See eng > Bat oe Ti es at eS atts s = E a ieee = ac Wa os Bs per iat Sipe ‘ eee He : Pen wee Rae fz Sete te 2 : Sex ee = . = S Ere as, : ee Fa Ra ag GP eB PP LE ae bee = Sex = ESD 3 GTI = Sore ee age : Ee — ee —— as <= oF CAE ST: Sees ae ; ee a Tes Face bene psn i d 6 Fie a = ate SET SA EE Bb ee A E cer Z Serer : é s ==. : ee fi “apology,” “apologise,” in current use of God’s kingdom under the apostles, after having as it were passed through the mint- 10 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS age of the King, so as to be stamped for circulation with imprint of His royalty. A distinct and full realisation of the fact as to that New Testament usage, taken into the mind here at the threshold of our inquiry, may serve toward preparation of the mind for further prosecution of the inquiry. And with a view to such preparatory impression, we make the following— Notes on the New Testament use of “apology,” “ apologise.” —The usage is obscured by translation: all the more in our version because in it the rendering is not always the same; though it always is “answer,” “defence,” “excusing,” or “clearing.” The following is a digested account of all the New Testament places where the Greek word—noun or verb —occurs. 1. Lt first occurs in a report of two most memorable utter- ances of the Lord (Luke xi. 11, xxi. 14—“answer”). We may suppose that the original utterance was in “Hebrew” (Aramaic), and that the Greek rendering is Luke’s own. The expression there is popular and free, so that in any case it would not be reasonable for us to fix its meaning in the strict sense of our technical apologetics. The theological use of apologia may be seen coming into existence at 1 Pet. iii, 15 (“answer”), in apostolic prescription of Christian defence; but there, too, we ought not to strain the meaning. Elsewhere the usage 1s exclu- sively Pauline in this. respect, that it appears only either in Paul's Epistles, or in historical works of the Pauline Luke. In Acts, where (ii., x.) Peter apologises the word “ apology,” “apologise,” is employed only in some connection with Paul’s evangelistic labours. The legal-technical sense—* answer,” or “defence,” as before a judge—comes into full view through Judicial proceedings in his case in Palestine, and colours his (subsequent) epistolary employment of apologia, which refers to similar proceedings in his case at Rome. 2. Either “defence” or “answer” is in our version always the rendering, except at Rom. ii. 15 (“excusing”) and 2 Cor. vu. 11 (“clearing”). The classic meaning is in the original somewhat clouded by metaphor at Rom. ii. 15, where conscience is the judge, at 2 Cor. vii. 11, where Christians are on their defence before Paul, and at 1 Cor. ix. 3, where he is judged of his readers or hearers. In all the places but one—namely, Acts xix. 33, where Alexander “would have made his defence” —it is in some way the Christian religion or cause that is apologised * There he is the protapologist of Christianity ; at 1 Pet. iii. 15 he is the apostolic preceptor of apology. INTRODUCTORY : REFERENCE TO WORDS AND THINGS 11 for. And ordinarily (see Luke xii. 11, xxi. 12) the judge isa regularly constituted authority ; though in two cases, of irregu- lar trial—at Acts xix. 33 and xxi. 30—the judge is only a mass meeting of the people. 3. “ Defence” is our version of apologia at Acts xxii. 1, where Paul says, ‘men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my apology ” ; and at Phil. i. '7, 17—two places on which we now shall dwell for a little. The Epistle is written from prison (vers. 7, 13, 14, 16), presumably (see iv. 22) at Rome. To this the apostle was brought by his own appeal to Cesar. And it may be with a reference to an appearance of his before Czesar’s throne, that he says ati. 7, “both in my apology and confirmation of the gospel, ye are partakers of my grace.” A “grace” lightly prized by him (ver. 29) is, being permitted not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for His sake. And (iv. 10, 14-16; cp. Heb. x. 34) in this grace the Philippians may be regarded as partners with Paul, in that they have with considerate generosity contributed of their means to his temporal support :—?they thus in a sense “apologise” in the person of the apostle. Very different is the temper of some (cp. ili. 18, 19) of whom he speaks at i. 15-17 (where the text has got somehow dislocated, but the substance of meaning remains clear). They preach the gospel “ out of con- tention, supposing to add affliction to his bonds.”+ But others preach it out of love, “knowing that I am set for apology of the gospel.” The Greek for “set,” here keimaz, has natively the meaning of “I lie” (down), or “I am laid” (low); so that here there may be a shade of the pathetic significance, “I le low” (helpless in bonds) for the good cause. But the sense of meaning simply “placed” for the defence of it, is in the connection very nobly adequate.? 4, “« Answer” is our version of apologise at Acts xxv. 8, where Paul apologises before the Roman governor Festus; and of apology at Acts xxv. 16, where Felix placed him under shield of the Roman principle of law, that no man be put to death before he have his accusers face to face with him,—so that he may have (lit.), “place for apology.”® At Acts xxiv. 10 Paul had said before Felix, “Ido the more cheerfully apologise” (“answer”). In Acts xxvi. (“the combat deepens”) apologise (“answer ”’) occurs four times,— “Agrippa said, Thou art at liberty to apologise . . . Paul stretched out his hand, and apologised . I shall apologise before thee this day ... As he thus 1 Gp. in “ Song of the Shirt,” the swallows ‘show their sunny backs, and twit me with the spring.” 2 Cp. Luther at Worms: “Here I stand. I can no other. God help me !” | 8 Op. place for repentance at Heb. xi. 17. 12 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS apologised, Festus saith with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself.” So where we last see this great apostle (2 Tim. iv. 16) at the close of his dying testimony. This Epistle, too, belongs to an imprisonment, which perhaps is later as well as harsher than that referred to at Acts xxviii. 30. He now (vers. 6-8) is in the near view of “dying for the name of the Lord Jesus” (see Acts xxl. 13; cp. Phil. ii, 17). He has “apologised” once (in “the lion’s” mouth), and is like to have occasion for again “ apolo- gising.” And he says, “ At my first apology no man stood with me” (cp. Dan. iii. 25). But (ver. 17) One stood with him, and strengthened him,—One who Himself (Luke xxii. 43) in the days of His flesh had (cp. Heb. iv. 14-16) been similarly strengthened, and who (Acts vii. 55, 56) in His glory of heavenly exaltation had similarly strengthened the proto- martyr Stephen. Otherwise left alone “to beard the lion,” as Christ had been when the disciples all forsook Him “and fled, Paul (cp. Acts xxii. 20) may now recall to mind that other faithful witness, who saw death’s door to be heaven’s gate, while those who slew him laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. Stephen did not call down fire from heaven to punish them. With dying breath he prayed for their for- giveness ; so following (1 Pet. i. 21, ete.) in the steps of Christ’s example on the cross. And Paul now prays for those who stood not with him at the trying moment, while not expressly saying that their absence was a sin. Perhaps in them “the spirit was willing” though “the flesh was weak.” But if he thus bear with weakness, he does nat share it. He can pray for them, but he will not flee with them. Now, as before (Phil. ii. 17), he is ready “with joyfulness” to be “offered on the sacrifice and service of the faith.” Such (cp. Acts xx. 35, 36), in the Scripture annals of time, is the last appearance of Paul the magnanimous. It is instructive to compare this last appearance of the word in the New Testament with its first appearance there, at Luke xii. 11. Paul, where he speaks of his own apologising, connects it (Phil. i. 7) with “confirmation” of the gospel (cp. Mark xvi. 20; Acts xiy. 3), and (2 Tim. iv. 16) with a completed proclamation of the message (R.V.) through him, and all the Gentiles hearing. Such an appearance of his in an imperial court at Rome, as (Acts xxiv.—xxvi.) he had made before the Palestinian Roman authorities, might make a deep impression at the heart of the world-empire (Luke ii. 1). The story of Paul himself, such as he had repeatedly told it INTRODUCTORY : REFERENCE TO WORDS AND THINGS 13 when evangelising in Palestine, is effectively an apologetic of the Christian religion,—answering objections to it, defending it against criminations, clearing it of “ calumnies,” constituting proof of its truth and divinity. Some—even “of Cesar’s household”—might, by force of reason thus brought home to them, be, like Cornelius and his friends (Acts x.) under influence of Peter's apologetic, not almost but altogether persuaded to be Christians. And the survivors of that “huge multitude” of believers at Rome who! at this time had undergone so gloriously (cp. Phil. uu. 15, 16) the “fiery trial ” of a great persecution under Nero, may (cp. Luke xxii. 32; 1 Pet. v. 10) have been greatly strengthened for further endurance, or for untroubled anticipation of such trials to come, by the bold front which the gospel showed to “the lion,” and the unshrinking defence with full proclamation of it on the part of (as the Romans know, Rom. xi. 13) the martyr prince-apostle of the Gentiles (Eph. iii. 8). The impression thus made at the head centre of heathen world-empire may have spread fast and far throughout its provinces and beyond its borders. For (2 Tim. ii. 9) God’s word was not in bonds as Paul was; and, eg., may have gone out from his prison even to Spain, where, as the Roman Christians knew (Rom. xv. 24, 28), his heart had long before been. His Roman apologising may thus have been to that “whole world” like the angels descending into Siloam’s pool, —causing a central impulse of healing movement that went throbbing out into ever wider circle beyond circle until the beneficent agitation filled all in all. But to dwell on the possible or intended effects of the apologising would here and now be premature. At present what we are seeking is, primarily, to take into our mind a full and fair impression of the sanction that the use of words, “apology,” “apologise,” has in New Testament Scripture use. And for that preliminary purpose our present exercise on the New Testament verbal usage has perhaps gone far enough. The same general purpose, to indent on the mind at this outset what is desirable by way of preliminary impression, may perhaps be further promoted by a yet further exercise on 1 Tacit. Annal. xv. 44. 14 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS use of words, in a wider connection with the things which are to be the subject of our following studies. The usage now to be recalled to mind, while having roots in Scripture history, became unfolded into completed explicitness of specific signi- ficance only in the subsequent “ period of the persecutions” ; and we now will follow it into that historical unfolding. 1. The Christian use of the words “confession” and “martyrdom ”—ain connection with “apology.” In the perse- cutions the Church was a Bush that burneth unconsumed.} And if (Luke xi. 11, xxi. 14) we regard apology as the articulate voice from that Bush, then in confession and martyrdom we shall see the luminous flame. Martyrdom simply as witness - bearing was by implication a mute apology through sufferings (John xxi. 19)—since testimony is a rational ground of belief, especially where there is (1 Pet. iv. 12) trial by fire. And after the middle-apostolic age, con- fession, though (Rom. x. 9, 10) natively not mute, had come to be so, ordinarily, as apology thus far, that it was actually inarticulate-—being silenced, or having only a stifled voice, that was not, like—ey.—Paul’s addresses to King Agrippa and the Jerusalem Jews, allowed to expand into apology. In the earlier times, both at Jerusalem, in the Petrine foundation of the new kingdom, and more widely over the Roman empire in the Pauline extension movement, the ad- herents of this religion, when called in question on account of it, were allowed to give their own account of it, explaining it so as to defend it—and commend it: they had this “place for apology” by customary permission of magistrates or other “powers.” In the second century there no longer was that freedom. Thus in the Bithynian persecution, A.D. 110,2 pro- fessed Christianity was dealt with, not as a doctrine or system to be considered, but simply as open capital crime to be punished and suppressed. The accused was simply put to the testing question of fact, “ Are you a Christian ?” and so made to decide by simply his Yea or Nay, between, on the one hand, disowning the religion or renouncing his hitherto profession of it, and, on the other hand, suffering the punishment of what under the law of the empire was an offence inferring ) ' Cp. Nec tamen consumebatur—Motto of the Reformed Scottish Church. * Pliny, Letter to Trajan, and Trajan’s Rescrupt. INTRODUCTORY : REFERENCE OF WORDS AND THINGS 15 death. The “apology” emitted by Christians of that period was as it were an articulation of the voice which thus had been stifled by the “powers.” It was in its nature like a “speech through the press,” in defence of Christianity so prevented from defending itself in a fair trial, or, in defence of humanity, of the soul’s right to be free, thus outraged by force- ful unfairness; such a speech as the martyrs or confessors, if allowed “place for apology,” might have orally delivered as a testimony before the judges or at the place of execution. The central conception represented by the group of words, confession, martyrdom, apology, is - not, reasoning on behalf of the religion, but, witness-bearing for it, testimony (which is the native meaning of the Greek martyria). In the Christian usage martyria came to have as its appropriate specific meaning, dying for the name or gospel of Christ. By “martyr” thus was meant, one who had sealed the testi- mony with his life’s blood; while “confessor” meant one who, though escaping from the fiery trial with his life, yet (Jas. 1, 12; ep. Rev. ii, 10) had earned “the crown of life” by “hazarding his life” in a persistent profession of this faith when brought before the prosecuting “ powers.” Thus in the great persecution, A.D. 177, of the churches of Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, under “the philosopher” emperor, Marcus Aurelius, those who were about to die for Christ requested that the brethren should not speak of them as “martyrs,” but only as “confessors,” lowly and simple; because (they reasoned) the lofty name belongs appropriately to the lofty One (Rev. i. 5) who is “the faithful martyr”? and the first- begotten of the dead. : * Letter sent at the time to the Christians of Asia and Phrygia (see Acts xvi. 6; 1 Pet. i. 1; Rev.i. 11; Acts xviii, 23). The notable use it makes of The Apocalypse is one of the few external proofs of the genuineness of that book to be found in extant second century literature. Another of them is contributed by Irensus (Against Heresies), the supposed writer of the Letter ; who, at the time of the persecution a deacon in Vienne, had in his youth sat at the feet of Polycarp of Smyrna in “ Asia” (cp. Rev. ii. 9 10). Yet a third proof, of considerably older date, was contributed by another Oriental, Syrian Justin Martyr, whose Debate with Typho the Jew is understood to represent a real discussion, held at Ephesus in “ Asia” (cp. Rev. ii. 1, etc.). | * Greek for witness. 16 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS They knew that the lofty One Himself had not disdained the crown ascribed to Him at Rev. i 5. In addressing a lukewarm Asian church (Rev. ii. 14), He, as if in order to create a soul beneath her ribs of death, had Himself assumed that crown by describing Himself as “the Amen, the faithful and true martyr (‘witness’), the beginning of the creation of God.” But (ep. Rev. u. 10) He did not refuse to share this crown with “ faithful” Christians. One of them He described (Rev. ii. 13) as “my faithful martyr,” and (Rev. xi. 3, 7) “my two martyrs” (“witnesses”) was His description of those who, faithful among the faithless at a foreseen time of general apostasy, were to testify against the beast-power of worldliness in the Church. Christians from the beginning have never as a class gone to the Lyonnesse heroic extreme of renouncing the lofty name. Long before The Apocalypse was written, the description “ Thy martyr” (Acts xxii. 20) had been employed by an apostle,in an address to the throned Christ Himself, with reference to him who is historically known to Christians as “the protomartyr” of their religion. And the Hebrew Christians (Heb. xii. 1) recognised “a great cloud of martyrs” (“witnesses”) in the suffering hero saints of the Old Testament. Though the meaning of martyr, as natively simply “ wit- ness” in the sense of testifier (not spectator), is exemplified in New Testament use (eg. at Matt. xviii. 16 and 1 Pet. v. 1), yet in the New Testament the word has already come to be the chosen one for designation of a witness who has been “slain for the word of God.” Thus (Acts xxii. 20) Stephen is a martyr in that specific sense. Christ Himself, where spoken of as “the faithful witness, and the first-begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth,” is in the same breath (Rev. i. 5) described as the one “that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood.” In the two places (Rev. 11. 13, xi. 3, 7) where He speaks of Christians as His “ witnesses,” He represents them as having been “ slain.” And presumably the Hebrew description of the ancient heroes of the faith as “witnesses” (Heb. xii. 1) has in it a reference, not only to their having lived a witnessing life (Isa. xliiii 10), but also (Heb. xi. 32-38, xii. 4) to their having, characteristically of their long, illustrious INTRODUCTORY : REFERENCE TO WORDS AND THINGS 17 line, been exposed to fiery trials of testimony, even unto death. The Greek for “confession” in our version is there some- times rendered “ profession” (eg. at Heb. iii. 1, iv. 14). It is capable of a meaning so vague as—say, with reference to a person or a doctrine—simply intimation or declaration (Matt. vii. 23), perhaps with a certain solemnity of protestation. But (Rom. x. 9, 10) the theological apostle employs it with specific reference to the fundamentally vital action of man’s true life in acknowledgment of God the Saviour. He also (1 Tim. vi. 13) raises it to the utmost conceivable height of solemn impressiveness in declaration by placing the “good confession,” which Christ “ witnessed before Pontius Pilate,” on the same level of inviolable sacredness with the being of the living God, the sovereign fountain of all creature life in the universe. And by Christ Himself (Luke xii. 8, 9) the expression, with its converse, is invested with a uniqueness as of tragic dignity and grandeur in setting it apart for denotation of the two actions, respectively, of Christians in either owning or disowning Him at the testing time before men, and of the Son of Man in correspondingly either owning or disowning them, at the final judgment, “before the angels of God.” In His own “good confession,’ He declared (John xviii. 37) that witness-bearing for “the truth” was a great purpose of His incarnation and coming into the world. We know (Matt. xxvi. 63-66) that in His case witness-bearing culmi- nated in martyrdom. But (Jas. 1.12; cp. Rev. ii. 10) the faithful confessor may receive the crown that is appropriately for martyrdom, though he should not be called to undergo the martyrs death. His action may have in it the moral worth of martyrdom, as well as its evidential value. Hence, in the later “period of the persecutions,” the confessors, having escaped with life after “ hazarding their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” came to be so held in honour by the Church as to constitute a sort of higher order of Christians: a lifelong distinction, on account of one past action, which ultimately came to be perilous to the general interest of orderly administration in the Church, and which, perhaps, in its tendency never was natively conducive to prosperity of 2 18 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS graces accompanying humility in “the confessors” them- selves. 2 2. A Christian use of the words “ lapsed, apostate, traitor.” Though somewhat remote from the central field of our proposed inquiry, the usage now to be considered by us is in that general region; and is so within its horizon that our present exercise on use of words will, in the line of similar exercises preceding, carry us down historically, in “ the period of the persecutions,” to that point where, at the opening of the fourth century (A.D. 312), Christianity is seen emerging from those persecutions in a Christian’s accession to the imperial throne (cp. Rev. xi. 15). This may suitably close the present Introduction, through rounding into completeness a kind of preliminary survey of that region of time in which we have really been engaging. What the usage brings particularly to view is, the primitive Christian feeling relatively to loyalty, moral trueness (1 Cor. v. 7, 8) in conscience toward God, faithfulness to Christ, as tested by the fiery trials (1 Pet. i. 7, iv. 12-19) in connection with religious profession. In Scripture Stephen and Christ are described as fazthful martyrs; and Christ spoke of Himself from heaven as the faithful and true martyr, after He had in the days of His flesh laid great solemnity of emphasis on truth,—* the truth,’—as being essential in the witness-bearing for which He came down from heaven to dwell among us here. Truth may in a sense be matter merely of the intellect or natural reason—a sense in which it will not be made light of except by idiots; but of the “ faithfulness that is crowned in Christian martyrdom the distinctively moral trueness is what constitutes the specific nature or characteristic essence. Moral veraciousness can have place and power in the other- wise rational or intellectual action or habit of receiving and keeping truth” (John vii. 17; cp. v. 39-41). But there may be a sort of surface receiving of the truth, where moral trueness is fatally wanting! And (Luke viii. 13) a grand effect of such trials as those of the persecuting times is, to illustrate the vital indispensableness of inward “ sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. v. 7,8) by making persistent open profession a testing proof of reality of conscience toward God. _ + Parable of the Sower ; cp. John ix. 39. INTRODUCTORY : REFERENCE TO WORDS AND THINGS 19 In our day, profession, often lightly made, also is often made light of; and, being made light of, may without much compunction be shrunk from “in time of temptation,” or so evaded that sometimes a nominal apology for religion really is effective repudiation or betrayal of it. The depth and strength of primitive Christian feeling toward such disloyalty is what, in the use of words now in question, comes into view — as, by contrast, illustrating true Christian loyalty of conscience toward God and faithfulness to Christ. Our illustrations are found near the middle of the third century and near the opening of the fourth.? Lapsed, apostate.—In the North African Church (Cyprian: Works and Lvfe) professing Christians who had “lapsed”? from profession, or become openly “apostate”? from the religion, under terror of the fiery trials, were found seeking restoration to Church fellowship. Whereupon it was not proposed by any one that the restoration should be granted without a protracted previous process of painfully humiliating penitential discipline. But many strong Christians, especially confessors, stood out for the view, that no man who, after once professing Christianity, shrinks at the testing time from openly confessing Christ, ought ever again to be owned as a Christian brother in the communion of the faithful. The strength of their feeling of this view was evidenced by that formidable Novatian “schism ” 4 which at one time threatened a disruption of the Christian Church. An evasion, that had been perpetrated by some of the lapsed, further illustrated loyalty by contrast. These were called /ibel- later (“ certificated ” men), in reference to a certificate (dibellus) which had saved them from the pains and perils of Christian profession. It was granted by the imperial officers, to the effect of certifying that the bearer had recanted—disowned or renounced that profession. And the evasion on the part of some Christians, who in fact had not recanted, consisted in this, that they escaped through benefit of the certificate of recantation, which they had somehow obtained though they had not qualified for it. Of course the lbellati were morally and spiritually in the same condemnation as the openly lapsed :— with an aggravation of mean dishonesty, as if a minister should 1 What here follows is considerably a reproduction from the present writer’s work, The Revelation and the Record. 2 Latin for sledden away. 3 Ecclesiastical Greek for deserter, * Greek for split. 20 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS hold. himself not under ordination obligations to the Church’s creed because he somehow—eg. through collusion with an official—has managed not to sign her ordination formula of adherence to the creed. te Traitor.—The Diocletian persecution, alming at extirpation or complete suppression of Christianity in the world-empire, had as peculiar feature an imperial command—suggested by a “philosopher”—that Christians, under penalty of death, should give up (tradere) their copies of the sacred books of the religion—their “Scriptures ”—to be destroyed. This pro- ceeded on the view, that Christianity among mankind stands or falls with the Bible—a view still held by worldly-minded philosophers as well as by spiritual-minded Christians. Those who obeyed the command became known as ¢raditores.* For their offence of unfaithfulness to God in relation to His written Word, they were dealt with by the Church as previously the lapsed or apostate had been dealt with for unfaithfulness relatively to the Incarnate Word (see Rev. vi. 9, xx. 4; cp. evil, 17), And in the ease of this legal treason, as previously in the case of apostasy or lapsing, there came to light an evasion which illustrates Christian loyalty—“ upright, downright, and straightforward ”—by contrast. Some of the traitors pleaded, in extenuation if not justification, that the books they had given up were not Scriptwres—sacred writings—but only common books, which the imperial officials took for Scriptures ;?. or again, that what they had given up were only those manor Scriptures—eg. 2 Peter, James, Jude, 2 and 3 John—which are intrinsically of insignificant importance, while (said the traitors) there 1s a cloud or haze of lingering doubt on the subject of their apostolic authorship. This occasioned a very important inquiry on the Church’s part regarding the Canon of New Testament Scripture. But what made the scandal of disloyalty in the evasion was, the false face of appearing to give up the word of God: as if a professedly Christian teacher, accused of preaching infidelity, should plead, that he had only pretended to do so (Jer. vi. 13, 14). Relatively to Pilate’s question regarding truth, the case of those “traitors” is interesting as bringing into view an allegation of “honest doubt ”—to justify dishonest action, or 1 The Latin of our “traitors”; the Greek for the crime of Judas has the same literal meaning. * Clavers’ dragoons—not being subtle theologians—are satisfied with abjuration of any “covenant.” APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 21 extenuate the dishonesty. The doubt, however sincere, could not whitewash insincerity and untruth, which (1 Cor. v. 7, 8; ep. John viii. 46; Rev. xxi. 8, 27) is a violence to the innermost life of this religion. But} it is remarkable that historically, on the great occasions of really testing trial, mere intellectual doubt, speculative indecision of the judgment, does not appear, to any appreciable extent, to have had any- thing to do with lapsing, apostasy, treason, Neither the faithful, nor the disloyal themselves, appear to have thought of other than moral and spiritual influences of worldliness (1 John ii. 19) as accounting for failure in the matter of witness-bearing for the truth in peril. It might thus appear that, as a rule, what is really tested in the life- history of this religion on the trying occasions is, not mere intellectual force or expertness, but moral trueness (Ps. cxil. 4), loyalty of heart (Ps. xv. 1, 2),—while correspondingly, living knowledge of the truth, real operative apprehension of it as the seed and food of life, is given to the true-hearted (Luke viii. 10, 15; John xviii. 37, xiv. 22-24; 2 Cor. iv. 3—6). BOO it. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. THE burden of our history here is, relatively to the two great ministries respectively of Christ and of His apostles,?—Did He, did they, apologise, or in any way deal with the matter of apologetics? And if He or they did, then how, or to what effect? What relative instruction is there, in His or their teaching or practice, for us “on whom (it may be said in this relation) the ends of the world are come” ? ‘But here there is a previous question—as to source of information—regarding which it may be desirable for us to come to some finding before going into those particulars of inquiry,—namely, in order to our throughout the inquiry pro- ceeding upon solid ground, a question— 1 See below, p. 42. 2 Greek for emissaries ; cp. Heb. iii. 1. 22 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Regarding History of the two great Ministries which are to be here considered. Professor Huxley, who claims to employ “ weapons of precision” in his inquiries in this region, has, in support of his contention that there is no sin in not believing in or on Christ (cp. John xvi. 9, iii, 18-21), asserted that we have no real means of trustworthy information about Christ and His teaching or work. Now, if we have no such means of information about Christ and His work, is it not for us a vain thing to inquire about His apologetics; and indeed about the apologetics of the apostles, since they profess to have derived their doctrines and their powers all from Him? Is there not for us a cloud or haze preventing vision over the whole field of the two great ministries, like that which the fourth century traitors saw over the human authorship of some minor Seriptures? And in this uncertainty regarding realities of the history, would it not be idle for us to inquire as to its apologetics ? Such is the previous question, which here may be profitably allowed to give us pause. Here, as before, we are confronted with a cloud at the threshold; but here, too, the cloud may pass away when the matter is fairly looked at. 1. The authenticity of gospel history may be provisionally assumed by us, as matter of present-day knowledge, estab- lished quite sufficiently for our information as to the teach- ing and practice of Christ and His apostles with reference to the proof of religion. It is true that Professor Huxley does not believe this. He holds that the present-day ascertain- ments of most advanced biblical scholarship are represented by such old masters as Baur and Strauss, whose Tiibingen school was virtually closed a generation ago, and whose critical theories now survive only as wandering echoes, perhaps taken upon hearsay by would-be well-informed men who really are ignorant. Here the professor’s “ weapons of precision” are ludicrously absent, like the panoply of Don Quixote. Instead of antiquated theories to the effect that the Gospels and other New Testament Scriptures are mainly forgeries late in the second century, let us listen, say, to Renan, the most. recent of the grand masters of scepticism ‘APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 23 with reference to primeval Christianity. He assures us, e.g., that discourses reported in Matthew are: self-evidently Christ’s own, and is willing to own that Mark is in substance the story of Peter declaring what he saw and heard in per- sonal attendance on Christ, as also that Luke, and in substance Acts, are presumably the work of Paul’s companion Luke. Here, then, if we will believe the latest of the leaders of “learned unbelief,” there is quite sufficient means of informa- tion for our purpose. For instance, as to Christ's own proof of religion, there is here authentic information of His having professed to work miracles in attestation of His being from God, and having appealed to evidence of prophecy in claiming to be the Messiah: so that Renan has to make Him an impostor ;—as also Strauss at last had to do on the same account, abandoning his mythic theory as untenable. 2. The genuine Pauline authorship of the four great theo- logical Epistles—Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians — is admitted as “ unquestionable” even by Professor Huxley's antiquated Tiibingen masters, as well as by Renan. These Epistles are the doctrinal manifesto of primeval Christianity. And about their genuineness there is not—broadly speaking —except in some cases of mere extravagant eccentricity, any question among real biblical scholars, whether believers or unbelievers: the only relative question that there can be among sane men is, not between belief and unbelief, but between real knowledge and mere ignorance. Now, in the light of these Epistles (of date a:D. 57 to A.D. 60), “un- questionably ” Pauline apostolic, it is perfectly clear, as mere historical matter of fact, as to proof of religion,—that the apostles, while placing great reliance on the internal evidence of the excellences of the religion itself in the substance of it, also claimed for it an external evidence, of Old Testament prophecy fulfilled in Jesus as the Christ, of His resurrection showing Him to be the Son of God, and of miracles done by the apostles themselves, in attestation of their mission as God’s ambassadors to mankind regarding the gospel of His kingdom in that Son :—all this, in representative regions of the whole Roman “ world” (Luke ii. 1), within half a lifetime of the personal ministry of Christ on earth. What further 24 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS information regarding the apostolic ministry could we, for the purpose of our present inquiry, reasonably expect or seek ? But,— = 3. The main point for us here is that, in order to profit- able fruitful inquiry as to the apologetics of Christ and His apostles, we do not need even to suppose or assume the authenticity of New Testament Scripture history. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Tiibingen theorising was right in making the New Testament Scriptures as a class to have been second century forgeries, and also that there were no “unquestionable” Epistles of Paul. Still, neither the Tiibingen school, nor any other school of real know- ledge, has any real doubt of the fact, that before the close of that century the new Scriptures now on our canon, and only these, were held in the bosom of the Christian community as genuine writings of the apostles and their authorised associates, Consequently it is a simply indisputable historical fact that, eg., those second century Christians believed the gospel history which we now have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Hence in these Scriptures we have demonstrably correct information as to what the second century Christians believed to have been the apologetics of Christ and His apostles in the first century. And as the Christians of the second and all subsequent centuries have held those Scriptures as a divine rule of faith and practice, it follows that, in ascertaining the New Testament apologetics, we come to know—what surely is well worth all the labour of thus learning it, namely— what Christians in the second century and ever since have held as a divinely given model and prescription for their guidance relatively to defence of Christianity by reasoning,—have held as the principia of the apologetics of their religion, as delivered in the two great ministries of its founders. 4. Further, we have independent means of trustworthy wm- Sormation in the Old Testament. The New Testament in our hands is, in its representations regarding the personal career of Christ and the establishment of His kingdom, on the face of it a history and exposition of the “ fulfilment ” of the Old. It is simply a fact, that can be seen by any reader, that the Old Testament Messiahism exhibits, in the form of adumbra- APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 205 tion and prediction, what the New Testament sets forth as realised in the religion of Jesus, so that His “Christianity ” is the historical counterpart of that prophetic Messiahism. And though the New Scriptures should not have come into existence until after the first century, certainly the Old Scrip- tures were in existence before it. They existed at least two centuries before it,—witness their being then extant in a Greek translation. Though the New Testament information regarding the first century should be for us only as the cloud- concealed bridge-way in Mirza’s vision, yet a light shines for us on that way from Old Testament adumbration and pre- diction, exhibiting the (future) history of Messiah’s earthly career. Not only the New Scriptures, though they should all be forgeries, clearly show what in every century since the first has always been the belief of Christians regarding Christ and His apostles in that beginning; the Old Testament also makes clear what, previous to that beginning, and down to a.p. 30 (Matt. xi. 13), had for long ages (see ver. 2) been Israel’s expectation regarding the “coming” Christ and His work. And though the Old Scriptures, too, should have originated in forgery (“methinks he doth forge too much”), still their existence at the opening of the first century is an undoubted fact. The fact of their existence was notorious as matter of literary history — witness the Septuagint translation — for centuries before the birth of Christ. And the Scriptures thus existing, as the sacred books of Israel’s religion, contained the Old Testament Christianity. That is to say, they exhibited, in the form of types and predictions, the expectation of Israel regarding Messiah, His work, His manner of proceeding in the establishing of His kingdom. Now, that will enable us to form a reasonable judgment as to what presumably must have been the apologetics of Christ and His apostles,—their manner of seeking to found His religion. For,— In seeking to found His religion, they presumably must have endeavoured to conform to the Old Testament repre- sentation of Messiah’s manner of working for the establish- ment of His kingdom, so as in this way to meet the Israelitish expectation of “Him that should come” in the fulness of the times. Thus, in the palmy early days of his mythical theoris- 26 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ~ ing, even Strauss, in order to find a seed from which a mythical history of Jesus could grow up in the supposed hotbed of primeval Christian imagination, had to seek that seed in the fact that Israel expected a Messiah who should work miracles, in fulfilment of prophecy and manifestation of His own glory. In which case,—Jesus of Nazareth claiming to be Jehovah’s Christ,— must He not presumably have professed to work miracles, and fulfil prophecy, by way of proving His religion ? Finally,— 5. Yet further, the character of the Scriptures, and of the ministries, would bear them witness though we otherwise had been ignorant of their history. Suppose that the Old Testa- ment had not existed for us, and that the Christian belief of the second and subsequent centuries regarding the New Scrip- tures had not been heard of by us. For us the said Scriptures would thus be—like the recently excavated Assyrian inscrip- tions—a, discovery of to-day. Even in that case the record might bear internal evidence of historical reality, such as would leave no doubt in the minds of men of sense that what we here have is a real history of the earthly career of Jesus of Nazareth and His apostles; and the way in which they are here represented as setting about the proof of religion might to such minds, by its reasonableness, go to show that the history is real. It is not irrational to suppose that In actual experience, by this very process, without men’s being distinctly aware of it, the Scriptures and the ministries are, in myriads of hearts and homes, continually approving themselves as true and divine. | For the ulterior purpose of our inquiry in the present book, it may not be unprofitable, by way of sample exercise on that testing character of reasonableness, here to pause for a little on a matter that has an interest of its own, in making the following— Notes on Professor HTualey ve the swine miracle (Matt. viii., Mark v., Luke viil.).—Here again there is on the professor's part a notable absence of hig « weapons of precision,” as! there was in his proposed proof of evolution from a paleeon- * Nature, June 21, 1883, APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY Py tological fact, of natural history of the nautilus, which* was promptly shown to be not a fact, but the opposite, and would not have proved evolution though it had been fifty times a fact. But absence of precision on his part need not make the present exercise unprofitable for our purpose. 3 : 1. His view (“as a scientist”) regarding “nature” implies that miracle is absolutely impossible: his view that “nature” is absolutely all of course implies that there absolutely cannot be anything supernatural? And (1) in holding such a view he is not a true scientist, but only an atheistic metaphy- sician (cp. Matt. xix. 26). Science does not teach that miracle (“extraordinary supernatural” work) is absolutely impossible ; but only assumes that it is naturally impossible,—as of course it is, otherwise it were no true “miracle” (wonder), Science thus does not bid men regard incarnation or redemption as a monstrous thing like “a centaur in Piccadilly.” (2) What is more directly to the present purpose,—his (untrue) scientism is a disqualification on his part for fairly judging as to the his- torical reality of the swine miracle. The man who is prepos- sessed with a “scientific” conviction that a thing is absolutely impossible,—is he in a mental condition for fairly estimating historical evidence adduced in proof that the thing is a fact ? It was the same presupposition, of the absolute impossibility of miracle, that occasioned the now demonstrated blindness (John ix. 39) of the so-called “historical” criticism of the Tubingen school with reference to gospel history (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). 2. He contends that this particular miracle is morally im- possible, as involving violence to right of private property,— which, he holds, could not be perpetrated by Christ. The char- acter of Christ he professedly holds in deepest reverence ; so as to be hotly indignant if it be said or implied that he (the professor) deems it not a sin not to believe Christ (as dis- tinguished from not believing in Christ or on Him). But (1) would not such a Christ as his argument here implies—one incapable of wrong-doing (so wtterly that the gospel story must be false)—be a miracle of manhood: which the professor, “as a scientist,” holds to be absolutely impossible? (2) How does Professor Huxley come to revere so deeply the character of Christ ? seeing that generally our having no trustworthy means of information about Christ is the very foundation of the professor’s 1 Pattison in Transactions of the Victoria Institute, April 7, 1884. 2 In his eulogistic appropriation of Hume’s reasoning about miracle (Essay on Hume), he essentially mistakes Hume, who, like Mr. Stuart Mill, knew better than to make miracle absolutely impossible. His position was only, that it is in the highest degree improbable, so as to be morally im- possible. 28 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS proof that it is no sin not to believe on Him; and particularly, to show that the Gospels, our only extant source of real informa- tion regarding the earthly career of Christ, are not trustworthy in their testimony as to fact, is the very purpose of the pro- fessor’s argument about the swine miracle? Whence, then, has he his knowledge of that character of Christ which he so profoundly reverences ? 3. In his endeavour to discredit the Gospels, he essentially misrepresents their narrative. This on his part is not mere clumsy blundering absence of “precision.” In such a case, it is a grave delinquency. It affects not only the logic of his argument, but its moral trueness. In all decent fairness, one who adversely criticises a gospel narrative is bound to represent the matter of it as the Gospels present it. And with reference to the purpose of this criticism, namely, testing the trustworthiness of the whole gospel history by this as a sample case, the moral as well as logical obligation is here pecuharly stringent. Yet true it is and of verity, that here there is mis- representation to the effect of turning, against the scriptural foundation of Christian belief in God, a narrative which in itself is fitted for supporting that belief. The narrative itself is regard- ing the Saviour Son of God, in a work intended to serve a saving divine purpose toward mankind. The misrepresentation makes it appear as if the thing narrated had been an isolated and unauthorised action of a merely private individual man, such as (the professor intimates) would be meetly rewarded by a magistrate’s casting the perpetrator into prison. That we do not here misapprehend the matter, may appear as follows :— Suppose that the Gadarenes (or Gerasenes ?) could lawfully hold property in swine; or, that in any case it would be wrong for a merely private individual man to destroy the swine,—as it would be, say, to blight a neighbour’s fig-tree without his permission, or to kill his firstborn of Egypt. That is nothing to the purpose of Professor Huxley’s argument, except on the view that Christ in this working is a merely private individual man. Now, is He so in the gospel narrative? Do the narrators, here or elsewhere, expressly or by implication, make Him to be in this working merely a private individual human being? On the contrary, all three of them, from the outset, with great impressiveness, make Him throughout His career to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. i. 1, 21-23 J viarkriels Luke 1. 35; cp. Matt. xvi 16-20). Nevertheless their critic, in an avowed endeavour to make them false witnesses concern- ing God, falsifies their testimony ; appearing to comment on what they say, while really putting an essentially different APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 29 thing in place of it, and moralising, or otherwise commenting, on that (cp. his “ fact” as to the nautilus). 4. Relatively to the root question here,—regarding Christ Himself personally,—Professor Huxley's procedure is arbitrary and irrational. It is logically weak and incoherent in a measure far from creditable to that “scientism” of which he 1s a popular expositor. A Christ whom he so profoundly reverences must in his view at least have some substantive reality of existence, He cannot be, in the critic’s own view, a mere figment of the critic’s own imagination. The Christ who was so unflinchingly just, that a swine miracle would be morally impossible for Him, must in some way be historically real. Now the only real Christ ever heard of among mankind professed to work miracles, and claimed to be the Saviour Son of God. If, then, according to Professor Huxley’s view of “nature,” miracle be absolutely impossible, what does he mean, what can he mean, by resenting the ascription to him of holding it not a sin not to believe Christ 2 Does he believe, or pretend to believe, Christ profess- ing to work miracles, to fulfil prophecies, to be the Son of God ? On the other hand, if Christ really was not a “ deceiver” (see Matt. xxvii. 63), if He was what He claimed to be,—then He is Lord of all, to whom belong the earth and its fulness, so that the cattle on a thousand hills are His; and to speak of any conceivable creature right of property as here limiting and barring out His right of universal suzerainty, is a mere crass futility, like speaking of a glow-worm’s extinguishing the sun. But, on the view that here He is only a private individual man, to speak about imprisonment for violation of neighbourly right of property is to betray utter incomprehension of the matter in question here. On this view that supposed offence would be mere insignificance of peccadillo in comparison with the vast wickedness of the whole career, in its persistent impious imposture, rising to a supreme of criminal audacity in the last cry from the cross. It is no wonder that the high priest, not believing Him on His oath, rent his clothes and solemnly declared Him worthy of death (Mark xiv. 61-64). Does Professor Hualey believe it was mere man that swore most solemnly, that He was “ the Christ, the Son of the blessed” ? If he do not, then why speak of a private right of property as making it wrong in Him to work His will on creatures? If he do, then what can be the meaning of his so profoundly re- verencing “that deceiver”? Even the swine-owners at least had a meaning whem they entreated Christ to leave their countryside. Is it possible that Professor Huxley has not a meaning when he speaks of utterly believing Christ? Is it an 30 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS office of “scientism” to make men speak nonsense about Christ in the-interest of infidelity or atheism ? Cuap. I. APOLOGETICS IN THE EARTHLY MINIstry oF Curist. What we here have in view is distinct from what may be spoken of as apologetics of gospel history. Apologetics of gospel history may mean (John i. 31; 1 John i. 3) apolo- getics constituted by the gospel history itself, as furnishing ground for men’s believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And presumably (2 Pet. i. 16; 1 Cor. xv. 3—8, ili, 8-15) this in effect is the ground of belief that primarily was laid alike before Jews and Gentiles (see Acts ii. 14-36, x. 34-43) by the apostles in their initial work of founding God’s kingdom among men. At this hour, simple presentation of that history, of the works and words of Jesus of Nazareth, is everywhere and among all classes found in experience to be the most effective apologetics,—or, means of leading men to belief in the Bible religion, and establishing them in the faith of it. The evidence of Christianity thus constituted or furnished by the gospel history, we will not now inquire into under the head of « apologetics in the earthly ministry of Christ.” What we are about to inquire into is only, in His ministry as teacher,—in His inaugural individual defensive propa- gandism,— His manner of dealing with the matter of proof of religion. There will thus be excluded from our consideration of gospel history,—in the first instance,—not only the great evangelical fundamentals of His incarnation and redemption, but also various other essential aspects of His person and work (John xvi. 14) in connection with which it may be seen (cp. Eph. ii. 20) that “Jesus Christ Himself” is “the chief corner-stone ” of apologetics as well as of the general Bible system of religion. Heads of evidence in gospel history that is thus excluded from our present consideration are, e.g., the following :—1, The moral perfection of Jesus—His “ sinless- ness "—regarded as involving a new supernatural beginning of manhood in His person (see Luke xxiii. 47; ep. Matt. xxv. 54), with (Matt. i. 21-23), a promise of new creation of humanity through the coming of such a Son of Man.— APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 31 2. The whole conception of His career—* Plan of Jesus”—as reaching through incarnation and redemption to that regenera- tion of mankind now dead in sin: this, say, in its corre- spondency, not only to the Messianic hope of the Old Testament, but also to (John xii. 20) the longings or wants of that lost mankind ;—as these may be seen, eg. in the religions of heathenism, and are illustrated by facts in general history of the moral and spiritual condition of man’s race.—3. That view of the whole system of things—in the condition, history, and thence presumable destination, not only of man, but of “the earth and the world”—which underlhes the gospel representa- tion of the mission of Jesus Christ the Lord (Luke ii. 11): this, say, as compared with otherwise known facts regarding the actual condition and history of that system, and with non-Christian speculations regarding it. From inquiry into such matters in connection with gospel history we will now deliberately refrain. From the com- prehensive investigations into which that inquiry would draw us we of set purpose turn aside,—in order to undivided full concentration of our attention for the present on the one matter of the Saviour’s personal teaching in its bearing on the subject of apologetics,—or on the question, Did He “ apologise,” or otherwise deal as teacher with that subject? And if He did, then, how ? In its bearing on apologetics His teaching presents two aspects of instructiveness, under which we shall now consider it.—1. There is (Luke xii. 5-12, etc.) a very special introduc- tion to apologetics in His teachings with reference to witness- bearing—to confession, with possibility of martyrdom, and culmination in apology (“ answer”). And,—2. there is His own apologetic practice,—His production of evidence of the truth of His religion, or exhibition of proofs, or appeal to the proofs, of His being from God. Here, too, we must practise exclusion, even of things intrinsically or otherwise most interesting and important, for the sake of concentration on the one subject- matter of our inquiry here and now. Under each of these two aspects of the Saviour’s teaching there appear things in it, of intrinsically greatest importance, which, in order to success in what ought here and now to be our one endeavour of inquiring, we must either exclude from our view, or look at 32 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS only in their connection with doctrine as to the proof of religion. It might even be said that the question for us at every point has now to be, not, What is the value of this or that as proof of Christianity ? but, How does it bear on the theory of apologetics,—the science or practice of that proof ? What does the great Teacher (“ Master” at John xiii. 13, 14, etc.) here expound or exemplify as to the manner in which that proof may be rightly contemplated and gone about ? What has the Lord thus or otherwise ordained, regarding either the sources and grounds of Christian evidence to be adduced by us, or the spirit and method of adducing it ? SEC. 1. His Introduction to Apology (in such teachings as at Luke xii. 1-12), It may help us toward the desired concentration on the one point of our inquiry here and now, if we look at the matter here set forth in the light of its environment. And for our purpose a suitable point of view may be found through our mentally placing ourselves beside a professing Christian who, when there is occasion or call for his “ giving a reason ” of the Christian hope (1 Pet. iii. 15), straightway (Luke xlv. 18) “begins to make excuse, —e.g. in the strain of pleading, that he is not of a martial temper or combative disposition, as some men are (Luke xviii. 11), but a quiet follower of the Prince of Peace, hating “strife of tongues,” and deeming that, after all, a good life is the best apology for religion. To which it might be answered,—Excuse in place of obedience is in such a case disobedience aggravated by hypo- critical insult (cp. Acts v. 3). Were Justin Martyr and Tertullian leading a bad life in hazarding their lives as apolo- gists for this religion? Had it not been said before their time, “Curse ye Meroz; because they came not to the help of the Lord, the help of the Lord against the mighty”? May it not be a delusive self-indulgence,—a blinding worldliness of soft unmanly selfishness,—that makes a capable man do nothing, but snivel about a good life, when the call is to the fiery front of battle: instead of standing in the breach, for the rescue or defence, where the heart’s life of the kingdom is in peril, perhaps with traitors within the city or the citadel, and enemies openly storming in upon and through broken walls ? ee ee eS APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 33 “Be not deceived, God is not mocked”; and the true con- fessors will disown the Vicar of Bray. We now look at the matter as exhibited by “the faithful witness ” in such utterances as at Luke xil. 5-12. Simply to look at this passage, pausing reverently (Ex. iii, 5) in con-. templation of what appears in it, as ina Bush that burneth unconsumed,—this, if we duly remember who it is that speaks here, is itself an education, as of novitiate, for apolo- getics,—were it only through its introducing us into the true central point of view for contemplation of the subject. Here at ver. 12, and in the parallel utterance at Luke xxi. 14, we mark the place that is given to apology. It is expressly placed, by Christ, at the highest point of testimony, in the culmination of that witness-bearing which appears in con- fession of Him, and may rise into martyrdom for His truth. We observed ? that apologise (“ answer”) in Luke’s report of the Lord’s relative utterances ought not to be pressed into a strict academic sense of apologetics. Taking the word in the free natural sense of, generally, “answer” to accusation or “defence” against crimination,—which may (1 Pet. ii. 15) consist in “ giving a reason” of the Christian hope—we now will dwell on the relative significance of the utterances in which, the word occurs (namely, at Luke xii. 11 and xxi. 14), as revealing itself through the historical connection. And we begin with observing that, even at the first blush, though it should be looked at only from a distance, in this representa- tion, while there is careful provision for the matter and manner of the apology—as it were, the body of apologetics— far more impressively what is made prominent, as the funda- mentally vital thing in respect of real importance, is, the heart and soul and spirit of the apologising—like a life divinely breathed into what otherwise is but animated clay. This is represented most impressively by the direction, Luke xii. 11, 12 (R.V.), “Be not anxious how or what ye shall answer (apologise), or what ye shall say: for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say.” Here we witness the first appearance of apology by name in the annals of the new dispensation of God’s kingdom among men. It is the King that here addresses “ His 1 “ Answer ”—on the word here, see above, p. 10. 2 Above, p. 10. 3 34 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS friends,” “ His disciples first of all.’ He speaks of a situa- tion of fiery trial (cp. 1 Pet. iv. 12, i. 7) in which they are to be placed through man’s opposition to His cause. On account of their adherence to that cause, they are to be called into question, brought before the “powers” of an angry threatening world, which are “able to destroy the body.” And in that situation, they are not to be simply passive, sitting still and doing nothing. Much less are they to be dumb if the good name of His religion be misrepresented or otherwise maligned. Least of all are they to deny Him, were it only (Matt. xi. 30) by a failure to confess Him which effectively is denying Him,—a silence giving consent te dishonouring His name. They are to stand up for Him, and speak out for Him—apologising, pleading His cause. And this they are to do in the Spirit: “the Holy Spirit shall teach you,” where- fore “ be not anxious how or what ye shall answer, or what ye shall say.” About reliance on the Spirit’s teaching Christ here speaks —“as His manner was ”—-without qualification. He simply makes His point here,—leaving qualifications, if needed, to come in due place and time of need. For instance, what He here says about making no previous preparation for apolo- gising, does it apply to such a case as ours? That may depend on the question, whether the situation in which we are providentially called to the answering is the same as that which He had immediately in view. The ‘case here in His view is the extreme case,—in which it is that a principle is thoroughly tried: namely, the case of His followers in deadly perils of raging persecution. In that case, a Christian might well be solicitous,! in fear that the good cause might come to be clouded through lack of preparedness on his part, confusing perturbation of his mind, mere failure of his nerve—as when the disciples all forsook the Master and fled. For such an emergency, a Christian may rely on the promised prompting of the Holy Spirit, in place of the preparation that in other circumstances would be in his own power. But in our ordinary case, where there is no such emergency, to neglect * The Lyonnese martyrs requested their brethren to pray for them, that they might be enabled to glorify God by the manner of their dying for His truth, (3) APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 39 the labour of attaining to attainable qualification for answer- ing when call arises, under the name of relying on the pro- mised aid of the Spirit, would be to show, not the true faith of a Christian, but rather the lazy presumption of a hypocrite. Still, it is in that extreme case, of emergency most fierily trying, that we most clearly see the point,—as to that heavenly teaching of apology. “His disciples first of all,” then immediately in view, may have been the apostles-elect : who by this time had received some inaugural experience of evangelistic labour, through probationary trials of preaching in a preparatory mission He had sent them on. That experience may have led them to look forward with peculiar anxiety to the possible occurrence of emergent calls for apology: in case of which a man, though resolute in confessing Christ, and ready (Acts xxi. 13) to be bound or even to die for His name, yet might not be prepared so to “answer” or apologise as not to bring dishonour on that name. What, for instance, if, through strangeness and sudden terrors of emergency, there had been an apologetic failure on the part of Peter at the great Pente- cost, or of Paul addressing the Jerusalem Jewish multitude, or Festus and Agrippa in their array of temporal dominion! It is worth noting that here, the earliest recorded promise of espiration to apostles—if such it be—had pointed reference to apology alone: on whick account, were it only on this account, we shall do well to make a careful study of the apostolic apologetics. But the address, though it should in the first instance be peculiarly to those apostles-elect, has a comprehensive aspect toward all Christ’s followers, down to the world’s end: go long as there are oppositions to the gospel of the kingdom which are calls to the defence of it by “ His friends.” Here we need not enter on any question, whether the forecast exhibited in the address, of the future experience of that kingdom among mankind, is not manifestly supernatural, such as to constitute for the gospel an evidence of fulfilled prophecy. Christ (John xv. 18) showed in His teaching, that thus far insight into the worldliness of mankind which is enmity against God would give a foresight of deadly oppositions to His cause, which natively (Heb. xii. 15, 16) Chap. 2nd below. 36 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS a are. fruits from such a root. And in the forecast of such oppositions, arising in the course of human history, He illus- trates the sacred importance of Christian apology by ascribing it primarily to a special and extraordinary teaching of the Holy Ghost. No doubt, in that unconsumed burning Bush of testimony, it is the Spirit of grace, which is true life, that is the luminous flame, appearing in confession with readiness for martyrdom. But the apology, which is the articulate voice from that Bush, is the one thing here ascribed expressly to the Third Person of the Godhead. It greatly adds to the impressiveness of this fact, to find in parallel utterances that, on all the occasions of His re- ferring to such provision for emergent opposition, Christ signalised the sacred importance of apology by promising the sacred gift of speech as distinctly a divine gift; and yet more, that on the separate occasions respectively He ascribed the sift to, separately, every one of the Persons of the adorable Trinity. Thus, while here (Luke xii. 12) He says, “the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that same hour,” on a previous occasion (Matt. x. 20) He brought into view the First Person as distinctly the bestower of the gift: “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you”; and (Luke xxi. 14, 15; cp. 1 Pet. iii, 15) on the last recorded occasion of His referring to this matter, within two days of His death, He brought into view Himself, the Prince of Life, the Second Person of the Godhead, as the giver of apology: “ Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate beforehand what ye shall answer (apologise): for J will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist” (see a fulfilment at Acts vi. 10 and Acts vii.). | It is to be noted, further, that the two utterances in which . the word apologise is found in gospel history occur in two most memorably great discourses of the Lord, which might be entitled His two farewells,—to the prevalently most esteemed religionism of Canaan in His day. 1. At Luke xii. 1-12 1s recorded His initial farewell, when He had broken with the leaders of that religionism, the Pharisees and scribes ; and,—2. in Luke xxi. and also in Matt. xxiv. and Mark xii, we have the record of His final farewell, on Olivet, apparently in APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 37 hearing of only some few selected disciples, in the last week of His life, after He had made His last appearance as a public teacher in the temple. These discourses were not addressed to those whom He thus had parted from; but to His “ disciples” or “ friends,’ who followed Him into the separa- . tion. And they have reference to the future that awaited His followers, in the times when He should have gone from them, and they should have come into painful experience of what (Matt. x. 38), in a world that hates Him because hating the Father, is involved in following Him truly as the Christ, the Son of God. It was then especially that there was to be call for apology as well as martyrdom: not only as a child can suffer, but actively playing the man for Christ and His religion by “ giving a reason of its hope.” Here let us pause for a little on the side-question, What is to be thought of Christ as here appearing ?—not only in His placing Himself between the First and the Third Persons of the Godhead, and most conspicuously on the judgment throne, but also and especially in His bearing toward men ?—above all, toward “ His own” disciples and friends? He foresees as in- evitable that adherence to His religion shall bring vast and incalculable miseries—the direst evils that creatures can inflict or can innocently undergo—precisely on those followers who shall trust Him the most unreservedly, and serve Him the most fully and sincerely in devotedness of love. Yet He calls men into His religion. He plans and provides for men’s being called into His religion in all nations through all generations. And He makes the sum and substance of it all to be—Hzamself: Christ, equivalent to Christianity, the religion of the living God! Apart from His here placing Himself on heaven’s throne, be- tween the Father and the Holy Ghost, how are we to account for the claim He here makes upon mankind,—not only to loving remembrance, but to worshipping service and sacrifice, including such endurance of evil for His name? A claim so vast, on the part of one so meek and lowly, so just and wise and loving,— can it be accounted for except wpon the view, that He is the only Being in the universe entitled to make such a claim ? Apology may be gone about in a worldly spirit. So may preaching or prayer: not to speak of temporising silence im the place of earnestly contending for the faith. But the true original Preceptor of apologetics is (John xvi. 14; Luke xii, 12) the Holy Spirit of God the Father and the Son. There 38 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS is no more perfect picture of wnworldliness than the delinea- tion of apology by Christ in those two utterances, in which it first appears by name. And a crowning exaltation of its true nature, of spirituality, in the sacred history of His kingdom, is constituted by its being thus ordained of the King, “the faithful martyr” (Rev. i. 5), who in witness-bearing on the cross has left His people an example, that they should follow in His steps. Comparing the particular contents of the two farewell discourses, we perceive that the first of them is that which bears most fully on our point of present inquiry. For all through it (Luke xii. 1-12) there is a continuous movement on and up to that point—of apology—as its culminating termination: while in the second of them (Luke xxi.) the utterance regarding apology (ver. 14) is not thus a finality crowning the whole, and the whole is not, as the first of them is, occupied only with the trials and the duties of Christ’s own “friends.” It reaches into “apocalyptic ” forecastings of judgment, final and initial, on His enemies :—initial judgement, on Jerusalem and the holy nation on account of their not receiving the Messiah when He came to them; blending in prophetic vision with ulterior judgments, on the populations of the earth in connection with the coming of His kingdom among mankind. Even there it is remarkable that Christian apology should still appear in His forecast, like a “ light in a dark place,” as if “shining” amid chaotic dissolution of a world. We, however, for our present purpose, will now con- centrate our attention on the subject as it appears in the first of those two farewell discourses of the Lord (Luke x11, 5-12), 7 This representation of it might as a whole be entitled, The trial of the witnesses (Isa. xliii. 10). The witnessing office of Christ’s followers is here taken for granted. And the situation, of alarming “ terror” (1 Pet. iii. 14), which is to be the outward instrument of trial, is regarded as inevitable through the wicked world’s antipathy to God in the gospel. The specialty, on which attention thus is fixed, is the trial,— the action of the witnesses under trial, their faithfulness or unfaithfulness to trust, and the corresponding action toward APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY og them on the part of the King and Redeemer’ who has sent them on this mission of witness-bearing. The discourse is distinctly the utterance of a King, invested with all power in heaven and on earth (Matt. xxvii. 18-20; ep. Acts i. 8). Its point is kingly direction from the Son of. God, such as the servant Moses (Heb. iii. 6) delivered to Israel at the Jordan regarding the holy war for conquest of the promised land. And with reference to that apology, which He places on the summit of the witness-bearing, what He prescribes is, not only faithfulness in testimony, but in a fearless boldness amid all the alarming “terrors,” @ strange unearthly calm, as of the light in a pharos tower, that shines immovable through all night storms, “not shaken by the thundering surges, nor quenched by the blinding spray ” (cp. Phil. ii. 15, 16). The calm, which in the last of the two farewell discourses (Luke xxi. 19) He spoke of as a Christian self-possession of the soul in “patience” (that is, persistent endurance; cp. Heb. xii. 1, 2),—is most remarkably to be exhibited in the witness’s making no preparation for the apologising, not even so much as thinking about the matter beforehand? but carefully, even of set purpose, to avoid all thought of so preparing for such emergency ! It was remarkably exemplified by martyrs and confessors in the first heroic age of persecutions, and often has been in later ages. It may remind classical scholars of the Horatian worldly wisdom of maintaining stable equanimity in troubles (memento in adversis rebus wquam servare mentem), or the Horatian composed fearlessness of virtue (integer vite sceleris- que purus) in confronting people’s rage or tyrant’s frown. But here it is exhibited, not by select individuals, rare heroic souls under discipline of philosophy, but (1 Cor. i. 26, etc.) by a commonalty largely consisting of weak despised “ things which are not.” So (Luke xxi. 13) it “shall turn unto them for a testimony.”* It is really wonderful. That self- 1 “How could I,” said Polycarp, when put to the test of dying as His witness, “ How could I deny Him, my Redeemer and King ?” 2 Ver. 14. Cp. as to “the extreme case,” above, p. 34. 8 Regarding Blandina the slave girl’s endurance of torture in martyr- dom, it was said by the brethren, “God showed in her person that things which are despised by men are honourable before Him.” 40 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS possession of the Christian soul, the strange unearthly calm— as on Stephen’s “angel” face, Acts vii—in simple reliance on the invisible God, is it not a visible outshining of divine supernaturalism of light within the soul so tried and not found wanting ? Moses by faith “endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” The thought of God—*the great J am ”—as watching over the trial, ready to sustain the tried, sure to punish those who prove unfaithful at the testing time,—is here employed by Christ as means of maintaining His tried followers in the calm of a persistent faithfulness in confession which may rise into martyrdom, and be manifested very signally in right apologising. Here, too, we mark the continuous movement of representation rising in that climax. Not only, with a powerful distinctness, every one of the three adorable Persons, in whose name the witness was baptized, is now brought into Separate view as a spectator of his action in the testing crisis :— an amazing appeal !—as compared with which Heb. xii. 1, 2 is feebleness, and Napoleon’s allusion to “ forty centuries ” looking down upon his Frenchmen from hoary pyramids, is vulgar theatrical anti-climax. To every one of the divine Persons there is assigned a distinct aspect, of awfulness as well as guardian care: especially with a reference to God’s mind regarding disloyalty, that is fitted, through prepossession of the mind and heart with rational fear of God, to forearm as well as to forewarn against ensnaring fear of man. And we note how all this—particularly the terrific severity of threatening— is, step by step, brought closer and closer to bear upon the case. _ LL (Luke xii. 5-7) as to Taz Fatuer: to whom (2 Cor. xiii. 14) in the apostolic benediction corresponds “the love of God.” He is here set forth ag distinctively the object of a salutary “fear.” It is true that His tender mercies are over all His works: so that His omnipresent providence is not regardless even where a sparrow drops lifeless on the ground. In parti- cular, toward His children of mankind in Christ He has in Him a distinctively parental tenderness—that is, the utmost con- ceivable tenderness of care : “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” Yea, His comforting parental tenderness (Isa. lxvi. 13) is dimly imaged in the doat- ing mother, who numbers, one by one, the hairs on her helpless infant’s head. So says, and shows, the only-begotten Son, who APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY Al is in the bosom of the Father, and hath declared Him. Never- theless, in the event of unfaithfulness in this matter of Chris- tian confession, that “Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” is able—He has it in Him, witness Judas going “ to his own place ”—to cast both soul and body into hell. This, too, is declared—it is said and shown—by the Son of Man, the only- begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father. 2. (Luke xii. 8, 9) as to Tue Son. The Second Person here appears, not as in “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,” but (John v. 22, 27) as the One to whom “all judgment is committed, because He is the Son of Man.” His placing Himself on the judgment throne, between God the Father and the divine Spirit, is here again equivalent to His claiming divinity of nature. But there is something peculiarly terrific in the representation of His turning away His face from us, on “the day of wrath, that dreadful day,” refusing to countenance His professed fol- lowers who have not been faithful in confessing Him before men. It is in His person peculiarly that Christians at the trying times have realised the being of God the Redeemer: as when aged Polycarp! spoke of the impossibility of denying Him instead of giving his own body to the flames; and as when the Lyonnese confessors all but saw Him bodily present sustain- ing the martyrs in their agonies of torture unto death. Angels are only “ministers.” The only Saviour near of kin to us 1S Christ the Lord. His countenance is the only hope of sinners on “the day of wrath” as at this hour. And if it be turned away from those who were driven by terrors of the “fiery trials,” —what of those who, under no such overmastering constraint, yet deny Him before men, either by silence where speech is called for, or by speech that puts a false Christ or “ another ” gospel? in the place of the true. 3. (Luke xii. 10-12) as to THz Hoty Guost. The refer- ences to His relation to the matter correspond to the clause of benediction, “the communion of the Holy Ghost,” in respect of representing as brought most intimately home to man (Luke xvii. 21) what (John i. 18) is natively invisible, in the bosom ’s counsel of the Father, and what in Christ His counsellor, a Son that is given to us, yet is high above us in the spiritual firma- ment as an ascended “ Sun of Righteousness.” The Spirit's rela- tion to a soul’s life is like that of the invisible atmosphere to the life of the body, as medium of its receiving the light and genial influences of the sun. We will not now dwell on the 1 See above, p. 39, footnote. 2 Tt is not vaguely “God” ‘and “truth,” but distinctly “the truth,” the “faith,” Christ and the gospel (Mark x. 29), that have to be faithfully con- fessed, suffered for, defended. 42 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS subject, which is here introduced by Christ in connection with that of a uniquely dreadful sinfulness: so that the sin against the Holy Ghost can hardly now be passed without notice on our part. But the connection of that “blasphemy” with the present matter is obscure and only general, and our notes on it are placed in a subjoined Appendix. SEC. 2. His Practice of Apologetics, It is a noteworthy circumstance that Christ, in His censures relative to failure to confess Him before men, made no account of simple scepticism, or indecision of the judgment.’ That “honest doubt,” which nowadays is made so much of by some professing Christians, as if the doubter were essentially a higher character than the believer—if not indeed the only character really high—is by the Christ whom they call Master and Lord nowhere exempted from the censure, or made an exception to the rule-—“He shall convince the world of sin . . . of sin, because they believe not on Me”; “This is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil” (cp. 2 Cor. iv. 3-6). This, with reference to His own ministry, implies that it had in it a clear light, such as to leave men without excuse for not receiving His doctrine; so that He could say with truth (John xviii. 37), “ Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice,” and (John vii. 16, 17), “If any one be wishful to do His (God’s) will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.” And as of Christianity in His teaching, so too of the proof of it as proposed by Him. Those who make light of apologetics, do they not so far make light of Christ,—of apologetics the King? His produc- tion of proof implies that in fact there és producible proof,—at least, that which He proposes: in other words, that there is rational evidence of the divinity of His religion or doctrine, evidence that is conclusively valid in the judgment of sane minds; so that, if a sane man be not convineed in his judg- ment by this evidence, he is shown by the light of it to be under some blinding influence of a darkness of the heart :— as Christ said, “ For judgment I am come into this world 5 aun that they which see might be made blind” (John ix. 39); * Cp. above, p. 21. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 43 “How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?” (John v. 44); “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 24) Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. vi. 22, 24). | Some professing disciples, perhaps ministers, of Christ make light of “evidences,” and hold that there is not really proof of Christianity in the ordinary sense of the term proof, —that is, producible evidence addressing itself to the common reason of mankind, and approving itself to that reason as con- clusive. Are they in this matter disciples of that Master (Matt. xi. 29), if in reference to it they reject His teaching ? Do they, for instance, “learn of” Christ, if they do not believe Him when He says that there is evidence of prophecy such as to leave without excuse those who do not receive Him as the Christ of God,—*There is one that accuseth you, even Moses... . For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me” (John v. 45, 46); and (Luke xxiv. 25-27), “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken,” when, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Similarly, if they do not believe Him when He speaks of evidence of miracle as conclusive to the same effect :—“ Believe Me . . . or else be- lieve Me for the very works’ sake” (John xiv. 11); “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin, but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father” (John xv. 24); “ Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes ”’ (Matt. x1. 21). Pa i) Professing Christians may reason in support of the view, that miracle cannot really be a proof of doctrine, and in like manner, that fulfilled prophecy (miracle of forecast) is not evidence constituting proof. But if they so reason, do they not set themselves to confute Him as well as contradict Him,—if it be indeed a scriptural fact, that in the course of His ministry He offered such proofs? In the gospel record we find Him so doing, while (Matt. xxiii. 8) presenting Himself as the one 44 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS true Teacher (R.V.). How do they read these Gospels, or expound them? A professedly Christian teacher (1 Cor. iv. 1) is to be made no account of except as a “minister of Christ,” and in this way a “steward of the mysteries of God.” What, then, in his office of Christian instruction, feeding the flock of God, does he say about the gospel narratives of » miracles of Christ, and Christ’s own accompanying representa- tions (Matt. xi. 3-6, ix. 6) regarding their evidential office, and His references to prophecy, with intimation that pro- phecy, too, is evidence? Does this “ minister” speak out in refutation of Him whom Christians call Master and Lord ? Or, simply say, that Christ is mistaken in His doctrine of the evidential character of these works and words? Or, only give out as his own view, that the works and words have no such character? Or, dissemble his disbelief in that “one” Master’s teaching as to this foundation matter? In that case, the gospel history of this great ministry is in this relation surely far from being made to serve its purpose (John xx. 31), The quality of the reasoning on which this rejection of Christ’s teaching may seek to support itself, does not fall to be considered at our present Stage of inquiry. At this point we are only inquiring as to fact in the actual teaching of Jesus (John iii. 12) with reference to proof of His religion,— proof to be found, not only in His own personal testimony, but also and especially in His wondrous works, and in the Old Testament miracle of prophecy fulfilled in Him. I. His Apprat To PropuEcy.—It is an anecdote regard- ing Frederick the Great, that, having challenged a theologian to give him some one word that sums up in itself the evidence on behalf of Bible supernatural religion, he received the word “Tsrael” in answer to the challenge. With like reference to the proof of Christianity, there might be given the one word “Christ” or Messiah. At present we will take this word only as representing the fact, that Jesus appealed to prophecy in proof of His religion, Of the historical fact of His claiming to be the Messiah or Christ (see Matt. xi. 1—6) there is no doubt in the mind of such a headmaster of unbelief as Renan. The disciples— we read (Acts xi. 26)—were called “ Christians ” before the APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 45 gospel histories were written. They went under that name (1 Pet. iv. 16) in the beginnings of the persecutions in Asia Minor; while (Acts xxvi. 28) at least as early they were known by that name in Palestine. “Christian” * was their name among the people in Rome, within thirty years of their Master’s death, at the time of the Neronian persecution, the first of what are known as the “great” persecutions: from which date (A.D. 64) they were known only by that name to “the whole world” (Luke ii. 1) of Roman empire. That name is monumental of their Master’s having claimed to be the Messiah or Christ: a claim which is put on the forefront of the gospel histories of His earthly ministry * (Matt. ipl Mark i. 1). But though there had been no other monument thus dating from the apostolic age, the historical fact of His having claimed to be the Christ is superabundantly evidenced all through the four “ unquestionable ” Pauline Epistles.° His having made that claim is historically no more doubtful than His having died on the cross, or having existed in the world. And the indisputable historical fact of His having clavmed to be the Christ is conclusive proof that He appealed to evidence of prophecy in proof of His religion. According to John, Christ’s predictions regarding His own death and resurrection were made by Him a prophetic proof of His religion. Thus (xiv. 28) with reference to His “ going to the Father,” He said, “ Now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” Here the prophetic proof is on the Old Testament ground of testing principle (Deut. xviii. 21, 22), that prediction is shown to be divine by fulfilment. In Matthew we read (xxvii. 63), that His enemies spoke of Him as a “ deceiver” in connection with foretelling His resurrection: they thus bore witness to the fact which now concerns us,—namely, the fact of His having made apologetic use of His prediction regarding Him- self. His predictions regarding the future of His kingdom were not applicable to this use in His own day, when the event had not come to show their divinity by their fulfilment, 1 Tacit. Annal. xv. 44. 2 In the Gospels “Christ” is not a proper name of Jesus, but always an official title. . 8 See above, p. 23: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians. 46 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS where the thing predicted was beyond the reach of mere calculating human forecast. Denial of supernatural prediction is historically associated with denial of the divinity of the Old Testament system generally, sometimes by professedly Christian teachers, even professedly Christian apologists. Gnostics rejected the Old Testament, on the view that the Old Testament Creator is not the New Testament God and Redeemer, but a demon from whose tyranny the Redeemer has come to set us free. Simi- larly in our own time professed adherents of Christianity regard the Old Testament as opposed to the New. But in this they contradict their very name of Christian. The generality of Christians regard the Old Testament religion as beng Christianity, under the old form of Messiahism ; and regard this view as established by the fact that the New Testament religion claims to be Messiahism in “ fulfilment,”— which is another name for its founder's claiming to be the Christ. On their view, a contradiction to Christianity is implied (Matt. v. 17-20) in rejecting the authority of the Old Testa- ment as no longer binding faith; and still more, in virtually denying the truth of its claim to divinity,—holding, ey., either that its prophecy is not really predictive, or even that its history is false, while in substance of system of divine revelation it is antiquated. Here, again, we do not now inquire as to the grounds and reasons in support of certain views. At present our only question in connection with the views is, with reference to the apologetics of Christ, Did He place His religion on a foundation of such views? On the contrary, in claiming to be the Christ, He placed it (Eph. ii, 20) on “the foundation of the prophets,” as truly as in sending the Holy Ghost He placed it on “the foundation of the apostles.” Or, if we contemplate the new dispensation as in Him a counterpart (“fulfilment”) of the old dispensation of types and prophecies, then what we see in His apologetic placing of His religion is, establishment of a solid way of faith on the sustaining two- fold “foundation” of an arch, in which He is the uniting key-stone. The two sides of that arch, of revelation as ground of faith, are constituted by respectively “the apostles ” and “the prophets,” while the key-stone in which they are APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 47 one is “Jesus ” as “the Christ.” Though neither side of the arch should be able to stand alone, the two as united in that key-stone are strong as a mountain of Rock. This “rock” strength of the revelation (see Heb. xi. 1, 2) may have been felt and rested on by the men of old, though (1 Pet. i. 10,. 11) they should not have clearly perceived, but only dimly divined, the “fulfilment” which was obscurely in the future. But, relatively to our present question, the fact of gospel history is, broadly, that Christ placed His religion on that foundation by professing to “fulfil” the law and the prophets. His original enemies made Him a “deceiver” in pro- phesying about His own future. So now some of His pro- fessed worshippers explain His references to the Old Testament by saying or suggesting, either that He was mistaken about the Old Testament, or that, in accommodation to then received views of Scripture, He said about it what He knew to be untrue! We have not the keeping of their conscience. If they duly consider what is struck at by such explanation, their judgment may be led to the thought— We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence ; For it is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery. That, however, belongs to the general subject of the life of Jesus, the truth of revelation in Him, the gospel fact of incarnation. Relatively to our particular subject, of His apologetics, we note the fact, that He never suggested a possibility of His being mistaken in construction of Scripture, but always the contrary; while, so far from His showing a disposition to conform to received mistaken constructions of it, from the outset a leading feature of His teaching was, unflinchingly persistent antagonism to accepted misconstruc- tions of the word of God, at the cost of a revulsion from His teaching which had a leading influence in finally bringing Him to the cross. The matter comes out in Luke’s account of what Christ said. to His followers immediately after His resurrection,—in laying the first foundation of (Acts i. 3) His forty days’ “com- 48 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS mandments . .. (in) speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” Mark (xvi. 14) reports that He up- braided the disciples for not having believed the fact of His being risen when it was testified to them by eye-witnesses. Luke records what appears a much graver censure, on account of their not having believed the Old Testament prediction of the fact (xxiv. 25-27). And again (vers. 44-46; cp. Acts xiii, 27-33 and 2 Pet. i: 16-21), at a meeting with the apostles-elect in Jerusalem, He said—in a discourse which laid out the foundation plan of the whole future campaign of Christianity on earth,—“ These are My words which I spoke while yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me. Then opened He their understand- ing, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached among all nations in His name. And ye are witnesses of these thangs.” Paul’s mixed metaphor (Eph. i. 18) about an opening of the “eyes” of the “ understanding,” to realising apprehension of what is folded in the fact of Christ’s resurrection, may have come to him, in his Roman prison where Hphesians was written, from Luke’s (Philem, 24; 2 Tim. iv. 11) there telling him the story which is here recorded (Luke xxiv. 31 ; ep. ver. 45). And (see John xx. 22) the opening of the understanding in this record may have been an inward spiritual illumination such as Paul prays for on behalf of the Ephesian Christians. But in any case it was to the understanding? of His disciples that the risen Lord addressed Himself with reference to Old Testament evidence of prophecy ; and what He said about the matter is, that there is in the Old Testament a pervasive forecast of the things which now had happened, so intelligibly clear, that the failure of disciples to see them there—ain the forecast—was a proof (cp. 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4) of blinding, dull carnality on the disciples’ part.’ 1 See above, p. 43. 2 Greek nous = “intelligence.” 3 It also appears that they were kept from seeing the things in the Old Testament by inability to believe in His resurrection, crowning “ fulfil- APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 49 “These,” He said, “are My words which I spake while I was yet with you.’ This may imply that to the apostles- elect He had, in the previous course (Luke i. 2) of their attendance on Him, given instructions regarding Old Testa- ment prophecy that are not reported in the gospel record of His ministry (cp. John xx. 30, 31);—even as that record may not contain a report of (Mark iv. 34) all the explana- tions of parables that He gave to those disciples “ privately ” (R.V.). But in our present inquiry regarding His ministry, what concerns us is simply the fuct, so broadly and strongly appearing in that narrative of Luke, that Christ in His teaching made the whole Old Testament, throughout (cp. Heb. i. 1, 2) all its varied parts in their order, to be one great evidential stream of divine revelation finding its goal of true fulfilment in Himself (Matt. xi. 13; cp. vers. 3-6). In the actual record of His public ministry it does not appear that He laboured in argument about the competency of the evidence of Old Testament prophecy. That among His hearers did not need to be debated about (John v. OO laid was (Acts xxvi. 27) fully believed in by every Jew who seriously believed anything about the Scriptures. All such Jews (see Acts xvii. 3, xxviii. 23) believed that the coming of Messiah and His kingdom of God was divinely foreshown and foretold in the Old Testament. In proof of the fact (John vi. 27) that He was that Christ who should come (Luke iy. 17-21), His especial appeal (John v. 36) was to those “works” of His which, while (Matt. xi. 3-6) predicted in the Old Testament as “signs” of the Messiah, are “ signs ” in the sense of being independent proofs, constituting in them- selves a conclusive evidence of His being from God (John iii. 1, 2, xiv. 10,11). The two sides of the work thus support one another. And even in this it appears that, were it only through His manner of placing His career in relation to the ment,” until the fact of that resurrection was brought home to them through their bodily senses. The Old Testament intimations may (cp. 1 Pet. i. 10, 11) thus to their mind have effectively been only, like the words of the women (Luke xxiv. 11—R.V.), “as idle talk” :—as now is the case with some professed disciples of Christ, though they are pro- fessedly settled in belief of the reality of His resurrection, and both He and His apostles bear witness to the fact of His being in the Old Testa- ment forecast. 4 50. STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Old Testament by claiming to be the Christ, the whole course of His ministry was a public appeal to the Old Testament as a prophetic proof of His religion. | Immediately after His baptism—in which (cp. John 1. 33, 34) He solemnly claimed what, on the part of a sinless man, cannot be really understood except as a formal consecration to Messiahship (with atonement),—in His wilderness temptation He showed that, while He was the Son of God, He was resolved still to place Himself as a man, in human subjection (Gal. iv. 4) to God as well as dependence on Him, under law to the revelation of God’s mind and will in Old Testament Scriptures. And in the Sermon on the Mount, publicly declaring His intended relation to the Old Testament (Matt. v. 17-20), He very strongly repelled the suggestion that He had come to “ destroy the law and the prophets”: where the word for “destroy ”—lit. loosen—means (dissolution of their binding force) abrogation or antiquation of their author- ity. The purpose of His coming, relatively to them, was, He said, “to fulfil.” We can understand that His fulfilling the law, for us and in us, involves antiquation of the Old Testa- ment ceremonialism, as (cp. John iii. 30) the blossom has to give place to the fruit: though the principles of revealed religion once given remain for ever, and the inspired record of the revelation (2 Pet. i. 19-21; Rom. xv. 4) retains a permanently binding authority as the Word of God—with much “use of illustration” in the old history (1 Cor. x. 6). But on that understanding the fulfilment—ey. as exhibited in Hebrews—does not “ make void the law” as a silent prophecy, but truly “establishes the law.” In short, in His programme of teaching there was made fundamental—through its being assumed and proceeded on as a foundation—1. generally, the divinity of the Old Testament permanently binding to belief in what it says and shows, and,—2. particularly and especially, its predictive character, constituting proof of Messiahism or Christianity through fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth. Note as to His detailed references to the Old Testament.—It is to be noted generally, that they are mainly to The Pentateuch, and more especially to Deuteronomy. That is, the Scriptures which He has most emphatically sealed as divine in their authorship and indefeasible in their authority are precisely APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 51 those which, by some of His professed disciples in our day, are made to be essentially of no authority :—unless there be some kind of authority that can pertain to what natively is only a collection of legends, which somehow came down the turbid stream of a half-idolatrous people’s unwritten tradition, to be at the long last worked up into a book or books, whose author- ship more or less was forgery, as_ their purpose was imposture, putting, in the name of God, a completely false face on the con- stitutions and the history they profess to record. Daniel, which by some professing Christians is made a forgery of long after the return from Babylon, Christ assigns, in making a quotation from it (did He ever so quote anything but “the word of God” 2) to “ Daniel” by name as “the prophet”: while presumably it is from prophecy in that book (vii. 13), with reference to the hinge of divine providence relatively to all future world- empire, that He took His own peculiarly chosen title of the Son of Man. Jsazah, which some of them make to be more or less the work of a nameless writer or writers much later than the historical Isaiah, is quoted under this name by Him as well as by His forerunner and His apostles. The narrative in Jonah, which by some is made a mere fable (epi 2 Pet: i716), especially on account of a strange miracle in it, He expressly makes, precisely in that strange miracle, to be a “ sign” of the Son of Man’s future passing through a similarly strange experi- ence: while the repentance of the Ninevites, which the book represents as a fruit of the first foreign mission to the heathen, is by Him applied for instructive warning to the generation He addresses. As in one word of Exodus He finds proot—wholly dependent on supernatural revelation—of the coming resurrection of all the dead; so in a clause of a Psalm, whose Davidic authorship is now disputed by some of His professed disciples, He finds “David” furnishing, by the very turn of an expression there, proof of the divine Sonship of Messiah that would be pointless if the expression were not—as He intimates—given by divine inspiration. Could any believer in Old Testamen prophecy now go further ? 4 Again we repeat, that at present we have not to do with such questions as, whether Jesus believed all this about the Old Testament, and could not be mistaken in His belief about it. We have to do only with the fuct, that in all this He proceeded on the view that the Old Testament is divinely * Here we disregard suggestions of “accommodation,” eg. in argu- mentum ad hominem, which would have deceived His hearers. 52 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS infallible, and constitutes a manifold prophetic proof of His religion. And we repeat, that the fact in substance is implied in His having claimed to be the Messiah: since those whom He addressed, in a career all hinging on that claim, could be influenced in its favour only through their coming to believe (John i. 45) that in Him was the fulfilment of the Old Testament Messianic “ hope.” Il. His AppEaL TO Miracie.—Here, too, the fact, which is what here and now alone concerns us, is quite beyond all possibility of reasonable question, and can hardly be said to be questioned in a manner calling for notice in our inquiry,— that is, in any way that is not quite insignificant relatively to the interest and prospects of apologetics:! the fact, namely, of His having professed to work miracles in proof of His claim. It was attested not only by the Jews, for generations after His death, ascribing His “works” to Satan, and by, eg., heathen Celsus, a “ philosopher” who had studied this religion in the Scriptures Old and New, ascribing the miracles of Jesus to magic learned in Egypt. Not less effectually the same witness has been borne by the most recent headmaster of learned unbelief in our day: eg., in his infamous representation of the raising of Lazarus, as a mock resurrection in which Jesus and His disciples were, with the Bethany family, conspiring deceivers. On Renan’s infamous view, it would be a demon- strated fact that Jesus professed to work miracle in proof of His religion.2 The “mythie theory,” which is the only real attempt that has been made to give any view of His career that does not include His professing to work miracles, was publicly abandoned a generation ago by its representative destructive critic in our new time. And though he treated our Gospels as mere books of fables, yet, in order to account for those things about Jesus that must have been at the beginning of the tradition regarding Him, Strauss, after a season of notoriety for his “theory,” found himself compelled to fall back from it into the old “vulgar rationalism” of 1 See as to Professor Huxley, above, pp. 22, ete. ? Unbelievers whose good feeling revolts against that infamy, will do well to consider, what other view can there be, except that Jesus is the Saviour Son of God ? APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 53 owning that there was in fact, on the part of the real Jesus, a profession to work miracles,—while explaining them away into imposture and gross delusion: an explanation which, still, is testimony to the historical reality of that profession to work miracle, which is the only thing in question at present. Note on His detailed references to miracle.—HMere, too, it was not necessary for Jesus to debate the question as. to the underlying ground of principle of the proof. Those whom He addressed held that principle as revealed in the Old Testament (Matt. xii. 28): believing,—1. (John vi. 30, 31) generally, that religion is appropriately evidenced by (“signs”) works of extraordinary supernaturalism ;+ and,—2. (vii. 31) in particular, that by such working the Messiah was to be accredited when He should come (at Matt. xi. 2 “the works of the Christ” is in the connection equivalent to, the test-works of Messiah). The full description of miracle, derivable from Old Testament facts— “signs, and wonders, and mighty works”—does not appear to have come into use until after His resurrection (Acts ii. 22; 2 Thess. 11..9;-Rom. xv. 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12); but, V.B.: (Acts li. 22), was first employed to describe “the works of Christ ” in the fundamental pronunciamento of Christianity at the great Pentecost. The description “mighty works” is appled by Christ to His own miracles in only one recorded case (Matt. xi. 20-23), where it gives pointed force to His upbraiding of those who had not yielded to their suasive light of evidence. The strong Greek word for the “ wonders” of our version (térdété= lit. “terrific things,” ? see Luke v. 8) is employed by Him in only one recorded case (John iv. 48)—to a similar effect. Ordinarily He spoke simply of His “ works” (“the ” works, “ His”), but in such a manner as to imply their evidential miraculousness (John x. 25, 32, 37, 38). And the miracles, eg. under the description of “signs”—at some places in our Authorised Version made “miracles” (wonders) to the detriment of the sense—He represented as being His special or most appropriate witnesses, assigning to them an evidential place much higher than that of prophecy (John v. 34-36). 1 Extraordinary =“wonder”—Lat. miracle ; supernaturalism = “mighty work” ; both, to the effect of “sign” =:evidential indication. 2 The Greek word “ miracle” (wonder), thawma, is never put to this use in the New Testament, where it occurs only at Rev. xvii. 6. 8 While the prophetic word reaches us through a human medium (2 Pet. i. 21), the miracle (John xiv. 10, 11; ep. Heb. ii. 4) is, so to speak, an immediate work of God—as if (Ex. viii. 19) showing His hand most plainly. D4 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS At John v, 34-36, the Baptist is referred to—not, as having done no miracle (John x. 41), but—as representing the prophetic attestation of Jesus as the Christ. And affinity of miracle to prophecy is represented by the Lord’s own favoured word “sign” (sémeion), He thus did not make miracle to be the only evidence of His religion. On the contrary, even in assigning the higher place to miracle as external evidence, He gave a place to prophecy: placing it (we saw) as a foundation of the whole revealed system; while assigning the highest place of all attestation to the internal evidence (John vii. 17, xviii. 37) of the truth as commending itself to the true-hearted (Luke viii. 15)—the sun as shown to the seeing eye by shining, by being the sun,—divinity self- shown to the pure heart by being divine (John viii, 12; Matt. v. 8; ep. 1 Cor. ii, 6-16; 2 Cor. iv. 3—6). Hence, to dwell on the value of the historico-prophetic evidence, or to emphasise the superlative worth of the internal evidence, when the question is about miracle,—is to speak wide of the question of fact at present in hand, Did Christ make apolo- getic use of the argument from external evidence of His miraculous working? To disregard this evidence out of professed regard for those other Christian evidences,—would not that be to set Christ against Himself, while setting at nought His authority as our Master in apologetics (Mark vu. 7 and Matt. xxii. 29) ? He did not make all real miracle to be proof of truth in religion. When (Matt. xii. 22-30) the Pharisees objected to His work of exorcism, that it was done through employment of Satanic agency, He did not say that there can be no such thing as real miracle of Satan (ep. 2 Thess. ii. 7410), nor (cp. Rev. xvi. 14) that real miracles cannot be employed as misleading proofs of a false religion. On the contrary, He warned His disciples (Matt. xxiv. 24; ep. Rey. xiii. 13, 14) that in the coming testing times miracles—real or unreal ?— were to be worked on behalf of false religion claiming to be heavenly and Christian. And in answer to the Pharisees’ objection, what He said was, in effect, that the truth of His miracle was shown by its tendency or scope, to destroy the tyranny of falsehood and wrong (cp. Deut. xiii. 1-3); so that what manifestly was working in it was God’s omnipotence, APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 5 founding a new kingdom of righteous peace and truth (see Luke xi. 20; cp. Ex. viii, 19). The Jews, in their Old Testament education through history (Ps. cili. 7), had not learned,—eg. from the Egyptian campaign of wonders,—to believe that the imitation wonders on behalf of false gods and tyranny of evil were unreal. Consistently with what is shown in the scriptural record of them, they might be real though untrue or misleading. Christ placed the evidential truth of His “works” on the ground of their manifest fitness for promotion of the kingdom of salvation in a way of truth and right. He did not make simply temporal beneficence ot miracle the testing mark of its truth. Peter (Acts x. 38) made a point of that beneficence; and no doubt it char- acterised the miracles of Jesus as a class. But the swine- miracle and the blighting of the fig-tree did not show it on their faces. Even relatively to the substance of religion, “the law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The operations may be varied while the purpose is one. In the system of the religion the law has an office, for establishment of truth and restored moral healthiness or salvation. The Mosaic judgment-works were thus beneficent relatively to the true highest interest of mankind. Even a Gadarene swine-owner might be infinitely a gainer through the spoiling of his goods; and the sermon of the blighted fig- tree was worth more than its cost—like the cost of candle- light for reading the Bible. All which goes to show that Irenzus is on slippery ground if he make temporal beneficence to be the test of truth in miracle. - But Peter (Acts x. 38), even when referring to that beneficence as a general character of the “works” of Christ, adds, “healing those who were oppressed (lit. tyrannised over) by the devil. He so reminds us of what Christ Himself said (Luke xiii. 16) about even bodily infirmity, that it meant a binding by Satan, On the view thus appearing, there was a spiritual tyranny of evil, established in man through possession of his natural faculties and capacities and other gifts.) And Christian civilisation is monumental proof, that if Gadarenes lose their swine, mankind may even in temporal goods be immeasurably the richer for that impoverishment (Matt. vi. 33). Christ made miracle to be, though not the exclusive test. 56 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS yet a conclusive test, of the inward character of those who see that outward work, Thus (John vi. 26) His multiplication of the loaves and fishes brought into view a blinding carnality, such that (cp. vers. 30, 31) men did not see the “ sign” in that work who fain would have made Him a king. The woful hardness of heart (Matt. xi, 20-23) in respect of which outwardly favoured cities showed worse than heathen Tyre and Sidon, yea than Sodom, was tested so as to come into manifesta- tion—while aggravated into obduration—through the doing of “most of His mighty works” in them. And thus, as (John xvi. 9) the crowning sin is, not to believe in Him) so (John xv. 24) the crowning proof of sinfulness in men, heart- hatred of the living God, arises from His “ having done the works among them which no other man did.” All which implies that, if we will believe Him,—whom Professor Huxley believes utterly,— not only is there an outward hight of evidence in true miracle, but His miracles (cp. Heb. iv. 12) have in them a most searching light for manifestation of the inward moral condition of those to whom they come (John 1x. 29)—as they come to every one who reads or hears the gospel history (John xx, 30, 31; 1 John 1, 1-3). The ordinary instruction, that (see Luke i. 4) in the first age was given to converts, is not what is represented by the apostolic Epistles — written for a different purpose from ordinary congregational instruction. It is represented, rather, by the gospel histories (Acts i. 21, 22; epi Gori, 8-15, xv. 1-8, xi. 23, ete.), the digest of the fundamental apostolic “declaration” (2 Pet. i. 16; 1 John i. 3).2 The Gospels are abidingly the apostolic scriptural “foundation ” (Acts i. 8; cp. John xiv. 25, 26, xv. 26, 27) of instruction to mankind. And this foundation is destroyed for men if they he led not to see the evidential supernaturalism of miracle shining 1 See above, p. 42. ? Justin Martyr, circa a.p, 150, states that in the Lord’s day con- gregational worship of Christians, apostolical memoirs called gospels were habitually read. His pupil Tatian prepared a Harmony of the Gospels for church use, And earlier—circa A.D. 125 ?—it is the gospel hestory that was basis of the “expositions” of Papias ; while—a.p. 120-140—the Gospels furnished materials for speculation to the heretical or infidel Gnostics. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 57 through the history of Godman’s earthly ministry. The homely human details of the history, so full of profoundest vital interest when seen as thus “transfigured” in their manifestation (John ii. 11) through our flesh, apart from that are—as in a mere Ecce Homo—dead and fruitless trivialty, of branches not abiding in the vine. In a battle-picture every detail that appears ought to be represented faithfully, shown as it really is in itself; but if shown apart from the main action as a whole, the detail is not shown as it really is, since here there is nothing real that has not battle in it. Preaching, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, these in the gospel history have no meaning, in the true sense, apart from the gospel (see Luke x. 9, 11): that is, except as detailed individual actions in the great battle, or campaign (John xvii. 4), of man’s deliverance by the Son of Man from spiritual tyranny of evil (Gen. 13.15). And the meaning of the “works” in connection with the gospel is, proof, through evidential “sign,” that the preaching in “the gracious words” of Jesus is divinely true. How, then, can the primeval Christians, under tuition of apostles, be supposed to have grown (?) into indifference toward the subject of miracle-working, thus vitally fundamental in the apostolic teaching regarding God in Christ? As if the branches were to grow into separation from the vine! Yet, to sane interpreters of the primeval history, this appears to be the true explanation of a noteworthy sparseness of allusions to evidence of miracle in the Epistles. That, on their part, has been made a ground of disparagement of this kind of evidence ;—on the view, that it indicates, on the part of the primeval Church, a growing indifference to the subject, of miracles and their evidence, consequent on her growth in spiritual intelligence. But the construction thus put on the New Testament history is at best a specimen of crude in- advertence, if not of a rashness perilous to man’s life in the truth. It proceeds in disregard of the fact, that the gospel history was the appropriate food of life to formed churches _ from the beginning, that the Epistles were in their nature mainly occasional utterances, and that the Gospels, representing the perennial pasture of the flock, came into existence mainly 3 1 See below, pp. 75, 78, ete. 58 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS after the Epistles, to perpetuate, for all generations, in written form, what at the outset (Luke i. 2) had been orally delivered by those “who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word” 4 Ordinarily there was in the Epistles no call to speak of the miracles for any common purpose of simply bringing them to remembrance (2 Pet. ii. 1) in the pure mind of the Christians addressed. Zhey were already in that Christian mind, not only as remembered, but—like the gospel history generally ?— as held vitally in the very structure and texture of the now historical Christianity of every congregation, so as to be included in all believing apprehension of the Christ of apostolical “foundation” testimony. In the ordinary con- gregational instruction ? on that “foundation,” of matter which now is digested in the Gospels, there might be little of argumentation—as if in debate with heathens—about the apologetic value of miracle; seeing that this value was of course owned by every believing Christian, so that there was no occasion for debating about it in a Christian community. But a knowledge and feeling of the value would nevertheless be operative in every believing mind and heart there, as a pervasive controlling influence in all the congregational exercises, aS with a perpetual renewal of the recorded first impression of miracle of Jesus (John ii. 11), “He manifested forth His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” In the gospel history Christ now teaches, that the evidence of miracle is in its nature fitted for founding and upbuilding God’s kingdom in the reason of mankind. In respect of externally evidential office, He made no distinction between what are called respectively the “greater” and the “minor” miracles of that history. There is a real distinction in the nature of the things, though not such as to make a difference in that respect. Some of the works, from their very nature, 1 As to their fundamental “ declaration,” see 2 Pet. i. 16; 1 Johni. 3; Heb. ii. 4. * The Epistles contain almost nothing of gospel history—or, biography of Jesus Christ the Son of God. ® Lig. by the teaching “ elder” or “bishop.” He is seen, as in the Acts and Epistles, in the recently discovered “Teaching of the Apostles,” which Bishop Lightfoot placed (conjecturally) as early as a.D. 80 or 100. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 59 are clearly either miracles or impostures; while in the case of others the marvellousness may be clear only from the attendant circumstances. It is, eg., only from the preceding circumstances that the great draught of fishes, or the coin in the fish’s mouth, becomes manifest to us as unquestionably involving extraordinary supernaturalism,— were it only of predictive forecast. It is conceivable that the exorcism He speaks of at Matt. xii. 28 should not have really involved extraordinary supernaturalism in working; and that similar “works of Christ” should be unmistakably shown to be extraordinary “by the Spirit of God,’ “by the finger of God,” only through their connection with the movement in His person and whole work on behalf of “the kingdom of God.” On the other hand, His work of turning water into wine, multiplying the loaves and fishes, walking on the sea, giving sight to the born-blind, raising the dead,—is plainly either veritably extraordinary supernatural work or impious pretence. But between the two classes of the “ works” He made no dis- tinction in respect of evidential office. And evidence (“sign”) was the distinctive office He assigned to them all in common. The “minor” works, though, if they had stood alone (eg. blighting the fig-tree), their extraordinary supernaturalism might not have been clear beyond a doubt, did not stand alone. They stood along with the “greater” works, which evinced the character of the system of His working. They came at His bidding (see 1 Sam. xii. 16, 17), for His purpose (eg. Peter’s penny), so as to show “the finger of God” here, though in another case the same thing might conceivably have happened in the course of nature or without real miracle. Accordingly (Matt. ix. 8) it is to one of those minor works that He appealed in proof of His having in Him here on earth the highest thing that there is in God on heaven’s throne. That is to say, being miracle, it is evidence, manifesting forth His glory, such that men may “ believe in Him.” Though the wondrous works are sermons about the mean- ‘ing of the religion (Matt. xvi. 7-12) as well as proofs of its divinity, we are not entitled, in exposition or in construction of the history of Christ’s earthly ministry, to turn the miracles into mere parables—occasions for meditating or commenting on commonplaces of the religion: as with reference to ordinary 60 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS history we are not entitled to put moralisings on provid- ence and human nature im place of real expiscation of the nature of the evidence or character of the witnesses in a great trial. The gospel history is given for a purpose, most pro- foundly vital in importance (John xx. 31; 1 Johni. 3). In order to attainment of that purpose, he, history has to be seen in its distinctive nature. And it is not seen in its distinctive nature by those who do not perceive in it the great part that was taken, in the earthly ministry of Christ, by miracle as proof of Christianity. The branch is severed from the vine—through growth in spiritual enlightenment. III. His Persona, Testrmony.—After looking at samples of Professor Huxley’s handling of “weapons of precision,” we may not welcome the now emerging recollection of a notable sample of it, though it be conveniently serviceable for illus- tration of our subject here and now. He severely censured Dr. Wace for speaking of the professor’s patronage of not believing zm or on Christ, as if this had meant, not believing Christ. He has intimated that, while holding it not a sin not to believe in or on Christ (cp. John xvi. 9), he does not patronise not believing Christ. He vehemently resents the imputation to him of not believing Christ, whose personal char- acter he holds in profoundest reverence: so that Mr. Gladstone is carried away by the rhetorical torrent of that vehemence into exuberant lowliness of apologising for his having inadvertently referred to the professor’s not believing Christ, instead of, his not believing in Him or on Him. But we, keeping our eye on one thing 3 in the whisking phantasmagoria of speech, again inquire, —(1) How does Braiea an Huxley happen to believe, because he profoundly reverences, a Christ regarding whom he holds we have no trustworthy means of information ? How does he or can he know that Christ is anything but a Straussian myth, or (Matt. xxvii. 63) that He was not, in accord- ance with theorising of old “ vulgar rationalism,” an impostor— perhaps (as Renan has represented) at the outset self-deluded, —one whom it would be folly to believe, and criminal to reverence? and (2) especially, what does he believe, or will he believe, on the credit of the word of Christ ? 1 Cf. pp. 27, etc., above. a a APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 61 Would he believe Christ professing to have worked miracles ?1 or, if He should claim to be the Old Testament Messiah, the Son of God,—eg. with utmost conceivable solem- nity of an oath, sealed with His life’s blood? The professor is aware that some such testimony is universally ascribed to Christ Jesus wherever He is spoken of. Would he “believe Christ” so testifying, swearing, sealing? If not, what on his part is the use of speaking about believing Christ, while resolved on disbelieving the “lock, stock, and barrel” of what the Christ in question really says about Himself? He surely cannot mean merely believing in commonplaces ascribed to Christ, or in other things whose truth we know independently of Christ’s testimony? That would be dishonourable. For then a man might as well speak about believing Mohammed, or Zadkiel, or Baron Munchausen. What real meaning can there be in protestations about believing one, whose personal testimony in us vital substance is beforehand counted as worth nothing ?? The incoherence may be found where it is more surprising. My. Stuart Mill, for instance, thought so highly of the per- sonal character as well as moral teaching of Christ, as to suggest that a good rule for our conduct of life might be, to do and be in all things what we think Christ would have approved. And cece Homo—once a nine days’ wonder of eulogistic eloguence—was, under the form of criticism of gospel history, all one flaming torrent of admiration of the man Christ Jesus—especially His truthfulness. There may be many who, not professedly believers in Christ or on Him, yet really are of kin to Him, “not far from” His “ kingdom of God.” They will revolt from cynical plain speaking such as Renan’s, in making Jesus to have been deliberately a “ deceiver” (Matt. xxvii. 63) in His teaching, an impostor in His working, and a suicide in His death, so that He must have been a har with His latest breath of life. But in coherent reason, have they a right to stop short of Renan’s conclusion ? Did Christ believe in Christianity in any real sense ? We are now proceeding on the fact that He professed to believe in it, placing Himself as personally a witness for its 1 Asan English deist said that he would believe Paul so professing. Had he read Rom. xv. 18, 19; 2 Cor. xu. 12? 2 See John xviii. 37. 62 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS truth (1 Tim. vi. 13), offering His personal testimony as evidence of its truth and divinity (John viii. 12), The author of Ecce Homo may choose to look at the gospel history as if in that career there were no question about either divinity of person or Messiahship of office: as one may look at the fate- ful voyage of Columbus without seeing in it any thought of geographical discovery, or at the drama of Hamlet without Hamlet’s part, or at the solar system without the sun. The sun of the system of the gospel history, that without which all details are dark and lifeless, is precisely this Christianity, of His being the Saviour Son of the living God. His claim- ing to be this not only was in His career. It was His career, the essence of His teaching, the professed reason of His working, the burden of the testimony He sealed on the cross. Did He believe init? Was He at all in earnest about it? Was He commonly honest in any part of that career which it “ filled allin all”? He called men into the belief of it as man’s true way of life in God. He sent them to battle and to die for that faith. Was He a believer? We need not here labour in inquiry as to the detailed con- tents of the Christianity in question here. We know what was the general nature of the Christianity (= Messiahism) of the Old Testament, which presumably He had studied (cp. 2 Tim. iii. 15), and (cp. John vii. 15; Mark vi. 3) which perhaps was the only book He had read. We know what was the Chris- tianity that was proclaimed as from Him by His apostles immediately after His departure: the Christianity, eg. of (Gal. ii. 10; 1 Cor. iii. 11) the “ unquestionable” Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, showing what was the settled Christian doctrine of the churches at and before A.D. 57— A.D. 60; and the Christianity of the gospel histories, exhibit- ing the doctrine in its “foundation ” facts. Excepting some surface of ethical commonplace, it has no real resemblance to what is the theme of some eulogies professedly on Christ and His career; it (Gal. i. 8) is essentially different from what is made by them to have been His message to mankind. At present, however, what falls to be considered by us is simply the fact, that He was a public witness for Christianity, that He died its “faithful martyr” (Rev. i. 5), and that He made His personal testimony a ground of believing that religion. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 63 The evangelists ostensibly (Luke i. 2; cp. Acts i. 21, 22) record what was delivered by the apostles; while the apostles (1 John i. 1-3; 2 Pet. i. 16) professed to declare what they had seen and heard of Him personally. Jesus of Nazareth, if we will believe them, placed Himself as the Christ, the Son of God, at the foundation of the true revealed religion, its true life’s bread and wine ;—and so He did according to every account of Him that has ever been heard of. His testimony, com- mitted to those witnesses, had been previously borne by Himself, before the nation, the priesthood, the Roman magis- tracy. What, then, relatively to the point as to the truth of His religion, are we to make of the fact that He offered Mis personal testimony as ground of our believing that religion ? There is on record (John viii. 13) a reference of His to an objection to His testimony as incompetent, on the ground that He was His own witness, and that the word of a witness is not good evidence regarding himself. He answered, that His own was not the only testimony in His favour, that he had in His favour an additional attestation by God. But He answered also, that His testimony was really good evidence, inasmuch as if He bore witness about Himself He knew about Himself. And in fact,— The word of a witness, 2f he be truthful, is good evidence about himself in so far as he really knows about himself. The Baptist is to be trusted in his testimony regarding himself, that he is not the Christ, as well as when he says about Jesus that he (John) saw descending on Him—at His baptism—a token of His being the Son of God. So, in the circumstance of its being to Himself that Jesus bears witness, there is nothing that makes His testimony necessarily untrustworthy, any more than if He had spoken about common matters really known to Him personally. And as to that knowledge, ey. about a divinity of Sonship, it is conceivable that an enthusiast should be mistaken; though Jesus of Nazareth, in all that we know of Him, shines out as perfectly clear in- mind from enthusiastic delusions, apparently perfect in calm solid poise of judgment.t So as to His being the Christ: making a 1 So that His question, “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” might be turned by us into the question, Did He ever, on any occasion of that so agitating a career, so much as appear to make any mastake in speech or 64 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS claim which was made by others, perhaps in some cases not insincerely. But even here He asswres us, most solemnly, that fe really knows the truth of the matter, and cannot be mis- taken about it. And there is no ideal possibility of His having been mistaken about His own miracles; while there is no real possibility of reasonable doubt of the historical fact of His having professed to work miracles. About some of the “minor” miracles, if they had stood alone, a sincere enthusiast might be honestly mistaken. But even about these in their actual connection, and about His “greater” works (e.g. raising Lazarus), as to their being really not mere human works of His,—He could not, though He were only a man, be mistaken, any more than omniscient God could be mistaken. He knew perfectly well what was the real truth of this matter. Js He entitled to be believed about such a matter in what He well knows? Is He to be regarded as barely truthful in His character, commonly honest in action and speech? To this point the question comes. To this point it is brought by Christ Himself, in offering His personal testimony as proof of religion. Thus we are reminded of what we saw! as to the great place assigned by the primeval Christians to the witnessing office of Christ, His trustworthiness or “ faithfulness,” as wit- ness (Rev. 1. 5, 11. 14) His truthfulness as a Rock foundation of our trust in God. And-we perceive that there is no cause to wonder at the transcendentalism of vital importance which Paul (1 Tim. vi. 13) ascribed to the witnessing of Jesus on the supremely great occasion of His finally appearing to be judged before men :—a transcendentalism which (John xviii. 37) had on that great occasion been ascribed to His witnessing office by Christ Himself,—making witness-bearing, to “the truth,” to have been a grand leading purpose of His coming into the world of creatures as a man. And now, without tracing the matter back to fontal theological principles of the faith,2 let us consider, as a matter of apologetic history, the fact that here, in the earliest primeval dawning of that history, Christ action, to stumble into any one, even the smallest, word or deed on which we could now suggest an improvement ? 1 Above, pp. 16, etc. 2 See John i. 185 ep. vers, 14, 1. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 605 offered, in proof of Christianity, His personal testimony to its truth. This bears on the apologetics of all following ages: not, as implying that every apologist for this religion ought to put forward jis belief in it as a ground of reason for other men’s believing in it, but as showing that he ought to set. forth, as a warranting ground and binding reason for their believing in Christianity, the personal truthfulness of Christ. If they reverence Him, as Professor Huxley professes to reverence Him—-so as to be violently offended if men say he does not believe Him—then let them really believe Him: not, crown Him with the thorns of a mock-belief, that rejects His testimony in its head and front, the soul and substance of what is really known of it. If we do really “believe Him,” it is impossible to rationally stop short of believing ix Him or on Him: to stop short of this is a sin against the light of the believing that is in us—in all who “believe Him” in that lowest degree, below which there is no possibility of any real respect for His personal character. And this is a strong founda- tion of apologetical contending for His religion as a whole. Of course, Professor Huxley, or any other man who holds miracles to be absolutely impossible, cannot believe Christ professing to have worked the gospel miracles, any more than he can believe God teaching that “all things are possible with Him.”* But in the judgment of minds really judicial,—seek- ing truth in this matter as history shows it,—not under blinding influence of atheistic prepossession,—it is a very weighty circumstance that Christ has borne witness to the fact of miracles performed by Himself. ‘His testimony regarding Himself being the Son of God is logically of a similar cogency, while it harmonises with a uniqueness in the character of His mighty works, and, of course (John xiv. 10, 11), is power- fully corroborated by their testimony. . And if, in its mysteri- ousness, the subject of that Sonship do not equally lay hold of the mind of the generality of inquirers approaching the religion as from a distance on the outside,—the subject of the Messiah- ship, on the other hand, while really containing within it the whole system of the religion (so, Hebrews =“ Christ in the Old Testament”) has an abundantly wide-open breadth of aspect, such that he may run who reads. 1 See Luke xvi. 27-31—where mark “ repent” and “ persuaded.” bc) 66 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS So far as apologetics is now concerned, we need not here assign to Messiahism (= Christianity) as an historical religion any greater definiteness of meaning than supernaturalism of revelation and redemption. So far, there was no doubt as to its meaning in the mind of any believing reader of the Old Testament, A.D. 30; nor, AD. 60, of any believing reader of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians; nor, from A.D. 60 onward, of any believing reader of Matthew, Mark, luke, John. What, then—it so falls to be asked—is to be thought of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth, at the opening of the period thus in view, placed Himself before mankind, and died on the cross, as witnessing the confession, that He was the Messiah, the Son of God? Surely that fact is at least entitled to a foremost place in apologetics, as being on the face of it a first-class proof of Bible religion, of Christian revelation and redemption. The fact itself, simply as matter of general history, is altogether unchallengeable at the bar of reason—irrespectively of all questions about the trustworthi- ness of Scripture history. To put His personal truthfulness in place of prophecy and miracle, to the effect of displacing these from evidential office, for the purpose of exalting the personal truthfulness as “alone. in its glory,’—1is surely a peculiar perverseness of reasoning. It is, by way of exalting His truthfulness apart from prophecy and miracle, to make Him a liar in connection with them ; for He has placed them in that office of evidencing religion. Still, His personal truthfulness is a distinct element of proof, which in some respects is deeper and of a wider range: even as His person, which in the catholic doctrine has its founda- tion in veritable godhead, is at the same time that by which, through His complete reality of a perfect manhood, all humanity is reached. Cuap. Ii. APOLOGETICS IN THE APOSTOLIC MINISTRY. In respect of evidence, Christianity is a tree-fortress, 1 In this connection He (John viii. 17) brought in the principle of law, that “at the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” If miracle be specially a testimony of the Father, and prophecy of the Spirit, there is a third place for the Son as a personally “faithful and true Witness.” APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 67° guarded by its own inward strength of life. In particular, this appears in the gospel history of the earthly ministry of Christ. That history is at once an exposition of the nature of the religion and a demonstration of its truth. In fact, at this hour and at all times, the four Gospels are the most effective of all apologies, doing more than all other things under heaven toward men’s believing “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God” Gana xx. 31), “ that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” They may thus be regarded as in the Bible system constituting a sacred citadel, or temple fortress in the holy city. But Jerusalem, whose temple was thus as the nation’s heart of strength in a defensive system, at the same time had defences more external in her battlemented walls: which, relatively to our subject, may ‘be regarded as representing the Old Testament revelation, with its wonders of wisdom as well as of power, “sealing” Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah Son of the Blessed ;—so that Christians in their believing in Him are (Eph. ii, 20) “built on the foundation ... of the prophets.” And further, though Jerusalem’s walls were removed, yet “the mountains round about ” the city would be a natural fortification to her: yea, all Canaan-land,—fenced round by wilderness, Great Sea, Lebanon mountains, deep trench of the Jordan valley,—was it not by nature, for a - warlike nation, as a wonderful entrenched camp? Such a comprehensive system of defences we now see in the apologetics of the apostolic age. SEC. 1. General Aspect, with a reference to Christ’s resurrection. Still keeping mindful of the fact that the subject of our inquiry is not the proof of Christianity, but the manner of dealing with that proof,—or, of commending the religion to the reason of mankind (Isa. i. 18),—we will begin with considering, in the apostolic age, the situation of the religion relatively to that proof. As appearing in New Testament history, the first century of the religion divides into three periods of nearly equal duration :—1. the period of gospel history, of the Saviour’s ministry, down to, say, A.D. 34;—2. the Petro - Pauline _ apostolic period, say, from a.D. 84 to AD, 67; and,—3. the 68 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Johannine apostolic period, say, AD. 67 to Av. 101. This last of the three periods is historically a blank thus far, that the Scriptures give no detailed information regarding the propagandist campaign of Christianity within it, or labour for planting or founding God’s kingdom among mankind; but only bring into view an inward process of consolidation, as in a church already formed, with constitution rounded and complete. The middle period, the Petro-Pauline, thus will form the basis of our present study of the great campaign. The middle period extends over two distinct though connected cycles of movement :—1. the Petrine movement, centring in Jerusalem, and extending down to the Jerusalem Synod, say, A.D. 51; and,—2. the Pauline movement, from Antioch, in the Gentile world, down to the disappearance of the two prince-apostles (Gal. ii 8) respectively of the circumcision and of the Gentiles. The two cycles of move- ment in some measure overlap one another; and the Pauline to some extent repeats the Petrine; as the situation and the work, circumstantially different in the two movements, were in vital respects essentially the same in both. For our special purpose it will be suitable to contemplate the Petro- Pauline period in its totality, not from a simply chronological point of view, but as in a logical survey of the whole period, in which (1 Cor. iii. 8-15) it is seen to include a twofold action, of planting or founding, and of watering or upbuilding. The initial propagandist action, of planting or founding, is what, down to A.D. 62, is exhibited in The Acts of the Apostles: which might be entitled The new-creative Acts of the Holy Ghost through apostles and evangelists It is in this initial propagandism that we see the apostolic practice of apologetics, in the actual work of endeavouring to bring men into the new kingdom through use of reason. In the ulterior apostolic labour, of watering or upbuilding,—as represented, eg., by the Epistles—we may see what was the apostolic doctrine as to apologetics, meetly crowned by the apostolic prescription of Apology at 1 Pet. iii. 15. 1 Cp. Gesta Christe ; and Gesta Dei per Longobardas (title of Paul the Deacon’s history of the Lombard conquest of North Italy). It is to be noted that the title, “ Acts of the Apostles,” though of very early date, is not given by Luke. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 69 The astonishing rapidity of the spreading of Christianity in this period over a hostile world is a fact of general history (noted by Tacitus), which in the post-apostolic ages has been put to apologetic use as a presumptive proof of the religion, on the ground that such a success against so great an opposition implies divinity of authorship. And under the same head of “experimental” evidence there would fall to be included the proof that is constituted by the moral and spiritual character of the primeval Christian community, as) (cp. Eph. ii. 7; 2 Cor. iii, 2, 3) constituting an evidential fruit of new creation in a morally ruined world. But for the purpose of our present inquiry we take that history into view only as illustrating the situation out of which the apostolic apologetics arose as from occasioning cause. So far as regards the rapidly victorious extension of this new kingdom among mankind, we can read the history even in heathen annals. Thus Tacitus, who in his childhood may have been at Rome when Paul suffered martyrdom there, has* not only a general statement of the fact of that rapidity, such that at A.D. 64 the religion had laid hold in every part of the empire, and quarter of the imperial city, but also in particular the terribly glorious proof of the fact that is implied in his statement, that at that time (when presumably Paul was in a Roman prison, Acts xxvill. 30; Eph. iu. 1, Tiga vi. 20) there were found in Rome itself, on occasion of the Neronian persecution, “a vast multitude” (multitudo ingens —cp. Heb. xii. 1) prepared to die with horrible and infamous tortures rather than deny the name of Christ (Luke xii, 5-9): —a truly startling phenomenon within thirty years of the crucifixion of a young Galilean of humble rank at Jerusalem ! * Similar evidence—in general terms—is found in Suetonius,’ who, like Tacitus, wrote within half a century of that first “oreat ” persecution. And about the same date (A.D. 110) Pliny’s Letter to Trajan, regarding the persecuted Christians of Bithynia (cp. Acts xvi. 7; 1 Pet. i. 1), incidentally brings 1 Annal. xv. 44. 2 Ullmann (Historisches oder Mythisches) gives as a status guestionis, “ What is to be reasonably thought about a historical Christendom founded on a crucified man, who was a Jew ?” 8 The Twelve Cesars: “Nero,” “Claudius.” 70 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS into view the corroborative fact, that in Asia Minor this new religion had so early come to be established and deeply rooted, “a kingdom which cannot be moved.” These heathen testimonies are sufficient as basis of apologetic argument on behalf of the gospel from its rapid success: inasmuch as they show, beyond possibility of reasonable doubt, that this religion, notwithstanding deadliest antagonism of the world’s “ powers,” had, from lowliest beginnings, so early in that first century come in a real sense into firmly fixed occupation of the world (ep. Rev. xi. 15 and 1 John vy. 4), For filling up that outline as bearing on our subject, we may freely employ the historical materials to be found in the New Testament records of the apostolic age Thus,—l. in Rev. i—iii. we see that, toward the close of the first century, while the gospel has encountered fierce oppositions on the world’s part, in Asia it has, at least at many main centres of population, brought into being famous Christian churches, now in a second generation of their existence.—2. Back at near the middle of the century, at the date of Paul’s Roman Imprisonment, his propagandist movement, always westward from Jerusalem, has successfully extended over main central regions of the Roman world-empire, whose J aphetic civilised peoples were his peculiar- province for subjugation of the world to Christ (see Acts ix. 15; Eph. ii. 8; Rom. xv. 19, 20, 24, 28): so that, ég.,now (1 Pet. i 1, v. 1, and Acts xill.—xvi.) Christianity is established, in churches under elders, among those Anatolian peoples westward of “Judea” which were specified in the second of two groups of nationalities represented at the great Pentecost (Acts ii. 5—1 1) ;—while, though there is no scriptural record of his having ever, in accordance with his early aspiration (Rom. xv.:j24)228), personally reached the furthest extremity of that west,? yet it is far from unlikely that in his lifetime, and at the impulse ‘ N.B. These records, though they had been forgeries, might be valuable sources of history. In any case, they must have been written at latest in the second century, that is, within short human memory of the first, conformably to second century tradition regarding the first. 2 There is a credible tradition of his having visited Spain, between a first and a second Roman imprisonment, and been brought thence to martyrdom at Rome, APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY ral of his personal movement (see 2 Tim. ii. 9), the gospel of the kingdom may have been preached in, say, Romanised regions both of Spain and Gaul, and of Egypt and North Africa. And,—3, in the meantime (1 Pet.i. 13), presumably the original apostles, absent from that recorded campaigning, were oceupied, eastward of Jerusalem, in propagandist opera- tions whose theatre was especially in the Parthian empire of the east, and whose central action was among the national- ities that are specified in the first of the two groups of the vidimus at Acts ii, 5-11. Those original apostles, whose appearanee at the J erusalem Synod marks the culmination of their distinctive “* founda- tion” labours (in “Judea,” Acts ii 9), disappear from the record, now filled with only the Pauline operations in the (Japhetic) regions of the west. But it is not to be supposed that they through that great formative period were defunct. And in 1 Peter, sent west from Babylon, we see presumptive proof of their not having gone to sleep, all through the intervening twelve years of western Pauline labours, but having been separately campaigning, in continuation of their original Palestinian movement, now eastward among (Senvitic) peoples from Jordan to Euphrates and beyond it. And,— Though there should not have thus been such formal completeness of ¢erritorial occupation of the “ world inits two empires, still, even in the western empire, on which there is sun-clear light of history of the Pauline propagand- ism, the gospel has had to deal with “the whole world” spiritually contemplated—that is, as consisting of Jews and Gentiles. It is to be presumed that the original apostles, in their eastern province of Semitism, though (see 1 Pet. 1.1; cp. Jas. i. 1) their special mission was to the dispersed of Israel, yet (see Acts x. 44-48; cp. Xv. 6—11) everywhere, as they had opportunity, preached the gospel “ also to the Greek ” (Rom. i. 16—where “ the Greek ” is typical sample of Japhetic Gentilism; cp. Eph. iii. 8). And we know that Paul, in his westward movement through the regions of distinctively Greeco- Roman civilisation, while he took Japhetic Gentilism for his 1To make this the mystical Babylon is purely arbitrary, and mis- places Peter at Rome. Still weaker is the suggestion of an Egyptian “ Babylon.” 72 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS especial province, yet habitually (Acts xvii. 2, 3—-where mark “as his manner was”), as he had opportunity, preached that “power of God unto salvation” “to the Jew first.” Such, in fact, was the action he took under the great apostolic com- mission (Luke xxiv. 47), “That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in Christ’s name to all nations, begin- ning at Jerusalem,” and (Acts i. 8), “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me... unto the uttermost part of the earth.” ! Lhe situation that had to be dealt with in the primeval propagandism thus becomes disclosed in a light of history. The missionaries might—eg. at Lystra or at Melita—have occasion to deal with a case of simple “barbarians,” whose religion was a credulously superstitious heathenism. But mainly, and in the first instance, their labours lay in a cwilised world (the Jew-Greek ; see 1 Cor. i. 22-24; Rom. i. 16; Col. iii. 11), where they were confronted with elaborate systems, which were a ruling influence among the peoples, though they should not be comprehended by the commonalty : the systems, either of Judaism founding on the Old Testament revelation, or of a naturalistic speculation at its highest in the Greek philosophy (then prevalently atheistic, Acts xvii. 18; cp. ver. 23), or of a mixture, combination, or amalgam of the two, found everywhere at the Gentile centres of population (Acts xv. 21; cp. Col. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20). Regarding the deeper causes of war (Eph. vi. 12) which lay in the nature of the spiritual condition of mankind as fallen (1 John v. 19),— an antipathy of darkness to the true light, ever ready to break out into open antagonism,—we need not now inquire particularly. With reference to commendation of Christi- anity to man’s reason, what has to be specially considered is the «intellectual condition of mankind then and _ there addressed by the gospel (“the preaching,” 1 Cor. i. 21—R.V.). And that intellectual condition,—such as it must have been in “the Jew first, and also in the Greek,’—is visible, suffi- . ciently for our purpose, independently of New Testament Scriptures, in the light of general history of the world as it then was. * We thus interpret the Partition Treaty at Gal. ii. 9 by the subsequent apostolic action. Constitutionally (see Rom. xi. 25; ep. Acts xv.) the Pauline labour was only a branch of the whole apostolic work. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 73 Regarding the Scriptures themselves (see more fully further on), in relation to our present subject, there need be no question. On simply historical grounds of literary judg- ment, their claim to be received as genuine apostolic? stands unshaken on the old foundations, and in our day has been demonstrated anew, in a clearer light of searching inquiry than before. Even unbelieving critics have been driven, by resistless force of argument, to place their origin as a class, not, far down in the second century (where they not long ago placed it), but at the latest near the opening of it, and more or less—more and more—in the first century. In particular, the substantially universal recognition, among competent scholars, of the “unquestionably” Pauline authorship of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians, at a date that is fixed at least four years before A.D. 64,—gives to apolo- getics a noonday light of history on the state of Christianity in the apostolic age, at the very heart of that central period—the Petro-Pauline—which precisely ts the centre of apologetic interest in the apostolic labours. And finally,— As we saw, with reference to that ministry of Christ, whieh(Acta, i» 21,22. Johny xiviy 255: 265 xv 26), 27s ow 14) was the main burden of apostolic testimony, we have, even on the admission of the most “advanced” recent learned unbelief, independently of the Acts and the Epistles, trust- worthy information sufficient for our present purpose—namely, to see how the apostles placed Christianity before mankind, with a view to commendation of it to men’s common reason. How they must have placed it we may learn even from, eg., heathen Celsus (and Jew Trypho) in the second century, not to speak of post-apostolic Christian writings and history. And the Gospels are, according even to Renan, a good means of learning how in fact they placed the story of the ministry of the Founder. ‘THE MIRACLE OF CurISt?’S RESURRECTION.—We now will pause here in contemplation of that central fact. Its place in the whole post-Pentecostal representation of Christianity is more sun-like in commanding prominence (Gen. i. 16) than 1 Tn this connection, with the canon of Scripture, “apostolic” means belonging to the apostolic circle: eg. Mark, Luke, James. 74 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS even that of His claim to Messiahship in the gospel history of His earthly ministry. Especially, it so appears, in proof of His being the Messianic Son of God (Rom. i. 4). And this we now will consider in connection with a disposition or tendency, occasionally appearing among His professed dis- ciples, to disparage the external evidence of miracle as comparatively a “weak and beggarly” thing—an a bc for babes. In the apostolic age of Scripture history, that glorious resurrection fact is a Sun-rising (Eph. iv. 10), to fill with itself all the world of New Creation. Like the spring sun (John viii. 12), it new-creates the world on which it shines: diffusing all through that world, not only a revealing light (Heb. iv. 12) that brings all things into view, but (Mal. iv. 2) a healing light of life that makes all things new ;—being (1 John i. 2) the new manifested life of everything that has in it the true life of righteousness in holy peace with God. That resurrection thus is not only an external proof of Christi- anity, but’ Christianity itself, now risen and glorified in the divine Redeemer for His people of mankind. It thus is vitally fundamental in the whole system of the religion in such wise, that (1 Cor. xv. 14, 15) if men should cease to believe in the resurrection of Christ, He, in effect, would cease to be “believed on in the world” (1 Tim. iii. 16), as vegeta- tion could not continue to exist on earth if the sun should cease to shine down from “heaven high.” For— Not only the glorious ascending of Christ is an out- shining “ manifestation” (see John ii. 11) of the inner divine glory of His person and redeeming grace. It has come to be to such effect the key-stone of the whole system of external evidences of Christianity, that if His resurrection be not historically real the whole system of those evidences is an arch whose key-stone is withdrawn; while, on the other hand, the historical fact of that resurrection is not only a miraculous proof of His being the Saviour Son of God (Acts xiii. 33), but a key-stone binding into unity of system all such evidences, of the Old Testament as well as of the New. So the matter appears in the scriptural apostolic age. In like manner, His miracles generally were, in the post- 1 See—cum grano—Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 75 Pentecostal representations (Acts ii. 32, x. 38), not only manifestation, but proof (as, eg., at Matt. ix. 1-8). So, eg. (2 Pet. i. 14-18), as to the wonder of the Transfiguration. It was evidential wonder: not only exemplifying the historical reality of extraordinary supernaturalism in the career of Jesus, but constituting proof of His being God’s beloved Son,—proof on the strength of which (vers. 5-11) Christians were able to trust in God with full assurance of faith, so as to be on a solid way of attaining, through persistent progress in Christian graces, to assurance (see 1 Pet. i. 3-5, 18-21) of hope that maketh not ashamed. In the fundamental manifesto of apostolic Christianity, to Jews at the great Pentecost and to Gentiles in the person of Cornelius and his friends, it was distinctly as miraculous that Peter made “the works of Christ” (see Matt. x1. 3-6) to bea rational ground of believing His religion. It was the extra- ordinary supernaturalism of the Transfiguration occurrence that he was able to look back to in his old age, from the gates of death, as for him and others constituting a solid ground of rational assurance of a glorious immortality beyond the grave: inasmuch as the original apostolic “ declaration ” (2 Pet. 1.16; cp. 1 John i. 3), of “the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ,” had not been fabulous or mythical, but genuinely historiealt And so, according to the apostolic representation, while the fact of Christ’s resurrection is a triumph of Christianity in the personal and official glorifica- tion of its Founder (1 Pet. i. 21; Eph. i. 18—24), it is the miraculousnesss of the fact that makes it “the chief corner- stone” of the system of the Christian evidences. Yet the Epistles, full of the great fact as their sunlight all-pervasive, make almost no allusion to its miraculousness. Plainly, they give no full view of apostolic apologetics. Why should they ? So it may be now; when the Christian, “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” is all the day long under power of that “remembrance,” which was awakened in his heart again this ‘morning when again the Sabbath bells were singing, that “the Lord is risen indeed.” When the bells are silent, the miracle they spoke of is perhaps not preached about, but it does not 1 Cp. Ullmann’s title, Historisches oder Mythisches ? 76 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS lapse from the Christian people’s mind. _Nor—whatever may happen to be the particular matter of discourse—does that miraculousness ever lapse from the truly Christian teacher's mind or heart. The lapse would be a downfall from really Christian “preaching”: perhaps into mythical or mystical theorising about Christianity: perhaps into mere naturalistic speculation about religion; or, declamation about philosophy, history, literature—anything or everything dut the life and immortality brought to light in the gospel. The Church would sink into a Lyceum with a pulpit rhetorician instead of a Christian minister. That is to say, if we may credit that representation, of the nature of Christianity, which was the instrument of new creation in the apostolic age. On the ground of information whose quality we have so far considered, we form the following— OUTLINE VIEW of the subject of apostolic apologetics.—1. The main direct external reason for belief in Christianity, laid by the apostles before Jewish and Gentile mankind, was, the earthly ministry of Christ, culminating in His resurrection from the dead, a resurrection of whose historical reality as a fact they were personally eye-witnesses (1 Cor. xv. 4-8).—2. In the general course of His ministry, they founded especially on His works, and on these distinctively as being miraculous (Acts il 22, x. 38). But,—3. (see Acts ii, x. xiii, 14-41; cp. xvi. 3) they also, in proof of His religion, appealed to Old Testament prophecy as fulfilled in Him; so making the pro- phecy to be, apologetically, evidential miracle of forecast, or attesting wonder of wisdom.—4. Paul, who (we will suppose— see 2 Cor. v. 16) personally “saw” Christ only after His resur- rection, refers only to this one of His miracles in evangelistic address to the Gentiles, while in addressing Jews he appeals for proof to Old Testament revelation—5. As credential of their own apostleship, that is, in proof of their being to mankind the authoritative “ witnesses” of God in Christ (planets of that sun, John i. 16), they appealed to miracles of their own, done in the course of their evangelistic labours (Rom. xy. 18, 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12; cp. Heb. ii. 4). Finally,—6. (1 Pet. iii. 15) they laid an obligation on ordinary Christians to be “always ready to give an (apologia) answer to every one that asked a reason (logos) of the hope that was in them”; and (1 Cor. xi—xiv.; Gal. i. 5; Acts vill. 5-7) extraordinary gifts were in some measure exercised by others than the apostles. The indirect external APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 77 evidence, constituted by manifest new creation of moral life in the Christian community, we do not here take into view. Sec. 2. Fact of Definite Belref in Miracle among Christians im the Middle-Apostolie Age. That there was not such belief among them at that time, was held by Strauss, who admitted that, if they really held a definite belief in the miracles of our Synoptical Gospels, it would be impossible, on ordinary grounds of historical judg- ment, to refuse to own the historical reality of those miracles. This with him was a motive to mythical theorising, to the effect that, at the received date of our Synoptical Gospels— we will say, between A.D. 60 and a.D. 70-—the Christians, relatively to the subject of miracle, were as yet only at the stage of day-dreaming about wonders in the career of their hero Christ, from which they did not settle into definite belief in His miracles as historically real until a later time. For, the supposed fact of historical reality of any miracle would destroy the whole Tiibingen criticism of the New Testament history and Scriptures, in its foundation assump- tion that miracle is impossible: it would destroy the Hegelian pantheism on which this Tiibingen assumption was_ based, and all other such atheistic naturalism, underlying so large an amount of the so-called “ historical” criticism of Bible religion and its records in our new time,—as one puncture of a needle would destroy a balloon “as large as all out of doors.” Though the mythic theory was publicly abandoned by Strauss thirty years ago, the question he raised in the interest of it, regarding definite belief in miracle on the part of Christians—we will say—hbefore the last quarter of the primeval century, is of importance for us in the present inquiry, aS opening our way to a closer view of apostolic apologetics. His apprehension was well founded: if the Christians of that early period really did receive as true the narratives of miracle in our Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then it is impossible to deny the reality of such miracles except at the cost of abandoning rational grounds and principles of really “historical criticism.” + © And we for our special purpose have an interest in here pausing on the question of fact, Did the 1 Greek for judgment at 1 Cor. ii. 15, x. 15. 78 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Christians of the Petro-Pauline period not believe definitely in miracle as historically real ? For a conclusive answer to this question we need go no further than those four great Pauline Epistles, whose genuine- ness was owned as “unquestionable” by the Tiibingen school, as it is by Renan, and by substantially all sane scholars who have knowledge of the subject. They must have been written between A.D. 57 and a.p. 60, before Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem, and after full rising of the justification contro- versy, regarding the ground of a sinner’s pardon and accept- ance with God. And they may have appeared in the order, —Gal., 1 Cor., 2 Cor., Rom. But such minutiw of detail do not concern us here and now. What concerns us is only the substantive fact, that “anquestionably,’ in these letters of the then foremost apostle, to leading churches in representative regions of the Roman world,—east, middle, and west,—we have a broad strong light ef history on the mind of Christians as it was in the middle-apostolic age. In that light we see, to begin with, what to think of the infidel assumption, that of course the Christians of that infant church were individually infantile, so as to be capable of day- dreaming instead of thinking about the foundation facts of the so recent historical beginning of their religion, incapable of distinguishing dreams from reality. There is no trace of that in the four Epistles. The writer knows (1 Cor. x. 15) that his readers, though they should be widely astray in various ways, yet have (zous} common sense, that has been much exercised in distinguishing things that differ, not only with reference to plain outstanding matters of visible fact, at a time so recent as that of the appearance of Christ on earth, —a quarter of a century ago,—but with reference to founda- tion questions regarding man’s relation to God. Thus, judging from Lomans (A.D. 59) regarding the qualified readers of that Epistle, we may conclude that (A.D. 64) the “ huge multitude ” of martyrs in the Neronian persecution were not all day- dreaming babies not knowing their right hand from their left. More particularly, in relation to our present subject, we mark a number of distinct allusions to actual miracle in these four Epistles, and observe especially,—1. that there is one APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 79 such allusion in every one of the four; while,—2. there are only three other allusions to actual miracle in all the remaining eighteen Epistles; and,—3. not one of the four allusions, and only one of the three, is to miracle of gospel history.’ This observation effectually disposes of the theorising assumption, that those early Christians were in such a condi- tion of fanatical excitement in connection with religion as to be ready to believe any tale of wonder about it,—that their heated imagination was a hotbed for spontaneous generation of such tales. The “unquestionable” historical fact, here appearing in the remarkable sparseness of apostolic allusion to miracle? in writing to those Christians, is, that the subject, vitally important and vividly interesting as it was to them, yet was in no wise allowed by them to usurp a disturbing possession of their mind, or to interfere with any due concen- tration of mind and heart on those emergent matters, of the inward life and outward action of practical religion, which then called for attention. Of the kind of undesirable excite- ment that might have been reasonably apprehended, among recent converts, from a fresh living belief in extraordinary supernaturalism of God’s manifested working among them, there was a something (1 Cor. xi—xiv.)—speedily corrected (2 Cor.)—at one critical moment, in the otherwise unruly Corinthian church abusing the spiritual gifts entrusted to her. But over all, what these Epistles bring to view, as the presumable condition of the Christian mind in the middle- apostolic age, is, relatively to such naturally exciting matters of thought and experience, a really wonderful calm sobriety, a solid poise of judgment, such as? we saw prescribed to His _witnesses by the Lord, and such as may suggest their being under inward influence of the Spirit of aediy and of a sound mind. At present, however, we are not inquiring as to the possible value of their opinion about miracles, but only about the fact of their definitely believing in miracle as historically 1 At 2 Thess. ii- 9 there is an allusion to Satanic miracle, and in The Apocalypse (chaps. xiii. and xvi.) there are (cp. Matt. xxiv. 24) several allusions to miracle in support of faise religion. 2 See above, p. 57. 5 See above, p. 39, and below, p. 13, ete. 80 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS real. And in proof of the fact, that they did so believe, wuniver- sally, we note (in the four “unquestionable” Epistles) the following— DETAILS OF EVIDENCE—1. They all believed in Old Testament Scripture: referred to at Rom. iii. 2 as “the oracles of God” (cp. 1 Pet. iv. 11). It is on the authority of that Scripture that Paul founds all his theological reasonings in these Epistles, which, distinctively “the theological,” really represent the systematic theology of the whole Bible religion. Consequently, all Christians of that time must have definitely believed in miracle. For (1) the Old Testament sets forth miracle—in Egypt, Sinai, Canaan, Babylon—as historically real: if we will believe Strauss, it was its record of miracles of such ancient heroes as Moses and Elias that originally set the primeval Christians day-dreaming about miracles of Christ. Why, then, should they be—as Strauss alleged—unable to believe Matthew, Mark, Luke, on account of their ascribing miracles to Him? (2) The Old Testament, which they owned as a divine rule, very strongly bownd them to belief in miracle—specially miracles of Christ (“ Messiah ”). The Redeeming God of Israel, set forth in that book, is not only “glorious in holiness, fearful in praises,” but also, miracle- working—* doing wonders” (Ex. xy. 11). It was (Ps. ciii. 7) His wondrous “acts” through Moses that opened their mind and heart to the Mosaic exposition of His ways “at Sinai.” Correspondingly (Ps. lxxviii. 1-8), in order to their continuing to be always rooted and grounded in His self-revelation, He charged them not to forget “the works of God,” but show to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, and His strength, and His wonderful works which He hath done.” Wonderfulness, to Christians reading that ancient Scripture as their sacred book,t must have been a distinctive character of adorableness in the God whom now they worshipped in Christ. “ Wonder- ful” (Isa. ix. 6) was the foremost name which in that book they learned to give to the “ Child,” the “Son,” who otherwise was to be named “ Counsellor,” “The Mighty God,” “ The Everlasting Father,’ “The Prince of Peace.” How could they be disabled from believing gospels by their ascribing wonders to Him? How could they at all believe in Him without ascribing miracles to Him ? (see Isa. lv. 12). 2. They all belreved in the resurrection of Christ. The four Kpistles are full of it as the day is of sunlight. Baur main- tained constantly with reference to it, that two things must be 1 At the time in our view, the Old Testament was their only sacred book ; the new Scriptures did not exist. \ a APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 81 held certain if there be any such thing as historical certainty, namely,—1. that all Christians, from the earliest dawning of Christianity after Christ’s death, believed in His resurrection as a fundamentally vital fact of their religion, and,—2. that Paul, throughout his Christian career, was under power of a. full undoubting conviction of his having personally conversed with Christ risen and glorified. How to account for these two _ things if that resurrection be unreal, Baur was contfessedly unable to tell. But he retained his belief in them to his dying day. . The fact of primeval belief in that resurrection is demon- strable even from the Christian observance of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. xi. 26—Paul’s conclusion of the earliest extant history of the institution).1 Leslie (in his Short and Lasy Method with the Deists) reasons from the nature of this Ordinance and of the Passover, to the conclusion that the events which they respect- ively commemorate cannot but be historically real. But here, again, we are concerned only with the fact of the belief. And the fact of the belief, on the part of Christians feasting in expecta- tion of His second coming, is clear in the primeval Supper as it is in the primeval Lord’s Day (1 Cor. xvi. 2). There is, how- ever, no call for any such particular proofs, of the fact of the belief, to a reader of the four Epistles. Every one of the four Epistles is alJ monumental of that fact. The very title apostle, in Christian usage (Acts i. 22) has in this case no meaning apart from belief that “the Lord is risen.” To the Christian readers (see 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16) of these letters, in them His resurrection “filleth all in all.” How, then, could those readers be unable to believe in the historical reality of miracles done in His previous course of ministry ? As compared with the transcendent reality of that resurrec- tion, all the previous miracles in our Gospels are only sunrays in comparison with the sun that shineth in his strength. 3. They all believed in miracles wrought in their own day. This third head of evidence brings us into the main central stream of the apologetic history of that middle-apostolic period. The allusions in all the four Epistles are exclusively to works that were done in the apostolic age, within the per- sonal knowledge of the Christians, whose belief in miracle is the matter of fact in this present question. The particulars regarding that belief of theirs as matter of fact appearing in the four allusions, are exhibited in the following Note :— 1 His version of the narrative conforms most nearly to Luke’s. It will be remembered that Luke was his companion. 6 82 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS — Detaltep Nove of the particulars under the third head of evidence—(1) Paul worked mueracles all through his career, tom. xv. 18, 19.1 An English deist said that if Paul should say he personally had worked miracles, he (the deist) would believe it—such “a gentleman” was this apostle in his estimation. Paul said it to the Romans, circa AD. 59, in an “unquestionable” Epistle, reckoned the greatest ever written. He may have to write guardedly, as the ashes of the circumcision controversy are not yet cold, and the Jewish element in the Church is probably very strong at Rome. But, writing to a community to whom he is personally a stranger (Rom. i. 13), at a time when apparently (see 1 Cor. ix. 2) even his apostleship has been called in question among Christians, he here exhibits “the signs of an apostle” (2 Cor. xii. 12): employing, for descrip- tion of “those things which Christ hath wrought through him,” all the grand array of New Testament names for miracle-—which (Acts ii. 22) were first employed, at the creat Pentecost, by the protapologist of Christendom with reference to those things which “God did by” Jesus of Nazareth. It does not follow from this statement that he worked miracles. in every place, as the bell is rung? before every sermon. But the statement shows that, from Jerusalem westward, through the whole curriculum of his evangelistic labours, he was, up to this time of his writing, in the way of working evidential wonders where occasion called for them ; so that the working was a feature of his public career.2 At Rome, where no doubt (see Rom. xvi.) there were Christians from every part of the empire, to many of whom—tfrom Syria, Asia Minor, and the Greek mainland—he was person- 1 See on Acts xix. 11, below, p. 99. 2 John Foster spoke of miracle as “the great bell of the universe” striking. 8 When did he go round as far as “ Ilyricum” (Dalmatia)? Presum- ably at the time of his first apostolic labour at Corinth (Acts xviil.), A.D. 53-54. During that year and a half he could radiate from Corinth into the adjacent regions (see 1 Thess. i. 7, 8, written at that time), as (Acts xix.) he afterwards radiated from Ephesus as a strategic centre of his propa- gandist campaigning in Asia Minor. It may have been at this time of his second recorded visit to Corinth (see 2 Cor, xi. 10). APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 83 ally known, the character of his labours westward from Jerusalem could be as well known about as if they all had taken place before many witnesses in the Roman forum. Though Paul had been capable of saying the thing that ts not, wis morally impossible that he should have made this statement to the Roman Christians, if a definite belief in miracle had not been in full possession of the mind of Christians generally at the dome. (2) All the apostles were miracle-workers 2 Cor. xii. 12.— Here, too, he employs the whole grand array of New Testa- ment names for miracle.? Here, too, he emphatically claims (cp. ver. 11) to have copiously done such works himself. It was at Corinth, some five or six years ago. And it extended —so to speak—through a campaign of such working on his part (the “patience” here is a soldierly endurance, or persist- ency in effort—as at Heb. xii. 1). And here too, in a time of controversy and partisanship (1 Cor. i. 12, ix. 2), he has to speak guardedly. Jt is morally impossible that he should here have spoken as he does if the fact of his having worked miracles, most memorably, at the founding of the Corinthian Christianity, had not been fully believed in by the Corinthian Christians. But any such thing believed in at Corinth, on that isthmus* which was a bridgeway of commercial and other intercourse between the eastern and the western Roman empire, would speedily be noised over all the Roman “world,” and perhaps (eg. by travelling merchants in the Euphrates regions, in Spain, Gaul, Germany, even Caledonian Britain) far beyond its borders. But further and especially, the reference, in the first instance to Paul at Corinth, is really to the whole apostolate 1 A professional “thaumaturgist” (Greek for muracle-worker) might be a conjuring quack, the most worthless of mankind (e.g. the gdete at 2 Tim. ili. 13), * Elsewhere, in addition to Acts ii. 22 and Rom. xv. 19, the array is found only at 2 Thess, ii, 9, where the miracles are lying wonders of Satan. * An “isthmus” was what in the Scottish Highlands is called a tarbet (=“draw-boat”)—a neck or saddle of land between two waters or seas. The position of Corinth was most. advantageous for Paul’s campaigning, as a strategic centre of operations, like Ephesus afterwards, and finally Rome. 84 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS in. its whole course of propagandist labours. “The signs of an apostle” here is literally “the signs of the apostle” (cp. “the lion’s roar,’ “the poet’s eye,” “the scholar’s melan- choly”),——that is, the specific “marks” of apostleship (principia cognoscendt), badges of apostolic office. Paul's present employment of the expression implies that every apostle was a reputed miracle-worker, that the miracle- working “power” (Acts i. 8)+ was to an apostle—like “holiness to the Lord” shining on the breast or brow of a high priest—the received visible attestation of official right (cp. Heb. ii. 4; and, as regards attestation of prophetic office, Deut. xvili. 20-22). Though an apostle should not be always and everywhere working wonders,—as an ambassador is not always everywhere producing his credentials——he had the “ power,” and would exercise it as occasion called, so as to be known to possess it. Whether in point of fact there was this supernatural attestation accompanying the apostolate, must have been well known to all Christians, and among unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, wherever the movement ex- tended. In a public letter to Corinth, Paul could not have spoken as he here does if miracle had not among Christians been believed in as real in the case of every apostle. (3) Apparently, miracle-working was not altogether re- stricted to apostles, Gal. iii. 5.—It is conceivable that the worker here intended should be simply the Holy Ghost (cp. Rom. xv. 18, 19), without understood reference to any individual human instrument in His working; or otherwise, that the individual should be Paul himself, say, in the past times of his founding the Galatian churches. A more natural —that is to say, a more easy and obvious—construction is, that the miracles were being worked, at the time of this writing, by some trusted associate? of the apostle’s labours, 1 The “power” at Acts i. 8 is (dynamis)=mught or force ; the “power” at Acts i. 7(R.V. “authority ”) is = right, of sovereignty. 2 It is interesting to think that the lieutenant may have been “trusty” Silas (1 Pet. v. 12). He disappears from the record (1 Thess. i. 1; 2 Thess. i. 1) at the time of Paul’s founding the Corinthian church, until the time of Peter’s writing to Anatolian churches. The great Jeru- salem prophet (Acts xv. 32) had accompanied Paul in the second missionary journey at the founding of them, and had come to be, next to the apostles, the foremost Christian in the world. We cannot think of him as having APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 85 placed in charge there in his absence, as Timothy and Titus will be his lieutenants elsewhere at a later date, and as (Acts viii. 5—7) Philip the Evangelist was employed in an earlier movement. A sort of deputy-apostle for a specific mission might, until its purpose was accomplished, be entrusted pro hac vice with the distinctively apostolic “ power” (see Mark xvi. 17, 18). Such an appointment in particular cases might be in the line of the general provision at Mark xvi., and in keeping with what is said about the distribution of spiritual’ gifts at 1 Cor. xii. 28, 29. Such occasional exercise of the “power” by an evangelist still could leave the permanent possession of it a distinguishing mark of apostleship. But the interesting question, Who was the worker at Gal. iii, 5—eg. “faithful” (1 Pet. v. 12) Silas with a special mission ?—is for us at present only a side-question. What lies straight on the line of our inquiry now is, the substantive fact that, whether at this very time of Paul’s writing to the Galatians, or, say, at the time, some six years ago, of his founding Christianity among them, miracles were worked among them in attestation of the true doctrine of grace. Though he had not been the last man in the world to say anything untrue, Galatia in its present temper is the last place in the world to which he—such a soldier on the warpath—would expose himself by writing what could be challenged. “Unquestionably” those Galatians believed in the historical reality of miracles quite recently performed among themselves, before their own eyes, while perhaps those eyes were the opposite of likely to see them if they were not there as stubborn facts. And Paul, now writing as he does, effectively brings in those Galatians as accessory witnesses to the reality of the wonder-working among them,—about which, as matter of plain fact, they really could not be mistaken. been idle during the ten momentous years preceding his reappearance at Babylon. He may have been all-worthily employed, as organising super- intendent (Tit. i. 5, 7), in resuming and completing Anatolian work which had been so strangely interrupted (Acts xvi. 6, '7) when Paul and he were called away to Europe. In the Pauline movement, his place would thus be like that of Philip the Evangelist in the Petrine movement. He was the natural mediator between the tendencies to Judaical and Gentilic extremes. 86 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _ (4) Apparently there were supernatural operations not restricted to official persons of whatever grade, 1 Cor. xi.—xiv.— With reference to the evanescent spiritual “ gifts” at Corinth, as distinguished from abiding graces of “ faith, hope, charity,” we need not now inquire beyond the point of fact that (xiv. 24, 25) they were deemed in some way extraordinary super- natural ;—such, eg., as to be fitted to produce, on heathens looking in upon the Christian assembly, an overpowering impression, as of awfully manifested presence of the living God. Such an impression, made*on a passing wayfarer between east and west, might speedily come to be heard of (cp. Luke 11. 38; Acts 11. 5; Matt. 1. 1, 2) at the remotest extremity of the empire, and beyond it, as a token of the coming and kingdom of a great one—a star as of Bethlehem, that might lead wise men to travel from afar in search of the salvation thus betokened for humanity. Apparently the gifts could—thus far like ordinary gifts (Eph. iv. 8)—be perverted for personal or sectional purposes of ambition, or even of vain display, or otherwise mishandled at the cost of decency and order. They thus may have differed from the apostolic “ power” to work miracles, which was reposed in individuals for attestation of their office and accrediting of their doctrine,—by being reposed, vaguely, in the Christian community for manifestation of God’s presence in the movement. In that case they might be, perhaps for an occasion, more or less at the command of individuals not holding any definite office or commission, ordinary or extra- ordinary. But in any case, for the purpose of sending abroad an impression that might prepare men for the coming of the gospel to them (cp. Mark i. 1, 2), or impel them to go in search of “the kingdom,’—the gifts might be placed there, and similarly at other centres of radiation like Corinth, in respect of strategic advantage for propagandist operation on the surrounding world. It is, however, only at Corinth, and that only as for an instant, that we obtain a glimpse of them in recorded manifestation; and this manifestation of them, locally and as if momentaneously, does not give much clear- ness of view in the direction shown by the preceding particulars of evidence regarding definite belief in miracle. Still,— APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 87 In this case, quite clearly, the operations—whatever precisely may have been their nature—are in progress at the time of Paul’s writing about them; and here, perhaps, most clearly of all, it is inconceivable that he should have spoken as he does if the existence of the things he speaks about had not been fully believed in and well known at the spot ;—while such things known or believed in at Corinth — would unfailingly be inquired about, if not well known, among Christians all the world over, to whom Corinth, great capital of European Greekland, was “a city set on a hill.” A conjoint view of the particulars may warrant the follow- ing observations :— 1. The general character of the four Epistles, as public apostolic allocutions, bearing, at a crisis, on foundation matters of Christianity, places the whole Christendom of a.p. 57-60 as accessory witness along with Paul regarding the matter of fact in our present question. He could not so write about the matter if all Christendom did not believe in the fact. 2. The incidental character: of all the four allusions to miracle is to be noted as implying that the—so to speak— amount of belief in miracle among Christians at that time must in reality have been vastly greater that at first sight appears. It is only through what, relatively to the main course of Pauline operations, even at Corinth, was only accidental side-matter, that we become aware of the existence of the supernatural gifts which were there and then in opera- tion, though they must at the time have been much in the mind of both Christians and heathens far and near. The important circumstance? that miracle-working (see Heb. ii. 4) was not wholly restricted to apostles personally, would not have been heard of by us, were it not for what might be called an untoward eccentricity of Galatian Christians. The great fact that the miracle-working “power” was universally deemed essential in the equipment of every apostle, as artillery is in the equipment of every army corps, comes to our knowledge only through a seemingly accidental side-utter- 1 Which see further illustrated below, pp. 99, etc. 2 Important were it only as incidental proof of the genuineness of Acts through “undesigned evidence” with Acts viii, 5-7. 88 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ance,—of Paul’s eager wistfulness of love’s labour to comfort the Corinthians now mourning under his rebukes. It is only toward the close of his “greatest” Epistle (cp. Gal. vi. 11), after its great and weighty matters have been all expounded, that, as it were in “a sentence after the last,” of modestly self-depreciatory introduction to strangers, we now see, what must long have been well known to all the nascent Christen- dom westward of Jerusalem, namely, that Paul—whose every step through all these years we have been following—was himself a miracle-worker all through the varied round of them. And in particular, it—very strikingly—is in a like seemingly accidental way that, in all but the last parting word of his long intercourse with Corinth, we come to know about his having—in a manner that well might shake awake (Eph. v. 14) the whole dead Roman empire of that west,—a very few years ago inaugurated the intercourse, in his founding the Corinthian Christianity, with a campaign of miracle-working, probably the greatest, excepting the cam- paigns of Moses in Egypt and of Jesus in Palestine, that the world has ever seen. It thus appears that no cursory surface reader of the Acts and LHpistles can be aware of, what becomes clear on close inspection of these four Epistles, the afiuent fulness with which definite belief in miracle must have then been in strong possession of the mind, not only of all Christians, but, no doubt, of many heathens around them. 3. Calm sobriety of judgment, on the part of those Chris- tians, relatively to the subject of miracle, is, we saw, presum- able from that apostolic manner of alluding to the subject. The allusions are called for by occasions arising. If Peter, in one of his Epistles (2 Pet. i. 16—18), makes one allusion to miracle, it is on the emergent occasion of his having at this point to lay great stress (cp. 1 John i. 1-3) on the historical trustworthiness of the apostolic testimony regarding “the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul’s allusion to Satanic miracles (2 Thess. ii. 9), in all but the earliest of his Epistles, is important for his practical purpose (cp. Eph. vi. 12, ete.) of early forearming the Church through fore- warning her at the outset of her militant career ;—as also was Christ’s own allusion (Matt. xxiv. 24) to miracles of the false a oo a APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 89 prophets and false Christs, and as will be John’s apocalyptic allusions (Rev. xiii. 12, 13, xvi. 14) to miracles of the second Beast. The only epistolary allusion (Heb. ii. 4) to apostolic miracle other than those in the “unquestionable” four (say, A.D. 68) would not be regarded as out of place or time ina pastoral address to Christians in our own day and land. WNo- where is there any appearance of dragging in the subject of miracle, or harping on it, as if under influence of exaggerating fanatical excitement (with reference to craving for miracle as mere “ wonder,” see 1 Cor. i. 22). In the four Epistles, that character of presumable calm sobriety in this relation, is remarkably sustained. The allusions in every case are distinctly for an emergent occasion. Gal. ili. 15 has the effect of clinching Paul’s great argument at the very hinge of the crisis of the justification controversy. Of the supernatural operations at Corinth, he has to speak, for correction of perilous as well as very shameful abuse of the spiritual gifts of God. The tenderness which appears at 2 Cor. xu. 12, 13, toward those who had sinned in this and other matters, is characteristic of the apostle whom Renan describes as the greatest of all spiritual directors; while at the same time the skilfulness of a veteran soldier of Jesus Christ may have suggested that such an allusion to miracle, while serving the kindly purpose immediately in view, was fitted, as it has served, for ulterior accomplishment of a higher effect in connection with the whole campaign of Christianity. So of the allusion at Rom. xv. 18,19. Nobly following up Rom. i. 8-14, it has to be made somehow, for self-introduction of Paul as an accredited ambassador of Christ; and, made as it is on this occasion, it abidingly strengthens the new heart of the empire of the world. Not only Paul is not exercised about the wonders merely as wonders (1 Cor. i. 22; cp. Luke xvii. 8). Evidently, the newly-born Christian community has them in its mind only in a rational manner; such that the Christian mind (1 Cor. i, 23) is not carried away by fascination of mere wonderful- | ness from the spiritual interest of that “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,” which are the great and weighty matters of the kingdom of God. A community settled on the slopes of a volcanic mountain is ordinarily occupied, not 90 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS with aimless talking about eruptions past or present, but with the daily industries of shepherding, farming, gardening,— though their life be under pervasively controlling influence of belief in reality of eruptions. Such a view of the mental condition of the Christians addressed in these Epistles is suggested by the character of the few allusions to miracle in the Epistles. Occurring as the allusions do,— incidentally, as in a passing “word to the wise,’—the view they suggest is that, while the Christian mind of the time was settled in full belief in the reality of miracles, yet among Christians they were not much nor frequently the subject of either ordinary conversation or distinct reflection. 4. As to bearing on gospel history—The thus “ unques- tionable” fact, of universal Christian belief in contemporary miracle, placed the apostles on a solid ground of advantage as witnesses regarding the preceding ministry of Jesus. Their own miracle-working power is now believed in, as a matter of present-day experience in the first entrance of the new kingdom into this or that locality. To every locality the entrance has been as a great stream, coming down into this present from a still recent past, of fontal outpouring of miraculous “power” from on high, at a Pentecost in sight of this generation, as Lebanon is in sight of Canaan. The very purpose of the working in this present has all been, to carry men’s minds back to that past so recent,—a past in which apostles, men still in the prime of life, “from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word ” (Luke i. 2; ep. 1 John i. 3; 2 Pet.i. 16). There now can be on their part no difficulty in recollecting main plain facts, of “ that which they have seen and heard,” as when some of them were with Jesus on the holy mount. And to the first generation of Christians under their instruction, believing in their miracles, so far from there being insuperable diffi- culty in believing in miracles of Jesus, rather would there not have been sheer impossibility of believing, that the Master had not done such wonderful works as now are being done by His servants ? The question, how there came to be a first generation of believers, prepared to live and die “for the name” of the Lord Jesus, unless there was miraculous proof of the O_o APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 91 religion at its original founding,—is outside of our present inquiry. Adhering to our present subject, we ask, How would Matthew, Mark, Luke, say, before A.D. 70, appear to a church like that of Corinth, now sixteen years of age? She believes in the Old Testament with its wonders, in the transcendent miracle of Christ’s resurrection, and in apostolic miracles now being worked, including, on the part of the prince-apostle of the Gentiles in a protracted residence here at Corinth, a most memorable campaign of miracle-working at her own so recent founding; while in her communion there have since been extraordinary supernatural operations copious all but to unmanageableness. Would not a Synoptist run some risk of rejection in that community on account of the quiet natural- ness of his supernaturalism,—making his wonders to be too little wonderful, not strong enough in sensationalism, for the Corinthian taste ? But the question bears not only on specialties of one church. The Gentile churches generally, in like manner, had fresh living memory (cp. Gal. iv. 13-15) of a quite recent time, some few years back at furthest, when the inaugural “sions, and wonders, and mighty works,’ broke in as an awakening earthquake or a resurrection thunderstorm (see Eph. v. 14) on their old heathen sleep of death. And they, relatively to possibility and likelihood of miracles of Christ the Son of God, would—after such (as they believed) experi- ence of apostolic miracle—hardly need to reason in order to stand in the conclusion, that in respect of supernaturalism surely the servant-apostle is not above his Lord. Nor must we forget the commanding force of definite belief in miracle that was operative—above all, as on a Lebanon summit—in the mind and heart of the «apostles themselves, and of their associates in the propagandism. Is it to be supposed that such a man as Paul,—that such associates as Silas, Timothy, Titus, Luke, Mark, Apollos,—were all under a lifelong plague of physical as well as of spiritual blindness, incapable of perceiving plain matters of fact, within their personal knowledge or easily ascertainable by them? If not, then in our day is it not a proof of strong delusion (John ix, 39), constituting incapacity for historical 92 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS judgment,! that any one should doubt as to the reality of what they so believed in? In that middle-apostolic age, had the apostles a definite belief in miracle, as a fact whose reality was attested by evidence of their bodily senses? If not, then how are we to account for those allusions to miracle in every one of the four “unquestionable” Epistles of Paul 2 And otherwise ——? (see Matt. xii. 28), SEC. 3. Apologetics in Pauline Practice and in Petrine Prescription. Though all the apostles were Christ’s ambassadors to “all nations,” the mission that specially fell to “the Twelve” was (Gal. 11. 8) “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Out- side of Palestine, from the time of the Jerusalem Synod, in Scripture we see almost nothing of their personal work of planting and upbuilding Christianity among mankind: though we know (1 Pet. i, 1; Jas. i. 1) that they specially ad- dressed themselves to Jews of the dispersion, and? may Suppose that the special theatre of their propagandism was, eastward from Palestine, among the Semitic populations where home-bred Palestinians like the Twelve would be half at home, and in whose Euphrates regions (see 1 Pet. v. 13), the original cradle of the Abrahamites, Jews of the dispersion were at this time peculiarly numerous? But regarding the presumable manner of their proceeding we are not without means of judging. In addressing Jews on behalf of Christianity, the apostles did not in the first instance speak as to outside unbelievers, Rather (see Acts xxvi. 6, 7) they spoke somewhat in the manner of Luther and other reformers addressing the Christian peoples of western Christendom,—peoples — professedly holding the catholic Christian faith. In the name and on behalf of the faith which those peoples professed, the reformers exhorted them to abandon the medizvalism now called Popery as an innovating corruption of that faith. So at the great Pente- cost the Jews addressed were in a sense believers, even pro- fessing Christians. That is to say, their Old Testament faith was MMessiahism (which is Hebrew for the religion of the 1 Greek for criticism. 2 See above, pp. 71, etc. ® Ewald, History of Israel. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 93 “anointed,” as Christianity is Greek for it). The original apostles (see John i. 35, ete), may conceivably—excepting “the son of perdition ”—-have been thus believing Christians of the Old Testament before they embraced the New Testa- ment Messiahism (see Acts xvii. 3) in Jesus of Nazareth.* Not improbably a large and most valuable part of the membership of the original apostolic church consisted of - individuals who thus had been born again within the Old Testament Church communion (see John iii. 10; ep.. 1 11-13). It was only (see Matt. v. 10-12; Acts xiii. 46, xxviii, 24-28) after trial by the gospel, of those pro- fessedly looking for Christ, whether they now would receive the Messiah who had come (cp. Deut. viii. 3), that non-believing Jews came to be held as simply outside “of God’s kingdom like Gentile heathens (see Rev. ii. 9, iil. 9). Paul, while accepting (Eph. ii1. 8) his own special mission “as to the Gentiles, for which he was uniquely qualified, as being the only apostle who was a citizen of the Gentile world, yet went with his message “to the Jew first” (Rom. i. 16), _ who (Acts xv. 21), with his synagogue, was to be found at the centres of population, even in those Japhetic western lands which proved to be the predestined? theatre of the Pauline propagandism. There thus was resumed, in his dealing with the Jews, the substance of what for our purpose is to be noted in the earlier ministry of the original apostles. And also and especially, in his grand campaign as apostle of the Gentiles (Acts ix. 15), we see at full length the whole “ case for Christianity,” as laid before the civilised mankind of the west by that great apostle who, through western culture, and perhaps by native cast of mind, has most of affinity to the modern Japhetic peoples,—e.g. in their “ critical” tendency (see 1 Thess. v. 21; 1 Cor. x. 15) to put matters to the test of reason. 1.The late Dr. Lindsay Alexander—Anglo-Catholicism not A postolical— held that not improbably Paul was truly such a Christian when persecut- ing Christ. ; 2 In the Acts it appears that every main course of Paul’s action, on to the very last, was taken under express instructions from God: he went always as directed. 94 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS THE PAULINE PRaAcTICE.—1. Appeal to the Old Testament. —Straightway ” after Paul’s conversion, “he preached Jesus ) In the synagogue” (of Damascus) “ that He is the Son of God” (Acts ix. 20), and again (ver. 22), “he confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is the Christ” (cp. Matt. xvi. 16-20; John xx. 31). The divine Sonship of Messiah had been made a point of Old Testament revela- tion by Jesus Himself (Matt. xxii. 41-45) in His last act of public teaching in the temple, immediately before His final farewell’ And His claiming divinity of nature as well as Messiahship of office was the ground of His condemnation to death as a blasphemer by the Jewish council (Matt. xxvi. 65—66).. It was (John xix. 7; ep. Matt. xxvii. 18)—they per- haps thought—the real cause of the pressure they put on Pilate, with a lying accusation and with suborned false witness, for the judicial murder of the sinless One, whom they and Pilate knew to be innocent of the civil offence laid against Him. It was the thing for which He “ witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate” (1 Tim. vi. 13), and died as “the faithful martyr” (Rev. i. 5) on the cross. It thus appears that Paul, in his Damascus beginning, raised a banner for the essential foundation doctrine of Christianity. Paul's apologetic was only for that gospel (1 Cor. i. 22-24; tom. i. 16, 17) regarding Jesus, the son of Mary, namely, that He is the Saviour Son of God.2 A defence ignoring that “gospel” would be inconceivable to him (see Gal. i. 8). His whole theologising ran into unfolding of what is folded in the personal and official glory of the Crucified One (Gal. ii. 20, vi. 14); and all his (1 Cor. ii. 1) “preaching” consisted in application of the doctrine, that salvation, in God’s redeeming love, is offered freely to all sinners as the purchase of Im- manuel’s sufferings unto death,—pardon and acceptance, the lawful way of life in peace with God, thus being a gift of divine free grace, on the ground of God’s own righteousness in Christ. And Paul maintained (Gal. ii.; ep. Acts xv. a etc.) that this “gospel,” received by him independently in 1 See above, p. 34. * “Liberty of conscience,” “rights of man,” came only in the train of that (Acts iv. 19, 20). The direct appropriate “defence” was of “the gospel” (Phil. i. 7, 17). APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 995 revelation from Christ, was in substance—of free salvation for mankind in the Saviour Son of God—what the original apostles had from the beginning delivered as from the Lord. The thing defended, and commended to men’s reason, in the apostolic apologetics, thus was “ evangelical” Christianity. Paul’s next recorded appearance as teacher was in that first great missionary journey (Acts xiil., xiv.) which was the beginning of the evangelisation of the Gentile world,—a work that still is in progress at this hour. There at the outset we see him (Acts xiii.) in “ the synagogue of the Jews,” “ preaching | the word of God.” This in its apologetic bearing is expounded _ (Acts xvii. 3) in a note on the second great missionary journey, with reference to Paul’s wonted “ manner” (in the synagogues), to the effect that in Berea, addressing Jews, he opened and alleged, (1) that the Christ must needs have suffered and risen from the dead;! and (2) that the Jesus whom he preached to them was the Christ. He thus may have assumed the divine Sonship of Messiah as an acknowledged point of Old Testament revelation, and may have had some occasion to deal with a “heretical” construction of the Old Testament that was to be found among Jews, to the effect that the coming One was not to be a humiliation Christ (Rom. ix. 32) as well asan exaltation Christ. But the point for us to mark,— as expressly intimated,—is, that habitually, in his commenda- tion of the gospel to Jews, he built “on the foundation . . . of the prophets” (Eph. ii. 20), in order to place his converts on “the foundation of the apostles . . . Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone.” In other words, the apostolic apologetics found proof of Christianity in the Old Testament: a proof which, if real, must be valid for Gentiles, eg. as consti- tuted by the miracle of Old Testament Beephery fulfilled in Jesus and His work. Of what we may suppose to have been those addresses of Paul “as his manner was” in the synagogue, the only recorded sample is (Acts xii. 16—41) the report cf what he said, in course of the first great missionary journey, in the synagogue of the Pisidian Antioch. It may be compared with Peter’s address at the great Pentecost to Jews from “every nation 1R.V. has, “that it behov ed \the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead” (cp. Luke xxiv, 25-27; 1 Pet. i. 10-12). 96 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS under heaven,”? and with Stephen’s address to Jews at his martyrdom,—an address which may appear to have made an indelible impression on the theological mind of “a young man whose name was Saul.”* We do not know whether the report is full, nor what subsequent discussion there may have been on the occasion. But in it we observe, here again in Paul’s procedure, the general fact, that the apostles found Christ wn the Old Testament, and adduced this Jinding as a proof of Christianity. In so dealing with Jews, they assumed the divinity of Old Testament revelation. This on their part implied divinity of Old Testament Scripture, and (cp. Matt. v. 17-20) its abiding authority in the new dispensation as a rule of faith to Christians. The apostle of the Gentiles holds to this “foundation” no less firmly (Rom. iii. 2; 2 Tim. iii 15—1 i) than the apostle of the circumcision (1 Pet. iv. 11 ; 2 Pet. i: 19-21; see iii. 15,16). The position thus assumed by them in dealing with Jews and with their own converts, involved for them a necessity of maintaining before all mankind, not only the truth of Christianity unfolding out of J udaism, but the divinity of Old Testament revelation, and of the Old Testament record of that revelation. But the position, while thus exposing a wide surface to assault, was one of great defensive strength in two respects :—1. Generally, the two dispensations, meeting in Christ, thus have the strength which the two sides of an arch have through uniting in the key- stone; and,—2. in particular, while the old dispensation thus has proof of its divinity in being shown to be prophecy ful- filled, at the same time (John vi. 27) the new is “sealed” of God in being visibly the fulfilment of prophecy. 2. Apostolic Miracle (Acts ii. 43, v. 12, viii. 5—7),—In Paul's ministry this does not come distinctly into view until he is seen dealing separately with Gentiles (Acts xiii, 11). 1 Peter (Acts ii. 22) appealed to miracles done by Jesus in the course of His ministry. Peter and many of his hearers had been eye-witnesses of these. Paul refers only to the resurrection miracle, of which (1 Cor. xv. 8) he was personally an eye-witness. But Peter, too (see Acts i. 22), made the resurrection miracle to be the crowning proof—instar omnium. * See Crliera, Acts viii. 9; ep. Acts ix.5. Theologians find the distinctively Pauline type of doctrine anticipated in the protomartyr’s dying testimony, SS APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 97 A clear sample is early given (Acts xiv. 1-1 8) in the narrat- ive of proceedings after the gospel has been openly rejected by the Jews in Pisidian Antioch. First, generally, with reference to the bold speaking in the Lord at Iconium,-— those Jews now being banded open adversaries,—it is stated that He “gave testimony unto the word of His grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their (the evan- gelists’) hands”: where appears distinctly the evidential office of miracle as proof of doctrine; while we also perceive the relation in which that office is peculiarly important, namely, to the case of those for whose conviction the authority of the Old Testament is not available, inasmuch as they (cp. Acts xxvi. 27) do not believe it! Then, particularly, at Lystra (vers.'8, etc.) there is fully detailed the individual case of the man impotent from birth. Here the miracle-working, which is to be a rational ground of believing, is preceded by, as it were, a provisional testing 2 of the man’s inward spiritual condition for receiving the temporal benefit he needs. But for us at present the essential point here is (ep. John vi. 26), that the purpose of the miracle is, not merely temporal benefit, but proof of gospel doctrine. In the second great missionary journey, when it has reached westward into Europe (Acts xvi. 10—xix.), that use of miracle, as of artillery in battles and sieges, is seen (Rom. xv. 18,19; 2 Cor. xii. 12) along the whole extent of the campaign of Christianity. It is in the Pauline plan of cam- paign to settle for some time at this or that great centre of population, which would be suitable as a centre of radiation into surrounding localities in the region. ‘Thus, first, there was a year and a half’s Corinthian residence, on the bridge- way of the Roman world’s. perpetual movement between east and west ;* to be followed, when (see Acts xvi. 6, 7) matters were 1 But (Acts x. 34-43) thoughtful heathens, with time for reflection, could see and feel the force of the argument for the New Testament from the Old. 2 Cp. (Acts ii.) Peter’s dealing with a similar case of impotency at Jerusalem ; and the second Cana miracle (John iv. 50), as contrasted with the first Cana miracle (chap. ii. 1-11). 3 See footnote on wsthmus, above, p. 83. 7 98 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ripe for it, by a three years’ Asian residence that centred in Ephesus (see Rom.i. 11, i—iiL); and finally (see Acts xix. 21; Rom.i. 13), in various respects most memorable of all, a pro- tracted residence in prison (Czsarean and Roman), with influ- ences widely radiant,’ bearing seeds of blessing for all peoples through all time. Corinth, Ephesus, Rome were strategically the true commanding positions in the whole theatre of Paul's campaigning westward from Jerusalem; and it is in connec- tion with them that there comes fully into view his apologetic employment of miracle in proof of doctrine,— particularly through demonstration of apostolic mission from God in Christ. Before that time (Acts xvii), on the way round the coast of Greece from Philippi to Corinth, at Berea and Thessalonica . he reasoned with Jews on the ground of Old Testament reve- lation, and at Athens with Gentiles (cp. his dealing with Gentiles at Lystra, Acts xiv.) on the ground of nature’s light shining through creative and providential works of God, and in the constitution of man,—apparently referring to no super- natural proof of religion beyond what is constituted by Christ’s resurrection. But “the signs of an apostle” had appeared at Philippi And in connection with the three strategic centres we note particulars as follows :— 1. At Corinth? he at the outset (1 Cor. xv. 4-8) not only reasoned with Jews from the Old Testament, but laid full out before men that transcendent resurrection miracle, citing an array of competent witnesses in proof of its historical reality.? Also—a fad, like the preceding, of which the historian in Acts mates no mention—{2 Cor. xii. 12) for attestation of his apostle- ship, which at the same time was by implication a proof of Christianity, in that community he laboured through a whole calnpaign of “ signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds,” which are “the signs of an apostle ”—his badge of office. (N.B—Some 1 “The word of God was not bound,” 2 Tim. ii. 9—witness “the prison Epistles”; as when, in The Pilgrim's Progress, myriads of immortal Bunyans went forth evangelising from Bedford gaol. The plan of Paul’s campaign was not his own (Acts xx. 22); the hero of that epic was Providence (conformably to Seeley’s prescription). 2 See above, pp. 83, 87. * At that time, within twenty years of the event, the Corinthian Jews, keenly hating the gospel, could easily test the good faith of that citation, by making inquiry about the matter through connections in Palestine. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 99 six years after, he stated this in a public letter, which the hostile Corinthian Jews could see.) 2. At Ephesus, “ Asia’s” famous capital, he laboured more than twice as long as at Corinth. Asia Minor was, through generations aiter the apostolic age, a head centre of powerful spiritual influences—good and evil—to all the Christian world. And as for Ephesus with its region—« Asia”—the deep and far-reaching influence resulting from the Pauline labours there is evidenced monumentally, not only by the history in Acts, but by Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and the apocalyptic Letters to the Seven Asian Churches, beginning with Ephesus, their chief. But it is only, as it were, incidentally! that Scripture makes us aware of the great part that was played by miracle in that Ephesian campaign. At Acts xix. 11 we read, “God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul”: where we note that the human miracle- worker is organ of deity. What we dwell on here is, the “special miracles” (dynameis = “works of power”: R.V. in margin has “powers”). The “special”—ou tas tuchousas— means literally “those not meeting you” (every day). They were not everyday miracles. They were uncommon— peculiarly “notable” (Acts iv. 16)—even in that region of supernaturalism: whether in respect of magnitude of indi- vidual works of wonder, or in respect of a peculiar affluence in the number of such works done at this one point of time (cp. Acts i. 43, v. 12-16, vii. 5-7). The point of time was critical in the history of God’s kingdom, not only at that great capital, but also and consequently for “ Asia,” for Asia Minor, for that eastern world,—and, as we now know, for Christendom through all time. And now, to meet the emergency of the crisis, for the final storming of that stronghold of Satan’s Anatolian kingdom, for decisive turning of the tide of spiritual warfare (see Eph. vi. 12, ete.) in those regions—there is here brought into operation an overwhelmingly concentrated out- pouring of wonders evidential. Here we note an implication, not of rareness of miracle in Paul's ordinary course of labours, but of its fregueney,—even, so to speak, to commonness (see 1 Sam. iii. 1). The history of a modern mission to the heathen does not put on record of every Lord’s day the fact of preaching the gospel, or of ringing a bell before service ;—/or that is not “special,” above the plane of 1 As to the significance of this ¢xctdental character of allusions to miracle, see above, pp. 87-88. _ 2 The names “ Asia Minor” and “ Anatolia,” for those regions, of which this “ Asia” was one, did not come into use until ages long after the apos- tolic. 100 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ordinary occurrence. But the first opening of a mission, or the occurrence of a trial of strength with heathenism in a great public debate, is put on record in the chronicle of occurrences. So here “special miracles” implies, that in the general course of Pauline labours miracle-working is of such everyday occur- rence, that ordinarily the occurrence does not fall to be chronicled by Luke. 3. At Rome we find no miracle-working on the part of “the. prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. iii. 1, iv. 1, vi. 20). “An ambassador in bonds,” his part now is “to suffer for the sake” of Christ (Phil. i. 13, 16, 29). Otherwise, is he not represented there by the great Epistle he sent thither several years ago ?—not to speak of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Epistles which (2 Pet. 111. 15, 16), owned as sacred Scripture by Peter at the historical Babylon (1 Pet. v. 13), are no doubt read with eager interest by many in John’s mystical Babylon. And in their own fomans (xv. 15-20) this throned witness (Matt. xix. 28) is self-introduced to them with the miracle “signs of an apostle”: modestly, “as his manner was,” but (“as his manner was’) quite effectually for his working pur- pose, namely, to place beyond all question his authority as (bonds or no bonds) an apostolic ambassador of Christ,—at a turning-point where the maintenance of Paul’s apostolic standing, with power of right to speak (2 Cor. v. 20) as from God in Christ, is vitally important for stability of the existing Christendom of believers, and also, consequently, for the salva- tion of an unbelieving world. “I have,” he there says (R.V.), “therefore my glorying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God. For I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Ghost: so that from Jerusalem, and round about even unto Lllyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.”? Consequently, miracle-working at Rome would perhaps be superfluous. This (Rom. xv. 15, ete.) was written, we will suppose, 1 This, collated with Rom. xv. 18,19, and 2 Cor. xii. 12, 13—see above, pp. 82, 83—makes a good case of that “undesigned coincidence,” whose apologetic value is so memorably illustrated by Paley, Hore Pauline. 2 See above, p. 82. ah | APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 101 from Corinth, at the time of his final visit to that strategic centre (say, A.D. 59). By this time his circuit of propagandist operations had—perhaps in a radiation from Corinth at the time of his protracted labour there—reached as far as to the coast of the Adriatic Sea: across whose waters he thus may have been looking towards Italy, when there first arose in his heart the thought, “I must see Rome also” (Acts xix. 21; cp. Rom. i. 9-13, and further, Rom. xv. 24, 28). But our present point here is in ¢he fact, that his whole round of propagandist labour was marked by miracle most unmistak- able, as credential attestation of his teaching, for the founding of God’s kingdom among mankind in belief of gospel truth. That belief thus was planted in men’s minds by means of this external evidence addressing itself to the common reason of mankind. This external evidence thus is at the “fouwnda- tion” of the historical Christendom as appearing in the apostolic church. Now, taking a conjoint view of the particulars of Scripture testimony regarding the Pauline appeal to miracle, we perceive as a general fact, that the actual working of the wonders was in the initial process, of planting or founding the church. Jn the ulterior process, of watering or upbuilding, what appears is not, a continuation of the miracle-working, but, as occasion emerges, a side-reference to the remembered working of miracles that signalised this church’s founding, or (gospel history—see 2 Pet. i. 16) the original introduction of Christianity into the world. The raising of Eutychus (Acts xx. 10) is a case in point for showing that in a formed church there might be meet occasion for a distinct apostolic miracle; and it may be supposed that whatever kind of evidential supernaturalism had place in the Corinthian, spiritual gifts continued with the formed church beyond the middle-apostolic age But the general fact on the record is as we have stated, that in the formed church what remained was the memory of ‘abe y works done at the founding of Christiantty. For evidential purposes, the memory of such working was logically equivalent to the sight of it; miracle in remembrance 1 Origen describes what resembles operation of those gifts within his knowledge in the third century, but there is not historical evidence of real continuance of them through the first century into the second. 102 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (Rom. i. 4) has the same light of proof as miracle in per- formance (John xx. 28),—once the mighty work is done, its testimony remains (witness the Psalms) for all generations, like the shining of a star once placed in the firmament. And for the purpose of edification—through such exercise as that of Sturm’s Reflections on the Works of God (cp. Heb. i. 10)— His “glory” as “manifested” in His wondrous works,—the memory of Egypt and the wilderness is! what He gave to Israel in Canaan. Accordingly, in the ordinary working of the primeval formed Christian mind, as occasionally reflected in the apostolic Epistles, miracle had no place nor part except through memory; and the place and part it thus had (through memory) in the middle-apostolic age, it for substance con- tinues to hold (through memory) in the formed Christian mind of churches at this present hour (allowing for difference in distance of the things remembered), Lhe internal evidence, about which Paul wrote go power- fully (1 Coy. ii. ; 2 Cor. iii. 14-iv. 6) at the time of his only known writings about miracle, does not appear to have been appealed to in the primary apologetics of the apostolic propa- gandism :—if indeed it could be so employed,—«.e. before there was a formed church in the locality, and presupposing, as it does, in those whom it addresses, a spiritual mind for appre- hension of the inward spiritual character of the religion, while the primary apologetics has to address itself to the common, reason of mankind.? But the “experimental ” evidence that is constituted by the rising of God’s new kingdom in the world, and specially the moral character of the citizens, begins to come distinctly into view in the middle-apostolic age (2 Cor. lil. 2,3; Eph. ii. 7; ep. 1 Pet. ii. 9); though from the nature of the case it could have no prominence in the primary apolo- getics at the fownding of the kingdom. How it might be quietly working, as a leaven that leaveneth the lump, we shall have occasion to consider in connection with the post-apostolic church life. 1 See above, p. 81. ? The subject of the internal evidence is, in pursuance of the general plan referred to in the Introduction to the present work, dealt with in the writer’s companion work, The Revelation and the Record. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 103 SupPLEMENTARY Nore on the apostolic testimony from personal experience. It is uniquely conspicuous in Paul's ministry (see Acts ix., xxii, xxvi, etc.), where it has unique importance: such that, ¢g., Paul’s conversion to the religion he had persecuted is itself made a leading proof of its truth. But the other apostles also “found ” on their personal knowledge of Christ on earth (1 Pet. v. 1; 2 Pet. i 16-18; 1 John i. 1-8; ep. John xix. 35—-see Luke i. 2). Their evidence has a peculiar value, as being virtually the evidence of their bodily senses. Paul saw the risen Christ (1 Cor. xv. 8,ix. 1). Peter’s “ declar- ation” is that of an “eye-witness” who heard “the voice out of the excellent glory.” John, the “spiritual” apostle, lays even greater stress on the evidence of the bodily senses. It thus is not only that those wise and good men are persuaded of the truth of this religion. Nor is it only that, being inspired of God, they cannot be mistaken about its doctrinal meaning. Over and above these things,—they have personally witnessed plain facts, with such unmistakable clearness (Acts iv. 20), that, since the matter is infinitely important, it is impossible for them to be silent about those facts: rather than not declare them, they will suffer imprisonment or death. Now those plain facts are (Luke i. 2; John xx. 30, 31) the facts in the earthly career of Christ, especially its miracles (Acts ii. 22, x. 38), and above all (Acts i. 22; 1 Cor. ix. 1) the crowning miracle of His resurrection. There effectively is nothing in the Scripture history of His ministry but what they saw and heard. ‘THEIR EYES AND EARS ARE THE ONLY INFORMANTS OF MANKIND REGARDING IT UNTIL His SECOND COMING (see Rev. i. 7 and 2 Cor. v. 10-20). THE PerRINE PRESCRIPTION (1 Pet. iii. 15).—It is under- stood that John settled in Ephesus after Paul’s final departure from that Asian field, perhaps about a.p. 65: that sun thus rising in the East when Paul’s (whose martyrdom may be placed at A.D. 67) was gloriously setting in the West (2 Tim. iv. 7). It is remarkable that John’s (John xx. 30, 31) is the only one of the Gospels (cp. Luke i. 4) that is expressly and avowedly apologetic in its purpose. Though its record of discourses of Jesus may have gone far to procure for its author the title of “The Theologian” (or “ Divine”: theologos — “one who speaks of God”) on account of his peculiar clear- ness of witness-bearing for the Godhead of Christ,—yet it is (John xxi. 25) “of things that Jesus did” (cp. John i. Lh) that this Gospel itself professes to be a record; and it is noteworthy (John xx. 30, 31) that it is only the miracles 104° STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (“signs”) of Jesus that the evangelist expressly specifies as constituting in his record a foundation for our “ believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” so that “ believing we may have life in His name.” | | John’s Epistles make no allusion to miracle; while the two or three allusions to miracle in The Apocalyse are to fatally misleading miracles of the second Beast. It may thus appear that continuation of true miracles after the apostolic age was not in the plan of Christianity. And—e.g. considering the vividness of Johannine representation of the state of Asian Christianity at Rev. i—iii—we may hold as historically clear that the Christian mind of the closing period of that century was no more exercised about the subject than it appears to have been in the formed churches of the Petro-Pauline period, —that is (as we saw) no more than it ordinarily is or may be in churches of our own day. But, on the other hand, the pronouncedly apologetic purpose of John’s Gospel would on this view seem to imply that apology, laying great stress on miracle, may be quietly at work, serving a profoundly im- portant purpose, even for the soul’s life in the divine Redeemer’s name, though the subject should not, in ordinary lite of faith, be frequently or much on the surface of the general Christian mind of the Church (cp. the expression, men’s “having the work of the law written on their hearts,” Rom. ii. 15), The suggestion thus arising is corroborated by Peter’s clear and distinct prescription of apology. This is the only scriptural prescription of apology to (1 Pet. i. 1, 2, 21) the com- monalty of believers. The Lord’s prescription, at Luke xii, 12 and xxi, 14, regarding apology by name was, if spoken: in ' This puts a copestone on the preceding refutation (pp. 77-92) of the view, that the Christian mind of the closing-apostolic age was a hot- bed of origination of belief in miracle, by further showing that that mind was much less exercised about miracle in the later-apostolic age than it had been toward the beginning of that age. The demonstration would have been cogent though the Johannine Scriptures had been forgeries; for still they would have shown what, immediately after the apostolic age, was by Christians believed to have been the condition of the Christian mind at the close of that age,—namely, a condition all but of seeming indifference to the subject of miracle. We otherwise know that there was no real in- difference to it. Pe APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 105 hearing of a general audience of followers, yet addressed specially and in the first instance to His chosen disciples, the future apostles. (Besides, the “apology” in that prescription is not exclusively nor primarily a “reasoning” in proof of the religion.) And it is to apostolic action primarily, though not. exclusively,—it is to some official or extraordinary procedure, —that there is reference in the Pauline Epistles and in Acts where they speak of apologetic practice. Apology as an office of ordinary Christians or of common Christian life is referred to in Scripture only at 1 Pet. 11. 15 (cp. Isa. xii. 10). » In the interest of “Christianity” it has been contended that those here addressed are not ordinary Christians, but official personages—priests, bishops, perhaps “ angels” (Rev. 1.—i1). And no doubt they are priests (1 Pet. i. 1-5). But not the less (ver. 9) they are ordinary Christians (ep. Rom, xiiiid; Ex. xix. 6); Rev.i.) 6), simply, believers (1 Pet. i. 1), “elect sojourners of the dispersion” (see R.V. ; ep. Jas. 1. 1). It may be contended or imagined that apart from Christian office there cannot be personal qualification for this Christian advocacy. But that is not suggested by experience, nor by the ostensible nature of the case. A lawyer like Tertullian or Lord Hailes, or a philosopher like Justin Martyr or John Locke, may be able to write an apology for Christianity though he be neither bishop, priest, nor deacon. And what makes the value of Origen’s Answer to Celsus may be, not his holding office as master of a Christian school, but his being a Christian of masterly ability, foremost in the scholarship of his age. No doubt “a poor man’s wisdom is despised,” while “not many mighty” are effectually called. But a clergyman as well as a layman can have the distraction of great possessions (or great covetousness); and “God hath made the poor of this world rich in faith,’—which is more to the purpose; so that a Peter and a John, at the Beautiful Gate of God’s temple, make a helpless poor man rich indeed, creating an apology and apologist in his person, though they are not arrayed in priestly “vestments,” and silver and gold have they none. “Clear your mind of cant” (Dr. Johnson). If nowadays the “laity” be stricken dumb by this religion, surely it has 106 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS changed its nature since that early time, when it made the dumb to sing as well as the lame to walk, while imparting to gentle and simple a free spirit of counsel and might. And apparently that spirit is not wanting in the apologetics of Hugo Grotius or of Isaac Taylor, more than in the apologetics of a Butler and a Lightfoot, prince-bishops of Durham. Nor does it appear that Pascal’s Thoughts on Religion would necessarily have been improved for defence of truth if he had been a bishop, like “the eagle of Meaux,”* or an archbishop, like “the dove of Cambrai”;2 while the Seigneur Philip Mornaix du Plessis was not disabled for drawing pen with Abaddie as well as Beza by drawing sword abreast of Coligny and Henry of Navarre. As for the nature of the case,—In order to be qualified for apologising, it is not absolutely necessary that a Christian should be “ clerical” even in the monkish medizval sense of being able to read and write. If only he be clerical in Peter’s true Christian sense (1 Pet. v. 3) of belonging to God’s klér0s*’—over which let no official play the petty usurping “lord” !—then let him try, with a cheerful “readi- ness,” to “give answer (apologia) to every one that asketh a reason (Jogos) of the hope that is in him, (yet) with meekness and fear”; and he may haply find that “where there’s a will there’s a way.” We know from sad experience that much learning and great intellectual power will not keep a man from going astray in highest things, where (John vii. 17; Ps. exii. 4) truth is given to the simple true-hearted (see divine and human “liberality” at Jas. i. 5 and 2 Cor. ix. 7 ». And the plain man may be able to give “ plain reasons for being a Christian” ; as a common person can give good solid reason for being guided by the stars, while perhaps a transcendental “scientist ”—going out of his beat—eets lost among the stars, or among nebule (it may be, of his own creating). The Samaritan woman (John iv.) had no need of school- ing beyond that of Jacob’s well—from one who Himself had “never learned”—to qualify her for the argumentative “ apologetical narration,’—“ Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” And it 1 Bossuet. 2 Fenelon. 3 Greek for heritage. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 107 was not human learning, such as Christ Himself had not, but only simple mother-wit or sense! that gave to the Jerusalem born-blind man (John ix.) his apology founded on the “unquestionable” fact of miracle-——“ Since the world began was it not heard that any one opened the eyes of one born. blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.” Or, if we will have it yet shorter and simpler, bringing the ~ matter to a luminous flame-point of practical reason,—*“ Once I was blind, now I see”: an apologetic which was answered only with persecution, as it never can be answered with reason. He had that argument in his power, and he avoided the crime of another servant who had only one talent. But and if we desire to have at our command a course of “evidences” for the simple, we have that from this great master, Peter himself, peculiarly endowed with the great gift of saying much in few words,—words always plain and strong, like the “shout”? of a fisherman-sailor: namely, in the Protapology (Acts ii.). We may wonder where Peter has been, and what he has been doing, since the time of his grandeur as de facto primate-apostle at the Jerusalem Synod, with the other Palestinian apostles as assessors ; all through these ten or twelve years of Paul’s campaigning westward ot Jerusalem (Acts ii 10), “to make the Gentiles obedient” (Rom. xv. 18, 10). If Peter has been idle, he must have greatly changed. And Paul’s campaigning in the West may (ver. 20) go to show that probably Peter, and the other original apostles, seeing that (1 Cor. ix. 5) they have been somewhere in the world, have been labouring to the eastward of the Holy Land (Acts ii. 9), among their Semitic cousinhood of “kindreds, and peoples, and tongues,’—-a direction in which also there was pointing from their King (Luke xxii. 38, xxiv. 46; Acts i. 8). Peter’s last distinct appearance (Gal. ii. 10—14),—not very like that of an Enoch who “has attained, and is already perfect,’—does not suggest his now having come down from heaven like Moses and Elias, when (1 Pet. v. 18) he reappears at Babylon, the old head-centre of that eastern Semitism. But no doubt he, the born primate 1 Greek nous, 1 Cor. x. 15. 2 It was an ancient saying about this apostle, that his utterance is a shout. 108 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (John i. 42), the prime administrator of the new kingdom (Matt. xvi. 18) all through the critical time (Acts 1—xii.) of its inaugural foundation movement, has been fully oceupied through the years of his absence from our view, until he now comes back to view, as a reappearing sun, in this great Kpistle for the strengthening of the brethren (Luke xxii. 32 ; cp. 1 Pet. v. 10-12). And if he strengthen them,! he at the same time here directs them, for the service of God and man, with what strength may be given to them. In the Epistle, where he is preceptor of apology, he does not gwe material of apologetics for the people,—in other words, apology that can be handled by all Peter’s priesthood, namely, the commonalty of believers, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through santification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” Yet (1 Pet. ii. 1, 2) he now may be fully aware of the desirableness of some apologetic provision for “the simple” in that commonalty: were it only because (2 Pet. i. 15, 16) to his apprehension Paul’s Kpistles, inestimably precious though they be, are not milk for babes.2. Nor indeed has “the Shepherd Apostle” (as Peter was called—ep. John xxl, 15-18; 1. Pet. ii, 25, v, 4) failed himself to make a provision suitable for even the “lambs” of Christ. In now saying to ordinary Christians, “ apologise,” he does not con- demn them to make bricks without straw. Though he had not now reappeared at Babylon (1 Pet. v. 13), joining hands with Paul in his prison at the mystical Babylon (Col. iv. 10; 2 Tim. iv. 11) through going and coming of Mark,—yet a true provision made by him is in readiness and safe keeping. Thus,—1. In Acts (ii. and x.), Luke (Acts 1.1) has ready for publication, if he have not already published (say, circa A.D. 63), the two foundation apologetic discourses, which Peter delivered at the inauguration of this new kingdom, “to the Jew first” (Acts ii), and (Acts x.) “also to the Greek.” These two inaugural addresses of Christianity to the world, of both Jews and Gentiles, were as an opening of the door ‘In the way of “strengthening the brethren” who read English, perhaps Leighton’s 1 Peter has done more than all the 400 or 500 known extant commentaries on Paul’s great Galatians. * The “ Pastorals” were not in existence at this time—say, A.D. 63. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 109 (Matt. xvi. 19) of heaven’s kingdom to mankind. On delivering them, Peter, effectively and in substance, laid the foundation of all future Christian apologetics. They say only, and they say all, that which needs to be said in a foundation proof of Christianity. And (as “Ais manner was ”) they say it with (2 Cor. ii. 12) characteristically Christian “ great plain- ness of speech.” Their great argument might easily be under- stood even by such an outside “laity” as Cornelius and his friends. It could be comprehended and remembered by any ordinarily intelligent common soldier in that company. In substance and even in words it thus may, within few years or months, have been repeated at camp-fires, to be pondered and prayed over in the night-watches by solitary sentinels, wide over the world, from eastern Parthian empire to the British borders of yet unconquered Caledonia: making not only Christians but qualified apologists; so that, all these years, legions of strong, simple, manly Peters, “good soldiers of Jesus Christ,’ may have been coming on the field where he personally was absent. But,—2. far more important, as a Petrine contribution to apologetics, is what we have in Mark's Gospel. That is to say, as even Renan owns, in especial Peter’s account of the earthly ministry of Christ. According to Papias (circa A.D. 125 ?), reporting what he had learned from an “elder” who, if not an apostle, had been a personal hearer of apostles, it is Mark’s digest of those “teachings” which Peter was in the habit of delivering for “foundation” (1 Cor. iii, 8-15; Rom. xv. 20) of Christian churches. The history thus delivered was, in Peter’s own estimation (2 Pet. i. 16), as in John’s (John xx. 31; 1 John i. 3) and in Luke’s (Luke i. 1—4), most important as a foundation of apologetics: because, through the testimony of eye-witnesses, it places us face to face with the ultimate foundation proof of Christianity in the personal working and presence of Christ Himself, Those professing Christians who speak disparagingly of apology, or of apologetic use of gospel history, are thus placed in open antagonism to apostles and evangelists, to a leading ostensible purpose of the Gospels. In Peter’s Pentecostal and Cesarean discourses, the 1 See “Supplementary Note” above, p. 103. 110 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS apologetic foundation is laid in that history, of the ministry of Jesus: the facts of which (Acts ii. 22) were then well known to the Jerusalem Jews, and probably not strange to Cornelius and his like-minded friends. It was not necessary for the apostle to go into detailed particulars of those wonderful facts; as the things (Acts xxvi. 26) “were not done in a corner,” but, in that land and day, took place openly before the nation (cp. Luke xxiv. 19). And now, in the four Gospels, we have the particulars—which then perhaps were presupposed and not specified—as in the founding of churches (Luke i. 2) they were delivered by those “who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word.” That is what we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. And in our estimate of the value of Peter’s abiding gift of “portable evidences of Christianity,” we must include his con- tribution to gospel history ; in what is distinctively the popular Gospel (Mark),—like the other Gospels intended, as it is fitted, to serve as historical foundation of primary apologetics. As to the terms of the prescription (1 Pet. iii. 15),—The “readiness ” for apologising, which the apostle here inculcates, may—we have seen—be attained without a man’s turning aside from the ordinary course of Christian thought, in order to study of miracles, of evidences, as a separate matter from, say, gospel history. It is attainable im the ordinary course of Christian thought regarding that history, of revelation as recorded for our learning. Thus in the gospel history such as it is placed in our hands, for the ordinary purpose of edifica- tion—congregational and individual—we do not see Christ except through His “works” (John v. 36, xiv. 9-11), which in their distinctive nature are “signs,” as being evidential “wonders.” Not to see these would be! to reduce the revela- tion into a mere naturalism in masquerade of seeming * supernaturalism. The history would thus in our hands be transmogrified into a mere cloud-land of our own imagining, in which the detailed narratives are illusory as “cunningly devised fables.”2 Mythical theorising, like a poisonous reptile 1 As in Ecce Homo, etc. 2 Greek for sophisticated myths, 2 Pet. i. 16; cp. 1 Tim. i. 4, iv. 7; 2° Timing Clee; 1A, ‘APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 111 creeping into the young innocence of their Paradise Restored, was before the mind of the two prince-apostles, as an object of strong contemptuous aversion, when writing their last recorded words of heavenly wisdom for the churches. Men may now not give to the thing that for the present so discredited name ;* but the thing so warned against (expressly, by name, in every one of Paul’s Pastoral Epistles, as well as in 1 Peter) is an existence wherever, on the part of a professing Christian or of an avowed infidel, the historical reality of miracle, or of its grand purpose to prove doctrine, is ignored or explained away. The state of professedly Christian mind which finds vent in disparagement of apologetics, as a thing only for a crude condition or for a low type of spiritual intelligence, is thus seen to be falsetto or unhealthy? at the very core. Every citizen ought no doubt to give diligence to the work of his own particular calling, wherein specially it is that he is called to serve the common-weal. But that man is no good citizen, and he gives no proof of “ good sense,” ? who goes about pro- claiming that the military defences of the city ought to be neglected by superior persons, and that care or painstaking about them shows a low order of mind. But in the present case the city is, in the first instance, a man’s own soul,‘ as dependent for its life on faith in God through Christ. In the city of Mansoul, a decadence of the towers, and bulwarks, and embattled walls, which guard the faith, is in progress wherever the professedly Christian mind is not habitually under influence of supernatural attestation of Christianity.° An American humorist has suggested as ideally possible that a Christian minister, in consequence of thoughtlessness in routine performance of preaching duty, should come to perish for lack of knowledge. What we now have in view is the real possibility (see Heb. xii. 15, 16) of a professedly Chris- tian teacher's coming to perish through lack of positive belief, in consequence of disregarding the rational grounds of belief, 1 Mythos, Greek for “ fable.” ? Mark, in the Pastoral Epistles, the value assigned to “soundness” — the theme of so much derision in certain Christian (?) circles. 3 English for orthodoxy. , * Bunyan, Holy War. ° So Baxter found in experience—see above, Prefatory Note. 112 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS which are essential in the substance of the religion as historically real, so that when they are disregarded the religion in its reality is not apprehended. So as to the professedly Christian community. They have to be trained for this Christian duty. If really Chris- tian, they will not away with a perpetual disputatious harping on external evidences, as if they were infidels or heathens, needing to be argued into Christianity once a week. Peter (1 Pet. v. 1, etc), in his kindly winning manner, reminds the under-shepherds that the Redeemer’s flock is not to be driven but led, even as it is not to be fleeced but fed. But if it be fed, led to the green pastures by the still waters,— the miraculous attestations of religion in substance have to be there,’ as essential in that substance (ep. John ii. 11). Express and formal demonstration of the truth of religion, as a separate thing from practical exposition and application of its truths, may—so to speak—be left out in the lobby of the church. But the pastor who does not see to it that the evidential signs and wonders on record of Scripture are noted and comprehended by the flock in their significance as proof of the religion,—does he expound them or apply them accord- ing to their nature as set forth in Scripture itself 2—does he in this matter take the Bible for his “only rule of ... practice” ? Is he a real follower (1 Cor. xi. 1) of that “shepherd apostle ” who here is preceptor of apology? or of that Chief Shepherd whose personal teaching is the grand exemplar of teaching in the great office of pastoral care ? The care may in this respect be taken with full effective- ness without any disputatious harping on one string, of apologetical polemics. David, in his open air of the Judean hills, was not even in his own mind carrying on a debate with “science falsely so called” (1 Tim. vi. 20), when he sang a song of the external evidence, about the heavens declaring the glory of God, and the firmament showing His handiwork. And in the Christian assembly the people may be led to see the evidential indications of a new heaven and a ‘It is said that in last century an eminent English Evangelical Non- conformist drove his congregation into Socinianism by monotonously incessant labour in proving the Godhead of Christ. 2 See above, p. 79. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 113 new earth, in the “signs” which are a pointed “ manifesta- tion” of the supernatural “glory” (John ii. 11) of new creation, without—eg.—being dragged through metaphysical refutations of a worldliness, in the form of naturalistic “philosophy ” of atheism (Col. ii. 8), whose “vain deceits” are - “spoilers,” like the false lights of a wrecker’s lure. Every child in the congregation may, without precociousness of a debating evil nature, be led to see and feel the evidential significance of the wonderfulness in Exodus and the Kings, in the Gospels and in Acts. The youngest can hardly be prevented from seeing, in the healing of the paralytic (Matt. ix. 1-8), proof that Jesus is the Son of God, and perceiving that the healing is a “sion” of our salvation from sin And not to see this in it is to be blind (John ix. 39) to the whole wondrous history, where the Son of Man is set forth turning water into wine, feeding thousands with a few loaves, giving sight to the born blind, raising the dead, rising from the grave, ascending into heaven. But supposing that there is this amount or kind of furniture or equipment (2 Tim. iii. 17), which can hardly fail to be in any formed Christian mind,—the prescription is, further, with reference to “every one that asketh a reason of the hope that is in” Christians, to be “always ready for apology” (“answer”) to the inquirer. Here the “ for’””—Greek pros—perhaps has a shade of meaning, not simply intellectual preparedness for answering, but moral ¢mpulsion or leaning toward it. The suggestion thus is, of a cordial readiness, alacrity (cp. promptus ad certamen), as if on the part of a “good soldier,” on the edge of battle, in act of readiness for the onset, eager for the trumpet signalling “ Charge!” (so Paul at Acts xvii. 16, xxvi. 2). The “always,” in the habitual temper of mind thus flashing out, is (with allowance) illus- trated by the martial clan motto, “Ready: aye ready ”— where the semper paratus has the specific meaning of pre- paredness for battle or combat. It is illustrated by contrast 1 Not long ago, the present writer heard this exposition from an infant class in the lobby of a church. What more can be comprehended of that narrative which a babe can so apprehend,—by the theologian in the pulpit ? yea, by the angels (1 Pet. i. 12)? 8 114 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS of dumb-stricken believers (? see Rom. x. 10), when there was trumpet call of occasion for giving a reason of the hope that is in them (?). Not only reason is to be given—perhaps constrainedly, under compulsion, like a shameful confession extorted by the rack. It is to be given “cheerfully” (2 Cor. ix. 7) as (Rom. xii. 8)—toward an inquirer—the gift of one who truly “showeth mercy.” The terms of the prescription, illustrated by the im- mediate context, and by the aspect of the Epistle as a whole, call attention to the situation which presumably the apostle here has in his view. The passage 1 Pet. iii, 13-16 is, when closely considered, seen to be substantially a reproduction of Christ’s utterances regarding confession rising into apology (Luke xii. 5-12, xxi. 138, etc.), which (John xiv. 26) Peter no doubt has as it were in the structure or texture of his apostolic mind ;—whence perhaps it comes that now in reproducing them he appears completely unconscious of reproduction, expressing himself as a man simply speaking out his own thoughts in his own words. In particular, both here and elsewhere in the Epistle (e.g. iv. 12-19), there are expressions which remind us of the words of the Lord regarding darkly _ stormy times of persecution as in the future of His Church for trial of her faithfulness in witnessing for Him. And some have thought that the description at 1 Pet. iv. 12-19, of a “fiery trial” even unto death,? is a miraculous prediction of the Bithynian persecution (cp. 1 Pet. i. 1) sixty years after. The question whether it really is so is not in the straight line of our present inquiry; but a side-note on it may conduce toward realising the situation at present in our view. SIDE-NOTE on the question as to 1 Pet. iv. 12-19,—whether it is a specific prediction of the Bithynian persecution, A.D. 110 ? That it is not, may be held on such grounds as the following :— (1) Though (1 Pet. i. 1) Bithynians are among the Christians 1 The true originality. It appears all through this Epistle, which essentially is a duplicate of Ephesians, while yet every syllable of it is truly Peter’s own. Another sample of Petrine reproduction is seen at 2 Pet. 1. 12-15—where note the references to “tabernacle” ; cp. vers. 16-18. 2 The Greek for “souls” at ver. 19 means also “lives”—cp. Luke xxill. 46; Acts vil. 59, and the expression of Sir Simon de Montfort, knowing the battle was lost before it was begun, “ Let us give our souls to God, for our bodies are Prince Edward’s.” APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 115 here addressed, the Epistle does not appear to have any specialty of reference to them as distinguished from other Anatolian Christians addressed in it. (2) The kind of “ fiery trial” that is spoken of at 1 Pet. iv. 12 is not anything peculiar to the Bithynian experience of persecution two generations after: on the contrary (ver. 12, ep. i. 7), it is expressly said to be familiar in the experience of Christians generally at and before this time of writing. (3) The representation of the trial is general: it has no “ particular marks” identifying the Bithynian persecution as being what is here in view ; 6g. the description might equally well apply to other persecutions, which now are not particularly known about because there was no (sacer vates ?) Pliny to record particulars regarding them in a letter to his emperor. (4) WB. especially, that the passage has no look of miraculous prediction,—is not “in the prophetic manner.” It does not foretell a storm that is in the future, to break out where now there is clear sky ; but describes a storm- ful present,—such as we otherwise know to have existed,— clouds darkly mustering overhead and all around, perhaps already emitting occasional premonitory hoarse thunders and fierce lightnings,—say (A.D. 63) a year before the awful storm- burst of the first “great ” persecution, under Nero at Rome, where Paul is now “an ambassador in bonds.” And WB. in particular, that Peter here, with reference to a storm that may be impending, reasons from the present state of things to future possibilities as folded in the existing actualities. Now an oracle does not reason. Bothas fisherman and as shepherd, the apostle is habitually a “discerner of the signs of the times.” And the kind of weather-prophecy that proceeds by reasoning, though it should be divinely inspired, is not oracular prediction; while the reasoning here has no exclusiveness of applicability to the case of Bithynia as distinguished from other cases. As to the situation, it suffices to know that in the pre- scription of apology the reference is to a trying or testing time, in which the testing process is searchingly painful as fire (1 Pet. iv. 12), and (1 Pet. i. 7) what was tested was particularly Christian faith. That in Peter’s own day might be in the form of violence of persecution, even unto death: witness apostolic history, corroborated by heathen historians.) But (Phil. iii, 18, 19, ep. ii, 15-17) there might be trials more painful for Christians to undergo or to contemplate arising out of unfaithfulness of brethren, tempting others to 1 Tacitus and Suetonius—see further on. 116 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS hold back in cowardly or shame-stricken silence when there was call to come forward and speak out, if not even, tempting to lapse into scepticism or disbelief: as “when iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” Against such “orievous wolves” as false teachers thus become tempters, 2 Peter was especially intended for warning: perhaps, im- mediately after the publication of 1 Peter in Asia Minor, on receipt of intelligence from “ faithful” Silas (1 Pet. v. 12), who had carried the first letter west from Babylon. Some little time before this (Acts xx. 28—30), Paul had very solemnly warned Asia Minor against such “grievous wolves” in his last farewell address to the Ephesian elders (cp. 1 Pet. v. 1—4). Ephesians, written from his Roman prison, is, we note (with its duplicate Colossians), essentially the same Epistle as 1 Peter ; —in contents, in structural movement, and in some testing details, in respect of which—constitution a view of Chris- tianity as a whole—the two are essentially different from every other book in the Bible. But the three Pastoral Epistles—of later date than phesians—are addressed to organising superintendents of the nascent Christianity of Paul’s East. It is in them that we see the Pauline analogue of 2 Peter. And they, eg., complete our view of the fact (2 Pet. i. 16—where the Greek for “fable” is myth) that at this time a tendency to mythicism, explaining away the historical reality of Bible facts and the plain true nature of Bible doctrine, constituted one of the internal “ perils ” of those eastern churches from “false brethren.” Relatively to apology at such a time, we may picture to ourselves a case of a confessor, perhaps in prison waiting for martyrdom (see 2 Tim. iv. 6-8), who (John iii. 1, 2) is visited there, it may be in secret or by stealth, by a heathen somehow moved to earnest inquiry as to the reason of the Christian hope so wonderful. Or, we may think of a profess- ing Christian whom false teaching, or lapsing or apostasy of others, has shaken in his belief as to the foundations. But in substance the situation, as giving occasion for such injunction regarding apology as this, may present itself anywhere in Christendom, this day. For the situation in substance is constituted by circumstances which can have place in the ordinary experience of Christians in any age or country. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 117 The thus abiding situation is summed up in the following particulars :—1. Zhe question as to the truth of this religion is open for consideration on grounds of reason, by the common judgment of mankind.—2. In possession of Christians there és producible reason by which that judgment ought to be satisfied. © —3. For production of those reasons, according to opportunity or call, the community of Christians, the commonalty of pro- fessed believers, are, jointly and severally, placed under apostolic prescription of apology. As the reproduction of Ephesians in 1 Peter as a whole is essentially Petrine, so is the reproduction at 1 Pet. ii. 13-16 of the Saviour’s utterances regarding confession rising into apology. The essential unity of the passage with those utterances is represented by the following particulars of co- incidence :—1. The situation of the confessor, opposed by threatening world “ power ” ;—2. his safety, under guardian care of God;—3. his obligation to maintain a strangely calm conuposedness, as of a Pharos ight in stormy darkness ;—4. (as the secret of this) his assurance of God’s being, not only for him in Heaven and with him here in Providence, but in him, as a grace to help him in such time of need (ep. Christ in the storm-tossed little ship on the narrow, gusty Galilean sea).! Points of contrast illustrating the essentially Petrine character of the reproduction are, ¢.g., the following :—1. Where Christ had @ terrific severity of warning against unfaithfulness, Peter has only a gentle winning suasweness; and,—2. where Christ said, “ The Holy Ghost shall teach you,” ete., what Peter says is (cp. John xvi. 14), “Sanctify in your hearts Christ the Lord” (R.V. in accordance with the best MS. authority). Such details we only glance at in passing, as they are not ' full in the line of our present inquiry. But we will dwell for a little on what here comes into view with reference to certain matters more directly concerning us. 1. The inward spiritual frame of mind, in which the duty of apologising is to be gone about.2. The fundamental preparedness is, having Christ in the heart as Lord: thus, 1 The present writer was told by the best oarsman on Loch Carron, that they had no fear of storm approaching visibly upon the sea: that the formidable onfall is in its leaping down the steep, so as to be on them unawares. But there is One whom even then “the winds and sea obey” — as perhaps Jonah will find. 2 See above, pp. 33, 79. 118 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS nearer than He was to Peter and others in the night-storm at sea when they were sinking, or than at Babylon (Dan. iii. 25) He was to His three witnesses in the furnace ;—in the heart adoring Him, as in a temple-fortress which He fills and guards when worshipped there. The self-possession of the soul (Luke xxi. 19)—on such occasions for “ endurance ”— thus is a possession of the heart by Christ; and this (cp. 1 Pet. iv. 19), in a deliberate purposing self-consecration and committal unto His kingliness, as the natural world’s life is committed (offered in the morning songs of birds?) unto the sun which rules the day. This appears on the shining face of Stephen (Acts vii. 59—_R.V.), “calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And the protapologist (1 Pet. iv. 19) now generalises that swan-song of the proto- martyr by saying, “Commit your lives unto God as unto a faithful Creator.”" The preparedness thus brought into view (cp. Ps. xci. 1, etc.) is far above that implied in “ Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.” 2. The encouraging clause, lit. “fear not their fearfulness, neither be panic-stricken” (“fear not their fear, neither be troubled”—R.V.), may remind us of what occurred in Dothan, when the prophet’s servant, at the grey dawn, perceiving that this refuge was now begirt with hostile heathen armed pursuers, was reassured by being shown, between him and that force, the encircling force of Jehovah’s chariots and horsemen. Peter, remembering how in Geth- semane his own flesh was weak though his spirit was willing, has the power (Heb. ii. 18) of sympathetic intelligence to prescribe thus for the situation here in view (Luke xxii. 32). On the other hand (Heb. v. 1, 2), those who are like-minded with him, as he is with Christ, will be “ ready to apologise,” with cordial alacrity, as “having compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way.” 3. Lhe precautionary clause is more fully to our present purpose. The true reading of it is? “ but ”—or “yet ”— * See “sidenote” above, p. 114-15. At Acts vii. 59 the God in A.V. and the Lord in R.V. alike are wanting in the original : the person there “ called upon” is thus conjectural. The Greek at 1 Pet. iv. 19—psyché, which may mean “soul,” is that in Christ’s “ He that will save his lofe,” ete. 2 Greek, dlld. APOLOGETICS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY 119 “with meekness and fear.’ Peter, with a sensitive while powerful nature, knows what it is to be liable to fever-chill in reaction from fever-heat. He had to be trained by pruning (John xv. 2) out of an over-boldness, in the carnality of a self-confident rashness. He thus got a lesson when he endeavoured to walk on the sea. But his costly education was worth much (1 Pet. i. 7). His personal experiences of the weakness of man’s flesh (vers. 24, 25) were overruled to the effect of his being? peculiarly the Strengthener of the brethren—*“ the shepherd apostle ” distinctively, as Paul was distinctively the “soldier” apostle. And (cp. 1 Tim. vi. 12) from Peter, whose own past life furnishes a most memorably impressive case to point his present teaching, there comes with peculiar force, of a peculiarly good grace, this pre- cautionary clause, on which we now will dwell in conclusion. The carnal beiligerency, of mere combativeness, or of a boldness that is not tempered by “meekness,” is illustrated by Peter’s own sword-stroke in the garden. And _ his “ with fear” in this clause, verbally at variance with his Masteyr’s “fear not” at Luke xu. 5, as well as with his own opening of the present sentence, can be charitably construed as referring to that “reverence” (see Phil. ii. 12; Heb. xii. 9) which we owe to every lawful superior—even though (1 Pet. ii. 13, 17) he should personally be such an one as “the whole world’s” master Nero, or (ver. 18) officially such an one as Malchus served. What Richard Baxter censured in “ dogmatical word-warriors”” was not the genuine boldness of a “ good _ soldier” in defence of truth, but a partisan combativeness? like that of a Friar Tuck,—which, where disgrace is ruin, disgraces what it professes to defend. It is true that to represent the conventional apologetics as “ evangelical bullying” might be only (worse than Diogenes “trampling on Plato’s pride”) a cynical depreciation of earnest honest men’s performance of plain Christian duty. But Peter in this warning—as against cutting off Malchus’ ear in the interest of a faith which “cometh by hearing”—has nothing of the base (perhaps unconscious) insincerity, that panders to worldliness of hatred of the gospel by a seeming 1 See footnote above, p. 108. 2 See above, p. 4, ete. 120 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS sincerity in dispraise of a really Christian witness-bearing for it. And (Acts xxiii, 25) a generous Christian spirit may be tempted into carnal belligerency in the witness-bearing—ey. by foul injustice or falsehood in the opposition to it, whether of a Nero employing Captain Sword, or of a Demos led astray by Captain Pen or Captain Tongue. | Even the just indignation of a ruggedly great, beautiful, fiery-souled Tertullian may have in it an earthliness of that wrath of man which worketh not the righteousness of God. And the modern apologist, though he should be sincerely earnest in predilection for sound reason as Peter was in his human affection toward the sinless Son of Man, yet has to be on his guard against earthliness of partisanship even for truth, that would be a corrupting alloy in that (orgé) moral resentment which, according to Plato, is the distinctively Godlike thing in manhood (see Eph. iv. 23-27). The spirit of the Teacher who (Matt. xi. 29) invites weary man to soul’s rest in the instruction of a meek and lowly heart of (ver. 27) God Incarnate, is finely exemplified in Paul (see 1 Cor. xi. 1). His vehement earnestness in apologising was such that Festus thought he was gone mad. But (2 Cor. v. 10-20 ; W.B. ver. 13) this was only one aspect of a soul- filling intensity of longing for men’s true life, and God’s honour in that life new and true: witness the impression which his manner of labouring for “his gospel” often made on worldly men,—men perhaps like the sceptical Shaftesbury (Characteristics), with cool derisiveness criticising “the heroic passion for saving souls” (which Gadarenes, though they be not “scientists,” know to be a visionary thing). Paul’s passion for men’s deliverance from evil drew Agrippa to the threshold of true life eternal in the gospel. Yet perhaps no one ever imagined that his polemical ardour, in warring for the kingdom of God and His righteousness, had in it any base alloy of Paul,—or inhumanity of disregard of the rights or the feelings of those against whom he earnestly contended for the faith. In his polemic there always was the “meekness and fear” of due respectful affection toward all men (1 Pet. ii. 17, ep. iii. 9) in combination with zeal for truth, conscience toward God, and profound habitual appre- hension of the terribleness of His holiness, before whose judg- APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 121 ment throne we all must appear, to receive the things done in the body. The spirit even of his warfare against men’s errors was fitted to win them, not repel them; and it is the spirit inculcated in the apostolic prescription, as well as thus exemplified in the apostolic practice of apology. Faithfulness to the trust thus reposed in the community of believers, their frankly speaking out in such appeal to the reason of their neighbours (John i. 41) on behalf of that religion (Num. x. 9) whose goodness is to themselves a matter of personal experience,—is fitted powerfully to promote the success of Christianity in localities and circles, as a leaven that leaveneth the lump, And the confidence in this relagion, that is evinced by such a trust on the part of its founders— their implication of magna est veritas et prevalebit—is further presumptive evidence of its truth and divinity. Only, in a zealous boldness which is admirable, let Mr. Valiant-for- the-Truth remember, not to cut off Malchus’ ear—a blunder like that of the not wisely zealous woodman who cuts down the branch he stands on. BOOK Is APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS. © In exploring the course of a great river, the traveller may begin where it enters the sea, thence to make his way observant up through the lands, to its headwaters among the solitary snow-clad mountain peaks. There are advantages of such a method in historical study of apologetics. But in the New Testament apologetics we have already made a study of the great river at its sources. And now, in our prosecution of inquiry through post-apostolic ages, we find that the balance of advantages for us may be in favour of beginning with what lies nearest to the primeval period that has already been considered by us. The primitive epoch of post-apostolic Christian history has 122 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS as an outstanding characteristic feature a “period of apolo- getics,” in considerable measure coincident with the “age of persecutions” at the hand of the heathen Roman empire. To that primitive “period of apologetics” we will devote the first of the two chapters of this Book II. The second of the two chapters will be given to what we will designate the modern period of apologetics,—say, from the sixteenth century down to our day. The Middle Ages, which in other respects were an epoch of transition from the ancient civilisation to the modern, were theologically, as represented by the “scholastic” period at their culmination, dogmatic in com- parison with both the primitive and the modern epochs in the history of Christian thought. With reference to comparison of the two apologetic periods, respectively primitive and modern, it may be said generally, that the substantive revelation, of the living God and Saviour in Christ, is what all but exclusively occupied the primitive apologetics, while in the modern apologetics a creat place has come to be occupied by the scriptural record of the alleged revelation. The general statement would require to be somewhat qualified or explained in anything like a full view of historical apologetics. But rigour of detailed exactness here is not requisite for the purpose of our present inquiry. CHAP, PRIMITIVE PERIOD OF APOLOGETICS. Here: an ical RS a of the relative condition of that heathen world, to which the primitive apology was addressed, may, through defining the situation out of which the Christian apologetics first arose, facilitate our inquiry as to the nature and true spirit of the apologetics, and at the same time may serve an indirectly apologetic purpose, through keeping in view, what is too easily forgotten where the gospel sun is shining,-—the natural condition, both intellectual and moral, relatively to God and to spiritual things generally, of mankind where not visited by that healing light (Acts xvii. 15, ete, xxvi. 18; 1 John v. 19). Such as fallen mankind are where the gospel finds them, they cannot fail to become again if the gladsome light should APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 123 leave them,—though the overt manifestation of their spiritual abandonment may differ in aspect from that which confronted the primitive Christians (Rom. i. 18-32; Eph. iv. 18, 19; cp. Isa. i. 83-6), in that heathen world where men greedily gave themselves over to uncleanness, or, God gave them over to uncleanness of heart, vileness of affections, a reprobate mind. And the exercise of recalling to mind that old world’s condition as it lay in the wicked one will further serve our special purpose of inquiry, by bringing to our mind’s view the vital continuity of all the post-apostolic ages with the primeval period of the apostles and of Christ. SEc. 1. The Situation out of which the Church Apologetics jirst arose. Very recently there was discovered the long-lost Apology of Aristides, which, along with that of Quadratus—of which a few fragments are preserved—is understood to have been presented to the Emperor Adrian at Athens, circa AD. 130. The Apologies of these two “philosophers” are the most ancient of which Christian history makes mention. Until the recent discovery there was no known extant “ Apology” (in full) of earlier date than Justin Martyr’s two, curca A.D. 150, at Rome, addressed respectively to the Emperor and to the Senate; though the discussion represented by his larger work, Dialogue with Jew Trypho, is understood to have taken place (at Ephesus?) perhaps as early as A.D. 140. From his time down to the close of the primitive age of per- secutions (A.D. 312), Apologies now extant were comparatively numerous; and during at least two generations beginning with him apology may be said to have been almost the whole of the Church’s work of literary publication, so that—on the principle denominatio fit a majori—the period is rightly named “the period of apologetics.” The history of “the persecutions,” on the part of the heathen world-empire, reaches back into the middle-apostolic age in the primeval century. It began with a certain mysterious abruptness, A.D. 64, in the outbreaking of Neronian persecution at Rome, at or near the close of Paul’s first two years (Acts xxviii. 30) of imprisonment there. This was the first express recognition by that empire 124 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS of the existence of Christianity as a distinct religion. And on the part of heathen imperialism it was the opening of a war—as of hammer against anvil—that was destined to endure for centuries, until the hammer was shattered into non-existence, and the anvil became a visible Christendom or world-empire of Christ (Rev. xi. 15; ep. Dan. 11. 31-35). The “great” persecutions might be regarded as in that long age of warfare the pitched battles or campaigns: but even in times of comparative truce or pause, when “ the churches had rest,” there must have been innumerable detailed local or individual sufferings and privations, corre- sponding to the skirmishes and raids and minor harassments of war-time. The Neronian persecution—not recognisably referred to in Scripture—is described by the greatest Roman historian,’ who lived at the site of it, and wrote within about half a century of its date,—-which is fixed by its connection with the great fire (A.D. 64), supposed to have destroyed three- fourths of the imperial city. The blame of that public calamity was laid by Nero on “the Christians’; for the purpose, it was and is understood, of turning away from himself the suspicion (probably well founded) of having been the real incendiary. What they really suffered for was the name of Christ. Tacitus, unworthily echoing popular “calumnies,’—which at this very time are being effectually refuted by his friend Pliny in Bithynia,2W—says that the Christians were detested for their crimes, and explains that they were actuated by a principle of hatred to mankind. But he bears unchallengeable witness to the fact, of a strange invincible constancy of theirs in suffering for that name,— though so absurdly mistaken in attempting to account for the constancy, which by heathen writers henceforward will be described as “ obstinacy.” 3 In the inquisition which thus, originating in the charge 1 Tacit. Annal. xv. 44. 2 Letter to Trajan. 3 The “obstinacy,” which Pliny will also call “contumacy,” was on the part of Christians a distinct and very grave offence against the civil law. That is, their refusal to refrain from openly professing Christianity was a defiance of the empire, which prohibited this religion. Of course the Christians had to be thus “ obstinate ”—or false. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 125 about burning the city, came to be a search for Christians guilty of a prohibited religion, there were found (he says) “a huge multitude” (multitudo ingens) of them (cp. Rom. i. 8, and the catalogue of names in Rom. xviiwritten some five years before this inquisition). Simply on account of professed Christianity’ they were put to death, with horrible and frightful tortures in its infamy; and in such numbers. that, eg., the Crown Gardens were illuminated through the night with the fires of their martyrdom,—the citizens being invited by their emperor to be spectators of the “sport” !2 Another “sport” which then began to be practised was (cp. Dan. vi.), throwing Christians alive to wild beasts, the humanity of the martyrs being—on that first occasion—disguised with a covering of the skins of animals of the chase, to encourage and incite the natural enemies of such animals to rend and destroy (cp. the “calumnies” against the moral character of these—and other—faithful witnesses for Christ)? | Cruci- fixion, a third mode of martyrdom exemplified on that occasion, 1s, while (see Heb. xu. 2; Gal. iii. 13) it was most infamous as a punishment, deemed the torture that has in it the largest amount of sheer physical suffering that creatures ” can inflict on a human being (see Matt. x. 38; ep. Luke xii. 5). But perhaps the most vivid illustration, furnished by that first “great” persecution, of the revoltingness of in- humanity of which fallen mankind is capable, was in a detail that is noted by the historian with reference to that most awful illumination of the Crown Gardens :—In order to make good torch-lights for the illumination, the garments of the martyrs had been previously soaked with oil or other such inflammable materials ! It is not impossible that* Paul at this time (cp. Acts xxvii. 30) should have been absent from Rome: on the fairly credible supposition (see Phil. ii. 24; 1 Tim. iii. 14) that his martyrdom (see 2 Tim. iv. 6—8), perhaps as late as A.D. 67, was at the close of a second Roman imprisonment, 1 See above, p. 14. 2 Ludibria—Tacit.; ep. Heb. xii. 1. 3 Christianos ad leones !—“ Christians to the lions !”—thus came to be a popular cry, like the clamouring for gladiatorial games—that had in it a soul of the original “ Crucify Him ! Crucify Him !” # See above, pp. 10-12. 126 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS and that his first Roman imprisonment (Phil. i. 7, 17) was closed by his being, on trial, set at liberty, as found innocent in the matter of the charges that had occasioned his being, on his own appeal (Acts xxv. 9-12, xxvi. 52), sent a prisoner to Rome;—after which he must have written the three Pastoral Epistles, and may (Rom. xv. 24, 28) have been enabled to gratify his cherished aspiration to go with the gospel to Spain, where a tradition makes him to have been finally apprehended as a professing Christian. And it is not perfectly certain that the prison from which he sent Phil. ii, 15-17 was not in Cesarea, though most probably it was in Rome.! But in any case Philippians was written at a time when the writer's heart, if not his body, was in the imperial city,—not many months, perhaps only a few weeks or days, before that Neronian Garden illumination; and in the recollection of this, we see in that illumination a glori- ously though frightfully vivid and powerful illustration of the apostle’s words at Phil. ii. 15-17. There he (ver. 17) speaks of himself as “ready to be” “joyfully ” “ offered (poured out as an oblation) on the sacri- fice and service of” his brethren’s “faith.” A sacrificial oblation was a customary offering of ancient peoples at the beginning of a war. David (2 Sam. xxiii.) would not drink the water of the well of Bethlehem, procured at the peril of three devoted lives of hero servants, but “poured it out before the Lord.” And Paul (Acts xxi. 13), now as hereto- fore, is willing that his great heroic life should so be an oblation in its closing. But is he aware of the fact, that there thus will be on his part a grandly appropriate opening of the war of centuries, in which (cp. 1 John v. 4) the persecuted faith is to overcome the world by suffering “for the name of the Lord Jesus”? It were vain for us to inquire, whether his great heart, made sore (Phil. iii, 18, 19) by prison thoughts of what baseness can show itself among professing Christians even in such times of “fiery trial,’ obtained strength and healing in some “heavenly vision” of that so near future, lighted up, in the moral darkness of a lost world, at that world’s very centre, by “a huge multitude” of Roman Christians, “ giving their bodies to be burned,” with so start- 1 See above, pp. 10-13. Ss ee ie ee ee ae oc ae a a Ce oe, APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 127 lingly strange a vividness illustrating his description of the destination of a true life (Phil. ii, 15, 16)—“< That ye might be blameless and harmless, children of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye are seen as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life” (R.V.). Was ever previous description so realised as this was, A.D. 64, in the Crown Garden “sport” ? The illumination, so terrific in its aspects to the eye of flesh, may have presented aspects of peculiar hopefulness to one who, like Paul in his prison-thoughts at this time (Eph. vi. 10-20), perceived the true inward nature of the warfare that was thus inaugurated on the world’s part.! “Courage! brother,” said a Protestant worthy to a fellow-martyr at the stake, “we shall this day kindle a fire in England.” That Neronian outrage on humanity was, says the historian, felt as such even by Roman heathens at the time. And a deeper feeling—which eluded his observation—may have thrilled through “the whole world” (Luke ii. 1), as the red light of that “fiery trial” shone out from the world-imperial centre so as to be “known and read of all men.” ‘This and that man, reflecting on the thing, so monstrously unprecedented in human experience, might be led, though dimly, to anticipate the reasoning of the last apostle (1 John v. 4), that that which so has overcome the world must surely be “born of God.” In any case here, visible from afar, conspicuous at the heart of the last heathen world-empire, a banner is raised, a wrinessing fire mnextinguishable is kindled, like a morning star of hope for fallen and lost humanity. Through heathen darkness of “the whole world” there shines out, in the feebleness of a suffering manhood of believers, the visible beginning of the new eternal empire of the Son of Man from the Ancient of Days (Dan. vii. 13). | The observation of Tacitus regarding a feeling among the people, of its being sad that suffering so dire should be under- gone by human beings for the cruel pleasure of one man, ‘In Norna Doone, John Ridd, the strongest man in England, in old age, looking back to a visit he paid to London in his early days, remem- bers the tears that he found on his face when he got disentangled from the crowd that had been looking on the execution of Lord Russell. The Revolution of 1688 was in that movement of an English heart. 128 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS may on consideration appear inane or jejune, as coming from such a man on such an occasion,—-as the occasion, in its moral wonderfulness, might have been apprehended by any commonly intelligent heathen. What a contrast, ¢g., his observation exhibits to the sublimity of a passing note of Luke (Luke xxiii. 48) on one gesture of the Jerusalem Jews taking their last look at the cross on Calvary! They, too, had witnessed a “sport,” in the mockings and buffetings at the trials of Jesus, and in the tauntings and revilings that embittered His long death-agony (see Ps. lxix. 20). But the centurion saw his innocence (Luke xxui. 47), through which (Matt. xxvii. 54, cp. ver. 19) might be perceived His divinity. The world’s face was darkened. The earth rent. Just men came alive out of their graves. And the Jerusalem Jews—they all, “beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned.” If the Roman commonalty saw only the sad misrule of that Neronian cruelty, reflection on it may have served to prepare them for the murdering of their man-god+ not many months after; they were as blind men to the true significance —even the pity and the tragic terror—of that so appalling massacre of innocents before their eyes. What the hard and shallow heathen heart thus failed to apprehend, even (John iii. 13) of the so manifested condition of “the world” as there visibly “lying in the wicked one” (so R.V., 1 John v. 19), might in some measure be divined by Jews, of whom there were many in that confluence of all the world’s popula- tions (cp. Acts xxvii. 24-30). After they “smote their breasts "—what we next see of them, in six weeks’ time, is (see Zech. xii. 10) the conversion of, first three thousand, and then five thousand, to the religion of that cross they had been looking on (Gal. vi. 14). As for the Roman Christians, had they not read, in the newly published Epistle to the Philippian Saints, the words of their prince-apostle of the Gentiles, about a glorious true destination of life, which may find its brightest realisation in such “ offering” as that of the Neronian Crown 1 The emperor, supreme pontiff of their religion, was, in the celebrated words of Gibbon, all at once ‘a priest, an atheist, and a god.” Such was Gibbon’s idolised “philosopher,” Emperor Marcus Aurelius—a worse per- secutor than Nero. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 129 Garden illumination—“in the midst of a crooked and _per- verse generation, among whom they are seen as lights”? Here, surely, in “a good confession,” is a good foundation for the Church apologetics. | The Bithynian persecution, A.D. 110, is described by Pliny, the friend of Tacitus, in a letter to their common friend, the “good” Emperor Trajan, which is an official report of Pliny as proconsul regarding what then was passing under his personal administration of the Bithynian government. This was only ten years after the supposed time of the death of the Apostle John, who long had flourished in the neigh- bourhood,—particularly in Asia, so closely associated with Bithynia in the Petro-Pauline period (Acts xvi. 6, 7; 1 Pet. 1. 1). Excepting what may be inferred from the apocalyptic letters to the seven Asian churches (Rev. li.—ill.), the period following the Petro-Pauline, the last third part of the century is, we saw, in the New Testament history a blank,—like the bridge-way in Mirza’s vision, which is shrouded from view in mist excepting at the two extremities, where there is light. At the extremities of the Johannine period of primeval Christianity there is a New Testament light of history,—at the one extreme from the Scriptures of the Petro-Pauline period, and at the other from John’s own writings toward the close of the century ; while for more external illustration, of environment of Christianity in the heathen world,—if the “great” Roman persecution be as a luminous flame-pillar of testimony a little before the beginning of the Johannine period, another such light-pillar of illustration is constituted, a little after the close of that period, by the “great” persecution in Bithynia. It is remarkable that we should have authentic accounts of these two most memorably illustrative occurrences, not from Christians under influence of apostles and their movements, but from heathens who, profoundly antagonistic to this religion, yet are men of highest character as trustworthy witnesses regarding fact within their knowledge, while regarding the facts they here speak of they have the best possible means of information, whether from personal observation and research or from free use of the relative official records of the empire. 1 See above, pp. 114, 115. 2 130 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS It is a providential provision relatively to the subject of the present inquiry. In the light of the persecution of A.D. 64, we saw a decisive commencement of the mortal antagonism of heathen world-empire to the then infant new kingdom of God among men, What we now see in the light of the persecution of A.D. 110 is, that same antagonism, fifty years later, when the new kingdom is manifested as in a heroic prime of youth (cp. 1 John ii. 14)—a kingdom which cannot be suppressed. Formerly, the magistracy appear as if surprised by incidental discovery of a new religion sprung up suddenly among the people ; here, on the other hand, its existence is visibly of old standing. Some say that they have discontinued the profession of it as many as twenty years ago. It has had time to take such possession of the whole Bithynian land, both town and country, that the heathen religion is all but virtually abolished in practice, and Pliny seems alarmed by the neces- sity laid on him, of stamping out this new religion, as if to his apprehension that would be something like a depopulation of his province, And so deeply is the faith rooted in men’s minds and hearts, that, so far as appears from his report, not one of those professing it at the time—male or female, young or old, bond or free—has been found willing to “accept deliverance” (cp. Heb. xi. 35) from tortures and infamous geath at the cost of denying Christ. Here, too, is “a good confession,” laying a good foundation for Church apologetics. To us the Bithynian Christianity has a special interest on account of what we know of its previous history. The region is (Acts xvi. 6,'7) one of two that, in Paul’s evangelistic labour, were literally and strangely “passed by,” as if under a mysterious doom of preterition ; and yet which (1 Pet.i 1, v. 1), a few years after—say, ten or twelve—were among those five Anatolian regions which were addressed by Peter from Babylon as now evangelised, with congregations con- stituted under presbyterial government (cp. Acts xiv. 23 5 Tit. i. 5-9). The persecution was fifty years after this ; and in the intervening period we obtain a side-glance at the con- dition of Christianity in one of those two regions from the apocalyptic letters to its seven churches (Rev. i—tiL), 1f not also from’ prison Epistles of Paul (Eph, 1 and 2-Tim.). . And APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 131 we know otherwise that for generations after, Asia Minor, so signally favoured with apostolic planting and watering, con- tinued to be a head-centre of spiritual influences, evil as well as good, in the Christian world. : A special contribution to apologetics resulted from the Bithynian persecutions through the light which it cast on the moral and spiritual character of the Christians of that very early post-apostolic time. It may be understood from the tenor of Pliny’s letter, that the “calumnies,’ which were so cruel an aggravation of their other sufferings, were already in possession of the heathen mind :—charging them with “atheism,” with eating infants’ flesh, with perpetration of abominable works of darkness. These were effectively refuted by the letter, in its official report of what had been judicially ascertained in the trials of the Christians,—that they worshipped Christ as God (or, as “a god ”—the Latin, quasi deo, will admit either rendering), that their congrega- tional evening meal was innocent, and that if they met before morning light, it was—not for love of darkness—but in order to avoid an avoidable disregard of a law that had been proclaimed by imperial authority for the province. Further, in their congregational worship there was, along with that worship of Christ already referred to, a “ sacrament ” (a Latin word meaning the military oath of loyalty) of covenanting, to be conscientiously careful in matters of common duty of man toward man. There thus was put on judicial record of the empire a disproof of the “calumnies”; and this may have been service- able to the Christians with impartial magistrates and others who chose to inquire into the matter. But for generations after this the calumnies continued to be in circulation, and to be believed by the generality without inquiry ;—for in- stance, about this very time, by Pliny’s own friend, the great historian Tacitus, unworthily echoing baseless rumour of the commonalty. Still, the fact thus once made clear, in the red % light of that Bithynian persecution, that the Christians were Stainless in moral character, while profoundly earnest in religion, was an established point of Christian apologetics,— an historical foundation of producible “experimental evid- ence” of this religion. From the Acts, the Epistles, and the 132 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS _Apocalypse,—to go no further—we know that the primeval Christians were in their own estimation far from stainless before the holy God they served. But before men, and as compared with the world around them “ lying in wickedness,’ their ordinary life, which the persecutions brought vividly into view, was an evidencing fruit of new moral creation: they were thus “blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom they shone as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life” (Phil. ii. 15, 16). Looking thus as into the storm-rocked cradle of apolo- getics, we perceive as to the sitwation, that those early Chris- tians were well placed for knowing about the facts of our New Testament history. For instance, they could hardly fail to know who really wrote 1 Peter—the supposed genuineness of which destroys the foundation of Tibingen theorising! about forgery of New Testament Scriptures. Their neighbour, Polycarp of Smyrna, some two years before this time—die. circa A.D. 108—in a letter to the Philippian Christians now in our hands, without naming either Peter or this Epistle, shows that he is full of it, as if 1 Pet. i—iv. had come to form the very warp and woof of all his thinking about religion. And it is only ten years since they were within easy reach of Polycarp’s old master, the Apostle John, who had been Peter’s own heart’s brother from the early Galilean days, and was a very Boanerges for the pure “ word of God.” Some still alive among them were no doubt person- ally acquainted with Mark and Silas (1 Pet. V1 2,51 357) at the time when the Epistle claims to have been written and sent to their churches by Peter. Where, when, how could a forged 1 Peter be imposed on so much as one — -Bithynian congregation, or even one ruling elder in a country parish there, to say nothing of all Bithynia, all « Asia,” all Asia Minor, the whole Christian world from that day to this? Further,— 1 Namely, by showing that the Tubingen supposition, of a doctrinal antagonism of Paul’s “ gospel” to the original apostolic teaching, is the opposite of fact (Gal. ii; Acts xv.). In that Epistle, Peter, the primate of the original apostles, appears, relatively to the doctrines in question, not opposed to Paulinism, but—as is confessed—‘ more Pauline than even Paul.” APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 133 Irrespectively of Scriptures, they had good means of know- ing about the things now given to us in Scripture. We do not see among them any such leader in their “ fiery trial ” (1 Pet. iv. 12, ep. i. 7) as Polycarp, on a like occasion long after (A.D. 155), will be in Smyrna, But among them there — doubtless are not a few of that class—“ the elders,’—-worthies surviving from the first generation,—contemporaries of John and other apostles, whose apostolic tradition will be so carefully collected by Papias, and so sacredly guarded by Irenceus. Some of those “elders” probably heard Paul’s preaching at the foundation of the Bithynian Christianity. And, were it only in connection with the Pauline movement in Asia Minor, there is nothing of material importance in either apostolic history or apostolic testimony regarding “the Lord and His miracles” (the expression of Irensus), recorded in the (Gospels and Epistles, that could fail to be known about by the Bithynian Christians of A.D. 110 through oral instruction of contemporarres of apostles and “ apostolic men” ;—and in this respect the Bithynian church is only a sample of the Christianity of that early time, that happens to have come to our knowledge through the official report of a persecuting heathen magistrate in the locality. Pliny shows a something of knowledge of the real character of the martyr church, where Tacitus plainly knows nothing of it. And the state of Christianity thus coming into view presents more than one aspect of interest relat- ively to apologetics in the primitive church history. Thus,— 1. The general character of Christian apology at the outset can be understood in the light of that state of things. It largely consisted in explanation regarding the main substantive nature of this religion, as a service of the living God and Re- deemer ; and particularly in answering “calumnies” that were in the air,—to the effect, e.g., that the Christians were “atheists ” (they did not worship “the gods,” nor any visib/e thing) ; that they ate the flesh of infants (“eat the flesh of the Son of Man” ?); that they held secret meetings for the practice of abominations. The Bithynian inquisition had a good effect of so far placing this matter rightly on record of the empire ; and we may suppose that after this the “calumnies ” were not 134 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS seriously believed by intelligent heathens,—magistrates or others,—who really inquired into the matter. But very many —witness the case of Tacitus—even of intelligent heathens, made no real inquiry. The calumnies were thoughtlessly repeated, to murderous effect of causing Christianity to be popularly regarded as a conspiracy of ghouls (cp. “ generation of vipers”) to be anyhow stamped out. Not only the earliest apologists had thus to make explanations. The explanations had to be repeated by their successors long after they had been once published.’ On the other hand, the mental condition of heathenism relatively to matters of religion was not such as to call for any- thing elaborate in apologetic argument or exposition. The question was simply between the living God, now revealed in Christ as offered Saviour and future Judge, and on the part of heathenism, either false gods of the peoples or a “no god” of civilisation (Acts xvii. 23; 1 Cor.i. 21). To the Scriptures of this new religion there was little or no reference; beyond, perhaps, allusion 2 to the existence of such vouchers, or some indication of their character.2 Great stress was laid on resur- rection, with its joyful hope; and on “the monarchy,” or the unity of divine government of the world. But in substance the primitive apology is as simple almost as that of the Samaritan woman and of the Jerusalem born-blind man (John iv., ix.), though a philosopher like Justin Martyr might have speculation at some points. The City of God—fifth century, by Augustine—was a Theodicy, or a “ philosophy of religion,” rather than a Christian apologetic of the primi- tive type.* awed Christianity was now fully recognised, and proscribed, as a new distinct religion. At the close of the second 1 Hig., Athenagoras of Athens formally answered the above-cited calumnies in his Hmbassy--addressed to the “philosopher” Emperor Marcus Aurelius. 2 H.g., by Aristides, in the tdi known Apology. 3 Hi.g., by Justin Martyr—whose Apologies were until recently deemed the earliest extant—stating that memoirs of Christ called ‘gospels ” were habitually read in Christian congregational worship. 4 A most elaborate answer to merely naturalistic philosophy (Col. 1i. 8) of heathenism, Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe, might be profitable reading for some “scientists” now. Spas APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 135 century, Tertullian—“ the apologist” of the western or Latin church, as Justin Martyr (though resident at Rome) was of the Greek or eastern church—bitterly complained, that they were put to death simply as Christians (cp. 1 Pet. iv. 16, iii. 16), without (see Acts xxv. 16) opportunity for self-justification if they adhered to this name. He and others appealed to the fact that, saving in this matter of professed Christianity, they were exemplary citizens, praying for magistrates, and ready to suffer like their neighbours for proved offence against the laws. On the other hand, they did not speak| of the emperors and their official represent- atives as monster Neros, taking delight in mere cruelty: they rather appeared to lean on those in authority as more or less to be relied on for some restraining influence relatively to otherwise ungoverned impulses of popular passion, on fire with a sort of zeal for heathen religion, which might be felt as a heathenish holy-water sanction to hatred, greed, and lust. And, in fact, Pliny evidently had no love of persecuting : nor presumably had his master Trajan, the only emperor to whom the Roman people ever gave the title of “the good.” It was one of the paradoxes of those strangely evil times, that usually the good emperors were the great persecutors, not excepting “the philosopher” Marcus Aurelius, whose stoicism in combination with a superstition which it condemns, seems to have operated on a weak mind in making a man otherwise just and benevolent to be the most unshrinkingly ruthless of all persecutors :—going to the extreme of Jawlessly violating, not only common humanity by outrage even on corpses of martyrs, but the majesty of the Roman State in the persons of free citizens! What thus comes into full view is the fact that, at the time of the Bithynian persecution and sub- sequently, it was simply Christianity that was persecuted unto death, while the persecutor, so making war against this religion, was primarily the sovereign State. Christian apology thus had to be in large measure an appeal, against a spiritual — tyranny incarnated in that State, to natural principles of liberty and justice as well as mercy ;—in support of which appeal there came defensive representations of the real nature of this 1 By inflicting servile tortures or death-punishments on them. a 136 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS religion, and the grounds of its claim to be received as true and divine. A formidable result of State recognition of the distinctness of Christianity as a new religion was, to make the simple pro- fession of it a capital offence before the law. Pliny’s letter to Trajan was not simply a report regarding the Christians, and their trial and punishment up to this date. It sought the emperor’s authoritative judgment on the question, whether a man was to be punished for Christianity if no other offence were proved against him. The emperor’s fescript (official answer), while (in words) providing for making the adminis- tration of the law as lenient as its nature would permit, yet left no room for doubting the necessity of carrying the law into force; and the imperial action in this case regulated the after course of judicial procedure until the heathen empire gave place to that of Constantine the Great. Trajan might plead the fact, that the law was not of his making. It was an immemorial constitution of the Roman State, older than the empire, perhaps older than the Republic. “The law of ceremonies (= religions),” under which the per- secutions were carried on, made religion to be so a matter of State, that non-conformity to the religion was legally equi- valent to repudiation of the State: so that persistency in it was to be visited with punishment of blackest high treason,— “ That soul shall be cut off from among the people.” When: Rome through foreign conquest had grown into an empire, her policy, admirably flexible while strong, allowed to subject peoples a liberty of practising their own religions (religiones licite), so long and so far as it did not either disturb the Roman religion, or interfere with the public order of the empire. But the Christians were not a people or nation. They were only an aggregate of individuals collectively without a home, in this way “strangers and pilgrims ” upon earth (1 Pet. i. 11). Consequently the political exemption, of national religions, from operation of “the law of ceremonies,” was not available for the purpose of making Christianity a tolerated religion (religio lictta)—-since it was not national. Previously to the Neronian outbreak the matter had not come to this. It was not as a Christian accused by Roman law that Paul went from Cesarea to a Roman prison. It APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 137 was as a Roman citizen, appealing to his emperor against legal persecution by Jerusalem Jews. But within two years of that, the “huge multitude” of martyrs were slain by Roman law, not for burning the city, but for persistently professing Christianity. Down to this time (see Acts xviii. 14,15, xxiii. 29), Roman magistracy, even in Palestine, if its attention should be called to this new religious movement, saw in it only a new phase of Judaism, perhaps occasioning squabbles between rival sects of that religion Nor does it appear that at any time previous to the Neronian outbreak there had been, on the part of Roman imperialism, any thought of seeing in Christianity a distinct religion from Judaism, in such a sense as to place it outside of the tolera- tion which was accorded to Judaism as being a national religion: that is, for thirty years after the great Pentecost. But, very near the close of the two years after Paul first entered a Roman prison, something happened, that brought the distinctness of Christianity, as not simply a new phase of Judaism, under cognisance of Roman magistracy, as a ground of judicial action in application of “the law of ceremonies.” What that something was or may have been—the breath of air that loosened the avalanche into a so destructive move- ment—remains an unsolved question of history at this hour: though there have been guesses, about some female Jewish influence in the imperial palace, that operated as a fire-spark in kindling a conflagration, long-lasting and wide-spreading, as compared with which the few days’ burning of the great im- perial city was a mere nothing. A something that so operated there must have been. For suddenly—as “a bolt from clear sky ”"—the old immemorial constitution broke out, like a long-slumbering voleano now awakening, into the terrific fury of that first “great” persecution against the Christians as professing an unlicensed religion (non licita). While the immediate visible occasion, of the first appear- ance of that star, of a publicly-recognised clear distinctness of Christianity from all other religions, may have been a freak 1 Paul himself (Acts xxvi. 7; Phil. ii. 3) to the last maintained that the new religion was the true old. national religion: from which it will follow that (Acts ix. 5) in persecuting Jesus he had been a persecutor of Moses and the prophets. 138 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS of moral madness in the emperor, a certain previous process, as of struggle toward the manifestation, is illustrated in the following Note :— Note on the rising of the name of “ Christian.’ 4—In the New Testament it occurs only three times (Acts xi. 26, xxvi. 28; 1 Pet. iv. 16), and there, apparently not. as taken by the followers of Jesus to themselves, but as given to them by outsiders. But it does not appear that His followers were unwilling to be known by this name: which in itself is most appropriate (see Matt. xvi. 16-19; cp. Mark viii. 29), as mean- ing that their religion is founded in belief of His being the Christ or Messiah. It is the name by which they have spoken of themselves ever since the apostolic age; as distinguished, é.g., irom “ Nazarenes,” as they were called by unbelieving Jews. Christian is also the name under which they from the first appeared in the records of heathen world-empire: namely, at and after the time of the Neronian persecution, in which the empire first recognised the existence of this religion as a distinct thing in the world. Tacitus, in his account of the persecution, not only employs the name as an historian—writing fifty years after the event. He expressly states that it was the name in use at the time of the event among the commonalty at Rome, for designation of the adherents of the religion. And in Suetonius, his contem- porary (The Twelve Cesars), we find what may be regarded as a reason for thinking that among that commonalty the use of the name had perhaps begun with the earliest noticeable appearance of the religion at Rome,—which (see Rom. i. 8; cp. Acts 1. 10) may have been very soon after the day of the great Pentecost. In addition to saying that “the Christians” were chastised by Nero, he elsewhere states (“ Claudius ”) that in the preceding reign the Jews (or, Jews) were expelled from Rome (cp. Acts xviii. 2—where observe “ Claudius”) on account of disturbances they incessantly made. at the instigation of “Chrestus.” Chrestus, not Hebrew, means “gracious” or “meek”; and by a Roman policeman it might, in the din of disturbances, easily be confounded with Christus:? as, a century after Suetonius wrote, according to Tertullian, Chres- tanus was mistakenly employed instead of Christianus by Latin- speaking heathen Romans in North Africa (so in the time of Justin Martyr and of Lactantius). The first appearance of the new religion at Rome would be (see Acts ix. 15, 20, 22) in the Jewish quarter, in the syna- 1 Cp. above, pp. 45, ete. ? Greek for anointed--Hebrew, Messiah. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 139 gogue, “ proclaiming Jesus, that He is the Son of God,” and “confounding the Jews” by “proving that this is the Christ” (R.V.—cp. Acts vi. 7-14). We know what effect such a first appearance produced in Syria and Asia Minor (Acts ix. 23, xi. 45, xiv. 19); and (xviii. 17) in Europe, so as to come under notice of Roman magistracy after the expulsion (A.D. 52) of Jews from Rome. In disturbances thus arising, the name Christus may well have been confusedly much heard; and at Rome confounded with Chrestus, long before that expulsion: as at Antioch the disciples were called Christians long before it, at the very beginning of Claudius’ reign (vegn. A.D. 41—A.D. 54). A century after that time, it was stated by Justin Martyr, in his Discussion with Jew Trypho (understood to have been really held, perhaps at Ephesus, circa a.p. 140), that the Jews were in the habit, in the lands of their dispersion, of sending delega- tions to places expressly for the purpose of, in the synagogues, denouncing the Nazarenes. But! Christian had long before his time come to be the world-imperial use and wont of speech for designation of this religion and its belongings ;—so that heathenism (“Saul among the prophets”?) has from the beginning been unwittingly a witness to the apologetic fact, that Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be Jehovah’s Christ. This pause on the origin of the received name of “Christian” is perhaps not waste of time; were it only on account of the distinctness which it gives to our appre- hension of the fact, that precisely Christianity—the Bible religion—was, more or less clearly in men’s view, in that primitive period the real object of both assault and vindica- tion or defence. The same fact might be further illustrated from the history of the Gnostic heresies, whose general true inward nature came to be disclosed in their giving place to— the fruit after that blossoming—heathen Manicheism, with its doctrine of a duality of creative principles, and of the essential evil of matter: a doctrine subversive of the funda- mental Christian principle of “the monarchy” (ae. unity of divine governmental headship of the universe). It appeared most vividly in heathen antipathy to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection (cp. Acts xvii. 15-32; 1 Cor. xv.; 1 Pet. i, 83-12); which, though it be (2 Tim. i. 10) the restoration of a lost hope of humanity, was opposed—e.g., at the “great” persecution of the Christians of Lyons and Vienna—in the 1 See above, pp. 45, etc. 140 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS interest of the heathen religions, as well as at the dictation or impulse of merely naturalistic heathen philosophies (see Col. u. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20). But we now will dwell only on a broader aspect of the subject, which influenced the imperial statesmanship of the period, and in whose light the situation relatively to Christian apologetics becomes more clearly and fully unfolded into view. We observed that the Roman “law of ceremonies,” older than the Empire, was perhaps older than the Republic. The principle of the law,—namely, the principle that non- conformity to the State religion is a treasonous repudiation of the State——appears to have entered immemorially into the working constitutions of the heathen peoples generally.? Thus, in the most ancient of the world-empires, Nebuchad- nezzar, in casting Jehovah’s persistent witnesses into the fiery furnace, was impelled not only by the personal pride of sovereignty, but by regard to the imperilled honour of the Babylonian State as bound up in public recognition of its “gods” (Dan. ili 18); and Darius was restrained, in his personal impulse to save Daniel, who had offended only “concerning the law of his God” (Dan. vi. 5-8), by a State _ necessity of dealing with the matter as placed unalterably ‘under “the law of the Medes and Persians.” So more clearly as to the more recent empires of the West. At the noon of Greek civilisation in democratic Athens, Xenocrates was banished (“excommunicated ”) on account of “atheism ” of his physical speculations (“as a scientist” ?); Socrates was put to death on the ground of his having “introduced new gods” (a nerve that still is sensitive at Acts xvii. 18—20— though paradoxically, as if in a corpse, see ver. 23);? and the “ philosophers” as a class, far from the erst moral noble- ness of Socrates, their “ prince,” now have for centuries evaded the responsibility of belief, or non-belief, by a shamefulness of outwardly conforming to religions which they really disbelieve and scorn (cp. 1 Cor. i, 21-23). Nevertheless Roman statesmanship tolerated non-Roman 1 It is stated by Professor Hearns—The Aryan Household—that in the original clan or patriarchy the vital principle of unity was not only blood relationship, but in higher degree community of religion. * Cp..case of Professor Huxley above, p. 22. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIG PERIODS 141 religions which were national. Nor do we find that heathen peoples ordinarily felt under a religious obligation to make war against the foreign religions of other peoples, as in the Mohammedan propagandism, and to some extent in the pro- fessedly Christian (see John xviii. 36) Crusades, as well as in Israel’s war of conquest in Canaan. For the heathen theology (if we may so speak) involved a provision for mutual. tolera- tion of “the religions” among themselves—if toleration be not a misnomer where there is no occasion for offence to be borne with. On the principles of that theology of “gods many, the Athenians, though they should be perfect in loyalty to their own patron mark in the Letter is, the state of the Christian mind, at the given in the present writer’s work, The Revelation and the Record, p. 149: where, however, by his fault there is wanting an important clause of the original, to the effect of exhibiting Polycarp’s reminiscences of what he had heard from the mouth of men who had personally known Christ in the flesh, as referring not. only in general to “the Lord,” but to “ His miracles” in particular. ———— APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 175 earliest appearance of an apostolic tradition distinct from Scripture, relatively to the sovereign authority of Scripture, as the norm with which that tradition has to “accord,” even when the tradition comes direct through a Polycarp from such apostles as John. (In this relation the Letter shows — curiously “undesigned coincidence” with the fragments of Papias.) : At that early appearance the unwritten tradition, fresh from its living fountain in a personally remembered apostolic teaching, apparently may have satisfied the thirst of the Christian community for information regarding the facts of the primeval history: while as vouchers there could be the new Scriptures not yet gone widely into general use, and for authoritative determination as to doctrinal principles of the religion there also were available to them the Old Testament “Scriptures ”—7.¢. “the Scriptures” referred to by Paul at Rom. i. 2; 2 Tim. iii. 15-17; and by Peter at 1 Pet. iv. 11; 2 Pet. 1. 19—21,.—which at that time were the Bible in ordinary use among Christians, at least much more than they have been at any subsequent period. The habit of naming the particular Scripture that is referred to does not appear as established in practice previously to Irenzus himself: though it may have begun to be formed much earlier than the time of his writing,—as soon, eg., as heretical abuse of the new Scriptures created a feeling of need of guarded exactness in the handling of them: while a growing amount of use of them was (Ex. i. 6) necessitated by gradual disappearance of those “ elders,” who could relate the oral apostolic teaching at first or second hand. Irenzeus has no catalogue of apostolic Scriptures; but from his “use” of them it can be seen that his New Testament was substantially the same as ours. The conservative traditionalism which appears in him is essentially different from that later traditionalism, which makes faith dependent on “the Church.”2 The Irenzan traditionalism makes faith, and the Church as a community of believers, to repose on “the apostles and the prophets, 1The only writings that are named “the Scriptures” in the New Testament, though Paul’s Epistles are placed along with them at 2 Pet. aid, 15, 16. . 2 See above, p. 164. ah Ae 176 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone” (Eph. i, | 20). The emphasis laid by Irenzan traditionalism on the — q known mind of “the elders” has its very point and force of reason in the view, that these elders authentically convey to _ us the teaching of the apostles; while the sovereign authority which it assigns to Scripture as inspired of God? constitutes a conclusive test of the claim to represent that primitive traditionalism that is made by an ecclesiasticism which (Mark vii. 7) “teaches for doctrines the commandments of men.” It can be demonstrated historically, that hitherto every traditional Church doctrine that is not found in Scrip- ture is either a contradiction of Scripture teaching or a corruption of it. If Irenzus and his teaching were simply effaced from history and memory, his views in substance would still be _ visible in the mind of the second century Church,—though not all-round in any one teacher as they are in him, the only ~ - second century Church-teacher from whom an all-round of - views has reached us. The apologies, which mainly are the _ now extant writings of other second century Christian leaders, — q do not, on their armed front of battle in defence of the 4g religion, show except partially and inferentially what are the 7 detailed contents of the Church’s faith: as one does not see ~ the streets and homes of a besieged city from the outside of ‘its. embattled walls. Ireneus, writing, so to speak, at leisure, for the instruction of Christians,—including “reproof and correction” of heretics,—enables us to see as full-formed — in his mind what in the apologists is perceptible only through isolated incidental indications. It really 7s the mind of the whole Church of his day; and its appearing in him, as it does, implies that it was the Church’s mind, not yet fully unfolded | 4 in expression, at the beginning of the second century.” At the opening of the period (A.D.101—A.D. 155) POLYCARP.— _ a Before Irenzeus left his master’s feet, the heresies about which he wrote his great work were under weigh,—as early, say (Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion), as A.D. 120-140. The word — 1 Trenseeus held the strongest view of the divine inspiration of the a apostolic Scriptures, as of the Old Testament Scriptures. » * See also APPENDIX, as to its relation at later times. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 177 “heresy” is from a root that means, seeking, which in the connection is suggestive of a misleading egoism as the moral root of the thing (Acts xxiv. 14; 1 Cor. xi. 19 :—at Gal. v. 20 it is placed, among “works of the flesh,” between “sedi-. tion” and “murder”). The Gnostic heresies (cp. Col. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20—where the Greek for “science ”—gndsis is= “knowingness,” “illuminationism”; ep. “ scientist”), which became conspicuous in the second century, were—like Moham- medanism, Mormonism, New Zealand Hau-hauism—a con- fused amalgam of essential heathenism in worldly speculation with some Christian elements of thought. In history they arrest attention by their offensive strangeness: whence it may appear in the retrospect as if heresy had been at least a main outstanding feature of the Church’s experience in that old time. In reality it was rather as an appearance of meteoric lights, whose glaring has little to do with the real history of those hours in which the lawful rulers of the night are quietly shining. The second century “heresies,” conspicuous as if portentously filling the whole world, thus remind us of the monstrosities of seventeenth century opinion described in Edwards’ Gangrena or in Baillie’s Disswasive from the Errors of the Time: things which had no real resemblance to the inward course of ordinary Christian British thought—as appearing, eg.,in James Melville's Autobiography or in the Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson by Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, his widow. Relatively to the real life of the period, those “heresies” were only as the turgid discoloration of a river in flood or as the storm-clouds of a spring. They may—cp. diseases of infancy—have served to purge the Church’s infant mind of some “parlous stuff.” But her veritable Christian life, of thought as well as action, is seen in such a case as that of Polycarp. gg te The heresies which occupy the great work of his pupil do not represent the mind of what it describes as “the Catholic Church.” On the contrary—cp. the “deistical writers” in Leland’s Review of them—the very reason of their being in _ this book is, that they are alien to that mind (1 John ii. 19), While it might appear as if all Christendom were full of such monstrosities of opinion, on consideration the real Christian mind of the period is seen to be quietly settled in the belief 12 178 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS. : represented by The Apostles’ Creed. This we see most clearly | in the comparatively quiet first half of the century, opening on our view in the apostolic fathers, of whom Polycarp is for our purpose the best typical sample. His contemporary Papias is directly known to us only through some fragments of his writing, transcribed, two cen- turies after his time, by Eusebius, who, at one place, making use of what was eulogised as his great erudition, describes him as a man of very little sense—nous (he differed from Eusebius and other Church leaders about the millennium). But the fragments are well worth preserving, even in a great ecclesi- — astical history. In them we see (at Hierapolis in Asia Minor ; — 4 cp. 1 Pet. i. 1), within some twenty or thirty years after | John’s death, a Christian minister habitually instructing his people through “expositions” on the basis of a Scripture that refers to the earthly ministry of Christ (The Gospel History ‘ ). One of the fragments, regarding the authorship of Mark and Matthew, is in comparison with the history preserving it as a nugget of gold compared with its quartz matrix or diluvium bed. And for us a morsel of information incidentally thus appearing is peculiarly important as constituting a vividly | corroborative illustration of what we saw regarding Polycarp ~ in the letter of Ireneus, written more than a generation alter A.D. 125 (where Papias is placed). At this early date, Papias, who in his expository studies prefers to consult men rather than books, is, with reference to points in connection with the earthly ministry of Christ, in the habit of consulting the memory of men who have been personally “ hearers ” of the “ elders.” And (cp. 1 Pet. v. 1; 2 John 1; 3 John 1) of eight or nine “ elders” whom he thus has ~ occasion to name in one breath, all but one (Aristion) or two ‘e 1 Regarding which, see p. 186. 2 The one, Aristion, may, like Barnabas, on account of eminent service in connection with official apostles (Matt. xix. 28), have been spoken of as an “apostle” in the general sense of “ emissary” (see Heb. iii. 1), An “elder” John, who is placed along with him ina supplementary (Papian) — ti group of two, may be the apostle, named also in a group of seven “ elders,” a all apostles (pre-Pauline). The group of two may mean two, belonging — to the first generation, whom Papias had personally heard : while the main group of seven—all apostles—will be apostles whom some of his comtem- poraries have heard. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 179 are (original) apostles! Here we see in the very process of formation that traditional heritage of apostolic testimony, which Irenzus will keep and guard so sacredly, “ pure and entire,’ as a faithful minister of Christ and steward of the mysteries of God (see 2 Thess. ili. 6—all but the earliest of Paul’s Epistles). In so far speaking as “ historical critic ” about particular Seriptures—Mark and Matthew— Papias is solitary-exceptional among apostolic fathers known to us. With reference to a sentence found in our Matthew, Barnabas, “The Shepherd of Hermas,” has the “it is written” which marks as holy Scripture. Clement of Rome (see Phil. iv. 3), writing to the Corinthians (circa A.D. 96 ?), reminds them of Pawl’s having written to them. Polycarp, writing to the Philippians (circa a.p. 108 1) speaks of Paul’s having written to them—in terms which place apostolic Scripture a whole world above the writings of such ordinary Christians as him (Polycarp). And in this, his only extant writing, he seems as if 1 Pet. i—iv. had completely taken possession of him, so as not only to fill his mind but to form the warp and woof of its texture. He has the exact words of the wonderful 1 Pet. i. 8; and on the five octavo pages of his letter we find eleven distinct traces of 1 Peter.? Yet he does not once name it. Nor does Clement name Hebrews, though his letter is almost as full of it as Polycarp’s is of 1 Peter. Here we note these two things,—1. No New Testament Scripture is named by any apostolic father, excepting Papias in what he happens to say about the composing of Matthew and Mark; while-—2. No apostolic father has any appearance of knowledge of matters of primeval Christian history beyond what is recorded in our existing New Testament This of course discloses a powerful corroboration of other evidence of primeval origination of those Scriptures. But the present suggestion is, that the Christians who survived the apostles, 1 This date is fixed by a reference he makes to Ignatius, as having quite recently gone westward, on his way to martyrdom at Rome: a martyrdom which took place a.p. 107. 2 Smyrna was in “ Asia,” one of the regions to which 1 Peter is ad- dressed (i. 1). ® This name, of “Testament” (Tert.), does not appear in use until about the close of the second century. 180 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS © while possessing the new Scriptures (having them as vouchers), did not, in their instructions to the new generation under their charge, ordinarily make formal reference to those writings, but drew upon the fresh living memory of the apostolic teach- ing. The “as it is written” of Barnabas, like “the Scripture saith” at 1 Tim. v. 18 (referring to Luke x. 7 ?), may thus be only “one swallow” that “does not make a summer” (yet shows that there is a summer—on the wing to come). Poly- earp’s public career extends over the whole transition time to a “use” of Scripture like the present use—naming the book and the author that is “chapter and verse”). quoted or referred to (though not giving The intellectual character of these apostolic fathers thus comes to be important for our inquiry, as affecting their quali- fication—not for “higher criticism,’ but—for safe transmis- sion of an heritage of apostolic testimony, orally delivered while it lived in me mory of men who had heard it from apostles’ lips, but guarded for the following generations through having from apostolic Scriptures. the outset been placed on record of And at first sight the aspect of that intellectual character is far from imposing. “The Shepherd of Hermas,” for instance, is a rhapsody, from which we are unable to judge whtt might be the author’s mental qualifica- tions in his normal exercise of reason on plain matter of history or doctrine. So too of Jgnatiws. He has flashes of theological insight not equalled by any other father of his period. But his Zetters—even the “genuine ones ”_ are known to have been extensively interpolated in a class ecclesiastical interest. And, as far as can be judged from 5 such documents, when writing them—on his way to martyr- dom——he was in a mental condition of abnormal exaltedness 4 (téte montée ?) which p might be the value matters (in which—cp. Cromwell—he may have been the — laces it out of our power to divine what of an opinion of his regarding plain shrewdest of mankind). But in other cases we have samples of the ordinary mental condition of Christians of that time. Papias, for instance, though he should be simple as Eusebius deems him, is an excellent witness, were it only by reason of his candid simplicity, his open-eyed industriousness, and his 1 See above, p. 175. t! ; % % ¢ a APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 181 manifest predilection for plain downright fact as to the great matters. And in the Letter to Diognetus there is disclosed on the writer’s part, not a fanatical excitability open to gross delusions, but a meditative calmness of clear soul, such as later Christians had in view when they spoke of their religion as a “philosophy,” meaning a contemplative life. But un- doubtedly, for our purpose the typically representative apos- tolic fathers are the remaining two,—Polycarp in the first place, and in a lower degree the Roman Clement (the Alexandrian Clement flourished circa A.D. 200). Clement, if, as is not unlikely he be the Clement (Phil. iv. 3) “whose name is in the Book of Life,” may, still in a vigorous old age, after having served in Paul’s European cam- paigning, have, at the funeral of the Apostle John,met Polycarp, John’s follower, who then, at least full thirty years of age’ (cp. Luke iii. 23; Num. iv. 3, etc.), was perhaps already known as (Rev. ii. 8) “the angel” of the church at Smyrna? While ‘Clement at Rome held high place in the western church, writing as if patriarchally to the (still) unruly Corinthians (cp. 1 Cor. i. 11, etc.), Polycarp, through the fifty years after his writing to Paul’s noble Philippians, seems a very pillar of quietly radiant influence for good in the eastern church.® In mental character, relatively to qualification for safe trans- mission of an apostolic heritage of doctrines or of Scriptures, the two men were of a type which may be delineated as follows :— 1 The “eighty and six years” at his martyrdom—the duration of his serving Christ—may refer back, not to his birth, but to his first personal profession of Christianity : so that at the date of the apocalyptic writing he might be of fullage. N.B. his importance very early in the second century. 2 Clement’s letter (the genuine one), which was written in the name of Domitian (0). a.D. 96), is placed as the oldest extant non-apostolic Chris- tian writing (he thus is not placed as a Mark or a Luke). Polycarp, young as he must have been at the time of the writing of Rev. ii. 8-10, might nevertheless conceivably be the “angel” there. In the apostolic age men —e.g. Timothy—were placed young in situations of highest trust, as there were young generals in the first French revolutionary wars. How old was the Apostle John at the great Pentecost, when he was consecrated ambassador to “all nations” ? 8 In extreme old age (A.D. 150) he made a journey to Rome for a pur- pose of mediation between east and west ; and, though unsuccessful in his mission, was duly honoured in his person. 182 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Without exceptional intellectual ability, they had in them what was much more important as qualification for that vitally important office, of transmitting the great heritage. Thus,—l. They personally love and reverence the new Scriptures. Poly- carp’s letter is full of one of them, and Clement's of another ; and both writers take occasion to do homage to particular Scriptures that are specially related to churches they are re- spectively addressing—2. They are in the spirit of the Scrip- tures, of zeal without fanatical discolouring exaggeration,—ot wisdom and power and a sound mind,—as if under baptismal influence of that inimitable authoritative tender sanctity which constitutes what is known to critics as “the scriptural style.” —3. While only one of them (Polycarp: mart. A.D. 155) is certainly known to have died for the faith, they both have quietly on their own spirit a fire-edge of that moral earnestness, which (1 Pet. i.7; Heb. xii. 1) when tried (Jas. i. 12) shows ~ the true temper of preparedness for confession and for martyr- dom. And,—4. more directly. to our present purpose, while taking an active personal interest in the Christian well-doing and well-being of churches far beyond their own immediate charges and spheres of labour, they were gifted with a regulative solid strength of judgment as men of affairs,—such that, ¢g., they were trusted and deferred to by those distant churches, as well as most influential in the communities where they were personally known. It is well to mark those qualities in these two representative leaders, who so stand as—Jachin and Boaz pillars—respect- ively in the east and in the west, on the two sides of the gate of entrance into the second century from the apostolic age. There is no reasonable doubt that they represent in history the class of Christians who came to be trusted as leaders, and imitated as examples, in their day and generation,—supported — in localities by local men like “the elders” of Jerusalem Synod (Acts xv.). In that world’s great crisis of “fiery trial” — for all time, so terribly searching relatively to—the real — desideratum for the crisis—moral earnestness on the part of professing Christians, the Church no doubt possessed, in her membership over all, a just proportion of the steadiness (1 Peta v. 10-12; ep. Luke xxii. 32) which appears conspicuously in these two foremost leaders :—a distinctively balanced quiet 1 In Polycarp’s prayer on occasion of his martyrdom, he offered him- self as a sacrifice to God (ep. Phil. ii. 17). But (Rom. xii. 1) he did so all through the “eighty and six years” of his serving Christ. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 183 force of judgment, in matters of faith and practice, such as in our time is exemplified in men like the late Dr. Tait, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, without the transcendent ability that shone in his predecessors Anselm and Bradwardin. In these two faithful witnesses we see a meet first appearance of that one and indivisible sensitive intelligence, which pervaded the whole Church life of that second century as the soul fills and rules the body, “all in the whole, and all in every part.” From the outset it put success in such mean imposture as mere forgery, creating a false unhistorical Christianity, quite out of the question—except (now) in the imagination of theorising visionaries presumably incapable of moral reason- ing (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). Our direct and primary interest here hes—we now repeat—only in ascertaining what it was that in fact the primitive Christians believed as to defence of religion. But —we repeat also—the fact of their so believing the Christian doctrine of revelation and redemption, as a thing to be main- tained at all hazards and costs, is on the face of it a pre- sumptive proof of the divinity of this religion. And they are not only thus evidential monuments, monumental evidences, but also faithful witnesses. Their judgment regarding matters of opinion—eg. that certain second century works were veritably miraculous proofs of the religion—may be no more an authority for us than the judgment of Celsus, that “ the works of Christ” were feats of magic learned in Egypt. Yet regarding matters of historical fact—which for us can be materials or grounds of a judgment of our own, and regarding which they are competent witnesses—their testimony, as borne in professedly believing this religion, is of real weight in the greatest of all trials: were it only because, while their truthful sincerity as witnesses was most terribly and search- ingly tested and proved, and their intelligence was quite adequate, in relation to the matters in question, for their “knowing what they said and whereof they affirmed,’”—they were within easy reach of authentic knowledge of those matters almost at first hand. When Sir Walter Scott wrote Waverley, “ Charlie’s Year” —'Tis Sixty Years Since—was in living memory of men who had personally witnessed its memorably thrilling in- 184 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS cidents of war and trials. The second century Christians, similarly contiguous to the primeval Christianity, were at the same time a yury—the only jury—that have heard the first century Christianity itself speaking about its few and simple ereat matters through a generation of its personal witnesses. The quality of at once witnesses and jurymen is exemplified in such individuals as Clement of Rome and Polycarp of Smyrna. CHAP. II. THz Moprern PERIOD oF APOLOGETICS. The period so described may be regarded as extending from the close of the sixteenth century to our day. The apologetics in it has been occasioned by a negativism or scepticism, relatively to the Christian religion and its records, which has arisen within the visible Christendom itself, where the primitive apologetics had heathen religions and philo- sophies as opponents. It thus cannot be rightly apprehended apart from the positive or dogmatic faith of the early Reform- ation period—sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—from which it was a recoil, or against which it was a revolt (1 John i. Sec. 1. Regarding the early Reformation and preceding “ Ages of Faith.” The Reformation dogmatic faith resumed, in common with the Romish creed, the primitive catholic doctrines of the primitive ecumenical councils regarding the constitution of the person of Christ and regarding Trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead. In opposition to a prevalent Pela- _gianism of the medieval Church, it laid great emphasis on the - Augustinian doctrine of grace, regarding fallen man’s moral corruption of nature, amounting to spiritual impotency, with the correlate fact of sovereignly efficacious grace of God as the cause of man’s regeneration and conversion. But the dis- tinctive Reformation point of doctrine was, justification by faith alone,—free pardon and acceptance, the gift of divine redeeming love, on the ground of God’s own righteousness in Christ, or as the reward of Christ’s meritorious obedience unto death for our sin ;—to the exclusion of all thought of a APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 185 righteousness of man, or of any creature, as the meritorious cause of a sinner’s pardon and acceptance. Along with that “material principle of the Reformation ”—Luther’s articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiw (“the point of a church’s standing or falling”)—there was embraced in the movement as. “formal principle,” the sole supremacy of Scripture as rule of Christian faith and practice,—as the authority for Christians regarding matters of religious truth and duty. The “old dogmatism,” of the early Reformation period, was itself a revolt against an older dogmatism, of a pharisaic traditionalism which, in germ appearing early in the primitive period of apologetics, went on unfolding through the later- primitive “age of the councils,’ and thereafter through the Middle Ages, until it reached maturity in that Romanism which was thrown off as an anti-Christian bondage by the peoples thenceforward known as Protestant. That older dogmatism differs from the old Protestant dogmatism in this, that the former ascribed authority in matters of religion to “the Church,” where the latter made Scripture to be the alone authority. But they both alike founded on authority, of supernatural revelation of a supernatural redemption, as being the appropriate object or objective ground of Christian faith. And one mode of the opposition, against which the modern apologetics has had to contend for the faith, is a Lationalism which means or involves, to the extent of its operation, rejection of that authority. “Variations” among Protestant churches (Bosswet), at the outset or eventually, need not exercise us here and now in connection with apologetics. It suffices for us to see among them (“ Harmony of the Protestant Confessions,’ A.D. 1581), at the outset of Reformation Christianity, a general accept- ance of the view, that in matters of religious faith and practice the authority is Scripture as the Word of God, the divine record of the divine revelation.” It has recently been suggested, that the divinity ascribed to Scripture in the 1The “Reformed” (Calvinistic) branch of the Reformation Church maintained, generally, that everything is unlawful in the Church that God has not prescribed in His word. The lower view, that things are lawful in the Church if He have not forbidden them, is not necessarily intended as a rationalistic rejection of the sole authority of revelation. 186 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Reformation doctrine as to “formal principle” is compatible with some wnveracity. In fact it meant, with clear conscious- ness, infallibility of Scripture, as contrasted with fallibility of popes, councils, “the Church.” The Protestantism of the early Reformation period thus was as truly dogmatic as Romanism was: though Protestantism made “the Bible, the Bible alone” (Chillingworth) to be the authority, where Romanism ascribed authority to also popes, councils, “the Church.” As opposed to rationalistic rejection of authority ab extra, the two systems are in one and the same relation to the movement of modern thought. Let us now look back beyond that early Reformation time, to remoter fountains. The whole intermediate time between the two apologetic periods—primitive and modern —was dogmatic in the sense of unquestioning acceptance of supernatural revelation,—of its doctrines as represented, ¢.9., by The Apostles’ Creed, and of our existing canonical Scriptures of both Testaments as a divine record of the divine revelation. Here we speak broadly of the character of the Christian Middle Ages over all, which is what alone concerns us at present, in our endeavour to realise the modern position as a whole. As compared with the primitive period of oppositions from heathenism, and with our modern period of oppositions from within a Christendom, the long intermediate epoch was one of unquestioning acceptance of what has been thus opposed from without or from within: so that the Middle Ages were “ages of faith,'—though (g. in the Crusades) the weapons of contending for the faith might be carnal. Indi- vidual cases of rationalism, negativism, scepticism, atheism—- medieval Servetism—do not affect the general accuracy of this representation: as the Emperor Julian's apostasy does not show that his Roman empire lapsed into heathenism at the death of Constantine the Great, and Spain is not shown to have ceased to be true “catholic” by the treason of another Julian.” The dogmatising began in the later-primitive period— “age of the councils”—with great solemnity of world- imperial sanction, almost immediately after the downfall of 1 See W. §. Landor’s Count Julian. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 187 heathen imperialism, when the empire became so far Christian (A.D. 312) through Constantine’s accession to the throne (first Ecumenical Council, Nice, A.D. 325). On the part of the series of councils, representing mainly the eastern or Greek church, it had reference to the constitution of the Godhead and of the person of Christ. But, especially in the western church, there began with, in especial, Augustine, a movement of Christian thought with reference to salvation and to sin, which, extending all down through the Middle Ages, was resumed and completed in the Reformation doctrine of grace.’ And all the thinking on the varied lines thus indicated was essentially dogmatic in the sense at present in question on our part,—namely, the sense of assuming and proceeding on the authority of supernatural revelation of God in Christ, and the divinity of Scripture as record of that revelation—though until the Reformation time there was not a decisively distinct articulation of the point, “the Bible alone.” At the very beginning of the dogmatising “age of the councils,” even in the court of the first Christian emperor, there began to appear, on the part of worldly-minded Chris- tian leaders, a Hellenism (cp. Col. ii. 8) which—analogous to the “Humanism” of paganising coteries of classic scholars at the early Reformation time—was at heart more or less rationalistic, in the sense of explaining away the positive contents of revelation into natural elements or principles of knowledge: in other words, naturalistic, to the effect of dis- placing Christian doctrine with what was only a heathenish theosophy or naturalistic philosophy of religion. And there was a rationalistic (= naturalistic) element perceptibly operative (eg. Abelard and Scotus Erigena) as an alloy in medieval speculations that might be dogmatic in intention and in essential reality. But there was not, relatively to the authority and the substantive contents of Scripture, a negativ- ism express and avowed, such as has appeared in the ign or infidel theologising, perhaps of nominally Christian teachers, that has characterised the new scholasticism of our modern period.” 1 See above, p. 184. 2 “But though German rationalism is thus in substance, and as to its fundamental principles, just old infidelity, there are two things about it 188 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Thus in the Middle Ages there was no occasion for such apologetics of the Christian faith as in this modern period has come to load the book-shelves. There was not assault calling for such defence. A veritably apologetic work belonging to the Middle Ages—a curiosity—-may on close inspection be seen to be (on behalf of Christianity and its Bible) against Mohammedanism and the Koran! Bradwardin’s great work (fourteenth century) in defence of religion is entitled The Cause of God against Atheists. But in the primitive period it was the Christians that were “atheists”: witness Athenagoras clearing them of this along with other “calumnies.”* And it appears from the sub-title that the “atheists,” especially in Bradwardin’s view, are “ Pelagians” in their theorising about second causes, His work is really in defence of the Augus- which are new—first, that it is broached and defended by men who call themselves Christians, who profess to believe in some sense in Christ and revelation, and who hold the offices of ministers and professors of Chris- tian theology. It is-true that some of the English deists in the early part of last century did occasionally express some respect for Christianity, and make something like a profession of believing it. But besides that their conduct wanted the aggravation of their holding the offices of ministers and professors of Christian theology, the sort of profession they made of Christianity could scarcely be reckoned an act of dishonesty or hypocrisy, for it was not usually made in such a way as to indicate any wish or expectation that they should be believed ; whereas, etc. . . . “ Another thing that is in a great measure new in German infidelity, though some approaches to it are to be found among the English deists, is, that their infidelity is all based upon and derived from the Bible itself. There is scarcely any one of their infidel positions for which they do not appeal to the authority of the Scriptures; and their gross perversions of the Word of God to the support of infidelity constitutes one of the greatest aggravations of the guilt which attaches to them.”—Cunningham, pp. 251, 252 of the work referred to at p. 195, below. Of those whom he thus refers to—anti-supernaturalists—he says at p. 249, they “are undoubtedly infidels, and ought ever to be regarded, spoken of, and treated as such. Their infidelity is aggravated by the grossest dishonesty and hypocrisy in pretending to be Christians and be- lievers in revelation, and they would be entitled to rather more respect if they threw off the mask altogether. The foundations of German ration- alism, or anti-supernaturalism as it is sometimes called, are, etc.”—N.B. a curious coincidence with Strauss, below, p. 227. 1 Two such works were republished, in a volume (extant at Oamaru) of tracts on Mohammedanism, with a commendatory preface by Martin Luther,—a sign of olden times. 2 In his Embassy to Marcus Anita $i above. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 189 tinian (now the Calvinistic) doctrine of sovereign grace, making God, in our salvation, to be “all in all.” The work resembles Edwards’ On the Will rather than Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe. It presupposes revelation and the divinity of Scripture. What its title betokens is, near the close of the Middle Ages and their scholasticism, the comer ascendancy of dogmatic theologising. Near the beginning of that : scholasticism (eleventh ey Anselm, Bradtardinigs predecessor in the see of Canterbury, best remembered in connection with his epoch- ee work on the Atonement,” further went into— ontology ”—the meta- physics of “theology” in the strict sense (— “ doctrine regarding God”) in a manner analogous to modern studies of “the & priort argument,’ and of high speculations of Augustine in, ¢g., The City of God and his controversy with Manicheism. So, too, at the culmination of the scholasticism (thirteenth century), did Thomas Aquinas, “the angel of the schools,” ¢g., in a separate work of defence of religion, reckoned second only to Bradwardin’s work on that defence in the Middle Ages. But these were not defences against assault of negativism or scepticism such as we now have in view. For instance, the endeavour in The City of God,—to show how it is rationally possible “to justify the ways of God to man,” or, in other words, in the face of a mundane history so disastrously dark as ours is, still (Ps. xevii. 2) to believe in a divine government of the world as declared in the Christian system, —that endeavour is* representative rather of the self-ques- tionings of “fears within” the religion than of its defensive polemic against “wars without.” And the medieval specula- tion, ontological and otherwise, was, even when aberrant, still professedly within the limits of the supernatural revelation, and under law to its authority. The dogmatic manner of thinking which characterised the 1“Tn this whole scholastic period down to the Reformation no contro- versies, public transactions and determinations of Synods, had place in the manner and with the far-reaching importance which had characterised them in the ancient church,”—Landerer, in Herzog’s Real- Encycl. Bund xiii. | 2 Cur deus homo ?= “the end of Incarnation ?” ® Cp. the book of Job and the Theodicée of Leibnitz—versus Bayle. 190 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Reformation Christianity at the outset, was dominant through its early period, down through the sixteenth century into the seventeenth. The appearance of one or more apologetic works within that period would be only as the “one swallow ” that does not “make a summer” (though it may be a stray sign that summer is nigh, as if on wing to come). If the medieval Christian thinking, on the face of it all dogmatic as a cloistered scholasticism, nevertheless had in it a soul of speculation adventurous as a wandering Crusader, on the other hand, the Reformation movement of thought, at first sight speculative enterprising as a Columbus or a Vasco de Gama, proved to be not less thoroughly dogmatic than that pent-up medizevalism or its modern heir. Protestantism, a revolt against authority merely human, gave itself over completely ¢o the authority, and contended earnestly and passionately, even unto death, for the authority of Scripture alone, or of God in Christ therein self -revealed as the Church’s living prophet, priest, and king. Even the Socinians at that early time? at least professed, like the primitive Gnostics, to found on Scripture: although in their case, as in that of the Gnostics, a rationalistic element, in forced and arbitrary construction of the Serip- tures, was a necessity of their position in holding an essentially anti-scriptural creed.” The “Humanism” of quasi pagan classicism, that ap- peared in the revival of learning, had no such place of ‘nfluence in the Reformation movement as came to be held by the Hellenism ot professedly Christian teachers in the church of the empire of Constantine the Great. For a century after the beginning of the Reformation, the ascend- ancy of a dogmatic faith was quite unbroken: controversies, abounding as they did, were only between one dogmatic system and another, all alike professing subjection to the sovereign authority of supernatural revelation of God, divinely recorded in Scripture. A philosophical speculation like that of Des Cartes, resulting from the intellectual awakening that had characterised the Reformation time, might occasion uneasiness, but would not affect the general 1 Racovian Catechism—Ree’s translation, with notes. 2 Op. the Unitarian ‘ Revised Version” of the New Testament. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 191 character of the period as dogmatic in its thought. The “Cartesian doubt” was not intentionally even a philosophical negativism or scepticism. It was only a provisional suspense of the judgment, with a view to rising from primary principles and elements of knowledge into coherent system. Its cogito ergo sum might be intended or construed as meaning only a primary judgment that phenomenon implies nowmenon or substance quality. It might conceivably apply, as a regu- lative principle, to our believing apprehension of the materials of knowledge that are supernaturally given in scriptural revelation, as well as to our believing apprehension of the materials of knowledge that are given as a natural revelation in the two worlds of matter and of mind. And with refer- ence to supernatural revelation and redemption, the modern doubt or disbelief (which Professor Huxley—in bad Greek— has named “ Agnosticism”), which came into distinct visibility in the early English deism, cannot with truth be said to have exercised a historically recognisable influence until the sixteenth century was drawing to a close,—after the definitive political success of the original Reformation movement had been signalised by the destruction of the Spanish Armada and sealed by the Spanish recognition of the Dutch Republic. A wave of worldiiness thereafter passed over the Protestant communities, as a wave of worldliness had passed over the Christianised Roman empire, when “the churches had rest.” And that wave preceded or accompanied, and presumably occasioned (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4; cp. Matt. vi. 19-24) the scepti- cism or disbelief relatively to the Scriptures (Hobbes, Leviathan), to Bible religion (Herbert), to supernaturalism generally (Spinoza, Zractatus Theol. Pol. und Hthica), which was represented by such masters as Bayle with French versatility, and Spinoza with Teutonic profundity, before making its most conspicuous appearance in the eighteenth century English deism.’ The retrograde movement from belief is not accounted for by divisions among Protestants, nor by the gradual cessation of the sort of alliance of Protestantism with “ Humanism ” or worldly culture that existed in the early Reformation time. 1 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, De Veritate, A.D. 1624. 2 As to which, see Cunningham Lectures of the late Principal Cairns. 192 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS But it has been represented as a “reaction” from the fervours of early Reformation movement: as if ebb-tide had been a re- action from the upward flow. Reaction from that warm, glowing fulness of life which constitutes health is negative disease, the foretaste and threatening foreshadow of corruption ending in death (morally and spiritually, negative disease itself is posit- ive, as the absence of “light” is darkness). And the glowing warmth of early Reformation evangelism was far from historic- ally appearing to be a mere unhealthy feverish excessiveness.' It apparently was not that excessiveness of fever-heat, which really is weakness, even when complexionally violent, and which by necessity of nature is followed by fever-chill. It was not excessive as compared, ¢.g., with the “ first love” of primitive Christianity, and the claim on man’s affection that is constituted by God’s “unspeakable Gift.’ Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, were not, more than Paul, David, Moses, fever-heated, irrational visionaries like the Anabaptists, but in truth were the foremost statesmen of their time. Let us begin with recognising the fact of a worldliness, operative in the Protestant communities, in displacement of the Reforma- tion vital godliness; and that, whatever may have been the cause of it, will enable us to comprehend the rise of negat- ivism or scepticism as its effect. Warburton said,? with reference to latitudinarian world- liness of English and Scottish clergy, “Socinus is at the root.” And his young correspondent, well knew, in the existing condition of his own Church, what would suffice to account for the rising of negativism or scepticism in Reformation Christendom ;—that Church being, under leadership ® of his own colleague, Robertson the historian—friend of Hume and Gibbon—far gone in worldliness, that was destined to present, in her supreme court,‘ a resolute front of opposition to his 1 See, e.g., Knox’s Letter—of remonstrance, on account of languor—to the Reformed Scottish Nobility. 2 Letter to Dr. John Erskine, in Sir H. Moncreiff’s (senr.) Life ay Erskine. 3 Afterwards—Guy Mannervng. 4 Assembly, a.pD. 1796,—when Erskine, then an aged man, began his reply with his famous “ Moderator, rax (= reach) me that Bible.” The occasion of his first writing to Warburton was, his sending him his own first publication, in defence of natural theology, against a “ Moderate,” Dr. Sy fe 7 Mixer Se ee ee ey sae Pe pane =) ree Se ee a ee ee roe tee ne Ce te MO er oa erie ge ee os re Lage oe ira a Pe APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 193 movement for some beginning of action on behalf of missions to the heathen. This was in the century after such apologetic works as those of Grotius (A.D. 1622) and of Baxter! had begun to appear in the literature of Christian communities. And it is to be observed that those earlier apologies were occasioned, not by movement, through publication of books or otherwise, in open opposition to Christianity as from without its pale, but rather by a felt necessity of dealing with objections that were, so to speak, in the atmosphere of the communities, and per- haps (as in Baxter’s own case, and more memorably in Pascal’s) were felt as working in the Christian writer’s own mind. That itself has a significance of suggesting that moral and spiritual decadence, as compared with the original Reforma- tion full healthiness of living religion, was preparing the way for negativism or scepticism relatively to the truth of the religion. And when we look from the seventeenth century down along the course of the eighteenth, we everywhere see symptoms of mournful progress in that moral and spiritual decadence, as indicated, within the churches, by abandonment of the Reformation dogmatic faith ;*—dissolution or decay of that positive belief, of the substance of evangelical Christian truth, which is the root, the living foundation, of practical Christianity in heart and soul. In Britain the decline and fall was exemplified as with a tragically vivid completeness. Thus, in the preface to his famous Analogy (A.D. 1736), Butler stated that at that time men professing enlightenment did not so much as pretend to inquire about the truth of religion, but openly spoke and pro- ceeded on the view that religion was now definitively so found untrue, as by common consent of capable judges to be held a George Campbell of St. Andrews, who—like the Socinians—threw cold water on that appeal to reason. | 1 See above, “ prefatory anecdote.” 2 “There had, however [a.D. 1736], been no revival of real religion and vital godliness in England. The Church continued as thoroughly sunk in worldliness and carelessness, as perfectly indifferent about all the high and holy functions of a church of Christ, at the middle as at the beginning of last century, and hence infidelity as well as irreligion continued to pre- vail.”—Cunningham, at p. 233 of the work referred to at p. 195. 13 194 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS mere antiquated hollow thing, not worth inquiring about. But at that time those who professed the religion were show- ing that they no longer seriously believed it as professed, and were on a down-slide of abandoning the profession. A strong party in the English Establishment were understood to have abandoned the evangelical fundamental of the Godhead of Christ. And outside of the Establishment the Presbyterians, for instance, at one time so strong in learning and ability of their ministers, and the hold they had on the respectable middle class, had begun to show that among them, too, “ Socinus was at the root.” The present writer has seen at Chester Philip Henry’s pulpit Bible in what had come to be a Uni- — tarian chapel. If it remain there, Unitarianism may go thence (1 John ii. 19); but it is sad to think that now, in congre- gations like what that of the Henrys once was, while husbandmen are sleeping, enemies may be preparing the way for infidelity by sowing Socinian tares. In a great cathedral city, at the opening of a Presbyterian church, he found that among Christians there Presbyterianism is in a measure regarded as a synonym for Socinianism. And the cause is shown by history in which the Presbyterian slid- ing from the Reformation faith is seen resulting, before the close of the eighteenth century, in reduction of that once powerful and famous evangelical Church to the quality and dimensions of little more than a few Socimian chapels. And the cause of that cause we see in the advancing worldliness! which was a death-chill at the heart of even historical belief in Christianity among those professing it (cp. Matt. xxiv. 12). Thus, very soon after the close of that century, Andrew Fuller, in his work, The Calvinistic and — Socinian Systems Compared—as tested by their practical fruits respectively—reproduces, from published writings of leading 1 « After the Revolution of 1688 . . . there was no real revival of true religion in the Church of England ; and even the Nonconformists, who, from the Restoration to the Revolution, had been, while subjected to great ri hardships and persecutions, almost the only preservers and promoters of — piety and godliness, soon fell to a considerable extent under the influence of the loose latitudinarian semi-infidel spirit which prevailed almost uni- versally in the Established Church.”—Cunningham, at p. 230 of the work referred to at p. 195. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 195 representative Unitarians of the immediately preceding period, ample proof that in their community practical religion had substantially no real existence, excepting some survival, in’ individual cases, of an inherited Puritan feeling without the Puritan faith. It is with immediate reference to what - thus appeared in England that? Principal Fairbairn of Glasgow? made the general statement, that the history of religion as a real thing might be written without mention of Socinians. So it went elsewhere in the British isles. In Scotland, for instance, under a regime of “a cold Moderatism,” in what now is known as “the dark age” of the national Church, at the close of the century Ramsay’s book on Zhe Socinian Creed was written by way of antidote to publications by leading ecclesiastics of an Establishment based on the Westminster standards. And at the beginning of the present century it was a Herculean labour? to deliver the Irish Presbyterian Church from a bondage of tolerated anti-trinitarianism that had endured through another “dark age.” All which meant departure of the old Reformation life and power of relzgion in men’s hearts: leaving their minds open and unguarded— “empty, swept, and garnished ”—for entrance of the spirit of unbelieving or sceptical worldliness,—since ‘nature abhors gavoid” 4 On the European Continent—as is known and read of all men—the worldliness with its make-belief not only passed over the German mother-country of the Reformation: pro- ducing in the first instance a frigid, pedantic, “dead orthodoxy” 1 See above, p. 173. 2 Introduction to Dorner’s Person of Christ. 3 Life of Dr. Henry Cooke, by Porter. 4 “ Perhaps a still worse result has been, that some of the defenders of Christianity, having themselves very defective and erroneous views of the doctrines of the gospel, as was certainly the case with many of those who chiefly conducted the defence of revelation against the English infidels of the early part of last century, have been led to explain away the doctrines of Christianity, to prune them down to what the natural reason of man- kind might be inclined to receive as true and probable, and to reduce the Christian revelation to little more than a republication of the law of nature” (p. 191 of Theological Lectures, the first thoughts, as professor, of Principal Cunningham of Edinburgh, the greatest master in theology Scotland ever produced). 196 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS __stark and stiff repulsive—where once a living joyful apprehension of the evangel of grace had filled the land with song. Before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes it had visited the French Reformed Church, whose record of a high heroic spirit is perhaps the most glorious in the annals of the early Reformation movement among the peoples. From her there had gone out the most celebrated sceptic of the seventeenth century before Scotland produced the most celebrated sceptic of the eighteenth,—if not of all time hitherto. Her exiles, in the lands of their dispersion, made such a mixed impression that “ French Calvinist” might on some lips be a synonym for clever sceptic. And Calvin’s own Geneva—erst the Jerusalem of highest and most advanced Reformation evangelism — at the opening of the’ present century had come to be the head-centre of a “neology” which, now better known as “ German Rationalism,” was essentially a reappearance of what in the early Reformation time was known as the Socinianism of Racow. The late Principal Cunningham? said that Dr. Rigg, in tracing the Maurician corruptions of the faith to influence of the philosophy of. Coleridge and his school, had not sufficiently allowed for a remaining influence of early Socinianism formally abandoned. But the two influences really were one. An old Puritan spoke of “new theology ” as “ old philosophy,” _——naturalistic speculation employing the terminology of supernatural Christian revelation. Conversely, “new philo- sophy ” may be “ old theology.” Socinianism of the Reforma- tion time was this new philosophy by anticipation,—as the chrysalis is future butterfly. That is to say, the naturalism, which the old Socinianism had in its heart, in its rationalistic rejection of scriptural evangelism, needed only a congenial sunshine, of favouring outward conditions, in order to take wing, and rise, and soar, as a naturalistic speculation of real or imitation (shoddy) transcendentalism. And the same naturalism is perhaps here and there to be heard in what passes among “ the simple” for “the preaching ” Ale Carc 91-24), by the foolishness of which, while the world by 1 See preceding footnote—clarum et venerabile nomen !—in a review of Dr. Rigg’s Modern Anglican Theology. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 197 wisdom knew not God, it pleased God to save them which believe. Paul’s “gospel” may thus (2 Tim. iv. 1-4) come to be displaced by another which is none (Gals iv 8).7 In place of that evangel (1 Cor. i. 21-24), which (1 Cor. ii. 1) he deter- mined to make the only thing in his preaching, there may come what excludes it, a mere naturalism that might be preached by a Buddhist revivalist.’ This may now be tolerated, welcomed, sought after, demanded, in communities ostensibly evangelical; as it was among the English Presby- terian hearers of Pierce and Hallet, ap. 1717: “it shall be like priest like people.” But if it be so, the Reformation evangelism of religion is dead or dying in that people’s heart ; and the worldliness of naturalism, whether it pass through the chrysalis form of Socinianism or not, is there in possession, and ready to rise into full-flown manifestation in unbelief, open and confessed. Christ and His apostles, when by their example and by their express instructions inculcating defence of His religion, presuppose real belief of it, and consequent believing confession of it. Where there is not that, there already is an inchoate assault on the religion ; since non- confession is passive denial (Matt. x. 33, cp. ver. 32), SO that evasion is oblique negation, and a substitute is a supplanter. Suc, 2. Movement within the New Apologetic Period. The eighteenth century has been pronounced “the golden age of mediocrity”: a censure that is not refuted by speaking about “vast material progress ””—-which is irrelevant. At least the Protestantism of that century seemingly was under disability of a flat commonplace, that is fatal in religion, and also in philosophy, as (Hor.) it is in poetry and art. Un- belief, on the other hand, may appear to have in that century reached its highest (or lowest?); since now it came out openly against Christianity on the field of argument by reasoning, where in the primitive oppositions to this religion 1 Not long ago a Buddhist. priest spoke highly in commendation of Christianity, especially its gospel history—eacepting two things, which precisely are the two things left out of the “ preaching” (?) above alluded to. 198 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS the argument had mainly been mere force, that gave not to the religion a fair field, of “ place for apology.” In any case, through now concentrating our attention on that eighteenth century, with its antecedents and consequences, we shall be on a way to comprehension of the existing apologetic situation, as arising out of that grand assault of learned unbelief on Christianity and its records, which has been so notable a character of the spiritual history of the century that now is in its last decade. We will not linger on the suggestive question, why, while Christians glory in the unchanged antiquity of their faith, should it be offensive to unbelievers to be told that their present position was held by unbelieving predecessors ? Strauss and others might take it ill to be twitted with the circumstance, that the learning, of which they made large display, had been borrowed without due acknowledgment from such Christian treasuries as that of English Lardner’s master-work. But even to the most sensitive ambition there was nothing essentially mortifying in the historial fact, that the recent “ theories,” which have played a great part in the movement, were anticipated by English deists of last century : not only Renan’s, which at bottom is only old “ vulgar infidelity” in a new dress, but also the mythic theory which made Strauss famous, and even (on the part of one who was supposed to be not quite sane) Baur’s peculiar “theory ” of primeval Christian history. Those deists, it is to be noted, did not give their strength to such theorising—that is, to framing a view 1 of Christ and Christianity, explaining what we are to think about Him and His religion—what is or can be the real fact regarding Him, — if it be not, what Christendom believes, that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself” ? They occupied themselves with assailing this belief, labouring to destroy its defences: in publications which in great measure have ceased to be read, but with arguments which, no doubt, will continue to be repeated; as—Baur tells us—the now current objec- tions are in large measure a repetition of arguments which were employed by Celsus (and answered by Origen and others) in. the primitive period of apologetics. And the 1 Greek for theory. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 199 bane, which thus again has come, has again produced its antidote. The direct or indirect, overt or covert, opposition to Christian belief, that arose on occasion of decadence of Christian life in the churches, was met by numerous apologetic publications, which constitute a new library of apologetics. Into the warfare of defence there were drawn a variety of gifts from varied regions of the Christendom that was threatened in its faith: e¢g., not only the fervid evan- gelical genius of Baxter, and the profoundly spiritual intelli- gence of Halyburton, among British Calvinists, but Dutch Arminian Grotius, Amyraldian French Abaddie in a once deservedly celebrated work, and, most celebrated of all, Romanist Blaise Pascal (Thoughts on Religion). Even Socinians did. yeoman service in the standard works of Lardner and Jeremiah Jones. The literature thus produced has the peculiar interest of a living literature, that “has battle in it,” as contrasted with mere academic book-work. It thus resembles the primitive Church apology in respect of being a veritable “earnest contending,” as pro aris et focis (“ for altar and hearth”), on the part of men who see and feel that the religion, which they deem the highest and most precious thing on earth, is now put on a real trial before the world, so as to be imperilled in its hold on the mind and heart and life of the community. Sir James Stephen, who! so disparages labour of this kind, unwittingly bears a strong testimony to its value. For, with immediate reference to the English apologists of that early time, he states that in learning, ability, and judicial temper they were incomparably superior to the assailants as a class. Now that itself is a presumptive proof of the truth of the religion they defended ;? and no doubt has its effect in estab- lishing men in the belief of this religion—including this critic (Sir J. S.) himself, who cannot but be influenced in favour of belief by his opinion, that at such a testing time far the best qualified judges were on the side of the religion assailed. But apart from this consideration of the just weight of the personal testimony of such men, the library of their apolo- 1 See above, “ prefatory anecdote.” 2 Op. “ Arnauld, le grand Arnauld, fait mon apologie.” 200 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS getic works is intrinsically a treasure of inestimable value for all following time: as may appear from the fact that so many of them continue to be reprinted and read,—thus held as things which “the world will not willingly let die,’— while the works they answered are for the most part remem- bered only from their answers, as the work of Celsus is extant only in Origen’s refutation of it. Excepting a few, such as those of Baxter and Halyburton, their works are deficient in respect of the primitive ardour and glow, as of confession with preparedness for martyrdom. And they are very detrimentally characterised by an incom- pleteness, a coldness, if not a backwardness, in the matter of setting forth evangelical Christianity in substance,—which is the true heart and core of real defence, as in the great siege of Jerusalem the temple was the central citadel of the national strength But they are greatly superior to the primitive apologists in comprehensiveness of view of the whole subject and its bearings, as well as in thoroughness in dis- cussion of particular questions or expiscation of detailed points. And to some extent they make the ground their own, so that now the straight way to master it is, to begin with learning from them or studying through them. The highly important position, for instance, of Butler in his Analogy, it is quite useless expenditure of energy for any one to think of making his own otherwise than through that master-work. And Lardner’s great collection of materials is so complete and accurate, that subsequent scholarship cannot 1“ Wherever personal piety and vital godliness sink to a low ebb, the views of the Christian system which generally prevail invariably assume a Socinian or a Pelagian, or what is virtually the same thing, though not so fully developed, a latitudinarian cast. This was remarkably the case in England during the deistical controversy of last century ; and accordingly, in the writings of the defenders of Christianity during that period, you find many erroneous and defective views of the doctrines of revelation, many attempts to show how reasonable they are when properly and rationally explained, 7.e. when explained away ; how easily infidels might admit them when freed from the corruptions which creeds and systems had introduced ; or, in other words—for this is the real meaning of men of that class when they use such language—when stripped of everything that is mysterious, and reduced to the level of what is fully and in every respect comprehensible by human reason.”—Cunningham, at pp. 264, 265 of the work referred to above, p. 195. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 201 warrantably profess to do anything in the way of addition or correction beyond some little gleaning in a field whose full harvest he has gathered. When Lord Napier’s engineering had brought his ee within striking distance of Magdala, the Abyssinian campaign was virtually finished, as with a vend, vida, vict: there, in its heart of strength, the Ethiopian empire, with its emperor, was as it were destroyed by a look. And some such preparation, for final summary disposal of emergent oppositions to Chris- tian faith, may be made through simply studying apologetics in the works of past masters of it. The emergent oppositions may, as in Baxter’s experience, be in a man’s own doubts and difficulties,—eg., in seasons of mental or spiritual depression, — rising in the mind with reference to rational foundations of historical belief in the religion. Or they may arise in the community where a man is placed as leader, perhaps as public teacher and witness of the religion: the publication of some infidel work, or some movement of sceptical propagandism, creating a situation of perilous crisis for the community,—where it is, “ Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child.” There may be unreasoning panic, and in some cases a shipwreck as con- cerning faith, on account of some thus emergent oppositions which the people imagine to be new and strange: a panic and disaster that would not have taken place if the public teacher of this religion had known from study of the past, that the seemingly new and strange objection is really old. Here it may be new and strange through ignorance of the past. And good is done by showing from the past that it is an old exploded objection, which now looks new because it was forgotten; having been weighed and found worthless,-— judged, Reoontietl buried out of memory,—in a preceding generation. There is a preparedness for on such occasion “strengthening the brethren” (Luke xxii. 32) in the leader’s being acquainted with that past, and so not personally hable to panic; as Coleridge; when asked whether he believed in ghosts, said, No: that he had seen too many of them. On the other hand, if at such a time the leaders be blind mis- leaders, bewildering because bewildered, that may be traceable 202 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS to laziness or presumption, of men failing to learn for the present what is taught by the past. Still, there has to be a reality of the religion, a life of the faith: otherwise—as has been felt in connection with last century apologists—the apologetic may be only so much firing blank cartridge at a Magdala capital of dark empire The late Principal Cairns (Cunningham Lectures) perhaps went too far in his honouring the internal evidence—or, the testimonium Spiritus Sancti—as if in a measure making it to supersede the external or producible evidence; but he did good service in repeatedly and very earnestly calling attention to the subject. And in the same interest we make the following Note from a different point of view :-— Note on the Testimonium Spiritus Sanctt.—The witness of the Spirit is (Conf. of Faith, chap. i. sec. 5)? by the evangelical theology placed as being in Scripture a self-evidencing diwonety of authorship (2 Tim. iii. 16; 2 Pet. 1. 20, 21), or oracular quality of the Scripture (Rom. iii. 2; 1 Pet. iv. 11), which is what makes that Scripture to be a suitable object or object- ive ground of spiritual faith? But to put this internal evidence in place of that external evidence,* in respect of which 1“Tt is right that all attacks made upon Christianity with a show of reasoning and learning should be met, as they always have been, with better reasoning and superior learning. But the exposure of infidel objec- tions and the establishment by unanswerable arguments of the truth of the Christian revelation are not enough to secure the great objects for which that revelation was given; and the diminished extent to which an open profession of infidelity has subsequently prevailed, though in some measure to be accounted for by temporary and adventitious causes, may also be regarded as proving that nothing so much contributes to discourage and prevent a general public profession of infidelity as an increase in the number of those who are living under the influence of personal religion, and are really taking the Word of God as a light unto their feet and a lamp unto their path.”—Cunningham, at p. 233 of the work referred to above, p. 195. 2 This admired section—see commentary on it in Cunningham’s work above referred to—is no Westminster specialty. It is, with perhaps one shade of local modification, an abstract of the relative part of Calvin’s Institutes, representing a commonplace of Reformation evangelism of doctrine. 8 Owen, The Reason of Faith = “rationale of an internal evidence.” 4 Cunningham (in the work referred to at p. 195) holds (pp. 226, 324, 330) that Owen, referring to Baxter (whom he does not name), fails APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 203 the Scripture, or the religion, is an object or objective sround of rational assent and historical belief (see Acts xxvi. 27), would, in the view of that evangelical theology, be a dangerously irrational mysticism, like that of the fanatical Anabaptists and others in relying on “new revelations” of the Spirit im them, instead of inward light for seeing what is outwardly revealed im the Word. It really displaces both kinds of evidence—the internal as well as the external—from their appropriate respective offices. The external evidence is displaced—its “ occupation is gone “— if its appropriate office, of showing that the religion of Scripture is entitled to man’s assent of reason, or historical faith, be usurped by the testimoniwm Spiritus Sancti; which addresses itself, not to the common reason of all men who are simply sane, but (1 Cor. ii. 14; ep. Matt. xiii. 10-17) only to a spiritual discernment which is a special “gift” conferred on some men. And, on the other hand, this witness of the Spirit, if placed as an external evidence—which in fact it is not, since it does not reach the common reason of mankind—is so far withdrawn from its own appropriate, peculiar, and distinctive office and place, and sent away to what may be mischievous misapplications— as of “idle hands” ( Watts’ hymn), while its abandonment of its one true place and office is a fatal damage to the true life of religion in its heart. The perilousness of so dislodging the testemonium Spiritus Sancti from its one true place and office, as a witnessing “in and with the Word” (C. of F. as above) in our hearts, is illustrated by a recent suggestion that, for the purpose of sustaining our faith in Scripture as the Word of God, that witness of the Spirit should in some way come in place of truthfulness of the Word, in its representations regarding plain matter of historical fact (see, on the contrary, the question of Christ, John iii. 12). This is abandonment of the Reformation ground of “the Bible alone.” It is lapse into the old “ fanatical” reliance on “ new revelations” of the Spirit, to enable us to put implicit faith in a word which is not infallible. It joins hands with a rationalism that thus finds itself with “strange- bedfellows.” And by confounding things which differ, it puts rational belief in peril of being lost in a fog. In the present connection, then, with the general subject to make due acknowledgment of the competency and value of that external evidence, which Baxter contended for, He sees in Halyburton the same one-sidedness (as in Owen). 204 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS of apologetics historically regarded, we perceive, that to put the inward witness of the Spirit im place of external evidence addressing the common reason of mankind, would so far be,— 1. to put the proof of religion out of reach of perception for mankind in general, and,—2. to bereave the spiritual faith, which alone is saving, of that support which (cp. 2 Pet. 1. 5—21)—as in Baxter’s case—it might receive from a simply historical belief, established, in the judgment of reason, by such external evidence, that can be known and read of all men, as that of miracle in working and predicting,—to the effect, eg., of demonstrating the historical trustworthiness of Scripture in its representations as to matter of fact. Still, the external evidence is in practical effect as if hollow and heartless (see the “persuaded” at Luke xvi. 31) where there is heartless hollowness of religious profession on the part of those presenting the evidence, or of the com- ‘munity of professed believers, on whose behalf it is presented (Isa. xiii. 10), as (1 Tim. ui. 15) “the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.’ And if the last century apologists were as a class deficient in respect of cordial explicit confession of evangelical Christianity in sub- stance as being the thing defended by them,—it may appear that (Acts xiv. 3) God provided for what thus was wanting, in the direction so earnestly insisted on by Principals Cunning- ham and Cairns, through otherwise “giving testimony to the word of His grace.” For, simultaneously with that good service on the ground of external evidence, the Church was visited with what well might be regarded as a new creation of life like that which ae appeared in the early-primi- tive period of apologetics. This movement,’ originating and spreading variously from independent centres, was invariably characterised by reappearance, in cordial full rejoicing pro- clamation, of the early Reformation doctrine of “the gospel of the grace of God.” So, about the time when Butler, with characteristic seriousness of sad earnest, was making his memorable statement about (cp. Isa. lii. 1) the contemptuous incredulity with which religion had come to be regarded by men professing enlightenment, and when on the part of those professing it the religion had reached its lowest and worst 1 Ryle, Christian Heroes of Last Century. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 205 condition of seeming spiritual abandonment in worldliness,— then, apart from the apologetic movement to which he was a contributor so puissant, there began, at first in isolated cases of individuals and localities, a spiritual movement, as it were a stirring among the dry bones in Ezekiel’s valley of vision, where lay “the House of Israel,’ forsaken because forsaking. It now is seen to have been a veritable awakening as from the dead (Eph. v. 14), a revival or restoration of the lost or waning life of primeval Christianity. It extended widely over western Christendom, which had so profound a need of such awakening: always in a manner that illustrated and enforced, relatively to a real defence of religion, success- ful in production or in restoration of belief, the principle which was declared to the weakling Zerubbabel in connection with the appointed restoration of God’s Temple and replace- ment of its Candlestick,—“ Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. iv. 6). And that evangelical awakening had, both in Europe and in America, exercised a distinctly perceptible influence on the general course of thought and feeling previously to (preparatorily for ?) that grand assault on Christianity by a really learned unbelief, in meeting which, in its full development, the modern apologetics has been led on to its existing culmination, at what perhaps is near the close of such trials of mankind in history. ., Simultaneously, 7x philosophy there was a felt need of awakening, which was granted, and which has resulted in one of the most. remarkable movements in the intellectual history of mankind. “ Hume,” said Kant, “ first awakened me out of my dogmatic slumbers.”? But Hume, with his universal scepticism, was an inevitable product of a shallow sensation- 1 See, ¢.g., Life of Brainerd and Works of Jonathan Edwards: particu- larly, Edwards’ two works on Revival of Relagion—true principia of the subject. Berkeley’s apologetic work, Alciphron or The Minute Philosopher, was prepared in America. 2 See prize essays on the question, ‘What progress has Metaphysics made in Germany since the time of Leibnitz and Wolff?” Berlin, a.p. 1796. The writers are Schwab, Reinhold, and Abicht. The propounder of the theme, with special reference to Kantism, was the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. 506 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS alism in philosophy, “the sentence after the last,” of what nowadays is widely prevalent, especially among “ scientists ” (employing “weapons of precision ”—e.g. the microscope ?), under such names as “positive philosophy,” or under no name as a simply practical epicurism. That philosophy, in this its reappearance, was a product of the human mind re- flecting on itself in that worldliness of condition into which the professedly Christian communities had lapsed in the closing of the early Reformation period. It ran into a shallow narrowness of mere “scientism,” not rising beyond physical nature, that might call itself “the Baconian philo- sophy ”: though Bacon? would have deeply scorned it; as it elicited the swva indignatio of Warburton’s dictum, “ It is well known that the best mathematician in England is the worst reasoner in it.”2 The sensationalist psychology (“ doc- trine regarding mind or soul ”)—-which Comtians nowadays regard as if it were a new revelation to them, a distinguish- ing glory of their “ philosophy ”__was expounded by Locke,’ himself a Christian apologist,’ a real master, with a solidly persistent force of penetrative intelligence not equalled by any of its recent expositors ; to be thereupon answered, point for point,> by Leibnitz, true father of the German philosophy, with at least an equal copiousness of luminous power of reflective thought. ‘But still there was need of awakening from “ dogmatic slumbers.” So Hume came, to displace the Berkeleyan dilly-dallying between Yes and No (ep. the medizeval title Sve et Non) with a persistent following out of the sensationalism, carrying out its principles to their legitimate logical conclusion. And the result was——universal scepticism. That really was a reductio ad absurdwm of the sensationalism (and may have been so intended by Hume, who spoke of speculations of this kind as on his part “a sort of philosophical delirium ”). He was ' gifted with a comprehensive grasp of the relative © learning 1 See his Hsswys— Of Atheism.” 2 In our day there are many real scientists who at the same time are philosophers, rising from physical law to principles and ideas, and theologians, believing in God. 3 Hssay on the Human Understanding. 4 The Reasonableness of Christianity. 5 Nouveaua Essai sur 0 Entendement Humain. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 207 of thought,” as well as a philosophical acumen, that makes him to be of a different world from such an “agnostic” as Professor Huxley (whose comprehension of Hume on miracle’ seems on a level with his Greek). It was not the intellectual power, which made his greatness, that he had in common with sensational psychologists. What he had in common with them was only the presupposition of their psychology, that all human knowledge is primarily received in and through corporeal sensation. And the use he made of the presup- position was,—not, like them, to build on it a system of “positive” or otherwise-named “ philosophy,” but—to show that there is and can be no solid foundation of certainty in knowledge of anything. (Renan came to the same conclusion —philosophically—from the same premiss.) Zhis it was that occasioned the “ awakening” of Kant and others. Seeing that the sensationalism thus leads to the conclu- sion, that there is no real foundation for solid knowledge, they sought for a foundation in a deeper psychology. And this was found, by both Reid and Kant,’ in the direction that had been indicated in Leibnitz’s answer to Locke. Where Locke had said (misapplying an old scholastic maxim), “There is nothing in the understanding that was not first in sensation” (in sensu—really —= “in primary apprehension’), Leibnitz answered, “ Except understanding vtself” (nist in- tellectus ipse). 1. The understanding itself, the knowing or percipient mind, is a thing known to us, in our consciousness or inward awaredness of all our knowledge, feeling, desiring, willing a thing specifically, yea, generically different, of a different world, from that whole material system which makes itself felt by us in corporeal sensation. 2. Even our primary apprehension of that material world outside of us, said Reid, is not mere sensation. It is a distinctly ratconal perception, the mind’s apprehending an object outside of itself; as reflec- tion is an internal perception of the mind apprehending itself as 1 See above, p. 22. 2 It is interesting to note that the two were in a sense compatriots ; Kant being by extraction a Scotchman,—the grandson of a saddler from Fife (“Cant”). : 3 Cp. cogito ergo sum, above, p. 191. 4 Inquiry into the Human Mind, and Hssays—“ Perception.” 2908 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS an object of knowledge. 3. Jn the understanding, there are principles (and elements?) of knowledge, distinct from the individual things that are apprehended in our act of knowing particulars, but which are brought into action and manifesta- tion on the surface of our mind in its process of thinking about particulars :—such as, ¢g., (1) the “law of contradic- tion,” which is the principle of all deductive reasoning; (2) “the law of cause and event,” or the causal judgment, which is the principle of all inductive reasoning, or of real physical “ scientism” as distinguished from a mere dabbling in the sur- face history of nature (dabbling otherwise called, in its totality, “the positive philosophy”); and (3) principles or elements of esthetics (Taste sense of the beautiful), and of ethics (Conscience sense of the morally good) ;—all aspiring toward Life, in (4) true knowledge of Gop (cp. John xvii. 3), though the aspiring should be as an eagle that has not light nor atmo- sphere to soar in, and though the soul, made for aspiring, should actually not aspire, but “cleave unto the dust ” (Ps. exix. 2.5). The direction thus indicated was that of an idealising spiritualistic philosophy, in revulsion from a so-called philo- sophy that is essentially narrow and shallow materialising in its tendency and goal. In that direction, Reid and the Seottish school, with followers of high distinction in France, took the solidly safe way of adhering to “common sense,” founding on principles and elements of knowledge that are given to all men in primary apprehension of real objects, and that place all men under an irresistible necessity of accepting them as true; while it is the office of philosophy to separate them from the particular things in connection with which the mind becomes aware of them, and to build them up into a system conformably to the requirements of their nature. Kant, on the other hand,—in what Jacobi, “the German Plato,” reckoned a fatal mistake,—threw away that primary knowledge of real things which we obtain in external and internal perception. He retained only the “ understanding ” (intellectus ipse) which is awakened into action on occasion of perceptions external and internal. And he sought to build a system out of elements and principles—not given to the understanding as things apprehended in such perception, but that are in the structure of understanding as such. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 209 The transcendentalism of speculation thus exemplified, that soars in or into disconnection with knowledge of real things attained in primary perceptive apprehension, was by and by found to be an eagle soaring without atmosphere or light. It ended in pantheism: in whose view there are no real things, but only a universal thing, which is an ocean of characterless being (== nothing?). The same result had earlier appeared in the pantheism of Spinoza; which had followed by logical necessity from the principle which to his apprehension really underlies the Cartesian cogito ergo sum. And Jacobi maintained earnestly that the same result inevit- ably follows, by logical necessity of the nature of the case, wherever a speculative philosophy—that is, a real philosophy, trying to see things in their principle, to comprehend them as a system—is “transcendental” to the effect of not taking into its view the primary materials of knowledge that are given in external and internal perception (including intuitions of conscience and taste). But the intellectual awakening, which thus—in the person of Kant and others—preceded the recent grand assault of unbelieving “criticism” on Christianity, so far prepared believing scholars for meeting the assault. And the pan- theistic or the atomistic naturalism (cp. “the Stoics and the Epicureans” at Acts xvii. 15-32), which was the real originative impulse in the “critical” assault—by mine or storm—was a leading instrumental cause of its inevitable defeat (“the defeat of rationalism’’—tile of a chapter in modern history). The defeat of rationalism—which is, of anti-supernaturalism—becomes inevitable when the matter comes to be reasoned out. For here again mere naturalism, which is essential in the being of a soaring pantheism as well as of a grovelling materialism, not only fails to satisfy the reason, in its craving (cp. Gen. i. 3, 16) for some real coherent view of the things around us and within us as a system or connected whole. Also and especially, it has no provision for the soul or heart. For it has to exclude, from its innermost nature it repels and repudiates, what to man’s heart or soul is THE GREAT THING, whose reality is the con- stitutively crowning fact of the system,—the thing without 1 Greek for theory. 14 910 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS which all other things are a system without a sun, an empire without a governmental metropolis, a body without informing light and life of spirit (Gen. ii. 7), namely, free will,— living personality, moral agency, rational spontaneity !—in God the Creater at one pole of the system, from which He is distinct while He “ filleth all in all” and “ worketh all in all”; and at the other pole in creatures who are His image in “ spirituality, freedom, immortality,” while it is in Him that they “live, and move, and have their being.” Thus the speculative transcendentalism, though it should lead the soul, through some Red Sea passage, out of the Egypt of a narrow shallow sensationalism that lands in scepticism, yet after all, if it end in a mere naturalism called pantheistic, only leaves the soul unprovided for in a Sinaitic wilderness, there to die (Deut. viii. 3). The vital question is about, not merely intellect or understanding, but the soul, the “spirit” that is “in man,” the thing in him that aspires,—the man himself in his true being’s being (Gen. ii. 7; Job xxxu. 8). Hence all mere naturalism is for man a dead thing, giving him no Canaan land of blessed rest; because it has nothing for the soul (Matt. xi. 28, 29; John iv. 10-14). Who now reads the mighty folio of once great Gassendi’s exposition of Epicurism,—copious as Comte’s exposition of that old thing under a new name? But beside that folio there are tiny duodecimos, of writings which are being reprinted ever since Gassendi’s time, because they are being read by generation after generation of ever-new students, as if they had in them an evergreen life, like a flower-garden of amaranthines unfading at the base of an old Egyptian pyramid in the desert. For they have life in them. They have in them cardiphonia of manhood, utterances of soul or spirit, that abides not in mere nature, but aspires to native super- naturalism—of “ spirituality, freedom, immortality ””—emitting such cries as, “ Man is a reed, but he is a reed that thinks". He is greater than the universe, though it should destroy him ; for the universe knows not it is destroying him, while he knows he is being destroyed.” The Blaise Pascal mind may have capacity for mathe- matical and physical attainments higher than any Gassendi’s. But when Pascal becomes a man he puts away childish APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 211 things. And in his maturity that soul in him, which is quenchless flame against villainous Jesuitical falsehood, can- not find rest in any Cartesian transcendentalism,—not even though a Malebranche transfigure it into heavenliness of an idealism that sees all things in God. It is but a Sinaitic wilderness to him,—with no manna nor water from the Rock (1 Cor. x. 4)—if it come short of his personally finding (Job xxiii, 3) the living personal God Himself: a finding for which the faint and weary soul is ever longing, “as the hart panteth after the water brooks ” (Ps. xlii. 1). “The defeat of rationalism” thus had place, before the assault began, in the indestructible nature of the rational soul. As the discussion proceeded, the anti-supernaturalism, the essential inhumanism, as well as godlessness of worldliness (Col. 11. 8), which from the outset was the dead soul of rationalism in the unbelieving criticism, and which continued to be its intellectual as well as moral mainspring, had to come out with ever-growing distinctness into view. And so at last the rationalism visibly ran to seed, as found to be in specu- lation a mere blind thing, having no real view of a system of the world and man ;—decause its eyes were shut, its heart was darkened to the supernaturalism—of “ spirituality, freedom, immortality ”—in both man and God, which is the great thing, the sunlight of life in all and through the whole. It needed not that the blind thing should break out, as a miserable, furious, blind Polyphemus in his Cyclops cave, into socialistic antagonism to the family and to patriotism, as well as to all religion. When men saw its essential nature as ungodly in its worldliness (Acts xvii. 23),—that is, as soon as it came into clear daylight of self-manifestation,—the rationalism was destroyed, as Frankenstein was destroyed by the fiend he had evoked. When they perceived what sort of thing it was that, under sounding names, “encountered” the gospel in this new Athens, they rested in the faith of “Jesus and the resurrection”: that is to say (Acts xviii. 10), “as many believed as were ordained unto eternal life.” So the Pharos-tower light was not quenched by that storm. After the grand assault has taken its course and spent its force, the religion is “seen as a light in the world,” and felt in the influences of its peace as a river, and of its 212 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS righteousness as waves of the sea. Among unbelievers of a speculative turn,—that is, who need to have something by way of “theory,” or view, of the system of things,—pantheism has now for some time given place to atomism,—Zeno to Epicurus. But practically there is between the two no real difference that concerns our inquiry. Atomism differs from pantheism by implying the substantive reality of individual things. And there is a verbal distinction, where there can be no real difference at bottom,’ between a materialistic and a spiritualistic pantheism. But in connection with the subject of our inquiry all forms and modes of naturalism are essenti- ally one and the same: in that they all alike are fatally exclusive of real provision for the rational soul. They have no real provision for the soul's essential rationality of nature, but, on the contrary, shut it out from all possibility of such provision. Still more to the purpose, they have no provision, but shut out all hope of providing for deliverance from its criminality and corruption as fallen: that cuilt and depravity, in fact, whose awful reality 1s attested, even among the heathen (Rom. ii. 14, 15, ep. i. 32), by whatever of con- science there is in man; since its operation in them is effectively a knowledge (cp. Acts xxviii. 4) of “the judgment of God, that they who do certain things are worthy of death.” The naturalistic systems all alike make impossible for man at once the real thing needful (Luke x. 42) and (Eccles. xi. 13) the one thing truly obligatory. And so (Ps. exii. 4), when the matter is faithfully reasoned out, they all alike are found wanting through being weighed in a just balance: Zeno and Epicurus alike, as giving a serpent and a stone instead of fish and bread. | In the meantime, that reasoning, from the nature of the things in question, is corroborated as well as illustrated by practical effects. On the one hand, the mere naturalism, which in that criticism was the real assailant, has effected nothing, and has hardly ever pretended so much as to try to © effect anything, in the way of actually benefiting mankind in its populations (cp. Gen. xil. 2 ; Gal. iii. 8); to say nothing 1 The one substance in pantheism is characterless : while “ materialistic ” or “spiritualistic” means either a character or nothing. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 213 of retrieving the condition of a mankind that is manifestly lost though it should not be fallen, miserable though it should not be sinful. Where, in the world’s history, is there a community of men that either Stoicism or Epicurism ever effectively. sought to bless (Ps. exlv. 15) by placing it on a basis of atomistic or pantheistic atheism ?* And in our day, among all the “scientists” and “ philosophers,” who believe that mere naturalism is the ultimate truth, how many are there so far gone in eccentricity as to think (ep. Isa. xxxv.) of trying to raise from a low condition, through belief of that, any one, even the least, of all the human “kindreds and tribes, and peoples and tongues”? Hardly any of them pretends to so much as think of such a thing.” But this religion 1s doing tt, —through quiet commonplace men and women, who look at the doing of it as matter of course. It is (cp. Acts iii. 12), in fact, the only power under heaven that is so doing. No other power under heaven is actually retrieving the condition of our fallen humanity. Christianity (Isa. xxxv.) is actually doing the work. Not only has it been so doing in the past, incessantly, for toward thirty centuries. It is so doing at this hour, as widely as the world, with so signal a success, that Christians themselves could not have ventured to imagine the possibility of it at the time when the unbelieving criticism was getting under weigh, perhaps with a view to extinction of this religion—as Voltaire had only varied between one man and five in his estimate of the amount of force that would suffice to “crush the wretch ” (écraser Vinfame).’ Witness Central Africa and the South Sea Islands: where communities, which within our memory 1 Socialism is nowadays—e.g., by Karl Marx—placed on a basis of theoretical atheism ; but the system has not thus been set a-working by any philosophical school (of “transcendental” petroleum or dynamite ? ep. Acts 1. 8). 2 When Mr. Stuart Mill had fairly thought out his economical system, so as to perceive the ideal of material well-being in a community, then he saw that the true well-being of man would, though that ideal should be realised, still remain to be sought, in a mental condition which Political Economy has no provision for. 8 At the death of Christ, the estimated population of “the whole world” of Roman empire was 200 millions. According to a recently published estimate, the number of professing Christians in the world, which a century ago was 250 millions, now is 500 millions ; so that within 214 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS | were in the lowest condition of dark heathenish—perhaps cannibal—savagery, are now “sitting clothed, and in their right mind”: orderly Christian societies, with every appear- ance of having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come: in their condition showing as a fact a new moral and spiritual creation, as clearly as if in their respective localities new races of men had been directly pro- duced from the dust of the earth, and there had been divinely breathed into their nostrils a breath of life to make living soul in every one so made of the dust. Nor is it only thus at its extremities that the banian tree- forest of the last world-empire (Dan. iv., vili. 13), of the Son of Man, has been giving renewed proof of its indestructible vitality, notwithstanding manifold corruptions that would have destroyed anything merely human (Isa. i. 9). The renewed inquiry regarding the primeval history of Christianity and its documents, that was occasioned by the movement of un- believing criticism, has led to a renewed proof of the genuine apostolic authorship of the Scriptures that were centrally brought into question: such a proof, and on such trial, that now their apostolic authorship * falls to be regarded as de- finitively established on proper grounds of scholarly historical judement,—a settled fact of literary history of mankind, to question which would henceforward be only to betray incom- petence, through ignorance or some other blinding disquali- fication. Also, the whole movement of inquiry has, through historical ascertainment, gone to the enriching and strengthen- ing of the apologetic argument, for the restoration? or the consolidation of belief,—by a comprehensive thoroughness that in some respects is new, as the occasion for it was new ; and especially, that thoroughness is a renewed expiscation of the literary history of early Christianity—both primitive and primeval—in connection with the distinctively spiritual that period the citizenship of Christ’s kingdom has now advanced to being a third part of the earth’s population from their being little more than a sixth part. And the quality is now as least as high as it then was. 1 “ Apostolic” in this relation means, belonging to the apostolic circle, which includes authorised associates of the apostles—e.g. Mark and Luke. 2 The Restoration of Belief is the well-known title of one of Isaac Taylor’s invaluable contributions to the defence of Christianity on grounds of literary historical judgment. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 2195 history of the religion, that has placed the claims of the Christian Scriptures in a new fulness of light on their vital or organic relation to the original foundation movement of Pat “kingdom which cannot be moved.” In Germany, whose Christian scholars took a leading part in the restoration of belief, there took place at the same time, especially among the learned pastorate, a widespread spiritual restoration, of serious personal religious conviction, which greatly adds to the value of the recent German contri- butions to technical apologetics And among the English- speaking peoples, which have made contributions of charac- teristically “sterling” value? to the relative learned labours of Christian thought,—bringing into decisive effectiveness of application their distinctive clear solid sense (1 Cor. x. 15), their masculine straightforward force of judgment (the present eulogist is not English nor Teutonic),—there has been a vast manifold expansion of multiplex Christian activities (Gal. vi. 10; Eph. vi. 16; Matt. v. 45-48), which itself—as indirect external evidence (Eph. ii. 7; 2 Cor. iii. 3)—is (cp. Matt. xi. 3—6) an apologetic of no inconsiderable cogency: while in religious revival of the churches there has been copious happy experience of the internal evidence. The amount of diffusion of the Scriptures that has charac- terised this period—Bible Societies as it were reversing the Babel diaspora, or resuming the Pentecostal wonder (Acts ii. 5—11) of speaking the one “ word of this life” in all tongues,” —shows a most powerful apologetic as well as propagandist movement “in all nations”; since the book is found always and everywhere its own most cogent witness and advocate: winning and commanding belief among the peoples it reaches, 1 Tt suffices to name—of those departed—Tholuck and Neander. But Ullmann, with his friend and publisher, Perthes (see Life of), will be gratefully remembered in connection with the Studien und Kritiken, representing a campaign of which it can say, guorum pars magna fur. ? H.g. American Unitarian Norton’s Genuineness of the Gospels. 3 It is said that the London office of the British and Foreign Society pours out Bibles all the year round at the average rate of 10,000 a day : which in a week mounts up to more perhaps than the estimated whole number of Bibles that existed in the world previously to the invention of printing. A beautiful copy of the four Gospels can be purchased for ld. ! There is even a penny New Testament ! 216 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS and making the believing peoples to be ever-new monumental evidences of a new creation by this Word (Eph. ii. 10), while sustaining in them an internal evidence constituted by dae te fellowship with God in Christ. The direct propagation of Christianity in the world, by the purely spiritual process of addressing men’s reason (Isa. 1. 18) with “the gospel of the kingdom,” has? during this period been prosecuted with a systematic energy, cietoke aiming at conquest of the world for God, that has not been equalled in any previous period since the time of the original great campaign of apostles and their associate evangelists. In our new time, as tried by its works, the proper analogue of the ancient ecumenical councils, defining the high catholic doctrines of the religion, is—not a foolish imitation council, eg., “ defining infallibility,” but—such a missionary conference as took place a.p, 1872—78, like a war council of the new kingdom of grace and peace, consulting about the great campaign for the world’s reconciliation unto God through the gospel. How it is within the Church herself, in respect of living realisation of the heavenly ideal, it may be difficult for us to judge. The Christian’s inward perception of the vastness of the distance between him and that ideal may tempt him to doubt the existence of any measure of true realisation (1 Kings xix.). Mr. Lecky, whose relative works— Rationalism in Europe and History of European Morals—place him on the very highest level as a judge in this relation, and who is the opposite of biassed in favour of distinctively evangelical Chris- tianity, has, in a judicial finding, evidently prepared with extraordinary care, put on record his opinion that, as tried by a variety of practical tests he specifies, Christianity is, among the community of professed believers, more pure and vigorous than it ever was before since the time of the apostles. We, then, while not taking it on ourselves to judge in such a question, but only looking at the matter in connection with our present purpose of inquiry, namely, to judge as to the apo- logetic situation, may warrantably assume that, in the visible condition of the existing Christendom, there at least is nothing that amounts to refutation of the argument from other sources. 1 See footnote above, p. 213. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 217 SEC. 3. As to the existing Apologetic Situation—particularly in connection with the New Testament. Here we begin with observing a change in the tactics of modern apologetics. Baxter, in his Reasons of the Christian Religion, has a first part occupied with what now might be called the natural theology of Christianity,—that is, its doctrine of the being and attributes of God as Creator and Ruler. It is only in a second part that he deals with what now makes the whole of Christian apologetics in our customary course,—namely, the proof of Christianity in particular, supposing the general fact of the being of a God, who is to be worshipped. So, too, it is in the earlier and better known work of Grotius, which continues to be used as a text-book basis of study. And now, in restricting itself to the second of their two parts, apologetics brings into view a noteworthy contrast of the modern apologetic situation to the apologetic situation in the primitive Church time. - That is, in relation to the super- natural, 1. In our new time, the supernatural, in the extraordinari- ness of miracle and predictive prophecy, is the grand difficulty in the way of speculative unbelief; so that removal of this difficulty is the great problem of apologetics,—since the extraordinary supernaturalism is essential in the Christian system, in such wise that to explain it away is to explain Christianity away. In the primitive time, on the contrary, that in practice was hardly any difficulty at all. The un- believers with whom the apologist had to deal did not ordinarily need to be reasoned into recognition of the feasible- ness of wonders, in work and word, as included in the system of a religion. The heathen religions had miracles and oracles of their own. The peoples, thus and otherwise, were familiar with the thought of such things as having place in historical reality. And they do not appear to have objected to this new religion on account, abstractly and generally, of its having miracle in work or word at the foundation of the system of its faith. Tertullian, in reproaching the heathens for their ungrateful disregard of the evidence of the Christian miracles of healing them, plainly has no thought of their questioning either the abstract possibility of such works or the fact of 218 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS their having been actually done. Irenzus, before his time, saw cause to reason, not about the fact or the possibility of miracle, but about the special character of the Christian miracles. And Celsus, the heathen writer of whose mind in this relation we have a direct view, so far from disputing the general position, that miracles may occur, really supports that position :—from the quotation of his work+ made by Origen for the purpose of answering it, there has been constructed (by Doddridge) a fairly full outline of the career of Jesus as recorded in our Gospels, and it appears that of the his- torical reality of His miracles Celsus had no more doubt than the Christians had. Yet Celsus was one of those “ philo- sophers” (Acts xvii. 18; cp. Col. 11. 8) whose theory was, in rigour of logic, atheistic. Principal Cairns? has called on modern anti-supernatural- istic opponents of Christianity to observe, that they are mistaken in claiming that their position here coincides with that of the ancient philosophers in their rejection of the prodigies and oracles of popular belief: that—paradoxical as it may now appear—those philosophers might themselves be believers in supernaturalism, in “gods,’ yea even in God. And certainly the Christian miracles and prophecies did not, on the score of extraordinary supernaturalism in them, constitute a difficulty in the way of belief among the heathen populations generally. The “scientism,” that now objects to miracles on behalf of mere naturalism, is thus completely opposed to the judgment of mankind in general. On the other hand, that which to the primitive apologist was the great labour of difficulty, to the modern apologist is hardly any labour ;—namely, contending for (“ the monarchy ”) the unity of government of the world,—against the heathenish conception of a plurality, or a multiplicity, of governing powers (which might be persons—cp. mere naturalism in- coherently spelling “nature” with a capital WV). Among those, on the contrary, whom the modern apologist contem- plates as his audience, there are hardly any who will not admit, as if it were matter of course, that one living God, Creator and Ruler, is the only God, if there be any such thing as God at all. Why is this fundamental thus, as it i 1 Logos Aléthés. 2 Cunningham Lectures. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 219 were, matter of course in modern civilisation? Apparently, because Christianity has made it so; with a hard labour, against worldliness of imagining a plurality of primary causes, which had to be continued in arduous inward conflicts with Gnosticism and Manichzism after the more palpable irration- alism of heathen superstitions had been destroyed in men’s minds. If now the superstitions be cleared away, so that for the judgment of men’s common reason there is a distinctly clear issue, of either mere stark naturalism or one living God, —that is not a fruit of mere “scientism” or merely natural-. istic “ philosophy.” At the time when the great work was achieved for mankind, philosophy, even in its last extreme of atheism, had proved impotent for destroying the superstitions: it really shared them (cp. an atheistic “scientist” now subject to bondage through fear of ghosts). The scientist, who takes advantage of the now general recognition of wnity in mundane government, may thus appear to be really ploughing with the heifer of that religion he perhaps opposes in its name. 2. In reference to that mere naturalism, which in a sense is peculiar to the modern unbelief, it is to be observed pointedly, and kept full in view, that sawpernaturalism, in the sense at present in question, 7s a fact, not only in the won- drous works and words of this religion, but throughout the whole system of things which it represents, relatively to man as well as to God. That is, in the sense of higher than mere “ physical nature,” distinct from her ordinary course of necessary causation or effectuation. The supernaturalism in the oracles and mighty works is “ extraordinary ” in the more comprehensive sense of involving a causation that is not ordinarily operative in the mundane system, and thus being outside of ordinary human experience. Hume thinks that on this account it is impossible to prove miracle by testimony. Stuart Mill thinks differently ; as also do Paul, believing the testimony of his own eyes (1 Cor. xv. 8), and (2 Pet. i. 16-18; 1 John i, 1-3) all the original apostles, believing the testimony of their own bodily senses, and bidding us believe in what they have seen and heard and handled. But a “scientist” may be found objecting to the supernaturalism in miracle not only as thus extraordinary, but as simply super or extra natural in the sense of being distinct from merely 220 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS physical nature, or different from her necessary eventuation. And what we now observe is that the supernaturalism or extranaturalism, thus objected to in the case of miracle, is all- pervasive in the system of things represented by Chniatianity, things human as well as things divine. Thus,—1. With reference to God. Mere naturalism, though it should not venture openly and flatly to deny His being, as a living personal Creator of all, yet may effectively shut Him out from being owr God, by excluding His provi- dence from actual government of the world,—* doing according to His will” in it (Dan. iv. 35), so as to be really the hearer of prayer, the Father who effectually “careth for” us. Or again, though deism should not thus, like Aristotle, banish providence to regions beyond the moon, but should acknow- ledge a natural providence of God as extending to our lowli- ness here, yet the anti-supernaturalism may assert itself in a Pelagian exclusion of God, from what may be called gracious providence, of which the sphere is a new creation in the salvation of sinners. And as to simply the being of a God, though He should not even be a Creator, but only a living person, that is a supremely supernatural thing, in the sense objected to by the unbelieving critic of Christianity,—namely, the sense of a thing distinct from simply physical nature, over and above that nature, or outside of it. So,—2. With reference to man. The objection to divine supernaturalism, or to extraordinary or miraculous extra- naturalism, on account of its involving what is outside of or over and above simply physical nature, applies also and equally to the being, and whole characteristic action and condition, of man as represented in this religion. For in the system of this religion man is a responsible person, a rational free agent; so that the anti-supernaturalism is incoherent and inconsequent unless it reject the man of Christianity as well as its God and Saviour, and make a man of its own, who shall be non-moral, non-rational, simply a piece of physical nature — perhaps the ornamental crowning piece. And again, though there had been no proof of supernaturalism, no actual supernatural fact, thus in the constitution of man’s nature, and consequently in all his distinctive life as human, —yet the Christian system exhibits a proof, the actual fact, APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 221 of supernaturalism, in the condition of his nature, whether as “asinner” simply, or as “saved by grace.”! Sin, whatever may he its essential nature or originative cause, is on the face of it supernatural in the sense at present in our question, of not natively belonging to the constitution of man, as truly as if it had been a physical poison, infused by a serpent into the nature of mankind. And though—as the Manicheans held —sin had belonged to the constitution of that nature, as distinguished from “ corruption” of it or “ depraved” condition of it,? yet—-as even they maintained——there is a true supernaturalism or extranaturalism in redeeming grace. Forgiveness of sin can be only through sovereignly free action of the Ruler of the universe; and “a new heart,’ as in the promise of this religion, is no more in the course of simply physical nature than a rib is naturally capable of developing into a wife. Having these things in remembrance, the present-day apologist may confront his especial question of miracle, as Knox went from the angry face of Queen Mary, “ with a reason- able merrie countenance.” When the objection to miracle as supernatural — the only objection of anti-supernaturalism as such—is found spreading itself over the whole system of things in the religion, it may at first. sight appear as if the religion were threatened with universal annihilation. But in reality it is as when a thunder-cloud, whose lightning-bolts threatened to destroy a temple, becomes diffused through the whole atmosphere of the region. Then, as a power to destroy, it ceases to exist, and it becomes a part of the beneficent agency of the whole natural system of the land. When the objection to miracle as supernatural is found to be equally an objection to the providence, the saving grace, the living personality or veritable being of God, and also to the constitu- tion of man as rational, his condition as sinful, his hope of salvation,—then, long before the finding is completed, the objection is destroyed,— excepting in the mind of atheists who hold that man is only a thing. And this, for the present- 1“ A SINNER SAVED BY GRraACcE.”—The inscription on the tombstone of Howard, the philanthropist, in a foreign land, in accordance with his dying request. 2 Confession of Fatth. 992 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS day apologist, is a very good introduction to the particular question of miracle in scriptural revelation. Hine ‘lle lachryme (“hence those tears”). The grief that stung naturalism into a great campaign of “higher criticism ” for destruction of the Scriptures, was on account of their being a record of things miraculous or extraordinary supernatural. These witnesses could not be “suborned,” but perhaps might—like Antipas—be “slain.” If their testi- mony as to fact be credible, miracle is a fact unquestionable. So, in that grand assault on religion, everything came to hinge on the credit of the Scriptures, as containing a trustworthy account of the plain matters of history they record. And in order to discredit them as history, it was found necessary to make them infamous in their authorship—forgeries,—and to place the New Testament somewhere down the second century. For—e.g.—it was felt, and it still is true, that if, say, the Synoptical Gospels were published among Christians within living memory of the career of Jesus of Nazareth, then it will be impossible to deny the historical reality of the miracles of those Gospels without rejecting history in its re- cognised principles and methods of ascertainment. And then, the whole fabric of that “higher criticism,” which was to rise as a Babel tower in place of Christian belief, would be found only a vanishing column of smoke: inasmuch as the super- naturalism, the supposed impossibility of which was the real foundation of that “criticism,” is here shown to be a fact. And here, too, the threatening thunder-cloud has now dissolved into a graciously refreshing rain. Not only in fact the grand assault against the Scriptures in question has failed,—* is defeated along the whole line” (Cazrns); so that all the learning, ability, and unsparing labour expended on the warfare (cp. the siege of Troy) against those Scriptures, have left their credit unshaken, solidly established on the old foundation of scholarly historical judgment (Non decem anna, non mille carinw). They have placed that foundation in a clearer light. And the credit that thus remains unshaken is necessarily strengthened by the failure to shake it; as Job’s was, or as the reputation of a veteran pilot is raised by his now weathering all the storms of a new stormy season. In APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 223 his appeal to the common reason of mankind, the present-day apologist is entitled to maintain that the genuine apostolic authorship of the body of our New Testament Scriptures has received a new demonstration. And it is a further impressive fact, that the grand critical endeavour to discredit them has brought to light nothing of any material consequence regarding them that was not known at the close of the second centwry,—when visibly the community of Christians was settled in acceptance of them as an apostolic heritage of holy Scripture, acceptance that has continued on the part of that community through all the following centuries. Trial by fire is in such a case a precious thing (1 Pet. i. 7). And the present-day apologist is bound in reason to make full use of the corroboration which the credit of the Scriptures has received from that criticism, “intending murder and committing suicide.” Regarding the question as to the Scriptures, it is important to observe that the matter has come to a point where mere technical scholarship, within reach of only a few, is no longer in command of the situation. It has reached the point at which, after the professional experts have given their testimony, there follows the judgment in the case; which here has to be a jury finding, of men who as a class are not professional experts. In this case the judge is not learned expertness—grammatical, or lexicographical, or antiquarian, but—the common reason of men simply as men—subject only to the reason or word (logos at John i. 1, 14) of God. That is to say, the question has come to an issue on the reasonable- ness of this or that view of the matter so far laid out for consideration. And relatively to the New Testament it is concentrated on the point as to the character of Jesus and His career :—-What are we to think of that? What view! of it will fairly account for the plain facts of relative history? or be a real explanation of the historical appearance of the religion in Him and His career ? Previous to the recent grand assault this aspect of the matter had not come into due prominence. It is true? that recent ‘‘theories”—of Renan, Strauss, Baur—had_ been anticipated,—e.g. by English deists. Renan’s view of the 1 Greek for theory. * See above, p. 198. 224 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS career of Jesus as a self-delusive imposture (see Matt. xxvul. 63) could hardly fail to be represented even among the guesses of “ vulgar infidelity.” But some may be surprised to learn that the mythic theory of Strauss had been anticipated among those old unimaginative English. And to some it may be purely incredible that (in a supposed-to-be cracked brain) there was anticipation even of the bizarrerie at the culmination of Tiibingen higher criticism,—in the “theory ” (to account for forged New Testament Scriptures) of an abandonment of their original Christianity by the twelve apostles in favour of a Pauline innovation of doctrine which esseritially changed the religion in its heart and soul. Still, those infidel predecessors of the “criticism” were not much occupied with such theorising—about the question, what is the true view of the matter, if the received view be false ? They gave themselves mainly to assailing the received view, —with objections which were so met at the time that their “eurious books” lapsed out of memory among the peoples. And the jury question regarding Christ and His career, what, if not the received view, is the true view, thus has fallen to “criticism” in the “ perilous times” of these “last days” (2 Tim, iii. 1-17). For the cause of truth, it is a great advantage thus to have the matter brought to a clear issue. In his answer to a certain assault on the cause of freedom in the Church, Dr. Chalmers humorously complained that, while an army 1s made strong against assault by compact order, this pamphlet was impenetrably shielded against refutation by baffling dis- orderliness of its multifarious contents. And at first sight of the existing situation relatively to our subject, it might seem hopeless to endeavour to get in sight of any key of the position. A diligent student has found that of “ theories ” regarding the New Testament, which have risen out of the recent critical movement, there are one hundred and forty-four (=12 x 12; ep. Rev. vii). And the sort of gossip that sometimes is publicly emitted under the name of speaking to the great question, as if everything hinged on the latest pamphlet (or telegram) about some new “theory ”—oround- swell of movement of which the storm is past—may thus be depressing to men desirous of real growth in knowledge APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIG PERIODS 225 among mankind. But even in theorising there is a limit, beyond which “the force of invention can no further go.” And theories already referred to will suffice for our present purpose,—to illustrate the advantage to the cause of truth that is to be expected from briuging the matter to a clear issue before the bar of reason. Lhe Mythie Theory.t —Strauss is one of the four who are named by Professor Huxley as leading typical representatives of the most advanced recent ascertainments in biblical scholar- ship. The professor’s trustful readers may thus be painfully surprised to learn—in view of his professed specialty, namely, “weapons of precision ”—that Strauss’s distinctive contribu- tion to ascertainment regarding Scripture was publicly aban- doned by him as untenable thirty years ago,” before he finally broke with Christianity, after an abortive endeavour to get him intruded into a Zurich professorship of Christian theology. That is, the mythic theory, through his ventilation of which (A.D. 1835) it was that he came to have a name in the history of learning connected with the Bible,—that theory has long ceased to have any place to make it worth considering cacept for ulustration; and what it illustrates is, the impossibility of * Welsh, in the work referred to below, p- 307, when the mythical theorising was at its highest, spoke as follows :— “Tt is not to he denied that Dr. Strauss has conducted his argument with great learning and ability. And in one respect he has rendered an important service to the cause of Christianity, by showing the utter un- tenableness of the Neologian system of scriptural interpretation, and thus, it is to be hoped, hastening its fall. The theory he proposes to sub- stitute in its place is attended with so many difficulties, that, notwith- standing its temporary success, it must soon share the same fate. And in this way Dr. Strauss will be found indirectly to have promoted the cause he has sought to destroy. Next to the development of truth, if is desir- able that the various forms of error should be fully illustrated ; and by clumination it may at last be forced upon the most incredulous, that the only tenable theory respecting the origin of the Christian Church is, that its Founder was divine” (p. 164). Dr. Welsh’s anticipation was com- pletely verified. By historical process of “elimination,” it is shown that there is no real theory, view, or explanation of the facts regarding Chris- tianity which no one disputes, excepting the received Christian view, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. A corroborative “ elimination,” it may be believed, is at present in progress relatively to the Old Testament. 2 New Life of Jesus, a.D. 1864. . 15 226 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ceiving any real view of the career of Jesus except the received Christian view, wrless He be made sinful, untruthful, dis- honest, in His personal character.’ Strauss assumed that miracle is absolutely impossible, so that the gospel history must needs be false. And he set himself to answer the question thus arising, If that history with its miracles be false, then what is or can be the truth regarding Jesus and His actual career,—the beginning of the world-filling fact of Christendom and the new true civilisa- tion? He disdained a preceding fashion of the “ vulgar rationalism,” explaining the miracles, which are essential in the gospel narratives, into mere imposture and gross delusion. He so explained as (he thought) to save the character of Jesus and His earliest followers by a “mythic ” theory. On that theory (= view), after the departure of Jesus, His followers brooding in a sort of day-dreaming on the memory of their hero, came to invest it with a glory of wonders like those of such Old Testament heroes as Moses and Elias; and in course of time these imaginings, without intention to deceive, settled and hardened into definite belief in miracles 1 “Tt is painful to those who regard Christ and His apostles with the respect and reverence to which they are entitled, to state such a question, even in the explanation of an argument ; but if the evidences of Chris- tianity are to be discussed, we must fairly contemplate and describe the case and the position of those who deny its truth ; and we are persuaded that it is of some practical importance, in order to our rightly compre- hending this subject, and being duly impressed with it, that we should rightly conceive and fully realise what is necessarily implied in the denial, or even in the non-admission, of the truth of Christianity. Hi Christ and His apostles were not divinely commissioned teachers, they must have been either enthusiasts who imposed upon themselves, or impostors who endeavoured to impose upon others. This is the only alternative, and it is right and expedient that this consideration should be ever remembered and realised when considering the subject of the evidences of Christianity, for it contributes to preserve a right impression of what is the true nature of the question at issue, and of the momentous results that depend upon its decision ; and it also renders us some assist- ance in forming aright estimate and a just impression of the force and bearing of the different arguments that may be brought forward on both sides of the question.”—-Cunningham, at pp. 147, 148 of the work referred to above, p. 195. 2 Mythos is always the Greek for “ fable” in our New Testament. 3 See above, p. 77, etc. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 227 of Jesus as historical realities. It was by this process (he represented) that the early Christians were prepared to receive such Gospels as Matthew, Mark, Luke, which, of course, must have been written lone after the time of the commonly supposed authors of them. Nineteen years later, he had found that this view is not tenable: that the substance of history which cannot be got rid of in the career of Jesus cannot—if His miracles be unreal -—be explained without more or less resorting to the old “vulgar rationalistic” supposition of imposture and gross delusion. He thus found that, even supposing the Synoptical Gospels to be spurious, he was not saved from the consequence he had apprehended as inevitable if they should be regarded as genuine works of Matthew, Mark, Luke,—namely,a necessity of owning that, according to recognised principles of historical ascertainment, the miracles they record must be accepted as historically real. For still, to explain the miracles away into anything but imposture or gross delusion would be, not to account for the origin of Christianity, but to refuse to account for it. Accordingly, at a later date! Strauss openly aban- doned all connection with Christianity, deriding those who persisted in showing some respect for it, while not really believing it, as hypocrites or fools.? But in this case, before any mythic theory can be entitled to a hearing, there is a previous question :— The Forgery Theory of Baur.—He is another of Professor Huxley’s four shining pillars of testimony regarding most recent ascertainments of advanced biblical scholarship. And here, too, the professor's “weapons of precision” are the opposite of shining and of sharp. Baur’s distinctive contribu- tion as a biblical scholar, his theory regarding forgery of New Testament Scriptures, is no longer owned by any school. The- Tiibingen school, of which he was head-master, was virtually dissolved before his death a generation ago (A.D. 1860). At the time of which Professor Huxley’s infor- mation to his trustful readers may be a straggling tradition, Baur perhaps appeared to admiring pupils as if bestriding 1 a.p. 1872—The Half and The Whole. * Cp. in curious coincidence, Cunningham, above, p. 195, footnote. 228 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS the world of biblical scholarship like a Colossus: now, in that world, he is no more a typical representative of recent ascertainments than if he had been the ancient Colossus of Rhodes. He, like Strauss his pupil, asswmed the absolute impos- sibility of miracles. This he did on the Hegelian pantheistic view, that in history there can be no real beginning, such as a miracle would involve; that in all seeming history there in fact is only an “ absolute continuity ” of evolutionary eventua- tion, as in the logical process of deductive reasoning,—with no such “ gap” or break as would be constituted by interven- tion of a will, or existence of a personal free agent. By this view he was avowedly determined in his so-called “ historical criticism” of primeval Christianity and its records: so that what we have from him, under the name of biblical criticism, really is atheistic metaphysics masquerading as a student of the Bible and its history. In this relation he had one remarkable incoherence, which offended followers and perplexes every one. He held (see above) very strongly, down to the close of his life, that the reswrrec- tion of Christ, as an historical reality, was believed in as vitally fundamental by all Christians from the very outset at the time of the great Pentecost, and by Paul as a matter of which he had been an eye-witness on his persecuting way to Damascus. How that belief of theirs can be accounted for, if the crowning miracle of miracles was unreal, or how, if 1t was real, miracle can be impossible, and all history can be an absolute continuity of evolutionary eventuation without “ gap” or break,—Baur did not explain, nor profess to be able to explain. But we pass from that incoherence to contempla- tion of his theory regarding forgery,—which is what now lies in our way. The specialty of his theory was not, allegation of forgery. Forgery was alleged by Strauss, and is virtually alleged by every one who questions the apostolic authorship of the New Testament Scriptures. But Baur had said that, in order to account for the rise of Christianity as represented in the mythic theory, it is necessary to explain how « was possible for a forged New Testament Scripture to come into existence, and be received as genuine apostolic by the community of APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 229 Christians—as early, say, as A.D. 160? And his explanation was to the effect,—That a Pauline revolution of doctrine, changing the original nature of Christianity, came to have the upper hand in that community; that consequently there grew into its mind an essentially mistaken view of the original history of Christianity, which view embodied itself in our existing Scriptures, conformably to the revolutionary Pauline doctrine of the religion; so that the forged Scriptures, and the reception of them by Christians all over the world, are accounted for by operation of that mistaken view. @.4.D. It now is needless, for working purposes of apologetics, to labour at discussion of the grounds and reasons of that theorising; which may be said to have died of daylight as soon as born, and to have been the death of the school which gave it birth. But the fact, and the history, of such theorising are well worth remembering and pondering.’ In order to its even appearing to have any look of plausibility, it was necessary to place the origination of the Seriptures in question far down in the second century,—say, as late as A.D. 160. But the result of renewed investigation thus occasioned has been to put that completely and finally out of the question. It now is for apologetics an easily demonstrable fact of literary history,? that the Scriptures in central question came into existence in the first century, and are the genuine works of apostles and their authorised associates. Hardly any scholar who knows the subject. will— on grounds of literary judgment—place them later than toward the beginning of the second century. And it would be mere misexpenditure of energy to debate with an absolute Baurism about the question, How could the Christianity of the time after a.p. 160 flow out of a forgery perpetrated at that time? For it is a now settled fact of literary history, that at that time there was not and could not be a forgery of the Scriptures in question; inasmuch as the Scriptures in question existed long before that time. 1 Regarding the Old Testament Scriptures and their history, sub- stantially the same view is at present most in vogue among revolutionary critics (see further on). 2 See the demonstration condensed—“ Canon of New Testament Scrip- ture ””—in the present writer’s work, The Revelation and the Record. 230 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Renan’s view brings the matter to a finally decisive point. -—The citation of names, of what he reckons typical re- presentative leaders, was by Professor Huxley intended to serve in place of proof, that, as he alleged, we have not trustworthy means of information regarding Christ and His teaching, so as—if He be of God—to be under obligation to believe in Him. That is to say, he in effect assured his readers that he knows as a fact, though it did not suit him to give proof of the fact beyond appealing to those names, that the Gospels are regarded as untrustworthy sources of information by those who really are the leaders of most advanced recent biblical scholarship. And that this is precisely the opposite of reality is shown by the one case of Renan,—more vividly than it could be shown by production of ten thousand names of Christian scholars against the professor’s four.! For many years after Baur and Strauss were antiquated in this relation, Renan (recently deceased) has been beyond comparison the leading representative of learned unbelief before the world. And he effectively rejects their theorising relatively to the Scriptures, and admits the substantive trust- worthiness of the Gospels in their information regarding Christ and His teaching, to an extent that is quite sufficient for the working purposes of apologetics. Witness (at the cost of some repetition) the following— Note of Renan’s admissions relatively to Scriptures—1. In common with the Tiibingen theorisers, he places as “ unquestion- ably” Paul’s own the four great theological Epistles—fom., 1 and 2 Cor., Gal.—2. Discourses reported in Matthew he acknowledges to be self-evidently Christ’s own, because no other can have spoken them,—they are thus unique.—3. In Mark, he says, we may well see for substance reproduced the testimony of an eye-witness, a personal follower of Christ, who watched Him with eyes of love,—no doubt, the Apostle Peter. —4. In the third Gospel, and also for substance in Acts, he is will- ing to see the genuine work of Paul’s companion Luke.—There is no need of going further with this witness. Here alreadg 1s, 1 The remaining two—in addition to Baur and Strauss—are, Volkmar, an extremist who represents no school, and Reuss, who, though revolu- tionary in his views regarding the Old Testament, was steadily an opponent of the Tubingen theorising about New Testament history. On what principle are these four selected? Is it merely their happening to be recollected as destructive critics ? APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 231 in ample sufficiency, regarding means of trustworthy informa- tion about Christ and primeval Christianity, concession of all that an apologist needs to care for. The field thus is completely clear for the question, What view is to be taken of this matter, if not, that Jesus is “ the Christ, the Son of the living God”? What story have you to put in place of the received Christian view of the matter ?? Here “learned unbelief” itself, in the person of its latest world-renowned corypheus, puts the matter of fact reality of the history, sufficiently for the Christian advocate, beyond dispute. And the specialty of Renan’s own theory 1s not, his making Christ a deluded impostor (cp. 2 Tim. i. 13), but his making Him a disreputable Frenchman. The im- posture theory is old commonplace of “vulgar infidelity.” The new specialty of the “brilliant scholar” is, his having, under some disguise of sentimental rhetorical glitter, pro- pounded that view in substance with unexampled shamefulness in detailed modifications, such as to make his “ Jesus” a hero of cheap French romance,—who begins with being a sensuous imaginative enthusiast, goes on to be a deliberately systematic “deceiver” (cp. Matt. xxvii. 63) in the name of God, and ends with suicide, in the desperation of disappointed vain ambition! That view is the alternative now remaining to those who do not embrace the Christian view. The revulsion of ordinarily clean-hearted unbelievers from that infamy of representation is no doubt sincere. But? the interest of truth demands the question, whether the revulsion is warrantable on their part? Is there, in reality of reason, any alternative but, either the Christ of Renan or the Christ of Christendom? The representation, for instance, of the raising of Lazarus as a mock resurrection, in which Jesus and His disciples were conspirators along with the Bethany family,—was in a measure withdrawn by the French infidel apostate himself. But the essential baseness of his con- ception of the real inward character of Christ and His career, —was that withdrawn? If it be not a fact that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, then what is the true representation of 1 Cp. with what follows, pp. 57-66 above, and p. 257, ete., below, the whole treatment of the Old Testament question. 2 See above, p. 226, footnote. 232 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS the matter? While, if it be a fact, He must needs (Rom. i. 4) be “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed” (Mark xiv. 61); if it be not a fact, He must have been a “deceiver” (Matt. xxvil. 63) on that occasion: if not personally participant in originating the fraudulent conspiracy, yet ploughing with its heifer—allowing it to be supposed He brought the dead back to life, and taking advantage of the mistaken supposition for the support of a false claim of His to be the Saviour Son of the Highest. Can any modification of Renan’s original picture make any real abatement of the infamous criminality that would be involved in the substance of that fraud? And if such was the character of the action of Jesus on this oceasion, at the culminating crisis of His career, can any mere modification, arising out of the moral and spiritual character of a critic, blacken the darkness of wickedness that must have been at the heart of that career all through? Here the appeal is to the reason of all men who are simply sane. Mr. Mill is no doubt sincere in his expressed admiration of the moral teaching and example of Jesus. Even an JLece flomo might not be consciously false in its eulogistic de- clamation. But, 7m reason, are men entitled to stop short at such half-ways? Suppose that Jesus, below the surface, behind the veil of that so admired and lauded life and speech, had in Him the hollow rotten heart of a lie so hideous as would be involved in His not really being the divine Christ. Then surely the philosophical admiration and the declamatory laudation are worse than wasted, on a mere surface of excel- lence, that conceals a reality immeasurably worse than all the “ whited sepulchres” represented by His Pharisee in the temple, “inwardly full of dead men’s bones, and all unclean- ness.” Is ¢his the morality for which all that homage is intended? It 2s the morality of a Jesus who is not Redeemer in His office and Immanuel in His person. And perhaps it is well that one man has been permitted to speak out, from “the imagination of the thoughts of his heart,” in relation to this matter, what underlies the surface of every view but one. The Christ of Christendom, or the Christ of Renan? To this alternative the matter has come simply through impulsive direction given to inquiry by the critical assault. Not only the assault has made the trustworthiness of gospel history APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLI€ PERIODS 233 clearer than before, it has compelled attention to the alter- native, with reference to “Jesus of Nazareth” (see Acts ii. 22, x. 38), which is the great matter of question raised for all men: Is He, on the one hand, a Saviour to be worshipped ? or, on the other hand, was He a “deceiver” to be abhorred (Matt. xxvi. 67)? All through His career before men,— especially in the culmination of His course of witness-bearing on behalf of God (Matt. xxvi. 63-66; ep. John xix. 7), above all, “before Pontius Pilate” and on the cross (John Xvili. 37; Matt. xxvii. 46), and (Luke xxiii. 46) supremely in that last ery, in which He commended His Spirit unto God as His Father, after having brought Himself to this death by a whole career of claiming to be the Son of God—“ Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” (Mark xiv. 61) is the one real question now, as it was when He answered it with utmost conceivable solemnity of an oath. And still the only real answer is: Either the adorable Christ of Christendom, or the abominable Christ of the French infidel apostate. History, as tried again in the fires of a long campaign of criticism searching and unsparing, leaves no other choice. The Christ of eulogistic eloquence and of commenda- tory philosophising, who is on/y a model teacher and man, who does not, in and through all and above all, claim to be a divine Redeemer—that Christ is not an (ens rationis) object of reason: He has no existence in historical reality; but is a mere figment of theorising imagination. To speak of him as the historical Christ of the Gospels, or as standing in any creative relation to the historical Christianity, is to sink into delusiveness of “ cunningly devised fables” (Greek, sophisticated myths, 2 Pet. i. 16),—essentially more irrational than the superstition of a peasant who adores the “Bambino” Christ he has made, for he at least thinks of Jesus as the Son of God. Ascertainment thus far with reference to the New Testa- ment will throw light on other matters, eg. regarding the Old Testament, as to which see the following section (4); and also regarding the New Testament itself, on which we now observe as follows :— Generally, “ oppositions” may be expected, and can have 234 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS their use—like storms. If Strauss abandon his mythic theory as untenable, and the Tiibingen theory of a forged New Testament die of exposure to daylight, a Renan will arise, rejecting those theories, but erecting another No-God altar on the same ultimate foundation of mere naturalism. And if his “theory,” or view, of the character and career of Jesus perish through its revoltingness to common good feeling and good sense, in the meantime a special pleader (Supernatural Religion)* will fill three volumes with negativism of a “ historical criticism ” whose dominant principle of procedure may appear to be, to assail the received Christian view and its advocacy, on every ground of argument found accessible, with every sort of missile that may be ready to hand. Yet again, if this amateur “scholar” succumb to such masters as Lightfoot and Sanday, an infidel female novelist will take the field; showing how a Christian minister became an infidel, and set on foot a Christianity of denying Christ the Lord, and made a similar infidel of his erst Puritan Christian wife,—all on no apparent ground of reason but what has been described as “a farrago of scraps of after-dinner conversation of bookish people of a 1 Bishop Lightfoot (articles in the Contemporary Review, republished in a volume, Essays on Supernatural Religion) terribly exposed his unprin- cipled misrepresentation of Christian writers, his ignorance (of Greek) where he parades full accurate knowledge. For instance, at one place this writer has a great array of reference to authorities, filling the page, and fitted to produce on “the simple” mind of reviewers a deep impression of his laborious conscientious completeness in mastery of recondite literature of the subject in hand. But it is proved by internal evidence that this elaborate “ Note” must in fact have been borrowed for show. The refer- ences are in large measure wide of his point, and otherwise the authorities referred to are more or less opposed to his view of the point. The borrower even seems unaware that the Latin “Coeus” of the borrowed note is his own compatriot English Mr. Cook. 2 The Gospels in the Second Centuwry.—A real original study of the “use” of the Gospels in the sub-apostolic age, which touches the very nerve of apologetic argument relatively to the canon of New Testament Scripture and authenticity of gospel history. For this argument it makes a con- tribution of unique value in its inductive proof, that a certain unhampered freedom, or seeming looseness, in the manner of the appearance of traces of the Gospels in the Christian literature of that age is identically the same as exists in the manner of the appearance of traces of the Olid Testament in the New. The author of Supernatural Religion went on reprinting what he owned as errors proved by Dr. Sanday ! APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 235 loose way of thinking about religion,’—certainly with no appearance of answer to the real question, as the matter stands, on your view: What are we to think of Jesus claiming to be the Saviour Son of God ? , Though real discussion should thus apparently have run to seed, it may be well to learn from recent representations how the most important matters can be contemplated and handled by active-minded persons who really do not understand them (Jude, 10). It may serve to show what abysses of really ignorant incomprehension there can be (Isa. i. 3), under a surface of sceptical knowingness wielding “weapons of pre- cision,’ in assault (Ps. 1. +) on “The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.’ And the emptiest “wind” of opposition may usefully guide attention to particular points in the system of defence. Thus,— 1. The vital issue does not depend on details of Scripture utterance; but only on the main plain substance of Scripture fact: which it might be possible to establish without aid of Scripture testimony (cp. the outline of the career of Jesus from Origen’s quotations of Celsus),—though it would be worse than silly—sinful—not to make use of that aid since we have it, as if an eagle should not use its wings for soaring to a mountain-top because it is able to walk. 2. Regarding Seriptures of minor importance. If the main body of Scriptures be shown to be genuine beyond reasonable doubt, then it is unreasonable to be anxiously solicitous about questions remaining over in connection with some Scriptures; and there may be no real apologetic interest, of the being of Christian faith, dependent on these questions, though they should have an interest in connection with “comfort of the Scriptures” (Rom. xv. 4), or completed well- being of that faith. -Suppose, ¢g., that after all the recent expiscations a shade or cloud of uncertainty regarding apostolic authorship remains on 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, James, Jude. That places us as—so far as was known to Eusebius in the fourth century —the community of Christians were placed at the close of the second century. For them there similarly was a cloud or haze in connection with those same minor Epistles. But 1 See above, p. 20. 236 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS there was cloudless light, full certainty, relatively to the genuine apostolicity of the four Gospels, Acts, the thirteen Pauline Epistles, along with Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John, Revelation. And these contain everything that any one thinks of the least con- sequence regarding the primeval Christian history and doctrine: regarding that there is nothing in those minor Epistles that is not contained in that main body of Scriptures on which there is no haze or cloud; so that we would have known it on apostolic authority, though the minor Epistles had never existed or were known to be forgeries. The special providence which Christian piety* sees in such preservation of the Scriptures, has surely been “good” toward mankind needing this “balm in Gilead.” It is truly “to be admired of” those who see God in history. To say that it amply suffices for working purposes of apolo-_ getics is only to confess one small part of our obligation to thankfulness on account of that preservation, unique as it is in the literary history of mankind.” 3. Concessions by unbelievers who are acquainted with the subject and capable of judging. These have a value in respect of serviceableness for disproof of unbelief all round,—arrows from its own quiver; but also may be, positively, testimonies for the religion disbelieved. For instance,—the genuineness of discourses of Christ in Matthew,—WMari’s being evidently in substance the story of an eye-witness, doubtless the Apostle Peter,—and Luke’s being presumably the author of the third Gospel and of Acts for substance. These things, acknowledged by Renan, place us, not only with Paul, at Rome 4.p. 62, and in his previous apostolic labours, but at the great Pentecost, listening to the original eye-witnesses and _ ear-witnesses through Peter their spokesman; and leave us, 7m reason, only the alternative of either going with the three thousand and the five thousand Jerusalem converts, or joining the enemies of Christ, who procured His judicial murder through suborned 1 Confession of Faith. 2 The corroborative testimonies of Egyptian and Assyrian discoveries (see sec. 4 below) relatively to the Old Testament, are paralleled by testi- monies relatively to the New Testament in recent recovery of long-lost writings of the early-primitive Church time,—e.g., within this last decade, “The Teaching” of the Apostles, Tatian’s Diatessaron, and the Apology of Aristides. ‘ q 5 { VO I A Te ee ee ee, ee ee ee ee ae ee ee ee a ee a ee ee APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 237 false witness: since the worst they had to say against Him was, that He was a “deceiver,” particularly (John xix, a) worthy of death, “ because He made Himself the Son of God.” Again, as to the four great theological Epistles, the acknow- ledgment of their unquestionable “ Pauline authorship, ’°—by Renan, by the Tiibingen school, by unbelieving critics gener- ally. That, 2n reason, is to the theorising and the disbelief explosive dynamite inside of a house of cards. For these four Epistles are day-clear proof of the following historical facts:1—-1. That a Christian Church, founded in belief on Jesus as the Messiah Son of God, existed in representative regions of “the whole world” of Roman empire within a quarter of a century of His crucifixion, and had go existed for a considerable number of years.2—2. That the Pauline “gospel ”—of free salvation for all mankind sinners, by faith, not by works, as the gift of divine redeeming love, in a divinely glorious Christ—was the doctrine of the Church from the beginning, as founded by apostles who had been “eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.” 3—And 3. At the time of this writing, Christians universally believed in aupos- tolic miracles, the credential attestation of the Twelve and of Paul as throned witnesses of God in Christ, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” How, then, could these Christians—as (the original) Strauss alleged they would—have insuperable difficulty in receiving Matthew, Mark, Luke, on account of miracles ascribed in these Gospels to the Lord? How could Paul’s “ gospel ”— as Baur alleged—be “another gospel, essentially different from, fundamentally subversive of, that which the Twelve had originally delivered as from the Lord? And if—ags Renan and others have alleged—there be “no supernatural,” then how (ae. on anti-supernaturalist principles) are we to account . Cp. Professor Huxley, wt supra. ’ * In articles in The Expositor, vol. ii., Second Series, Dr. Matheson shows, from incidental indications in these Epistles, that the Christians of that time, before our Gospels were written, must have been familiar with the history narrated in these Gospels as we have them. * Dr. Matheson points out the fact, that at the early time of the four Epistles there were in the Church’s mind those theological “ideas” which negative criticism has made a testing proof of lateness in the origination of Scriptures ! 238 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS for the apostolic testimony regarding miracles of Jesus, above all, the stupendous miracle of His resurrection ?—for the universal belief of Christians in apostolic miracles, eg., at the so recent founding of Christianity (Rom. xv. 18, 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12; ep. Heb. ii. 4) ?—-yea, and for the existence of. that “immovable kingdom,” “planted in the sea” of a world that lay in wickedness ? Did the original apostles conspire with Paul against Christ for subversion of their own original “ gospel,” declaring it accursed of God? (Gal. i. 8). Did the converts every- where conspire with apostles in lying about miracles, at the peril (1 Cor. xv. 19) of all that is worth caring about in this world and (see ver. 15) the next ?—all on account of a young deluded impostor of the labouring class in Galilee, whose brief career closed in infamous death-punishment at the hand of the public authorities at Jerusalem, in sight of the Jewish nation, within that generation, in memory of half mankind yet alive,—including not a few influential Pales- tinians who, with connections all over the world, would go to any extreme, even murder, to prove those miracles untrue! If not, then is there, can there be, any real “theory,” view, explanation of the plain facts established by those four “unquestionable” Epistles, excepting the view or “theory” of a professed “eye-witness and minister of the word from the beginning” (John xx. 31), “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (ep. 1. dohn 1..1—3) 2? Sec. 4 (Supplementary) Latest Phase of the recent movement— The Old Testament Question. The designation “conservative ” is not a heavy burden for disciples of Him who says (Rev. ui. 11), “ Behold, I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” Nor is “progressive” necessarily eulogistic. There is a progress (2 Tim. iii 13) of “evil men and seducers” (gdete—conjuring quacks) from bad to worse, which (Ps. i. 4), in relation to the Old Testament, may be “like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” But (vers. 2, 1 See Peter’s view at Mark i. 1, cp. 2 Pet. i. 16; Matthew’s, Matt. i. 1, 22, xxviii. 18-20; and Luke's, Luke i. 35, xxiv. 46, Acts 1. 1-8. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 2389 3) there also is a blessed progress of the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord. And, while (Col. ii. 8) there may be a conservative traditionalism in atheistic naturalism of Epicurus or of Zeno, the great Puritan divine John Owen says, “ He does not serve God in his generation who will not go beyond the line of predecessors.” The Reformation was a great forward movement: as also was the entrance of “the gospel of the kingdom” into the heathen Roman empire, and as had been its previous going down to Israel in Egypt. But! the Gassendi-Epicurism of Pascal’s day was not a progress from what had “ encountered ” Paul at Athens, but a regress to that heathenism from Chris- tian civilisation ; as it now is when it speaks through a falsely so-called “scientism,” in the old speech-bewraying manner of “what will this babbler say?” And in the eighteenth century the sensationalism of Christians of the type of Locke? was a symptom of their being on the way to fatal shallows, even in philosophy, from the earlier depth and comprehensiveness of such as Cudworth, yea, and as deistical Herbert of Cherbury.? And even the naturalism, which was the impulsive and regu- lative principle in the recent grand assault on Christianity, had in it a wholesomeness of emancipation from the baser naturalism into which philosophy had sunk.: It can hardly be believed that a few years ago a really able man, such as Comte was, imagined that a crass Epicurism, to which he and others gave the name of “philosophy,” was about to be accepted by mankind as at last the true Lureka evangel of its hope. Some still, no doubt, who may justly be deemed philosophers, avowedly see no other hope for mankind, though that hope on their part may seem to be only a sort of desperation in expecting what they really do not look for (see 1 Cor. 1. 21; cp. 1 Pet.i. 3-12). But those Teutonic peoples among whom the Reformation Christianity came to be most deeply and widely rooted, and which now have apparently 1 See above, p. 210, ete. * “Locke held thoroughly unsound and erroneous views in regard to the fundamental doctrines of ‘the gospel.”—Cunningham, at p. 266 of the work referred to above, p. 195. * In his philosophical ground-principles, he anticipated what is dis- tinctive in the “critical” philosophy of Kantism. 240 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS: attained to the leadership of civilisation in the world,—they, notwithstanding deep and widespread worldliness of heart and life, have not anchored their hope behind the veil of what has been called “the dirt philosophy,” looking for a material- istic-Epicurean age of gold. | , Before the Comptian positivism there had arisen, not only in France (Cousin, etc.), but still more in Germany and among the English-speaking peoples, a far-reaching revival of philosophy in the true sense: in comparison with which the more recent resuscitation of materialistic naturalism among those peoples, as an exercise of reason, pales into insignificance. The philosophy, though, as has appeared, naturalistic in its heart (witness, in places, its running into pantheism), yet in complexion was prevalently spiritualistic, in a strong antagon- ism to materialistic sensationalism, from which it had originally been a recoil.2 Retaining the colour of that revulsion, it continued to be in aspect distinctively idealising, soaring, transcendental,—a philosophy akin to what of nobleness there had been in ancient schools. In Germany alone it was, from Leibnitz to Hegel, illus- trated by a series of masters nob equalled in intellectual ereatness by any other series in the philosophical history of. mankind. Jacobi’s divination, of a fatal misdirection in its tendency, of empty idealism towards pantheism, has been justified by the event. But the speculative loftiness of its aim, and its comprehensive thoroughness of intellectual process, served to theology, which had shrunk into a surpliced naturalism, both as a wholesome tonic and as a preparatory discipline for Christian thought, in particular training her into a depth and breadth and clearness of view, which did good service in the then impending warfare of apologetics,— as Israel was trained in the wilderness for future conquest of the promised land of rest. 1 See above, p. 207, etc. 2 “Philosophy” (lit. love of wisdom) in the true sense looks toward principles and ideas, imperial and universal, while mere “scientism ” only peers into physical processes of necessary eventuation. A man of science may be a philosopher, as a parishioner may be a statesman or a grocer a poet. Buta mere “scientist” with “a little philosophy ” (Bacon) is a jack- daw with one or more peacock’s feathers in its tail. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS. 241 Theology had need of purification, though it should be by earthly fire. When a leading public witness for Christi- anity could speak of original sin as a literal poisoning of man’s nature (cp. John i. 13), there was work for a real philosophy thoroughly trenchant as Kantism, were it only in clearing the theological atmosphere of deleterious fog. Isaac Taylor (Fanaticism) has a suggestion, that perhaps the sweeping monotheism of the Califs was for mankind an improvement on the rotten Christianity that had come to occupy regions where the kingdom of God was originally planted by apostles. And for the true Israel the doleful heavy labours of Egypt, and Sinaitic reverses and other trials, are an education for enjoyment as well as for conquest of Canaan. But, through its underlying naturalism, the new philosophy worked inward in corrupting the substance of Christianity and undermining its authority. This was reflected in Coleridge and his school,2 where the philosophy wore an aspect of ambitious loftiness passing into docile wisdom of discipleship. The loftiness of the speculation had an attraction for sincere discipleship, through its appearing to place philosophy in accord with universal aspects of Christian revelation; so that Edward Irving could sit at the feet of Coleridge, perhaps reading his own interpretations into the philosopher-poet’s dreams, It thus might happen that an essentially naturalistic metaphysic should, in clouds of mystical transcendentalism, be mistaken for a “child of the Highest.” The disguised hollowness of a pantheistic theorising has (Col. ii. 8) a dangerous facility of self-accommodation in forms of expression to the positively Christian supernaturalism of conception and belief. In fact the theorising of what in its essence ig only a heathenish theosophy,—that excludes both living personality in God and responsible free agency in man,—came to be to such effect infused into Christian “forms of sound words,” that (“ without observation”) a really heathenish petrifaction came to be in place of the evangelical tree of knowledge of saving truth. And in this way an appearance of Christian teaching in form of words‘came to be the disguising medium of spreading an evasive exclusion of the gospel in substance from the system of men’s thought and life, and putting in 1 See above, p. 205. * See above, p. 196. 16 942 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS place of it a doctrine or view, whose antagonism to evangelical Christianity is the most profoundly comprehensive that can be imagined. Thus in the land of Luther, mother-land of Re- formation evangelism, an atheistic metaphysic has within recent memory domineered in professedly Christian schools of learning. Under nominally Christian State-patronage, it expounded ttse// through the most sacred Christian words, in a mystification that was infamous mockery rather than a real disguising. And in professedly evangelical circles and communities a welcome is given to a shallow flimsy naturalism, because, “ paltering in a double sense,” it speaks the heathenism in the consecrated “language of Canaan” (Jer. vi. 13, 14; 2 Tim. iv. 1-4). That worldliness, in a progress that is natural to it, fatally tends toward antagonism to the gospel from which it is a departure (1 John ii. 19). N atively, the case is one of, “He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad” (Matt. xii. 30). Consequently, there may always be need of apologetics, were it only (Matt. xxiv. 24) for self-defence of Christianity against the sap and mine of a professedly Christian teaching of mere naturalism or worldliness (Acts xx. 28-30). In the mean- time, there continue to be evasions more or less insidious, which as a class are characterised by tendency to disparagement if not rejection of the Old Testament. “The Old Testament question” is by many felt as being, relatively to apologetics, distinctively the burning question at this hour. It is with a leading reference to the apologetic situation as affected by that question, that we now will endea- your to obtain some light from the smoke of controversy in connection with it. In particular, we will look at the matter with an eye to the previous question, whether the subject is one only for specialists expert in technical scholarship ? or whether it is not open for judgment by the common reason of mankind ?—a question vitally affecting in this relation the ereat interest of the freedom of the human soul. The present Old Testament question hinges on the pentateuchal constitution of Israel: it is found that a man’s view regarding that will operate as a—true or false—“ great light” (Gen. i. 3, 16), guiding and controlling his construc- APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 243 tion of the Old Testament as a whole. And regarding that constitution the root question is as to the religious institutions appearing in the last four books of Moses 7—eg., are they really Mosaic, and in what sense? did they originate in the Mosaic age, in such finality of completeness, as through the following ages to have been “the law” (John i, 17), the rounded Israelitish constitution :—such that of legislation strictly speaking there afterwards was nothing, even under the kings (unless 1 Sam. xxx. 24, 25 be an exception), and the only considerable post-Mosaic ordinance was that of the temple service of song? That they did, is the “ received ” view, which has been held by substantially the whole com- munity of believers in Bible religion upon earth as far back as the matter can be traced, from long before the closing of the Old Testament canon of Scripture. Along with this view as to the institutions, it is a similarly received view as to the pentateuchal Scriptures in our hands, that they too originated in the Mosaic age, —with allowance for subsequent editorial revision, but not such revision as would violate their character of primeval author- ship ;—and that, if not written literally with the great Legislator’s own hand, they yet so proceeded from Him that Moses was their author (John v. 46). But some adherents of the received view as to the institutions hold what, for eon- venience of distinet exposition, we will speak of as a “ half- way” view: ¢.7., that the pentateuchal Scriptures now existing are more or less of post-Mosaic authorship ; or, again, as to the institutions, that what completeness they had in the Mosaic age was only the completeness which a tree has in the newly- planted seed,—while what we now see in the Pentateuch is the tree in its fully-unfolded manifestation, such as it came to be, in historical reality of existence, only through a process of growth or evolution in the course of ages after the Mosaie. To us endeavouring to see the apologetic situation, the existence of a half-way view creates a difficulty of complica- tion as in Captain Marryat’s triangular duel. It presents on the one hand a face of opposition toward the received view, while on the other hand it opposes what we will call the “destructive” criticism! It thus is exposed to fires of 1 See Appendix, Note A, 944 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS antagonism from opposite sides, like the ancient Britons lamenting, “The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea throws us back on the barbarians.”} Relatively to apologetics, the proper direct antagonist to the received Christian view is, the destructive criticism: to which accord- ingly our attention will in the present section be mainly directed. But a passing note at the present stage on the relation of the half-way view to the matter may facilitate our exercise on that criticism, by helping to clear the air and show how the land hes. Adherents of the half-way view profess to hold by that supernaturalism, in the origination of the Israelitish constitu- tion, which here is the fundamental matter in controversy of Bible religion with the destructive criticism ; that is, to believe that the institutions were a special creation by expressly declared will of God: though the creation, primarily and eerminally at the hand of Moses, was thereafter, in the Mosaic seed’s unfolding into tree, completed by other divinely moved and commissioned ministers of that will—ey. “the prophets.” On this view, though the constitution in its Mosaic stages should have received augmentations from with- out,—such that its expansion was thus far not as a tree’s erowing, but as the swelling of a stream through tributary rains,—still, these accessions could be from heaven, in revela- tion of God. And on behalf of the view it is pleaded, that the so far abandonment of the old received view, about a primeval origination of the institutions in a finally manifested completeness,—as of a fruit-bearing tree,—is an advantage to the defence of Bible religion; as being an abandonment of no longer tenable outworks of the religion or its book, which wight be turned against it. Here it will serve an ulterior purpose of our exercise to 1 Aneyil hence arising to the interest of truth 1s, interference with due Christian freedom in characterising the destructive criticism, through half-way theorisers imagining that of course the characterisation is in- tended for them. Nevertheless, truth has to be defended by free speech, with a detur dignoré of, “Let him wear the cap who finds it fitting him.” If a man maintain positions of the destructive criticism, he will be smitten with arrows aimed at what he shields; and in battle for Israel’s life Jonathan will aim at the Philistines, though the arrow’s path should not be over David’s head but through his heart. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIGC PERIODS 245 pause upon the fact, that az evolution of the Israelitish con- stitution, as from planted seed into fruit-bearing tree, had place on the received view? This appears in the pentateuchal representation of “ the three Codes,” as follows :-— 1. “The Jehovist Code.” In The Book of the Covenant, at Ex. xx.-xxiv. (see also Ex. xxxiv.), there appears Israel’s earliest exodus condition, previous to the erection of the tabernacle, and the constitution is seen in outlined rudimentary formation.—2. “The Priest Code,” at Ex. xxv. and on to the close of Numbers xxxvi. Here, within the area so outlined, and on that foundation of covenant with Jehovah, the constitution rises into a completed ceremonialism of Levitical institutions, around the tabernacle as their sun: where the principle, referred to at the original founding (Ex. xx. 24—R.V.), that the place for altar sacrifice shall be that which Jehovah chooses to put His name there (cp. Deut. xii. 5, ete.), is distinctly applied in restriction of sacrifice to the central sanctuary now erected, —that being now the place wherein He has “put His name” (by theophany and through prophetic intimation).—3. “The Deuteronomic Code”—in Deuteronomy—at the close of the wandering, when the great human leader is about to be parted from his Israel. This parting address is as it were at once a dying testimony and (ep. Acts i. 3) a mediatorial testament. We see in it a recapitulation of the constitution previously existing. With only some needed allusions to the Levitical institutions—already sufficiently expounded for the priests, whom they mainly concern,—what Moses here dwells on are the things which concern the nation generally, in its common life: introducing modifications of the system of the laws—by 1 See Appendix, Note L. * Even on the full received view of the Mosaic age, there is a true Institutional evolution within that age itself : from (1) the germinal con- stitution in The Book of the Covenant, into (2) the ceremonial system of the Priest Code, and thence on to (3) the recapitulary completion in the Deuteronomic laws. Here, while there is additional revelation at stages (2) and (3),—as a stream receives tributary “gracious rains” from heaven, —that supernaturalism of revelation and redemption, which constitutes the essentially distinctive, or distinctively essential, nature of the history, is the same all through the stages. And as for téme,—The changes in form (of this umbrella plant) can, so far as we know, have taken place in the well-marked periods of the forty years—(1) the inaugural annus merabuilis, (2) the long wandering, (3) the pause before crossing the Jordan as well as it could in the vast sons imagined by the destructive criticism : whose changes after all are not “uniformitarianly ” gradual, but highly and violently, if not absurdly, “ catastrophic.” 246 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS addition, subtraction, adjustment—suitably to the changed condition and prospects of the nation, now in transition from the wilderness to Canaan; with earnest appeals to the spiritual principles, of heart religion, which in the constitution are the living soul. Here, on the face of the matter, is a real evolution, em- bracing the whole constitutional history. Consequently the half-way view, if it speak of an historically unfolding growth of the constitution, does not in so speaking necessarily differ from the full received view except in reference to the tame of the evolution: the received view placing it all within the Mosaic age, while the half-way view extends it through generations following,—it may be, a thousand years.’ Of course it is necessary for those who hold this view as to the institutions, to hold also that the pentateuchal Seriptures, exhibiting the institutions in their final complete- ness, are of post-Mosaie origin. Some adherents of the view own that it necessitates departure from the hitherto received doctrine of inspiration of the Scriptures, their divinity of authorship; while others are found protesting that in their theorising the inspiration doctrine is not abandoned but pre- supposed.2 Adherents of the full received view object to the half-way view as not compatible with belief in the historical truth of the Scriptures,? which place that complete historical constitution in the Mosaic age, and also ostensibly place the pentateuchal Scriptures in that age. What is represented as an apologetically advantageous abandonment of indefensible outworks, they deprecate* as really being an opening of a door through which the enemy can come in as a flood, a con- cession of principle—to aggressive rationalism—which is a 1 There is here no question of the fact of those being three distinct codes, varying in form and in character correspondingly to their respect- ive purposes or occasions. The question of criticism here is, whether they so vary that they must have been framed in widely separate ages ot Israel’s history. 2 So Canon Driver, Introduction (Preface). But in The Contemporary Review (Feb. 1890), he said, “It would seem that current views of inspira- tion need some modification and revision.” 'That is, 2f, as he strove to show, the Scriptures are not free from error as to fact, but set forth as historical fact some things really untrue. 3 See Appendix, Note on “ Dr. Robertson.” 4 See Appendix, Notes A, K, I, and on “ Principal Cave.” i eling Si ets, APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 247 down-slide, with no rationally consistent termination short of naturalistic abandonment of revelation altogether. And in particular, with reference to inspiration, they are found remonstrating in the following strain :— | The sincerity of such protestation, about adherence to the inspiration doctrine, is not a matter in question. The question for us, with reference to supernatural religion in the Bible, is not, what a man may sincerely believe to be the bearing of the half-way view on inspiration ; but—a thing quite independent of his belief—what is the fact as to that bearing? Is the half- way view logically consistent with belief in real divine inspira- tion of Scripture? Suppose, for instance, that a critic, who prefaces with protesting about inspiration as aforesaid, goes on to make the Scriptures wnhistorical in narrative representations as to fact. What sort of “inspiration” is that,! under whose influence a sacred writer narrates as history what is untrue (2 Pet. 1. 16)? Can it proceed from the divine “Spirit of truth” (John xiv. 17, 26), the “holy Spirit” of God (2 Pet. i. 19-21)? Is not such unveracity, in a book professedly oracular (Rom. ili. 2; 1 Pet. iv. 11), suggestive rather (John vill. 46; cp. Gen. iii. 1-5) of a very different kind or source of influence, which perhaps may operate in heathen oracles ? Now, concentrating our attention on the bearing of the destructive criticism on apologetics, we begin with clearing away Clouds of confusion, ¢..,in relative use of words,—which (Bacon) are the counters of wise men and the money of fools. Sometimes a mere hash of opinions, adverse to the Bible and its religion, is served up as an exposition of “The Higher Criticism.” And not unfrequently it might appear to be thought that “criticism” is a new invention of deep scholars for discovery of hidden things regarding Scripture, and “higher criticism,” in ascertainments or.in methods, a con- summate fruit of that invention. Hence the following— Nore on use of words.—Criticism, higher criticism, is at least as old and widespread as real study of the Bible: so that it 1s to be hoped we all are more or less critics, yea, higher * “Such scholars would do an invaluable service to the Church at the present time, if they would explain what they mean by inspiration in this connection, and define wherein their position differs from that of the critics who profess no such reverence for the Old Testament.”—Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, with immediate reference to Dr. Driver's protestation. 248 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS critics ; although—like the man who spoke prose—we may not be .aware of it.: “Criticise” (eg. at-1 Cor..1.15;, x. 15), is Greek for judge. Biblical criticism thus is judgment regarding Scripture. The lower criticism (Eichhorn) is judgment regarding the outward form of Scripture, its text or letter: what are the books entitled to rank in its canon, and what the words and sentences that genuinely go to make those books? While higher criticism is judgment regarding the inward substance and history of Scripture on the ground of what Scripture itself contains. If the judgment be opposed to the claim of Scrip- ture and its religion to be of God, the criticism is “destructive” ; and it is “revolutionary ” if the judgment be opposed to received Christian views of Scripture and its contents. On the other hand, it is “conservative” if the judgment be favourable to these views, and “constructive ” if the judgment be favourable to that claim. Traditional means that this or that is “received” in a community from the past: e.g. (Col. i. 8) un-Christian opinions, 1 The following is historical definition from a common-sense point of view. Its immediate reference is to a certain German handling of the Old Testament previously to 1843 :—‘‘ Miracles and prophecies are impos- sibilities, and all apparent predictions that seem to have had a fulfilment must have been written after the events in which they seem to have been fulfilled. Having thus settled the matter in the gross by @ priori con- siderations, they proceed to apply the principles of criticism more speci- fically and in detail to particular books and portions of books of the Old Testament in order to show that they are neither genuine nor authentic. This criticism is of two kinds, the lower and the higher. The lower consists of an examination of the languages and contents of the books, especially of the events recorded, and of the allusions to manners and customs, with a view to determining the age and credibility of the particular books. This process in its general character is quite a legiti- mate one, and has often been successfully applied in proving that particular books were forgeries of a later age. . . . The higher criticism embodies the application of principles of a much more indefinite and im- palpable description, and consists in substance in a mere appeal to the taste and feeling of men, an utterly uncertain and fallacious test by which to judge of matters that can be competently decided only by appropriate historical evidence.”—Cunningham, at p. 423 of the work referred to in footnote above, p. 195. It is interesting to read the—so to speak—first impression of the present subject on the part of one who now takes rank abidingly in literature as a great master of historical theology. Where he deals with inspiration in the “Lectures,” he notes the significant fact that, broadly speaking, from Socinianism upward, low views of the authorship of Scripture are historically associated with proportionate lowness—looseness, inaccuracy, inadequacy—of men’s views regarding the doctrinal substance of revelation. ated 7 ——— APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 249 delusively ensnaring as a wrecker’s lure, perhaps called “ philo- sophy,” but really being atheistic naturalism; or, on the other hand, things received from divinely-inspired apostles (Luke i. 2; 2 Thess. ii. 15, iii; 6—where the Greek word is the same as at Mark vii. 9). A “tradition” thus may be Christian or atheistic; and “critical” views may be traditional, one way or the other. To make tradition an authority, is to reject the authority of Scripture alone, and to enslave the individual judgment: e.g., if “a consensus of critics” be made infallible Pope. Regarding the two most recent grand-masters of the destructive criticism (both lately deceased, within a year of each other),— Wellhausen for the Old Testament and Renan for the New,—it is said by a masterly writer in The Edinburgh feview (Oct. 1892), that they abandoned criticism properly so called, so as to be in their leadership a reductio ad absurdum of the movement they headed,—putting a fool’s cap on its pro- fessed undertaking, to judge regarding Scripture on the ground of what it contains,—by basing their judgments, not really on the contents of Scripture, but in historical guesses and philo- sophical dogmas of their own, imported into the case as an Alpha of premiss, and consequently found in their Omega conclusion.’ So, too, as to the judgments of their predeces- *“Wellhausen thinks that Graf has not much improved upon De Wette’s adverse criticism of the Books of Chronicles. He holds that the great task of such criticism ‘is not to collect the details of evidence, but so to shape the superabundant material as to convey a right total impres- sion.’ This singular principle of criticism, as practically illustrated by the work of Wellhausen himself, means that the critic must not cautiously and soberly inquire, first, if there be any irreconcilable discrepancy between Chronicles and the older books, but must so ‘shape’ the points im question as always to put the chronicler in a bad light. This of course enables him to transform the slightest difference of statement and abridg- ment of old narratives into deliberate and transparent mutilation of the old records.”—Professor Beecher, in—see below, pp. 280-1— Moses and his Recent Critics, pp. 229, 230, After giving samples of the “ shaping” on Wellhausen’s part, Dr. Beecher—p, 234—says further about him :—“He [the unsophisticated reader] needs perhaps no great amount of learning and logical acumen to perceive that this critic creates difficulties where there are none, perverts the import of the most transparent narrative, and arbitrarily rejects any passage, however found, which conflicts with his theory of Israel’s history.” (The work of Wellhausen he refers to is that referred to by the Edinburgh Reviewer in the characterisation of Wellhausen cited below, p. 268— which see.) 250 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS sors in grand-mastership of so-called “criticism,” Strauss and Baur! of Tiibingen school. As represented by such masters, the so-called criticism in the recent movement has in large measure been a dogmatism of mere naturalism, virtually atheistic, in holding as principle of judgment, that miracle is impossible, that there is no supernatural,—making this a criterion for determining what to think of Scripture and its contents: so that the tradition called “a consensus of critics” may have had its fountain, not in oracles of reason or of God, but in the blind unreason of disbelief in the operative being of a God. Here, however, we must be careful to distinguish things which differ. Thus, though that so-called “ evolution,” which is merely naturalistic, is in this relation another name for atheism, yet® there is a really Christian doctrine of evolution 1 See above, p. 227, etc. 2“ A third fundamental of the latest criticism, really held and acted on by its leading representatives, and not unfrequently confessed, is that a supernatural revelation, prophecy, and miracle are incredible.”— Bissell, The Pentateuch, p. 15. “T by no means intend to say that every one who belongs to this class of critics would take each one of these principles in the full sense here explained. But they are thoroughly characteristic of the class. Professor Robertson Smith, it is likely, would have disclaimed being governed by some of them. But Professor Smith’s acknowledged masters would not disclaim them.”—Pp. 17, 18. See further quotations from Professor Bissell in Appendix Norss. “ At the bottom of all this lies the naturalistic [=atheistic, M.] denial of those great principles whose recognition is absolutely necessary to a right understanding of the Old Testament.”—Vos, The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes, p. 170. Regarding M. Vos, see below, p. 279, and see further quotations from him in Appendix Norss. . “The question is fundamentally between rationalism and supernatural religion. Did the institutions of the Old Testament, and by legitimate and necessary consequence those of the New Testament also, proceed from the revelation of God? or are they the natural outgrowth of the national life of Israel ?”—Professor Green of Princeton, Introduction to Vos’ above work. Regarding Dr. Green, see below, p. 279, and see further quota- tions from him in Appendix NovteEs. “In some cases the theory rests on the philosophical postulate that religion in any case is only a natural development, the supernatural being impossible and incredible : this is certainly the view of Kuenen and Well- hausen.”—Professor T. W. Chambers in the Introductory Essay of Moses and his Recent Critics, pp. 26, 27,—regarding which volume see p. 279, ete. 3 See above, p. 245. Eimear oe ae geting tnt ncaa bid int aoa le Lar cs oS ze + APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 251 in this relation. Again,a man may hold that Jsaiah is a collection of the utterances of more than one prophet, while yet believing that all the utterances and this reeord of them are “given by inspiration of God”; and a man may hold that Danvel is a forgery, while yet believing in the divine author- ship of “all Scripture’! Such are not cases of destructive criticism in principle. At the worst they may be only cases of dangerous mistake on the part of men whose principle of Judgment regarding Scripture is not anti-Christian (Col. ii. 8). But we have to keep in view the fact that the movement of destructive criticism has been, and is, largely under controlling influence of a principle of anti-supernaturalism which is essentially opposed to the claim of Scripture, and the claim of Bible religion, to be either divine or true. The opposition may be in connection with such a detail as the Pentateuch, its institutions or its books; but the thing in question, with reference to the true quality of the criticism, is its bearing on that supernaturalism of revelation and redemption, without which the Scriptures and their institutions are, on the received Christian view, a body without a soul (see Note D).2 The detailed grounds and reasons which, apart from T Only, he thinks that Daniel is not a “ Scripture,” but has crept or slidden into the sacred volume through some mistake. With reference to such a case, it is said by Chalmers, “The disciple of a plenary inspira- tion may deny to some of our present books their title to a place in the canon” (Evidences). * “Nor is it learned criticism at all. All the difficulties alleged to exist in what is called the traditional view have been seen and weighed by Jews and Christians alike from the very beginning. There is absolutely nothing new in them, And nearly all—certainly all of them that are of any moment—are as patent in our English Bible as in the original.”— Principal Brown, in Aberdeen Presbytery, 14th February 1878. “The deistical controversy in England during nearly the first half of last century is the more important in the history of theological literature, because the infidel views then promulgated in England laid the founda- tions’ both of French and German infidelity. The writings of the English deists not only tended to call forth the infidelity which has since prevailed so extensively in France and Germany, but furnished the sub- stance or at least the germs of most of the arguments by which the French and German infidelity has been defended. Voltaire, who con- tributed largely to introduce into France the philosophy of Newton and Locke, was at least equally successful in disseminating the infidelity of Collins and Woolston ; and although the infidel neology of Germany has 252 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS atheistic anti-supernaturalism, are adduced on behalf of the destructive criticism against the received Christian view of the matter, are as a class not in their nature new.' It was said by Baur in his latest published work (posthumous), that to a remarkably large extent the present-day objections to Christianity are, often even in unchanged form, objections made by Celsus in the second century (recorded by Origen, who answers them seriatim). A like thing was said (with truth) about Baur’s own contending, that the New Testament Scriptures are mainly forgeries, and the contending of Strauss, his pupil, that the gospel history of wonders is a collection of myths or fables. Their objections were in use of common infidelity: even their theories, and the grounds and reasons of them, had been anticipated, eg., by English deists in the seventeenth century. So as to those objections, or grounds and reasons of opposition, to the received Christian view, that now are adduced on behalf of the Old Testament destructive criticism. Even the view that Jsaiah is a collection of utterances of more than one prophet, is very ancient: early in the second century it was put forward by the unbelieving Jew, Trypho, in his debate with Justin Martyr. The view that Daniel is a forgery was asserted by the heathen philosopher Porphyry, writing against Christianity in the third century? And, more impressive to us, in the eighteenth century, the golden been considerably modified in its character by an intermixture of unin- telligible metaphysics, and by the exhibition of a vastly greater amount of philological and ecclesiastical learning than either the English or the French infidels ever possessed, yet its fundamental principles are to be found very plainly and fully set forth, not only in the works of Spinoza, but ‘also in those of English infidels, especially of Tindal and Morgan.”— Cunningham, at p. 231 of the work referred to above, p. 199. 1 See above, pp. 198, 223-24. 2Though Justin’s “Dialogue” should be only dramatic — in the manner of his old master Plato—his putting that view into Trypho’s mouth would go to show that the view then had some currency among unbelieving Jews opposing Christianity (¢.g. in connection with the topic of a suffering Messiah—a “humiliation Christ”). 3 That view has to be maintained by unbelievers, because, if Daniel be not a forgery, then supernatural prediction is a visible fact, and anti- supernaturalism is destroyed in its foundation, There is a like necessity for denying the unity of Isaiah (see Appendix, Note D). APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTLOIC PERIODS 253 age of systematic Reformation theology, even the general views regarding Scripture and the Pentateuch which appear as finally matured in the present-day destructive criticism, were, in consecution of beginnings of a far higher antiquity, anticipated with a certain completeness and prestige of learn- ing and critical acumen by, ¢g., the two noted infidel philo- sophers,' Hobbes in England and Spinoza in Holland. The new thing in our day is,? the appearance of these views, carried to an extreme of really atheistic anti-supernaturalism, and sometimes in a spirit compared with which Hobbes and Spinoza are piously reverent, on the part of what may be said to be a movement within the Christian pale. But we now observe specially, that the present-day destructive criticism of the Old Testament has been antici- pated in another way, which ought to be marked and kept in mind. It has, that is, been anticipated by the New Testament destructive criticism of such as Baur and Strauss. The ground is changed from the New Testament to the Old; but the warfare is unchanged: the principle of judgment, the spirit of movement, the characteristic nature of methods and results, are now the same as then. It is the same criticism in a different application.” The same, but now discredited by the outcome of the trial of it in the previous case. And this ought now to be distinctly noted and well remembered; for it has an important message to our present from that so recent past: in particular, to us in the present inquiry it has a sermon on the text, “ All flesh is grass, . . . but the word of the Lord endureth for ever.” Let us look back (Isa. i. 3)— practising real “criticism,” instead of parrot echoing of other men’s judgments (Mark vii. 7). * Witsius (see below, p. 306, etc.), A.p. 1691, in addition to these specifies (as answered by him), Clericus (Le Clerc), Simon, and the author of a work on Pre-Adamites (Peyrerius). ? See footnote, p. 197, above. ° Its constitutive elements, the same in both applications, being,—1. rejection of supernaturalism ; 2. legends growing into history ; 3. radical revolution of the oriyinal religion, pretending to be only an evolution ; 4. Seriptures forged, late, pretending early origination, to conceal the in pos- ture, by invention of a false history.—Baur (see below in text) was really anticipated in all this by an early (abortive) appearance of the Old Testament application. 204. STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Yesterday at Tiibingen, the criticism was flourishing like a green bay tree, in a school renowned as Diana of the Ephesians, with a master like a colossus bestriding all the relative world of learning. And now—#? That school, which was virtually dissolved before its master’s death (A.D. 1860), at present is represented among individuals only by here and there a stray survival—rari nantes in gurgite vasto—or (case of Professor Huxley ?) uncomprehending echo of the long silent voice, like an incoherent ghost “revisiting the glimpses of the moon.” Christians, while the criticism was flourishing at highest, went on (cp. Eph. iv. 13, 14) steadfastly believing that the body of New Testament Scriptures are genuine writings of apostles and their authorised associates, and the Gospels a true history of the earthly career of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Their steadfastness is now justified by the result. The Tiibingen collapse is a new presumptive proof of that which they believed, as new storm is new proof that a house is founded on the rock. And this new proof of the religion is a new reason why Christians now, when tried by similar “wind of doctrine,” should go on trusting its old Scriptures, that they are the Word of God, who spoke through the prophets and in the Psalins, having sent redemption to His folk, and who, in pursuance of a purpose of redeeming mercy toward mankind, made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel (Ps. cili. 7). It is well to keep that historical experiment on the criticism in view, were it only for guarding “the simple” against the delusiveness of a cry that is often heard in this relation, about a “consensus of critics,” as if it were asked, “Have any of the scribes believed in Him?” Some, who have made a reputation through ploughing with the heifer of the destructive criticism, may be found on close inspection to cive really 2o reason for their theorising but the authority of the alleged “consensus.” Some, who offer themselves as teachers of mankind with reference to Scripture and its contents, expressly bid the commonality of men, who are not expert in dead languages and deeply buried antiquities, pin their faith on the decisions of a criticism that now seems In the ascendant in certain schools. This recalls to mind. an ancient utterance of “higher critics” (judges) in their own APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 255 way (John vii. 47-49), “This people (there —“this here mob”) who knoweth not the law are cursed ” (ep. vers. 15-17): It would go to establish a popery of bookishness, a dominie- ation of mere technical “scholarship,” as truly fatal to rational freedom, with its dignity and its blessings, though the infallibility should be in Tiibingen or Leyden, as if it were at Rome. But the infallibility would require to be real. Let US, then, remember that experiment on the criticism in our time. This will show us that in such matters a full consensus of critics, though it should be admissible as expert evidence, is far from conclusive as infallible judgment. There was (1 Cor. ii. 8) a full consensus of highest critics (= “ judges”) in condemning the Carpenter, who (John vii. 15) “had never learned,” and (Acts iv. 13, ep. ver. 1) in casting out the fishermen, whom, after the great Pentecost, they perceived to be “unlearned and ignorant men.”! There was a consensus of the book-learned in asserting Transubstantiation, and of anti-Galileo “scientism” in commanding the sun to move round the earth. Soin our own day, great was the consensus of “biblical scholars” in the Tiibingen fiasco; while about the same time other “higher critics” of the infallible type were stamping as a genuine antique Zhe Amber Witch, a good story which really was their own contemporary, child of Dr. Meinhold’s brain, a jew d’esprit for testing their infallibility. Not that much learning always makes men mad, nor that destructive critics always are much learned? But there are “follies of the wise” as well as “fears of the brave.” Learned men are, like the commonalty, liable to epidemic delusion: especially when they form into exclusive coteries, perhaps (John v. 44) visited with blindness of mutual admira- tion societies, or intellectual sterility as through “ breeding in and in.” And they are peculiarly exposed to blinding influences of Bacon’s “idols of the theatre” (of system or theory, ¢.7. mere naturalism, 2 Cor. iv. 3, +), and “idols of the ' Greek for zdiots = no “scholars.” * In Ebrard’s famous recipe for making a destructive critic, it can be seen that show of much learning may be only shoddy—old clothes worked up into seeming new. And indeed, what labour of learning is required for keeping up a cry about “consensus ” ? 9256 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS cave” (of cloisteral isolation from the open air of reality, the school of practical judgment or sense, Leo xe Lo): Now, in the present case, the very question is, under one aspect, whether those critics, about whose consensus the cry is raised, are not possibly, if not presumably, under such blinding influence ?—whether the judgments, which we are exhorted to take implicitly on their authority, may not be reasonably supposed to be possibly products of cave or theatre idolatry, a domineering bookishness that is worldly in its arrogance and blind in its worldliness ? These destructive critics are on their trial. In addressing the public through books or otherwise, they place themselves at the bar of that public, to be judged with reference to their views by its common reason. And if they now say in effect, “ These views of ours are to be received by all other men because they are ours,’ then they in this give no proof of infallibility any more than of wise humility or modest wisdom. The party at the bar lays down the law to his judge; or says to the jury, “Open your mouth, and shut your eyes, and see what J will send you”! Nor is the case materially altered if it be the minor prophets of the criticism who speak, to the effect of saying, “ All men ought to accept these judgments, blindly as we deliver them, for owr masters all are of one mind in pronouncing them.” Their masters at present are not the judges, but are being judged; and certainly are not shown to be infallible by having them as pupils, who “say ditto to” _ their judgments. “Thou hast appealed unto Cesar: unto Cresar shalt thou go.” And in the trial the destructive criticism may do service to truth by furnishing an experiment (cp. Rom. ix. 17), with experimental evidence resulting from failure—as in the Tiibingen experience. The masterly Edinburgh Reviewer is of opinion that already the Old Testament destructive criticism is visibly on its way to similar collapse, in self- destruction through self-manifestation as a mare’s nest ; so as to leave the old received view in sole possession of the field, with gain, in improved knowledge of the Scriptures, from the new searching study of them that the movement has occasioned. And in that event this will not be the only gain. There will also be an apologetical gain, in the new proof of APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 257 the religion that is constituted by new failure of assault on the Scriptures. Nor will the gain be, of simply so much additional evidence, of the kind that resulted from the Tiibingen collapse. It will be the gain of a second line of curcumstantial evidence, making proof that is far stronger than simply twice the first. In such a case the argument is what is called “cumulative”: the augmentation of evidential force is not by addition simply, but by multiplication,—szeh multiplication that (2 Cor. xiii. 1) “two or three” times one may be infinity—absolute certainty. Thus,— The criticism, while reproducing common infidelity, has brought into the assault its own resources of learning, trained academical acumen, and industry such that the world is not able to contain the books it has written. That is to say, all that the wit of man can do has now been tried against the old Book. And the result, in the assault on the New Testament, has—we saw—been failure, most memorably conspicuous, thus far furnishing experimental proof that the book is an “Impregnable Rock.” What, then, if there similarly be failure in the assault on the Old Testament, the only other assailable side of that Gibraltar? Then, as the result of two grand experiments, which are exhaustive, there will be not only an addition but a completion: there will have been completed a grand arch of demonstration by experi- mental proof: a fabric whose two sides, though separately neither of them should be able to stand, in their combination may be strong as the mountains round about Jerusalem. Well and wisely might Neander, consulted by the King of Prussia about suppression of Strauss’s infidel book, advise against that use of force. It might have deprived the truth of the benefit of the Tiibingen experiment. The criticism may thus do a peculiar service to truth, by reason of the peculiar nature of the assault on its part. The peculiarity of the critical assault is constituted by the cireum- stance that the criticism undertakes to account for the Bible and its history, or to answer the question,—which common infidelity avoids or evades,—How are they to be accounted for, if not on the received Christian view 2 What story have * What Neander said was, that Christianity is best defended by its own resources,—not by the civil. power. 17 258 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS you to put in place of the scriptural account of the matter?’ To answer this question is distinctively the problem which the criticism has undertaken. And a failure on its part to solve the problem is important unintended (see Luke xxi. 13) service to Bible religion, through going to show that the Bible and its history really cannot be accounted for except on the received view,—so that the book and its religion must be of God. So it was when the Tiibingen theorising died of daylight. So long as the matter lay among objections, perhaps in remote obseurity of recondite antiquarianism, “the simple” might be perplexed (though “not in despair”—see Matt. xxiv. 24): as when Paul and others (Acts xxvii.), nonplussed in a stormy darkness, cast anchor and waited for the day. But when the discussion rolled out into daylight, and the criticism laid 7s own story of the matter open to the judgment of men’s common reason,—then it perished of the exposure: as a fish out of water, gasping, dies, or as an oyster 1s no sooner open than it is dead. And in dying it bequeathed a new hind of proof that the scriptural story is true and divine: when the rationalistic story was by mankind seen to be «rrational, condemned by the common reason as historically absurd, then not only the criticism consequently sank into nothingness,— its fall was a distinctly new testimony of rationality to the truth of Christianity. Hence with reference to this new assault, believers well may comfort themselves with recollection of that failure of the same criticism in a different application, as David was heartened for his combat with Goliath by re- collection of what had happened to the lion and the bear. For it is here to be remembered that when Goliath is slain, not only Israel is delivered from assault, but the Philistines become tributary servants of the new kingdom. Believers are not now in a darkness of mere nonplus. Though they were, yet (see Acts xxvii. 25), knowing on whom they have believed and in what, they here might (see Note H) emulate the cheerfulness of Leonidas at Thermopyle, when it was observed that the Persian arrows were so thick in the air as to darken the sun: “Then,” said he, “we shall fight in the shade.” But in fact, not only there is for them an | 1 Cp. above, pp. 198, 231. " SS en ee a APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 259 inward shielding light of faith (Eph. vi. 16)! against. which arrows of unbelief are powerless.2 In such a case as that of the Tubingen fiasco, light ariseth unto them out of the dark- ness itself: as in the case of Samson’s lion, “out of the eater’ came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” And this again is a dawning light of hope regarding the new assault, that it shall go with it as it went with its predecessor ; hope thus giving a new song of the book (Ps. i, xix. 7, etc; ; as a bird will sing in the darkness of snowstorm, if the world’s heart be full of spring, and the sun—a veiled Moses—appear through the gloom. The hope is founded on the rationality of mankind, that its judgment shall now as before be found revolting from historical absurdity, condemning it to vanish into nothingness— “And leave a name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.” Such a judgment natively tends to be a finality, like the creation of a star, a new light fer all coming time. So the judgment in the Tiibingen case reasonably warrants an ex- pectation that similarly in this new case, the criticism, like Balaam, having come to ban, shall be constrained to bless. It thus may be not really so formidable as (to “the simple ”) it looks: like the terrific spectre who, trading in mysteriousness, kept the population of the land in fear and tremblin g,—until the plain sane strength of Gireth’s manliness fought its way into the stronghold of delusion, there to smite off the helmet of imposture, so disclosing to view the face of a foolish frightened boy. A finale that, if the masterly Reviewer be not. mis- taken, is perhaps waiting in the not far: distant future of some others who play pranks of spectral mystification. TAs to the internal evidence, see the present writer’s work, The Revelation and The Record. ? Thus Paul and Silas at midnight in the inner prison sang praise to God, so that the prisoners heard them; and thus “an old disciple ” in Horatius Bonar’s Kelso congregation,—when tried in her devotions with whisperings (Gen. iii. 1-5) of the oldest of destructive critics, “just went on wi’ her bit prayer, an’ never heeded him.” (Reported to the present writer by a lady to whom that old disciple confided this and other such matters. ) 960 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS - Those high critics have appealed for a judgment to the common reason of mankind. And instead of accepting them as infallible judges in their own case, we will remember that in this case they are only at the utmost expert witnesses 5 whose testimony is the less weighty because the case is their own, while their trustworthiness in witness-bearing is, under one aspect, the thing in question (ep. the controversy about Papal Infallibility). We will also remember that in this case the expertness, the special knowledge, of which we will suppose then to have a monopoly, is really of very little importance for a sound judgment! The really decisive con- siderations in the case—those which the destructive critics themselves appeal to and rely on——are not of linguistic and other obscurities of technical “scholarship,” but of historical fact, the nature of real things in mundane history, the veason- ableness of this construction of that history. When they speak of these things, they are not witnesses, but judges like their neighbours. And for judging with reference to those things the true qualification is, not mere technical “ scholar- ship,’ ——‘ gramerie” of * curious books,’—but the qualification of a juryman, who may ‘make use of expert evidence if needed; that which Paul appeals to at 1 Cor. x. 15 (where his word for “judge” is criticise): namely, the “wisdom ” (for which his word is novs—as at Gal. iii. 1), which there means practical insight, Scoticé “ cumption,” Anglicé “sense.” 1 An expert who has made his mark in this controversy speaks ex- pressly to the point as follows -__“ The essential and fundamental matters in dispute in this controversy are not questions of ‘scholarship’ at all, in the proper sense of that term. It so happens, as a matter of course, that the men who have gone most thoroughly into these questions are trained Hebrew scholars ; but the bare facts of a linguistic character with which they have to deal, count for very little in the essential questions at issue, as critical writers themselves have confessed. These writers are special- ists, it is true, but specialists dealing with matters in which common sense may follow them, observe their processes, and pronounce upon their validity.” —J ames Robertson, D.D., Professor of Orvental Languages wn the University of Glasgow. 2 In this connection Professor Robertson says of some “cave” men,— «“ Perhaps if German scholars had gone more out into the broad light of day, and looked at these narratives in connection with the places to which they relate, instead of keeping their science, to use Socin’s words, ‘under ground, in the esoteric circle of special students,’ they would have at- APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 261 Graf, who heads the series of masters of theorising at present most in vogue among the destructive critics, made a point of asserting that in this matter judgment has now to proceed, no longer on grounds merely of language in the books, but on historical grounds of reality,—the substantive nature of the laws in connection with the varied national conditions for which the laws were supposably suitable. All the more, therefore, we are entitled to warn the commonalty against the snake-in-the-grass fallaciousness of the aforesaid appeal to consensus of critics: making what is only the technical expertness of a few specialists to be more than equivalent to the sense or gumption of mankind as a whole, entitling this witness to speak as if ex cathedré, ad urbem et orbem, from a papal judgment throne—in his own case. The gébe-mouche, who pins his faith on the alleged consensus, may imagine that he is only accepting testimony—as of the dictionary—regard- ing languages and antiquities. What in fact he blindly swallows is, the judgment, reyarding history of Israel and Israels religion, of men who have no special qualification for that judgment, but may be very specially disqualified for it. What he subjects his own judgment to is, domination of mere book-learning where it has no right to rule; a popery of scribes who may be not even Pharisees, but Sadducees, believing neither in angel, spirit, nor resurrection,—atheistie school- masters bearing witness on behalf of themselves. In a plain matter, we are all to believe whatever story this consensus- coterie may happen to put in place of the Bible account of itself, because the story-teller tells the story !? And all the time there is no obvious necessity of sub- tained results more acceptable to average common sense” (Early Religion of Israel, p. 103 ; 3rd ed.). His immediate reference is to the Old Testa- ment topography, so remarkable in its (unconscious or unstudied) minutely detailed exactness,—in comparison, ¢.g., with the Palestinian topography of early Christian and Mohammedan tradition. This he regards as con- stituting a presumptive proof of authenticity of the materials of Israel’s oldest history in Scripture, where the destructive criticism will see nothing but mere legendary cloud-land. His point is illustrated even in such a case as that of the Scottish topography of Blind Harry’s Wallace and Barbour’s Bruce, in comparison with that of the Arthurian legends. But see Sir J. W. Dawson’s comprehensive statement below, Note T. 2 See below, p. 326. 262 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS mitting to such degradation of reason. To all appearance, the community may, in this matter, be really qualified to form a judgment of its own. As against the endeavour to enslave its reason through repression of its judgment, we submit the following— : Note regurding qualification in the community..—l. Even though the question had really depended on “cave” mysteries of “scholarship,” still the unlearned might be qualified to judge as in a jury question, using expert evidence on mysterious points. As for technicalities—a plain man, who cannot follow the higher mathematics of Newton’s Principia, yet may, through such reasoning as that of Ferguson’s Lectures on Astronomy, attain to comprehension of the starry system, or perception of its rationale, sufficiently for guidance of his jndgment in real questions coming home to him, eg., regarding navigation or the succession of the seasons. And in the present case there are no higher mathematics. What has to be considered is a story about a plain matter, with reference to Israel and Israel’s religion. A plain man of sense or gumption can judge for him- self, Is this a likely story, a reasonable account of the matter ? And the most learned expert in the world cannot really do more. He after all can only, in the exercise of what sense or eumption—if any—may be given to him, ask himself, Is this a likely story ? a reasonable view ? yea— 2. Though for information the commonalty had been com- pletely dependent on learned antiquarianism, they might yet be able to judge in the matter. Professor Owen did not need to sce amoa in N.Z. With reference, eg., to Celtic Scotland, in a real question an unlearned man may be substantially as eood a judge as Mr. Skene was, if he have as much exercised sense as that true master had. But in the present case all the informa- tion as to facts that is of real importance is within easy reach of every one who can read his mother-tongue. It is all in the Bible. Substantially, the learned know nothing about the matier begond what is there? while what is there lies open to all mankind, and is everywhere in use of Christians and their churches, “familiar in men’s mouth as household words.” 3 A somewhat similar case would be, that of a constitutional question in present-day politics coming home to men’s business and bosoms while reaching back to such foundations as The Declaration of Independence, The Act of Settlement, Magna Charta. ‘ven here the cases are not quite parallel. For those 1 Cp. Appendix, Note on “ Principal Cave,” p. 329. 2“ Foy all that preceded the time of Alexander the Bible is the only native authority.”—Wellhausen. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 263 great monuments are—unlike the Pyramids—in a sense “ out of sight, out of mind.” They are away from familiar knowledge of the people, so as not to be seen and felt in their bearing on the nation’s daily common life. And that (Matt. v. 17-20) can never happen to any Bible “ foundation” so long as men “by Christ believe in God” (1 Pet. i. 21). But even in the case we have imagined, while practical men might greatly value — expiscations contributed by expert antiquarianism,—could any spectacled “cave” professor ever be such an utter troglodyte of book-learning, so completely wanting in sense or bereft of nous, as to dream of going out into daylight of real affairs, with dictation in a practical question of the constitution to such plain men as Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Cromwell, Edward Longshanks, or Hugh Miller? These, being large, real men, could appreciate the humour of the puny preposterousness of spectral apparition (Dominie Sampson with his “ erudition ” ?). To bring this matter, of the possible fitness of the com- munity to judge in the present case, to a test, let us now provisionally suppose that the story, proposed in place of the received Christian view, is somewhat as follows (see Appendix, Note A) :— Theoretical story of Israel's constitution.—The pentateuchal Scriptures as we have them, and the Mosaic institutions as these describe them, came into existence after the return from Babylon. The Scriptures, especially in so far as they bear to be of earlier date than that, are more or less forgeries (see Appendix, Note L); the history, in the soul of its main central course, 1s fictitious or false ; and the introduction of the institu- tions, claiming to have been created by God through Moses, Was an imposture in God’s name.!_ The imposture proceeded 1 Bissell (The Pentateuch, p. 29) particularises,—“It is safe to say that a really sober Christian scholarship will never abandon a position against which so little valid objection can be urged, for one involving the extra- ordinary inconsistencies of that now before us.” ~In illustration, he has referred to the inconsistency of the view that “the authorised existence of the priestly constitution began after the Exile,” with main plain facts, é.g., in the Kings, such as, the elaborate ceremonialism of Solomon’s temple, and the refrain of denunciation, “Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.” [It is admitted that the Kings, written during the Exile, are substantially authentic history.] Also, the background of reference to “the law” in the, Psalms, and in the prophets, particularly those before the Exile ; as well as the very existence of the prophecy and psalmody, amid surrounding degeneracy shining as “a light in a dark place” (at 2 Pet. i 19 the reference is emphatically to Old Testament Scrupture). 264 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS under the eye and influence of distinctively spiritual-minded prophets whose aim was, to raise the people from carnality of outwardness into spirituality of monotheism! The result was, a radical revolution of Israel’s Exodus religion, in two grand movements :— ; 1. The Deuteronomic Code, represented by the laws in Deuteronomy,—(1) prescribed that there should be for Israel only one central place of worship by sacrifice, where hitherto there had been permitted freedom of altar sacrifice, as in the patriarchal age,—the high places (Bamoth) being, previous to Josiah’s time, as local sanctuaries in Israel, something hke parish churches ;—and (2) it set apart a priestly tribe, of Levi Qf there was a tribe of Levi), where hitherto the only priesthood had been that of all Israel. The revolution was effected, B.C. 621 (2 Kings xxi.) by means of “a law book,” which the zealous priest Hilkiah® found in the temple when the pious 1 “They [Israel’s tribes of the Exodus time in Egypt] served different gods, but among them one deity was regarded as the protector of all these tribes together. . . . These tribes differed from, properly speaking, one people ; the wandering life which they mostly led, rendered that im- possible ; and besides, they stood on a very low level of civilisation.” Kuenen. [Mark “the wandering life,” for which there is no evidence, but the contrary. But it is wanted for a colour to the preceding and succeed- ing assertions, which are wanted for Kuenen’s theory, which here says in effect, Sic volo, sve jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas (“I so please and command : Jet will for reason stand”). Mark again theorising assumption, regarding standard of morality on the part of religious reformers (!)] 2“ A clever stratagem, to secure respect for legal enactments from a reluctant people.”—Bissell, The Pentateuch, see Appendix, Note L. 3 Clericus (see footnote below, p. 306) held that the writer of the Pentateuch including Deuteronomy was that priest (2 Kings xvii. 27) who was sent from Babylon to teach the Samaritans imported into Canaan. Kuenen says, “We find it, however, very difficult to believe that the dis- covery was accidental. It was the execution of a plan formed beforehand, to which Hilkiah himself would not have been entirely a stranger. We, of course, must strongly disapprove of such deception [cp. the “holy earnestness” below, and the “shaping” in footnote, p. 249]; but those who practised it did not feel disturbed in conscience by it : the conception of good faith which was at that period entertained was much less pure than that which is now cherished. [The standard morality, here ascribed to zealous religious reformers in Josiah’s time, is pure theorising assumption. | “The view of history, also, which had at an earlier period been presented by the Jehovist, and with a slight modification adopted, did not entirely content the priests. [That is, Aaronic priests, now supplanting the older priesthood.] They therefore did not hesitate to commit to writing their own conception of this history, and in their turn to make the representation of the past subservient to the education of the people in APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 269 Josiah was king, and which (“The hider finds.”—Detective Police) perhaps had been placed there for that purpose. It represented the new constitution as having been publicly given to all Israel, with a solemnity second only to that of the giving the direction which appeared to them to be the true one. Need I enlarge on the peculiarity of tendency ? [of “clericalism,” well known about in Holland]. You have all more or less clear notions of the priestly ideal.” —Kuenen. [Cp. 2 Pet. i. 19-21 ; 2 Tim. iii. 15-17.] As to the revolution of 422 B.c. (Neh. viii.).—“The people receive a deep impression both from the words of the law and from the holy earnestness [cp. above in this note] with which Ezra acquits himself of his task. Immediately, in accordance with a prescription, which then for the first time came to the knowledge of the people [here Kuenen perverts the Scripture statement as to fact], the feast of tabernacles is celebrated with unknown splendour. At the conclusion of it the crowd assembles anew. All is now properly prepared. The principal persons subscribe a document whereby they bind themselves to the strict observance of all Jahveh’s commandments, laws, and institutions; the whole of the people join themselves with them, and take upon themselves the same obligation. Especial reference is made to the regulations in the interest of the temple and its priesthood, and their observance is urged. Ezra has gained his object. The third edition of the Pentateuch [including the newly-forged main part of the middle books] is recognised as the law of Jahveh, and accepted by the Jewish nation itself as the rule of belief and conduct [though they must have known it was an imposture! Cp. with the “holy earnestness ” of Kuenew’s Ezra the words of a book which he held in his hand, and read to the people, at Deut. iv. 2, xii. 32, xxxi. 9-13, 24-27 ; see as to the crime, Rev. xxii. 18; Gal. i. 8. Our quotations of Kuenen, from a public address of his, thus bring into view in him a modern “ Ezra” —quantum mutatus ab illo 1] “In these Mosaic laws, the worship of Jehovah outside of the temple, on the high places, was not forbidden, nay, it was expressly permitted [here—as proof—follows quotation of Ex. xx. 24].” Kuenen, who prefaces with, “we must very distinctly attend to this,” and goes on to set forth a process of abolishing that permission, effective in the time of Josiah, when ‘“a new law-book was drawn up, which, nearly in its original form, is pre- served to us in the book of Deuteronomy.” [The permission is a pure judgments regarding Wellhausen at pp. 249 and 268, etc.).] “ All these commands [of The Book of the Covenant, Ex. xxi.-xxiii.] are represented as Mosaic. In truth they were borrowed from custom, which had been gradually formed, and from the moral principles which he had proclaimed. They were therefore Mosaic in a wider sense, and would thus be put into the mouth of Moses himself.”—.Kuenen. [Yes—by a false historical witness. Their being traditional—see Exodus in loco, Dods and Whyte’s Handbook—would not necessarily prevent them from being really Mosaic, and “ given by inspiration of God” ; nor, from being enshrined in a supernatural revelation of merey and judgment. | 266 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS . of the law at Sinai, by Moses in the plains of Moab; and at least in its essential part (the laws) bore to have been written by him. The forgery may have taken place.a century betore Josiah’s time, in Hezekiah’s or Manasseh’s. 2. The Priest Code, a post-exilian imposture in Jehovah's name, centred in the creation of an Aaronic priesthood, where under the Deuteronomic constitution there had been only a priesthood common to all the Levites. Along with that there was introduced the invention of a Messiahism of atoning sacrifices—sin-offering and peace-offering—and a system of temporal support in the interest of the priestly caste. The new constitution, B.c. 444 (see Neh. viii.) was on the basis of a sketch by Ezekiel (xL, etc.) of a plan he had begun to carry out. And the Pentateuch and other historical books were so recon- structed as to hide the change, and make the post-exilian institutions appear to have arisen at the exodus time.? 3. The Jehovist Code, at Ex. xxi.—xxili. (see also Ex. xxxiv.), of uncertain date (perhaps the ninth century B.c.), represents approximately the earliest Israelitish constitution. To what extent—if any—this was “given by Moses,” or in his age, is undetermined. The very solemn representations (“The Lord called unto Moses, etc.) in the middle pentateuchal books, exhibiting the institutions (cp. Heb. viii. 5) as all, one by one, called into being (Heb. xi. 3) by express creative revelation of God’s kingly will, is fictitious; and (cp. Heb. iil. 5) the great mediatorial office filled by Moses in the middle books, and his erand historical action all through Deuteronomy, are dramat- ism 2— “a literary form ”—tlor the purpose of facilitating the religious revolutionary movements, through gaining affectionate reverence of the people towards the innovations, by putting on these the winninely venerable (false) face of having come down from the great Founder (founder of what—if of anything—is undetermined). Our Kuenen quotations, here and further on, are from a public address on “ The Higher Criticism,” expressly intended (cp. Paul at Athens, Acts xvii. 19) to show the community what this new criticism really is. Here, then, we see it, so to speak, on its best behaviour, as exhibited by one of its three foremost masters. “ Essentially a fraud of the time of the Exile.”—Bissell, The Pentateuch. a ue preceding footnote. 3 « Whatever the forte of our critics may be, they have a very decided foible for omniscience.”—Bissell, The Perticue APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 267 Here we see no call for deep dictionary lore. Such a story is not beyond the depth of common reason. A plain man of sense is capable of judging whether this is a likely story, a reasonable view of the Bible and its history. In a community of such plain men, such a story would go the way of Tubingen, dying of daylight as soon as brought into full view of the public. Exposition would be exposure. There would be no deep discussion of its claims on human reason. The only real question regarding it would be, whether it is really possible that, with reference to the noble book of Deuteronomy and Israel’s whole momentous history of religion, such a story ever, outside of Bedlam, entered the imagination of the thoughts of any human heart. Unlearned criticism* will perhaps be found marked by one quality (highly placed by Paul in the Pastoral Epistles), in respect of which it may differ from the learned criticism at present in question. That is, the quality of “soundness” in mind, healthiness of judement, sanity of reason. ‘This quality is in schools of learning often “ made light of,” sometimes even expressly derided or openly scorned by name: as if wnsoundness of judgment were deemed an an indispensable qualification of a true judge (=“ critic”). A Chinese manufacturer, having received an order to make a set of cups in exact accordance with a pattern that was sent him (ep. Heb. viii. 5), made a set in which every cup was cracked. For by accident it happened that the pattern cup had a crack in it. So it came about that crackedness of one type was made a prineipiwm cognoscendi, or testing-mark of genuineness: a cup without a crack in it was disesteemed as not up to the mark,—behind the age. An allegory in which perhaps the crackedness is anti-supernaturalism. Crack (or “crank ”) of that type seems to be in some quarters—not so far away as China—deemed indispensable as qualification of “a chosen vessel’ unto criticism: so that, in order to be in the fashion of those quarters (see Gal. ii. 13, 14), this or that critic, though the crack should not be in him really, as a principium essendi or essence of being, may yet be tempted to a simulation of the crackedness,—which, as in cases of lycanthropy, may more or less impose upon himself (ep. Luke 1 Greek for judgment. 268 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ix. 05). Hence the unlearned criticism may be despised like a poor man’s wisdom, because of apparent sanity, healthiness, or soundness init (no avristveratic ailment): while perhaps, on the other hand, a critic flourishes through crackedness ;— esteemed on account of that hall-mark, as, in “cumulative ” election voting, the man with a bee in his bonnet is carried to the top of the poll by plumpers of all the cranks in the con- stituency. Nevertheless, in the above sample story we can see that want of scholastic learning is no necessarily fatal disqualifica- tion for veritable judging with reference to the Bible question. In the popish controversy it is maintained by Protestants that, previous to surrendering one’s liberty of judgment in favour of “Church” infallibility, it at least is necessary to exercise private judgement on the previous question, as to the title of “the Church” to claim infallible authority. And the community, called on to put implicit faith in a “ consensus of critics,” is entitled and bound, before committing to them so ereat a trust, to exercise its own judgment—if it have any— on the question as to their presumable qualification for giving the law to “the rest of mankind” (the non-elect ?—Conf. of Faith), If “the law was given by Moses,” he gave proof of qualification: what about those consenting critics ? tegarding their most recent grand-master, the following opinion was very recently? laid before the literary world in one (Tit. i. 12) of its most long-famous organs of opinion :— Opinion regarding Wellhausen (the words are ours).—l. As shown in testing samples (of “ Prolegomenato History of Israel ” —the work under review), he is unreliable in statement regard- ing mere fact, on the face of the Scripture he professes to be citing or expounding, to such an extent as to be disqualified for witness-bearing, not to speak of judging —2. He is further dis- qualified in this case by being substantially unacquainted with tar the most important extra-seriptural aid to solution of the present Old Testament problems,—namely, the new light pour- ing in on the old Scripture from archeological discoveries in Egypt and the East, with reference to ancient languages, customs, constitutions, and religions of Eastern peoples, specially those of Semitic race.—3, He is disqualified especially for historical judgment (that is, in this case, real judgment), by a bookish narrow closet one-sidedness, such that he can see no 1’ See above, p. 249. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 269 difference between an ancient Oriental Semite and a modern German.—4. In fine, he really does not read the book he pro- fesses to construe, but reads into it what will suit a SOUL oy anti-super naturalistic prepossession. What is the use of a “consensus” of a whole world full of such critics? Then, the minor prophets of the movement, whose one argument is that “consensus,” have to be dis- counted as having abdicated if not forfeited the title to count. Of one of the most distinguished of these pupils, who from the outset has made most copious use (or abuse) of that one- argument method, an opinion was recorded, by a writer of similar calibre to that of the above-cited Review, in a previous number of the same Quarterly (Zdin. Rev. April 1892). That is, of Professor W. R. Smith, as represented by his recent Burnett Lectures, specially in his handling of root questions in reference to religion and social morality, in connection, e., with sacrifice and with marriage. The Cambridge Arabic professor is found to be in his thinking receptive rather than originative,—taking his philosophy from Herbert Spencer, his social archeology from J. F. Maclennan, and_ his biblical criticism from the Continental school represented by Well- hausen. And in the mind so constituted and furnished there are found the same traits of unfitness for veritable criticism (= judgment) as elsewhere are found in that master,—rash arbitrariness in assumptions even as to fact, ignorance or ignoring of information outside of the “cave” of a one-sided book-learning, and manifested incapacity for simply inde- pendent judgment on the ground of relevant ‘evidence.' 1 Of the personal authorship of the two Edinburgh Review articles the present writer knows nothing. Professor Green -of a ee is an account of the contents of the Lectures (first series), ; “No thoughtful reader can avoid feeling that sw Tee Age Bad ise are deduced from slender and doubtful premisses, or can yield his ready assent to novel opinions here propounded as indisputable with but slight show of proof. An inquiry into primitive Semitic religion which aims at really trustworthy results, should be based on a just oa careful deduction from the entire Semitic field, and especially from the most ancient and reliable sources. The volume ten us, however, purposely ignores all that has been developed from the early monuments of Syria and Babylonia, and bases itself almost exclusively on the principle of kingship prevailing in Arabia in the age before Mohammed, which stood confessedly in no special 270 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ‘Neglect of the light of those wonderful discoveries, to which the Reviewers allude, may appear a wilful blindness evincing moral disqualification for judging in the present case. The “ monumental history ” that is derived from them is now established in the rank of science. Yet apparently “ biblical scholars,” who claim to be distinctively “scientific” and above all things “historical,” are unacquainted with that history ! A very able writer (see Appendix, Note F), who has exten- sively studied the literature of the subject in connection with the Old Testament, can hardly find among that school of critics any trace of acquaintance with the relative significance of the recent discoveries, excepting (7) some such things as a scoff of Wellhausen at the “God-forsaken dreariness ” of the Egyptologists. But (saith Hartley) “if reason be against a man, a man will be against reason” (cp. John ix. 39). It is long since an eminent Egyptologist * bore witness on behalf of “the monuments ”—as if Israel’s ancient oppressors were now speaking for Moses from their graves—with reference to the Exodus foundation of the Old Testament historical system, that the “scholars” of negative criticism are simply wrong, and yelation to religion, and which is pressed to consequences for which no evidence is furnished other than a very subtle and not very satisfactory process of argument. This is supplemented by taboos and totems of non- Semitic savage life, and by passages and incidents from the Old Testament, interpreted from his peculiar critical standpoint in admitted opposition to the intended meaning of the sacred writers themselves” (The Presby- terian and Reformed Review, Oct. 1892). With reference to a bias against the evangelical doctrine of atonement, which Dr. Green perceives in the Lectures, he speaks of The Westminster Review as warmly commending them on this account. The present writer’s recollection of a cursory perusal of the Review article referred to is, rather that it censured Pro- fessor Smith for not going on to the conclusion, adverse to that doctrine, for which, to the Reviewer's great satisfaction, the more special discussions in the Lectures furnish premisses. But this may be only the opposite side of the shield. Near the beginning of his career of publication, the professor was very severely taken to task, by Principal Cave and others, on the score of his having—as if in the witness-box—represented to the general community, as conclusions definitively accepted by all scholars worth taking into account, what in reality are only the conclusions of one school, prevalently yationalistic. (With reference to that early period, see Appendix, Notes “Pr, Binnie” and “ Reminiscences.”) 1 Mr. Stuart Poole, “ Egypt” articles in The Contemporary Review. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 271 the scriptural representation is clearly authentic history. And growing comprehensiveness of knowledge derived from (“the land o’ the leal”)! the impartiality of long departed peoples, is telling with a like fatal effectiveness against the very founda- tions of the historical system which the destructive criticism has to put in place of the historical system of Scripture on the received view. In particular, in order to have room for a naturalistic “evolution” of the Israelitish constitution as it was at the time of the exile, that criticism finds it necessary to presuppose” a very low condition of the exodus Israel,—a social condition with hardly a beginning of civilisation, and a religious condition such that there could not be made known among them the pure and lofty monotheism of the Pentateuch. tegarding these two matters we make the following— NOTE on two relatively vital points of archwology.—The pre- suppositions of the destructive criticism here are simply destroyed by fact. Thus,—l. As to religion. The theoretical assumption, that the exodus Israel’s God was only a national deity, one of “gods many,” not the righteous “judge of all the earth ” (Gen. xviii. 25), rests on a wider theoretical asswm prion (the imagined elephant, on the back of an imaginary tortoise), that in the history of peoples, by necessity of nature, the earliest religious condition is fetichism, which has to be followed by polytheism before monotheism is reached. Though this had been reconcilable with general fact, yet the question would remain, whether Israel’s particular case is not exceptional, through election of grace and supernatural revelation. Butas to " Mr. Gladstone thought “the leal” to mean the Scottish people : they really are the dead (= ‘the just made perfect” ’). * “Laws already existing were introduced into it [the Josiah “law- hook ”], but most of the ordinances were new, and had as their object— what I have just declared to have been the requirement of the time—the extirpation of idolatry, and the removal of the high places. Again, the prescriptions were put into the mouth of Moses himself.”—Kuwenen. [By theorisers, the high places—Bamoth—are regarded as now first: prohibited by law, in favour of exclusiveness of the one (Jerusalem) place of sacrifice, where previously, for the centuries at and after the Mosaic age, there had been a plurality of altars at discretion. This in the theorising is asso- ciated with the deeper view—-see footnotes above, p. 264—that at the exodus Israel had not yet attained to either doctrinal or practical mono- theism, clear and distinct,—that the attainment was definitively achieved and fixed only, say, seven or eight centuries after the exodus, in the Deuteronomic legislation. ] 272 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS the-general fact of the matter (according to our expert witness) —(1) a full half of the scientific archeologists hold that mono- theism is the earliest religious condition of peoples that the monuments bring to light; and (2) as for Lyypt, where Israel erew into a people, all Evyptologists are agreed in the view, that during a period somewhat earlier than the exodus, mono- theism was in that land even established as the religion of the State. So,—2. As to civilisation. So far from its being a matter of course that the exodus Israel must have been a mere horde of nomadic semi-barbarians, the monumental history bears witness that in fact, (1) Egypt, where Israel sojourned for educative centuries in beautiful fertile Goshen, possessed a high civilisation, literary and otherwise, for at least a thousand years before the exodus; (2) in Euphrates regions, among the Semitic ancestry of Israel, there was a high civilisation before Abraham was called from between the rivers; and (3) at and before the exodus time, Syria, including Canaan (= its low-land) possessed a civilisation which in some respects was ahead of the Egyptian.’ | The things we here have looked at certainly are not proof of infallibility in the destructive criticism. Nor does proof of it appear in the history of that particular theory, now most in vogue among the destructive critics,—the Graf-Kuenen- Wellhausen theory,—which comes to a head in making the priestly institutions, as authoritative “law” (John i. 17) to be post-exilian in origin. The novelty (‘newer criticism ” '), which to some (Prov. xxiv. 23) is an attraction in this theory, is illusory : witness Havernick (Introduction to the Old Testa- ment) copiously controverting 1t, as ventilated by Vatke and others, fifty years ago Its look of recency is owing to its having undergone oblivion, after having “fallen absolutely 2 Quite recently there has been discovered an ancient Arabian civilsa- tion, reaching back far beyond even the Sabean period known to us through Solomon’s Queen of Sheba. “As far back as the time of Solomon, a rich and cultured Sabean kingdom flourished in the south of Arabia, the influence of which, if not its authority, extended to the borders of Palestine.”—Sayce, Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1889. 2 When (teste Dr. Green) it was said by the great critic De Wette, derisively about “three young critics » who had ventilated the theory, that this was necessary in order to complete the possibilities—boxing the compass—of theoretical inventiveness; and twenty years later the great critic Riehm inflicted “the most unkindest cut of all,” by saying that this theory was not worth attention. What !—the now dominant theory ? Yes,—as Wellhausen owned, saying to Vatke, Thou art my father. APOLOGETICS IN ITS Two POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 273 flat” at the outset, held in no esteem among “the critics” : until it was raised from that ignominy by the “brilliant ” Graf (A.D. 1866), to become the prevalent fashion of think- ing among the destructives, | He took it from his old master Reuss: without due acknowledgement of indebtedness,—as if running away with that veteran’s clothes when he caught him bathing (in a cave?) At the outset Graf maintained only one-half of the theory,—cp. one side of an arched roof,—namely, that the mstitutions were in their origin post-exilian ; still admitting that the héstory, in which they are pentateuchally imbedded, is pre-exilian in authorship. But Kuenen and other critics called his attention to the fact—which he curiously had not perceived—that the two sides of this arch must either stand or fall together,—that the history cannot be pre-exilian in authorship if the institutions be post-exilian in origin. Whereupon that critical friend and brother (witness a posthumous publication) made the history to be post-exilian !? a highly instructive exemplification of “the case being altered alters the case”: while, as we saw, he had intimated that henceforward our judgment has to proceed, not any more on mere linguistic grounds, but on historical grounds of decision. (Yet men say that the Germans are deficient in humour.) So the Vatke-redivivus theorising got launched and under weigh, as the (for the present) ne plus ultra of higher criticism, Only, Wellhausen, the foremost of its “first three,” in this movement is to the last found elusively zigzageing between Yes and No in relation to the (for the theory) essentially “The first thing that strikes one here is that the theory is not the result of a sustained and uniform line of criticism. It wasa volte-face.... It is therefore inaccurate to describe the position of Graf as a conclusion of criticism [ep. as to Wellhausen, above, p. 249]. It was simply a hy po- thesis to evade a difficulty in which criticism had landed him” (Robert- son, Karly Religion of Israel, pp. 418, 419). “ Ewald has left far behind him the depth of negation that was represented by Vatke and in other books, which went further, but now [a.D. 1861] have disappeared ” (Auberlen, The Divine Revelation, p. 123 of Clark’s T ransl.). The original was pub- lished when the Graf resuscitation of Vatkeism—through consultation with Reuss as unacknowledged witch of Endor ?—was only getting under weigh. 18 2974 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS important question, As to those institutions, whose authorised existence began after the exile, had they any real existence— and if any, what and how—in Israel’s history previous to the exile? “ These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of Egypt”? Devotees of the consensus may find rest unto their souls in infallibility so beginning its career. To the eye of common reason, the calf, before which critics not a few are prostrate, has a look of brass rather than gold—or perhaps of gilded wood, with the gilt beginning to rub off. Changing to Babylon, we now look to see whether—as alleged—the great, Nebuchadnezzar image, if not outwardly a mere gilded wooden effigy of mankind, yet may not inwardly, instead of coherent reason, have a confused stuffing of papers about a consensus, if not mere rags or sawdust. And at first glance we perceive that (cp. popery) the kind of “ con- sensus” here appears peculiar :—concordia dtscor's ? “dissentient consenting,” as of rival schools consenting to pull against each other in a “tug of war.” Thus, ¢.g., Dillmann, who, though holding by supernaturalism in origination of the institutions, yet makes their origin to be long post- Mosaic,— contradicts the Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen theorising in its very heart of lite: while tiey make the priestly constitution to have begun to exist two centuries after the Hilkiah “ find,” he places it in existence two centuries before that fateful discovery (if not invention). Both views may be wrong. But if either of them be right, then the other must be wrong to the “ pro- digious” extent of making the great stream of that so momentous history, in the distinctively creative epoch of Bible religion for mankind, to have, through several centuries, run uphill! And there comes the question—“ Under which king, Bezonian?” To whom are we to “ say ditto,’—Dillmann or Wellhausen ? “Marriage makes both one—a subsequent process deter- mining which one.” But here there are two suns in the firmament, yea and a multitude of other suns (or meteors ). To the historical inquirer, with reference to the (consensus) theorising, a grievous difficulty rises from its multifariousness, as (cp. 1 Kings iv. 29) “the sand which is on the seashore” ; with a Protean or borealic sudden changefulness, as of the ever-shifting faces in a swift-revolving phantasmagoria. The APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 275 diligent student, who found the number of theories about the New Testament to be 144 (Rev. vii. 4), found (ep. ver. 9) that about the Old Testament there are (I think) between 600 and 700. Perhaps the enumeration is only approxi- mately correct ; as when a rustic was unable to make out the exact number of a litter of pigs because they would not stand still to be counted. The theories are evanescent as “a snow- flake on the river,—a moment seen, then gone for ever”; or variable as “the rainbow’s lovely form, evanishing amid the storm.” And—as we owned—changefulness is attractive to some minds (Eph. iv. 14). Buta poor student may groan under the cost of pamphlets—or telegrams ?—in his endeavour to keep sight or count of the incessantly-new latest phases. And to a seeker for truth, as the solid way of life, the aspect of this consensus is disconcerting, as the “choice of difficulties ” which confronted Wolfe at Quebec,—supposing it had been laid on him to carry his army across a flooded St. Lawrence on 600 or 700 fragments of that great river’s ice, confusedly tumbling down-stream in the spring. The difficulty is aggravated by complication? of there being several theories in the field at one time: like anti-popes— only, the old popes did not anathematise predecessors, as well as contemporary claimants of the throne of infallibility. The aggravation is intensified by the circumstance that, while the theories all more or less contradict one another, every one of them always has perfect confidence in itself, is immovably assured of now being right—this time. And the confusion— in such multitudinousness of reciprocally contradictory infalli- bilities—becomes yet worse confounded in the event of an always infallible master theoriser’s contradicting himself: to-day’s pope Self anathematising yesterday’s ;? or-—* tell it not in Gath !”*—a latest and greatest grand-master, down to his latest breath, continuing to half-say both Yea and N ay to one root question as to the theorising. There may be deep reason in the variations ; as doubtless there is in the changing fashions of ladies’ bonnets. But to the eye of common reason they do not appear a proof of infallibility of sages, whose con- sensus is to displace “the foundation of the apostles and 1 Case of Dillman versus Wellhausen. 2 Case of Graf versus Graf. 3 Case of W. versus W. 276 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS’ of the prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner- stone.” Further, there have to be considered the critics who do not consent to the destructive theorising:! namely—not to speak of Christ and His apostles—always and everywhere, substantially the whole community of believing readers of the Bible among mankind; so that the non-consenting comes up to the “always, everywhere, by every one” (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus) of the Vincentian test of truth in religion. It may be natural for the consenting critics to disregard them, A pious Scottish Highlander, claiming 1Take as a sample the Rev. Dr. A. Moody Stuart in the following extract :— Of the theory that finds a new code of Jaws in the book found in the temple, the only plausible form is that of the rationalists ascribing it to a pious fraud. That the old book of the law should have been found in the recesses of the temple was natural enough. But that a new code of law should have been discovered there is a story that would bear telling only on the supposition that it was concealed so as to be found through them by whom it had been hidden on purpose that it might be taken for an old book of Moses, as it evidently was by the king and all the nation, who regarded it with the highest possible reverence. But such a fraud would exclude it from a place in the Holy Scriptures [Oh ! sancta samplacr- tas]; and it is rejected by those amongst ourselves who deny the Mosaic origin of the book in favour of another theory, which must be regarded as both more unlikely and worse in morals. “To remove the insuperable difficulty of frand, it has been held that the recent origin of the book was openly stated and publicly recognised, but that a Mosaic authority was claimed for its repetition of the history of Israel and its supplementary code of laws. In that case the national assembly, to whom the book was read, concurred in an unparalleled deception on all ages to come, by sanctioning its insertion in the holiest records of the nation under the revered name of Moses. [Here follows, with a reference to 2 Kings xxiii. 3, an impressive representation of the great historical procedure of the nation’s reeeiving the book,—after which we read:] By the new theory the whole nation, engaging in these solemn transactions before the Lord, handed down to all generations of mankind a book of their own days as the work of their great lawgiver and prophet seven hundred years before. ... The fraud of a single false prophet deceiving the people would have been a lighter crime.”-—Our Old Bable: Moses on the Plains of Moab. Edinburgh, 1880. On the same occasion, in the Scottish Free Church, scholarly defences of the historical character of Deuteronomy were published, e.g., by the Rev. Principal Douglas of Glasgow and James Sime, Esq., of Craigmount, Edin- burgh. Regarding the occasion, see further in Appendix below, Note on “ Dr, Binnie,” and “ Reminiscences.” APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 277 unanimity in a congregational vote where some opposed, ruled these out of account on the principle, “there are sons of Belial in every congregation.” And in the judgment. of negative criticism the believing Christians may be of no account, as in the heathen world (1 Cor. i, 28) they were “things which are not.” But the infallibility of that criticism — is the thing at present in question; and we, holding the balance even, must provisionally suppose, as an ideal possi- bility, that the criticism—c.y., in its impartiality of newly- hatched expert encyclopedic information for the people—may be mistaken in reckoning Christendom as not even fine dust in the balance of judgment regarding its own book. The tailors of Tooley Street were no doubt sincere in styling themselves “the people of England”; but they might be mistaken. And the early first French Revolutionists— the fervid orators and enthusiastic audiences, by acclamation passing enthusiastic resolutions, ey., “decreeing,’ that there is no God—might sincerely believe that theirs was the last word of human wisdom. But in the utterances of those anti- supernaturalists, the prophetic soul of Burke perceived only (cp. Rev. xvi. 15) the noisy shrillness of a few grasshoppers in a tussock, which appears to fill the world and be its voice, while—* without observation ””—a thousand noble oxen are browsing noiseless in the meadow. An allegory far from intended for any purpose beyond reminding devotees of the alleged consensus that there are critics who have not bent the knee to negativism ; and who, at the beginning of an appeal for judgment to men’s common reason, ought not to be ruled out of existence by a judgment of the opposite party in the case. vecognising as a fact the existence of critics who do not consent, we, by the “consensus of critics” in this case, will understand, a consensus of the critics who consent.! 1. There even are “scholars” who do not consent. Apart from’ the thousands of them whose silence is constructive dissent, taking into account only those who have publicly con- tended for the received Christian view,—to speak as if all the biblical “scholarship” in: the world were against it is to betray fallibility regarding fact. Not to speak of the scholar- 1 We saw that their manner of “consenting” is very peculiar—above, p. 274, ete. 278 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ship of Christian ages previous to—say—the Graf resuscita- tion of Vatkeism, and as for our own day, to name only a few individuals,—ey., in England, no name is higher in Hebrew Old Testament scholarship than Principal Cave,' the resolute champion of the received view in its completeness: while in Scotland, of the two who stand foremost in that scholarship before the world, one, Professor Robertson, of Glasgow University,” in his recent Baird Lectures (A.D. 1889) delivered what has been pronounced the most thoroughly trenchant assault on the destructive criticism, along its whole line and. in its innermost intrenchments; and the other, Professor Davidson, of Edinburgh New College, long reticent, has of late reservedly (as in a fine scorn?) been dealing keen stroke after stroke at distinetive detailed positions of that criticism. Regarding some “ young lions” in Britain, who, with reserva- tions, have more or less gone into “the swim” of revolu- tionary critical movement, a testimony? was this last year delivered by one who—so to speak—natively is in close relation to them,—himself “a scholar, and a ripe and good one,’ widely known as among the most brilliantly gifted of Britain’s younger theologians,—publicly cried shame on them as, in a sort of competitive imitation Germanism, degenerate even from “independence, the stalk o’ carl hemp in man”: ‘an ignominiousness lamentably beneath what sinfulness may have alloyed the sentiment,— Thrice happy Britain! from the kingdoms rent, To sit the guardian of the Continent. In Germany itself the tide seems turning;* though no prudent man will venture to foretell “ what next” of “ wind of doctrine,’ as from olus caves, in that “empire of the 39 air.” Let us turn our eyes to a new and greater Britain, locally remote from old world prepossessions. Of scholarly resistance to the revolutionary criticism of the Old Testament, 1 See Appendix on “ Principal Cave,” p. 326, etc. * See Appendix on “ Professor Robertson,” p. 332, ete. 3. |. the authoritative correction which we, in our littleness, most needed. For we were shaken and confused by the new powers that had taken hold of the intellectual life. We were staggering about ; we were lifted off our feet. We were weaklings caught in a strong stream.”—Canon Scott Holland on “H. P. Liddon,” Contemp. Rev., October 1890. * See Appendix, Note W. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 279 for the most impressive exemplification, in respect of breadth and strength and resolute thoroughness, is in the youngest of the Christian empires, the great new “empire of the west” (cp. Bishop Berkeley's poem): regarding which the now deceased veteran Reuss of Strassburg, himself! a very patriarch of the destructive criticism, recently said, that Hebrew was leaving Germany and migrating to America.’ Regarding that land we make the following— Notes regarding America (United States along with the British Dominion *).—There, where thought is free, and scholarship is fresh and keen, while the common intelligence is perhaps the highest upon earth, the community, both clergy and laity, along with “the stalk o’ carl hemp,’ have sense or gumption, if it be in any community on earth. So at least has Professor Green of Princeton (Moses and the Prophets, etc.), protagonist there of the received Christian view in its complete- ness: whose judgment in aveal of Old Testament Hebrew scholar- ship is perhaps the weightiest now in the Christian world+ If he be deemed a home-bred youth, who consequently can have only homely wits, as resolute as he in that cause is Professor Bissell of Hartford (The Pentateuch, etc.), who resided in Germany so as to have studied the Old Testament question at its hottest in that glowing focus. And not less resolute than either is M. Gerhardus Vos (The Mosaic Origin of the Penta- teuchal Codes), naturalised American, but native and alumnus of Holland, which in the new critical direction is more German than Germany itself. While they earry out the discussion, comprehensively, into ramifications of relatively general reasoning, he, intensively, searches the matter, with unflagging pertinacity of keenly penetrative intelligence, through and through every institutional fibre of its Hebrew-biblical root of roots. If such men have not adequate qualification in respect of technical scholarship, where 7s it, or what is it? And on their part it is wielded by a clear solid strength of judgment which in the case of some “ brilliant scholars” of revolutionism 1 See above, p. 273. * “ America is of great and growing importance in the general estimate of the situation.”—Professor Sanday, Contemp. Rev., July 1889. 3 See Note G. 4 He was chairman of the, American Old Testament Revision Com- mittee. Two years ago a German work on Deuteronomy was dedicated “with much esteem, to the distinguished apologete, William Henry Green,”—the author exhorting Germans, with reference to this Bible question, to study the works of Dr. Green and other Americans. 280 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS is conspicuous by its absence. To speak as if there were nothing worth counting of that qualification where there are such men in one cluster, is to show, not critical infallibility, but (cp. John ix. 39) blindness of “cave” or “theatre ” idolatry. More fully and directly, however, to our present purpose, as illustrating qualification inthe community for judging relatively to such matters, is a volume of Essays, Jfoses and his Recent Critics, published at New York, 1885.1 The ten writers are all professors, presumably selected with a reference to their being men of approved scholarly qualification for this pubhe advocacy, in what effectively is a trial of the great case before their nation. And it is an important circumstance that they are very fully representative of the evangelical Christianity of that great empire in its various revions,—alike North and South, and from Atlantic seaboard to Pacifie: “the Baptist, the Congregational, the Episcopalian, the Lutheran, the Methodist, the Presbyterian (North and South), and the Reformed (Dutch) Churches” (Editor’s Note). The volume is thus a testimony, in favour of the received Christian view, on the part of that wide and powerful province of God’s new kingdom in the world. And it is remarkable how great a measure, what all but completeness, of unanimity, in a com- munity so diversified, at a time of such distraction, is repre- sented by this manifesto:? the editor—if we rightly under- stand him—in that vast community is able to name only one Christian scholar of like standing and spirit with the essayists who is understood to favour the new critical views. But what we specially mark in that publication is its bear- ing on the point as to the community’s fitness for judging in such a case. Evidently the essayists have no doubt of that fitness. Not only are they themselves fully confident, cheer- fully expectant, that their cause will be victorious, since truth is great and shall prevail. And not only also, they show without saying, it appears in their bearing and tone, that they feel that, in contending for the old view of the old Book, they represent the deepest heart and mind of the Christendom of their country. Also and especially, they ‘Dr. 7. W. Chambers (editor); Professor Gardiner, of Theological Seminary, Middleton, Conn. ; Professor Bissell, of Theological Seminary, Hartford ; Professor Green, of Princeton ; Professor Schodde, of Capital University, Ohio ; Professor Beecher, of Auburn Theological Seminary ; Professor M. 8S. Terry, Illinois ; Professor Harman, of Dickinson College, Pa.; Professor Dwinell, Pacific Theological Seminary, Oakland, Cal. ; Professor Scheibart, Gambia, O.; Professor Hemphill, of Columbia, §.C. ; Professor Osgood, of Rochester Theological Seminary. 2 See Appendix, Note B. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 281 evidently believe that the community addressed by them is really capable of comprehending the argument in their con- tendings.! As men who respect the reason of that community, the essayists—instead of a parrot cry about “consensus” (of those who are on their trial)—really offer discussion of the question under various aspects. Their discussion is as full as —in such a publication—any “scholarly” heart can reasonably wish. And yet quite plainly they expect to be understood, as judge or counsel are understood in a jury trial—not only by experts in technical scholarship, but by the commonalty of readers, who have no scholarship excepting that of ordinary citizenship, who thus are “unlearned and ignorant” like the apostles and their Master. 2. As to those who may not be technically “ scholars”: it is greatly to be desired that nevertheless they should be really qualified for criticism (=judement). It is on the judgment of such plain men, who mainly ave the community in question (1 Cor. i. 2), that, subject only to “the judge of all the earth,” the great interest of truth in this matter among man- kind has in the last issue to depend. In practical effect, as in the divine intention (Eph. iv. 8), the special attainments of true scholars are not rulers of the Christian people’s faith, but helpers of its joy. The “gifts” conferred on individuals are thus for the community: to be employed in its judgment, as expert evidence is employed by a jury. It thus is the common reason of the community, and not a domination of mere technical scholarship, that must ultimately decide,—that is, if men are to be free, and truth is to have free course and be glorified among them. The suggestion that, in the highest relations, they should pin their faith on “scholarship,” is utterly preposterous in the recollection of proots of wnjitness of mere scholarship to guide men in these relations with which the recent history of thought about this very matter is filled. But though every destructive critic had been an angel of light, yet to be ruled, in judgement as to real matters of Christian revelation, by the criticism of mere scholarship, would be, to be not free, nor in the real way of attaining to freedom through knowledge of the truth (see 1 We do not suppose that Professor Green’s analysis of the first part of Exodus is really an exception. Intelligent laymen can appreciate the logic of that sample exposure. 282 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS John vil. 32, cp. ver. 36). It would be enslavement under a popery of bookishness (see Gal. v. 1, R.V.,cp.1. 8). It would be a disowning of the sole authority of God in Christ, who claims to be the only Master (Matt. xxiii. 8, cp. xi. 29, 27). And not only in the American States, but all. over Christendom, among communities really free, and in the habit of exercising reason, that is, of really thinking, in connection with Bible religion, the domination will not be submitted to, except (2 Tim. iv. 1—4) through blinding world- liness of those professing to serve God (Matt. vi. 21-24). Otherwise there is no real call, no justifying necessity, for the abjectness of that “voluntary humility.” And in any case the communities have to be reckoned with. They are entitled and bound to judge in this matter; and—unless they be so blinded by worldliness—they are capable of judging, in possess- ing gumption or sense—while the learned, if they have not that, cannot rightly judge, as a parrot is no critic though it speak with tongues (cp. 1 Cor. xiv. 2, ete.). Here, then,! we have a third line of circumstantial evidence presumptively in favour of the received view,—namely, in the fact of its being so the received view, through so many ages, in so many storms, ever “steadfast, immovable”; as if “moored in the rifted rock, proof to the tempest shock,’ so that “the firmer he roots him the ruder they blow.”? What is the Rock of that immovableness? the root, so sustaining and sustained? Presumably (Matt. vil. 24-27) it is reality or truth. Not that what all men believe must of course be true. They all—including the “scientists ”"—beleved wrongly about the stars, for countless generations, through which they were ever steadfastly gazing at those heavenly guides, and often too much believing in them. But the cases are not parallel. In that case the received astronomy, during the ages of mistaken belief in it, was not really tested by _ opposition of any force; and when Newton came with his 1 See above, p. 257. 2 An eminent biblical scholar, Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, in a recent publication on the subject, has predicted that the hitherto received view shall continue to be similarly the received view so long as a community of believing Christians continues to exist on earth (see Appendix, Note D). APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 283 true doctrine, the civilised world went over to it, casting the old opinion to the owls and the bats. In the present case, on the contrary, the received view in question has been tried with oppositions, “ scientist” (1 Tim. vi. 20) and otherwise, from the beginning unto this present: first, of heathenism, then, of common infidelity, and now, finally, of a eriticism calling itself historical and scientific. And now, as all through preceding moods and tenses of opposition, the view remains unchangeably “ steadfast, immovable.” The presump- tion from which is, that it is true. The Bible, said Thomas Carlyle, is a very honest book. Is it reasonable to think that, With reference to its own essential character,—the living soul of all it says,—it has always been such a “deceiver” (Matt. xxvii. 63) as to completely mislead, all the world over, through all genera- tions of its existence, the whole community of those who really trust it? The destructive theorising is on trial shown to be presumably untrue by its proving to be neredible to the community of Bible readers, rejected by their common sense as unlikely, in such a degree as to be historically absurd. By parity of reason, the received view, simply through being so credited, always and everywhere, by the whole community of believers in this religion, is shown to be credible to men in such a sense, that here the credibility! is presumptive evidence of truth and divinity. Why should the community of believing Christians be deemed incapable of knowing truth about their Bible in the substance of its history of doctrine and worship ;—so that their testimony, “steadfast, unmovable,’ is to count as nothing? In other cases of literature belonging to a com- munity, the fact simply of a book’s being received in the community as the work of A. B., is by critics held a strong proot of A. B. authorship. And in the present case the community not only has received and held the books in accordance with one unchanging view ; but it is founded on them, and lives on them and in them, giving its life to habitual study of them, so that a believer in the religion is “a man of the Book.” This is one aspect of the fact that, in the estimation of those believers as a class, the true “scholar- 1 German, Glaubwiirdigkeit =“ worthiness of belief.” 284 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ship” is duscipleship (see Acts xi. 26) in the sense of “learning of” Christ (Matt. xi. 29, ep. ver. 27, xxviii. 18-20 —where “ teach” is == make disciples of them, bring them into My school): while destructive critics (¢.g. Renan and Kuenen) are often far from sitting at the feet of that “ one” Master. Yet, while these are to rank among infallible critics (— judges), the judgment (= criticism) of the nations and generations of believing Christians is to go for nothing, not reckoned even as dust in the balance of testimony! Such in effect is the relative meaning of the cry about “consensus” which (cp. Matt. xxiii. 8) some professing Christians are found emitting ! ; | One of those believers (1 Cor. 11, 15—-where his word for judge is cridicise) maintains that, for judging regarding scriptural matters, which—as indeed is owned by destructive eritics—are at bottom in their destructive nature “ spiritual,” true believers possess a special qualification, which (ver. 14) a merely naturalistic critic cannot possess, in their having a spiritual mind. So (Matt. xii. 10-16) his Master taught before him, quoting the great evangelical prophet of the old dispensation. And it stands to reason that the spiritual mind should be fittest for judging with reference to spiritual Scrip- tures; as Robert Burns might be a better judge than college- made critics in matters referring to Scottish song, by reason of his having in him, what they had not, the living soul of Scottish song, to guide his judgments through its formative influence on his heart and mind. The Greatest of all teachers has declared it to be a purposed effect of the coming of heaven’s ight in Him (John ix, 39), to show the blinding influence of worldliness on professed illuminati. Unquestionably the mere naturalism, which destructive critics are found holding as a principle of judgment regarding Scripture, is in its native tendency a darkening as well as deadening influence relatively to things 1 A master of the present subject has called attention to the fact, that precisely the lwving soul of Israelitish history of institutions is what is cacluded by the destructive criticism from our contemplation of that history and of the literature which grew out of that history. Shall we reckon the exclusion—of the sun—a qualification for infallibly judging as to the system? If not, then what other difference is there between destructive and believing criticism ? APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 285 in their nature spiritual:! witness (1 Cor. ii. 8) those highest critics (judges) who “crucified the Lord of glory.” Those who believe in God will own as conceivable that He should hide things from the wise and prudent (see 2 Thess. ii. 11 5 cp. Eph. iv. 18, 19) which He reveals unto babes. In any case the blindness—whether wilful (Rom. i. 28) or judicial (vers. 24, 26, 28), or necessary (Matt. vi. 21—24)—to that which was the living soul of Israelitish institutional history, is a so far disqualification for judgment regarding the body—of the Seriptures—in which that institutional history is all in all. And, on the other hand, to be delivered from that spiritual blindness is, of course, to be so far gifted (Luke viii. 10, 15) with qualification for judging in the exercise (yt Lone tee) OE a relatively “sound mind.” Such considerations, relatively to the great community of believers not consenting to the destructive criticism, may help the commonalty of mankind in maintaining the liberty here in question, namely, the liberty to judge, instead of blindly accepting mere dictation of technical scholarship. That liberty is based on their possessing the common reason, which is the only faculty of judgment in possession of the learned experts. The grounds of judgment—the informatory materials of evidence—are in nowise a monopoly of those experts: as all the researches in the critical movement have, relatively to the New Testament, brought to light no materi- ally important information that was not within reach of Christians at the close of the second century, so with refer- ence to the Old Testament all the now extant material information was—say—four centuries before that time within reach of Old Testament believers; and supplementary in- formation, ey., regarding language and antiquities, can easily be obtained by “the simple” from trustworthy sources far on this side of Tiibingen and Leyden (while any growth in capacity for soundly judging that may to mankind have resulted from the progress of Christian civilisation, is an heritage that can be shared in by believing Christians, even “ignorant and unlearned men” (Acts iv. 13), as well as by destructive critics). * See statement of Mr. Gladstone, Note C. 286 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS To bring the matter to a visible point, we again will put it in a concrete form. A judgment of the common reason by plain men might conceivably proceed as follows :— “Unlearned and ignorant” criticism of the theoretical story.$— Whatever the truth of the matter may be, it cannot be this. Here a pious king” and a zealous priest, countenanced by a prophetess of Jehovah, and burning with ardour for religious reformation, conspire to impose on a trusting Israel, by means of a forged book of law, a new religion, hiding the imposture under a face of its being Israel’s old primeval religion,—all in the name of Israel’s living God, whose glory is holiness, whose being is truth. The wonder of their expecting the nation to be in this way deceived about such a matter of public notoriety, affecting the whole system of the nation’s past and present common life, is trebly crowned by the miracle of the nation’s accepting, strongly against the grain of its present inclination, as having been publicly “given by Moses” with most memor- ably impressive solemnity, to all Israel, seven or eight hundred years ago,—a whole system of laws which in fact, everybody knows, was not so published by him, but? is now so published for the first time, to the effect of a radical change of the nation’s existing system of religion. The nation’s fatuity is even more astonishing than that of the conspiring prophetess, priest, and king. ~ In respect of fraud and falsehood, forgery and imposture, the story is of a piece with the other story about “holy men of God” claiming to speak by His inspiration, and act as His especial commissioners, who at the exile time conspire to introduce another new religion. But in respect of artistic skilfulness there is a contrast of the two grand impostures: which perhaps might now be made a proof of the new theory, on the view that at the time of the Deuteronomic forgery the art of dramatic fiction was comparatively in its infancy, so that there must have been generations, of practice—say, in schools of the prophets—to train the holy men into the perfection which appears in their Priest Code of the middle pentateuchal books. The account in those books, of a Mosaic origination of priestly institutions in the wilderness, is a miracle of inventive eenius, in making everything appear as if there and then originating at the hand of Moses by express command of God. 1 See above, pp. 263-6. 2 The criticism does not require that Josiah should be a conspirator : it allows him to be an idiot—belveving the story. 3 See Note N. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 287 The representation is as like reality as if it had all been true. And it is so “shaped” (to use a word of Wellhausen)! that a belief in the truth of it, gradually forming in the people’s mind, would save the purpose of the fiction, to carry out the programme of imposture. The Deuteronomic imposture, on the other hand, with reference to that purpose, appears rather a wonder of clumsy ineptitude, fitted really to frustrate the purpose of the conspirators, by putting a fool’s cap on the representation, self-exposed as impious mockery. 2 That a Mosaic origination of the priestly constitution—a comparatively private matter—should have lapsed from the people’s memory in long course of ages, might at the exile time perhaps be not altogether inconceivable to the Israelites — as it is inconceivable that the United States American people should forget the Revolution. But in Josiah’s time it would be utterly incredible to them that there should have disappeared from the nation’s mind all trace of a Deuteronomic levislation which, if it really took place, was, next to the Sinaitic legisla- tion, far the most memorable transaction in the nation’s history after its baptism in the Red Sea. And Israel, now having no recollection of such a transaction, can be moved by aquasi-historical representation of such a thing only to ridicule or to resentment, perhaps with grief and shame on account of the farce played in the name of God, by those who in their offices—kingly, priestly, and prophetic—are at the holy nation’s head. The suggestion of a “programme,” to be carried into effect through the nation’s acceptance of that forgery, bids us look into the book, to see how the injunctions of its discourses would serve the working purposes of pretended reformation in Josiah’s time. And regarding these injunctions, we note the following points :—(1) Even the laws peculiar to this book have no peculiar appropriateness for Josiah’s time, but the giving of them would be specially appropriate for the inaugural time of proceeding to settlement in Canaan. (2) The alleged innovation on Josiah’s part, of centralising Israelitish worship and narrow- ing the priesthood to one tribe, does not to us appear in Deuter- onomy as an innovation under a false face; but as it would ’ See footnote above, p. 249. * “Tt is an impressive whole, which testifies both to the talent of the writer and to his conscientious earnestness” (!)—Kuenen. [Cp. the “strong disapproval,” footnote, p. 264 above.] “The drapery [of the Mosaic dramatism], for it is no. more than this, affords the writer of Deuteronomy an opportunity repeatedly to adopt the tone of earnest warning, which suits him better than the dry legislative style.”— Kuenen. [#.g. about conquering Canaan, exterminating its nations, a future first beginning of kingship ?] 288 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS - naturally have been presented by Moses; while as a mere innovation it really could not be introduced in Josiah’s time. And (3) to a very large extent the distinctively Deuteronomic injunctions—those which in their commanding prominence give character and tone to the whole Mosaic address—would have been absurdly out of place in legislation at a later period than that of the original settlement. , How, for instance, would the following injunctions fit into a “programme” of reformation for Josiah’s time.—1l. With great solemnity of iteration and reiteration in Jehovah's awful name, His chosen people now are called to begin the holy war of conquering Canaan :—when Canaan was conquered by them seven or eight centuries ago!—2. With like solemnity they are charged to be unshrinkingly thorough in extirpating the Canaanites, and receive particular instructions with reference, e.g., to besieged cities and prisoners of war :—when for long generations there have been no cities to besiege, nor war- prisoners to dispose of, nor Canaanites to extirpate; but peaceable neighbours quietly settled under shield of Israels covenant of peace to thein.—3. Provision is made for a possible future beginning of kingship in Israel, particularly that the king shall be Israelitish in blood :—when kingship has existed in Israel for half a millennium, and aimost from its beginning the kingdom was divided into two, one of which was destroyed a century ago; while in the other it has always been, as it were, a natural impossibility that the king should not be of Israelitish blood, seeing that from its commencement the Judah house of David has been established on its throne inseparably from the being of the kingdom.—4. The (so to speak) foreign policy of Deuteronomy—its aspect or bearing toward Amalek, Moab and Ammon, Edom, Egypt—is precisely what would suit the time of Israel’s passing from the wilderness into Canaan, and quite unsuitable for Israel’s position in the time of the later Judah kings. . But the crowning ineptitude, an unspeakably shameful incongruity, in the fiction, is its “ Moses.’ Here the most venerable personage in all history is turned into a marionnette, — as a medieval hero-saint may come to sink into theatrical stage pantaloon. In a supremely great discourse the effigy, in the creat name of the Highest, prefacing with a narrative of events which (according to master critics) never occurred, goes on to bewray the masquerade by speech recapitulating, expanding, amending, laws which never existed until centuries after the real historical Moses was laid in his mysterious grave. How could the people be moved by such a representation to receive and reverence the innovating laws? Would they not rather, APOLOGETICS IN ITS Two POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 289 if they had in them any reverence for sacred things, or patriotic feeling toward a glorious past, be moved to deep sorrowful humiliation and burning indignation—“ To your tents! O Israel”—by such dishonour to the name of God and the memory of His prophet ?—a travesty all the more diszrace- ful on account of the theocratic standing of the leading movers _ iiuit; iF: Such a heaping of impious ineptitudes, if it had been possible through some strange madness of the king, and priest, and prophetess, yet could never impose on a whole people to the effect of inducing them to accept a radical revolution, at the cost of their existing relivion, their national traditions, their collective and individual self-respect, their elementary feelings of religion and morality.1 Shall we, then, believe, with some of the theorisers, that the nation itself was consciously participant in a revolting farcical silliness, that should mislead all following generations—by way of entering into a new/( man-made) covenant with God? No: this theoretical story raises no question about believing or disbelieving any version of it. In its very concep- tion it is a jumble of incoherent absurdities, such that seriously to entertain any question about believing or not believing it in any shape or sense would on our part be a senselessness akin to that of its own Israel of King Josiah’s time. We have heard that scholars may be addled with books upon the brain; now we seem to see it.2 ; | Saul, going for asses, found a kingdom, perhaps because there was kingliness in him (Deut. xvii. 14), and man finds what he brings,—so that even an irrational anti-supernaturalism can find its own lost self in the Bible! The bizarrerie, not worth even disbelieving, which learned men see in history, is not in Scripture, but in their manner of looking at things, as if “from between their legs.” Accordingly we find that this criticism, when “done into English,” has to perpetrate a large amount of tinkering at the Seriptures—making their contra- dictions of it to be « interpolation,” ete.—before it can make them so much as appear to have a look of countenancing its representation of the history it professes to find in them. Nor is the representation got out of “the twist” of its incurably perverse manner of exhibiting the matters by spreading the process of innovation over a great period, in which its proares- sion—like the grass’s growing—is imperceptible to the naked eye. That would resemble the alleged “evolution” in natural history of life, through which in xons of time, eg., a dog might be produced from a cat, or a man from “a hairy quadruped,” * See Appendix, Note N. > Cp. Appendix, Notes Or Ry Sy: 1 19 2990 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS “perhaps living in trees.” Though there had been the time, no amount of time can change the essential nature of things, “evolving” a square from a triangle or a circle from a square. And the evolution through which a polytheistic exodus Israel “orowed,” like Topsy, into the monotheistic Messiahism of later prophecy, we will not ascribe to any process on Bible record, implicating “ Israelites indeed,” such as Josiah, Hilkiah, and Huldah; but rather, to hallucination of critics as of Graf, Kuenen, Wellhausen, about whom we hear as if they had been infallible prophets or apostles (Gf not—in a true sense— veritable creators, “calling things which are not as things which are”). With reference to the Levitical institutions, again (“ Priest Code” in the middle pentateuchal books), plain men of sense are not incapable of judging. For instance, they can see the point and force of such questioning as here follows :—1. How came there to be, for ages, in commanding influence, among such “a people of unclean lips,” the spiritual-minded prophets (say master critics), with no light of supernatural revelation to them, nor life of new creation in them 221 What sort of spirituality was theirs who, in the name of the one true living God, and in the public ministry of religion to His covenant people trusting them as His ambassadors,—coun- 7 tenanced and practised fraud and falsehood, forgery and imposture, for introduction of human inventions pretending to divinity of authorship; by way of labouring for a pure and lofty monotheism, whose living God is holy, just, and true ?—3. Seeing that they were not utterly fatuous—is it not very strange that, for their purpose, to raise the people from carnality of outwardness, the crowning finality of imnovation should have been, the imposition of a system in which (Heb. ix. 10) carnality of outwardness—say, innocent earnality, as of a babe——was all-pervasively the prominently distinctive character 2-4. Is it rationally credible that in Israel there was not, until after the Babylonish captivity, that authorised atoning sacrifice of, e9., trespass-offering and sin-offering, which is the soul’s blood of Bible religion in both dispensa- tions ?—b. Can it be that; instead of “the law and the prophets,” the true historical order of origination—“ genetic development ”—is “the prophets and the law”? These ; 1 See Notes Q, R, S. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 291 questions are plainly decisive, cutting to the root of the matter. Mere “scholarship” can give no real help to answering them; and sense or gumption has no real need of help to answering them. | We now can see a cause of the slavish harping on “a consensus of critics” instead of manfully exhibiting the critical theory in its outcome, of a theoretical story of Israel’s constitution. The story, to which the theorising leads, cannot, at least in America or Britain, bear the daylight. It is a Frankenstein fiend, destroying him who calls it, Tue Roor Prmary Question.—Plain sense can see how all this bears on the question regarding (“ The Jehovist Code ”) the exodus Israel, the Mosaic legislation, Moses himself. In the case of Graf, we saw! a sample of the fact, that a theoriser may make the history to be this or that in the interest of his theory.2, Where the theoretical interest hangs on excluding supernaturalism from Israel’s history,® there, in the spirit. of the theorising, the pentateuchal Mosaism is, in greater or less measure, suppressed on account of its downright super- naturalism in works and words And in the residual Mosaism that remains after the suppressions—through Deuter- onomic and Priest Code theeretical stories—the things of the 1 See above, p. 273. ? For “shape,” as Wellhausen’s word, see footnote, p. 249. ° As it does even in the case of theorisers who believe in supernatural- ism as having had place in that history. Their theory, in its distinctive principle (of evolution), goes only as far as naturalism can carry them ; and ordinarily the distinctive in their construction of Scripture, as com- pared with that arising from the full received View, is a minimising of the supernatural in favour of simply naturalism—not necessaril y atheistic. * Of relative Scripture, Kuenen speaks as follows :—“More or less hazy and confused, so long as they were not committed to writing ; it was only when this took place that connection and unity were introduced into them. It thus was a highly important task that our prophetical writer undertook when he collected, arranged, and completed the detached narratives and popular legends.” [This writer, “the J ehovist,” was an unknown prophet, who, circa 750 B.C., wrote the “first edition” of the Pentateuch—afterwards much amplified and altered. One of the “legends” was, eg., that of Jacob—their supposed father—and Esau, which grew out of the national enmity between Israel and Edom. } “The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, which is closely connected with it, now contain together 211, or, in round numbers, 210 chapters. Of 292 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS primeval period, even Moses himself (“a gigantic shadow”), as well as his legislation, tend to fade or blur into legendary folk-lore, if not vanish into myth! All which things are presumptive disproof of the theorising that lands in them,— inasmuch as, generally, the exodus Israel,a Mosaic legislation, a mediatorial Moses, have to be supposed in all true theorising here, unless Israel’s whole history be a stream without a fountain. The theorising thus is branded with incredibility by — an unmistakable pentateuchal realism even in details. For - example, in the account of erecting the tabernacle, and the _ unconscious picturing of the Sinaitic surroundings® in place and time, of natural and human life in that primeval condition. Charles Lamb said of Defoe, that he is the greatest “matter-of- lie man” in literature. But in this respect he was nothing as compared with the exilian Jew or Jews who, a thousand years after the exodus, composed the Priest Code fiction of the middle pentateuchal books. Defoe had the making of his Crusoe and island and savages, as well as tent; while the Babylonian scribe, in his tabernacle, and wilderness, and other Mosaism, had to conform to conditions with which he was in large measure unacquainted, that were fixed by nature 4 and history. His achievement, in its full exactness of multi- — tudinously detailed prosaic realism, always conforming to the these 80 belong to the first edition ; the second had 120, so that in the third 90 have been added.” [Great is “criticism”! Query: Would the unknown prophet now be able, in the existing pentateuchal amalgam, to know with such exactness the total amount of his contributions? No two critics agree in specification of his contributions in detail.] In the first edition, the (Jehovist) author “draws copiously from the stores of tradi- tion and legend.” [Regarding the third edition, see footnote, p. 265 above. | “Some years later [than Josiah’s reformation (B.c. 620)] the author of this [Deuteronomic] law incorporated his own work in that of his pre- decessor, the Jehovist [the code is named “Jehovist”], and on this opportunity made some additions to it... . In this way the second edition of the Pentateuch was completed. More than 150 years elapsed before the third and last edition was completed and accepted by the Jewish people.” [The later editions, by way of bringing the earlier up to date, “shaped” the whole book—Wellhausen’s word, see footnote, p. 249 —anew from the beginning in accordance with their new story, putting — their present inventions back into the primeval history '] 1 See Notes P and E. | 2 See above, footnote, p. 261; cp. Note T. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 293 unknown conditions (now known to us),-—this, in such a com- parative episode of the romance as the tabernacle erection, is a wonder far eclipsing the Homeric Shield of Achilles: were it only because Homer, too, like Defoe, had the making or the choosing © of his conditions from among things well known to him (not less truly than Shakespeare, the creative, had in the matter of his play within a play). And it is not only in every minutest detail of the tabernacle erection that we are—like Crusoe on the seashore—confronted with a footprint of distinct reality, which, if it be genuine, destroys the theorising! The prosaic realism confronts us everywhere in the scriptural Mosaic age. It is verified by all that has now come to be known of the actual conditions. And the verification is presumptive proof of the authentic truth of the history. Now, however, we will look on the external details only, in connection with the substance of primeval Mosaism as a beginning of the Israelitish nation’s history now in question. And in search of that substance we will seek a guiding way through cloud-land of theorising in what? we early saw of a real evolution in the pentateuchal history. It is important that we should here see clearly what 7s a true evolution? “Evolution” is unfolding of what is cnfolded. And, beyond what we saw of an unfolding within the scriptural Mosaic age itself—on the received Christian view as to the Old Testament there could be a real evolution all through Israel’s post-Mosaic history, in the sense of continual unfolding of an Israelitish constitution that was “given by Moses” complete in a Sinaitic planting. So, too—in intention—on the half- way view of some. The evolution in their view is of what was complete in substance as existing at the exodus time: the completion which came after that being in respect of realised manifestation (see John ii. 11, ep. i. 14). ' So that theorisers are found asserting that this Exodus Tabernacle never existed. But the present question is, about the rational possibility of invention of such an wnreal Tabernacle by a Babylonian forger. It isa tradition about Shakespeare that, when asked why he had so early killed Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet), he answered, that otherwise Mercutio would have killed him. The Exodus Tabernacle, even apart from surroundings, would have been thus a Mercutio to all the scribes of Ezra’s time. » ? See above, p. 245, and footnote there. 5 See Note M—addition., 294 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Suppose the constitution to have been “given by Moses” in a real completeness as of a tabernacle he had “made in the _ wilderness” (1 Chron. xxi. 29). Still,! in the people’s mind — and life,—in the Israelitish realisation of the ideal thus exhibited,—there could be, under influences of experience and reflection, with prophetic expositions and applications, a continual growth toward fulness in apprehension or clearness in comprehension of what had been in the constitution com- plete from the outset: somewhat correspondingly to the _ historical development of Christian doctrine in the mind of — the post-apostolic Church, after she had received the whole — system of that doctrine as if bodily in the person and in the word of Christ. And? some adherents of the received view as to supernaturalism are of opinion that, as the tabernacle simplicity gave place to an elaborate gorgeousness of temple system, so there may have been a real evolution even of natively Mosaic institutions,—eg. out of a rudimentary — Sinaitic form, represented, say, by The Book of the Covenant, into a complete unfolding in the course of ages following, — represented, say, by Deuteronomy and the middle pentateuchal books. Let us now put the destructive criticism—professing — “ evolution ”—to the testing question, Had the post-Mosaic con- stitutions vt speaks of a real existence in a Sinaitic seed? We — now perceive what well may occasion theoretical zigzagging — between Yes and No. The question places the theoriser — between the horns of a dilemma. If the answer be Yes: the priestly constitution did exist in the wilderness, but only in germ,—then it can be retorted, If it existed there in any © real way, though only as a microscopic seed-spore, there is no call nor place for your post-exilian ercation of it; for it can have grown into the post-exilian completeness, as a Mosaic bud unfolding into blossom and maturing into fruit. If, on — the other hand, the answer be No: in the Mosaic age there — was not even a germinal existence of the constitution,—then — it can be asked, In that case, where is your evolution? Your “ scientific” history, it seems, is not history at all, but only incoherent antiquarian gossip strung in an order of time. A — similar dilemma for the theorising rises out of its Deuteronomy — See Note O. 2 See above, p. 244, etc. 3 See above, p. 273. APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 295 constitution story; and may account for a noticeable shyness or haziness in theoretical representations regarding what really existed as “law” in Israel before Josiah’s or Hezekiah’s time! If before that time this constitution existed even in germ, there is no call for a “theory” of imposture and false- hood ; and if before that time it really existed not in any way, there was no true evolution of it at that time.” Was there, or was there not, a real evolution in that history? If there be not a real evolution shown in the theoretical history, we have only antiquarian guide-book temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel, in no genetic relation to any real Sinaitic tabernacling of Jehovah among men. And* while on the received view the pentateuchal constitution is to Israel’s post-Mosaic history as a Galilean sea that feeds the Jordan, making Jordan’s valley to be “as the garden of the Lord” (Gen. xiii. 10),—on the destructive-critical view that constitution is, to Israelitish history of the times before Josiah and the exile, merely a Dead Sea, that gives nothing to the river and its vale, but only receives what comes down from them (changing the nature of that)—-wnless there be a real evolution. Now,— A real evolution does not change the nature of that in which it works, as the Dead Sea changes Jordan water.t It unfolds the nature into new manifestations, but retains its being or essence unchanged: as the New Zealand umbrella plant, unfolding into a succession of varied forms, as if changing into so many distinct species, always really is one and the same, individually and specifically. Even so might, conceiv- ably, a Mosaic constitution unfold, in the course of post-Mosaic history, into greatly changed aspects, correspondingly to changed conditions in the nation’s unfolding life, first under the kings, and thereafter at the exile time,—as compared with the original aspect or form of that same constitution in the wilderness. The question here is,— 1 “Tt is not a little remarkable that modern critics, while they tell us very particularly the historical circumstances under which the Deuter- onomic and Priestly Codes were produced, can tell us very little about the earliest of all the Codes, the Jehovistic.”—Robertson, p. 389. 2 See footnote above, p. 245. 3 See Note M. 4 What appears in the healing of water is miracle—not evolution. 296 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Are not the changes implied in the destructive theorising such in their character as to make the essential nature of the existing constitution give place to a really different nature? If they be, then it is idle, it is delusively fallacious, to speak about “evolution”: as it would be, to speak about “evolving” a square from a triangle or a circle from a square. The thing affirmed, if it involve a change of nature, is not really evolution, but revolution. To hide the pea, of a change of nature, under the innocent name of evolution, is to play the conjuror who takes out a serpent where his neighbour has put in a dove. Now, according to the theorising in the hands of its real masters, to make an essential change of the nature of the constitution was the one purpose of the “evolution,” alike in tts two grand movements: first, Deuteronomic, a transition to pure monetheism from virtual polytheism (changing triangle into square); and second (changing square into circle), post-exilian, a transition to Messiahism of high priesthood with atoning sacrifice. The innocents, who think about the theoretical revolution without that change, merely do not see the pea. And to spread the process over a wide period, in which the radical revolution is at every moment imperceptible, is only to hide the pea.t What, let us consider, really was the essential nature of the Israelitish constitution in the Mosaic age? On the received view,—according to the scriptural account of the matter,—it was supernaturalism, of revelation and redemption, * “What may be called by admirers a delicate process of criticism may appear to others uncommonly like a piece of literary thimble-rigging” (Robertson, Harly Religion of Israel, p. 150). Cp. Note A. “Not only are the narratives of the Pentateuch so treated [as to be, “in short, fictitious ”]; the historical and prophetical books are in a similar manner discredited, so as to be admissible as testimony only after they have been expurgated or adjusted on the principles of the underlying theory. The historical books, we are told, were written long after the events they relate ; and even when they contain the record of historical facts, these records are overlaid with later interpretations of the facts, or even glossed over to obliterate them. Even the prophetical books are not to be relied on to determine the religious history ; for the books, in the first place, have undergone great alterations in the process of canonisation—and in the second place, even where there is an unambiguous declaration of a prophet as to a certain sequence of events, it is open to us to accept or to reject his statement on ‘critical’ grounds” (the same, pp. 466, 467). APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 297 by historical manifestation and working of the one true living God, in accordance with a covenant promise regarding Israel to their fathers. Zhis (Ex. xxxiv. 4—7) is what was folded in the great “name” of JEHOVAH (in Hebrew pronounced Jahveh ?), now distinctly manifested (cp. John i. 18, ii. L1) as the proper name of Israel’s God and Saviour. And the constitution, with this as the heart and soul of life in it, remammed the same in its essential nature through all the penta- teuchal changes down to the close of Deuteronomy The greatest of the changes, in the rising of the priestly institu- tions, only brought that vitally constitutive supernaturalism, which begins to appear in The Book of the Covenant, most commandingly into view. On that view of the matter, the “ difficulties ” which arise (perhaps inevitably) do not weigh much in the judgment of solid reason. It sees that in such a case, of varied repre- sentations of a great complicated historical movement of a constitution rising toward completed existence, there could hardly fail to be difficulties for us now in harmonising them (cp. the case of the gospel histories), And the difficulties may not be found solvable by us. Closer investigation, if it result in ascertainment of particular solutions, and perhaps of new principles or methods of solution, may also bring into view difficulties previously unsuspected. It may be that on the Whole, the ne¢ amount of difficulty felt as pressing at any one time shall not much vary in the successive generations. J¢ never has moved the community of belicvers in that essential supernaturalism to abandon the received view as to the Old Seripture, nor kept any community from receiving that view. Correspondingly, theorisers opposed to that view, and making rhetorical use of difficulties in harmonising—which they ex- aggerate, multiply, manufacture 2—show “between the lines ” that to them the real root difficulty lies in the essential sub- stance of the view. “The captains of Captain Pen ”—the shrill minor prophets of the adverse criticism—-may more or less be thus evil in action yet innocent in intention. Captain * See above, p. 245 ; cp. footnotes above, pp. 263-6. * Directly, by misrepresenting the scriptural accounts ; or circuitously, by means of subsidiary theorisings, that may enable them to get rid of books or passages whose difficulties are solved. 298 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Pen himself means anti-supernaturalism. His free handling of Scripture means, that the supernaturalism, which to him is the root primary difficulty in the scriptural account, was the heart and soul of life in the Israelitish constitution through all the ages now in question. | Nore regarding “discrepancies.” —In the Deuteronomy laws, intended for the nation generally, there was, on the received view, little occasion for detailed specification of ceremonial, away from the people’s common life, and amply detailed in the Priest Code specifications.—A case of modification of the law, adjusting it to Israel’s now changing condition, is that regard- ing the blood of an animal slain for common food: at Lev. xvu. 4 the law is, that the blood shall be brought “to the door of the tabernacle” (which was practicable in the wilderness camp life); at Deut. xii. 16, xv. 23 (with reference to a—settled Canaan—condition in which that was practically impossible), the law is, that where the Israelite is resident the blood shall be poured on the ground as water. The purpose of the law, to cuard the sacredness of blood (Lev. xvii.)' is best secured in each place by the form of the law in each place—A case of changing a law is (Deut. xiv. 24-26) that of now permitting an Israelite, instead of bringing certain sacrifices bodily to the sanctuary, to bring the price of them from his perhaps distant home, and change the money? into sacrifices when the sanctuary is reached by him. There, too, the purpose of the law was best served by so far altering the law that had been best in the wilderness. Such things are specially good (because incidental) proofs of the correctness of the scriptural order of origination. It seems incredible that they should by “critics” (= men professing judgment!) have been made proof- samples of “ discrepancy ” between the two Codes (“There's a great deal of human nature in man”). Another “discrepancy” that disappears when looked at with clear eye is, with reference to centralisation of worship. In Deuteronomy (xii. 5, etc.) the centre is a to-be-fixed future thing, while the Priest Code assumes as a settled thing that the sanctuary is that centre. Yes: but in the wilderness it was a movable centre—of the camp. The Deuteronomy question is, What shall permanently be the place of the sanctuary? Here is no discrepancy, dislocating the record, but harmony of two 1 Where N.B., the juxtaposition of this principle to that regulation in Leviticus, is incidental proof of the priority of Leviticus, in which the prin- ciple is so placed. 2 A memorable illustration of the primeval form of money, Lat. pecwnia, from pecus =‘ cattle.” APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 299 parts incidentally evidencing genuine authenticity of both. Of course it will not so appear “to a high critic looking at the matter from “between his legs.” So as to the “ discrepancy ” between Ex. xx. 24 and later scriptural representations. It is assumed that Ex. xx. 24 legalises a discretionary plurality of local sanctuaries, or at least, a ‘liberty relatively to place of altar sacrifice that is unlawful under the subsequent Codes. But (1) a certain laxity (cp. Amos v. 25) tolerated in the wilderness might be decisively terminated in Deuteronomy at the close of the wandering. (2) Also and especially,! the assumption is not warranted by fact. Apparently even the patriarchs did not place altars at discretion, but where, by theophany or other “sign,’ God had chosen to put His name. And the place, thus for the occasion made “holy ground” (Ex. ni. 5), did not thereby become a sanctuary in the now relevant sense of permanent local centre for common worship to the people in the region (or camp). On the received view the principle, exemplified in patriarchal practice, was in the Mosaic institute applied, suitably to the new condition, by the luw of one sanctuary for the nation, in the manner now best fitted for the pwrpose,—exhibition of the monotheistic supernaturalism of alike the patriarchal and the national religion. But appeal is taken to the practice, appearing in later history,—Judgcs, etc.,—of sacrificing away from the Canaan centre. In answer to which it is, on the recewed view, repre- sented,—(1) That in the time of the Judges, Israel, not in full command of Canaan, might not be able to fully carry out the Mosaic constitution, e7., regarding central gatherings at national festivals, while in times of apostasy or backsliding there was much of sinful neglect of what admittedly was pre- scribed in the divine Mosaic law ;—and that (2), in the northern kingdom, where political separation barred the way to Jerusalem, God’s people, under prophetic guidance from Him, presumably fell back, more or less—in the exceptional exigency (cp. Matt. xii. 1-7)—0on the patriarchal practice ; as also may have more or less been the case in the undivided ‘kingdom dur- ing the century after Eli’s death, until, in Solomon's reign of peace, the ark, the true centre, ‘obtained a settled home at Jerusalem ;—while (3), in all the history before Josiah’s time, though there are cases of censure and punishment on account of unauthorised sacrifice, there is no case of a sacrifice accepted by God where it is not reasonably presumable that He had “ put His name ”—through supernatural indication. All which is quite feasible explanation. 1 See above, pp. 246-7. 300 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ‘Whether, however, every difficulty, in harmonising the received view with historical fact in Israelitish practice, can be removed by such explanations, will not be anxiously inquired by believing men of sense or gumption. And the destructive criticism has here brought a Balaam’s blessing of corroboration to the received view, in proposing as its alternative the (very unlikely) story, that for so many centuries the peculiar people had a discretionary liberty of worshipping in high places, if not also of worshipping strange gods! A theory which needs that story is very questionable. Silence in history does not prove non-existence of a law: witness the all but complete silence regarding the Passover, though the festival—even in the judgment of destructive critics —dates from before the passage of the Red Sea. It does not prove even non-observance: Dr. Robertson (Jsrael’s arly Religion) adduces the Koran’s making no reference to circum- cision, though its antiquity among the Arabs as a sacred custom is far higher than the time of Mohammed. History? leaves unnoticed those things which—eg. sunrise—no matter how important in a nation’s life, are not in some way above the plane, or out of the line, of everyday occurrence. And the Bible has reference to this nation’s life only in connection with the more comprehensive matter of God’s kingdom in “the earth and the world.” But we again remember that our special question here is reearding the story, which the destructive criticism has to put in place of the scriptural account of the present matter,—a question which now has narrowed to the point as to the essential nature of whatever religion Israel had in the Mosaic age. And as to that, the theoretical story is waste and vacuity.2. Some theorisers, otherwise going with the revolu- tionary set, maintain the supernaturalism which, on the received view, is what constitutes the changeless essential nature of the Israelitish constitution. But the leaders now in our view—the leaders who lead, perhaps invisibly—do_ not, will not, really cannot leave that supernaturalism in the real history. Its presence there is a “let there be light,’ which destroys their theoretical “ darkness on the face of the abyss.” They have to put in a serpent where the scriptural account of 1 See above, pp. 99, 100. 2 See above, p. 264, footnote, Note P, and Note on “ Principal Cave,” p. 326. Pe Pe APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 301 the matter puts in a dove (it is only this that will make their “criticism” differ from common infidelity). For anti- supernaturalism really is their principle of judgment and mainspring of movement (it is only this that makes their “criticism” differ from ordinary Christian study of the Scriptures); while in the biblical Mosaic age a true super- naturalism, all-pervasive as the atmosphere and light, is | constitutively essential, in such wise that without it the history would be “unthinkable,” theoretically absurd as a story of spring-time without sun or of human life apart from vital air. Accordingly, they cast the Bible infant Mosaism out of the Sinai cradle, and put a mere naturalistic changeling in its place. If in the real Mosaic age they own anything pro- fessedly supernatural,—in order, say, to account for subsequent belief in supernaturalism,—they do not own it as historically real, but perhaps ascribe it to imposture or gross delusion (2 Tim. ui. 13) on the part of Moses and his associates; who thus are made to meetly inaugurate the theoretical nation’s experience of fraud and falsehood on the part of spiritual- minded prophets and zealous priests and pious kings, But even after they thus change, even in. their own changeling Mosaism from dove to serpent (giving it a “corrupt nature— Conf. of Hath), they still are under a fatal necessity? of changing yet again and again, in the two grand movements of radical revolution :—1. their Deuteronomic concentration of worship and priesthood, if not also creation of nationality, changing the primeval triangle into square ;? and,—2. round- ing square into circle, their post-exilian creation of Messianic priesthood with atonement. Reasons for that irrationalism, in the shape of scriptural difficulties alleged against the received view, we have passed from, perceiving in the nature of the case a reasonableness of accepting the thorny crown of difficulties in that scriptural view along with the Scripture itself. We now fix attention on the said irrationalism. It can be charged against the 1 See above, footnote, p. 248, 2 First STUDENT: “Every man shapes his own destiny.” SECOND Stuprent: “ Every man zs his own destiny.” 3 See above, footnote, p. 264. 302 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS destructive criticism in question, in the following three parti- culars of changing the essential nature of Mosaism:—1. the theoretical Mosaism has not in it the redeeming grace which, represented by the priestly constitution, was expounded (cp. John i. 18) in the teaching of the prophets ;—2. it has not in it the real monothecsm which, represented by the Deuteronomy concentration of national worship, appeared in the national belief as a finally settled habit, as it were a mental second nature, at the return from exile; and,—3. in and through all, it lacks the true divine supernaturalism, of revelation and redemption by the one living God, which, represented by Israel’s Passover and tabernacle (or temple) way of life, appeared in the deliverance from Egypt and Sinai consecration, as well as in the wonders and prophecies of Canaan,—the “river” (Ps. xlvi. 4) which from the smitten Rock was ever in the city of Jehovah-God. One ray of that supernaturalism shining in the history, glimmering through its veil (Luke ix. 31, 32), destroys the Apollyon criticism in its life of life. Thus, with reference to the Passover—The theorising strives to level that festival down into mere naturalism, making it to be natively and essentially only a festive social meal in connection with the good fruits of the earth and man’s life thereby sustained and cheered. This is to the criticism a necessity of existence. Accordingly it strives to make the historical reference of the festival, to a salvation of Israel’s firstborn in Eeypt, an importation belonging to a period long after the Mosaic age. True, in Deuteronomy the historical reference is clear and distinct,— with the name (pésach), “ Passover,” which has no other mean- ing; in Hxodus, which has the name (mazzoth) “ unleavened bread,” the historical reference appears distinctly at chap. xxxiv. (18, 20, cp. Ex. xxiii. 15), which these critics place, along with The Book of the Covenant, two centuries before Deuteronomy; and between the two dates a corresponding general view, of dependence of present religion on a divine law from the Mosaic past, appears in Hosea and Amos, whom they own as unquestionably authentic, making them the earliest extant writing prophets, on a solidly clear historic ground.! 1 “His (Dr. Robertson’s) literary argument places Israel, before the Hilkiah “find,” with two prophets and The Book of the Covenant plus APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 303 All these, their only primary witnesses, not only themselves make the historical reference, but make it in such a manner as to show that it is 72 the nation’s mind, as a habit of its look- ing toward the primeval past, from “ days of old.” Yet the critics reject the testimony. They even dismember one of the witnesses, cutting a section of Lxodus (xili.) out of its place (cp. John ix. 20), where it 1s monumental verification of the historical reference; and they cast down Joel from his erst antiquity alongside of Amos and Hosea, where his evidence for that reference is overwhelming in its fulness. Why do these things? Because the historical reference destroys their theorising, by placing a real supernaturalism, of revelation and redemption, in Israelitish recollection and in prophetic re- presentation of the Mosaic age, long before Josiah’s time—not to speak of the exile time :—that is, placing in the period between Josiah and the exodus an Israel, and Israelitish condition of thought regarding religion and history, essentially different from what the theorising demands. And in so intending murder, the criticism again falls into suicide. For if it succeed here, what is the result ? All that violence against the most ancient witnesses will inevitably, if successful, furnish clear proof that the theoretical “evolution” rs not a real evolution, but a radical revolution, changing the essential nature of the exodus religion, putting an essentially different thing in place of it. A Mosaic Passover that is merely naturalistic is essentially different, not only from the Passover of exilian and later times, but from that of Deuteronomy, and of the earliest writing prophets before it, and of Ex. xxxiv. before them. In it, the super- naturalism in question is fundamentally essential. And here consequently, for the theorisers, the only Passover known Ex. xxxiv., all authentically looking back to Sinai, and seeing their springs in the smitten rock. But he refuses to make anything of the fact, that this Israel is a monumental nation (Isa. xliii. 10), and its prophets, its apostles, its Christ, have ostensibly borne authoritative testimony regard- ing origination in the Mosaic age ; and he fails to show cause for other men’s disregarding this ground of judgment (= “ criticism”), and restrict- ing themselves to grounds accepted by negative critics. He also fails to show how or when the Scriptures and the institutions can have originated after the Mosaic age, without fraud and falsehood, forgery and imposture, which he repudiates” (MS. Letter to an Australasian friend). 304 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS historically has yet another dilemma. ther this is essentially the Mosaic Passover, 07 it is not: if it be, then the exodus religion was essentially supernaturalistic as that of later ages ; and if it be not, then the religion of those later ages cannot have originated in evolution from the exodus religion. In either case, the theorising is destroyed in its foundation. So over all, without that violence which is disproof of real evolution—“ catastrophic ”—the “scientific” history will not move on. Beginning with a Mosaism that has not in it the smitten Rock (1 Cor. x. 4) of a true divine super- naturalism, the theorising has to bring in as vera causa—the distinctively efficient agency—in its historical movement a truly wndivine supernaturalism * of (as we saw) human fraud and falsehood, forgery and imposture, “ Zhese be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of Egypt” ?? The theorising, so far from “scientifically ” accounting for the Bible and its history, really shuts criticism out of both.? And, in reducing itself to absurdity, it furnishes—-we repeat—-new proof of the scriptural account of the matter,“—or, indirectly, new proof that the scriptural supernaturalism is historically real, so that the Bible religion must needs be true and divine. The half-way view, which makes the origination of the institutions or of the Scriptures to be more or less post- Mosaic yet supernatural, is not, of course, on principle in league with anti-supernaturalism. But on the part of the received view it is an essentially important question with reference to the half-way view, On what ground it stops there? Is it, eg. a ground of compromise with mere naturalism, “ throwing tit-bits to the hon” ?° If it be, then it is only a lack of logical persistency that keeps the alpha of mere naturalism from showing itself (Jas. i. 15) in omega fruits of matured anti-supernaturalism ; and where the fathers eat sour grapes the children’s teeth are set on edge.® 1 See above, pp. 219-20. 2 See Appendix, Note L. 8 Cp. above, pp. 247-8. 4 By further showing that there is no other possible rational, that is, real, account of the matter. 5 Cp., or rather contrast, dealing with lion and bear on the part of the ‘man after God’s own heart.” » 6 See Notes J, K, M. LL es aes oe ee eae So Se ar ae hy APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 305 The master argument for the received view, on the ground of the authority of Christ and His apostles, is not really out of sight of our apologetic history, though for mere naturalism it should have no weight. No doubt for Chris- tians it is an important inquiry, what view of the Old Testa- ment is, wrrespectively of New Testament evidence, justly deducible from the Old Testament itself. But for them and for all men there is an ulterior question, what is the truth as to the Old Testament, —a question regarding which the testimony of Christ and His apostles is adduced.2 We will suppose that there is no question as to the fact, that those founders of Christianity (Eph. ii. 20) so assumed and proceeded on the received view regarding the Old Testa- ment in their public ministry, as te make themselves respon- sible for that view before mankind. With reference to this fact, opponents of the, received view have found it necessary to say or to suggest, that either these founders were mistaken about this matter—of the scriptural “foundation” of man’s life in believing God—or, knowing the truth about it, they accommodated their utterances to suit mistaken Jewish views of it,—-that is, put on their teaching a face of believing what they knew to be untrue. Men of sense, whether Christian or not, will judge for themselves whether that is a likely story.* 1 See above, Book i. * See Appendix, Note G. 3 See above, p. 47. . * “There is another topic connected with the canon of the Old Testa- ment, which has of late attracted some notice, and is entitled to some share of your attention, and this is the attack that has been made upon the authenticity and canonicity of many of the books, and upon large portions of the history of the Old Testament, by a series of German writers, some of whom have brought to the work a large amount of learn- ing, accompanied generally with a miserable lack of common sense and sound logic. The principles upon which they usually proceed in this matter are these : The testimony of Christ and His apostles to the divine authority of the Old Testament, and to the integrity of the Jewish canon, is of no weight, for they either shared in the ignorance and error which generally prevailed among their countrymen in regard to the origin and character of their sacred books, or, though they had the discernment and sagacity to perceive the absurdity of the prevalent Jewish notions upon these subjects, they, to avoid offence, professed to concur in them, and usually spoke as if they believed in their truth and soundness... . The books of the Old Testament have, however, stood without injury this the most formidable assault that has ever been made upon them. In the 20 206 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Clericus! sought to support that story by contending,— “Since Christ and His apostles did not come into the world to teach biblical eriticism, there is no wonder they express themselves in accordance with vulgar opinions.”? Witsius, replying, in a passage to be presently quoted, pointed at this as “profane” (cp. Heb. xii. 15, 16); and more recent utter- ances in similar terms on the part of professing Christians have been similarly censured. In the judgment of charity, they can be construed as confusedly meaning, that the founders of Christianity, in their utterances bearing on this matter, employed conventional phraseology—as when an astronomer speaks of “ sunrise "without intending to teach for doctrine what the phraseology implies if taken literally. But NV.B.,— the Jews really believed what is implied in the utterances at present in question. And Le Clere’s contending is now answered, as it was by Witsius, that, though those founders were not teachers of criticism (as they were not teachers ot logic), yet they were teachers regarding the scriptural rule of faith and practice, and in that eapacity bore a definite positive testimony, regarding the Old Testament in general and the Pentateuch in particular, which they placed at the foundation of the true religion. 1. As to their possibly being mistaken about the matter.—A man’s not being omniscient (Mark xiii. 32) does not imply that he can be mistaken, ¢.y., in “speaking as he is moved by the legitimate department of the lower criticism the evidence adduced to dis- prove the genuineness of particular books of the Old Testament has been subjected to a thorough investigation, and been proved to be utterly insufficient to serve the purpose for which it was brought forward ; and in the department of the higher criticism, the folly, capriciousness, and recklessness of those who applied this test have been so fully exposed, that [this was before the Graf resuscitation of Vatkeism, see above, p. 272, ete. | even in Germany it is now generally abandoned to contempt.”—Cunning- ham, at p. 423 of the work referred to in footnote above, p. 195. The lectures were prepared immediately after the Disruption of 1843. The present quotation is given as a sample utterance of sense or gumption. Its moral characterisation resembles that of Welsh and Witsius in quota- tions below. Its critical divination is illustrated by the history referred to above at p. 272, etc. 1 He honourably retracted his teaching, being convinced by the reasoning of Witsius (see above, p. 253, etc.). 2 Donaldson’s Translation of Witsius, see below. ey a APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 307 Holy Ghost” (John xiv. 10, xvi. 13). And in His recorded public ministry Jesus never speaks as merely a man, but always as the Christ, the Son of God (John vii. 16, viii. 28). —2. As to “ accommodation,” —it is painful to have to remind professing Christians of the fact, that (1 Cor. v. 7, 8) the very life’s bread of this religion is sincerity and truth, and 2 those * With reference to such “accommodation,” as alleged by German anti-supernaturalists, Dr. Welsh, moderator of the Scottish Disruption Assembly of 1843—“’Twas fifty years ago ”—wrote, in his Elements of Church History, as follows :— “The compatibility of such deceit with the character of virtue was agreeable to the current system of morals, and corresponded with the practice of the rationalists themselves, who professed themselves defenders and preachers of the Christian doctrine, while devoting their lives to its overthrow,—their philosophers of highest name (as Kant) defending this course of conduct. It is hoped that a better spirit is beginning to prevail. [See footnotes above, pp. 249, 264.] In regard to the whole system of accommodation, I heartily go along with the following statement by Ullmann :—*. . . To suppose that Christ accommodated Himself to the errors of His time, with the knowledge that they were errors, unplies that the origin of Jesuitism may be traced back to Jesus Himself?” (pp- 152, 153). This singularly precious volume is only a first part—down to Con- stantine’s accession, A.D. 312—given to the world a.p. 1844, of the author’s intended work, which was broken off by his death not long after. He was Cunningham’s colleague in the Edinburgh New College, under Chalmers as principal, but had been Professor of Church History in the University when they all sacrificed their livings for what they regarded as truth. It was by his hand—as moderator—-that there was tabled the Protest, in which the sacrifice for conscience toward God was declared. He was deeply versed in the learning of philosophy, patristics, and classics, as Cunningham was in that of more positive theology and ecclesi- asticism, and “Rabbi” Duncan in Semitic lore. What a theological faculty the Disruption Church was able to extemporise in her birth year ! There is not one of the four that was not, in his own independent way, a true master, essentially unique in British history of Christian thought ; and surely such a combination in one theological school has rarely appeared in Christian history. The present writer may be allowed to make this observation as having been personally a pupil of Cunning- ham and Duncan. In such labours as the present he has been always deeply indebted also to the tuition of Dr. Bannerman, who had come to be their colleague,—represented in literature by his books on Inspira- tion and on The Church,—who, ‘like Dr. James Buchanan, was of the type _ of that “first four” in respect of maturity of rich thought and belief, and clear, solid strength of judgment, as well as affluence of digested and really mastered knowledge of his subjects. 2 See above, p. 17. 208 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS founders of it, so far from “ shaping ”! their testimony regarding Scripture to suit relative Jewish errors regarding it, openly and unshrinkingly opposed such errors,—opposition which was one occasion of the Jewish hostility that drove out the apostles and nailed Christ on the cross. And their testimony regarding the matter was not a mere fencing with Jews, but a so far founding of Christendom in the new dispensation. Witsius, admired as an Old Testament Hebrew scholar in that age of real great scholars, was conspicuous by a candid ynildness and charity in controversy. All the more remarkable on that account is the strength of his feeling in the following extract :?-— “Woe betide that audacious and reckless criticism, whose relivion it is'to prefer—as it admits—its own guesses to the authority of Christ and His apostles! Yes, indeed! Christ and His apostles were not teachers of the science of criticism, such as these opponents of ours demand to be esteemed ,— claiming a sort of literary sovereignty ® in every branch of human knowledge whatever. Teachers of TRUTH they never- theless were, nor did they suffer themselves to be imposed on either by ignorance of men or the craft of great men of their time. Of a surety they did not come into the world to cherish common errors, and, by their authority, to protect them; nor did they scatter broadcast the seeds of truth among the Jews alone, but also among the peoples [Gentiles] peculiarly depend- ent upon them. To finish by one statement, I maintain that that man, in whose heart the religion of Christ is, with whom the authority of Christ and His apostles is sacred, will far more joyfully bind his faith to them in their references to — Moses as the author of the Pentateuch than to any mob what — or where soever, of Hobbists, Spinozists, Simonists, Le Clercs, and the whole rabble of profane critics, with their audacious and reckless conjectures.” , An aspect of the matter glanced at by Witsius, but bearing with peculiar fulness* on the special “mission” of — 1 See footnote above, p. 249. 2 Donaldson’s Translation—Edinburgh, 1880—of Witsius’s Dissertation © on the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch (first published a-p. 1691, in | vol. i. of Witsius’s Miscellanea, —2nd ed., improved and enlarged, A.D. 1696). (ees 8 Witsius has regnwm—* kingship ”—evidently meaning autocracy—as — if infallible popery of bookishness. 4 F.g., with reference to Witsius’s point about the Gentiles, as in a special — manner and measure dependent on the testimony of Christ and His _ apostles. ee APOLOGETICS IN ITS TWO POST-APOSTOLIC PERIODS 309 Christianity in our more recent time, is very seasonably illustrated in the following extract from a statement on the present subject by the Bishop of Colchester :— “Tf the view of the extreme rationalists robs us of an. important element in Christian education, not less does 1t paralyse our efforts in the vast and ever-growing field of Chris- tian missions. We cannot send our missionaries to the heathen with the New Testament only in their hands; or, if that were possible, our converts, when able to read the Gospels and Epistles for themselves, would naturally ask for some account of those older Scriptures which they would there find so con- stantly quoted and referred to. Imagine, then, the position of a missionary obliged to tell those whom he has admitted, or was about to admit, into the fold of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, that while one portion of the Bible, which he could not withold from them, was true and genuine, the other and larger portion was only fabrication and fable, leading up to and preparing for the later, and indeed only real revelation, simply in the sense (if there is such a sense) in which the stories of King Lear or King Arthur may be said to prepare the minds of children for authentic history.2_ Already the question has been significantly asked by one representing the extreme left wing of rationalism, ‘Why should we unteach our converts Hindoo mythology, only to teach them Hebrew mythology instead ?’ Why indeed!” Dr. Bloomfield, in the statement here quoted from, resolutely maintains the competency of men who are not technically scholars to judge for themselves in this Bible question; and his own present contribution to discussion on the merits of it is expressly on the footing of simply an educated Christian man who does not claim to be a specialist in Old Testament Hebrew lore. It became one in the highest rank of Christian leadership and teaching to direct attention to the bearing of the matter on the “ founding” (Eph. i. 20) of Christianity among heathen populations. And his impress- ive suggestion, of a conceivable practical impossibility of really establishing the new kingdom on a basis that excludes 1 See above, p. 216. 2 Dr. Duff, “the prince of missionaries,” said to the present writer, in answer to the question, How the new critical views would work in India ? that they would be simply ruinous, destroying the foundations. 8 Contemporary Review, June 1892, p. 874,—the second of two articles, “ Professor Driver on the Old Testament.” 310 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS the divine authority of the Old Scripture, brings up with a fresh vividness the status questinis, If we refuse to be “built on the foundation of the prophets,” can we be built on “that of the apostles,’ or have “Jesus Christ Himself” as “the chief corner-stone ” ? 1 Witsius joyfully made due acknowledgment of Le Clerc’s honourableness in retractation. This became one so revered as he still is—among Christians of the type of Toplady and Mr. Donaldson of Ceres—on account of evangelical unction sanctifying his erudition and masterly ability. And his dis- cussion of the present question has—when reproduced—been found in substance really seasonable for the present need. But it is to be noted in the above extract from it that he sees no half-way house between denying the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and in that connection effectively disowning the authority of Christ and His apostles. The distinction which now is fully recognised? between denying the Mosaic authorship of the Scriptures and denying their divine author- ity, had not then come into recognition as in our day. In our day, on the other hand, under cover of the distinction, there may be an evasion of the question as to the bearing of that authority (Matt. xxviii. 18—20), which is the foundation of Christendom, on the whole question regarding Old Testa- ment Scriptures and institutions. With reference, however, to a point comparatively new, regarding which there is not full unanimity among intelli- cently sincere defenders of evangelical Christianity, it may be well for all parties to consider the following utterance emitted in another connection :—“ Brethren, I count not myself to have yet apprehended: but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and stretching to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be other- wise, even this God shall reveal unto you. Only, whereunto we have already attained, by that let us walk” (Phil. in. 14-16). 1The whiff of cold wind about mission work from the ice-land of rationalism reminds us of “rax-me-that-Bible” Dr. Erskine’s experience of a kindred region relatively to mission work almost exactly a century before (see above, p. 192). 2 See Appendix, Notes on “Dr. Binnie” and “ Professor Robertson.” EPILOGUE: THE supplementary section has been much rewritten, but in its allusions conforms to the beginning of 1894, as date of the completion of the work. Here, as elsewhere, the writer has disregarded the weak worldliness of the exhortation to Horatius, that he should strike soft, instead of striking down, when on the bridge defending “the ashes of his fathers and the altars of his gods.” But he disclaims allusion to individuals excepting where individuals are named or distinctly indicated. A reader may naturally see allusion to individuals who, in connection with this or that matter in question, are much in his mind and presumably not absent from the writer's. But the reference may be only to classes or types; and the indi- viduals—if any—immediately in the writer’s view are all but certainly not those whom an English or a Scottish reader would most naturally think of. In three distinct works the writer has dealt with one subject, of historical apologetics, though from different points of view; and in the present work he has dealt with apologetics as, while appearing in historically varied articulations, yet always being the same in substance. There thus is repetition, extending even to phrases and illustrations. The writer may not have fully succeeded in avoiding iteration really needless ; and he may not have been duly solicitous to veil the appearance of it where the reality was called for. But—witness the Bible, the grand model of teaching, with its- continual vetus in novo patet—repetition rightly used is a most valuable means of exposition for placing a matter fully and fairly in the mind of those addressed. t The amount of space occupied respectively by the success- ive chapters in the work goes on expanding as in the > apocalyptic panorama of the seven seals; and the final section places the Old Testament question as if at last alone in a great historical movement like the Exodus erection of the Tabernacle. This expansion may have been occasioned by the nature of the movement in the studies as historical, like a river’s expanding through gain of ever-new accessions while retaining all the past. 311 312 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS For the practical purpose of apologetics, if we lose the past in the present, it ought to be in order to more fully find it there. The past is abidingly important, not only as historically intyo- ducing the present, but because it is in elucidations of the remotest past that often the present has to look for solution of its most recent problems. In the present case a certain com- pleteness, or needed balance, has come unsought through emphasis now laid on the Old Testament (veiled Christianity), correspondingly to special emphasis laid on (Moses unveiled) the New Testament at earlier stages—ey., in Book i. 1 “There is an ideal balance of Christian theology; and the Old Testament, if seems to me, more than anything else, is needed to restore that balance—not the Old as contrasted with the New, but the Old Testament as being the ground and foundation of the New, the rock whence it was hewn, and the pit whence it was digged.”—Professor Sanday, Contemp. Rev., July 1889, ‘The Future of English Theology.” a” eS APPENDICES. ——}—— APPENDIX TO SEC. 1, CHAP. L, BOOK I. Observations on “ Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,” Luke xu. 10. Here we will only, for our special purpose, coast in shallows along the shore of a deep sea. 1. What makes the sin in question at Luke xv. 10 1 not simply “blaspheming,’ but must be something in the circum- stance of its being “against the Holy Ghost.” The Greek “blaspheme ” (dit. =“ evil-speak ”) has the general meaning of, uttering defamatory speech, or speech otherwise revolting to pious feeling, especially with reference to deity or to sacred things (Matt. ix. 3; Acts xiii 45), The evangelists employ it with reference to such utterance regarding Christ: ¢g.,at Matt. xxvil. 39, where A.V. has “reviled Him ”—on the cross; and at Mark xv. 29, A.V. and R.V. have “railed on” Him—there. So at Luke xxii. 65, where He is on trial before the high priest. In the post-apostolic “period of the persecutions,’ blaspheme Christ was the Greek equivalent of the Latin Christwm matedicere, lit. “to evil-speak Christ” (cp. “malediction ”). This, in judicial procedure of the heathen world-empire against professing Christians, meant, denying or disowniny Him, recant- ing or abjwring His religion.* -This is in the line of what Christ Himself says at Luke xii. 10,—“ Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man [lit. as if, ‘throw a word at Him ’—cp. Ex. xi. 7], it shall be forgiven him.” And it is fully borne out by the terms of His general declaration ‘at Mark iii. 28,—“ Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme. But he 1 See in Pliny’s Letier to Trajan regarding the Bithynian Christians, A.D. 110. 313 314 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of [lies under] eternal damnation.” ! So the matter is placed by God’s here revealed will: whether by His willit might not have been otherwise placed, we do not now inquire, This perhaps remotely bears on apology on the principle set forth at Matt. xii. 37, that a man’s mouth shows what is innermost in his heart and life (see, e.g., Isa. lvi.10). At least, here we are in the region of the ethics of witness-bearing as to religion. 2. The “blaspheming” in question may not be consciously aimed at the third Person of the Godhead. The sinner may not even have that Person in his mind. “A word against the Son of Man,” which the persecuting heathen might speak of as a blaspheming Christ, might involve the guilt for which there is no expiation ; but if in any case it should involve that guilt, yet the professing Christian in that case, denying Christ, might have in his mind no more thought of the Holy Ghost in particular than the heathens had in theirs. The lapsed in the Lyonnese persecution, when they went back to confession on the way to martyrdom, were welcomed by the faithful (ep. “welcome to your gory bed!”); and Peter found “place for repentance ” after he had perpetrated The Great Denial; but Paul (1 Tim. i. 12) seems to see, as an ideal possibility, that he, “a blasphemer and a persecutor, and injurious,” might have sinned beyond reach of mercy,—though presumably (see Acts ix. 5) he at that time had no thought of opposition to the Holy Ghost. It is conceivable that the blasphemy, on the part of one who in his mind has no thought of that Person, should yet be distinctively against that Person (Heb. x. 29) in the sense of being in a special manner opposed (Acts vii. 51) to Him, though (cp. Luke ix. 55) not in a consciousness of the opposed- ness to Him. The Jews, ascribing Christ’s miracle of exorcism to His employing Satanic agency, did not mean to say in other words, that Beelzebub was employed for man’s deliverance by the Holy Spirit of Jehovah. Nevertheless they really blas- phemed against that person of the Trinity, by ascribing what in fact was distinctively His work to Beelzebub, so as (cp. Acts x. 38) to identify that holy God, who (John xiv. 11) dwelt and worked in the Messiah, with an unclean demon of the pit. Similarly as to the case of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts v. 3, 4). We need not suppose that, in lying to God the Holy Ghost, ' The R.V. English here, “is guilty of an eternal sin,” is nonsensical. Tt can be seen in the Greek that the guilt is=reatus pene and not only reatus culpe, and remains all through the (won) “ever.” APPENDICES Bs ee they had Him in their view as a person to be imposed upon by their mean pretence. And in saying (Eph. iv. 30), “grieve not the Holy Ghost” (eg. by “falsehood” or other “corrupt speech ”—vers. 25, 29), or in saying (1 Thess. v. 19), “quench not the Spirit” (? eg. by “ despising prophesyings ’—ver. 20), —Paul need not be understood as referring to intentional antagonism toward the third Person of the Godhead on the part of the Christians he is addressing. He may mean only that a native tendency of the kind of action he warns against,— violating the bond of Christian fellowship or throwing cold water on spiritual movement,—is, to grieve that Spirit of truth and grace as with a painful personal offence, so occasioning withdrawal of His enlightening and quickening operative presence from them in His anger (see the “for” at Heb. x. 30). Here we seem to see at least an approach toward our subject of apology, in the references, in connection with out- ward utterance, or action on the community, to an imward frame of mind that is revoltingly offensive to that Spirit, who through His gracious operations is the innermost life of religion in man’s heart. That inward framie—rotten-hearted falseness (cp. 1 Cor. i. 7, 8)—may appear (2 Tim. iv. 1-4) in putting a false face of worldliness (Col. ii. 8) on the religion under the name of “answering” for it to the world—thus effectively betraying it with a kiss—or (Isa. lvi. 10) in being silent where “ silence gives consent” to accusation of it. It is in this direction that Christ points the saying (Matt. xu. 30), “He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth ” (mark the “therefore” at ver. 31). 3. As to the representation of this matter(?) in the two famous passages in Hebrews ostensibly referring to it,—vi. 4-6, x. 25-29. They have immediate reference to lapsing or apostasy ; and they very powerfully set forth as the revolting thing in that sin, the dishonour done to Immanuel slain for us (as to the expression “ blaspheming ” Him—on the cross—see again Matt. xxvii. 39; Mark xv. 29). And this, on the part of the lapsed or apostate, they set forth as resulting in iwretriev- ableness of spiritual ruin:—either (Heb. vi.) in a “second death” of insensibility (Jude, 12) in the sinful soul; or (Heb. x.) in a second death of condemnation (cp. Rey. xxi. 8) on account of the criminality of the sin. In so speaking of an irretrievably ruinous consequence of lapse or apostasy, they remind us of what Christ said about blaspheming against the Holy Ghost in connection with witness-bearing as to religion. (Here, as there, the question is not raised, whether it might not be otherwise if God so wieled.) The consequence of the sin is in the two passages exhibited Od 316 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS in two distinct aspects. At Heb. vi. 4-6 what we see is, as it were, a natural consequence, as when foul deadly disease is brought on a man by indulgence in vice; while what we see at Heb. x. 25-29 is a penal consequence, like Gehazi’s plague of leprosy.! The representation of the criminality of apostasy at Heb. x. 20-29 resembles the representation at Luke xii. 5-12 with reference to witness-bearing in the form of confession which culminates in apology: eg.,in bringing to view all the three Persons of the Godhead as distinctly sinned against (the Father here—Heb. x.—in the reference to “ Moses’ law”); and also, and especially, in making Christ equivalent to the religion of the living God. It is the aggravated criminality of apostasy from Christ that is illustrated by comparison with “despising Moses’ law”; and the culminating point of aggravation is constituted by the fact of its being “the Son of God” who is trampled under foot by the apostasy, that it is His blood—the blood (of the covenant)—in its great office of making the Church to be “a peculiar people,” a boly nation of the tedeemer,—that is contemptuously treated as a common thing. That same fact is made the culminating point of aggravation in the otherwise dissimilar representation of the consequence of the lapsing at Heb. vi. 4-6, where the lapsed are said to have crucified the Son of God, and “ put Him to open shame.” It was exhibited with an awful vividness (Matt. xxi. 33-44) in Christ’s own parting parable to the apostatising Israel of His day: where mark the point (ver. 37), “ They will reverence my son” (ep. Ps. 11.) The representation of a—so to speak—natural consequence ' This distinction, of a penal from a natural consequence in the soul’s life, is illustrated by a difference between Paul’s two famous utterances regarding a “second death” in the moral condition of heathens, Rom. i. 18-32 and Eph. iv. 18, 19. In both we see an insensibility to truth and goodness, which is a consequence of atheism, and which appears in enormities of outbreaking wickedness, revolting to the ordinary feelings of even unregenerate mankind (moral monstrosity). But at Eph. iv. 19 the “past feeling” appears as if a simply natural consequence of godless- ness, as the physical world would die in absence of the sun: the atheists “giving themselves” over to enormities of uncleanness ;—while at Rom. i. it is shown that the moral deadness, which breaks out in the enormities, is a punishment of the crime of atheism, in its rejection of a light of God. Instead of a se/f-abandonment to shameful practices, on the part of man, what now comes into view is a judicial abandonment of the sinful men on God’s part :—“God giving them over,” to uncleanness, vileness, reprobacy (the Greek for “giving over” or “up” is the same at Rom. i. 24, 26, 28; and at Eph. iv. 19). APPENDICES S17 at Heb. vi. 4-6 brings into view a natively deadening process in the sowl,—in lapsing from a condition of spiritual enlighten- ment, and feeling, and movement, into irretrievableness of dark and stark insensibility, such that the apostate, once dead in sin (Eph. ii. 1-3; Rom. v. 12) by inheritance from Adam, now is “twice dead” through destruction of a sensibility to the things of God in the word of His kingdom, that was evoked in him by “the Spirit of grace” (so—cp. Heb. vi. 7, 8—in the cases of the thorny-ground and the stony-ground hearers, Parable of the Sower). Here (NV.B. the “crucified to thenselves the Son ot God”) there is, through trampling on an inward light of life in the soul, a consequent suicidal extinction of that life, efface- ment or obliteration of the capacity of feeling, as in the cauterising + of a conscience that is “seared as witha hot iron.” As in a wasted soil, the ruin is now beyond remedy. There is no healing balm in Gilead. The “season of grace” 1s gone, past hope of its returning. There is no possibility of renewal unto repentance (cp. Luke xix. 41-44). Such is the native tendency (cp. Heb. vi. 9) of that against which the Hebrew Christians here are warned. (Whether Onnipotence—Matt. xix. 26—is not capable of retrieving that ruin, if God so willed—Matt. viii. 2—is not here the question.) The process within the soul, thus deadly in its native result, is in its nature suicidal, being a violence to the innermost life of whatever of religion has come into that soul through the gospel. Above all, as involving a base disloyalty to Christ, the inward movement in lapse or apostasy goes to destroy (see Matt. vii. 6) in the heart all real possibility of adoring love to Christ, with- out which the man who once has known Him is truly “nigh unto cursing” (see 1 Cor. xvi. 22). And that poisoning of the soul’s blood, through the base disloyalty’s working inward on the apostate’s moral character, is glanced at in the description at Heb. x. 29, of dishonouring Christ as at the same time a “doing despite unto the Spirit of grace.” For,— He who now slays Christ on the cross destroys life’s true light in his own soul. The tender strength of a true Christian feeling that is revolted by the disloyalty to Christ crucified, is illustrated in an early Church tradition regarding Peter’s martyrdom. At first sight (so runs the legend) of the in- famous pain set before him, though “the spirit was willing” yet (again) “the flesh was weak,” and he fled from the cross. 1 The rendering, “branded in their own conscience,” as if self-con- demned, puts (legitimately ?) quite a different meaning into this clause of 1 Tim..2v. 2, | 2 As to the intended effect of which, see John xxi. 19; cp. 1 Pet. iv. 14, 13. 318 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS But in the shameful flight he was met by Christ (cp. Heb. xii. 1-4 and iv. 14-16), now entering the battlefield he was leaving. When Peter asked the Master, why He now was come down from His throne, Christ answered, that He was come “to be crucified afresh.” Whereupon (cp. Luke xxii. 32, 62) the disciple saw, and went back to “the death” by which it was appointed that he should “glorify God.” In the Christian mind in which that legend grew, no infamous pain of martyr- dom was a thing to be weighed against the “shame, and ever- lasting contempt,” which are the due reward of a professing Christian’s baseness in at the testing time dishonouring Him, who for man’s redemption “endured the cross, despising the shame” (see Phil. 1. 5-11). At Heb. x. 29 the expression “suppose ye” is, in view of that revoltingness of base disloyalty, an appeal to our feeling of its deserving,—as compared, e.g., with open disrespect to Moses’ law, recognised as justly meriting a merciless severity of death- punishment. And the common feeling thus appealed to is iulustrated by another anecdote of the Lyonnese persecution. The faithful witnesses, ready “to die for the name of the Lord Jesus,” were (says our informant?!) visibly confident, and even jubilant, as if shining with oil of gladness, in elation of “the joy of martyrdom, and the hope of the promises, and the Spirit of the Father” (cp. Phil. 11. 15-17); while on the other hand the few “lapsed” were, in their aspect and bearing, pictures of abjectly despairing misery, of remorseful self-loathing and self- contempt: even the guards and executioners, heathens though they were, did not conceal their scorn of the Christians who so proved untrue when tried (cp. 1 Pet. i. 7, iv. 12). And in such a baseness God sees the sin that hath never forgiveness,—the crime supreme, with reference to which in particular it is to be noted (cp. Acts xiii. 46), that “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful look- ing for of judgment, and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries ” (Heb. x. 26). It does not follow that we can see it in individual cases, though we may take warning from the general nature of the scriptural representation of it. Into the essence of the crime, against Immanuel Christ,—His blood shed for us and Spirit striving in us,—there enters its being a “sinning wilfully after” the sinner has “received the know- ledge of the truth.” But the Lyonnese “lapsed” found, like Peter, “place for repentance.” And we are not qualified nor called to judge in particular cases whether that essential crimi- nality, of base disloyalty in desertion of the good cause, has really placed the sinner, as if he had died in his sins, beyond 1 See above, p. 15. APPENDICES 319 the reach of God’s forgiving mercy. That can be known only to Him, as it wholly depends on His unrevealed will regarding individuals. Judas, in executing judgment on himself (see a “Thought” of John Foster about condemning and executing one’s self), thus was guilty of presumption as arrogating a right of judgment in the case. But we can see the direction in which the warnings point, so as to be able to descry the region in which the sin against the Holy Ghost is to be apprehended, namely, the region of a disciple’s failing to duly honour Christ by open persistent confession of Him; on the part of those who have once attained to some real knowledge and feeling of “the word,’ “ the word of God,” “ the word of the kingdom ” (Parable of the Sower—Matt., Mark, Luke). Open confession of Him is (Rom. x. 9, 10) as it were a primary instinct of the heart which believeth unto righteousness, as it is the instinct of birds to sing in the sunrise. And unfaithfulness in that matter is Opposition to the Spirit whose great work in man is (John xvi. 14) to glorify Christ, convincing the world of sin, of righteous- ness, and of judgment. The introduction of the subject, for salutary deterrent warn- ing in connection with confession, is a fact in the very fountain of New Testament history of apologetics. It may in this con- nection be a particular application of the deterrent principle, relatively to all the militant life of the new kingdom (Phil. ii. 12,13), “ Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ; for vz 1s God that worketh in you, sovereignly, both the willing and the doing.” But no doubt the connection in which the subject is placed by Scripture, both in the Gospels and in ffebrews, implies that the peril we are warned against is in some way specially connected with profession of the true religion: in the form both of steadfast adherence to the Church’s communion and of resolute open maintenance of her great heritage of truth regarding God in Christ (1 Tim. 11.15). And in any case the warning is for such as, in the matter of effective witness-bear- ing for the Bible and its religion, might appear as if experi- menting on close approaches to the sin that hath never forgive- ness. ‘The warning is,—leave that region, shun the region, which has poison in its air, making poison to the soul’s blood. Do not presume on the infinity of the expiatory value of the blood of Jesus, and the omnipotence of the new-creative Spirit. By the will of God—*the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ’”—a man may be’ placed beyond all saving efficacy of either the Spirit or the blood, without raising any question of their entrinsic all-sufficiency. 320 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS APPENDIX TO-SEC. 3, CHAP. 1., BOOK IT; As to The Apostles’ Creed. Bishop Lightfoot, the highest authority in our time with reference to second century Christianity, says (Supernatural Religion) that the Ireneean view! of the substantive doctrine of Christianity is effectively the doctrinal view that has ever since been held by the community of Christians upon earth. “The Apostles’ Creed” (not under that name) appears in Jreneus, and later in Tertullian, not simply as an expression of the writer’s individual belief, but especially as representing the general belief of Christians at the time and from the past. — Its terms are not exactly the same in the two writers, and in both the terms differ somewhat from the form that has become stereotyped. The variety in form, which it thus is seen freely assuming at the outset, is proof, that natively and originally it was not, like the doctrinal “definitions ” (=“ determinations”) of the later-primitive “age of the Councils” regarding the person of Christ and the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, set in stereotype of dogmatic Church authority. But as a “form of sound words” it exhibited, with permissible variation in details of expression, the substance of what was beheved all over the second century ;—not only at Lyons or in Gaul, and at Carthage or in North Africa, but everywhere in what Irenzeus elsewhere calls “ the catholic Church” (2.¢., as appears from the connection, the Church “throughout the world”). The sub- stantive inviolate unity of the Church’s body of doctrine, from the apostles downward, was fervently contended for by Ter- tullian in the Latin Church as it had been resolutely main- tained as a sacred thing by Greek Ireneus. This (witness Tertullian’s famous prescriptio) is the meaning of their con- tention against heresy on the ground of tradition ;—namely, that there is a settled Church doctrine, such that what is alien to it is co ipso shown to be untrue. And no doubt The Apostles’ Creed, in elementary outline, really represents that doctrine. While no doubt substantially representing the theological mind of the second century Church all the world over, it also substantially represents, in a real though simple elementary way, the theological mind of Christendom in all the following centuries. Thus, in the Middle Ages it was the basis of Peter Lombard’s Books of the Sentences,? which (witness the descrip- 1 See above, p. 176. 2 The “sentences” were derived, like proof-texts, from the primitive Church teachers : who were named “ fathers,” while the medieval teachers were only “masters” or “doctors.” fe APPENDICES ovr tion of scholastic systematisers as the “ sententiators”) became an accepted norm of later medizval theologising; while in our new Reformation epoch it is the basis of Calvin’s Institutio, the typical masterpiece of modern evangelical system. Popular exposition of it is at this hour a favourite mode of pulpit in- struction in the circle of Christian doctrine (ep. Barrow’s Sermons on the Creed): elaborate expositions of it (eg., Pearson On the Creed, Witsius On the Apostolic Symbol) are favourite Christian classic works in systematic theology. While it has place in the Romish Catechism of Trent, Luther prescribed it, as going along with The Lord’s Prayer and The Ten Command- ments, in the minimum of Christian instruction to be given to her children by the Church. A year or two ago, in a small provincial town at the Antipodes, a minister (not the present writer) who had advertised that he would give a prize to every child, of whatever denomination, found correctly reciting The Apostles’ Creed, suffered sore depletion in purse from the multitudinousness of qualified young divines who came flocking to his windows in answer to the challencve. That symbol, thus defining the unchanging faith of Chris- tendom in its movement, as of a river (Rev. xxii. 1-3) through the ages, is monumental proof, not only of the unity of that faith of Christendom through all those ages in articulately distinct expression, but also of the fairly adequate ripeness of the general second century Christian mind for safe transmission of a heritage of apostolic doctrine and Scriptures from the first century. The Greek word “symbol” which natively means a sign or mark, in the present Christian use came to mean, “the watchword or distinctive mark of the Christian body, consisting in their confession of faith, a creed” (Liddell and Scott in verbo). It thus was like the “For Christ’s Crown and Covenant” on the banner of the Covenanters, showing what it is that they so earnestly contended for all together. ‘The apostolic symbol” is historically known to us as fairly representing, in relation to later ages, the Vincentian gvod semper, quod ubigue, quod ab omnibus (“what—has been believed—always, everywhere, by every one”) of Christian faith. Tertullian and Ireneeus bear witness that the same faith is what was held in the second century Church from the beginning. This is what her con- fessors witnessed for and her martyrs died for. And a second century Christendom so holding this faith, of supernatural revelation and redemption, is a highly qualified witness regard- ing the substantive history of its primeval origination and transmission, as well as a monumental presumptive proof of its divinity. 21 022 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS APPENDIX TO SEC. 4 (CHAP. IL, BOOK TTs} Additional Illustrations. These may be serviceable in showing what, to a student of the Bible question in its bearing on the apologetic situation, is of primary importance, namely, the view that is taken of the matters in question by Christian scholars of acknowledged eminence who oppose the revolutionary theorising. It was the writer’s first intention only to give in this Appendix a selection of passages from the Essays in Moses and his Recent Critrs, whose value as a witness representing the relative mind of the seriously Christian community is in some respects unique, while the standing of the writers guarantees their qualification for speaking to the various points as men worth listening to regarding the merits of the case. But it may not be undesir- able superfluousness to supplement those “ American Notes,’ — in particular, prefacing them with some British Notes, to con- stitute a sort of view of the recent movement as seen through the eyes of conservative British scholarship. We will connect that prefatory view with representative names of individual scholars well esteemed. Dr. Bixnik.—This honoured name reminds us that already, within little more than a decade, the movement in Britain has attained to historical tradition? At the time of the first notable raising of the Old Testament question in Britain (in connection with the article “Bible,” Hncycl. Britt., a.d. 1876), Dr. Binnie was a professor in the Aberdeen Divinity Hall of the Free Church of Scotland. He deliberately refrained from dealing with the subject in connection with a colleague’s publications and case (Professor W. R. Smith’s). He dealt with it in the fountains, of exposition by the German masters of the criticism in question. And his pamphlet (1880), Zhe Proposed Reconstruction of Old Testament History, is a masterly dissertation on the subject, of permanent value like that of Witsius,? whom he resembled in respect of erudition and of Christian character. While personally holding the Mosaic 1 See above, p. 280. * There was a Christian “tradition” in the Thessalonian Church within a few months after she had been founded ; and (Col. 11. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20) within ten years of that the Asian Churches were in peril from a naturalistic tradition, of worldliness (see Acts xvii. 18) called “ philo- sophy ” or “science.” 3 See above, p. 310, APPENDICES 328. authorship of the Pentateuch, he made the essential question in this controversy to be, as to the authentically historical truth of the Scriptures; and standing on this ground (four years after xraf’s definitive pronunciamento), he thoroughly grasped the. situation as it is at the present hour. The Graf resuscitation was fairly under weigh when Dr. Binnie wrote; and his pamphlet if now republished would, in its manifest mastery of the subject as a whole and in details, itself be an exposure of the silliness if not shamefulness of speaking as if all the competent “scholarship” in the world were on the negative side of the question. It is needless to quote from his luminous exposition what now-—thanks to him and others—is fully in the air. But the following (cp. the statement of Dr. Moody Stuart)? has a weighty individuality of personal testimony, while placing us in the view-point of a Scottish Christian scholar at the beginning of this (as he thinks) imported movement in his country :— “To the Christian Church the Pentateuch forms part of the Word of God, and possesses the qualities of infallible truth and divine authority. It purports to relate the unfolding of God’s redemption purpose from the fall of Adam till the settlement of Israel in Canaan. This unfolding of the divine purpose took place ‘in divers manners.’ It took place partly by particular oracles, that is by express declarations of His mind and will made to our first parents, to the patriarchs, to Moses : partly by dispensations of His providence acting concurrently with more express declarations of His mind; partly also by laws and institutions delivered by His authority to be observed. The promise of a Seed in whom all the nations shall be blessed ; the destruction of Sodom; and the institution of circumcision, —these are familiar examples of the ‘ divers manners’ of divine revelation from the history of Abraham. The three are always seen in Scripture acting concurrently, and are to be viewed together. The great divines from Augustine to Jonathan Edwards laid particular stress on the historical character of divine revelation, and have ascribed to the sacred history de- livered in and by the Scriptures authority co-ordinate with the doctrinal statements of particular truth. “Regard to these considerations makes it impossible to look with an easy mind on theories which overthrow the historical truth of the Scripture. Take away the literal historical truth of the evangelical record, and the Christian doctrine of redemp- tion and eternal life will not stand for half a century. If Christ be not risen, our faith is vain; we are yet in our sins. Take away the literal historical truth of the Old Testament 1 See above, p. 273. 2 See above, p. 276, footnote. 394 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS history, and the great ideas about God and man, about sin and redemption, which sustained the life of the Old Testament Church, must fall to the ground. And if this is true of the Old Testament history in general, it is especially true of the middle hooks of the Pentateuch, which contain the authentic record of the delivery of the law by the ministry of Moses. This view of the matter has presented itself to all the more thoughtful students of Holy Scripture. Nor has it by any means been con- fined to those who hold by the high and strict doctrine of inspira- tion hitherto characteristic of the English-speaking Churches.” It is interesting to look back on the feelings with which the situation was contemplated by this faithful witness, now in cloudless light :— “Tt must be granted that men do not escape all difficulties by abiding within the lines of the Christian faith regarding the truth of Holy Scripture,—the veracity of the writers and the verity of the record. No wise man will make light of the difficulties of faith, in the biblical any more than in the doctrinal domain. A raw student may start difficulties in the Old Testament history which the ripest divine may admit his inability to solve. But if you once get over the initial difficulty of the supernatural, the difficulties attaching to the old version of the sacred history, which accepts the Bible narratives as thoroughly trustworthy, are nothing in comparison with the difficulties attaching to the new version, which rejects the Bible narratives in their natural sense, and forces them into a sense never intended by their authors, and never imagined by unsophisticated minds” [sophisticated is the Greek for “cunningly devised” at 2 Pet. 1. 16]. “ As for the proposal to accept the critical reconstruction of the sacred history, and to retain along with it the faith of the Church regarding the truth and authority of the Holy Scriptures, it is the most inadmissible of all. Two guests so antagonistic were never yet able to dwell long together in one mind. They may ledge together for a while; but in the end, one must cast out the other. Besides, what would be gained were this incompatibility overcome? The Church’s faith in the Old Testament has its difficulties ; the critical revision of the sacred history has its difficulties. To accept both—if the thing were possible—would net bring relief from the difficulties clinging to either part, but would burden us rather with the difficulties pertaining to both.” * 1 The following illustration is worth saving from the fate of occasional pamphlet utterance :—- “Nobody doubts that the First Book of Discipline was written by Knox and his friends at the beginning of our Reformation. Yet we might APPENDICES NG _. Three years before publication of that pamphlet, the present writer published (British and Foreign Hvangelical Review, April 1877) a statement on the subject which then had begun to exercise all minds. Professor Binnie, with whom he was barely acquainted, in his quietly impressive manner volunteered an assurance, that he earnestly endorsed every word of that state- ment. This was comforting at the time—of much anxiety. It is now referred to for a present purpose. Dr. Binnie apparently anticipated that the movement, which in Germany had well-nigh run its course if not spent its force, would not have much nor long success in the British continuation. The Edinburgh Reviewer! seems to see the beginning of the end of that effect. The following American utterance on the same general subject is from Professor Osgood :— “The period of the Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen criticism of the Old Testament, now drawing to its close, is marked by the same characteristics which distinguished its predecessors. From the days of Semler and Eichhorn, in the last century, each theory of destructive criticism has first been tentative, then speedily run into intense ‘dogmatism, and, at the moment of apparent and asserted victory, it was smitten with paralysis and buried out of sight by its numerous children of newer theories that promised better results. Was there ever a man who lorded it boldly undertake to demonstrate that it was written during the public life of Dr. Chalmers, by the same line of argument which the critics follow in regard to Deuteronomy. There are qualities of thought and style observable in the writings of Knox, in respect of which they are in marked contrast to the writings of the following times down to the present century, when they reappear in Chalmers, Irving, and M‘Crie. Besides, is it not plain to demonstration that the principle of compulsory education laid down in the First Book of Discipline belongs to the nineteenth century? [The principle remained inoperative and unheard of for three centuries.] . . . The reader may smile ; but the argument is every whit as _good as that of the critics in reference to Deuteronomy,—very much better than their arguments about the middle books. The truth is, that in the age of Hezekiah and Josiah, the Hebrew Church did remarkably revert to the principles, and institutions, and Holy Scriptures of its youth ; just as the Scottish Church of fifty years ago began to remember, with new intelligence and warm love, the thoughts and principles, the men and institutions, of the. Reformation.” It was characteristic of Dr. Binnie’s type of manly piety, that, with express reference to biblical scholars whose fame then filled the world, he openly avowed a strong revulsion from a certain manner of mere “ scholar- ship” in handling Scripture (Matt. vi. 6), which tends to desecrate a holy thing, and essentially is a profane vulgarity. 1 See above, p. 249. 326 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS over German scholarship with more imperious learning and decision, or was followed by a larger and more imperious clientele than Ewald? And yet, one of the inheritors of Ewald, Siegfried, declares that not one of Ewald’s opinions has any following in Germany now. The learning of nineteen cen- turies of Christianity, the bones of deserted theories that mark the desert on either side of the path of faith in the God-given Word, the utter failure through all these centuries to offer any possible substitute for a God-given Word, render the existence of the destructive theories paretic [parcsis = brain-softening ?], swift hastening to decay. When the whole argument of the Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen theory is summed up, it is found to demand the surrender of faith in Jesus Christ as anything more than a man imperfectly informed; of all reliance on the New Testament as the Word of God; of all trust in the sciences of Egyptology and Assyriology, with their myriad proofs against this theory ; in other words, of believing anything but what these critics tell us, and because they tell us.”—The Presby- terian and Reformed Review, April 1891. PRINCIPAL Cave! is known, wherever English is read by men taking an interest in these matters, as author of high-class works dealing with the Old Testament question in its true ultimate fountains of solution (¢.g., his work On Sacrifice). At present, for a glance into the English mind as now exercised about our matter, we will refer only to what may be called the Cave-Driver (and Cheyne) episode of 1890-91.2 Canon Driver’s Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1891) at once took high place in verbal or formal scholarship, as appearing, ¢g., in laborious collections and digests of particulars bearing on Old Testament Hebrew usage of speech. On this account the more there was call for close attention to his bearing or apparent leanings relatively to real questions of higher criticism: especially since he is esteemed the best sample of those critics who? hold a professed adher- ence to the scriptural supernaturalism of revelation and redemption in combination with revolutionary critical opinions relatively to the Scriptures. His own views of general questions thus arising are set forth in an elaborate Preface to the Lntroduetion : with reference to which we here place notes that were suggested by the reading of that Preface :— 1. Dr. Driver makes criticism (“ we”) to stand in opposi- 1 See above, p. 278. ? It is perhaps worth remembering here that he at one time was an adherent of. the theorising he now opposes. 5 See above, pp. 243-4. APPENDICES 327 tion to traditional views of Scripture. The right word there would rather be negativism. Criticism can be traditional. His own critical views are traditional, in a school that has existed for generations. If adherence to received Christian views regarding Scripture be a traditionalism in its nature opposed to “criticism,” then “criticism” is in its nature opposed to the spiritual mind at 1 Cor. i. 15 (where the Greek for “judge” is criticise), if not also to the sense or gumption at 1 Cor. x. 15 (where likewise the Greek for “judge” is criticise). If scholars like Principal Cave and Professors Green and Robertson be deemed natural enemies of “criticism,” so much the worse for its devotees (“I banish yow.’—Coriolanus). 2. Regarding certain distinctive positions of (negativist) “criticism,” he speaks as conclusions which it 1s impossible to dispute on proper grounds of literary judgment. This un- pleasantly reminds us of the infallibility of negativism. At the first notable outbreak of the present phase of it in Britain, Principal Cave had occasion to say, “ Views which have scarcely been advocated by a score of respectable scholars were put forward absolutely as the commonly accepted and indis- putable results of unbiassed research.” * Formule of that sort have too much come in place of men’s “ bringing forward their strong reasons.” Reliance on them is a weak irrational tradi- tionalism, tyranny at one pole calculating on slavishness at the other. It is to be noted that Dr. Driver in large measure avowedly does not give reasons for the critical opinions he here propounds. On what ground are his readers to accept them ? The ground of assuming that the Caves, Greens, Robertsons are nothing, and that the Grats, Kuenens, Wellhausens—to whom he “says ditto ””—are all-sufficient, while the reader's own judgment has no office but passively blind acceptance of this dictation ? 3. The protestation, that those conclusions are in keeping with belief in divine authority and inspiration of Scripture, can be rationally accepted only as expressing an opinion of ir, Driver. Others of the evitics holding the conclusions are of an opposite opinion, namely, that they are subversive of belief in divinity of Scripture, and even subversive of belief in the supernatural revelation it professes to record. Dr. Driver in lis opinion is not an infallible pope. And the community, to whom he proposes it for acceptance, is entitled to “ ask @ reason” (1 Pet. iii. 15), or some explanation as to the following points:—1. By “inspiration,” does Dr. Driver mean—the thing really in question—divine authorship of the Seriptare (2 Tim. iii. 16), and (2 Pet. i. 20) not only an effect on Scrip- 1 Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., October 1870, p. 597. 328 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS ture produced by the human author’s mental conditicn (aflatius) ?—2. If he really mean this, divinity of Seripture in its authorship, how comes he to make historical representations of Scripture to be in fact untrue? If an « inspired ” book be false in its witness regarding “ earthly things,” can talk about “inspiration” make it a trustworthy witness regarding “heavenly things” ?—8. Does he believe that Christ and His apostles, in proceeding on the received view regarding the Old Testament, laid a false view of Scripture at the foundation of religion ? Principal Cave’s. contributions at present in our view are, two articles in The Contemporary Review :—in April 1890, “The Old Testament and the Critics,” with reference to preced- ing articles by Drs. Cheyne and Driver; and in December 1891, “Canon Driver on the Book of the Law.” We preface our account of them with another extract from the above-cited article of ten years’ earlier date (p. 605) :— “Here the present writer cannot refrain from making a personal statement. Assertion cannot, of course, go for much; but he is nevertheless desirous of distinctly saying that, while he believes he is familiar with the whole of the voluminous and arid literature of the controversy, from the suggestive essay of Astruc down to the last contribution of Delitzsch to the Aeuschrift fiir kirchlichen Wissenschaft und kirehlichen Leben, of Valeton to the Studien, and of Bloch to the Jtidische Literaturblatt, he has never seen reason, on purely literary, philological, or historical grounds, for more than very slightly qualifymg (and that mostly with regard to the book of Genesis) the traditional view of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.” Of the articles at present in view, the following is a digest (in our words) :— IN THE FIRST OF THE TWO ARTICLES, Principal Cave sets forth as the alleged grounds of cumulative argument on behalf of the [naturalistic] evolutionary theory.—1. Zhe laws consist of three strata, so differing in style and contents as to evince diversity of authorship (The position that all the laws of the Thora are from a single hand really does not merit refutation.” — Kuenen). 2. They are imbedded in a narrative similarly shown to be threefold in authorship. 3. Internal contradictions between the strata of laws further imply that they belong to different ages of Israel’s history. 4. The pentateuchal repre- sentation of the original circumstances is wahistorical ( 338 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS his deserved repute of judicial fairness and perfect honesty, had all to be thrown into correction of the misrepresentation, which, though perhaps natural in the circumstances, must have sorely tried his large goodness of nature. But the fact of mistake 1s transparently clear on the face of the indictment: so that it is no wonder he complained of people’s listening to speeches and gossip instead of looking at the words of the hbel. Its one remaining charge (“amended libel”) at the Assembly of 1880 stood as it had been from the outset in the Aberdeen Presby- heLy c= “Albeit the opinion that the book of inspired Scripture called Deuteronomy, which is professedly an historical record, does not possess that character, but was made to assume it by a writer of a much later age, who therein, in the name of God, presented, in dramatic form, instructions and laws as proceeding from the mouth of Moses, though these never were, and never could have been, uttered by him . . . contradicts or is opposed to the doctrine of the immediate inspiration, infallible truth, and divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, etc.’—Assembly Papers, No. ii., “ Case of Rev. Professor Smith, Aberdeen.” ! authorship of Scripture, because, in the Church’s estimation, the book of Deuteronomy is in fact historical. On the fine point of Church law thus raised, the Assembly of 1878 was, it seemed, almost equally divided. But regarding the real meaning of the motion that was carried, there afterwards was doubt : of two most estimable voters for it whom I ques- tioned, one (the late Mr. David Dickson) said that his meaning was, that Professor Smith’s teaching about the Bible contradicted the Confessional doctrine of inspiration, while the other (the late Rev. Mr. Falconer of Ferry-Port-on-Craig) said that, rather than vote for the motion on that understanding of its meaning, he “would have cut off his right hand ” (his expression). It will be understood that—at this distance of time and place, when almost all I have named are in their graves—I do not mean to reflect unfavourably on any of the persons engaged in that case. No one imagined that Professor Smith would make any fight for his position in the Church if he did not himself regard it as accordant with his ordination vow of loyalty to her doctrinal constitution. He was much esteemed in her communion for his personal character of honourable truthfulness, as well as admired on account of his ability and attainments. Our present point is only regarding the theological position of those who personally believed in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. 1'The Assembly by a majority declined to deal with the professor as euilty under the libel, and—in a clause added to the motion as first framed (by the present writer)—censured him on account of offensiveness in his manner of dealing with Holy Scripture. In the following year, after new publication by him in what was deemed the same manner more pronouncedly, Professor Smith was, not deposed as a heretic, but informed APPENDICES - 339 2. The Article in the Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., referred to at p. 325 above as having been completely approved by Professor Binnie ;—three years before publication of his pamphlet (with which ep. his lecture to the Glasgow Young Men’s Christian Association on “Recent Attempts to eliminate Supernatural Revelation from Holy Scripture”). Dr. Binnie stronely main- tained the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. At the same time he made the historical truth of the Scriptures, not the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, to be the essential matter in controversy with the destructive criticism. Otherwise, he could not have given that unqualified approval to the article now referred to. And that in this respect he was not isolated will appear from the following notes and extracts, through which the article attains to a factitious importance, irrespective of intrinsic weight,! as a feather has value in showing how the wind blows. It was not the manifesto of a leader, but only the substance of a paper that had been read to a Free Church Clerical Association in Edinburgh, 15th Jan. 1877, that is, previous to publication of the College Committee’s Report on Professor Smith’s article “Bible” in the Eneycl. Britt, before that matter was ripe for judicial consideration of the Church in her Courts. My article studiously avoided reference to any specialty of that case; and it distinguished between two general ques- tions in connection with the subject:—1. Did Moses write the Pentateuch? 2. Supposing that he did, and that this is the general opinion in the Church, ought the opinion to be a term of office, and in this way, an article of her doctrinal constitu- tion? The distinction is illustrated by what the writer now remembers to have heard at the time, about a strong Clerical Association in another city, whose members were—at that point of time—all in favour of tolerating in the Church’s teach- ing office the new critical opinions, while not one of them personally accepted those opinions. The writer placed himself as not an expert specialist in Old Testament scholarship. He personally believed in Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, with qualifications ordinarily made by defenders of that belief. His view of ecclesiastical by resolution of Assembly, that he had not the confidence of the Church, and that, consequently, the Assembly could not and would not go on supporting him in the Church’s professorial office for education of her future ministers. . ‘It is, however, placed by Professor Bissell of Hartford (U.S.), The Pentateuch, in his catalogue of works on the subject. Perhaps this with him was a case of “far come birds hae fine feathers.” Certainly this Eden Lane bird had no thought of so being blown round the world. 340 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS policy relatively to the new opinion as to that was, that it ought not to be dealt with as matter of Church discipline, but allowed free course of scholarly expiscation. This view as to policy did not commend itself to all present. But as regards his manner of placing the received view of authorship of the Pentateuch, he does not remember that there was any dissent on the part of adherents of that view; and after publication of the paper there were expressions of earnest satisfaction with its representation, particularly (he now remembers) on the part of laymen (eg., the aforesaid Mr. David Dickson) conspicuous by Christian intelligence and solid strength of judgment. The extracts call for no further introduction beyond intimation of the full title of the paper,—“ The Age of the Pentateuch, with special reference to Revelation and Inspiration.” 1. “Up to this time the question of the age of the Pentateuch has, by people of sense, been very much left to experts in relative linguistics and antiquities. No Church in the world has ever really dogmatised to the effect that Moses was the writer of our existing Pentateuch. Probably no Church in the world is at this hour qualified, or thinks herself qualified, to dogmatise on the subject. The relative dogma of the Churches has only implied that the Pentateuch, as part of Holy Scripture, is a divine record of a divine revelation. The traditional impression or opinion that Moses wrote the Penta- teuch has never yet assumed the place of a dogma in any Church.”—The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, April LST “ye. 254/055: 2. “It is not very long since denial of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch meant overt or covert rationalism or infi- delity ; so that the relative literature of the Church was part of her apologetic, of her defence of Christian religion against its assailants. ... But now there are professing Christians of un- questionable intelligenceand sincerity, who, whilefully admitting the divine authority and inspiration of Scripture as a whole, and of the Pentateuch as part of Scripture, yet maintain that Moses was not the author of our existing Pentateuch. ... We are bound to regard as constituting a providential call to recon- sideration the circumstance, that not only this or that eccentric individual, but a respectable though perhaps small propor- tion of otherwise trusted members or ministers of the Church, are found saying or thinking, ‘I hold that, while the Pentateuch is a divine record of a divine revelation, yet Moses was not the author of the record, nor the human originator of all the institutions described in the Pentateuch.’ In relation to such men I desire to speak on a footing ot brotherly equality, as of Christian men who have an equal APPENDICES dtl right to hold their respective opinions, and are under an equal obligation to respect each other’s rights” (pp. 257, 258). “That is, it would be easy to do wrong in this case, as ib is easy to do wrong in most cases. But to do wrong is not to be in the way of serving the cause of right. If we will be in that good way then we shall proceed upon the fact, that there is such a party as I have described among professing Christians of unquestionable sincerity and intelligence at this hour; so that the Church is now providentially called to reconsider, or to consider for the first time from a new point of view, her traditional opinion or impression regarding the question in hand” (p. 258). 3. “To allow and encourage discussion on this footing would, in my estimation, be to be in the way of doing good service to the Christian cause. Personally, I have a deep feel- ing that to bring crude ecclesiastical fovce in om my side of the question would be a deadly injury to that. side. On the other hand, a really generous discussion with brethren of another way of thinking would in various ways tell in favour of that side. “For instance, in such a discussion the bearing of revelation and inspiration, as confessed facts, on this question would obtain a place of due prominence and influence which has hitherto been a manifest desideratwm. In a discussion of this sort among brethren holding those great facts in common, one could hopefully say much that would be out of place in a debate with infidels. or with rationalists. Thus, the fact that Christ’s word is divine as well as human is. to such men weighty in relation to the apparently remote question now before us; for to many of them it will appear in the last degree unlikely that God in Christ should have so spoken as i effect to mislead men about human authorship of the Penta- teuch. Again, to such men the confessed fact that God is the primary author of the Pentateuch is important in relation to the question of secondary (human) authorship; for many of them will regard as incredible the suggestion that God should have moved any one but Moses to write a book so ostensibly Mosaic as Deuteronomy. The supposition that the penta- teuchal institutions are in large measure post-Mosaic will in like manner appear quite incredible. “Tt may do good to Christian people to learn, as they must learn from such discussion as I have suggested, that the ques- tion about Mosaic origin of the pentateuchal institutions is fundamentally a question, not of abstruse scholarship, but of morality. It has been said that the personation of Moses, such as must be supposed if Moses was not the author of Deuter- 342 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS onomy, would not deceive the people of God in an age much later than the Mosaic. It certainly would not deceive them. But it does not follow from this that they would accept a Scripture or institution from a personator of Moses, their great prophet. What is most likely is, that they would stone the personator as profane ; so that Israel’s acceptance of the book and the institutions falls to be regarded as a demonstration of the Mosaic authorship of both. But beyond that, there is the far more impressive consideration, that it is inconceivable that God should have inspired or authorised any man to put on the Jalse face of the supposed impersonation, if not for the pur- pose, to the effect, of leading many following generations to beheve what is not true—that Moses said and did what he really did not say nor do. “In a discussion among brethren holding by revelation and inspiration, such considerations would be alleged with confessed relevancy, though there should be some demur about their con- clusiveness. 1 think that the concession of their relevancy to the question in hand, a concession that could not be refused by the brethren who accept our Christian doctrine of revelation and inspiration, would be a very great advantage to our side of the present question ” (pp. 270-272). 4, “J have an impression that the brethren who, agreeing with us about revelation and inspiration, yet differ from us about the present question, may be unconsciously determined by a theory of ‘evolutionism’ which natively is anti-supra- naturalistic and infidel. . . . That ‘evolutionism’ dislikes prediction proper, and leans toward reducing supernatural revelation to a minimum, the nearer to nothing the better. It founds upon the alleged fact, that supernatural communication to man, except in a measure infinitesimally small, would involve a violence to man’s nature as rational. The minimum when analysed will often be found to be little more than a sort of protoplastic matter of divine communication, not at first ex- isting in any definite shape, but taking shape more and more precise as it passes down the series of prepared prophetic minds, ... As a theory it is lame and impotent, were it only because . . . it does not enable us to see the thing which a ‘theory’ is bound to show us. The alleged difficulty, occa- sioned by the impossibility of making a divine communication to man without violence to his nature as rational, is not solved by reducing the communication to a minimum, but is left unsolved in that primeval minimum of supernatural revelation. “Tn the interest of that minimum the theorisers naturally revolt from the supposition, that all at once there should have been given to Moses so large an amount of new revelation as NOTES 343 must have been given to him if the pentateuchal books and institutions be Mosaic in authorship. Here they resemble the physical evolutionists in objecting to ‘catastrophe,’* and con- tending for uniformitarianism, or progression invariably by insensible decrees, one shading into another. And in that interest which has led them to contend for their minimum, they are really bound to contend that even the protoplastic matter of revelation corresponds to the Hegelian pregnant principle of ‘being equal to nothing.’ For if in that protoplastic matter of revelation there be any real thing, anything super- naturally communicated to man’s mind by God, then it 1s manifest stupidity to object to any conceivable amount of such communication, it does violence to the rational nature of man. “T believe that the principle to which some of our brethren are unconsciously yielding obedience is one which thus can result in only an empty idealism. I therefore wish that the Church should encourage such friendly discussion as may lead those brethren to feel the pulse of ordinary members of the Church. That will lead them to recognise theoretically what they know in their own hearts’ experience, that the Bible does not record a series of illusive representations of ideas; that what it records is a historical proceeding of the living God to the redemption of mankind” (pp. 272-274). NOTES. Note A. Professor Dwinell, in his Essay on “The Higher Criticism and a Spent Bible,” in Moses and his Recent Critics (p. 287), says :— “The mind is put to questioning whether this or that is genuine, in its right place, and is historical. The writings are treated as the work of historical jugglers, now throwing late events back into the mould of the past to make them seem ancient history, and now setting forth actual occurrences so as to make them appear in the womb of futurity and make them pass for prophecy. The wits of the reader must be sharp to catch the truth under these various metamorphoses.” This is said with reference to “the Secondary Higher Criticism” (=our “half-way” view), which (Essay, p. 282) 1 But see per contra, above, p. 294, etc. 344 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS “aims to preserve the supernatural element and the substantial integrity of the historical facts while it rearranges them.” tegarding it the trenchant Californian professor says further (p. 283) :— “It plays fast and loose with destructive criticism, and it plays fast and loose with conservative criticism. It shows respect for the sacred narrative, and disrespect for it [ =some- times it murders, and sometimes not]. It honours the Bible, and dishonours it. It culls scriptural facts, reassorts them, and throws them around in new and Strange combinations. At one time it adopts the method of the Primary Higher Criticism [anti-supernaturalistic, Essay, p. 280], at another time it tlinches from its conclusions. Its position at every point is that of weakness.” Regarding “the Primary Higher Criticism,” he says (pp. 280-282) :— “The extraordinary elements [in Old Testament history], all the supernatural and miraculous elements, are regarded as later imaginings thrown back on the early facts. It is taken for granted that the first thing to be done by the higher critic is to go through the religious literature and reduce to a natural level all those mythological additions and fables. The next thing, as the sacred narrative has evidently been arranged to set forth this supernaturalism, is to pull apart the historical setting in which it is presented, decide what is fact and what is fabrication; and the last thing, having thrown away the fabricated portions, is to rearrange what is left in the proper historical order of a natural development of the religious life. ... We cannot expect Wellhausen or Kuenen or Stade to absorb the Hebrew history, digest it, and then resecrete it with God active in it, or with any special inspiration, or real revelation or supernatural interposition of any sort, any more than we could expect a yew tree to throw its roots around the erave of Shakespeare or Milton, and then secrete from its branches a ‘Hamlet’ or a ‘ Paradise Lost.’ ” Note B. The following is from Professor Chambers’s “ Introductory Historical Sketch of Pentateuchal Criticism” in Moses and his frecent Critics, p. 22 :— “Some eminent British scholars, such as the brilliant W. Robertson Smith, and the learned Drs. T. K. Cheyne and S. R. Driver, have given assent to these positions. The same may be said of the accomplished Professor C. H. Toy of Harvard, with whom it is said some of the younger scholars of our own NOTES 045 country are in sympathy. Nor is it to be denied that some of the advocates of these views consider them entirely consistent with the inspiration and canonical authority of the books of the Hexateuch [=Pentateuch plus Joshua]; for, they say, no matter when or by whom these were set forth, they in every case retain the sanction given them in the New Testament, and are an authentic and sufficient guide to the belief of any into whose hands they may come. This may be true so far as concerns those who now maintain it, but certainly it will not hold generally. If it be openly proclaimed that we have no original data of early date, and that what profess or at least appear to be such are only the residuum of varying traditions which have been recast and edited at various times and by various hands, until in the course of centuries they have reached their present form, men will certainly arrogate to themselves the right to sit in judgment on this residuum, and analyse its contents and form their own conclusion as to its claims upon them. And if their confidence be shaken as to the historic worth of the first portion of the Old Testament, it cannot remain very strong in the rest. And, still further, if they feel that the New Testament presupposes and vouches for the early portions of the Old, as a true and trustworthy narra- tive, the conviction of a serious error here cannot but work disastrously for the entire volume of Scripture” (see further statement of Dr. Chambers, Note I below). Note C. “TI own it does appear as if there had now spread among many of the teachers of religion an apprehension of fully unfolding and strongly enforcing on their hearers of to-day the doctrine of sin, and of its moral and judicial consequences, such as it is taught in the Jewish and in the Christian Scrip- tures. But this, I have no doubt, is due in part to an enemy far more powerful than what is called the higher criticism, namely, the world in its increasing power over our minds and lives” (W. E. Gladstone, The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scrip- ture, new ed. The zalics in the quotation are ours). ' Regarding frivolity in criticism, Mr. Gladstone has said in the context :— “Tt really too often seems as if, when we are arguing about the authenticity of Genesis or Exodus, we had no weightier task in hand than if we were discussing the Epistles of Phalaris, or the letters of Ganganelli, or the authorship of Junius.” 046 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Nore D. Professor Green of Princeton (on “Genuineness of Isaiah xl—lxvi.” in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, April 1892) speaks as follows :— 7 “ We have no argument at present with those who deny the possibility or the reality of supernatural foresight; with whom it 1s an axiom that there is no minute fulfilment of predictive prophecy ; who find nothing in the utterances of the prophets but inferences from known facts, or vague presentiments based on religious ideas; and refuse to admit any distinct and un- ambiguous prescience of events lying beyond what is called the prophetic horizon. With all such the question is determined in advance, and there is no room for argument. Whatever arguments they may adduce are merely to sustain a conclusion already reached, and which rests in their mind on an & priore eround. This prophecy makes undoubted mention of the exile, and of Cyrus, and of the release of the captive Jews. And if this excludes the possibility of Isaiah being the author, and makes it certain that the prophecy could not have been written until the exile had taken place and Cyrus had appeared, and the hope had arisen in the mind of the captive Jews that this portended their release, the case is beyond argument. But if the existence of supernatural prediction of remote events in the future is an open question to be settled by the facts and the evidence, and not to be negatived by mere dogmatic presup- positions, then we think it can be shown to the satisfaction of every candid mind that there is no good reason to abandon the old and well-established belief that Isaiah is the author of these chapters.” But Dr. Green assumes that candid minds may reject this belief about the chapters while holding by supernaturalism of predictive prophecy. Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Rochester and Bristol, in articles (now published separately) in Zhe Expository Times, vol. iii., on “The Teaching of our Lord as to the Authority of the Old Testament,” speaks thus :— “There is, however, one characteristic of this modern view of the Old Testament, as set forth by those writers to whom I have referred [Graf, Kuenen, Wellhausen], which must always steadily be borne in mind. And it is this,—not merely that this modern view tends to, or prepares the way for, a denial of the supernatural, but that it owed its very origin to the as- sumption that the existence of the supernatural in these early records is exactly that which wrecks their credibility. . . . The basis of the histories and criticisms of the most eminent foreign NOTES 347 exponents of the so-called higher criticism is patently and even avowedly naturalistic. ... We thus do not deem it unfair to say that the whole system of Old Testament criticism, as set forth by some at least of these foreign expositors, is based upon rejection of special revelation, miracles, and prophecy,—in a word, the supernatural in all its relations to the nistoey of the chosen people” (pp. 153-159). “The obliteration, or, at the very least, the minimising of the supernatural is too plainly the principle, avowed or unavowed, that influences or conditions the whole of the more advanced analytical investigation of the Old Testament” (p. 162). “Inability to accept the supernatural is the distinctive feature of the analytical system” (p. 163). Note E. As to the tendency! of the theorising to refine away the primeval history.—Effectively, Moses and his work become what suits the theoriser, which may be little or nothing,— beyond perhaps a seed of inaugural delusion or imposture. In a more general aspect, this point is made by Mr. Gladstone in the passage above quoted from (Nore C), as follows :— “That which perplexes and may even alarm a sober-minded reader is that we have suffered controversy on the form almost to hide the substance from our view, certainly to lower and enfeeble the living sense, which the body of believers have always entertained of its authority, its majesty, its stringency, aye of the terrors of the law for those who will uot accept its blessings.” [Here follows the sentence, “It really seems,” etc. | “ And yet there they stand, these great facts and doctrines, in all the primitive severity of their outline, unshaken and august. There we find, now as heretofore, the doctrines of Gestion of life, of human life, of the introduction of sin into the world, of the havoc which it wrought, of the simultaneous promise of redemption, of the selection of a special race for special pur- poses, and of the gradual preparation of the nations until the fulness of time had come. I have said nothing of that exhibition of preternatural power, which is supplied by pro- phecy and by wonder. These I forbear to dwell on, not so much because they cannot add to the marvel of creation, as because they seem to make a postulate or presupposition of religious faith, while facts of the class of those above recited . . . rest upon grounds of known fact, or of evidence cognis- able by all.” [Here follows the sentence about present-day teaching that fails to duly inculcate the doctrine of sin, 1 See abore, p. 282. 348 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS and about growing worldliness at the root; ep. Heb. xii. 15, 16.] To similar effect speaks the Bishop of Rochester and Bristol in the statement above cited (Note D) :— “ Now, however, in the closing years of this century, we are told that this [the received] view must, to a great extent, be given up. We are, in fact, called upon to set aside the greater part of the beliefs of the past, and to see in the Old Testament a collection of ancient documents, many of highly composite structure, which came consecutively into existence centuries later than when they are supposed to have been written; and which, after various re-editings and redactions, only received the form in which we now possess them in the later, if not the latest, period of the exile” (Expository Times, ii. 257). Note F. The following extract is from Professor Osgood in Moses and his Recent Critics. His title is, “A Reasonable Hypothesis of the Origin of the Pentateuch,’—which, he says, “must be one which clearly agrees with all known facts”: adding, “any hypothesis that contradicts or does not agree with plain facts within its sphere is untenable.” “Professor Maspero some years ago wrote: ‘In less than thirty years a new world of languages and peoples has been opened for study; thirty centuries have come forth from their tombs and reappeared in the full light of day.’ The literature, which these studies have evoked, represents more scholars than those who wrote on the pentateuchal controversy. They are the peers in every respect of the German and Dutch and Eng- lish leaders of the school of criticism which denies that the Pentateuch is history. These historians of Chaldea, Egypt, Syria, have the advantage over the critics of a single theme, that they base their results not on one book, but on hundreds of monuments of stone, clay, inscribed statues, engraved seals, containing the same texts with the variations of copyists. These historians breathe a larger, freer air than most critics, for they are compelled to take into account comparative ethno- logy, geography, and religion; to become familiar with the language, art, government, and social life and commerce of the peoples whose history they study ” (pp. 379, 380). By evidence of the archzologists—French, English, German, —he proves, point for point, that the historical assumptions underlying the critical theorising in question are contrary to historical fact. Thus, as to the assumption that at the time of NOTES 349 the Exodus “ Egypt and Syria were at a relatively low state of civilisation,’ — In point of fact, “The Semitic inhabitants of the Tigris and the Euphrates meet us at their very first appearance in history as a settled people, possessed of a very high civilisation” (Hommer, with other witnesses); and “Egypt, as she first appears to us in her first creations, already possesses an art so advanced, that it seems the end rather than the beginning of a long development” (Perrot and Chipiez). “At that time [about 3000 B.c.], long before our usual ideas of the develop- ment of nations, there is formed a people highly instructed in all the arts of peace; a state completely organised ; a hierarchy firmly founded, minutely divided and organised even in the smallest external matters; a universally diffused system of writing and the common use of papyrus; in short, a civilisation which, in all essential points, had already attained its full maturity; and only by sharp investigation can the further development in some directions be discovered” (Brugsch). “Syria [says Prof. Osgood, p. 399—generalising from testimonies he has given] before B.c. 1300 [assumed as date of the Exodus] had reached the same stage of civilisation as Egypt, and in manufactures and commerce had exceeded Egypt. It was densely populated, rich, and the emporium of the world’s commerce. Its Semitic language appeared to the educated scribe of Egypt so refined, that he adorned his pages with its expressions, and taught that language to his children, that they might profit by it at home and abroad.” The reference is to the period “at and before the Exodus.” «NB. that “Syria” here is especially Canaan =< the lew land.”) Again,as to the assumption that the Israel of the Exodus had to grow into an “ethical monotheism,” out of, virtually, a poly- theism which was inevitable at that stage of the people’s career— In point of fact—while Brugsch and “other scientific archeologists and historians” find an Egyptian monotheism “during ages anterior to B.c. 2000, or the time of Abraham,’— “when we turn to the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties [where the Exodus is placed]; al] Egyptologists are in accord that monotheism was believed and was even established as the religion of the state for a short period during the eighteenth dynasty” (so Le Page Renouf and other witnesses). “These opponents [says Prof. Osgood, pp. 380, 381) postulate as ‘the universal, or at least the common rule, that religion begins with fetichism, then developes into polytheism, ete... .a pure traditional assumption and nothing more, when fully one- half of the scientific archeologists believe that they can prove the contrary.” 350 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS “So long as the hosts of Egyptian and Chaldean monu- | ments corroborate the pentateuchal statement of customs, so long as the very ground of Chaldea, Syria, and Egypt proves the exactness of the Pentateuch minute geography, the date of the Pentateuch cannot be moved by any sound historical reason. . . . These minutie ... are facts that never yet have been successfully forged, because it is simply beyond the power of man to impose them upon men” (p. 407). “The opponents of the Pentateuch as history claim a keener insight than other persons concerning questions of 3000 years ago; but they fail to see, or if they see, they fail to con- sider that ‘3000 years ago’ when brought into plain sight before them and all men now. Except a few notices in Kuenen’s felzgion of Israel, and Wellhausen’s characteristic ‘God - forsaken dreariness of certain modern Egyptologists, one searches in vain in their writings for any real appreciation of the utter revolution that has taken place in ancient history by reason of the startling resurrection of long-buried nations” (p. 380). NOTE G. “The Testimony of Christ to the Old Testament” is the title of a valuable article by Principal Caven of Toronto in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review for July 1892: see extract below, Nore K. The following extracts are from essayists in Moses and his Recent Creties :— “Our Lord taught that He had come ‘ to fulfil the law and the prophets,’ and on the road to Emmaus He expounded ‘all things in the law, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, con- cerning Himself.’ St. Peter at Pentecost, St. James at the Council of Jerusalem, St. Paul before Agrippa, all take the ground that Christianity was the foreseen and designed accom- plishment of the ancient Scriptures. Throughout the New Testament, in every form of utterance, teaching, narrative, exhortation, argument, it is constantly reiterated by the Lord Himself, and by all those whom He commissioned, that the Gospel was the intended fulfilment and culmination of the Law. Whether this ground was well taken or not, the whole position of the New Testament in this respect is indisputable” (Prof. Gardiner, “The Hebrew Rehgion not a Natural Development,” 89), : “His view [Christ’s], therefore, of the Mosaic law can be accounted for in neither of these ways [either mistake or ‘accommodation’]. The record of that view is in His almost every utterance. It appears in His devout submission to its Ce eee eS Te eT cra on ka Ey = sid —_— a ee ge SIR a fl Sh as as tele Bi te OTR ee aa Sale ty aa ee ea: NOTES fig | Or requirements as of divine authority; in His reference to its teachings as heavenly truth; in His citation of its statutes as embodying the duty of man, and of its representations of the God of Israel as absolute truth. Even when He enlarges or modifies its precepts, He still shows that His teaching was the original intention of the law, temporarily changed ‘for the hardness of men’s hearts.’ He stood firmly and fully upon the Old Testament in all His promulgation of the New. He ever recognised its authority as absolute and of God, while He admitted no other authority. To Him ‘the law, the prophets, and the psalms’ were sacred books, divinely given. Is it likely that there was a radical error on this fundamental point in Him who spoke as ‘never man spake’? ” (p, 64). “Tn this the New Testament speakers and writers were either right or wrong. If they were wrong,—-setting aside all question of inspiration,—we have the astounding phenomenon that the best men of their race, in their spiritual apprehension, carefully trained in, and earnestly attached to the religion of their fathers, should have so utterly misunderstood its whole nature and purpose” (pp. 59, 60). “Validity and Bearing of the Testimony of Christ and His Apostles” is the title of Professor Hemphill’s Essay. His con- tention, that the Mosaic authorship of the Scriptures [penta- teuchal] is avouched by Christ, occupies only a secondary or side place in his argument. His main central contention has reference to simply the historical truth of the Pentateuch, and the dvwunity of its institutions and Scriptures in respect of origin.? But in his view that historical truth and divinity cannot be maintained consistently short of holding that the whole Israelitish constitution exhibited in the Pentateuch is of Mosaic antiquity and origin. Thus, eg., as to Deuteronomy, that, apart from the question whether Moses wrote it, the book is historic- ally false, so that it cannot be inspired of God, if Moses did not in fact deliver the discourses it ascribes to him, or if the narrative it ascribes to him be historically untrue. Our quota- tions have reference to the point as to the testimony of Christ and His apostles. “Beyond a doubt, in the estimation of Jesus and His apostles, the Old Testament religion was supernatural in. its origin; and its documents were inspired and authoritative. Equally beyond controversy is the assertion that to their minds the Old Testament was incomplete: the Old Testament a pro- phecy—not simply in its predictions, but in its history and institutions—and the New its fulfilment: the Old creating longings and expectations of a Messiah and a Messianic king- ‘Cp. as to Dr. Robertson, above, p. 332, ete. 352 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS dom, and the New placing over against them the person and work of Jesus and the kingdom He preached. The bond, there- fore, between the New and the Old is not one of mere historic succession, but is organic. It needs no proof to justify the statement that if Jesus and the apostles attributed the Mosaic writings to the age and authorship of Moses, they would be in harmony with their attitude toward the religion of Israel. It is very doubtful whether any other view of the relation of Moses to Israel and these writings can be adjusted to the New Testament” (p. 374). “Tf this exposition [of John v. 45-47 by Schaff in Lange’s Commentary| be just, our Lord must have had in His mind the body of writings known as the writings of Moses. “Should a doubt remain, it should be removed by the reflection, that unless by ‘his writings’ our Lord intended to name the Pentateuch, there was to those who heard Him no method of determining His meaning. If we give up the doctrine that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, we are absolutely unable to discover what are the writings of Moses to which Jesus appealed. It is a notorious fact that while there is more or less of agreement on the part of the critics in their general analysis of the Pentateuch, there is no approach to unanimity in the proportion ascribed to the date and authorship of Moses. The proportion ranges from zero through varying degrees, according to the fancy or preconceived notions of the critic. Denying, then, that our Lord referred the Jews to the Penta- teuch, and the whole Pentateuch, when He spoke of disbelief of the writings of Moses, we are compelled to say that He based a most solemn indictment against their most sacred beliefs and their religious life upon their great leader’s writings, of which, like his sepulchre, no man knoweth unto this day” (p. 371). Note H. “A high authority assures us that ‘great men are not always wise, and it may be thought that the theory which has obtained such wide acceptance among the learned does not really rest upon a solid foundation. Similar assaults upon the New Testament have been made from time to time, and occa- sionally seemed to carry all before them. Yet the result has vindicated the steadfast faith of the old father who once, at a time when the heavens were overhung with black, exclaimed, Nebecula est, transibtt” (Dr. Chambers in Moses and his Recent Critics, p. 23). NOTES 353 Norte I. The following is from Dr. T. W. Chambers’ notice of Driver’s “Introduction,” in The Presbyterian and Lieformed Review, July 1892 :— ‘“, “Dr. Driver distinctly disowns evolution in this matter, and holds the old theory of a ‘ progressive revelation,’ but that does not prevent us from insisting that his theory of the composition - of the Old Testament coheres much more exactly with the naturalistic hypothesis of the origin of Hebrew religion than it does with the claim that that religion was the result of direct divine communications. It has been carried out to this extent by Wellhausen and the late Professor Kuenen, and this seems to be the logical outcome of the speculation. Men brought up in the serene atmosphere of an evangelical faith, like Dr. Driver, may for a time and even permanently resist the con- sequence; but how will it be with their pupils and followers ? Will they fail to carry out the scheme to what seems to be its natural and legitimate result? And if they do so carry it out, must not the consequence be fatal? The Old Testament and the New are inseparably bound together, and the giving up of the one must be followed by the giving up of the other. Nor is this a mere inference. It is sustained by facts. There is no case on record in which men have given up the Old Testament and then for any length of time retained the New. “ Hence the unutterable importance of this question of the composite authorship of the Pentateuch. We are told often enough that it 1s a mere question of criticism, and may be settled one way or other salva fide. It is a question which ultimately bears heavily on the point whether we have a divine revelation, and whether the Bible is such a revelation” (see following Note K)., Note K. The following is from Professor Dwinell’s Essay in Moses and his Recent Critics, “ Bearings of the New Hypothesis on Questions of Biblical Theology, Inspiration, and the Authority of the Bible generally,’—the title given by the editor: the inner title being as in above, Nore A. On the present point he speaks as follows :— “The bearing of this .criticism [the “Secondary” in above, Note A] on the doctrine of inspiration should not be over- looked. The only inspiration possible under the theory is of a very equivocal order, morally and spiritually; for it is an inspiration that does not keep the sacred writers from making 23 354 STUDIES IN HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS up a pretended framework of history in which to set their characters and instructions. It does not interfere with their asserting things to be facts which never took place. It does not stand in the way of consciously ante-dating and represent- ing things as having occurred centuries before which really oceurred later, or deliberately writing after the events had taken place, and giving to the writing the form of prediction, and passing it off as prophecy. It does not stay the sacred authors from writing out of their own intuitions or experience or thoughts and yearnings, and claiming that these teachings came direct from God. —— ABADDIE, 9, 106, 199. Abelard, 187. Abicht, 205. ** Act of Settlement,’ 262. Acts of the Apostles, 68. Adrian, Emperor, 123, 154. Agnosticism, 191. Alexander, Dr. Lindsay, 93. Alexander the Great, 262. America and Old Testament Criticism, 279. Anabaptists, 192, 203. ‘** Analogy,” Butler's, 193, 200. Anselm, 5, 151, 183, 189. Apocalypse, 15. Apologetics in Apostolic ministry, 66 ; post-Apostolic, 121; modern, 122, 184. Apologetics in Christ’s ministry, 30. Apologetics, unfavourable preposses- sions, 4. ‘* Apology,” New Testament nse of, 10. ‘“* Apology of the Christian Religion historically regarded, the,” 3, 161. ‘* Apostate,” use of word, 18. Apostles’ Creed, 146, 166, 178, 320. Apostles, ‘‘ The Teaching” of, 236. Apollonius of Tyana, 162. Aquinas, Thomas, 189, 356. Aristides, Apology of, 123, 134, 147, 150, 154, 155, 163, 286. Aristion, 178. Aristotle, 2, 166, 220. Arnauld, Anthony, 199. Assyriology, 26, 236, 268, 326, 348. Astrue, 328. Athenagoras, 134, 150, 155, 165, 188. Atomism, 212. Auberlen, C. A., 273. $ Augsburg Confession, 9. Augustine, 5, 134, 151, 164, 184, 187, 189, 323. Aurelius, Marcus, 15, 128, 134, 135, » 142, 188. Authenticity of Gospels, 22. “