Tuesday, December 16, 2008
fasting and praying
http://www.theevidence.org.uk/accurate5.htm Spending today doing some thinking. Lord help my unbelief.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Feeling
I've recently been reading my high school diary. Pages are covered with my turning to God for help through problems. There was a lot of emotion linked with my relationship with God. Why now does it all seem so factual and distant?
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Thursday, November 15, 2007
the truth of the bible lecture
THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE
Lecture by the Editor, 2 delivered in Birmingham, May 16th, 1875.
IF the Bible be not true, there is no hope for man, and we must accept the present weak, imperfect, abortive, vain, and useless life as a finality, and must be content to perish like the strown leaves of autumn. But the Bible is true. That is a demonstrable proposition; it is not a matter upon which a man’s judgment may be said to be in the nature of a doubtful opinion. It is of the same order of conviction—perhaps it may be too strong an illustration, but a full view of all the evidence, to my mind, certainly justifies the illustration—as we have concerning the shining of the sun when we see it. There is no kind of test that can be applied to the Scriptures but yields that result continually. From whatever point of view we discuss the matter, we shall land at what is certainly a blessed conclusion—that the Bible is true.
I propose to indicate the kind of process by which that conclusion is arrived at. What I have to say must be exceedingly brief, rough, sketchy—a merest outline; for the evidence on the question is so voluminous, that a whole course of twelve lectures would not exhaust it. I must be content to crowd the substance of that extensive mass of evidence into a few brief sentences to-night.
Let me begin just where we stand: if the Bible be true, two things ought to exist in the world at the present time. The Bible says the Jewish nation shall not come to an end; the Bible says the Jews were to be scattered among all nations, but that while every other nation would come to an end, that race would not; so we see it. That one circumstance which the Bible requires if it be true, is palpable before the eyes of even the non-reflective, for everybody knows about the Jews. Everybody knows that they are in every country, and everybody knows they have come through the precise kind of experience which was foreshadowed concerning them ages ago in this book.
The other thing that ought to exist, if the Bible is true, is a corrupt Christendom, for Paul predicted that there would be a departure from the simplicity of the gospel as placed in the world by him and his co-labourers in the first century, and that that departure would blossom into a political system which would be found existent in the world when Christ should return. Therefore, there ought to be, at the present time, a political system having a profession of the gospel as the foundation of its existence in the world, because Christ has not yet come. Well, what is the constitution of Europe? A system of “Church and State,” based on the Christian tradition. The Pope, the kings, and the churches illustrate a corrupt apostate Christendom, the very system of things Paul foreshadowed.
So that, standing where we are, these two circumstances required to exist on the assumption that the Bible is true, do exist plainly and palpably before everybody’s eyes.
Well then, take the authenticity of the book. Here we are, on the 16th of May, 1875; and how do we know that this book was written by those who are in it set before us as the writers of it? Just upon the principle by which we know the same fact concerning any other book. The principle by which the authenticity of any ancient volume is established, establishes the authenticity of the Bible more powerfully than in any other case; for there is more abundance of the kind of evidence requisite to establish the authenticity of the Bible than there is to establish the authenticity of any book produced in ancient times. How do we get at that? I must indicate it very roughly. I cannot, for the reason already mentioned, be either very nice and critical or very elaborate, but I will roughly indicate a process which can be pursued most critically, most thoroughly, most exhaustively, most unanswerably in detail when necessary.
This book did not come into our hands yesterday: it was in the land of the living when we were born; it did not come into existence in the days of our fathers and mothers, for it was in everybody’s hands when they were born; and it did not come into existence in the days of their grandfathers and grandmothers, for it was in existence when they were born; you may trace the process backward and backward and backward. How so? Because there are collections of ancient volumes at certain centres throughout the world; volumes which were written in all the centuries: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and so on up to the 19th; and they all recognise the contemporary existence of the Scriptures and quote from them. Go right away back to the first century or the beginning of the 2nd, for that is, perhaps, more conclusive than all coming between, and you find Justyn Martyr, Irenæus, and Polycarp, writers of those days, making large quotations from both the New and the Old Testaments just as we have them in our own day. That circumstance enables us to take a very long jump by a very simple process which is palpable to the meanest intellect: it enables us to go back to the first century and to say, These books existed then. But how does this prove they were written by the men professing to have written them? This question is answered by the fact that they were then received as authentic. By whom were they so received? The answer to this is the important fact of the case. There was, at that time, a large community in existence, not in one city only; true, the community began at Jerusalem in the days of Tiberius Cæsar, and, for a while, the largest community was there; but there came to be a community at Rome, at Ephesus, at Corinth, in all the leading cities of Greece, and throughout the Roman Empire. How came those communities into existence? By the travels of the men who planted in Europe that which we may, for present purposes, call the tradition of Jesus Christ, upon which our political system is built. They went about declaring that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by Pontius Pilate, had risen. Without at present considering the circumstances attending their preaching, and their success (though those circumstances constitute, perhaps, one of the most powerful evidences in proof of the divinity of the whole matter), let us merely look at the simple uncontrovertible, historical fact that there were large communities developed throughout the world by the preaching of Paul and the other apostles and their fellow-labourers. It was among those communities that the books forming the New Testament (not at present to speak of the Old, for the New proves the Old), were in use, as the writings of John, Peter, Mark, Luke, Paul, and the others. And Paul was alive and John was alive, for John lived nearly 100 years and was alive close upon the end of the first century. These two facts: the fact that the New Testament was in circulation; and the fact that several of their authors were living amongst those by whom the books were received, proves that the books were written by the men by whom they profess to have been written. How do the facts prove this? Because if the books had not been so written, the notion that they had been so would quickly have been dissipated by the personal travels of Paul and John, who would have set their feet upon any such literary imposture as the one involved in the suggestion I am considering. “But, then,” says the shallow cavilling critic—and I am sure there are none who reject the Scriptures who really know them and who are well acquainted with all the facts of the case, though there be a great many doubters—“there were other books that are not comprised in the New Testament: the apochryphal New Testament and the apocryphal epistles, and they are not comprised in this New Testament. How are we to know that these are the right and the other the wrong?” If such objectors were really in earnest, they could very easily answer that question; for the principle by which they know the right and the wrong of any other book is the principle by which they may decide it in this. These apocryphal books were rejected from the very first by those who were privy to the truth of the case. The books of our New Testament were always accepted; the apocryphal were accepted by some who did not know better; but that is no evidence in their favour. Roger Tichborne is accepted by some; but of what weight is that fact in face of the evidence when considered as a whole by competent judicial minds?
What we have to deal with is the fact that from the beginning there was a large class, and those the critical and knowing class, who rejected the spurious writings from the very start. Therefore, we have a very simple method of deciding that question, even if there were not another argument, which is very conclusive—the argument of internal evidence. Let anyone read any of those apocryphal gospels and epistles, and see whether in themselves, upon their face, they do not carry their own condemnation. Certainly they do. In their attempts to imitate the genuine article, they remind one of a monkey putting on a man’s clothes and trying to act the part of a man; you know a monkey would never be so soon detected as in trying to pass off for a human being. And so these spurious writings carry their own condemnation with them in their most bungling and contemptible attempts to imitate the manly, vigorous, pure, delightful writings which constitute the New Testament. Therefore, that argument is very easily disposed of. “Ay,” say these same people, “but the canon was settled by the Council of Nice in the 4th century;” and supposing the objector to be addressing a Christadelphian, he might say, “You know you do not believe in the Councils, nor their decisions, and, therefore, how do you take a book, the canon of which has been settled by them?” The simple answer to that is, that they merely recognised literary facts, and that is a function which can be exercised by any man. It does not want any special spiritual penetration to be able to decide upon evidence. They, as educated men, to an extent, simply went upon the literary facts of the case. They were, in a manner, obliged to come to a collective decision on the matter. Various notions were being agitated, and these apocryphal writings were being quoted by ignorant persons in support of false doctrines, and they thought it necessary for the guidance of Christendom in general to give a deliverance with regard to the writings which were authentic. Their decision, with regard to a point like that, may be quite sound, although their doctrines may be unscriptural. If all the gentlemen composing that council, with the Emperor Constantine at their head, had stepped outside the great hall in which they met, and a heavy storm had raged, and they had said, “Oh, there’s a great storm,” should we not have all accepted their competence to decide whether there was a storm or no, even if their doctrines might be false? Certainly. The authenticity of the Scriptures is a literary question, which only requires the light of common sense to be brought to bear upon it to enable us to decide it, and to respect the decisions of others apart from their theological peculiarities.
So upon the question of the authenticity of the Old Testament, a similar argument may be used, but time forbids its thorough application to the case. If is sufficient to notice that if the New Tcstament is proved the Old is also proved, for they are part and parcel of one another. The New continually quotes the Old, and is a continuation of it in several vital respects, which it does not come within the compass of the present lecture to consider.
(To be continued.)
The Truth of the Bible
LECTURE BY THE EDITOR
(Continued from page 553, vol. XII.)
Another thing is this: the Bible gives a certain history of things concerning remote times. In many points, that history has been questioned from time to time by those who wanted to get rid of the Scriptures, such as Paine, Voltaire, &c. But the progress of discovery and invention has, item after item, gone to show that the historical sketches contained in these writings are actually true. Just let me briefly run over a few instances of this. At the beginning of this century, the infidels under the leadership referred to, denied that there ever was such a man as Christ. Their theory was that the history of Christ was a priestly fable, concocted in the monasteries in the dark centuries; that Christ was not an historic character at all. In our day, the infidels have retreated from this ground: they have been beaten off it. They admit Christ was an historic reality. They don’t believe in him any the more for that. Still, they have abandoned their old position, which is something. They now say, “Christ was a real character, who appeared in the days of Tiberius Cæsar, and he was a wonderful man, but, on the whole, he was a madman, though of a very inoffensive and useful sort.” They admit he was crucified, but deny that he rose. I will not combat the new theory at present. I merely point to the suggestive fact that within seventy years as the result of searching investigation and criticism, the infidel community have abandoned one position to take another, which is still more indefensible when it comes to be thoroughly considered.
But I was about to refer to something else. They have held that there was no such places as Nineveh and Babylon. Their argument was this: according to the Bible, these cities were very great and extensive, and important and populous, containing architectural structures of a very solid character, and sustaining a very material political and commercial relation to the rest of the world. This being so, our infidel friends contended it was a matter of impossibility that such cities should so entirely disappear from the annals of human history and from their place in human affairs, as these have done. Therefore, argued they, such cities never existed: they are the fanciful creations of a mythical book. “Where is Nineveh?” asked they, “Where is Babylon? Where are any traces or indications of them?” Unconsciously, they were supporting the Bible, for the Bible which tells us of their past greatness, also foretels their disappearance in the vortex of one complete ruin. But since then both Babylon and Nineveh have been discovered, as you know, by Layard and other excavators, who have exhumed these ancient places from the rubbish of centuries, and shut the mouths of infidels.
Well, then, they used something of the same sort of argument with regard to the Mosaic account of the flood. They said it could not be a true historical account, or we should have found some traces of it in the archives of other nations. What has happened with regard to that? About a year ago, Mr. Smith of the British Museum, who was sent by the Daily Telegraph upon a special mission to the Assyrian ruins discovered by Layard, has discovered and has translated tablets from amongst those ruins containing an account of the flood. “Ay, but then,” say these men, “the account of the flood that is on these ruined monuments is not the Mosaic account: there are a lot of things there that would not be accepted by a Bible believer.” Quite true—there is a lot of nonsense in it, but the flood is there: that is the great fact of the case. Here is evidence brought before our eyes of the knowledge of the flood amongst other nations besides the Jews; and, therefore, it is a conclusive answer to the argument about the silence of other nations which infidels have used against it. The discrepancies between the two accounts does not weaken the force of the evidence in the least. Surely it is nothing new or unusual for very different versions of the same true story to exist in different quarters. But the variations in the accounts does not disprove but rather proves that there is a correct version somewhere. And where do you expect to find the true story of any matter? Why at the official source with those who know all about it, and are commissioned to publish it. You are not surprised to find some altogether glossed, inaccurate, and absurd version of it away in some country village. Upon the same principle, it is no wonder that the Assyrians should have corrupted the simple facts given by Moses and mixed them up with their own mythology.
So with regard to the history of the Jews. It was contended that there was no contemporary verification, such as might reasonably be expected to exist with regard to the proceedings of the Jewish nation as recorded in the Bible. The argument did not go for much, because the times of the history in question are so remote, and the Jews were at the time so nearly the only literary nation (for the Greeks came to the front long afterwards), that the fact that nobody was noticing and nobody writing about the doings of the Jews is not a great wonder. But although that is a good answer of itself, we have a better one. You have heard about the Moabite stone, discovered by a Frenchman of the name of Ganneau about a year ago; that stone is a local native record of events in the history of the Moabitish nation, though there is no nation there now; for it is written in the prophets that the nation should be blotted out and the land be waste. This stone is a record of what went on amongst the Moabites when they were a nation, and it is an exact confirmation of the account given us in the Kings. It is written by authority of Mesha, King of Moab, and gives an account of the various Israelitish kings with whom Mesha was in correspondence.
There are various other illustrations of the same sort, but these perhaps are sufficient on that one point, as showing that the history of the Scriptures has been corroborated from many sources that did not exist at the time that opposition to the Bible began. I mean particularly at the beginning of the present century. These confirmations are multiplying every month almost. The last discovery by that same Mr. Smith is an account—truly a very absurd one, but nevertheless an account—of the creation and of the fall of man, of which you may have seen some account in the newspapers a very short time ago.
(To be continued.)
The Truth of the Bible:
LECTURE BY THE EDITOR.
(Continued from page 27.)
Next to its history we come to a most important department, which of itself yields conclusive evidence of the truthfulness of the Bible, and that is the fulfilment of its prophecies. Let any man try to prophesy. Let any man who thinks that Moses and the prophets were only astute men, who by a large discernment of human affairs prophesied what should happen centuries afterwards; let those who try to get over the difficulty in that way try themselves to prophesy; or let them go to any of the learned men and get them to try and prophesy. There are plenty of things for them to try their hands at. There are the Mormons; let any man prophesy where they will be a hundred years from this, and what will be their position. There is Germany just risen to a position of great military eminence: let any one predict where she will be in 20 years. The simplest matter taken in hand will convince any man of the utter inability of the mind to penetrate the future. The future is a dead wall to the human eye. If any man is prepared to controvert that, let him give us his reasons; let him produce one prophet; let him give us the man who can even forecast the markets for a day ahead. He cannot, and therefore the proposition must be accepted that we know not a day ahead what will certainly come to pass.
Now in view of that, how are we to understand a few things to which I will now call attention. First let me read you what Moses said concerning the Jews three thousand years ago: “Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and gladness of heart for the abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things, and He shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck until He has destroyed thee. The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, who shall not regard the person of the old nor show favour to the young. And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle and the fruit of thy land until thou be destroyed, which shall also not leave thee corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine or flocks of thy sheep, until he hath destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst throughout all thy land; and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land which the Lord thy God hath given thee. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee . . . And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth unto the other, &c.”—(Deut. 28:47–53, 64.)
Presuming every one to be acquainted with the history of the Jews, it does not require many words to force home the argument arising upon that prophecy. These words were written three thousand years ago; no scholar will deny that; Colenzo does not deny that. All that Colenzo says (though his argument is not the conclusive affair that the majority of readers delight to think it,) is that Moses did not write this. Even granting that this were so (which cannot be granted for many cogent reasons), you have got the fact that three thousand years ago, someone—and it does not matter for the present argument who—foretold the dispersion of the Jewish nation throughout the world, consequent on the Roman invasion, during which all their fortified places would be reduced, and the nation brought to terrible extremities. And even a matter of detail like this is detailed; “The Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again in ships by the way whereof I spake unto thee, thou shalt see it no more again; and ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bond women, and no man shall buy you.” When Titus had levelled Jerusalem with the ground, what did he do with the inhabitants who still remained alive? He reserved ten thousand for his triumphal entry into Rome, and for amusing the people at the public games; and the residue he sent to the slave markets of Egypt, and the markets were glutted that people would not buy them. Thousands of poor emaciated Jews had this phophecy fulfilled in their own persons. This is a matter of record; Josephus tells us about it.
Whatever explanation people may have to give of this fulfilled prophecy of Jewish dispersion at the present day, they are bound to admit that in that item the Bible has proved true against all probabilities. For what was the natural probability? Why that the Jews as soon as their nationality was broken up, as soon as their institutions were blown to the winds and themselves scattered as disconnected units, they would become assimilated among the nations and disappear. Instead of that they are just as distinctly national in Birmingham in 1875 as they were in Jerusalem at the beginning of the present era.
Take another prophecy: one concerning Babylon, the great rival of Jerusalem. In the days of Isaiah, Babylon was a flourishing place and likely to continue so, as much as Rome; and what does Isaiah say as to its destiny? Eight hundred years before Christ, and something like 300 years before Babylon’s overthrow, Isaiah said (chap. 13:19), “And Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there; but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and all their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.” And how has this turned out? Exactly as foretold. Babylon is a desolation, literally deserted except of the lower kinds of noisome creatures such as are enumerated in the passage quoted. So completely has that prophecy been fulfilled that it gave the infidels at the beginning of our century a peg on which to hang an argument in the opposite direction, and to contend that there never had been such a place as the Babylon of Scripture. Now thanks be to God, we have Babylon before our eyes, in the works of modern explorers, though I do not say that the recovery of Babylon was necessary to give us confidence in the truth of the Scriptures.
I could occupy not one but twenty evenings if it were necessary, in bringing forward arguments and evidences which go to show that the Bible is the book of God. I think there is a sort of widespread popular intuition that it is so; for notwithstanding all the clever artifices of shallow writers, and some who do not appear to be shallow, there is solid strength in the book which speaks for itself from generation to generation; and every now and then re-asserts itself, as if to blow away the cobwebs which some minds would try to weave over it.
What is true of Babylon you will find on reference to numerous places is true of Tyre, Nineveh, and Egypt. Concerning Egypt we read (Ezek. 29:12–15), “I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years, and I will scatter the Egyptians through the nations and disperse them through the countries. Yet, thus saith the Lord God, at the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered, and will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation, and they shall be there a base kingdom. It shall be the basest of the kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations; for I will diminish them, and they shall no more rule over the nations.” Here is a practical prophecy which I should like to hear any man venture concerning any other power in the world. Who could be sure that Egypt would not re-assert her supremacy, as she came very near doing under Mehemet Ali, 35 years ago? Who could have foretold ten years ago that Germany would be the military master of the world? Here is a declaration that Egypt should be a base kingdom, and it has been a base kingdom since then, a kingdom of no account in the roll of nations. It is now a mere dependency of the tottering Turkish empire.
Then let us take Tyre. Look at the 28th chapter of Ezekiel, 6th verse: “Therefore saith the Lord God, because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God: behold, therefore, I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations; and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness.” Tyre was the London of ancient days; the Phœnicia of the profane historians—the market of all nations, at the time of this prophecy. It goes on to say, “They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the death of them that are slain in the midst of the seas.” In the last part of the 18th verse: “I will bring forth fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror and never shalt thou be any more.” Tyre never regained her maritime supremacy or even a maritime place, but became what as it was prophesied (Ezek. 26:14, ) like the top of a rock, a place to spread nets upon. You may go there and see how the prophecy has been fulfilled.
Then there are many other prophecies of a striking nature. Consider the prophecy of Daniel, who while Babylon was yet in her glory under Nebuchadnezzar, foretold the uprise of the Medo-Persian power to overthrow Babylon, and predicted that the Medo-Persian power would be succeeded by the Grecian goat, and that the Greek dynasty would break up into four, and be succeeded by the Roman, which would prevail over all the earth, establishing an empire, would before long be divided into manyparts. All of that has been fulfilled in the most singularly accurate manner, in order to get away from the force of which, the infidel has to suggest that Daniel was written after the events. The suggestion cannot be sustained; all the principles of literary criticism and common sense are against it, for Daniel was a book well known in the days of Christ and referred to by him, as when he says, “When ye see what was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, then go ye to the mountains.” In the Sannhedrim (the council of the Jewish nation), among scribes and pharisees, the learned classes of the day, the book of Daniel was current and accepted as the undoubted prediction of the Jewish captive Daniel, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and their knowledge and verdict in such a case would be conclusive, apart from the evidence (of a very conclusive character) furnished by the characteristics of the book. It shows how hard pressed the adversaries of the Bible are with the mighty evidence before them, that they should have to suggest the spuriousness of the book of Daniel. The argument has been very thoroughly refuted in a recent pamphlet in which the authenticity and age of the book of the prophet Daniel have been demonstrated.
Here then is a fact to be considered; here is a broad and in some respects a detailed delineation of the history of the world for many centuries, which has been fulfilled. How is it to be explained? It cannot be explained upon any principles recognized by the infidels. They have no prophet amongst them, neither is there a prophet anywhere else. They cannot say that prophecy belongs to the Jews, for there has been no prophet amongst the Jews since God has left them, when Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jewish race scattered. Where are their prophets now? The Jews are not a bit better than the Gentile. The only thing is this, they are the nation of whom God has made choice as the pivot of His operations upon this planet, in working out His ultimate purpose of goodness, and the Gentiles are not. The Gentiles have nothing to do with God’s purposes, unless they become grafted upon the stock of Abraham by adoption through Christ, the seed of Abraham.
Then take the case of Christ himself, as regards this matter of prophecy. You remember all the particulars foretold concerning him: that he was to be born in Bethlehem, that he was to be a poor man, that he was to be a rejected and a despised man, that his hands and his feet were to be pierced, and that he was to be withdrawn into the presence of God. All these particulars are set forth n various places to which I might refer you if there were time, and they were all of them realized; realised too, not by any design on the part of those who co-operated in the production of their fulfilment, for those who were instrumental in their fulfilment were ignorant of what they were doing. Take an example: the unexpected decree that came forth in the days of Augustus Cæsar that all the world should be taxed, was the occasion of the fulfilment of the first part of these prophecies, namely, that Christ should be born in Bethlehem. But for that apparently inconsiderable event, Christ would have been born in Nazareth, since Mary was in Nazareth when the angel came to tell her that she should bring forth the Messiah by the power of the Holy Spirit; and if it had not been for this imperial edict requiring her husband to go to Jerusalem to be enrolled there as the place to which he belonged, that prophecy would not have been fulfilled. And so it is with all the other items of the fulfilment; friendly co-operators had nothing to do with them. The fulfilment was brought about by circumstances altogether beyond human control, including the crucifixion of Christ at last. How is it to be explained? If what Paul says is true, that “God at sundry times and in divers manners in times past spake unto the fathers by the prophets,” then there is an explanation, and if that is not true, then there is no explanation.
(To be continued.)
The Truth of the Bible
LECTURE BY THE EDITOR
(Continued from page 81.)
But we get a closer view of the divine character of the Bible in looking at the nature of the Bible itself. We discover peculiarities which show that it is a matter of impossibility that it could be of human origin. I will give one or two slight illustrations of this great point, which might be illustrated by hundreds of cases. I refer now to one illustration of the sentiment which pervades the whole book, and which is totally foreign to all human tastes and all human conceptions. In the 9th chapter of Jeremiah, and 23rd verse, we read thus: “Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth.” The universal principle of human nature illustrated in all history and among all nations, in every human circle and in all kinds of society, is that the wise man glories in his wisdom, and is complimented for it; the mighty man glories in his might, and has a monument put up to him when he dies; and the rich man glories in his riches and is universally deferred to on account of it. Throughout the whole of the Scriptures this credit to man is denied. In this, the Bible differs from all human books; and in this, it is more philosophical than human books; for what credit has a horse in that it has legs and strength? The glory of its strength is obviously due to the origin of that strength, but you don’t find men recognise that fact. You don’t find the races of mankind in any part of the world saying “Oh, don’t give us the credit,” “Not unto us, O Lord; but unto Thy name be the glory.”—(Ps. 115:1.) On the contrary they say, “we are entitled to the credit.” In every speech made upon every platform, whether it be a political gathering or a corporation meeting, or a trades demonstration, men glory in their own town and in their own party, and in their own leaders: whereas the scheme which centres in Christ has this for its intrinsic and essential feature, that human glory is excluded.—(1 Cor. 1:26.) “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence.” I say that it is å matter of impossibility from our knowledge of human nature, in every nation and in every age, as reflected in books that such a sentiment can be of human invention. It is self-evidently divine. The consideration of this single point apart from the mighty mass of evidence there is on every hand, is sufficient to convince any competent mind—any mind capable of comparing things that differ, that this Bible is the book of God, and no human invention.
Let me give you one further illustratration of this point in a practical form. You know what patriotism is universally, and more particularly in its manifestation to wards historic characters. People may not be always very enthusiastic and appreciative towards living people, but when a man dies who has rendered any service at all to the nation to which he belongs, you know what the style is. It is said, “his remarkable genius,” “his large heart,” “his powerful arm,” and this and that, “entitle him to the eternal gratitude of posterity.” Now let me give you a specimen of the kind of patriotism that belongs to the literature of the Bible—Psalm. 44:1–3: “We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in the times of old. How thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand, and plantedst them; how Thou didst afflict the people and cast them out. For THEY GOT NOT THE LAND IN POSSESSION BY THEIR OWN SWORD, neither did their own arm save them; but THY RIGHT HAND and THINE ARM, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.” That is no human patriotism. It is not the patriotism of the Jews. The patriotism of the Jews does not differ from that among other nations elsewhere. The Jews always praise the Jews. They never ascribe the glory to God. You never find Jews complimenting this book; you don’t find Jews in our day approving sentiments like that just read. Read the writings of Disraeli or the Jewish Chronicle, and what do you see? Just a soaping over of the Jewish nation and the Jewish stock, in precisely the same style as is common amongst the Gentiles. Anything they have done is attributed to the fine energetic force of the Caucasian organization. It is said that the Jewish blood is rich in genius; that the Jewish race is of immortal vigour, and so on. You find the Jews taking up with the Talmud and not with the Bible. Why? For the same reason that they loved the false prophets and put the true prophets to death. The prophets of the Bible speak like Moses. In what respect do they resemble him? Look at his farewell speech, and just compare it with the farewell speech of any other patriot, and then try and suppose for a moment that Moses is speaking only as a human leader, aiming at popularity. If Moses did not act as he did because God sent him, he acted out of his own head and for his own objects. Assume for a moment that that was the case. Imagine him for a moment speaking in the style which you find in the 31st chapter of Deuteronomy. In the 16th verse it is written: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.” Having been apprised of his approaching decease, he makes a few remarks which I will read, that you may try and realise them on the supposition that his case was a merely human case.—(verse 25.) “Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying. Take this book of the law and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck: Behold, while I am yet alive with you this day; ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and HOW MUCH MORE AFTER MY DEATH? Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death YE WILL UTTERLY CORRUPT YOURSELVES, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands.” How did Moses know that? It came to pass most strictly. No wonder the Jews did not like Moses and the prophets. They all spoke in this same strain. The nation is not complimented. There are no human principles of action inculcated or recognised throughout these writings.
This is an argument that might be very extensively elaborated with great force to the mind of those who have any experience of human nature and any discernment of the principles of human action. It perhaps requires considerable experience and knowledge of human nature to appreciate the value of this argument, but it is an argument of crushing force to the minds of those who possess the necessary knowledge which may be gained by general observation.
Well, there is another argument requiring far more time than we have, and also requiring far more ability than could be brought to bear to elaborate it. What is that? The portrait of the man Christ Jesus. Such a character is inexplicable upon all human principles, but is intelligible upon the principle on which he is introduced to our notice in the Bible; for he is introduced as the manifestation of God in the flesh. If God by his Spirit photographed, so to speak, His own moral and intellectual likeness upon the fruit of Mary’s womb, there is an explanation. But I should have liked to place before you the thing to be explained, though even if there were time, I feel that the matter is one which can only be apprehended by close and constant reading of the narrative of Christ’s life and sayings and the letters of Christ’s friends, while it also requires some amount of discernment to compare the picture there displayed with the picture presented in universal human nature. Christ is the corner-stone of the house of God in the age to come, and he is the corner-stone of the argument to prove that the Bible is true. This is particularly shown when we come to that crowning event in his life, his resurrection, which is demonstrable by every kind of evidence by which any past historical occurrence can be demonstrated. The facts now before our eyes, the nations now existing, and their political institutions are evidences, when properly worked out, of Christ having risen.
The process of the proof may be very simply indicated. I might suppose myself an utter stranger, looking on all the nations of Europe, crowded with churches and priests, and Bibles, and religious faith, with the name of Christ written on it, and knowing that this state of things did not come yesterday nor in a hundred years, the question would occur, how came it that Christ has been universally received amongst the powerful nations of Europe? There must be something in the beginning of the matter adequate to the production of that general conviction, and when I come back to the beginning, what do I see? I see a little obscure band of illiterate men, whom the Jews sought to exterminate by persecution, imprisonment and death, and against whom the powers of Pagan Rome were all arrayed in many bloody persecutions; but in spite of all these, their testimony spread and spread until the rising tide reached the throne itself, and shows us, in a little while, a military champion of Christ upon that throne.
What is the explanation of it? If you tell me Christ did not rise, you ask me to believe a something which is without explanation. If Christ rose and sent power upon his apostles, enabling them to raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and do many mighty works in confirmation of the testimony that he had risen and that they had seen him, I can understand the success of the apostolic testimony; but if you tell me the apostles were mad enthusiasts, labouring under the power of delusion, you present to me a view which is more utterly incredible than the one presented in the New Testament.
The case is complete, the evidence is conclusive. There is no breach in the wall anywhere. Why is it that so many refuse to believe? It is because they are too busy with other things to become sufficiently acquainted with the facts of the case to be able to come to a conclusion; for a man cannot be convinced without evidence. If the evidence be not before his mind, it is no wonder if the conviction is not there. But perhaps it ought to be said in this matter as in the case of the Jews: “the leaders of this people cause them to err,” as said Isaiah; for in the first place, if the ministers and clergymen were at all up to their work, there would not be the amount of scepticism that there is. The fact is, they are not; they are hirelings, “dumb dogs that cannot bark;” they do not know the ground on which they stand, and are ignorant of the teachings of the book of which they profess to be the expositors. No wonder that there is a leavening through all society, of this curse of unbelief which is eating the life out of the people, and sending them in innumerable droves down the inclined plane of an objectless life.
But the Bible is true. Christ rose, Christ is in heaven. Christ will be here by and bye, and Christ will have a people alive looking for him, and we are busy trying to develop that people by the agency which He has placed in our hands; with the belief that this is the book of God, which for that reason we submit for your most attentive consideration.
Lecture by the Editor, 2 delivered in Birmingham, May 16th, 1875.
IF the Bible be not true, there is no hope for man, and we must accept the present weak, imperfect, abortive, vain, and useless life as a finality, and must be content to perish like the strown leaves of autumn. But the Bible is true. That is a demonstrable proposition; it is not a matter upon which a man’s judgment may be said to be in the nature of a doubtful opinion. It is of the same order of conviction—perhaps it may be too strong an illustration, but a full view of all the evidence, to my mind, certainly justifies the illustration—as we have concerning the shining of the sun when we see it. There is no kind of test that can be applied to the Scriptures but yields that result continually. From whatever point of view we discuss the matter, we shall land at what is certainly a blessed conclusion—that the Bible is true.
I propose to indicate the kind of process by which that conclusion is arrived at. What I have to say must be exceedingly brief, rough, sketchy—a merest outline; for the evidence on the question is so voluminous, that a whole course of twelve lectures would not exhaust it. I must be content to crowd the substance of that extensive mass of evidence into a few brief sentences to-night.
Let me begin just where we stand: if the Bible be true, two things ought to exist in the world at the present time. The Bible says the Jewish nation shall not come to an end; the Bible says the Jews were to be scattered among all nations, but that while every other nation would come to an end, that race would not; so we see it. That one circumstance which the Bible requires if it be true, is palpable before the eyes of even the non-reflective, for everybody knows about the Jews. Everybody knows that they are in every country, and everybody knows they have come through the precise kind of experience which was foreshadowed concerning them ages ago in this book.
The other thing that ought to exist, if the Bible is true, is a corrupt Christendom, for Paul predicted that there would be a departure from the simplicity of the gospel as placed in the world by him and his co-labourers in the first century, and that that departure would blossom into a political system which would be found existent in the world when Christ should return. Therefore, there ought to be, at the present time, a political system having a profession of the gospel as the foundation of its existence in the world, because Christ has not yet come. Well, what is the constitution of Europe? A system of “Church and State,” based on the Christian tradition. The Pope, the kings, and the churches illustrate a corrupt apostate Christendom, the very system of things Paul foreshadowed.
So that, standing where we are, these two circumstances required to exist on the assumption that the Bible is true, do exist plainly and palpably before everybody’s eyes.
Well then, take the authenticity of the book. Here we are, on the 16th of May, 1875; and how do we know that this book was written by those who are in it set before us as the writers of it? Just upon the principle by which we know the same fact concerning any other book. The principle by which the authenticity of any ancient volume is established, establishes the authenticity of the Bible more powerfully than in any other case; for there is more abundance of the kind of evidence requisite to establish the authenticity of the Bible than there is to establish the authenticity of any book produced in ancient times. How do we get at that? I must indicate it very roughly. I cannot, for the reason already mentioned, be either very nice and critical or very elaborate, but I will roughly indicate a process which can be pursued most critically, most thoroughly, most exhaustively, most unanswerably in detail when necessary.
This book did not come into our hands yesterday: it was in the land of the living when we were born; it did not come into existence in the days of our fathers and mothers, for it was in everybody’s hands when they were born; and it did not come into existence in the days of their grandfathers and grandmothers, for it was in existence when they were born; you may trace the process backward and backward and backward. How so? Because there are collections of ancient volumes at certain centres throughout the world; volumes which were written in all the centuries: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and so on up to the 19th; and they all recognise the contemporary existence of the Scriptures and quote from them. Go right away back to the first century or the beginning of the 2nd, for that is, perhaps, more conclusive than all coming between, and you find Justyn Martyr, Irenæus, and Polycarp, writers of those days, making large quotations from both the New and the Old Testaments just as we have them in our own day. That circumstance enables us to take a very long jump by a very simple process which is palpable to the meanest intellect: it enables us to go back to the first century and to say, These books existed then. But how does this prove they were written by the men professing to have written them? This question is answered by the fact that they were then received as authentic. By whom were they so received? The answer to this is the important fact of the case. There was, at that time, a large community in existence, not in one city only; true, the community began at Jerusalem in the days of Tiberius Cæsar, and, for a while, the largest community was there; but there came to be a community at Rome, at Ephesus, at Corinth, in all the leading cities of Greece, and throughout the Roman Empire. How came those communities into existence? By the travels of the men who planted in Europe that which we may, for present purposes, call the tradition of Jesus Christ, upon which our political system is built. They went about declaring that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by Pontius Pilate, had risen. Without at present considering the circumstances attending their preaching, and their success (though those circumstances constitute, perhaps, one of the most powerful evidences in proof of the divinity of the whole matter), let us merely look at the simple uncontrovertible, historical fact that there were large communities developed throughout the world by the preaching of Paul and the other apostles and their fellow-labourers. It was among those communities that the books forming the New Testament (not at present to speak of the Old, for the New proves the Old), were in use, as the writings of John, Peter, Mark, Luke, Paul, and the others. And Paul was alive and John was alive, for John lived nearly 100 years and was alive close upon the end of the first century. These two facts: the fact that the New Testament was in circulation; and the fact that several of their authors were living amongst those by whom the books were received, proves that the books were written by the men by whom they profess to have been written. How do the facts prove this? Because if the books had not been so written, the notion that they had been so would quickly have been dissipated by the personal travels of Paul and John, who would have set their feet upon any such literary imposture as the one involved in the suggestion I am considering. “But, then,” says the shallow cavilling critic—and I am sure there are none who reject the Scriptures who really know them and who are well acquainted with all the facts of the case, though there be a great many doubters—“there were other books that are not comprised in the New Testament: the apochryphal New Testament and the apocryphal epistles, and they are not comprised in this New Testament. How are we to know that these are the right and the other the wrong?” If such objectors were really in earnest, they could very easily answer that question; for the principle by which they know the right and the wrong of any other book is the principle by which they may decide it in this. These apocryphal books were rejected from the very first by those who were privy to the truth of the case. The books of our New Testament were always accepted; the apocryphal were accepted by some who did not know better; but that is no evidence in their favour. Roger Tichborne is accepted by some; but of what weight is that fact in face of the evidence when considered as a whole by competent judicial minds?
What we have to deal with is the fact that from the beginning there was a large class, and those the critical and knowing class, who rejected the spurious writings from the very start. Therefore, we have a very simple method of deciding that question, even if there were not another argument, which is very conclusive—the argument of internal evidence. Let anyone read any of those apocryphal gospels and epistles, and see whether in themselves, upon their face, they do not carry their own condemnation. Certainly they do. In their attempts to imitate the genuine article, they remind one of a monkey putting on a man’s clothes and trying to act the part of a man; you know a monkey would never be so soon detected as in trying to pass off for a human being. And so these spurious writings carry their own condemnation with them in their most bungling and contemptible attempts to imitate the manly, vigorous, pure, delightful writings which constitute the New Testament. Therefore, that argument is very easily disposed of. “Ay,” say these same people, “but the canon was settled by the Council of Nice in the 4th century;” and supposing the objector to be addressing a Christadelphian, he might say, “You know you do not believe in the Councils, nor their decisions, and, therefore, how do you take a book, the canon of which has been settled by them?” The simple answer to that is, that they merely recognised literary facts, and that is a function which can be exercised by any man. It does not want any special spiritual penetration to be able to decide upon evidence. They, as educated men, to an extent, simply went upon the literary facts of the case. They were, in a manner, obliged to come to a collective decision on the matter. Various notions were being agitated, and these apocryphal writings were being quoted by ignorant persons in support of false doctrines, and they thought it necessary for the guidance of Christendom in general to give a deliverance with regard to the writings which were authentic. Their decision, with regard to a point like that, may be quite sound, although their doctrines may be unscriptural. If all the gentlemen composing that council, with the Emperor Constantine at their head, had stepped outside the great hall in which they met, and a heavy storm had raged, and they had said, “Oh, there’s a great storm,” should we not have all accepted their competence to decide whether there was a storm or no, even if their doctrines might be false? Certainly. The authenticity of the Scriptures is a literary question, which only requires the light of common sense to be brought to bear upon it to enable us to decide it, and to respect the decisions of others apart from their theological peculiarities.
So upon the question of the authenticity of the Old Testament, a similar argument may be used, but time forbids its thorough application to the case. If is sufficient to notice that if the New Tcstament is proved the Old is also proved, for they are part and parcel of one another. The New continually quotes the Old, and is a continuation of it in several vital respects, which it does not come within the compass of the present lecture to consider.
(To be continued.)
The Truth of the Bible
LECTURE BY THE EDITOR
(Continued from page 553, vol. XII.)
Another thing is this: the Bible gives a certain history of things concerning remote times. In many points, that history has been questioned from time to time by those who wanted to get rid of the Scriptures, such as Paine, Voltaire, &c. But the progress of discovery and invention has, item after item, gone to show that the historical sketches contained in these writings are actually true. Just let me briefly run over a few instances of this. At the beginning of this century, the infidels under the leadership referred to, denied that there ever was such a man as Christ. Their theory was that the history of Christ was a priestly fable, concocted in the monasteries in the dark centuries; that Christ was not an historic character at all. In our day, the infidels have retreated from this ground: they have been beaten off it. They admit Christ was an historic reality. They don’t believe in him any the more for that. Still, they have abandoned their old position, which is something. They now say, “Christ was a real character, who appeared in the days of Tiberius Cæsar, and he was a wonderful man, but, on the whole, he was a madman, though of a very inoffensive and useful sort.” They admit he was crucified, but deny that he rose. I will not combat the new theory at present. I merely point to the suggestive fact that within seventy years as the result of searching investigation and criticism, the infidel community have abandoned one position to take another, which is still more indefensible when it comes to be thoroughly considered.
But I was about to refer to something else. They have held that there was no such places as Nineveh and Babylon. Their argument was this: according to the Bible, these cities were very great and extensive, and important and populous, containing architectural structures of a very solid character, and sustaining a very material political and commercial relation to the rest of the world. This being so, our infidel friends contended it was a matter of impossibility that such cities should so entirely disappear from the annals of human history and from their place in human affairs, as these have done. Therefore, argued they, such cities never existed: they are the fanciful creations of a mythical book. “Where is Nineveh?” asked they, “Where is Babylon? Where are any traces or indications of them?” Unconsciously, they were supporting the Bible, for the Bible which tells us of their past greatness, also foretels their disappearance in the vortex of one complete ruin. But since then both Babylon and Nineveh have been discovered, as you know, by Layard and other excavators, who have exhumed these ancient places from the rubbish of centuries, and shut the mouths of infidels.
Well, then, they used something of the same sort of argument with regard to the Mosaic account of the flood. They said it could not be a true historical account, or we should have found some traces of it in the archives of other nations. What has happened with regard to that? About a year ago, Mr. Smith of the British Museum, who was sent by the Daily Telegraph upon a special mission to the Assyrian ruins discovered by Layard, has discovered and has translated tablets from amongst those ruins containing an account of the flood. “Ay, but then,” say these men, “the account of the flood that is on these ruined monuments is not the Mosaic account: there are a lot of things there that would not be accepted by a Bible believer.” Quite true—there is a lot of nonsense in it, but the flood is there: that is the great fact of the case. Here is evidence brought before our eyes of the knowledge of the flood amongst other nations besides the Jews; and, therefore, it is a conclusive answer to the argument about the silence of other nations which infidels have used against it. The discrepancies between the two accounts does not weaken the force of the evidence in the least. Surely it is nothing new or unusual for very different versions of the same true story to exist in different quarters. But the variations in the accounts does not disprove but rather proves that there is a correct version somewhere. And where do you expect to find the true story of any matter? Why at the official source with those who know all about it, and are commissioned to publish it. You are not surprised to find some altogether glossed, inaccurate, and absurd version of it away in some country village. Upon the same principle, it is no wonder that the Assyrians should have corrupted the simple facts given by Moses and mixed them up with their own mythology.
So with regard to the history of the Jews. It was contended that there was no contemporary verification, such as might reasonably be expected to exist with regard to the proceedings of the Jewish nation as recorded in the Bible. The argument did not go for much, because the times of the history in question are so remote, and the Jews were at the time so nearly the only literary nation (for the Greeks came to the front long afterwards), that the fact that nobody was noticing and nobody writing about the doings of the Jews is not a great wonder. But although that is a good answer of itself, we have a better one. You have heard about the Moabite stone, discovered by a Frenchman of the name of Ganneau about a year ago; that stone is a local native record of events in the history of the Moabitish nation, though there is no nation there now; for it is written in the prophets that the nation should be blotted out and the land be waste. This stone is a record of what went on amongst the Moabites when they were a nation, and it is an exact confirmation of the account given us in the Kings. It is written by authority of Mesha, King of Moab, and gives an account of the various Israelitish kings with whom Mesha was in correspondence.
There are various other illustrations of the same sort, but these perhaps are sufficient on that one point, as showing that the history of the Scriptures has been corroborated from many sources that did not exist at the time that opposition to the Bible began. I mean particularly at the beginning of the present century. These confirmations are multiplying every month almost. The last discovery by that same Mr. Smith is an account—truly a very absurd one, but nevertheless an account—of the creation and of the fall of man, of which you may have seen some account in the newspapers a very short time ago.
(To be continued.)
The Truth of the Bible:
LECTURE BY THE EDITOR.
(Continued from page 27.)
Next to its history we come to a most important department, which of itself yields conclusive evidence of the truthfulness of the Bible, and that is the fulfilment of its prophecies. Let any man try to prophesy. Let any man who thinks that Moses and the prophets were only astute men, who by a large discernment of human affairs prophesied what should happen centuries afterwards; let those who try to get over the difficulty in that way try themselves to prophesy; or let them go to any of the learned men and get them to try and prophesy. There are plenty of things for them to try their hands at. There are the Mormons; let any man prophesy where they will be a hundred years from this, and what will be their position. There is Germany just risen to a position of great military eminence: let any one predict where she will be in 20 years. The simplest matter taken in hand will convince any man of the utter inability of the mind to penetrate the future. The future is a dead wall to the human eye. If any man is prepared to controvert that, let him give us his reasons; let him produce one prophet; let him give us the man who can even forecast the markets for a day ahead. He cannot, and therefore the proposition must be accepted that we know not a day ahead what will certainly come to pass.
Now in view of that, how are we to understand a few things to which I will now call attention. First let me read you what Moses said concerning the Jews three thousand years ago: “Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and gladness of heart for the abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things, and He shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck until He has destroyed thee. The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, who shall not regard the person of the old nor show favour to the young. And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle and the fruit of thy land until thou be destroyed, which shall also not leave thee corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine or flocks of thy sheep, until he hath destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst throughout all thy land; and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land which the Lord thy God hath given thee. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee . . . And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth unto the other, &c.”—(Deut. 28:47–53, 64.)
Presuming every one to be acquainted with the history of the Jews, it does not require many words to force home the argument arising upon that prophecy. These words were written three thousand years ago; no scholar will deny that; Colenzo does not deny that. All that Colenzo says (though his argument is not the conclusive affair that the majority of readers delight to think it,) is that Moses did not write this. Even granting that this were so (which cannot be granted for many cogent reasons), you have got the fact that three thousand years ago, someone—and it does not matter for the present argument who—foretold the dispersion of the Jewish nation throughout the world, consequent on the Roman invasion, during which all their fortified places would be reduced, and the nation brought to terrible extremities. And even a matter of detail like this is detailed; “The Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again in ships by the way whereof I spake unto thee, thou shalt see it no more again; and ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bond women, and no man shall buy you.” When Titus had levelled Jerusalem with the ground, what did he do with the inhabitants who still remained alive? He reserved ten thousand for his triumphal entry into Rome, and for amusing the people at the public games; and the residue he sent to the slave markets of Egypt, and the markets were glutted that people would not buy them. Thousands of poor emaciated Jews had this phophecy fulfilled in their own persons. This is a matter of record; Josephus tells us about it.
Whatever explanation people may have to give of this fulfilled prophecy of Jewish dispersion at the present day, they are bound to admit that in that item the Bible has proved true against all probabilities. For what was the natural probability? Why that the Jews as soon as their nationality was broken up, as soon as their institutions were blown to the winds and themselves scattered as disconnected units, they would become assimilated among the nations and disappear. Instead of that they are just as distinctly national in Birmingham in 1875 as they were in Jerusalem at the beginning of the present era.
Take another prophecy: one concerning Babylon, the great rival of Jerusalem. In the days of Isaiah, Babylon was a flourishing place and likely to continue so, as much as Rome; and what does Isaiah say as to its destiny? Eight hundred years before Christ, and something like 300 years before Babylon’s overthrow, Isaiah said (chap. 13:19), “And Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there; but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and all their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.” And how has this turned out? Exactly as foretold. Babylon is a desolation, literally deserted except of the lower kinds of noisome creatures such as are enumerated in the passage quoted. So completely has that prophecy been fulfilled that it gave the infidels at the beginning of our century a peg on which to hang an argument in the opposite direction, and to contend that there never had been such a place as the Babylon of Scripture. Now thanks be to God, we have Babylon before our eyes, in the works of modern explorers, though I do not say that the recovery of Babylon was necessary to give us confidence in the truth of the Scriptures.
I could occupy not one but twenty evenings if it were necessary, in bringing forward arguments and evidences which go to show that the Bible is the book of God. I think there is a sort of widespread popular intuition that it is so; for notwithstanding all the clever artifices of shallow writers, and some who do not appear to be shallow, there is solid strength in the book which speaks for itself from generation to generation; and every now and then re-asserts itself, as if to blow away the cobwebs which some minds would try to weave over it.
What is true of Babylon you will find on reference to numerous places is true of Tyre, Nineveh, and Egypt. Concerning Egypt we read (Ezek. 29:12–15), “I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years, and I will scatter the Egyptians through the nations and disperse them through the countries. Yet, thus saith the Lord God, at the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered, and will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation, and they shall be there a base kingdom. It shall be the basest of the kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations; for I will diminish them, and they shall no more rule over the nations.” Here is a practical prophecy which I should like to hear any man venture concerning any other power in the world. Who could be sure that Egypt would not re-assert her supremacy, as she came very near doing under Mehemet Ali, 35 years ago? Who could have foretold ten years ago that Germany would be the military master of the world? Here is a declaration that Egypt should be a base kingdom, and it has been a base kingdom since then, a kingdom of no account in the roll of nations. It is now a mere dependency of the tottering Turkish empire.
Then let us take Tyre. Look at the 28th chapter of Ezekiel, 6th verse: “Therefore saith the Lord God, because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God: behold, therefore, I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations; and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness.” Tyre was the London of ancient days; the Phœnicia of the profane historians—the market of all nations, at the time of this prophecy. It goes on to say, “They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the death of them that are slain in the midst of the seas.” In the last part of the 18th verse: “I will bring forth fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror and never shalt thou be any more.” Tyre never regained her maritime supremacy or even a maritime place, but became what as it was prophesied (Ezek. 26:14, ) like the top of a rock, a place to spread nets upon. You may go there and see how the prophecy has been fulfilled.
Then there are many other prophecies of a striking nature. Consider the prophecy of Daniel, who while Babylon was yet in her glory under Nebuchadnezzar, foretold the uprise of the Medo-Persian power to overthrow Babylon, and predicted that the Medo-Persian power would be succeeded by the Grecian goat, and that the Greek dynasty would break up into four, and be succeeded by the Roman, which would prevail over all the earth, establishing an empire, would before long be divided into manyparts. All of that has been fulfilled in the most singularly accurate manner, in order to get away from the force of which, the infidel has to suggest that Daniel was written after the events. The suggestion cannot be sustained; all the principles of literary criticism and common sense are against it, for Daniel was a book well known in the days of Christ and referred to by him, as when he says, “When ye see what was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, then go ye to the mountains.” In the Sannhedrim (the council of the Jewish nation), among scribes and pharisees, the learned classes of the day, the book of Daniel was current and accepted as the undoubted prediction of the Jewish captive Daniel, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and their knowledge and verdict in such a case would be conclusive, apart from the evidence (of a very conclusive character) furnished by the characteristics of the book. It shows how hard pressed the adversaries of the Bible are with the mighty evidence before them, that they should have to suggest the spuriousness of the book of Daniel. The argument has been very thoroughly refuted in a recent pamphlet in which the authenticity and age of the book of the prophet Daniel have been demonstrated.
Here then is a fact to be considered; here is a broad and in some respects a detailed delineation of the history of the world for many centuries, which has been fulfilled. How is it to be explained? It cannot be explained upon any principles recognized by the infidels. They have no prophet amongst them, neither is there a prophet anywhere else. They cannot say that prophecy belongs to the Jews, for there has been no prophet amongst the Jews since God has left them, when Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jewish race scattered. Where are their prophets now? The Jews are not a bit better than the Gentile. The only thing is this, they are the nation of whom God has made choice as the pivot of His operations upon this planet, in working out His ultimate purpose of goodness, and the Gentiles are not. The Gentiles have nothing to do with God’s purposes, unless they become grafted upon the stock of Abraham by adoption through Christ, the seed of Abraham.
Then take the case of Christ himself, as regards this matter of prophecy. You remember all the particulars foretold concerning him: that he was to be born in Bethlehem, that he was to be a poor man, that he was to be a rejected and a despised man, that his hands and his feet were to be pierced, and that he was to be withdrawn into the presence of God. All these particulars are set forth n various places to which I might refer you if there were time, and they were all of them realized; realised too, not by any design on the part of those who co-operated in the production of their fulfilment, for those who were instrumental in their fulfilment were ignorant of what they were doing. Take an example: the unexpected decree that came forth in the days of Augustus Cæsar that all the world should be taxed, was the occasion of the fulfilment of the first part of these prophecies, namely, that Christ should be born in Bethlehem. But for that apparently inconsiderable event, Christ would have been born in Nazareth, since Mary was in Nazareth when the angel came to tell her that she should bring forth the Messiah by the power of the Holy Spirit; and if it had not been for this imperial edict requiring her husband to go to Jerusalem to be enrolled there as the place to which he belonged, that prophecy would not have been fulfilled. And so it is with all the other items of the fulfilment; friendly co-operators had nothing to do with them. The fulfilment was brought about by circumstances altogether beyond human control, including the crucifixion of Christ at last. How is it to be explained? If what Paul says is true, that “God at sundry times and in divers manners in times past spake unto the fathers by the prophets,” then there is an explanation, and if that is not true, then there is no explanation.
(To be continued.)
The Truth of the Bible
LECTURE BY THE EDITOR
(Continued from page 81.)
But we get a closer view of the divine character of the Bible in looking at the nature of the Bible itself. We discover peculiarities which show that it is a matter of impossibility that it could be of human origin. I will give one or two slight illustrations of this great point, which might be illustrated by hundreds of cases. I refer now to one illustration of the sentiment which pervades the whole book, and which is totally foreign to all human tastes and all human conceptions. In the 9th chapter of Jeremiah, and 23rd verse, we read thus: “Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth.” The universal principle of human nature illustrated in all history and among all nations, in every human circle and in all kinds of society, is that the wise man glories in his wisdom, and is complimented for it; the mighty man glories in his might, and has a monument put up to him when he dies; and the rich man glories in his riches and is universally deferred to on account of it. Throughout the whole of the Scriptures this credit to man is denied. In this, the Bible differs from all human books; and in this, it is more philosophical than human books; for what credit has a horse in that it has legs and strength? The glory of its strength is obviously due to the origin of that strength, but you don’t find men recognise that fact. You don’t find the races of mankind in any part of the world saying “Oh, don’t give us the credit,” “Not unto us, O Lord; but unto Thy name be the glory.”—(Ps. 115:1.) On the contrary they say, “we are entitled to the credit.” In every speech made upon every platform, whether it be a political gathering or a corporation meeting, or a trades demonstration, men glory in their own town and in their own party, and in their own leaders: whereas the scheme which centres in Christ has this for its intrinsic and essential feature, that human glory is excluded.—(1 Cor. 1:26.) “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence.” I say that it is å matter of impossibility from our knowledge of human nature, in every nation and in every age, as reflected in books that such a sentiment can be of human invention. It is self-evidently divine. The consideration of this single point apart from the mighty mass of evidence there is on every hand, is sufficient to convince any competent mind—any mind capable of comparing things that differ, that this Bible is the book of God, and no human invention.
Let me give you one further illustratration of this point in a practical form. You know what patriotism is universally, and more particularly in its manifestation to wards historic characters. People may not be always very enthusiastic and appreciative towards living people, but when a man dies who has rendered any service at all to the nation to which he belongs, you know what the style is. It is said, “his remarkable genius,” “his large heart,” “his powerful arm,” and this and that, “entitle him to the eternal gratitude of posterity.” Now let me give you a specimen of the kind of patriotism that belongs to the literature of the Bible—Psalm. 44:1–3: “We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in the times of old. How thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand, and plantedst them; how Thou didst afflict the people and cast them out. For THEY GOT NOT THE LAND IN POSSESSION BY THEIR OWN SWORD, neither did their own arm save them; but THY RIGHT HAND and THINE ARM, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.” That is no human patriotism. It is not the patriotism of the Jews. The patriotism of the Jews does not differ from that among other nations elsewhere. The Jews always praise the Jews. They never ascribe the glory to God. You never find Jews complimenting this book; you don’t find Jews in our day approving sentiments like that just read. Read the writings of Disraeli or the Jewish Chronicle, and what do you see? Just a soaping over of the Jewish nation and the Jewish stock, in precisely the same style as is common amongst the Gentiles. Anything they have done is attributed to the fine energetic force of the Caucasian organization. It is said that the Jewish blood is rich in genius; that the Jewish race is of immortal vigour, and so on. You find the Jews taking up with the Talmud and not with the Bible. Why? For the same reason that they loved the false prophets and put the true prophets to death. The prophets of the Bible speak like Moses. In what respect do they resemble him? Look at his farewell speech, and just compare it with the farewell speech of any other patriot, and then try and suppose for a moment that Moses is speaking only as a human leader, aiming at popularity. If Moses did not act as he did because God sent him, he acted out of his own head and for his own objects. Assume for a moment that that was the case. Imagine him for a moment speaking in the style which you find in the 31st chapter of Deuteronomy. In the 16th verse it is written: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.” Having been apprised of his approaching decease, he makes a few remarks which I will read, that you may try and realise them on the supposition that his case was a merely human case.—(verse 25.) “Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying. Take this book of the law and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck: Behold, while I am yet alive with you this day; ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and HOW MUCH MORE AFTER MY DEATH? Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death YE WILL UTTERLY CORRUPT YOURSELVES, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands.” How did Moses know that? It came to pass most strictly. No wonder the Jews did not like Moses and the prophets. They all spoke in this same strain. The nation is not complimented. There are no human principles of action inculcated or recognised throughout these writings.
This is an argument that might be very extensively elaborated with great force to the mind of those who have any experience of human nature and any discernment of the principles of human action. It perhaps requires considerable experience and knowledge of human nature to appreciate the value of this argument, but it is an argument of crushing force to the minds of those who possess the necessary knowledge which may be gained by general observation.
Well, there is another argument requiring far more time than we have, and also requiring far more ability than could be brought to bear to elaborate it. What is that? The portrait of the man Christ Jesus. Such a character is inexplicable upon all human principles, but is intelligible upon the principle on which he is introduced to our notice in the Bible; for he is introduced as the manifestation of God in the flesh. If God by his Spirit photographed, so to speak, His own moral and intellectual likeness upon the fruit of Mary’s womb, there is an explanation. But I should have liked to place before you the thing to be explained, though even if there were time, I feel that the matter is one which can only be apprehended by close and constant reading of the narrative of Christ’s life and sayings and the letters of Christ’s friends, while it also requires some amount of discernment to compare the picture there displayed with the picture presented in universal human nature. Christ is the corner-stone of the house of God in the age to come, and he is the corner-stone of the argument to prove that the Bible is true. This is particularly shown when we come to that crowning event in his life, his resurrection, which is demonstrable by every kind of evidence by which any past historical occurrence can be demonstrated. The facts now before our eyes, the nations now existing, and their political institutions are evidences, when properly worked out, of Christ having risen.
The process of the proof may be very simply indicated. I might suppose myself an utter stranger, looking on all the nations of Europe, crowded with churches and priests, and Bibles, and religious faith, with the name of Christ written on it, and knowing that this state of things did not come yesterday nor in a hundred years, the question would occur, how came it that Christ has been universally received amongst the powerful nations of Europe? There must be something in the beginning of the matter adequate to the production of that general conviction, and when I come back to the beginning, what do I see? I see a little obscure band of illiterate men, whom the Jews sought to exterminate by persecution, imprisonment and death, and against whom the powers of Pagan Rome were all arrayed in many bloody persecutions; but in spite of all these, their testimony spread and spread until the rising tide reached the throne itself, and shows us, in a little while, a military champion of Christ upon that throne.
What is the explanation of it? If you tell me Christ did not rise, you ask me to believe a something which is without explanation. If Christ rose and sent power upon his apostles, enabling them to raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and do many mighty works in confirmation of the testimony that he had risen and that they had seen him, I can understand the success of the apostolic testimony; but if you tell me the apostles were mad enthusiasts, labouring under the power of delusion, you present to me a view which is more utterly incredible than the one presented in the New Testament.
The case is complete, the evidence is conclusive. There is no breach in the wall anywhere. Why is it that so many refuse to believe? It is because they are too busy with other things to become sufficiently acquainted with the facts of the case to be able to come to a conclusion; for a man cannot be convinced without evidence. If the evidence be not before his mind, it is no wonder if the conviction is not there. But perhaps it ought to be said in this matter as in the case of the Jews: “the leaders of this people cause them to err,” as said Isaiah; for in the first place, if the ministers and clergymen were at all up to their work, there would not be the amount of scepticism that there is. The fact is, they are not; they are hirelings, “dumb dogs that cannot bark;” they do not know the ground on which they stand, and are ignorant of the teachings of the book of which they profess to be the expositors. No wonder that there is a leavening through all society, of this curse of unbelief which is eating the life out of the people, and sending them in innumerable droves down the inclined plane of an objectless life.
But the Bible is true. Christ rose, Christ is in heaven. Christ will be here by and bye, and Christ will have a people alive looking for him, and we are busy trying to develop that people by the agency which He has placed in our hands; with the belief that this is the book of God, which for that reason we submit for your most attentive consideration.
1880 the c
THE BIBLE TRUE
OR,
Arguments, articles, papers. extracts and miscellaneous matter from various sources to prove that
THE SCRIPTURES ARE THE AUTHENTIC AND GENUINE RECORDS OF DIVINE REVELATION.
This department has been suspended for some time, not for want of matter, but from a variety of cause which are not active at the present moment. We may hope the need for it will soon be at an end; but so long as the cold night continues it is helpful to the new man to have the evidences of the foundation of our faith exhibited and the flimsiness and irrationality of unbelief illustrated, if only in a casual way.
The Absurdity of Atheism
The absurdity of atheism is never so manifest as when it attempts to propound a theory of the origin of heaven and earth, or at least when this theory is put into a naked form. Beating about the bush, and indulging in vague generalities or negative criticism, it can seem sapient enough, but take it back to the beginning of things, or take it down to the foundation, and ask it to define itself precisely, and its absurdity becomes strikingly manifest. This is smartly done in the following newsclip forwarded by brother Hodgkinson. The atheist is supposed to define his creed in the terms of science. There is a little sarcasm of course, in the words put into his mouth: but they fairly describe the atheistic view:
“I believe in a chaotic nebula self-existent, evolver of heaven and earth. And in the differentiation of the original homogeneous mass; its first begotten product which was self-formed into land and water, self-organised into plants and animals, reproduced in like species, further developed into higher orders, and ultimately refined, rationalised, and perfected in man: he descended from the monkey, ascended to the philosopher, and sitteth down in the rites and customs of civilisation under the laws of a developing sociology; from thence he shall come again by the disintegration of the heterogenized cosmos back into the original homogeneousness of chaos. I believe in the wholly impersonal absolute; the wholly uncatholic church, the disunion of the saints, the survival of the fittest, the persistence of force, the dispersion of the body, and in death everlasting.”
Nature’s Testimony to God
Paul says, “The invisible things of God (from the creation of the world) are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” The philosophical correctness of this declaration is well brought out in a notice of Flint’s Baird lectures, appearing in the Jewish Chronicle. The following is an extract:
“The moment science has shown that the earth had a beginning, reason has a right to inquire what was the cause of this beginning. It may be argued, as has been done by the late John Stuart Mill, that amidst all the changeable elements which are the productions of a cause, there is something immutable of which experience has not proved that it required a cause for its existence. Even if it were admitted that the atoms into which it is assumed all matter is resolvable, are self-existent and eternal, an eternal intelligence would still be required to account for the universe. For (as Mr. Flint says) “There are countless millions of them, and manifestly the universe is one, is a single, magnificent, and complicated system, is characterised by a marvellous unity in variety. We must be informed how the universe came to be a universe—how it came to have the unity which underlies its diversity—if it resulted from a countless multitude of ultimate causes. Did the atoms take counsel togethey and devise a common plan and work it out? That hypothesis is unspeakably absurd, yet it is rational in comparison with the notion that these atoms combined by mere chance, and by chance produced such a universe as that in which we live. Grant all the atoms of matter to be eternal, grant all the properties and forces which with the smallest degree of plausibility can be claimed for them to be eternal and immutable, and it is still beyond all expression improbable that these atoms with these forces, if unarranged, uncombined, ununified, unutilised by a presiding mind, would give rise to anything entitled to be called a universe. It is millions to one that they would never produce the simplest of the regular arrangements which we comprehend under the designation of course of nature, or the lowest of vegetable or animal organisms; millions of millions to one that they would never produce a solar system, the earth, the animal kingdom, or human history. No number of material atoms, although eternal and endowed with mechanical force, can explain the unity and order of the universe, and therefore the supposition of their existence does not free us from the neceasity of believing in a single intelligent cause—a Supreme Mind—to move and mould, combine and adjust, the ultimate atoms of matter into a single orderly system.”
Darwinism Scientifically Rebutted
A Reviewer in the Daily News, noticing a recent publication, says:—
“The men of science, who in the name of their mistress arrogate to themselves the right to dogmatise in matters of faith, have of late met with but rough usage at the hands of some of their distinguished fellow-labourers in the field of physical research. In France, Quatrefages has recently denounced the Darwinian creed. In Germany we find the philosopher and statesman, Virchow, addressing a congress of naturalists with the express object of warning them against accepting “the problems of research as actual facts, the opinions of scientists as established science.” In reply to Dr. Haeckel, of Jena, who had contended “that the evolution theory should at once be laid down as the basis of public instruction, and the protoplastic soul assumed as the foundation of all ideas concerning spiritual being,” Professor Virchow very justly objects that true science is opposed to the propagation, as matters of popular belief, of hypotheses which have as yet not been demonstrated, and are probably incapable of philosophic demonstration. With regard to the view held by evolutionists as to man’s ancestral connection with the rest of the animal kingdom, the Professor declares “that every positive advance which we have made in the province of pre-historic anthropology has actually removed us further from the proof of such a connection.” Words such as these from an anthropologist of the eminence of Professor Virchow can hardly fail to moderate the hyper-scientific zeal of some of his countrymen who would appear to desire “to supplant the dogmas of the Church by a religion of evolution.”
“We are glad to find that a countryman of our own, Dr. Bateman, of Norwich, well known as the able author of a medical treatise on “Aphasia,” has in a work recently published addressed himself to the examination of the Darwinian doctrines from a linguistic point of view. In “Darwinism tested by Language” Dr. Bateman contends that the faculty of articulate speech is a characteristic of man which differentiates him in kind from every other animal, and thus becomes a crucial test for the theory of evolution.”
Inspiration of Moses and the Prophets
“Inspiration can manifestly be predicated very extensively of the Old Testament. This appears from the prophetic authorship of its books and from the claims which its writers put forth. It is certain that most of the books of the Old Testament were written by prophets; and while we cannot adduce direct evidence to show that all the books of the ancient canon were written by men of this order, there is at least manifestly a high degree of probability that they were all, as the ancient Jews believed, written by prophets. At present we do not lay stress on this probability, but confine ourselves to what is capable of clear proof. There are marks of the existence throughout the whole period during which the Old Testament was produced of an order of men honoured to hold special intercourse with God and receive supernatural revelations from him, and who were formally accredited by the Most High as his agents, whom he authorised, in their official character, to speak and act for him. The relation which Aaron is represented as sustaining to Moses brings out distinctly the relation in which the prophet stood to God, and the authority due to his words, whether spoken or written. When Moses was unwilling to bear the divine message to Egypt, the Lord, having reminded him that his brother Aaron could speak well, said to him, “Thou shalt speak unto him and put words in his mouth.” * * * “He shall be thy spokesman unto the people; and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God.”—Ex. 4:15, 16. Again we read, “And the Lord said unto Moses, see I have made thee a god unto Pharoah; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.”—Ex. 7:1. What Aaron said to Pharoah had the authority of Moses, and so what the prophet, in his official capacity, said to the people had the authority of God. He spoke as God’s mouth. God made himself responsible for the prophet’s utterances. When it was known that the prophet stood in this relation to God, all that was necessary to certify men that a book was given by inspiration of God was the assurance that it was the official work of one of the prophetic order. We assume that God did in various ways give public sanction to certain men as prophets, by which their contemporaries could be assured of the genuineness of their prophetic character, and thereby of the divine authority of their writings.
“That the vast majority of the books of the Old Testament were written by prophets can be easily shown. They were all familiarly referred to and quoted by Christ under the well-known Jewish divisions, Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. Luke 24:44. That the Pentateuch was, with very trifling exceptions, written by Moses nothing that modern destructive criticism has been able to adduce need make us doubt. And that Moses was a prophet cannot be denied in face of the express language of Scripture, “And by a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved.”—Hos. 12:13. And the whole record of his legislation and life bears ample testimony to the sobriety of the statement with which it is closed, “There arose not a prophet since Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”—Deut. 34:10. That the second division, which is expressly called “the prophets” by Jesus Christ, was written by prophets can scarcely be successfully denied. What God said to Jeremiah might have been said to any of them from Joshua downwards, “Lo, I have put my words in thy mouth.”—Jer. 1:9. Shall we then refuse to acknowledge the prophetic character of that division named from its first book, the Psalms? The apostle Peter expressly testifies that David was a prophet, Acts 2:30, and he affirms that the Scriptures must needs be fulfilled which the Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David, Acts 1:16. It is true that we cannot adduce direct evidence that all parts of the Hagiographa, as this division was frequently called, were written by prophets; but we find that Asaph and Daniel are both ranked by our Lord as prophets, Matt. 13:35, and Matt. 24:15, while in Hebrews 3:7, 9, an anonymous Psalm is ascribed to the Holy Ghost. And not only are the Proverbs of Solomon repeatedly quoted in the New Testament with the usual formula, “it is written” Rom. 3:15, and Rom. 12:19, 20, but once in terms that show that the words are the very words of God, James 4:10. To this we may add the fact that the Apostle Paul, on one occasion, refers to the Old Testament Scriptures generally under the title of the “the prophetic Scriptures.”—Rom. 16:26. It was doubtless very largely due to the evidence for the prophetic authorship of the books of the Old Testament that the Jews, in the time of our Lord, believed universally in their inspiration. The writers of the Old Testament repeatedly use language which involves a direct claim to inspiration. This claim is advanced in many forms, and in terms so general that no reason can be assigned why it should be restricted to any particular portion of their writings. How often do we find such language employed by them in reference to their own statements as this: “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it,” “Thus saith the Lord,” “Hear the word of the Lord?” Nearly all the prophets again and again employ phraseology which indicates that the Lord spoke by them. “The word that Isaiah, the son of Amos, said concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” “The word of the Lord came unto me saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou?” “The word of the Lord same expressly unto Ezekiel, the priest, the son of Buzi,” &c. “The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea.” “The word of the Lord that came to Micah.” And almost the entire legislation of Moses has the divine authorship stamped upon its lane guage with equal distinctness. As we read the Pentateuch we encounter continually the words, “And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying.” It is true that there are books of the Old Testament in which no such direct claims to inspiration as we have cited are put forth. But there is a silent tone of authority pervading even these which is compatible only with the idea of their inspiration. In addition to this, the fact that they were written in the Sacred Collection, which the Israelites guarded with such jealous care, is itself a tacit claim to the same character as distinguished the other portions of the ancient canon. If the writers who put forward these claims are regarded as the crecible historians of a supernatural revelation, we cannot avoid the conclusion that a very large portion of the Old Testament was given by inspiration of God.—Prof. MACLAREN.
OR,
Arguments, articles, papers. extracts and miscellaneous matter from various sources to prove that
THE SCRIPTURES ARE THE AUTHENTIC AND GENUINE RECORDS OF DIVINE REVELATION.
This department has been suspended for some time, not for want of matter, but from a variety of cause which are not active at the present moment. We may hope the need for it will soon be at an end; but so long as the cold night continues it is helpful to the new man to have the evidences of the foundation of our faith exhibited and the flimsiness and irrationality of unbelief illustrated, if only in a casual way.
The Absurdity of Atheism
The absurdity of atheism is never so manifest as when it attempts to propound a theory of the origin of heaven and earth, or at least when this theory is put into a naked form. Beating about the bush, and indulging in vague generalities or negative criticism, it can seem sapient enough, but take it back to the beginning of things, or take it down to the foundation, and ask it to define itself precisely, and its absurdity becomes strikingly manifest. This is smartly done in the following newsclip forwarded by brother Hodgkinson. The atheist is supposed to define his creed in the terms of science. There is a little sarcasm of course, in the words put into his mouth: but they fairly describe the atheistic view:
“I believe in a chaotic nebula self-existent, evolver of heaven and earth. And in the differentiation of the original homogeneous mass; its first begotten product which was self-formed into land and water, self-organised into plants and animals, reproduced in like species, further developed into higher orders, and ultimately refined, rationalised, and perfected in man: he descended from the monkey, ascended to the philosopher, and sitteth down in the rites and customs of civilisation under the laws of a developing sociology; from thence he shall come again by the disintegration of the heterogenized cosmos back into the original homogeneousness of chaos. I believe in the wholly impersonal absolute; the wholly uncatholic church, the disunion of the saints, the survival of the fittest, the persistence of force, the dispersion of the body, and in death everlasting.”
Nature’s Testimony to God
Paul says, “The invisible things of God (from the creation of the world) are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” The philosophical correctness of this declaration is well brought out in a notice of Flint’s Baird lectures, appearing in the Jewish Chronicle. The following is an extract:
“The moment science has shown that the earth had a beginning, reason has a right to inquire what was the cause of this beginning. It may be argued, as has been done by the late John Stuart Mill, that amidst all the changeable elements which are the productions of a cause, there is something immutable of which experience has not proved that it required a cause for its existence. Even if it were admitted that the atoms into which it is assumed all matter is resolvable, are self-existent and eternal, an eternal intelligence would still be required to account for the universe. For (as Mr. Flint says) “There are countless millions of them, and manifestly the universe is one, is a single, magnificent, and complicated system, is characterised by a marvellous unity in variety. We must be informed how the universe came to be a universe—how it came to have the unity which underlies its diversity—if it resulted from a countless multitude of ultimate causes. Did the atoms take counsel togethey and devise a common plan and work it out? That hypothesis is unspeakably absurd, yet it is rational in comparison with the notion that these atoms combined by mere chance, and by chance produced such a universe as that in which we live. Grant all the atoms of matter to be eternal, grant all the properties and forces which with the smallest degree of plausibility can be claimed for them to be eternal and immutable, and it is still beyond all expression improbable that these atoms with these forces, if unarranged, uncombined, ununified, unutilised by a presiding mind, would give rise to anything entitled to be called a universe. It is millions to one that they would never produce the simplest of the regular arrangements which we comprehend under the designation of course of nature, or the lowest of vegetable or animal organisms; millions of millions to one that they would never produce a solar system, the earth, the animal kingdom, or human history. No number of material atoms, although eternal and endowed with mechanical force, can explain the unity and order of the universe, and therefore the supposition of their existence does not free us from the neceasity of believing in a single intelligent cause—a Supreme Mind—to move and mould, combine and adjust, the ultimate atoms of matter into a single orderly system.”
Darwinism Scientifically Rebutted
A Reviewer in the Daily News, noticing a recent publication, says:—
“The men of science, who in the name of their mistress arrogate to themselves the right to dogmatise in matters of faith, have of late met with but rough usage at the hands of some of their distinguished fellow-labourers in the field of physical research. In France, Quatrefages has recently denounced the Darwinian creed. In Germany we find the philosopher and statesman, Virchow, addressing a congress of naturalists with the express object of warning them against accepting “the problems of research as actual facts, the opinions of scientists as established science.” In reply to Dr. Haeckel, of Jena, who had contended “that the evolution theory should at once be laid down as the basis of public instruction, and the protoplastic soul assumed as the foundation of all ideas concerning spiritual being,” Professor Virchow very justly objects that true science is opposed to the propagation, as matters of popular belief, of hypotheses which have as yet not been demonstrated, and are probably incapable of philosophic demonstration. With regard to the view held by evolutionists as to man’s ancestral connection with the rest of the animal kingdom, the Professor declares “that every positive advance which we have made in the province of pre-historic anthropology has actually removed us further from the proof of such a connection.” Words such as these from an anthropologist of the eminence of Professor Virchow can hardly fail to moderate the hyper-scientific zeal of some of his countrymen who would appear to desire “to supplant the dogmas of the Church by a religion of evolution.”
“We are glad to find that a countryman of our own, Dr. Bateman, of Norwich, well known as the able author of a medical treatise on “Aphasia,” has in a work recently published addressed himself to the examination of the Darwinian doctrines from a linguistic point of view. In “Darwinism tested by Language” Dr. Bateman contends that the faculty of articulate speech is a characteristic of man which differentiates him in kind from every other animal, and thus becomes a crucial test for the theory of evolution.”
Inspiration of Moses and the Prophets
“Inspiration can manifestly be predicated very extensively of the Old Testament. This appears from the prophetic authorship of its books and from the claims which its writers put forth. It is certain that most of the books of the Old Testament were written by prophets; and while we cannot adduce direct evidence to show that all the books of the ancient canon were written by men of this order, there is at least manifestly a high degree of probability that they were all, as the ancient Jews believed, written by prophets. At present we do not lay stress on this probability, but confine ourselves to what is capable of clear proof. There are marks of the existence throughout the whole period during which the Old Testament was produced of an order of men honoured to hold special intercourse with God and receive supernatural revelations from him, and who were formally accredited by the Most High as his agents, whom he authorised, in their official character, to speak and act for him. The relation which Aaron is represented as sustaining to Moses brings out distinctly the relation in which the prophet stood to God, and the authority due to his words, whether spoken or written. When Moses was unwilling to bear the divine message to Egypt, the Lord, having reminded him that his brother Aaron could speak well, said to him, “Thou shalt speak unto him and put words in his mouth.” * * * “He shall be thy spokesman unto the people; and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God.”—Ex. 4:15, 16. Again we read, “And the Lord said unto Moses, see I have made thee a god unto Pharoah; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.”—Ex. 7:1. What Aaron said to Pharoah had the authority of Moses, and so what the prophet, in his official capacity, said to the people had the authority of God. He spoke as God’s mouth. God made himself responsible for the prophet’s utterances. When it was known that the prophet stood in this relation to God, all that was necessary to certify men that a book was given by inspiration of God was the assurance that it was the official work of one of the prophetic order. We assume that God did in various ways give public sanction to certain men as prophets, by which their contemporaries could be assured of the genuineness of their prophetic character, and thereby of the divine authority of their writings.
“That the vast majority of the books of the Old Testament were written by prophets can be easily shown. They were all familiarly referred to and quoted by Christ under the well-known Jewish divisions, Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. Luke 24:44. That the Pentateuch was, with very trifling exceptions, written by Moses nothing that modern destructive criticism has been able to adduce need make us doubt. And that Moses was a prophet cannot be denied in face of the express language of Scripture, “And by a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved.”—Hos. 12:13. And the whole record of his legislation and life bears ample testimony to the sobriety of the statement with which it is closed, “There arose not a prophet since Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”—Deut. 34:10. That the second division, which is expressly called “the prophets” by Jesus Christ, was written by prophets can scarcely be successfully denied. What God said to Jeremiah might have been said to any of them from Joshua downwards, “Lo, I have put my words in thy mouth.”—Jer. 1:9. Shall we then refuse to acknowledge the prophetic character of that division named from its first book, the Psalms? The apostle Peter expressly testifies that David was a prophet, Acts 2:30, and he affirms that the Scriptures must needs be fulfilled which the Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David, Acts 1:16. It is true that we cannot adduce direct evidence that all parts of the Hagiographa, as this division was frequently called, were written by prophets; but we find that Asaph and Daniel are both ranked by our Lord as prophets, Matt. 13:35, and Matt. 24:15, while in Hebrews 3:7, 9, an anonymous Psalm is ascribed to the Holy Ghost. And not only are the Proverbs of Solomon repeatedly quoted in the New Testament with the usual formula, “it is written” Rom. 3:15, and Rom. 12:19, 20, but once in terms that show that the words are the very words of God, James 4:10. To this we may add the fact that the Apostle Paul, on one occasion, refers to the Old Testament Scriptures generally under the title of the “the prophetic Scriptures.”—Rom. 16:26. It was doubtless very largely due to the evidence for the prophetic authorship of the books of the Old Testament that the Jews, in the time of our Lord, believed universally in their inspiration. The writers of the Old Testament repeatedly use language which involves a direct claim to inspiration. This claim is advanced in many forms, and in terms so general that no reason can be assigned why it should be restricted to any particular portion of their writings. How often do we find such language employed by them in reference to their own statements as this: “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it,” “Thus saith the Lord,” “Hear the word of the Lord?” Nearly all the prophets again and again employ phraseology which indicates that the Lord spoke by them. “The word that Isaiah, the son of Amos, said concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” “The word of the Lord came unto me saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou?” “The word of the Lord same expressly unto Ezekiel, the priest, the son of Buzi,” &c. “The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea.” “The word of the Lord that came to Micah.” And almost the entire legislation of Moses has the divine authorship stamped upon its lane guage with equal distinctness. As we read the Pentateuch we encounter continually the words, “And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying.” It is true that there are books of the Old Testament in which no such direct claims to inspiration as we have cited are put forth. But there is a silent tone of authority pervading even these which is compatible only with the idea of their inspiration. In addition to this, the fact that they were written in the Sacred Collection, which the Israelites guarded with such jealous care, is itself a tacit claim to the same character as distinguished the other portions of the ancient canon. If the writers who put forward these claims are regarded as the crecible historians of a supernatural revelation, we cannot avoid the conclusion that a very large portion of the Old Testament was given by inspiration of God.—Prof. MACLAREN.
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