1876 18-25 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,
AND THE ONLY SOURCE AT PRESENT AVAILABLE TO MAN OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE, AND THE WAY BY WHICH IT IS TO BE SECURED.
“Concerning Thy testimonies, I have known of old that Thou hast founded them for ever. Thy word is true from the beginning.”—(Psalm 119:152, 160.)
“Come hither, and hear the word of the Lord your God.”—(Jos. 3:9.)
“He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully: what is chaff (dreams) to the wheat?”—(Jer. 23:28.)
“When ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God”—(1 Thess. 2:13).
“The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”—(2 Peter 1:21.)
“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son.”—(Heb. 1:1).
“The sword of the Spirit is the word of God.”—(Eph. 6:17).
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”—(2 Tim. 3:16).
“Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed.”—(Prov. 13:13).
“Their root shall be as rottenness and their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”—(Isaiah 5:24).
Darwin and Huxley Refuted
A pamphlet entitled Science and Revelation is published by William Mullan of Belfast. It is by Dr. Porter, the Professor of Biblical Criticism in one of the Belfast Colleges. It reviews and answers “the theories of Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer.” It is a decidedly able and conclusive treatise in its particular department: a department which has become prominent and important in these days of scientific opposition to revelation. A few extracts will be profitable to the more observant and thoughtful reader.
“The teachings of scientists on matter and the material universe are not uniform; were they so they would have much greater weight. Nearly every scientific man has a theory of his own, which he propounds with all authority, not to say dogmatism; and it so happens that these theories are, for the most part, inconsistent with each other—and indeed, in some cases, mutually destructive. Democritus, a Greek sage, who lived about B.C. 400, propounded a theory of the structure and origin of the material universe, which he appears to have derived from Leucippus, its founder. It was substantially adopted by the Latin poet Lucretius, whose prime object in adopting it was thereby to banish from the mind of man all idea of a creating and superintending Deity. It has received its latest development or exposition in the address of Professor Tyndall before the meeting of the British Association in Belfast.
As this theory is now put forward in the name of science, we naturally ask—What are its scientific proofs? We cannot admit theories. They have no weight in our present critical investigation. And first—What proof is advanced that matter is eternal? There is none; and from the nature of the case there can be none. All that science can prove is that matter has existed so long as man has existed to observe it. We all admit this: and farther science cannot possibly go. To affirm that it is eternal is a pure assumption, which has no logical connection with observed facts. Herbert Spencer rightly says that the eternity, or self-existence, of matter is unthinkable; and he argues, with true philosophic instinct, that ‘the assertion that the universe is self-existent does not really carry us a step beyond the cognition of its present existence; and so leaves us with a mere restatement of the mystery.’ And, besides, while science cannot advance one step towards the proof of the eternity of the matter, some of the most eminent scientific men of the present age affirm that this atomic theory affords the strongest proof of the existence of a Creator. At the meeting of the British Association in 1873, Professor Clerk Maxwell said, ‘We are unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or any of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural.’
I do not profess to reconcile the discordant theories (of philosophers); nor is it necessary for my purpose, even were it possible. My sole object is to submit them to the test of scientific proof. As to the atoms themselves, they have never as yet been discovered. Scientists have searched for them; the highest powers of the microscope and the utmost skill of the chemist have been tried in vain. ‘Loschmidt, Stoney, and Sir William Thompson have sought to determine the size of the atoms, or rather to fix the limits between which their sizes lie,’ and they have failed. Their very existence, then, is a theory—a theory, too, which has no logical connection with any observed fact. And besides, the idea of an atom is inconceivable, or, as Herbert Spencer would say, it is unthinkable. To conceive of a piece of matter having necessarily, because it is matter, length and breadth, and yet being indivisible, is an absurdity. And if we adopt the view of Faraday, that atoms are “centres of force,” the difficulty remains. A centre of force must be either material or immaterial; if material, the absurdity is as before; if immaterial, then no aggregate of the immaterial could form the material universe. Science is thus completely at fault regarding these imaginary atoms.
And when we proceed to test the atomic theory in its development, difficulties and absurdities accumulate at every stage. It is held that atoms, whether eternal or “manufactured articles,” whether inert or gifted with love and hate, or possessing inherent potency, have arranged themselves by chance friction and spontaneous interaction, throughout the infinite past, into those forms of wondrous beauty and delicate and complicated mechanism which we now see in every part of the universe, and which appear to be guided by wise laws and adapted to wise ends. What is the scientific proof of this theory? There is none, and there can be none. No scientist professes to have seen atoms building up worlds. The nature of the theory places it beyond the range of science away in the infinite past. And farther, the theory of matter arranging itself spontaneously into systems governed by exact law, and organisms exhibiting the most exquisite design, is not only unsupported by scientific observation, but is opposed to the whole analogy of scientific observation. Spontaneous action is, as Huxley rightly says, action without a cause, which is unscientific and impossible. It is impossible to conceive of a change taking place without a cause, and action necessarily involves change, so that spontaneity in matter is an absurdity.
Tyndall himself is, in the end, forced to admit that the structure of the universe around us is an ‘insoluble mystery;’ and Huxley, after placing the dogma of atheistic materialism in its strongest light, says ‘The materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas.’ This with him is, of course, the acme of incredibility and absurdity. So I am content to leave the theory of atomic materialism in the position thus assigned to it.
Here again we see that the solution of the grand problem of the origin of the universe is beyond the range of science. And besides, the inferential teaching of science is not exhausted in this negative result. It reveals in nature everywhere the existence of force. However far its observations extend back, that force cannot be eliminated. It is involved in the movement of a grain of sand as fully as in the circling of the spheres; and if science here attempt to pass beyond the range of sense, and to theorise about force existing in atoms, we follow it and say—You are but shifting the mystery; and we press the natural question—What put the force in the atoms? Whence came it? Thus we drive the scientist back and back through every province of his own legitimate domain; we drive him back, too, through those regions of hazy theory and dim speculation, in which he loves to expatiate until, at last, by an inexorable logic, we compel him to admit an author of force—the Great First Cause.”
The Bible the Proof of Its Own Divine Origin
“Every thoughtful believer must have hailed with pleasure the determination to devote a portion of the Christadelphian to the proofs of the genuineness and authenticity of the Bible. The effort must prove highly interesting and instructive to many who have neither leisure nor opportunity for the careful study of the evidences themselves. One very important advantage to the reader is that the proofs will be presented apart from the errors with which many of the standard works upon the evidences abound. The value of this is beyond calculation.
“There are many earnest and thoughful men in the world who doubt the divine origin of the Bible, because they believe that it teaches such dogmas as “eternal torment,” “the natural immortality of man,” &c. These views are founded upon the expositions of the clergy, and must, therefore, be as false as the source from whence they are derived. As no amount of “external” evidence can prove a false doctrine to be true, it is almost out of place to present external evidence to such enquirers, and we can scarcely blame them for refusing credence to a book that they have been taught, erroneously, to regard as the source of these pernicious dogmas, which have held Christendom in abject mental and moral slavery for many centuries, and which are as revolting to their better feelings as they are opposed to all the deductions of their reason and experience. We can only regret that they have been so cruelly deceived, and strive to disseminate the truth more widely than ever, in the hope that it may catch the attention of sincere truth-seekers.
“In the search for truth, too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the necessity for honesty in the enquirer. It was into the “honest and good heart” (Luke 8:15) that the seed sown by the Great Teacher himself, fell, and in which it fructified. If we place this fact side by side with another statement made by Jesus to the Jews (John 7:17), “my doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me; if any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself”—we are shut up to the conclusion that it is impossible for a sincere and moral man, unless he be bewildered by the distracting clamour of the orthodox Babel, to search carefully and candidly through the Scriptures, without becoming convinced of their supernatural origin. The constant reading of the Bible is essential even to the believer. By that only can he keep ever vigorous within him the conviction of its divine authority, and, day by day, it will speak to him in tones of encouragement or reproof. Some have had short seasons of doubt, arising partly from forgetfulness of what they had learned (Heb. 2:1; 1 Cor. 15:2); and partly from distracting questions raised by some of their own brethren in the faith. But renewed application to the Word brought a sweet renewal of the hope that Paul describes (Heb. 6:19) as “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.”
“The strongest proofs for the divine origin of the Bible are those furnished in its own pages, and it was very happily urged in the introduction to this topic in the Christadelphian for January twelve months, that “The best way of attaining a thorough conviction of the authenticity and genuiness of the Scriptures, and of the divine character of their origin, is to read them constantly.” This is fortunate for the poor working man, whose limited means and leisure make it impossible for him to read the varied and extensive historical and critical works necessary to the successful study of the subject. He need be grateful to those whose abilities and opportunities enable them to condense and present, in a simple form, the results of such a course of study, as auxiliary evidence to that afforded by the book itself in the course of his daily reading; but the latter is sufficient of itself to inspire him with a calm assurance of the divine origin of the Scriptures, so that he may become more and more “grounded and settled,” and not easily “moved away from the hope of the gospel.”—(Col. 1:23.)
“As an illustration of this kind of proof, we have but to note the uniformity of testimony by the various books composing the Bible, to one grand scheme for the righteous government of the world by a divinely-appointed king, viz., Jesus Christ. This theme, like a golden thread, runs through and links together, in a manner altogether beyond human sagacity and skill, the various books from Genesis to Revelation, present in all, but shining out more brilliantly in some than in others. In the limits of this paper we can but mark the general outline of the subject, and leave the interested reader to fill it in at his own leisure.
“Genesis supplies the beginning of the thread in chap. 3:15: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This remarkable passage predicts a desperate struggle between a descendant of the woman and certain opposing forces prefigured by the “serpent,” the struggle ending in the destruction of the latter. We pass on to chap. 12:1, 2, 3: “Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great nation; and I will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” The last clause in this prophecy is a step in advance of chap. 3:15. We perceive now that the destroyer of the serpent-power was to descend from Abraham, for the prediction had special reference to an individual and not merely to the immediate descendants of the patriarch. This is evident from Gal. 3:16: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ.” This promise is repeated most emphatically in chap. 13:14, 17; 15.throughout; 17:4, 8, 19, 21; 18:18; 22:16–18. It is renewed to Isaac in chap. 26:2–5, and, through him, to Jacob, 28:3, 4, 13–15, and again to Jacob himself—(35:10–12).
“And now that we are fairly embarked and gliding down the stream of time, how rapidly the historic testimonies pass before us.
“Starting from the triple Fatherhood, we come to the initial and partial realisation of the promises in the rise and eventful career of the Jewish people, whose unparalleled history assign them a most important place in the grand scheme unfolding before our eyes. When groaning under the galling Egyptian yoke, they are delivered by Moses, himself a living prophecy of the future prophet and deliverer.—(Acts 3:22.) Then, by a series of triumphs, they establish themselves a powerful nation in Palestine for a time, under a theocracy, and a symbolic ritual, pointing, in almost every particular, to a great anti-typical deliverer. They bind themselves by solemn covenant to obey the voice of God, and, then, with a fickleness that characterises the whole of their subsequent career, turn their backs upon Him and cry out madly for a king from among themselves, after the fashion of the heathen nations by whom they were surrounded. They are allowed to have their own way. The permission was provisional merely, and never designed by the Deity to be an abdication of His kingly right. Doubtless, one great object was to teach the great lesson that men have been learning ever since, viz., that no merely human being can efficiently govern his fellows.
“We must allow many interesting particulars of this history to pass unnoticed as we move along—such as the fickleness and frequent backslidings of Israel; the misfortunes brought upon them by their own folly and wickedness, and not unfrequently by the wickedness of the men under whose rule they had voluntarily placed themselves; the long-suffering and forbearance of God towards them; and their ultimate fall as a nation and dispersion among the heathen. But we must linger over a few of the conspicuous facts and predictions which, like meteors gleaming across the gloom of Israel’s calamities, discover to us the unbroken thread of testimony that we are pursuing. Joshua, Judges, and Ruth—each a link in the historical chain—bring us to the books of Samuel. In Book I., chap. 8:7, Jehovah, speaking to Samuel, says of His people: “They have rejected me that I should not reign over them,” and, further (verse 9) bids the prophet “Protest solemnly unto them and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.” The tender solicitude shewn in these words is the more striking when viewed in the light of the subsequent history of Israel. Samuel denounces their ingratitude, and makes this remarkable appeal to their past experience of theocratic rule (chap. 12:11, 12): “And the Lord sent Zerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and ye dwelled safe. And when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against you, ye said unto me, Nay, but a king shall reign over us, when the Lord your God was your King.” It is evident from the rest of this deeply interesting chapter, that in spite of the atrocious ingratitude of the Jews, Jehovah could not be turned from His purpose of using them as the instruments of blessing to the world. See especially verse 22: “For the Lord will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake, because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His people.”
In the second book of Samuel a very remarkable prophecy is delivered.—(7:12–16.) It was spoken to David, King of Israel: “And when thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever; I will be His father and he shall be my son.” Although this prediction was partially realised in Solomon, it pointed beyond him to the “greater than Solomon,” “the Son of David,” who should occupy the throne of his Father for ever. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews applies the passage: “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” to Jesus.—(chap. 1:5.) In the first book of Kings, the kingdom of Israel, under a human sovereign, is seen in the zenith of its glory, and was, doubtless, then a grand type of the glorious reign of “The Branch,” the ruler whom Solomon himself, in certain respects, so nobly prefigured. The second brings the narrative down to the disastrous reign of Zedekiah, when the throne of David was overturned by the Babylonians. Ezekiel foretels that great calamity (chap. 21:25–27), and adds a splendid prophecy of the future restoration of the monarchy in the person of one who shall claim the throne as his right. The books of Chronicles, termed in the Septuagint “Paraleipomena,” the things that were left or omitted, while supplying many things omitted in prior narratives, corroborate the testimony already given. Thus, the throne of Israel is clearly defined to be “the throne of the Lord.”—(1 Chron. 28:5; 29:11, 23; 2 Chron. 13:8.) In 2 Chron. 7:17–22, another striking prediction occurs, and is now in course of fulfilment before our very eyes. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah add their weight to the previously-cited testimonies, by giving some very interesting particulars in Jewish history. “Job” treats of other matters than the kingdom, yet the sovereignty of Jehovah is clearly recognised in chap. 5:8–27; 9:4–13. Important truths, intimately bound up with the grand scheme before us, are clearly enunciated in this sublime work, but do not strictly come within the scope of this paper. And now the prospect widens, and passages bearing upon the kingship of Christ and the astounding results of his reign, crowd upon the vision. The whole of the second Psalm is a graphic description of events in the career of the future king of Israel, beginning with the conspiracy against his life by the Roman and Jewish authorities, and going forward until he sits as universal monarch upon Zion. Psalm 9. expatiates upon the glorious results which flow from the ruling of the world in righteousness by Jehovah in the person of His Son. So also Psalm 22:27, 28: “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and He is the governor among the nations.”
“In Psalm 48:1, 2, Jerusalem is recognised as the royal city; in the words used by Christ (Matt. 5:35), “it is the city of the Great King”
“The fulfilment of the promises made to the patriarchs is thus referred to in Psalm 72:17: “His (Messiah’s) name shall be continued as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in him, all nations shall call him blessed.” See also Psalm 89:26, 27, 28, 29: “He shall cry unto me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also, I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.” Psalm 110. entire. But space will not allow further reference to this wonderful book. Proverbs is a collection of aphorisms, yet it corroborates the testimony to the reign of Christ in such a statement as that of chap. 11:31: “Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner.” Ecclesiastes confirms, indirectly, what has gone before, by its recognition of man’s mortality and a future judgment, subjects closely related to the reign of Christ, but we must not stay to enlarge upon them here. The Song of Solomon is considered by many to be a figurative poem upon the Great King and his Bride. Others suppose it to be an oriental love song. The latter view does not contradict the general testimony, but the former harmonises beautifully with the entire Scriptures. We leave the discussion of this point to abler critics, and pass onward.
And now where shall we begin in our selections from the sublime writings of Isaiah. The profusion of testimonies to the reign of Jesus is absolutely bewildering. The rhetorical and poetical splendours of this book dazzle the mental vision, and the amazing revelations it unfolds enchants the reader, rendering it an unwelcome task to mar the massive harmony of the whole by making isolated selections. The glorious results of Messiah’s reign are thus depicted: “And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths, for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”—(chap. 2:2, 3, 4.) Messiah’s regal character is clearly announced: “The government shall be upon his shoulder.” “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end; upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.”—(chap. 9:6, 7.) “Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment, and a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”—(chap. 32:1, 2.) See also chaps. 11. and 12. entire; 24:23; 33:22: “For, the Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king—he will save us.”
E. CORKILL.
(To be continued.)