1876 553-558,

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 the 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).
The Existence of Evil and the Goodness of God
AN unknown friend submits, through a brother, the following proposition: “If God cannot compass good ends, without those means which produce evil, then that ‘cannot’ deprives Him of His claim to omnipotence. If He can do so, and is consequently omnipotent, then, by preferring to work out good by evil, He cannot be benevolent.”
The difficulty is one of terms and not of facts. The “cannot” in the case is wrongly placed in antagonism to omnipotence. God can do anything so far as the exercise of power is concerned: all power is with Him and there is no power that is not of Him. But this power is exercised subject to what, for want of a better phrase, may be called His moral attributes. He is faithful, for example; He “cannot” lie (Titus 1:2), but the impossibility does not conflict with omnipotence in the sense which omnipotence is affirmed of Him. He cannot deny Himself or be other than what He is: He cannot do a thing and not do it at the same time; but this impossibility is not inconsistent with His power to do any work of power He may choose to perform. He cannot make a world which shall never have existed after its having been made; but this is not inconsistent with His power to make anything He likes, which is the attribute of omnipotence. He cannot make a straight line that shall at the same time be a curve. There are impossibilities with Him, and yet His omnipotence in the correct sense of the term is none the less a fact. He cannot stultify Himself. He is a God of order: this is revealed; He cannot at the same time be a God of chaos. But He is none the less omnipotent: for omnipotence was never intended to affirm power to stultify Himself, but His ability to accomplish any work of power. His power is equal to anything He may design, but He cannot design and not design at the same time; yet He is none the less omnipotent, for His omnipotence was never intended to include absurdities, and is only made to do so in the hair-splitting of verbal quibblers who are bent on logical trifling rather than on the serious and candid ordering of facts and truth. The application of this to the particular proposition must be evident. “Good ends” is a very ambiguous term for such a precise proposition. Who is to be judge of what are such in the ultimate sense? Pigs would consider the filling of their troughs the highest of “good ends;” and there is a parallel to this in the thoughts of man, a class of whom are scripturally likened to these animals. A wise man, who has any capacity for profound thought, will waive the right and disclaim the ability to be judge of “good ends.” God, who gave us what little capacity we have, must be allowed to be the only judge of what “good ends” are, and of the way they are best to be achieved. If those “good ends,” as concerning His purpose with this world, involve the development of character on the basis of free agency, and if this development cannot take place without the subject being placed in evil circumstances, then His provision of those evil circumstances is part of His wisdom and kindness, and no evidence of want of omnipotence, for His omnipotence does not consist of doing a thing and not doing it at the same time. Finally, it is not for us to say He could not have compassed His “good ends” with the human race in some other way than the one adopted. Perhaps He could, it is presumptuous in us to argue the point: it is for us to accept the fact as it stands as evidence that the plan adopted is the best for the end in view.
“J.M.’S” Objections to the Bible
The second and third paragraphs in the lithographed tract by “J.M.,” referred to last month, are in reality one, and one answer will dispose of them both. In the first, he tells us that when he began to see man’s antiquity as a race, he set himself to “test whether they (the Scriptures) were really infallible, and it occurred to him that very few of the books themselves claim to be so.” We have already shown how entirely the antiquity of the human species (even if proved) fails to afford a reason for doubting the Scriptures, which deal only with what began six thousand years ago, and what must be admitted on mathematical grounds to have commenced only that length of time ago. We have only now to look at the lame results to which “J.M.” so easily allowed the alleged antiquity to guide him.
He might have unburdened himself of the fact that “very few of the books” of the Bible claim infallibility. If one of them does, and claims it for all, and that one is itself proved divine, the inspired character of the rest is as firmly established as if every one of them claimed that character. This is the state of the case. Christ, speaking of the Old Testament compilation as a whole (viz., “Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms.”—Luke 24:44), says, “The Scripture cannot be broken.” Christ rose from the dead, which is evidence that God spoke by him; consequently his endorsement of the “Old Testament” compilation is proof of the divinity of the books comprised in that compilation, even if there were no other proof, which there is in abundance.—(See Bradlaugh Discussion.)
Paul says the same thing in another way, and with a like result in logic. He reminds Timothy that from a child he had known the Scriptures—referring again to the Old Testament compilation, and concerning these Scriptures he says two things: 1.—That they are able to make wise unto salvation, (which, of itself, shows that in Paul’s estimation, they were divine): and 2.—That they are “given by inspiration and profitable,” &c., which is a precise formulation of the doctrine of their divinity. Now, Paul saw Christ after his resurrection and was commissioned by him as his apostle and ordained with the Spirit abundantly. Consequently what he wrote has all the authority of “a commandment of the Lord” as he claims.—(1 Cor. 14:37.) Therefore, his statement as to the Scriptures is proof of their divinity, notwithstanding that “very few of the books themselves” may claim it. For the demonstration of Paul’s case, see Bradlaugh Discussion.
It would have been better if “J.M.” had frankly avowed the notion that the Bible is a human composition, instead of trying to drag the Bible into an unnatural fellowship with his views.
But pursuing his process of test, “one of the first things that struck him” was that whereas the prophecy of Gen. 15:13, seems to require that Israel should have been afflicted in Egypt 400 years, they could not (according to his calculation) have been more than 140 years subject to that experience. The conclusion he evidently gathers from this is, that there was a failure in the fulfilment of the prophecy. Ought not this to strike him as a strange conclusion, even on the hypothesis that Moses was the sole and unassisted author of the books bearing his name? At the time that Moses wrote, the fulfilment of the prophecy was a matter of history. That is to say, Israel had been delivered from the affliction of the Egyptians; and Moses knew as a matter of fact how long that affliction had lasted. Consequently, it was in his power to make the prophecy, if the prophcy was his invention, to tally exactly with the facts. Can “J.M.” imagine that the exact and skilful writer of the Pentateuch, (apart now from all question of its divinity,) was as devoid of common discretion as to publish a confutation of its prophetic character by perpetrating a glaring discrepancy in a matter which was at the time a matter of history, known to all?
Even on the infidel hypothesis of the Bible, such a supposition is incredible. Even on that hypothesis, there must be agreement between the prophecy and the fulfilment in such a matter.
And there is. The prophecy is (Gen. 15:16), “In the fourth generation they shall come hither again.” And the fact is that Moses was the fourth from Levi who represented the first generation after Abraham. (Thus: 1.—Levi. 2.—Kohath. 3.—Amram. 4.—Moses.) In the fourth generation after Abraham, Israel was delivered. Here is a key to the meaning of that part of the same prophecy which says, “they shall afflict them 400 years.” The four hundred years are the measure of the time occupied by the four generations after Abraham. Consequently, “J.M.” errs in making them begin with the death of Joseph. They begin with the delivery of the prophecy to Abraham. They are an indication of the length of time that would elapse before the seed of Abraham would begin to exist as a free and independent nation. This time is described as a time during which they were to be “strangers in a land that is not theirs,” and relatively in a state of affliction. This reads as if it were applicable to Egypt only: but we must interpret it in harmony with the facts. They were not in Egypt 400 years. Part of the 400 years they were in Canaan, and they were strangers in Canaan as well as in Egypt. They sojourned “in the land of promise as in a strange country.”—(Heb. 11:9.) Abraham himself said he was a stranger and a sojourner with the children of Heth.—(Gen. 23:4.) The judgment of “that nation whom they should serve” is an episode after the 400 years should expire—how long after is not stated, but it proved to be 30 years after. With those facts in view, the statement of Moses, in Ex. 12:40, is capable of being understood without difficulty, thus: “Now the sojourning (that is, from the time of the promise to the exodus) of the children of Israel who dwelt (260 years) in Egypt was 430 years.”
Authenticity of the New Testament
(Continued from page 510.)
The Apocalypse
“EUSEBIUS speaks of the book of Revelations in a very peculiar manner—perhaps a book universally received, or one altogether spurious. Not so, however, did the second century judge. Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, near Laodicea, the contemporary of the apostle John, received and used this book.—(Andreas, in Apoc.)
“Justin Martyr, before the middle of the second century, held his contention with Trypho, the Jew, at Ephesus, where John had been living thirty or thirty-five years before. He says that the Revelation had been given to ‘John, one of the twelve apostles of Christ.’ Irenæus, so closely connected as he had been with the immediate disciples of John, gives a similar testimony: he even tells us when John saw the Revelation, almost, he says, in his own days, about the end of the reign of Domitian.—(l. v. c. 30, §3.) As to the true reading of a passage, he refers to the information which he had received from those who had known John face to face. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in the second century, wrote a book on the Revelation of John.—(Euseb. l. iv. 26.) All this evidence is more or less connected with the very region of the seven churches of Asia, to whom the book was addressed.
“In Egypt, we have the testimony of Clement of Alexandria (Strom., pp. 207, 667), and, after him, of Origen. In North Africa, we have Tertullian (De Prœs., c. 33), and, at a little later time, we have (at Rome probably) Hippolytus.—(Opp., p. 18.) There was thus the united testimony of the East and West.
“Caius, a Roman Presbyter of the end of the second century, is said (Euseb. l. iii. 28) to have rejected this book; but this could have no weight against such evidence. Dionysius of Alexandria, in the middle of the third century, in opposing the doctrine of the millennial reign of Christ (Euseb. l. vii. 24), chose to ascribe this book to John the Presbyter and not to the apostle, but still he elsewhere uses it as an authority.—(Euseb. l. vii. 10.) The growing opposition to Millenarianism led to an acquiescence in the view which regarded this book as non-apostolic; hence, probably, the peculiar language employed by Eusebius. Of course we shall adhere to the contemporary evidence which ascribes this book to the beloved disciple, instead of following mere arbitrary conjectures.
“Indeed, it may be observed that there is perhaps no book of the New Testament of which we have such clear, ample and numerous testimonies in the second century as we have in favour of the Apocalypse. And the more closely the witnesses were themselves connected with the apostle John (as was the case with Irenæus), the more full and explicit was their testimony. That doubts should prevail in after ages, must have originated either in ignorance of the earlier testimony or else from some supposed intuition as to what an apostle ought to have written. The objections raised on the ground of internal style, &c., can weigh nothing against the actual evidence. It is in vain to argue a priori that John could not have written this book when we have the evidence of several competent witnesses that he did write it.
Results of Evidence
“I have now discussed all the books of the New Testament, and to this I may add, that if I were to investigate other remains of antiquity, we could rarely find one tenth part of the evidence for works undoubtedly genuine: and even this evidence is often only found after intervals much greater than that from the apostolic age to the end of the second century.
“Historic evidence embraces a much wider range than that of eye witnesses. Thus we do not in the slightest degree doubt the facts which Bede mentions in his history as occurring a century and a half, or two centuries before the time when he wrote. We conclude that he made due enquiries of those who could inform him of what had taken place before his time. A person who takes pains may learn much orally on good authority as to past events. I can well remember the interest with which, when a child, I listened to accounts of the Scotch rebellion, in 1745, under Prince Charles Edward Stuart: and these things were told me not on report, but by an eye-witness. Things thus learned (as Irenæus says) grow with us; so that the whole of the rebellion would have been a history in my mind, even if I had never read a word on the subject. This is wholly different from hearsay report. And observe that this period of 106 years, is as great as that between the apostolic age, and the time when Origen had arrived at man’s estate. A very few lives may continue testimony for a much longer period. In the popedom of Sixtus V. (1585–90) was born Giovanni-Battista Altieri. When very old he became Pope in 1670, under the name of Clement X. He died in 1676. Now, in March, 1846, I visited at Rome, the convent of Santa Francesca Romana. The abbess of this convent was a princess of the Altieri family, then aged almost 100. This abbess had known several in her own family, very aged, of course, when she was young, who had been acquainted with their kinsman, Clement X. In conversing with the old abbess, about these things, it seemed as if I was transported back two centuries and more. Here were links of connection that carried me back into the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Two hundred and fifty years carry us from the time of Paul to that of Eusebius—the extreme interval over which our enquiries have been extended.
“Has not, then, the requirement of the rule of evidence laid down by Augustine, been fully met? We can show that a successive series of writers from the age immediately subsequent to that of the apostles, have mentioned, or used (and in general extensively) the books of the New Testament. And if with regard to some, such as the Epistle of James and the Second Epistle of Peter, the indications are less frequent, we have only to enquire whether they are not sufficient? As to the books in general, the evidence is so cumulative, that nothing more attested is presented to our notice.”
“I have indicated the evidence on many points, without stating it at length: this has only been, however, the case when the facts are unquestioned. I have omitted vast masses of evidence as to many of the books, not because it is not both good and valuable, but because a few unquestionable witnesses sufficed to prove the points. I have also passed by many statements which are often brought forward as evidence, because of some difficulty or doubt which may attach itself to these testimonies. An advocate may easily invalidate the force of his case by adding weak or doubtful evidence to that which is beyond exception. Cavils may be raised against that which is weak, which will undermine in the thoughts of others that which is strong. Harm has often been done to Christian evidence by referring to writers for that which their works do not contain, except by doubtful interpretations.
“Here then we have plain historic reasons for accepting the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, as the genuine works of eight persons—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter and Jude. But will this evidence apply to these books alone. I asked why do we receive the acts of the Apostles and reject the acts of Paul and Thecla? I have answered the former part of the enquiry. I will now briefly reply to the second. Because the acts of Paul and Thecla, though written by an Asiatic Presbyter, who had known Paul, was never received by contemporary Christians, and those of the age immediately subsequent, as an authentic history, and farther, as we learn from Tertullian and Jerome, the author of the book was excluded by the apostle John from his office as Presbyter for having written it.
“And as to other early writings, though we may find occasionally one or two who use them and cite them, yet this is the rare exception; it is as much a matter of individual opinion as it is when we now find a Protestant who believes in the Divine authority of some book of the Apocrypha.
“But if this be the evidence in favour of the New Testament books, what is that which can be brought to meet it? Should we not hear both sides? THERE IS NO COUNTER EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. Surmises and hinted doubts are all that can be brought to meet the united testimony of the early Christian Church, scattered in many regions, yet testifying to the transmission of the same books. But might not this common testimony be only a tradition? If tradition be used in an indefinite sense, then I say, certainly not. For this testimony goes back so far as to exclude the lapse of time needful to give birth to indefinite tradition. And besides, the tradition of something to be propagated by mere oral report is wholly different from the account which is received relative to a monument inscribed with a record, or a book which claims (as do Paul’s epistles) to be written by any well-known individual. The received account then becomes a sort of public consent to the recorded inscription, whatever it be.
“Those who seek to invalidate evidence by means of surmises, represent ordinary minds as incapable of nicely balancing such points. They say that without certain habits of study and mental training, we cannot do this. But is the allegation true? Can it be applied generally? Certainly we so act as if we thought that minds in general are capable of appreciating evidence, when placed before them intelligibly. We do not seek for profound scholars or men of most acute intellect, as if the facts in question in judicial enquiries could only be determined by such. And though we sometimes find a brainless juryman, incapable of comprehending evidence, yet this does not prevent our considering that men in general are competent to weigh testimony to facts. Mental training and experience of a particular kind are certainly necessary to enable anyone so to investigate facts and to arrange the evidence on which they rest as to present them intelligibly before others; but this is done so for the very purpose of putting them in the possession of the evidence which enables them to grasp the facts as such.
“It has been said that the investigation of Christian evidence is on the whole unsatisfactory, because the point to which it is intended to lead the enquiry is known beforehand. This objection is very much in accordance with the habit of mind which loves a considerable degree of uncertainty, and which wishes to make the first elements of truth a mere field for speculation.
“But if this objection be good, will it not apply to other subjects also? For instance, in mathematical studies, we know very well as soon as a theorem is enunciated what the point is which the teacher intends to prove. We are not instructed how to demonstrate that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, in order that this should afterwards be in our minds a debateable question; but we learn the demonstration that this may henceforth be held as an established and unquestionable fact. Just so is it as to the evidence for the records of our religion. We do not prove the genuineness of the New Testament books on any grounds of mere opinion, so that what seems established to-day may be overthrown to-morrow, but we demonstrate it by evidence, which loses no part of its value by lapse of time, any more than time can weaken the force of a mathematical demonstration.”
(To be continued.)