Much is now denied or doubted, within
the Church itself, concerning the Book of Exodus, which was formerly
accepted with confidence by all Christians.But one thing can
neither be doubted nor denied. Jesus Christ did certainly treat this
book, taking it as He found it, as possessed of spiritual authority,
a sacred scripture. He taught His disciples to regard it thus, and
they did so.
Therefore, however widely His followers may differ about its date
and origin, they must admit the right of a Christian teacher to
treat this book, taking it as he finds it, as a sacred scripture and
invested with spiritual authority. It is the legitimate subject of
exposition in the Church.
Such work this volume strives, however imperfectly, to perform.
Its object is to edify in the first place, and also, but in the
second place, to inform. Nor has the author consciously shrunk from
saying what seemed to him proper to be said because the utterance
would be unwelcome, either to the latest critical theory, or to the
last sensational gospel of an hour.
But since controversy has not been sought, although exposition
has not been suppressed when it carried weapons, by far the greater
part of the volume appeals to all who accept their Bible as, in any
true sense, a gift from God.
No task is more difficult than to exhibit the Old Testament in
the light of the New, discovering the permanent in the evanescent,
and the spiritual in the form and type which it inhabited and
illuminated. This book is at least the result of a firm belief that
such a connection between the two Testaments does exist, and of a
patient endeavour to receive the edification offered by each
Scripture, rather than to force into it, and then extort from it,
what the expositor desires to find. Nor has it been supposed that by
allowing the imagination to assume, in sacred things, that rank as a
guide which reason holds in all other practical affairs, any honour
would be done to Him Who is called the Spirit of knowledge and
wisdom, but not of fancy and quaint conceits.
If such an attempt does, in any degree, prove successful and bear
fruit, this fact will be of the nature of a scientific
demonstration.
If this ancient Book of Exodus yields solid results to a sober
devotional exposition in the nineteenth Christian century, if it is
not an idle fancy that its teaching harmonises with the principles
and theology of the New Testament, and even demands the New
Testament as the true commentary upon the Old, what follows? How
comes it that the oak is potentially in the acorn, and the living
creature in the egg? No germ is a manufactured article: it is a part
of the system of the universe.