ANTECEDENTS OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY.

From the great central truth of our Lord's supernatural manifestation, we legitimately infer, as has been shown in a previous number, the probability of subsequent supernatural revelations, such as those recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and everywhere implied in the apostolic Epistles. With even greater certainty may we infer the existence of antecedent, preparatory revelations. Consider, for a moment, how much is implied in the great historic fact that the Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world, and that he certified to men his heavenly mission, as well by the supernatural character of his teaching as by the stupendous series of supernatural works which, he performed. It establishes at once the fundamental principle that supernatural interposition enters into the plan of the divine government; that it is not, as some would have us believe, a government of pure natural law, behind which the Creator hides himself forever, and through which alone his existence and attributes can be inferred; but rather a government administered in the interest of the rational intelligences whom he has made capable of having communion with him self, and to whom he holds the relation of a moral governor. If their wants require immediate manifestations of himself, outside of the laws of nature, such manifestations will be made, and their supernatural character certified to those who receive them. Since, moreover, the whole order of providence, as well as of nature, is " first the blade, then the car, after that the full corn in the car," we infer, naturally enough, that such a mighty supernatural manifestation as we have in the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, which is certainly " the full corn in the ear," must have been preceded by "the blade" and "the ear." More reasonable would it be to believe that the fields white for the harvest had been preceded by no seed-time, than that the way for the advent of the Son of God had not been prepared by previous supernatural revelations.

Then, again, it was not by chance that the Messiah appeared, not in Egypt in the days of Pharaoh, nor in Nineveh or Babylon or Greece or Rome, but among the Jewish people, who alone were prepared for his advent.

That a belief in the unity of God and in his infinite perfections, not to specify other particulars, was a necessary foundation for the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, all of which are overlaid by that of trinity in unity, is self-evident. Now, this belief was peculiar to the Jews, in contrast with all the other ancient nations; and it was held. moreover, not dimply as a speculative doctrine by a few philosophers, but in a practical way by the masses of the people, and that, often, in the face of bitter and long-continued persecution. No other example of a whole nation receiving and holding firmly this fundamental doctrine of religion existed in that age; and no adequate explanation of this grand fact has ever been given, except that it was brought about by a series of supernatural revelations, such as are recorded in the Old Testament. The attempt to account for it from the original peculiarity of the Hebrew mind¹ is simply an absurd expedient, adopted only to avoid the admission of the supernatural element in the history of the Israelitish people. Admit the historic reality of the divine revelations recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, and we see at once how the way for the Saviour's advent was prepared, and why he was of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. Deny the historic reality of these preparatory revelations, and we have a mystery, but not one of divine origin. It is simply a man-made mystery, created in the interest of those who have decided beforehand that the true supernatural is an impossibility, and that, accordingly, its existence anywhere in the line of human history must be stoutly denied in the face of all possible evidence.

But the impossibility of the attempt to dissever the revelations of the New Testament from the preparatory revelations of the Old appears most clearly when we consider the explicit declarations of our Saviour, and, after him, of his apostles, on this point. If we know anything whatever concerning the teachings of our Lord, we know that he constantly affirmed that he had come in accordance with the prophecies of the Old Testament. It is not necessary here to anticipate the question of the inspiration of the record. We need only assume (what we are abundantly warranted to do, as has been shown in previous numbers) that the evangelists were honest and competent men, and that they have faithfully reported the substance of our Lord's teaching. If there were in his discourses only here and there a remote allusion to the prophecies concerning him contained in the Hebrew scriptures, there might be some show of reason in the hypothesis that the disciples misapprehended their Master's meaning. But his declarations on this point are so numerous and explicit that such an explanation is not to be thought of for a moment. It was with two of them a matter of personal knowledge that, " beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself"²; and with all of them that he said, after his resurrection, in reference to his past teachings:" These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me."³ Notice that our Lord, in this last instance, refers, not to certain specific declarations, but to the broad current of his teachings. That in him were fulfilled the prophecies and types of the Old Testament appears in every variety of form in the writings of the New. The Hebrew scriptures constitute, so to speak, the warp into which the Saviour wove the web of his daily instructions. " Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."⁴ Here we have the shuttle of the New Testament flying in the warp of the Old under the Saviour's own hand, and lengthening out the gospel web from day to day. If, now, a stray thread or two of Hebrew prophecy had found its way into this warp, unlike all the rest in substance and color, we might, perhaps, attempt to dissect it out as some thing foreign and accidental. But we find, upon examination, that the warp itself is made up of Old Testament materials; and to dissever all these from our Lord's discourses would be to remove all the threads of the warp, and then the web itself would be gone. There are some who seem inclined to treat the New Testament with much respect, while they speak disparagingly of the Old. We should like to ask them whether they do or do not believe that Christ and his apostles claimed to stand on the platform of the Old Testament. Did any unbiased reader ever gain from the perusal of the New Testament any other idea than that Jesus of Nazareth came in accordance with a bright train of supernatural revelations, going before, and preparing the way for his advent? The answer is, No. This idea is so incorporated into the very substance of the New Testament that it must stand or fall with it.

But there is another and a deeper view of the unity of the plan of redemption. We find the Old Testament thickly sown with those great principles which underlie the gospel, and the removal of which would be the removal of its very foundations. Here we specify the following particulars:

1. The fallen condition of man, which is the substratum of the plan of redemption through Christ. From the opening chapters of Genesis we learn that alienation from God, with the extreme wickedness that necessarily accompanies it, is not the original condition of the race. Man's normal state, if we may so speak, is that of holy communion with God. In that state he was created; from that state he fell; and to that state it is the end of the gospel to restore him. " For this purpose the Son of God was manifested," says the bosom disciple, " that he might destroy the works of the devil."⁵ These are the very works described in the narrative under consideration, namely, the seduction of man from his allegiance to God, with the misery and death that followed. The primitive Hebrew narrative contains, then, the key to the plan of redemption. So it is plainly regarded by the writers of the New Testament. The apostle Paul makes the universality of man's fallen condition through the sin of Adam the platform on which is built the universality of the provisions of salvation through Christ. "As by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."⁶ " Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."⁷ How could the original transaction of the fall through the wiles of the devil, and the manifestation of God's Son to destroy the works of the devil, be more indissolubly bound together, as parts of one great whole, than in these words of an inspired apostle? It should be added that the Saviour himself recognizes unmistakably the primitive transaction in Eden, when he says of the devil:" He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."⁸ He was the first who uttered a lie in this world, and thus he is the father of it; and by lying he seduced the human race into sin, and thus made himself their murderer; for " the wages of sin is death," " and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

2. The Abrahamic covenant connects itself immediately and indissolubly with the mission and work of Christ. It was made with Abraham, not for himself and his posterity alone, but for all mankind:" In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."⁹ It was, moreover, purely spiritual in its character, the condition of its blessings being faith alone. Paul urges, with great force, the fact that this covenant was made with Abraham before his circumcision, lest any should say that it was conditioned, wholly or in part, upon a carnal ordinance. Having said that Abraham's faith was reckoned to him for righteousness, he raises the question:" How was it then reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed to them also: and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised."¹⁰ Words of immense significancy! Would that our modern ritualists, who are doting on rites and ceremonies, who seem to be unable to distinguish the outward sign from the inward spiritual thing which it shadows forth, and who practically exalt the letter above the spirit, might study and comprehend the deep and far-reaching force of the apostle's argument! Under the Old Testament the seal did not make the covenant valid; for the covenant existed many years before the seal was instituted. Faith was the only condition of Abraham's justification. Hence the apostle argues that the Gentiles who have Abraham's faith shall have Abraham's justification also, though they be uncircumcised. Upon the same broad and spiritual ground he further argues that the blessing of justification pertains not to the literal seed of Abraham, but to those who are his spiritual seed by virtue of possessing his faith:" Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations."¹¹ The historic fact that many nations literally descended from Abraham adumbrated the higher fact that he is the father of all who exercise his faith, and thus inherit his justification.

But again, if we look at the promise itself embodied in the Abrahamic covenant: " In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed," we find it to be the very substance of the gospel. So the apostle argues:" The scripture, fore seeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before [announced beforehand] the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed."¹² It was, in deed and in truth, an annunciation beforehand to Abraham of the gospel; for the incarnation and work of Christ are, according to the uniform representation of the New Testament, nothing else but the carrying out of the covenant made with Abraham — a covenant (1) made for all mankind, (2) conditioned on faith alone, (3) having Christ for its end and fulfilment. Here, then, we have another bond of connection between the Old Testament and the New, and a bond which attaches itself to the very sub stance of both.

But still further: While God has thus indissolubly linked to the incarnation of his Son this high transaction with Abraham, he has, at the same time, connected it with the first promise made to man in Eden, and thus with the fall of man through the agency of the devil. The promise in Eden was that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head; the promise to Abraham was that his seed, which is this very seed of the woman, should bless all the families of mankind. This blessing Jesus of Nazareth be stows by bruising the serpent's head, or, in the language of John, destroying the works of the devil. The two promises are, then, in their inmost nature, one and the same, and their fulfilment constitutes the work of Christ. Whoever has obtained a glimpse of this internal connection between the different parts of revelation, will never again think of separating the Old Testament from the New.

3. The Mosaic economy had its end in Christ. Its general scope is thus summed up by the apostle:" The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith."¹³ It is, then, to be judged not absolutely, but with reference to this its high end. The training to which it subjected the Israelitish people was severe; but, rebellious and stiff-necked as they were, and surrounded, moreover, by polytheism and idolatry, all its severity was necessary to fit them for their high office as the covenant people, through whom the gospel should afterwards be given to the world. The rites which it imposed were burdensome through their multiplicity; for the nation was then in its childhood and pupilage,'¹⁴ and needed to be treated accordingly. As to the objection, so much insisted upon by some, that the Mosaic institutions were exclusive in their character — a religion for one nation only, while all the other nations were left in ignorance — it can be answered in a summary way. The Mosaic economy was a partial, preparatory to a universal, dispensation. God's plan was to bring one nation into special relation to himself, to root out of it idolatry, and educate it by a series of divinely appointed institutions for the advent of the Son of God, and then to propagate the gospel from this nation as a centre throughout all the earth. It belongs to the objector to propose some better way. As well might he complain of the procedure of a military commander that, instead of spreading his army at the outset over a whole province, he concentrated it on one strong point. Let him wait patiently, and he will find that in gaining this point the commander gains the whole country. Looking at the Mosaic economy, then, with reference to its end, we find it inlaid with three institutions, each of which adumbrates the Messiah, and prepares the way for his ad vent. These are the prophetic, the kingly, and the priestly.

The prophetic institution consisted in an order of men divinely commissioned by God to reveal to the covenant people his will for their salvation. The point of special importance here is, that they were men addressing their fellow-men in God's name. From the blazing summit of Sinai God himself spake to the whole congregation. But this mode of communication they could not endure, and they besought him, through Moses, that it might be discontinued:" speak thou with us," they said, " and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die."¹⁵⁾ Of this request God approved; and in the promise which he gave in connection with it, he unfolded, on the side of divine revelation, the whole economy of redemption:" I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him."¹⁶ How exactly is the prophetical office of Christ here portrayed! He came in human nature, a man like his brethren to whom he was sent, and he spake to them all that the Father who sent him had commanded him. " My doctrine is not mine," said he, "but his that sent me."¹⁷ "He that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him."¹⁸ "All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you."¹⁹ But how did this promise of the Great Prophet to come in the latter day from among their brethren meet the wants of the generation who preferred through Moses the request that we are con sidering? We answer: the promise that the great antitype should be one of their brethren, contained in itself the pledge that God would hereafter adopt this mode of communicating his will to men in all the preparatory revelations which he should make. The coming of the Messiah in human nature was delayed for many centuries; but God sent as his fore runners a series of prophets, who not only foretold his advent, but typified his office in the fact that they were men sent by God to speak to their fellow-men. By this fundamental principle — that God would address man through man — the old and new dispensations are linked together as parts of one great whole.

The kingly office of the Messiah connects itself with that of the Old Testament in a special way. Not only did the headship given by God to David and his successors over the covenant people adumbrate the higher headship of Christ, but David had from God the promise, "Thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever";²⁰ a promise which could only be fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, "the seed of David according to the flesh," and which was so fulfilled in him, according to the express declaration of the New Testament: "The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end."²¹ It is true that the people were sharply rebuked for asking of God, through Samuel, a king, because the motives on which their request was founded were low and and unworthy, having their origin in an unbelieving and worldly spirit. Never the less God granted their petition, because it was his purpose to adumbrate in the kingly office thus established, that of him who is "King of kings and Lord of lords." The victorious might wherewith God endowed David, and his many interpositions in behalf of him and his successors on the throne, were anticipations and pledges of the all-conquering power of David's greater Son, to whom should be given dominion over all nations.²²

Of the priestly office, with the blood of the sacrifices connected with it, the very substance is the prefiguration of " the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."²³ By the stream of sacrificial blood which flowed from the Jewish altar was shadowed forth the great fundamental truth of redemption, that" without shedding of blood is no remission";²⁴ and by the continued flow of that stream from age to age was further indicated its own inefficiency to take away sin — the fact that it was not itself the expiation that human guilt demanded, but only a type of that expiation. So the writer to the Hebrews argues :" The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually, year by year, make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin."²⁵ Christ, on the contrary, offers but one sacrifice, because that has a perfect power of expiation:" Every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God."²⁶ If anything is fully taught in the New Testament, it is, (1) the sacrificial and propitiatory nature of our Lord's death — that he came " to give his life a ransom for many" (more literally, "a ransom instead of many")²⁷; that his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree"²⁸; that he " redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us";²⁹ that God "made him to be sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him;³⁰; and that God "hath set him forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission" [passing by] of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God, . . . . . . that he might be just, and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus"³¹; (2) that this sacrificial and propitiatory offering of himself on Calvary was adumbrated by the Aaronic priesthood, with its system of bloody offerings. If we receive the New Testament doc-

trine of our Lord's sacrificial death, then the divinely appointed priesthood of the Old Testament, with its sacrificial blood flowing from age to age, appears as a shadow indeed, but the shadow of a great and solemn reality. We have in the Old Testament the type, and in the New the great Anti type. Thus the inward, vital connection of the two parts of revelation appears in its full glory. But the moment we deny or explain away the sacrificial and propitiatory nature of our Lord's death, thus reducing its efficacy to the softening, subduing, and winning power which it exerts over the human heart, we make the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices a shadow, not of good things to come, but of a nonentity; and thus we violently disrupt the economy of the Old Testament from that of the New. Christ no longer fulfils in his own person the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices; for if these latter adumbrate anything, it is that of intercession between God and man through the offering of blood on man's behalf; just as the New Testament everywhere refers forgiveness of sin to the efficacy of Christ's blood.³²

Since, therefore, the Old Testament has so many and such vital connections with the New — connections not of external character merely, but which enter into the very substance of both; since its whole scope and aim is to pre pare the way for the Messiah, to adumbrate his offices, and to educate the covenant people for his coming, we need not wonder at the constant appeals which the Saviour and his apostles make to its pages. It is throughout a perpetual prophecy of the gospel, and so they manifestly regard it.

It would now be interesting to follow out historically the development in prophecy of the Messianic idea. We are able to give only the salient points of prophetic revelation, omit ting all minor details.

The original promise in Eden: "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 its heel,"³³ received in the wisdom of God a form admitting of indefinite expansion and development. It contained, and was intended to contain, in a germinal way, the whole future history of redemption. Its deep meaning is not to be measured by the little which our first parents could comprehend concerning it, but by the mind of God, who, in giving it, saw the end from the beginning. To their apprehension the curse may have fallen only on the literal serpent; but in the intention of God it came on him symbolically, while its real contents rested on the true author of the apostasy, "that old serpent which is the devil and Satan"³⁴ — that primitive murderer and liar, whose seed are all that are like him, and follow him in his persecution of the seed of the woman.³⁵ This seed of the woman, again, is Christ; not in his simple personality, but as the great head of God's king dom. It is Christ and his body, the church; or, if one prefer to say so, it is the church in Christ, her head. The promise foretells a relentless conflict between these two seeds, in which the seed of the serpent shall bruise the heel of the woman's seed, but never prevail against it, while the seed of the woman shall in the final issue bruise the serpent's head. The reader is requested to notice how absolutely generic this promise is. No time is specified. No single person is named, or any line of offspring. It is simply the seed of the woman.

Coming down, now, to Abraham's day, the same promise is renewed to him, with an important limitation:" In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."³⁶ Beyond doubt " all the nations " are to be blessed in the way specified in the original promise, by the bruising of the serpent's head; and this high office is now assigned to Abraham's seed, but still with no specification of a particular person.

According to the most probable interpretation of Jacob's prophetic words:" The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come" (or, " until he come unto whom it belongs." Compare Ezek. xxi. 27); "and unto him shall the gathering" (or, "the obedience") "of the people be,"³⁷ we have in them, for the first time, an intimation of a personal Redeemer of Judah's line, who is to be the great Pacificator (Shiloh), or the great King to whom dominion belongs, and who shall gather the nations to his standard. But, whatever doubt may rest on the mind of any one in respect to the true interpretation of these words, we have in the promise to Moses already noticed:" I will raise them up a prophet from their brethren like unto thee,"³⁸ a clear prediction of a personal Redeemer under the character of a great Prophet, who is to be, like Moses, the Leader of God's people, and the Mediator between them and God.

Passing on, now, to the time of David, we have the memorable promise of Nathan to David:" I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house to my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever."³⁹ In the words, " He shall build a house to my name," there is undoubtedly a reference to Solomon and the material house which he should erect on Moriah. But it is this house only as the visible centre of God's kingdom among men; and it is Solomon only as the next after David in a royal line which should reign over God's people forever. Notice that the promise, originally made to the seed of the woman as such, afterwards limited to the seed of Abraham, then to the seed of Judah, is now once more restricted to David's royal line. The seed of the woman, moreover, that is to crush the serpent's head, is invested with a kingly character, and as such it appears afterwards in the Psalms and the prophets. The king that sits on David's throne is in vested with universal dominion, and breaks his enemies in pieces with a rod of iron;⁴⁰ he has dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth; all kings fall down before him, and all nations serve him.⁴¹

His superhuman exaltation is intimated in such words as the following; " The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies my footstool "⁴²; " I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations; therefore shall the people praise thee forever and ever."⁴³ And, finally, the great truth that it is in one of David's descendants that these magnificent promises meet, is fully revealed to us in such predictions as the following:" Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be on his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonder, Counselor, mighty God, Father of eternity, Prince of peace. 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 forever"⁴⁴ "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and under standing, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." Under his dominion universal peace shall prevail, and the earth "be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."⁴⁵

Meanwhile, as the scroll of prophecy is gradually unrolled, offices and attributes are ascribed to this mighty Son of David which are utterly inconsistent with David's position in the theocracy, and to human appearance inconsistent with each other. The priestly office was by the law of Moses restricted to the family of Aaron, and no man of another tribe might presume to usurp its functions. For attempting to burn incense in the temple — an office which appertained to the priests alone, Uzziah was smitten with leprosy.⁴⁶ Yet this king of David's line is by a solemn oath made a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.⁴⁷ He " shall bear the glory, and sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne."⁴⁸ This mighty King, who sits at God's right hand, and at whose right hand the Lord stands to strike through kings in the day of his wrath,"⁴⁹ is yet oppressed and afflicted, brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. It pleases the Lord to bruise him, and to make his soul an offering for sin; he pours out his soul unto death, and is numbered with the transgressors, bears the sins of many, and makes intercession for the trans gressors.⁵⁰ The plot continually thickens, till it becomes to human view an inextricable maze. Yet when Jesus of Nazareth appears, all becomes plain. He unites in himself characters apparently the most incompatible. He is at once the King of kings and Lord of lords, and " the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world." All the types and prophecies of the Old Testament, and all the offices of the Mosaic economy — the prophetic, the kingly, and the priestly — find in him their end and their fulfilment. Faith in him is the key which opens all the intricate wards of Old Testament prophecy which otherwise remain shut to human apprehension; and just as the lock and the key are parts of one whole, so are the revelations of the Old Testament and the New.

Our remaining remarks will constitute a transition from the subject of revelation to that of the inspiration of the record. We have seen that the gospel is built on the plat form of the Old Testament — that it is, in truth, but the consummation of a connected series of divine revelations begun in Eden. It is a natural inference that the record of these revelations must have come to the covenant people with divine authority; and such an experience is fully war ranted by the uniform manner in which Christ and his apostles refer to the writings of the Old Testament. We have now in mind, not so much the express statements of the New Testament, like the celebrated passage:" All scripture is given by inspiration of God "⁵¹ and the apostle Peter's declaration:" For prophecy was not at any time given by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as moved by the Holy Ghost"⁵² — we have not so much in mind these express declarations as the reverential attitude which Christ and his apostles take towards the writings of the Hebrew scriptures, and the confidence with which they appeal to their doctrines and historic statements; in a word, to the manifest assumption which they everywhere make of their infallible authority. No unprejudiced man can read the New Testament without the profound conviction that its authors did thus receive the Old, and that herein they truthfully represented the position of Jesus himself. In this respect no distinction is made between one part of the Old Testament and another. The whole is received and referred to as a divinely authoritative record of God's dealings with men.

Some of the passages already quoted to show the inseparable connection between the Old Testament and the New, are equally pertinent to establish the divine authority ascribed by the Saviour and his apostles to the record. When, for example, the risen Jesus said:" 0 fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken," and then, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself"; and afterwards added:" These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me," he appeals to the record of ancient prophecies concerning himself as in vested with divine authority. So, also, in his question to the Pharisees:" What think ye of Christ? Whose son is is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord"⁵³ etc. The words " in spirit " are equivalent to " in the Holy Spirit." that is, under his guidance. Nor is there the shadow of a reason for supposing that the Saviour wishes to distinguish this Psalm from the Psalms as a whole. He simply refers to it as one of the declarations concerning the Messiah made, as are all the rest, " in spirit." Again, in answering the question of the Pharisees concerning the lawfulness of divorce, he says:" Have ye not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh," etc.⁵⁴ Here our Lord refers, first, to a historical incident in the Book of Genesis, combining the two records of the same;⁵⁵ secondly, to the divine interpretation of its import, making this authoritative for the relation of husband and wife.⁵⁶ The apostles follow in their Lord's footsteps. " These things," says John, " understood not his disciples at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him."⁵⁷ "Is there," asks Paul, " unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."⁵⁸ He is arguing concerning God's sovereignty in the distribution of his favors; and he sustains himself by an appeal to the divine record. It is useless to multiply quotations any further. The authors of several books of the Old Testament are unknown; but the record contained in them is never, for this reason, disparaged. All are put on a common basis of divine authority. " What saith the scripture? " With Christ and his apostles this is the end of controversy.

2) Luke xxiv. 27.

3) Luke xiiv. 44.

6) Rom. v. 18, 19.

7) 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.

8) John viii. 44.

9) Gen. xxii. 18.

10) Rom. iv. 10-18.

11) Rom. iv. 16, 17.

12) Gal. iii. 8.

13) Gal. iii 24.

14) Gal. iv. 1-3.

15) Ex. xx. 19.

16) Deut. xviii. 18.

17) John vii. 16.

18) John viii. 26.

19) John xv. 15.

21) Luke i. 32, 33.

22) See this subject discussed at large in the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1854, in the Article entitled:" The Relation of David's Family to the Messiah," pp. 306-328.

23) John i. 29.

24) Heb. ix 22.

25) Heb. x. 1-4.

26) Heb. x. 11, 12.

27) Matt. xx. 28; Mark x. 45.

28) 1 Pet. ii. 24.

29) Gal. iii. 13.

30) 2 Cor. v. 21.

33) Gen. iii. 15.

34) Rev. xx. 2.

35) John viii. 44.

37) Gen. xlix. 10.

38) Deut, xviii. 15, 18.

39) See the passage at large, 2 Sam. vii. 12-16.

41) Ps. lxxii.

42) Ps. cx. 1.

43) Ps. xlv. 17.

44) Isa. ix. 6, 7.

45) For the full description see Isa. xi. 1-9.

46) 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-21.

47) Ps. cx. 4.

48) Zech. vi. 13.

49) Ps. cx.

50) Isa. liii.

51) 2 Tim. iii. 16. So far as the doctrine of inspiration is concerned, it makes no difference whether we render with Calvin, De Wette, Wiesinger, and many others, as is done by our version:" All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable," etc.; or, after the Syriuc, Vulgate, Origen, Luther, and others (except that they take no notice of the καί):" All scripture given by inspiration of God is also profitable," etc. In the former case the apostle directly affirms the inspiration of all scripture, and adds that it is profitable, etc. In the latter, he assumes inspiration as an attribute of scripture, whence it naturally follows that it is also profitable. We say, assumes, for with a "Hebrew of the Hebrews" no distinction of scripture into inspired and uninspired could possibly have been thought of. It is of scripture as inspired that he makes the affirmation that it is also profitable. His object, Bays Huther, is to show "that the scriptures, as inspired, are also profitable (καί serves the office of strengthening)."

53) Matt. xxii. 42 seq.

54) Matt. xix. 4 seq.

55) Gen. i. 27; ii. 18-22.

56) Gen. ii. 23, 24.

57) John xii. 16.

58) Rom. ix. 14, 15.