Chapter II: Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine Revelation (3)

Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 43-49—“The Deuteronomic law was so
short that Shaphan could read it aloud before the king (_2 K.
22:10_) and the king could read ‘the whole of it’ before the
people (_23:2_); compare the reading of the Pentateuch for a whole
week (_Neh. 8:2-18_). It was in the form of a covenant; it was
distinguished by curses; it was an expansion and modification,
fully within the legitimate province of the prophet, of a Torah of
Moses codified from the traditional form of at least a century
before. Such a Torah existed, was attributed to Moses, and is now
incorporated as ‘the book of the covenant’ in _Exodus 20_ to _24_.
The year 620 is therefore the _terminus a quo_ of Deuteronomy. The
date of the priestly code is 444 B. C.” Sanday, Bampton Lectures
for 1893, grants “(1) the presence in the Pentateuch of a
considerable element which in its present shape is held by many to
be not earlier than the captivity; (2) the composition of the book
of Deuteronomy, not long, or at least not very long, before its
promulgation by king Josiah in the year 621, which thus becomes a
pivot-date in the history of Hebrew literature.”

(_g_) From references in the prophets Hosea (B. C. 743-737) and Amos (759-745) to a course of divine teaching and revelation extending far back of their day.

_Hosea 8:12—_“I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law”;
here is asserted the existence prior to the time of the prophet,
not only of a law, but of a written law. All critics admit the
book of Hosea to be a genuine production of the prophet, dating
from the eighth century B. C.; see Green, in Presb. Rev.,
1886:585-608. _Amos 2:4—_“they have rejected the law of Jehovah,
and have not kept his statutes”; here is proof that, more than a
century before the finding of Deuteronomy in the temple, Israel
was acquainted with God’s law. Fisher, Nature and Method of
Revelation, 26, 27—“The lofty plane reached by the prophets was
not reached at a single bound.... There must have been a tap-root
extending far down into the earth.” Kurtz remarks that “the later
books of the O. T. would be a tree without roots, if the
composition of the Pentateuch were transferred to a later period
of Hebrew history.” If we substitute for the word “Pentateuch” the
words “Book of the covenant,” we may assent to this dictum of
Kurtz. There is sufficient evidence that, before the times of
Hosea and Amos, Israel possessed a written law—the law embraced in
_Exodus 20-24_—but the Pentateuch as we now have it, including
Leviticus, seems to date no further back than the time of
Jeremiah, 445 B. C. The Levitical law however was only the
codification of statutes and customs whose origin lay far back in
the past and which were believed to be only the natural expansion
of the principles of Mosaic legislation.

Leathes, Structure of O. T., 54—“Zeal for the restoration of the
temple after the exile implied that it had long before been the
centre of the national polity, that there had been a ritual and a
law before the exile.” Present Day Tracts, 3:52—Levitical
institutions could not have been first established by David. It is
inconceivable that he “could have taken a whole tribe, and no
trace remain of so revolutionary a measure as the dispossessing
them of their property to make them ministers of religion.” James
Robertson, Early History of Israel: “The varied literature of
850-750 B. C. implies the existence of reading and writing for
some time before. Amos and Hosea hold, for the period succeeding
Moses, the same scheme of history which modern critics pronounce
late and unhistorical. The eighth century B. C. was a time of
broad historic day, when Israel had a definite account to give of
itself and of its history. The critics appeal to the prophets, but
they reject the prophets when these tell us that other teachers
taught the same truth before them, and when they declare that
their nation had been taught a better religion and had declined
from it, in other words, that there had been law long before their
day. The kings did not _give law_. The priests _presupposed_ it.
There must have been a formal system of law much earlier than the
critics admit, and also an earlier reference in their worship to
the great events which made them a separate people.” And Dillman
goes yet further back and declares that the entire work of Moses
presupposes “a preparatory stage of higher religion in Abraham.”

(_h_) From the repeated assertions of Scripture that Moses himself wrote a law for his people, confirmed as these are by evidence of literary and legislative activity in other nations far antedating his time.

_Ex. 24:4—_“And Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah”;
_34:27—_“And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for
after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee
and with Israel”; _Num. 33:2—_“And Moses wrote their goings out
according to their journeys by the commandment of Jehovah”; _Deut.
31:9—_“And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests
the sons of Levi, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah,
and unto all the elders of Israel”; _22—_“So Moses wrote this song
the same day, and taught it the children of Israel”; _24-26—_“And
it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words
of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses
commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of
Jehovah, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it by the side
of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be
there for a witness against thee.” The law here mentioned may
possibly be only “the book of the covenant”_ (Ex. 20-24)_, and the
speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy may have been orally handed down.
But the fact that Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians”_ (Acts 7:22)_, together with the fact that the art of
writing was known in Egypt for many hundred years before his time,
make it more probable that a larger portion of the Pentateuch was
of his own composition.

Kenyon, in Hastings’ Dict., art.: Writing, dates the Proverbs of
Ptah-hotep, the first recorded literary composition in Egypt, at
3580-3536 B. C., and asserts the free use of writing among the
Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia as early as 4000 B. C. The
statutes of Hammurabi king of Babylon compare for extent with
those of Leviticus, yet they date back to the time of Abraham,
2200 B. C.,—indeed Hammurabi is now regarded by many as the
Amraphel of _Gen. 14:1_. Yet these statutes antedate Moses by 700
years. It is interesting to observe that Hammurabi professes to
have received his statutes directly from the Sun-god of Sippar,
his capital city. See translation by Winckler, in Der alte Orient,
97; Johns, The Oldest Code of Laws; Kelso, in Princeton Theol.
Rev., July, 1905:399-412—Facts “authenticate the traditional date
of the Book of the Covenant, overthrow the formula Prophets and
Law, restore the old order Law and Prophets, and put into
historical perspective the tradition that Moses was the author of
the Sinaitic legislation.”

As the controversy with regard to the genuineness of the Old Testament books has turned of late upon the claims of the Higher Criticism in general, and upon the claims of the Pentateuch in particular, we subjoin separate notes upon these subjects.

_The Higher Criticism in general._ Higher Criticism does not mean
criticism in any invidious sense, any more than Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason was an unfavorable or destructive examination. It is
merely a dispassionate investigation of the authorship, date and
purpose of Scripture books, in the light of their composition,
style and internal characteristics. As the Lower Criticism is a
text-critique, the Higher Criticism is a structure-critique. A
bright Frenchman described a literary critic as one who rips open
the doll to get at the sawdust there is in it. This can be done
with a sceptical and hostile spirit, and there can be little doubt
that some of the higher critics of the Old Testament have begun
their studies with prepossessions against the supernatural, which
have vitiated all their conclusions. These presuppositions are
often unconscious, but none the less influential. When Bishop
Colenso examined the Pentateuch and Joshua, he disclaimed any
intention of assailing the miraculous narratives as such; as if he
had said: “My dear little fish, you need not fear me; I do not
wish to catch you; I only intend to drain the pond in which you
live.” To many scholars the waters at present seem very low in the
Hexateuch and indeed throughout the whole Old Testament.

Shakespeare made over and incorporated many old Chronicles of
Plutarch and Holinshed, and many Italian tales and early tragedies
of other writers; but Pericles and Titus Andronicus still pass
current under the name of Shakespeare. We speak even now of
“Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar,” although of its twenty-seven editions
the last fourteen have been published since his death, and more of
it has been written by other editors than Gesenius ever wrote
himself. We speak of “Webster’s Dictionary,” though there are in
the “Unabridged” thousands of words and definitions that Webster
never saw. Francis Brown: “A modern writer masters older records
and writes a wholly new book. Not so with eastern historians. The
latest comer, as Renan says, ‘absorbs his predecessors without
assimilating them, so that the most recent has in its belly the
fragments of the previous works in a raw state.’ The Diatessaron
of Tatian is a parallel to the composite structure of the O. T.
books. One passage yields the following: _Mat. 21:12a_; _John
2:14a_; _Mat. 21:12b_; _John 2:14b, 15_; _Mat. 21:12c, 13_; _John
2:16_; _Mark 11:16_; _John 2:17-22_; all succeeding each other
without a break.” Gore, Lux Mundi, 353—“There is nothing
materially untruthful, though there is something uncritical, in
attributing the whole legislation to Moses acting under the divine
command. It would be only of a piece with the attribution of the
collection of Psalms to David, and of Proverbs to Solomon.”

The opponents of the Higher Criticism have much to say in reply.
Sayce, Early History of the Hebrews, holds that the early chapters
of Genesis were copied from Babylonian sources, but he insists
upon a Mosaic or pre-Mosaic date for the copying. Hilprecht
however declares that the monotheistic faith of Israel could never
have proceeded “from the Babylonian mountain of gods—that
charnel-house full of corruption and dead men’s bones.” Bissell,
Genesis Printed in Colors, Introd., iv—“It is improbable that so
many documentary histories existed so early, or if existing that
the compiler should have attempted to combine them. Strange that
the earlier should be J and should use the word ‘Jehovah,’ while
the later P should use the word ‘Elohim,’ when ‘Jehovah’ would
have far better suited the Priests’ Code.... xiii—The Babylonian
tablets contain in a continuous narrative the more prominent facts
of both the alleged Elohistic and Jehovistic sections of Genesis,
and present them mainly in the Biblical order. Several hundred
years before Moses what the critics call _two_ were already _one_.
It is absurd to say that the unity was due to a redactor at the
period of the exile, 444 B. C. He who believes that God revealed
himself to primitive man as one God, will see in the Akkadian
story a polytheistic corruption of the original monotheistic
account.” We must not estimate the antiquity of a pair of boots by
the last patch which the cobbler has added; nor must we estimate
the antiquity of a Scripture book by the glosses and explanations
added by later editors. As the London Spectator remarks on the
Homeric problem: “It is as impossible that a first-rate poem or
work of art should be produced without a great master-mind which
first conceives the whole, as that a fine living bull should be
developed out of beef-sausages.” As we shall proceed to show,
however, these utterances overestimate the unity of the Pentateuch
and ignore some striking evidences of its gradual growth and
composite structure.

_The Authorship of the Pentateuch in particular._ Recent critics,
especially Kuenen and Robertson Smith, have maintained that the
Pentateuch is Mosaic only in the sense of being a gradually
growing body of traditional law, which was codified as late as the
time of Ezekiel, and, as the development of the spirit and
teachings of the great law-giver, was called by a legal fiction
after the name of Moses and was attributed to him. The actual
order of composition is therefore: (1) Book of the Covenant
(_Exodus 20-23_); (2) Deuteronomy; (3) Leviticus. Among the
reasons assigned for this view are the facts (_a_) that
Deuteronomy ends with an account of Moses’ death, and therefore
could not have been written by Moses; (_b_) that in Leviticus
Levites are mere servants to the priests, while in Deuteronomy the
priests are officiating Levites, or, in other words, all the
Levites are priests; (_c_) that the books of Judges and of 1
Samuel, with their record of sacrifices offered in many places,
give no evidence that either Samuel or the nation of Israel had
any knowledge of a law confining worship to a local sanctuary. See
Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel; Wellhausen, Geschichte
Israels, Band 1; and art.: Israel, in Encyc. Brit., 13:398, 399,
415; W. Robertson Smith, O. T. in Jewish Church, 306, 386, and
Prophets of Israel; Hastings, Bible Dict., arts.: Deuteronomy,
Hexateuch, and Canon of the O. T.

It has been urged in reply, (1) that Moses may have written, not
autographically, but through a scribe (perhaps Joshua), and that
this scribe may have completed the history in Deuteronomy with the
account of Moses’ death; (2) that Ezra or subsequent prophets may
have subjected the whole Pentateuch to recension, and may have
added explanatory notes; (3) that documents of previous ages may
have been incorporated, in course of its composition by Moses, or
subsequently by his successors; (4) that the apparent lack of
distinction between the different classes of Levites in
Deuteronomy may be explained by the fact that, while Leviticus was
written with exact detail for the priests, Deuteronomy is the
record of a brief general and oral summary of the law, addressed
to the people at large and therefore naturally mentioning the
clergy as a whole; (5) that the silence of the book of Judges as
to the Mosaic ritual may be explained by the design of the book to
describe only general history, and by the probability that at the
tabernacle a ritual was observed of which the people in general
were ignorant. Sacrifices in other places only accompanied special
divine manifestations which made the recipient temporarily a
priest. Even if it were proved that the law with regard to a
central sanctuary was not observed, it would not show that the law
did not exist, any more than violation of the second commandment
by Solomon proves his ignorance of the decalogue, or the mediæval
neglect of the N. T. by the Roman church proves that the N. T. did
not then exist. We cannot argue that “where there was
transgression, there was no law” (Watts, New Apologetic, 83, and
The Newer Criticism).

In the light of recent research, however, we cannot regard these
replies as satisfactory. Woods, in his article on the Hexateuch,
Hastings’ Dictionary, 2:365, presents a moderate statement of the
results of the higher criticism which commends itself to us as
more trustworthy. He calls it a theory of stratification, and
holds that “certain more or less independent documents, dealing
largely with the same series of events, were composed at different
periods, or, at any rate, under different auspices, and were
afterwards combined, so that our present Hexateuch, which means
our Pentateuch with the addition of Joshua, contains these several
different literary strata.... The main grounds for accepting this
hypothesis of stratification are (1) that the various literary
pieces, with very few exceptions, will be found on examination to
arrange themselves by common characteristics into comparatively
few groups; (2) that an original consecution of narrative may be
frequently traced between what in their present form are isolated
fragments.

“This will be better understood by the following illustration. Let
us suppose a problem of this kind: Given a patchwork quilt,
explain the character of the original pieces out of which the bits
of stuff composing the quilt were cut. First, we notice that,
however well the colors may blend, however nice and complete the
whole may look, many of the adjoining pieces do not agree in
material, texture, pattern, color, or the like. Ergo, they have
been made up out of very different pieces of stuff.... But suppose
we further discover that many of the bits, though now separated,
are like one another in material, texture, etc., we may conjecture
that these have been cut out of one piece. But we shall prove this
beyond reasonable doubt if we find that several bits when unpicked
fit together, so that the pattern of one is continued in the
other; and, moreover, that if all of like character are sorted
out, they form, say, four groups, each of which was evidently once
a single piece of stuff, though parts of each are found missing,
because, no doubt, they have not been required to make the whole.
But we make the analogy of the Hexateuch even closer, if we
further suppose that in certain parts of the quilt the bits
belonging to, say, two of these groups are so combined as to form
a subsidiary pattern within the larger pattern of the whole quilt,
and had evidently been sewed together before being connected with
other parts of the quilt; and we may make it even closer still, if
we suppose that, besides the more important bits of stuff, smaller
embellishments, borderings, and the like, had been added so as to
improve the general effect of the whole.”

The author of this article goes on to point out three main
portions of the Hexateuch which essentially differ from each
other. There are three distinct codes: the Covenant code (C—_Ex.
20:22_ to _23:33_, and _24:3-8_), the Deuteronomic code (D), and
the Priestly code (P). These codes have peculiar relations to the
narrative portions of the Hexateuch. In Genesis, for example, “the
greater part of the book is divided into groups of longer or
shorter pieces, generally paragraphs or chapters, distinguished
respectively by the almost exclusive use of Elohim or Jehovah as
the name of God.” Let us call these portions J and E. But we find
such close affinities between C and JE, that we may regard them as
substantially one. “We shall find that the larger part of the
narratives, as distinct from the laws, of Exodus and Numbers
belong to JE; whereas, with special exceptions, the legal portions
belong to P. In the last chapters of Deuteronomy and in the whole
of Joshua we find elements of JE. In the latter book we also find
elements which connect it with D.

“It should be observed that not only do we find here and there
_separate pieces_ in the Hexateuch, shown by their characters to
belong to these three sources, JE, D, and P, but the pieces will
often be found connected together by an obvious continuity of
subject when pieced together, like the bits of patchwork in the
illustration with which we started. For example, if we read
continuously _Gen. 11:27-33_; _12:4b, 5_; _13:6a, 11b, 12a_;
_16:1a, 3, 15, 16_; _17_; _19:29_; _21:1a, 2b-5_; _23_;
_25:7-11a_—passages mainly, on other grounds, attributed to P, we
get an almost continuous and complete, though very concise,
account of Abraham’s life.” We may concede the substantial
correctness of the view thus propounded. It simply shows God’s
actual method in making up the record of his revelation. We may
add that any scholar who grants that Moses did not himself write
the account of his own death and burial in the last chapter of
Deuteronomy, or who recognizes two differing accounts of creation
in _Genesis 1_ and _2_, has already begun an analysis of the
Pentateuch and has accepted the essential principles of the higher
criticism.

In addition to the literature already referred to mention may also
be made of Driver’s Introd. to O. T., 118-150, and Deuteronomy,
Introd.; W. R. Harper, in Hebraica, Oct.-Dec. 1888, and W. H.
Green’s reply in Hebraica. Jan.-Apr. 1889; also Green, The Unity
of the Book of Genesis, Moses and the Prophets, Hebrew Feasts, and
Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch; with articles by Green in
Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882 and Oct. 1886; Howard Osgood, in Essays on
Pentateuchal Criticism, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1888, and July,
1893; Watts, The Newer Criticism, and New Apologetic, 83; Presb.
Rev., arts. by H. P. Smith, April, 1882, and by F. L. Patton,
1883:341-410; Bib. Sac., April, 1882:291-344, and by G. F. Wright,
July, 1898:515-525; Brit. Quar., July, 1881:123; Jan.
1884:138-143; Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 373-385; Stebbins, A
Study in the Pentateuch; Bissell, Historic Origin of the Bible,
277-342, and The Pentateuch, its Authorship and Structure;
Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 180-216, and The
Veracity of the Hexateuch; Murray, Origin and Growth of the
Psalms, 58; Payne-Smith, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 15;
Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Kurtz, Hist. Old Covenant, 1:46;
Perowne, in Contemp. Rev., Jan. and Feb. 1888; Chambers, Moses and
his Recent Critics; Terry, Moses and the Prophets; Davis,
Dictionary of the Bible, art.: Pentateuch; Willis J. Beecher, The
Prophets and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 326-329.

II. Credibility of the Writers of the Scriptures.

We shall attempt to prove this only of the writers of the gospels; for if they are credible witnesses, the credibility of the Old Testament, to which they bore testimony, follows as a matter of course.

1. _They are capable or competent witnesses_,—that is, they possessed actual knowledge with regard to the facts they professed to relate. (_a_) They had opportunities of observation and inquiry. (_b_) They were men of sobriety and discernment, and could not have been themselves deceived. (_c_) Their circumstances were such as to impress deeply upon their minds the events of which they were witnesses.

2. _They are honest witnesses._ This is evident when we consider that: (_a_) Their testimony imperiled all their worldly interests. (_b_) The moral elevation of their writings, and their manifest reverence for truth and constant inculcation of it, show that they were not wilful deceivers, but good men. (_c_) There are minor indications of the honesty of these writers in the circumstantiality of their story, in the absence of any expectation that their narratives would be questioned, in their freedom from all disposition to screen themselves or the apostles from censure.

Lessing says that Homer never calls Helen beautiful, but he gives
the reader an impression of her surpassing loveliness by
portraying the effect produced by her presence. So the evangelists
do not describe Jesus’ appearance or character, but lead us to
conceive the cause that could produce such effects. Gore,
Incarnation, 77—“Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod, Judas, are not
abused,—they are photographed. The sin of a Judas and a Peter is
told with equal simplicity. Such fairness, wherever you find it,
belongs to a trustworthy witness.”

3. _The writings of the evangelists mutually support each other._ We argue their credibility upon the ground of their number and of the consistency of their testimony. While there is enough of discrepancy to show that there has been no collusion between them, there is concurrence enough to make the falsehood of them all infinitely improbable. Four points under this head deserve mention: (_a_) The evangelists are independent witnesses. This is sufficiently shown by the futility of the attempts to prove that any one of them has abridged or transcribed another. (_b_) The discrepancies between them are none of them irreconcilable with the truth of the recorded facts, but only present those facts in new lights or with additional detail. (_c_) That these witnesses were friends of Christ does not lessen the value of their united testimony, since they followed Christ only because they were convinced that these facts were true. (_d_) While one witness to the facts of Christianity might establish its truth, the combined evidence of four witnesses gives us a warrant for faith in the facts of the gospel such as we possess for no other facts in ancient history whatsoever. The same rule which would refuse belief in the events recorded in the gospels “would throw doubt on any event in history.”

No man does or can write his own signature twice precisely alike.
When two signatures, therefore, purporting to be written by the
same person, are precisely alike, it is safe to conclude that one
of them is a forgery. Compare the combined testimony of the
evangelists with the combined testimony of our five senses. “Let
us assume,” says Dr. C. E. Rider, “that the chances of deception
are as one to ten when we use our eyes alone, one to twenty when
we use our ears alone, and one to forty when we use our sense of
touch alone; what are the chances of mistake when we use all these
senses simultaneously? The true result is obtained by multiplying
these proportions together. This gives one to eight thousand.”

4. _The conformity of the gospel testimony with experience._ We have already shown that, granting the fact of sin and the need of an attested revelation from God, miracles can furnish no presumption against the testimony of those who record such a revelation, but, as essentially belonging to such a revelation, miracles may be proved by the same kind and degree of evidence as is required in proof of any other extraordinary facts. We may assert, then, that in the New Testament histories there is no record of facts contrary to experience, but only a record of facts not witnessed in ordinary experience—of facts, therefore, in which we may believe, if the evidence in other respects is sufficient.

5. _Coincidence of this testimony with collateral facts and circumstances._ Under this head we may refer to (_a_) the numberless correspondences between the narratives of the evangelists and contemporary history; (_b_) the failure of every attempt thus far to show that the sacred history is contradicted by any single fact derived from other trustworthy sources; (_c_) the infinite improbability that this minute and complete harmony should ever have been secured in fictitious narratives.

6. _Conclusion from the argument for the credibility of the writers of the gospels._ These writers having been proved to be credible witnesses, their narratives, including the accounts of the miracles and prophecies of Christ and his apostles, must be accepted as true. But God would not work miracles or reveal the future to attest the claims of false teachers. Christ and his apostles must, therefore, have been what they claimed to be, teachers sent from God, and their doctrine must be what they claimed it to be, a revelation from God to men.

On the whole subject, see Ebrard, Wissensch. Kritik der evang.
Geschichte; Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists, 30, 31;
Starkie on Evidence, 734; Whately, Historic Doubts as to Napoleon
Buonaparte; Haley, Examination of Alleged Discrepancies; Smith’s
Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul; Paley, Horse Paulinæ; Birks, in
Strivings for the Faith, 37-72—“Discrepancies are like the slight
diversities of the different pictures of the stereoscope.” Renan
calls the land of Palestine a fifth gospel. Weiss contrasts the
Apocryphal Gospels, where there is no historical setting and all
is in the air, with the evangelists, where time and place are
always stated.

No modern apologist has stated the argument for the credibility of
the New Testament with greater clearness and force than
Paley,—Evidences, chapters 8 and 10—“No historical fact is more
certain than that the original propagators of the gospel
voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and
suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The nature of
the undertaking, the character of the persons employed in it, the
opposition of their tenets to the fixed expectations of the
country in which they at first advanced them, their undissembled
condemnation of the religion of all other countries, their total
want of power, authority, or force, render it in the highest
degree _probable_ that this must have been the case.

“The probability is increased by what we know of the fate of the
Founder of the institution, who was put to death for his attempt,
and by what we also know of the cruel treatment of the converts to
the institution within thirty years after its commencement—both
which points are attested by heathen writers, and, being once
admitted, leave it very incredible that the primitive emissaries
of the religion who exercised their ministry first amongst the
people who had destroyed their Master, and afterwards amongst
those who persecuted their converts, should themselves escape with
impunity or pursue their purpose in ease and safety.

“This probability, thus sustained by foreign testimony, is
advanced, I think, to historical certainty by the evidence of our
own books, by the accounts of a writer who was the companion of
the persons whose sufferings he relates, by the letters of the
persons themselves, by predictions of persecutions, ascribed to
the Founder of the religion, which predictions would not have been
inserted in this history, much less, studiously dwelt upon, if
they had not accorded with the event, and which, even if falsely
ascribed to him, could only have been so ascribed because the
event suggested them; lastly, by incessant exhortations to
fortitude and patience, and by an earnestness, repetition and
urgency upon the subject which were unlikely to have appeared, if
there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for the
exercise of such virtues. It is also made out, I think, with
sufficient evidence, that both the teachers and converts of the
religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new
course of life and conduct.

“The next great question is, what they did this _for_. It was for
a miraculous story of some kind, since for the proof that Jesus of
Nazareth ought to be received as the Messiah, or as a messenger
for God, they neither had nor could have anything but miracles to
stand upon.... If this be so, the religion must be true. These men
could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony, they might
have avoided all these sufferings and lived quietly. Would men in
such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw,
assert facts which they had no knowledge of, go about lying to
teach virtue, and though not only convinced of Christ’s being an
impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his
crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on, and so persist as to
bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of
the consequences, enmity and hatred, danger and death?”

Those who maintain this, moreover, require us to believe that the
Scripture writers were “villains for no end but to teach honesty,
and martyrs without the least prospect of honor or advantage.”
Imposture must have a motive. The self-devotion of the apostles is
the strongest evidence of their truth, for even Hume declares that
“we cannot make use of a more convincing argument in proof of
honesty than to prove that the actions ascribed to any persons are
contrary to the course of nature, and that no human motives, in
such circumstances, could ever induce them to such conduct.”

III. The Supernatural Character of the Scripture Teaching.

1. Scripture teaching in general.

A. The Bible is the work of one mind.

(_a_) In spite of its variety of authorship and the vast separation of its writers from one another in point of time, there is a unity of subject, spirit, and aim throughout the whole.

We here begin a new department of Christian evidences. We have
thus far only adduced external evidence. We now turn our attention
to internal evidence. The relation of external to internal
evidence seems to be suggested in Christ’s two questions in _Mark
8:27, 29—_“Who do _men_ say that I am?... who say _ye_ that I am?”
The unity in variety displayed in Scripture is one of the chief
internal evidences. This unity is indicated in our word “Bible,”
in the singular number. Yet the original word was “Biblia,” a
plural number. The world has come to see a unity in what were once
scattered fragments: the many “Biblia” have become one “Bible.” In
one sense R. W. Emerson’s contention is true: “The Bible is not a
book,—it is a literature.” But we may also say, and with equal
truth: “The Bible is not simply a collection of books,—it is a
book.” The Bible is made up of sixty-six books, by forty writers,
of all ranks,—shepherds, fishermen, priests, warriors, statesmen,
kings,—composing their works at intervals through a period of
seventeen centuries. Evidently no collusion between them is
possible. Scepticism tends ever to ascribe to the Scriptures
greater variety of authorship and date, but all this only
increases the wonder of the Bible’s unity. If unity in a half
dozen writers is remarkable, in forty it is astounding. “The many
diverse instruments of this orchestra play one perfect tune: hence
we feel that they are led by one master and composer.” Yet it
takes the same Spirit who inspired the Bible to teach its unity.
The union is not an external or superficial one, but one that is
internal and spiritual.

(_b_) Not one moral or religious utterance of all these writers has been contradicted or superseded by the utterances of those who have come later, but all together constitute a consistent system.

Here we must distinguish between the external form and the moral
and religious substance. Jesus declares in _Mat. 5:21, 22, 27, 28,
33, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44, _“Ye have heard that it was said to them
of old time ... but I say unto you,” and then he seems at first
sight to abrogate certain original commands. But he also declares
in this connection, _Mat. 5:17, 18—_“Think not I am come to
destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to
fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass
away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the
law, till all things be accomplished.” Christ’s new commandments
only bring out the inner meaning of the old. He fulfils them not
in their literal form but in their essential spirit. So the New
Testament completes the revelation of the Old Testament and makes
the Bible a perfect unity. In this unity the Bible stands alone.
Hindu, Persian, and Chinese religious books contain no consistent
system of faith. There is progress in revelation from the earlier
to the later books of the Bible, but this is not progress through
successive steps of falsehood; it is rather progress from a less
to a more clear and full unfolding of the truth. The whole truth
lay germinally in the _protevangelium_ uttered to our first
parents (_Gen. 3:15_—the seed of the woman should bruise the
serpent’s head).

(_c_) Each of these writings, whether early or late, has represented moral and religious ideas greatly in advance of the age in which it has appeared, and these ideas still lead the world.

All our ideas of progress, with all the forward-looking spirit of
modern Christendom, are due to Scripture. The classic nations had
no such ideas and no such spirit, except as they caught them from
the Hebrews. Virgil’s prophecy, in his fourth Eclogue, of a coming
virgin and of the reign of Saturn and of the return of the golden
age, was only the echo of the Sibylline books and of the hope of a
Redeemer with which the Jews had leavened the whole Roman world;
see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 94-96.

(_d_) It is impossible to account for this unity without supposing such a supernatural suggestion and control that the Bible, while in its various parts written by human agents, is yet equally the work of a superhuman intelligence.

We may contrast with the harmony between the different Scripture
writers the contradictions and refutations which follow merely
human philosophies—_e. g._, the Hegelian idealism and the
Spencerian materialism. Hegel is “a name to swear at, as well as
to swear by.” Dr. Stirling, in his Secret of Hegel, “kept all the
secret to himself, if he ever knew it.” A certain Frenchman once
asked Hegel if he could not gather up and express his philosophy
in one sentence for him. “No,” Hegel replied, “at least not in
French.” If Talleyrand’s maxim be true that whatever is not
intelligible is not French, Hegel’s answer was a correct one.
Hegel said of his disciples: “There is only one man living who
understands me, and he does not.”

Goeschel, Gabler, Daub, Marheinecke, Erdmann, are Hegel’s right
wing, or orthodox representatives and followers in theology; see
Sterrett, Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion. Hegel is followed by
Alexander and Bradley in England, but is opposed by Seth and
Schiller. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 279-300, gives a valuable
estimate of his position and influence: Hegel is all thought and
no will. Prayer has no effect on God,—it is a purely psychological
phenomenon. There is no free-will, and man’s sin as much as man’s
holiness is a manifestation of the Eternal. Evolution is a fact,
but it is only fatalistic evolution. Hegel notwithstanding did
great service by substituting knowledge of reality for the
oppressive Kantian relativity, and by banishing the old notion of
matter as a mysterious substance wholly unlike and incompatible
with the properties of mind. He did great service also by showing
that the interactions of matter and mind are explicable only by
the presence of the Absolute Whole in every part, though he erred
greatly by carrying that idea of the unity of God and man beyond
its proper limits, and by denying that God has given to the will
of man any power to put itself into antagonism to His Will. Hegel
did great service by showing that we cannot know even the part
without knowing the whole, but he erred in teaching, as T. H.
Green did, that the _relations_ constitute the _reality_ of the
thing. He deprives both physical and psychical existences of that
degree of selfhood or independent reality which is essential to
both science and religion. We want real force, and not the mere
idea of force; real will, and not mere thought.

B. This one mind that made the Bible is the same mind that made the soul, for the Bible is divinely adapted to the soul,

(_a_) It shows complete acquaintance with the soul.

The Bible addresses all parts of man’s nature. There are Law and
Epistles for man’s reason; Psalms and Gospels for his affections;
Prophets and Revelations for his imagination. Hence the popularity
of the Scriptures. Their variety holds men. The Bible has become
interwoven into modern life. Law, literature, art, all show its
moulding influence.

(_b_) It judges the soul—contradicting its passions, revealing its guilt, and humbling its pride.

No product of mere human nature could thus look down upon human
nature and condemn it. The Bible speaks to us from a higher level.
The Samaritan woman’s words apply to the whole compass of divine
revelation; it tells us all things that ever we did (_John 4:29_).
The Brahmin declared that _Romans 1_, with its description of
heathen vices, must have been forged after the missionaries came
to India.

(_c_) It meets the deepest needs of the soul—by solutions of its problems, disclosures of God’s character, presentations of the way of pardon, consolations and promises for life and death.

Neither Socrates nor Seneca sets forth the nature, origin and
consequences of sin as committed against the holiness of God, nor
do they point out the way of pardon and renewal. The Bible teaches
us what nature cannot, viz.: God’s creatorship, the origin of
evil, the method of restoration, the certainty of a future state,
and the principle of rewards and punishments there.

(_d_) Yet it is silent upon many questions for which writings of merely human origin seek first to provide solutions.

Compare the account of Christ’s infancy in the gospels with the
fables of the Apocryphal New Testament; compare the scant
utterances of Scripture with regard to the future state with
Mohammed’s and Swedenborg’s revelations of Paradise. See Alexander
McLaren’s sermon on The Silence of Scripture, in his book
entitled: Christ in the Heart, 131-141.

(_e_) There are infinite depths and inexhaustible reaches of meaning in Scripture, which difference it from all other books, and which compel us to believe that its author must be divine.

Sir Walter Scott, on his death bed: “Bring me the Book!” “What
book?” said Lockhart, his son-in-law. “There is but one book!”
said the dying man. Réville concludes an Essay in the Revue des
deux Mondes (1864): “One day the question was started, in an
assembly, what book a man condemned to lifelong imprisonment, and
to whom but one book would be permitted, had better take into his
cell with him. The company consisted of Catholics, Protestants,
philosophers and even materialists, but all agreed that their
choice would fall only on the Bible.”

On the whole subject, see Garbett, God’s Word Written, 3-56;
Luthardt, Saving Truths, 210; Rogers, Superhuman Origin of Bible,
155-181; W. L. Alexander, Connection and Harmony of O. T. and N.
T.; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O. T.; Bernard, Progress of
Doctrine in the N. T.; Rainy, Delivery and Development of
Doctrine; Titcomb, in Strivings for the Faith; Immer,
Hermeneutics, 91; Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 23; 5: no. 28; 6: no.
31; Lee on Inspiration, 26-32.

2. Moral System of the New Testament.

The perfection of this system is generally conceded. All will admit that it greatly surpasses any other system known among men. Among its distinguishing characteristics may be mentioned:

(_a_) Its comprehensiveness,—including all human duties in its code, even the most generally misunderstood and neglected, while it permits no vice whatsoever.

Buddhism regards family life as sinful. Suicide was commended by
many ancient philosophers. Among the Spartans to steal was
praiseworthy,—only to be caught stealing was criminal. Classic
times despised humility. Thomas Paine said that Christianity
cultivated “the spirit of a spaniel,” and John Stuart Mill
asserted that Christ ignored duty to the state. Yet Peter urges
Christians to add to their faith manliness, courage, heroism (_2
Pet. 1:5—_“in your faith supply virtue”), and Paul declares the
state to be God’s ordinance (_Rom. 13:1—_“Let every soul be in
subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God;
and the powers that be are ordained of God”). Patriotic defence of
a nation’s unity and freedom has always found its chief incitement
and ground in these injunctions of Scripture. E. G. Robinson:
“Christian ethics do not contain a particle of chaff,—all is pure
wheat.”

(_b_) Its spirituality,—accepting no merely external conformity to right precepts, but judging all action by the thoughts and motives from which it springs.

The superficiality of heathen morals is well illustrated by the
treatment of the corpse of a priest in Siam: the body is covered
with gold leaf, and then is left to rot and shine. Heathenism
divorces religion from ethics. External and ceremonial observances
take the place of purity of heart. The Sermon on the Mount on the
other hand pronounces blessing only upon inward states of the
soul. _Ps. 51:6—_“Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts,
and in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom”; _Micah
6:8—_“what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

(_c_) Its simplicity,—inculcating principles rather than imposing rules; reducing these principles to an organic system; and connecting this system with religion by summing up all human duty in the one command of love to God and man.

Christianity presents no extensive code of rules, like that of the
Pharisees or of the Jesuits. Such codes break down of their own
weight. The laws of the State of New York alone constitute a
library of themselves, which only the trained lawyer can master.
It is said that Mohammedanism has recorded sixty-five thousand
special instances in which the reader is directed to do right. It
is the merit of Jesus’ system that all its requisitions are
reduced to unity. _Mark 12:29-31—_“Hear, O Israel; The Lord our
God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
with all thy strength. The second is this: Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than
these.” Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:384-814, calls attention to
the inner unity of Jesus’ teaching. The doctrine that God is a
loving Father is applied with unswerving consistency. Jesus
confirmed whatever was true in the O. T., and he set aside the
unworthy. He taught not so much about God, as about the kingdom of
God, and about the ideal fellowship between God and men. Morality
was the necessary and natural expression of religion. In Christ
teaching and life were perfectly blended. He was the
representative of the religion which he taught.

(_d_) Its practicality,—exemplifying its precepts in the life of Jesus Christ; and, while it declares man’s depravity and inability in his own strength to keep the law, furnishing motives to obedience, and the divine aid of the Holy Spirit to make this obedience possible.

Revelation has two sides: Moral law, and provision for fulfilling
the moral law that has been broken. Heathen systems can incite to
temporary reformations, and they can terrify with fears of
retribution. But only God’s regenerating grace can make the tree
good, in such a way that its fruit will be good also (_Mat.
12:33_). There is a difference between touching the pendulum of
the clock and winding it up,—the former may set it temporarily
swinging, but only the latter secures its regular and permanent
motion. The moral system of the N. T. is not simply law,—it is
also grace: _John 1:17—_“the law was given through Moses; grace
and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Dr. William Ashmore’s tract
represents a Chinaman in a pit. Confucius looks into the pit and
says: “If you had done as I told you, you would never have gotten
in.” Buddha looks into the pit and says: “If you were up here I
would show you what to do.” So both Confucius and Buddha pass on.
But Jesus leaps down into the pit and helps the poor Chinaman out.

At the Parliament of Religions in Chicago there were many ideals
of life propounded, but no religion except Christianity attempted
to show that there was any power given to realize these ideals.
When Joseph Cook challenged the priests of the ancient religions
to answer Lady Macbeth’s question: “How cleanse this red right
hand?” the priests were dumb. But Christianity declares that “the
blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”_ (1 John 1:7)_.
E. G. Robinson: Christianity differs from all other religions in
being (1) a historical religion; (2) in turning abstract law into
a person to be loved; (3) in furnishing a demonstration of God’s
love in Christ; (4) in providing atonement for sin and forgiveness
for the sinner; (5) in giving a power to fulfil the law and
sanctify the life. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 249—“Christianity, by
making the moral law the expression of a holy Will, brought that
law out of its impersonal abstraction, and assured its ultimate
triumph. Moral principles may be what they were before, but moral
practice is forever different. Even the earth itself has another
look, now that it has heaven above it.” Frances Power Cobbe, Life,
92—“The achievement of Christianity was not the inculcation of a
_new_, still less of a _systematic_, morality; but the
introduction of a new _spirit_ into morality; as Christ himself
said, a leaven into the lump.”

We may justly argue that a moral system so pure and perfect, since it surpasses all human powers of invention and runs counter to men’s natural tastes and passions, must have had a supernatural, and if a supernatural, then a divine, origin.

Heathen systems of morality are in general defective, in that they
furnish for man’s moral action no sufficient example, rule,
motive, or end. They cannot do this, for the reason that they
practically identify God with nature, and know of no clear
revelation of his holy will. Man is left to the law of his own
being, and since he is not conceived of as wholly responsible and
free, the lower impulses are allowed sway as well as the higher,
and selfishness is not regarded as sin. As heathendom does not
recognize man’s depravity, so it does not recognize his dependence
upon divine grace, and its virtue is self-righteousness.
Heathenism is man’s vain effort to lift himself to God;
Christianity is God’s coming down to man to save him; see
Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 11, 12. Martineau, 1:15, 16, calls
attention to the difference between the physiological ethics of
heathendom and the psychological ethics of Christianity.
Physiological ethics begins with nature; and, finding in nature
the uniform rule of necessity and the operation of cause and
effect, it comes at last to man and applies the same rule to him,
thus extinguishing all faith in personality, freedom,
responsibility, sin and guilt. Psychological ethics, on the
contrary, wisely begins with what we know best, with man; and
finding in him free-will and a moral purpose, it proceeds outward
to nature and interprets nature as the manifestation of the mind
and will of God.

“Psychological ethics are altogether peculiar to Christendom....
Other systems begin outside and regard the soul as a homogeneous
part of the _universe_, applying to the soul the principle of
necessity that prevails outside of it.... In the Christian
religion, on the other hand, the interest, the mystery of the
world are concentrated in _human nature_.... The sense of sin—a
sentiment that left no trace in Athens—involves a consciousness of
personal alienation from the Supreme Goodness; the aspiration
after holiness directs itself to a union of affection and will
with the source of all Perfection; the agency for transforming men
from their old estrangement to new reconciliation is a Person, in
whom the divine and human historically blend; and the sanctifying
Spirit by which they are sustained at the height of their purer
life is a living link of communion between their minds and the
Soul of souls.... So Nature, to the Christian consciousness, sank
into the accidental and the neutral.” Measuring ourselves by human
standards, we nourish pride; measuring ourselves by divine
standards, we nourish humility. Heathen nations, identifying God
with nature or with man, are unprogressive. The flat architecture
of the Parthenon, with its lines parallel to the earth, is the
type of heathen religion; the aspiring arches of the Gothic
cathedral symbolize Christianity.

Sterrett, Studies in Hegel, 33, says that Hegel characterized the
Chinese religion as that of Measure, or temperate conduct;
Brahmanism as that of Phantasy, or inebriate dream-life; Buddhism
as that of Self-involvement; that of Egypt as the imbruted
religion of Enigma, symbolized by the Sphynx; that of Greece, as
the religion of Beauty; the Jewish as that of Sublimity; and
Christianity as the Absolute religion, the fully revealed religion
of truth and freedom. In all this Hegel entirely fails to grasp
the elements of Will, Holiness, Love, Life, which characterize
Judaism and Christianity, and distinguish them from all other
religions. R. H. Hutton: “Judaism taught us that Nature must be
interpreted by our knowledge of God, not God by our knowledge of
Nature.” Lyman Abbott: “Christianity is not a new _life_, but a
new _power_; not a _summons_ to a new life, but an _offer_ of new
life; not a reënactment of the old law, but a power of God unto
salvation; not love to God and man, but Christ’s message that God
loves us, and will help us to the life of love.”

Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 5, 6—“Christianity postulates an
opening of the heart of the eternal God to the heart of man coming
to meet him. Heathendom shows us the heart of man blunderingly
grasping the hem of God’s garment, and mistaking Nature, his
majestic raiment, for himself. Only in the Bible does man press
beyond God’s external manifestations to God himself.” See Wuttke,
Christian Ethics, 1:37-173; Porter, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no.
19, pp. 33-64: Blackie, Four Phases of Morals; Faiths of the World
(St. Giles Lectures, second series); J. F. Clarke, Ten Great
Religions, 2:280-317; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith; Farrar, Witness of
History to Christ, 134, and Seekers after God, 181, 182, 320;
Curtis on Inspiration, 288. For denial of the all-comprehensive
character of Christian Morality, see John Stuart Mill, on Liberty;
_per contra_, see Review of Mill, in Theol. Eclectic, 6:508-512;
Row, in Strivings for the Faith, pub. by Christian Evidence
Society, 181-220; also, Bampton Lectures, 1877:130-176; Fisher,
Beginnings of Christianity, 28-38, 174.

In contrast with the Christian system of morality the defects of heathen systems are so marked and fundamental, that they constitute a strong corroborative evidence of the divine origin of the Scripture revelation. We therefore append certain facts and references with regard to particular heathen systems.