has reference to the Messiah and His kingdom, seems to guide St. John's use of Old Testament imagery in the Apocalypse. It is, however, enough to have briefly indicated a rule observed by New Testament writers in the Messianic application of prophecy, which is very simple and comprehensive, but which we might easily overlook. It seems to give us a clue to the freedom and boldness with which the ancient Scriptures are applied to the person of Christ and the fortunes of the Church. All forms of nobleness or loveliness, all types of excellency or majesty, are seen in the light of the Incarnation to be only shadows of the uncreated beauty: but the body is of Christ1. The song of the redeemed claims for Him all that excites the wonder or merits the praise of man: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing 2. 3. A third great function of the Old Testament is that of forming and training human character. This function it discharges partly by its explicit and formal teaching, partly by presenting living patterns of humanity by which we are taught how to walk and to please God. "The morality of the Old Testament' is a phrase to be used with discrimination. There is the morality which God tolerates as the best that can be attained under the rudimentary conditions and circumstances of those with which He is dealing. There is the morality which He approves and delights in because it rises above the average level of the age in which it appears. There is the morality at which He aimsthe final or perfect morality which is disclosed in the spotless life of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, there is the morality recognized or allowed by the standard. generally prevalent at a particular time, but retrogressive in so far as it falls short of a higher standard 1 Col. ii. 17. 2 Rev. v. 12. 3 I Thess. iv. I. See Aug. de doc. ii. 9: 'In his omnibus libris timentes Deum et pietate mansueti quaerunt voluntatem Dei'; iii. 10: 'Non autem praecipit scriptura nisi caritatem, nec culpat nisi cupiditatem, et eo modo informat mores hominum.’ already acknowledged. And it is this which is plainly described as hateful to God, and as bringing down upon men the fire of His judgment. Take the great sin of David for instance-a sin of which it was truly said that it had given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme1. The man after God's own heart falls into deeds which might have been matters of every-day occurrence in an ordinary oriental court. David acts as any eastern monarch might have acted who was not restrained by a conscience educated under the discipline of a recognized moral law. But in one single sentence the true character of David's deed is declared the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. And his subsequent history is the divine commentary on his crime; the sword never departing from David's house, the rebellion of his favourite son with all its fatal consequences, the outbreaks of lawless passion by which the royal household was subsequently defiled, the over-clouded and sorrow-laden old age of the king himself. Thus even in the historical narratives the eternal requirement of God for man and His thoughts concerning human sin are made abundantly manifest. Augustine indeed insists that the sins of the ancient saints of God are described in order to teach us humility. There is not a page,' he declares, ‘in the sacred books which does not ring with the truth that God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. If evil is described, it is described in its nakedness and loathsomeness; if it is denounced as by the prophets, it is denounced in words that burn, in sentences that might well 'make mad the guilty and appal the free'; while, on the other hand, the great outlines of religious character and the primary elements of human duty are everywhere set forth, with a continual tendency (as in the more humane injunctions of the Law) to raise the whole standard of morality, and to encourage the growth of that inwardness, that purity 1 1 2 Sam. xii. 14. 3 de doc. iii. 23. Cp. Jas. iv. 6. 22 Sam. xi. 27. of motive which is the distinguishing mark of Christian goodness. In two respects Old Testament morality transcends the ordinary level of pagan ethics; it is theocentric, and it is altruistic. It is theocentric: Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. This is the fundamental and regulative commandment. As we have already noticed, the characteristic feature in Israel's conception of God was that it gave vitality and substance to the thought of the divine personality. God was a person capable of relationships of love-the true and adequate object of devotion, trust, gratitude, obedience, and service. He was one with whom and before whom man might walk; whom to know was man's glory, whom to serve was his joy. How strange and complete is the contrast between such a conception of deity and those vague and undefined notions which are characteristic of Semitic paganism. The religion. of the Old Testament marks a forward step in the spiritual development of humanity which can never be retraced. It represents man as standing in an intelligible and moral relationship to God; as linked to Him not by the mere accident of birth, carrying with it the obligation to perform correctly certain stated observances, but by community of moral nature. For the theocentric idea of morality which pervades the Old Testament corresponds to a theomorphic view of humanity. Man was created in God's image; in other words, his very constitution made him capable of communion with God and of progressive assimilation to Him. From the first the Old Testament sets before man not merely his obligations, but the personal relationship, the tie of kinship to God, on which they Already moral good presents itself to man in the shape of a personal appeal: Be ye holy, for I the rest. 1 Deut. vi. 5; x. 12; xi. 1, &c. 2 Jer. ix. 24. 3 Cp. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, pp. 29 foll. Lord your God am holy. Already morality is suffused with emotion: the coldness of a mere abstraction disappears, and the moral law is seen to be the expression, the very essence, of the living personality behind it. Obligation is set before man as dependent on a tie of vital relationship between persons. Thus the revealed morality of the Old Testament marks an epoch in the history of man's ethical progress, inasmuch as it exhibits with absolute clearness the fundamental characteristic of moral action. For it has been justly said that Morality begins with the relation of person to person, and all moral government-pre-eminently the government of God-is founded upon and legislates for this relation 2." Secondly, the morality of the Old Testament is altruistic. Its essential feature is no longer the self-regarding performance of stated rites calculated to secure the favour or avert the anger of jealous deities, but the fulfilment of duty as a member of the human brotherhood. A conspicuous feature both of the Law and of the prophetic teaching is that in both great practical prominence is assigned to duty towards one's neighbour. It is social righteousness which is preeminently the theme of the prophets. Integrity, justice, faithfulness in every relationship of life, compassion for the oppressed, the friendless, the poor, self-restraint towards an enemy, humanity even to animals, mercifulness in dealing with slaves, reverence for the marriage tie and for the laws of hospitality, habitual respect age and station, fidelity in the matter of oaths and promises, and strict administration of justice—these are the distinctive points in Israel's moral law; and the sum of them, as St. Paul teaches, is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. It is in fact a sense of the for 1 Lev. xix. 2; xx. 7. 2 See Bp. Ellicott, The Being of God, p. 120 note. 3 Lev. xix. 17, 18; cp. Rom. xiii. 9. See Fairbairn, Religion in History and in Modern Life, lect. ii. pp. 123 foll., especially the admirable passage, pp. 132-134. dignity and worth of human personality as made in the image of God that underlies the moral precepts of the Pentateuch and it is in its recognition of this principle that the law of the old covenant is of permanent and eternal validity. At the same time the prophetic denunciations of hypocrisy, of formalism, and of the false externality that preferred ceremonialism to righteousness, anticipate those utterances of our Lord in which He distinguishes between the false and true types of goodness. There was much indeed in the Old Testament system that might foster the tendency to serve God in the anxious and timid spirit of a servant; but a corrective element was contained in the injunction to love God: and Hebrew saints and psalmists illustrate the power of this love to chasten and refine character, even when moulded by the stern discipline of the Law. Speaking generally, the characters delineated in the Old Testament are marked by features which give them typical significance and permanent value as examples. We may admit that the heroic figures of antiquity are idealized, but they are the more valuable on that account as patterns, the qualities ascribed to them being precisely those which are essential parts of the noblest human goodness-fidelity, kindness, selfrespect, hospitality, domestic affection, patience in trial, self-restraint, disinterestedness'. These are qualities which are constant elements in religious character, because they spring from the root of faith in a living God, the righteous Lord who loveth righteousness, who calls men to walk before Him and to be perfect, who delights in trustful obedience, and in that fidelity to obligations which is the reflection of His own unchanging self-consistency and covenant-faithfulness. Thus we habitually turn to the Old Testament for lessons of human duty; we regard it as 'a family album of the saints of God 2.' In a certain sense they are all 1 Cp. Driver, Sermons on the Old Testament, pp. xii, xiii. |