IV.

Having now cleared the ground by a definite statement of the presuppositions with which we approach our subject, I shall endeavour in the following lectures to illustrate the positive functions which the Old Testament, viewed in the light of modern research, is intended to fulfil in the Christian Church. It may be useful to illustrate the way in which a servant and disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ may still continue to use the Old Testament, even though inevitable changes have passed over his conception of its origin, structure and character. I cannot, however, conclude the present lecture without a brief consideration of two factors which determine the true use of Scripture and specially of the Old Testament: first, the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ; and secondly, the collective experience of the Christian Church.

1. Nothing is more certain to a devout Christian than the fact that the Old Testament comes to us solemnly commended by the express authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence the danger of ignoring and misunderstanding its special teaching, or of omitting to devote to it honest, reverent, and intelligent study.

But our study must be discriminating. We must draw a careful distinction between the inspired teaching of the Old Testament in regard to divine and spiritual things, and those many matters contained in it which fall within the sphere of natural knowledge. Christ did not come into the world to teach history or science, but to make sinful men children of God and heirs of eternal life. How carefully He warns us in the Gospels that there are tasks and functions the fulfilment of which formed no part of His mission. I am not come to call the righteous. I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. I came not to do mine

own will. Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you1? It was surely not the purpose of His coming to teach us the exact course of Israel's history, or the origin and nature of the sacred books which recorded it, but rather to point men to the sources from which they might learn necessary truth about the nature and character of God, His requirement of man and His purpose for the world. Search the Scriptures, He said to the Jews; for in them ye think ye have eternal life. Considering, however, that both Christ and His Apostles represent Israel's history as a preparation for His coming, and refer to the Old Testament as God's express word concerning His previous dealings with humanity, a Christian cannot be satisfied with any representation of the history which denies that it was throughout its whole course a continuous preparation for the coming of Christ. At the same time he will ever bear in mind that the Incarnation completed the self-revelation of God which, in divers parts and in divers manners, had been communicated to mankind from the first. He will remember that our Lord nowhere claims for the Old Testament that it is an infallible authority in regard to such points as the course of primitive history or of Israel's national development. To grasp correctly and present adequately the actual incidents of a long historical movement falls within the sphere of men's natural faculties, and is a proper subject of scientific investigation according to the recognized laws of historical research 3, and consequently any appeal to Christ's authority on such points is dangerous in so far as it mistakes the true purpose of His coming. He came to reveal

1 St. Matt. ix. 13; St. John xii. 47 and vi. 38; St. Luke xii. 14. 2 St. John v. 39.

3

Cp. Köhler, Über Berechtigung der Kritik des A. T. pp. 24, 25. Valeton, Christus und das A. T. p. 27, speaking of the appeal to Christ's authority on points of scientific or historical research, well remarks: 'Es wäre ein wenigstens teilweises Übertragen seiner Bedeutung von dem Gebiete, wo sich alles dreht um Leben, Errettung, und Seligkeit, auf ein ganz anderes und für diese Dinge neutrales Gebiet, wo bloss Fragen wissenschaftlicher Art verhandelt werden.'

God to men, and He points to the Old Testament Scriptures as the source whence an adequate, if not an altogether perfect, knowledge of God and of His kingdom may be derived. And we shall find that criticism in no way impairs this function of the ancient Scriptures. We approach them as of old, only with a heightened consciousness of the divine operation which has brought the Old Testament into its present and final form. That form has been reached under the providential guidance of One who foresaw our circumstances, and who so controlled the tongue of the seer, the imagination of the poet, and the pen of the chronicler, that their utterances possess an abiding and progressive significance, speaking with fresh meaning and power to each successive generation of God's children. We must not lose in any literary or scientific investigations the characteristic Christian spirit. We may be keenly interested in the researches of critics; we may ourselves approach the Old Testament as students of literature, as philologists, as historians, as linguists, as archaeologists; but, after all, the main interest must not, cannot, be merely scientific or technical; it must be ethical and spiritual. The distinctively Christian temper is that which approaches the Bible as the record of a real and continuous revelation of God-His mind, His character, His moral requirement, His disciplinary dealings with mankind. We need to place ourselves on a level with believing students of all ages who, apart from the accidental circumstance that their critical knowledge or their exegetical methods were less perfect than ours, do nevertheless set before us an example of the true spirit in which Scripture should be approached and used. They do not allow personal tastes or predilections to blind them to the real purpose of Scripture. They do not suffer any subordinate interest to interfere with the primary object of biblical study, which is to make us wise unto salvation1, to teach us about man

1 2 Tim. iii. 15.

and his need of Christ, about God and His purpose for humanity, about the conditions of acceptable worship and the attainment of perfect character.

2. It remains to estimate briefly the importance of Christian experience. It might be asked why Christian faith is more or less independent of critical controversies in regard to the Old Testament? The answer is because the Bible is 'a book of experimental religion ''; it depicts in each of its various stages the history of an actual friendship between God and man. The most potent factor in the formation of the canon was undoubtedly religious experience. The Old Testament books gained their authority and their place in the sacred library because, as a thoughtful critic has said, 'they commended themselves in practice to the experience of the Old Testament Church and the spiritual discernment of the godly in Israel 2.' The Mosaic dispensation did, as a matter of fact, educate in devout Israelites a certain faculty of spiritual insight; it produced a high level of religious knowledge and affection; it trained powers of discrimination which could be entrusted with the delicate task of gradually selecting or determining the contents of the Old Testament canon. At the period when the necessity for collecting a canon was realized, most of the Old Testament books were already familiar to the faithful, who found in them the light of their consciences and the food of their spiritual life. In fact, the canon assumed its final shape and gradually attained to authority as the result rather of an experimental process, than of theological reflection or discussion. For the canonical books, sufficiently at least for all purposes of religious edification, illustrated the great evangelical truths by which faith is kept alive 3. They gave adequate expression

1 Robertson Smith, O. T. in J. C. p. 8.

2. Ibid. p. 162.

On this point, so far as it bears upon the Jewish limitation of the Old Testament to the 'canonical' books and the exclusion of others, see an excellent passage in Buhl, Canon and Text of the O. T. [Eng. Tr.] § 22.

E

to the vital needs which divine revelation satisfied. Indeed in large part that which we call with some freedom of expression the word of God is actually the word of man, since it gives utterance to the appeals, the supplications, the questionings, the yearnings after God, which make the Bible a universal book, reflecting the experience and the wants of humanity 1. And the authority of the Bible, like that of Jesus Christ Himself, lies in the directness of its response to man's needs. Like the Lord's own teaching, Scripture is self-evidencing. Like Him, it speaks directly to the hearts and consciences of men, and its divine origin and authority is vindicated by the continuous testimony of Christians who have verified its message; and let us remember that its appeal to our generation is strengthened incalculably by the results of that same appeal to the minds and hearts and consciences of every preceding generation".'

Spiritual experience then lies behind the record in which it is enshrined, and this leads us to the observation that, after all, Christian faith is essentially independent of the Old Testament. The great fundamental verities are not learned by us from the pages of the ancient Scriptures. For instance, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that we learn the fact and the true significance of the world's creation, not from the pages of Genesis, but as the result of Christian faith; we find the verification of the fall of man in universal experience; we infer the pity of God for the human race from the upward movement which has marked its development and which culminates in the advent of the Son. In the Old Testament, Christian faith puts itself to school with the saints of the preparatory dispensation; it enters into their hopes and fears; it takes their language of love or trust on its lips; it learns how they regarded those great acts of God to which their whole history bears 1 Cp. J. Paterson Smyth, op. cit. p. 122. 2 Ibid. p. 27. Cp. pp. 21, 22.

Heb. xi. 3.