undying witness. But faith carries with it a religious test learned in the school of Christ: it appropriates everything in the Old Testament which can edify the conscience, while it passes by all that falls short of Christ's teaching; thus it sometimes sets aside what the ancient saints extolled-the vengeance of Jael, for instance, or David's treatment of Moab-discriminating freely between what is profitable for the spiritual life and what belongs to a lower stage of human development 1.

There is one final reflection specially appropriate in this connexion. We have noticed the attestation which is given by Christian experience to the function of the Old Testament, but what has been said after all amounts to the assertion that the Old Testament Scriptures are an integral part of a treasure which peculiarly belongs to the Church of God-that divine society which exists as the living witness of God's continuous self-revelation in the world and which appeals to the Scriptures as corroborating her own primary testimony to God's truth. Believing then, as we do, that new and impressive views of God's providence are being opened out to us by the gradual advance of critical science, and that a revelation is being made to us respecting God's word in Scripture parallel to that which is already familiar to us in the sphere of physical nature, we shall realize the farreaching importance of that foundation doctrine of the Church which God seems to have restored to us in time to enable us to deal with the critical question dispassionately and fearlessly. We, in this University, are not likely to forget the honoured names of those great spiritual leaders to whom, under God, we owe the recovery of this doctrine; nor can we easily overrate its vast significance. The doctrine has a plain bearing on our present inquiry. The Church of God!

1

Cp. Köhler, op. cit. pp. 64, 65. Aug. de doctrina, ii. 8, gives a rule for determining the canonicity of different books which presupposes the guidance of organized experience.

-we belonged to her, her message was delivered to us, her powers were at work upon us before we were able to read a line of the Bible. She taught us that in the Bible God's voice was to be heard, but the manner in which it speaks she did not define. Thus the way has been left open for those who might competently instruct us in regard to the methods. actually employed by the Holy Spirit. We certainly are not true to the mind of the Church, nor to that lofty temper which St. Paul commends to the Corinthians as specially characteristic of Christians, if we fail to appreciate and worthily use the gift of new knowledge with which this age of scientific criticism has enriched us. We approach the Old Testament with reverent interest as believers in the incarnation of the Son of God; with a deep sense of our own insufficiency as believers in the mystery of inspiration, and finally with the quietness and confidence of those whose feet are planted on the rock of the Holy Catholic Church, that city of God which claims as her own all that is good in human character, all that is precious in human life, all that is true in human knowledge. All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

LECTURE II

But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.—2 Tim. iii. 14, 15.

In this passage St. Paul at once indicates the scope and purpose of the Old Testament, and prescribes the condition of using it profitably. He begins by stating the reasonable ground on which the authority of the Christian Church is based. Continue thou, he says to Timothy, in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them. The acceptance of authority in itself implies an act of the moral judgment. The individual submits himself to the guidance of the Christian community mainly because it exhibits an impressive consensus of belief in regard at least to certain fundamental truths, but the testimony of the Church is commended and enforced by the spiritual life and character which lie behind it. The neophyte can venture upon an act of self-committal, because his reason tells him that the highest type of human excellence within the sphere of his observation has its roots in the creed of Christendom. In verse 15 the apostle appeals to Timothy's personal experience and training. From a child he has been taught to study the sacred writings' of the Old Testament and to find in them the necessary guidance of his religious thought and conduct. The peculiar function of these Scriptures is to make wise unto salva

tion. The very phrase conveys a warning that men may approach Holy Scripture not only in a wrong temper and spirit, but under a positive misconception as to its true purpose. The study of the Old Testament is calculated to impart 'wisdom'-the knowledge, that is, of the great principles of divine action in the world, of the conditions under which man can be admitted to fellowship with his Creator; knowledge which is contrasted, on the one hand, with the intelligence or insight (ouverts) which apprehends the immediate purpose of God, on the other hand, with the practical wisdom (ppóvnois) which dictates right courses of action. The condition of acquiring this wisdom is faith resting on Christ Jesus. The true function of the Old Testament can only be rightly estimated from the standpoint of faith in one whose coming was from the first destined to crown the entire history of revelation.

Leaving on one side the exegesis of this particular passage, let us pass on to consider some general aspects under which the Old Testament presents itself to the Christian student. Viewed historically, the Old Testament is the sacred book of Judaism, the charter so to speak of the community which was organized by Ezra and Nehemiah on the basis of the levitical law and of the sacrificial cultus of the post-exilic sanctuary. It embodies the account, first, of the origin, historical career, and peculiar character of the holy community and of its sacred institutions; secondly, of the divine communications imparted to it from time to time through the agency of the prophets. Thirdly, it contains products of religious emotion and reflection, which illustrate the spiritual influences that prevailed in the Jewish Church and helped to mould its character. Lastly, the Old Testament depicts the external circumstances and conditions under which Judaism grew to maturity. But the interest of a Christian in the ancient scriptures cannot be merely 1 Cp. Dalman, Das A. T. ein Wort Gottes, p. 13.

literary or archaeological. He will be concerned with other aspects of the Old Testament, and of these five especially seem to deserve attention.

The Old Testament is to be studied, in the first place, as a record of the history of redemption. It contains the account of a continuous historical movement of which the originating cause was the grace of God and the aim the salvation of the human race. It scarcely requires to be stated that this aspect of the Old Testament opens very serious and urgent questions in regard to the precise character and extent of the strictly historical element in the ancient narratives. Secondly, the Old Testament is the authentic record. of a divine revelation. It describes the course of a progressive self-manifestation of God, of the unveiling to man according to his needs and capacities of a supreme personality to whom he finds himself standing in necessary and intimate relationship. Thirdly, the Old Testament may be treated as the history of a covenantal relationship between man and God, of a continuous converse or friendship which from the first depended on moral conditions, and ever tended towards a more perfect mode of union between the divine and human natures. Fourthly, the Old Testament is to be regarded as the record of a growing anticipation or hope, the hope which we call Messianic, and which found expression not merely in ancient oracles and prophecies, but also in the symbolic institutions of the chosen people. This expectation was rooted in spiritual experience, outlived even the most formidable disasters which overtook the Hebrew nation, and found its accomplishment in an event of which only a chosen few were able to recognize the true significance. Lastly, the Old Testament is to be studied as the revelation of a divine purpose, not merely for a particular nation or even for humanity at large, but also for the individual soul in its frailty and solitariness, its sense of accountability, its presages of immortality.