THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS 
 OWN DEFENCE 
 
 BEING A REPLY TO 
 
 "THE OLD TESTAMENT VINDICATED." 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH S. COOK, B.D., Ph.D. 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY REV. PRINCIPAL SHAW, LL.D., 
 
 Of the Wesleyan Theological College, Montreal. 
 
 TORONTO 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS 
 
 Wesley Buildings 
 
 MONTREAL: C. W. COATES HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS 
 
 1898 
 

 Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand 
 eight hundred and ninety-eight, by William Briggs, at the Department of 
 Agriculture, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These pages do not profess to answsr every ques- 
 tion raised by Dr. Workman in his " Old Testament 
 Vindicated." The method used by the author as a 
 scheme for settling Biblical difficulties, I believe, is 
 sure to fail. It savors too much of Rationalism, and 
 is too closely akin to the dangerous theories of criti- 
 cism that make God's book very much like any other 
 book — a mere human production. 
 
 Bishop C. H. Fowler, of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, says : " In the chilling fog of Higher Criti- 
 cism, which is higher only in name and assumption, 
 all the warmth and winsomeness of Christianity are 
 
 destroyed." 
 
 J. o. O. 
 
 Walkerville, March, 1898. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 When Dr. Hurst, twenty years ngo, wrote his very interesting 
 "History of Rationalism," it was generally felt that he was 
 tracing the operations of a recognized foe. To-day Rationalism 
 comes with an evangelical spirit .is devout as Semler's, but 
 with a plausibility which tends to a paralysis of all faith in the 
 supernatural. For a popular and very recent illustration of 
 this we have only to read Washington Gladden's work just from 
 the press, "Seven Puzzling Books of the Bible," a work made 
 attractive by its style and by the author's activity in sociological 
 problems. This process is not as marked in Methodism as in 
 other formf, of Christianity, because of intellectual stagnation, 
 say our enemies, — I venture to say, because of the indisputable 
 triumphs we have witnessed through simple faith in the two- 
 fold Divine Word, written and incarnate. If I wish to deal 
 fairly with these two greatest and most potent miracles of the 
 ages, the Incarnate God and the Written Word, I nmst at 
 the outset recognize the supernatural in all the subordinate 
 miracles historically attested in the various dispensations. I 
 must do this or be a Deist. I see no neutral zone between 
 Christianity and Deism as a logical standing place. Borrowing, 
 shall I say stealing, the ethical sublimity of the Divine Christ, 
 
Vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and glorifying Deism therewith, does not harmonize the two 
 systems. The transcendent ethical, contributions of Christi- 
 anity will, in due time, disappear, if their supernatural source 
 be rejected. 
 
 I know how to distinguish between men and their views. 
 I do not ignore the Christian spirit of the author whom Dr. 
 Cook opposes, nor do I accept all of Dr. Cook's statements ; 
 but this work is timely and able, and worthy of a place among 
 the conservative apologetics of our day. 
 
 The supernatural in the Old Testament is ruthlessly assailed, 
 from the Plagues of Egypt to Daniel's Fiery Furnace. More 
 delicacy is shown for the New, as a consciousness is felt of the 
 strange Presence there who could call forth more than twelve 
 legions of angels for His defence ; and if we harbor a hostile 
 intention, like the Roman soldiers before this Presence, we go 
 backward and fall to the ground. But how long will this 
 reserve continue ? Judging from the history of Rationalism, if 
 this tendency prevail, we will at last have left a volume of 
 legends with a slight basis of fact, and " Jesus in the midst " of 
 the legends an actual personality, but mostly a creation of 
 mythical exaggeration. '* If thus the foundations be destroyed, 
 what can the righteous do ? " 
 
 William I. Shaw. 
 
 Wesley AN Theological Collbok, 
 Montreal. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Paob 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Preliminaries - - 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Prophecy ---------- 1° 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Miracles - - - 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Immortality - - - - 29 
 
 . CHAPTER V. 
 Religion ---------- 33 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Morality ^^ 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Anthropomorphism -------- 4o 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Inspiration - 48 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Citation "^ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Evolution - - - "^ 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS 
 OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 PRELIMINARIES. 
 
 We believe that one may, with perfect safety and 
 reason, still hold to the traditional view of the origin and 
 structure oic the Old Testament Scriptures. 
 
 The time has not yet come for disregarding the " old- 
 fashioned way of viewing and treating its literature." No 
 doubt, as time goes on, new ideas will find a place in the 
 mind of any earnest student, which, while tending to the 
 modification of certain views, by no means interfere with 
 the traditional belief that the Scriptures are just what 
 they claim to be, viz., the Word of God, emanating from 
 those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Dr. Workman may smile at an attempt to answer him 
 from such a standpoint. This, however, we believe still 
 to be the general position of Christians throughout the 
 world. As yet no valid reason has been given why the 
 belief of nineteen centuries should change, notwithstand- 
 ing the fact that a few " Christian scholars " maintain a 
 different opinion. 
 
10 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 Andrew Jukes expresses the position of this essay when 
 he says : " The mystery of the incarnation, I am assured, 
 is the key, and the only sufficient one, to the mystery of 
 the written Word. . . . Jesus of Nazareth is the Son 
 of God ; not partly man and partly God, but true man, 
 born of woman, yet with all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily. So, exactly, is Holy Scripture the Word of God ; 
 not half human and half divine, but thoroughly human, 
 yet, no less, thoroughly divine. . . . And just as He, 
 the Incarnate Word, was born of woman by the power of 
 God's Spirit, so exactly has the written Word come out of 
 the human heart, not by the operation of human under- 
 standing, but by the power of the Spirit directly acting 
 upon the human heart." 
 
 "This Plenary verbal theory," says Dr. Cave, Principal 
 of Hackney College, a well-known writer on the subject 
 of Inspiration, " is accepted by Bishops Harold Browne, 
 Hannah and Westcott ; Deans Alford, Garbett and Goul- 
 burn ; and Professors Bannerman, Eleazar Lord, Watts, 
 Manley and McCraig — all of whom have written notable 
 books on the subject." Old-fashioned the theory may be, 
 yet the same high authority says, " This theory and the 
 theory of degrees of inspiration are the only ones which 
 really hold the field." 
 
 We have not attempted an answer to the whole book — 
 for in it there are many valuable things which are helpful 
 to all — but only to such portions as we deemed were out 
 of harmony with the teachings of God's Word. There 
 may be other objectionable teachings which we have not 
 noted. 
 
 We are well aware that there are many others who could 
 have given a more formidable reply to the book than we 
 are able to give ; but, so far, none has been forthcoming, 
 notwithstanding the fact that the book has been openly 
 questioned in a public conference of ministers and laymen, 
 and severely questioned by very many in private conver- 
 sation. Its endorsation by the honored Chancellor of 
 
PRELIMINARIES. 11 
 
 Victoria University inay be taken by many to be the 
 endorsation of the Methodist Church at large. 
 
 This, of course, is by no means the case so i'ar as our 
 Church is concerned, as our people generally are in- 
 clined to hold fast that which is good. We further believe 
 that a reaction has set in against radical higher criticism, 
 or, in other words, against Higher Criticism, as that term 
 is generally understood ; or, as Dr. A. J. F. Behrenda says, 
 the time is coming, and it may be nearer than we think, 
 when the literary problems of the Old Testament " will 
 cease to command attention, because it will be universally 
 acknowledged that tradition speaks with authority." The 
 portion in quotation marks is from Professor Adolf 
 Harnack's " The Chronology of the Old Christian Litera- 
 ture." "Harnack," he says, " has held chairs in Leipzig, 
 Giessen and Marburg, and is at present the great shining 
 light in Berlin. His influence in the leading universities 
 of England and America is great. His latest and ripest 
 contribution is all the more remarkable, because even in 
 Germany his orthodoxy has been fiercely assailed." This 
 we are glad to have to record, as it has become customary 
 in some quarters to regard the universities of Germany as 
 the real lights of the world. But other universities are 
 thinking upon these things, and have not yet spoken their 
 last word. 
 
 So far as the " Old Testament Vindicated " itself is 
 concerned, it is a cleverly written book, showing a good 
 deal of ability and aptness in putting the case before the 
 public. The writer is evidently quite familiar with the 
 various phases of current thought from the standpoint of 
 the so-called " Higher Critic." The book, however, in our 
 humble opinion fails to do what it was evidently meant to 
 do, " to establish truth and strengthen the foundations of 
 Christianity." We are inclined to the opinion expressed by 
 Dr. Shaw, of the Wesleyan Theological College, Montreal, 
 who says, in the July number of the Methodist Magazine, 
 "His work is virtually an eirenicon. Eirenica, however, 
 
12 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 though devout and amiable, are not always successful 
 — they do not always escape the difficulties they try to 
 obviate." He also says, •* By many it will be condemned 
 as simply inviting the reader from the perilous edge of the 
 precipice of Gold win Smith's rationalism to a doubtful 
 refuge only a little way removed." 
 
 This, we believe, fairly states the case, so far as the very 
 large majority of the Christian public are concerned, both 
 in and out of the pulpits and universities of this continent ; 
 and, we may add, to the ordinary intelligent reader, such 
 as we find among the members of our Church, Dr. Work- 
 man's book would be regarded as very dangerous to the 
 Christian faith. Dr. Workman, I am sure, would not like 
 to preach as he has written, to an ordinary congregation. 
 The very fact that the book is welcomed by those who see 
 very little of the supernatural in the Bible is, to our mind, 
 very suggestive. 
 
 The book, of course, purports to be an answer to Dr. 
 Goldwin Smith ; but it is an answer that does not answer. 
 Dr. Smith himself does not feel alarmed, for, while he 
 may not see the same "millstone" that he hung about the 
 Old Testament's neck, as he peruses the pages of his critic, 
 he sees enough to convince him that there are others who 
 take very much the same view of the matter that he does, 
 Dr. Workman not excepted. He (Dr. Smith) virtually 
 accepts Dr. Workman's position, and seems quite satisfied 
 with the " vindication," as he sees very little diflFerence in 
 the situation, only in the fact that, instead of there being 
 one rationalistic millstone, there are enough of Higher 
 Critic millstones which, to his mind, amount to the same 
 thing ; and, to our mind, the stones have all come from the 
 same rationalistic quarry. Dr. Smith therefore, satisfied 
 that Dr. Workman and he really mean the same thing, 
 stated this fact through the public press. To which Dr. 
 Workman replied : " I am much surprised, however, that 
 the only difference that Dr. Smith can discern between 
 him and me is that I see fit, as he expresses it, to apply tlie 
 
PRELIMINARIES. 13 
 
 phraseology of inspiration and revelation to unhiatorical 
 history, to cosmogony contradicted by science, and to un- 
 defensible morality." Such surprise, however, does not 
 take avs^ay the fact that Dr. Gold win Smith states that 
 little difference exists between him and Dr. Workman, and 
 stakes his reputation as a critic by allowing this fact to 
 be publicly known. 
 
 Another critic expresses an opinion, which also finds its 
 way into the press. This time it is the Rev. Oscar B. Hawes, 
 of Jarvis Street Unitarian Church. "Dr. Workman's book," 
 he says, " was the culmination of a process going on in the 
 orthodox Church, and which enabled a man to write a book 
 to-day that thirty years ago he would have been excom- 
 municated for. Dr. Workman to-day was fully on a plane 
 with the Unitarianism of thirty years ago." If it be any 
 comfort for Dr. Workman to find himself endorsed on 
 the one hand by the rationalism of Dr. Smith, and on the 
 other hand by the Unitarianism of the Rev. Oscar B. Hawes, 
 we are sorry, in this instance, that we cannot " rejoice with 
 those that do rejoice." 
 
 Dr. Gold win Smith professes to believe in Christianity, 
 yet how many are there who would retain their faith if 
 our pulpits were supplied by men who would preach as he 
 writes ? We are not afraid of criticism, nor of the most 
 thorough scholarly research, nor the testimony of the monu- 
 ments. The Bible has nothing to fear from either history 
 or discovery. It invites, yea, it challenges, investigation. 
 At the same time, it may be wounded in the house of 
 its friends. The Christian scholar, by going too far and 
 making such large concessions, may prove too much, and 
 those whom he may try to influence and conciliate may, in 
 turn, use the same methods, but to a different purpose. 
 
 Ajnong some of the peculiarities of the work we have 
 noted the following, which seem, to say the least, scarcely 
 warranted. This is what the writer says of it himself : 
 
 '•Though a comparatively small book, it is very com- 
 pactly written, and contains a pretty large amount of 
 matter," (Preface, page 5.) 
 
14 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 " So far as I know, it is the first attempt yet made 
 to give a complete answer to such objectionb from the 
 standpoint of modern Christian criticism." (P. 5.) 
 
 But, as Dr. Shaw says, " May we not consider that the 
 same practical purpose animated Robertson Smith, Driver 
 and Briggs 1" 
 
 Tliis same- dogmatic spirit pervades the whole work, as 
 the sweeping and uncalled-for use he makes of certain 
 terms pertaining to scholarship proves. Indeed, after 
 reading the work, one is inclined to use the words of 
 Job in regard to Dr. Workman and those of his school : 
 " No doubli ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with 
 you." According to Dr. Workman, " the account of the 
 Fall " is now explained by Christian scholars (the italics 
 are ours) as religious allegory. 
 
 " Christian scholars claim for the inspired writers of 
 
 Scripture only what such writers claim for themselves, 
 
 namely, that they were prompted by the Holy Spirit to 
 
 make an honest use of the best knowledge they possessed 
 
 ■for the purpose of teaching religious truth." (P. 38.) 
 
 "The time has long come since the soundest Christian 
 teachers taught that the Old Testament is not a revelation, 
 but the record of a revelation." (P. 40.) 
 
 Christian teachers separate the acts of Joshua and Jehu 
 from the teachings of Jesus (p. 52) ; respectable scholarship 
 does not turn the Hebrew literature into a sort of crypto- 
 gram of Christianity ; reputable scholars regard the Song 
 of Songa as a lyric poem. 
 
 Intelligent interpreters have long since turned the Song 
 of Songs into a cryptogrammic description of the union of 
 Christ with His Church. No competent expositor will 
 spiritualize Scripture for the sake of obtaining a Christian 
 meaning. (P. 56.) The sense of the author rather than 
 direct quotation is given here. 
 
 " Modern teachers ... do not put all the books of 
 the Bible on the same level." (P. 54.) 
 
 •' Christian scholars ... see other indications that 
 the Book of Jonah is not strictly historical." (P. 61.) 
 
PRELIMINARIES. 15 
 
 " Our forefathers thought that the first part of Genesis 
 was the oldest piece of literature in existence."* (P. 67.) 
 
 " Christian scholars have recognized for a long time that 
 the ethnological statements of the Book of Genesis are 
 imperfect." (P. 67.) 
 
 " Evangelical scholars have long recognized, too, that the 
 Flood and the Tower of Babel . . . contain traditional 
 elements which are peculiar to all such ancient accounts." 
 (P. 68.) 
 
 ^^. Every competent scholar would make a similar admis- 
 sion." (P. 70.) 
 
 "All Old Testament students k<>ow that the Books of 
 Chronicles . . . were written at a comparatively late 
 date, and from a distinctively religious and Levitical point 
 of view." (P. 71.) 
 
 *' Evangelical interpreterSy like Delitzsch and Dillmann, 
 frankly admit that the narratives of the patriarchs belong 
 rather to the realm of tradition than to the sphere of rigid 
 history." (P. 74.) 
 
 " Theologians note recognize that some features of the 
 story (of creation) are not to be treated literally, but tropi- 
 cally." (P. 81.) 
 
 " They (Christian scholars) feel under no obligation to 
 harmonize an ancient popular description (of creation) 
 with a modern systematized account." (P. 82.) 
 
 " Judicious teachers do not maintain that the narrative 
 in the first chapter of the book (Genesis) is perfect geology." 
 (P. 83.) " Much less does any ivise apologist try to recon- 
 cile the facts of science with the doctrines of Scripture." 
 (P. 86.) See also a similar use of like terms, pages 6, 8, 19, 
 20, 29, 30, 31, 36, 42, 43, 45, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 69, 81, 
 85, 86, 101, 102, 119. 
 
 While these are not all, yet they are sufficient to show 
 the style of Dr. Workman throughout his book. After 
 looking over statements like the above (most of which are 
 
 *Dr. Cunningham Geikic then must be one of " Our forefathers," for 
 he says, '* As a whole. Genesis stands at the head of th^ literfttur*? of the 
 world— the very oldest booH now in existence," 
 8 
 
16 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 direct quotations, while others simply give the meaning 
 in connection with the term used), one cannot help com- 
 ing to the conclusion that the " Christian scholar," in 
 the estimate of the writer, is any one who agrees with 
 the rationalistic method pursued, for, we confess, we have 
 no better term than " rationalistic " to describe the method. 
 It would, moreover, appear that all who do not agree with 
 the above method, or do not arrive at the same conclu- 
 sions, are possibly "Christian," but by no means "schol- 
 ars." They would be better classed with our " fore- 
 fathers," who knew nothing of these things. We, how- 
 ever, differ entirely from Dr. Workman when he assumes 
 to tell us who the Christian scholars are, by inference, if 
 not by name. Nor will we accept his standard of a 
 " Christian scholar " any more than his method of inter- 
 pretation. Christian scholarship, we believe, is tremen- 
 dously strong against such assumptions as are made by 
 Dr. Workman, and the concessions made to rationalism 
 and infidelity. We challenge a denial of the fact that 
 the Christian scholarship of England and America is 
 preponderately against the Christian scholarship defined 
 by Dr. Workman. The following list of Christian 
 scholars, to be supplemented as we proceed (see pages 23, 24), 
 who are conservative critics, will possibly be sufticient to 
 show that there are some scholars left that are not ashamed, 
 after a most thorough and impartial view of the whole 
 situation, to declare their adherence to the more rational, 
 and decidedly more scriptural, methods of the conservative 
 critics. The list is copied from Dr. A. J. F. Behrends' 
 "Old Testament Under Fire." An equally large and 
 influential list may be found in " Anti-Higher Criticism," 
 edited by the Rev. L. W. Munhall, M.A. 
 
 This is what Dr. Behrends says, and I think he may 
 be considered an authority : " The statement that scholar- 
 ship is practically a unit for the radical criticism cannot be 
 made good. It is not true of Europe, it is not true of 
 America. The most prominent advocates of radical criti- 
 cism among us are Harper, Briggs, Toy, Mitchell, Smith, 
 
PRELIMINARIES. 17 
 
 and Haupt. But these men are not the superiors in 
 scholarship of Beecher, Osgood, Green, Mead, Curtiss, 
 Denio and Bissell." ... In another place he men- 
 tions Bleek, Ryssel, Schrader, Klosterraann, Baudissen, 
 Kay, Kleinert, Dillmann, Delitzsch, Strack, Hoffmann, 
 Orellij Oehler, Keil, Riehm, Buhl, Homrael, Bohl, Bre- 
 denkampf, Marti, Kittel, Kiinig, Zahn, Rupprecht and 
 Hoedemaker as condemning the main positions oi the 
 school led by Kuenen and Wellhausen. Of those defend- 
 ing the conservative position in England and America, he 
 names " Davidson, Pusey, Stanley, Duff, Geikie, Watson, 
 Sime, Binnie, Watts, Cave, Ellicott, Leathes, Simon, Orr, 
 Dods, Rainy, Robertson, French, Sayce, Cotterill, McClin- 
 tock. Strong, Bissell, Vos, Mead, Dwinell, Trumbull, Bart- 
 lett, Curtiss, Ladd, Chambers, Green, Osgood, Stebbins, 
 Gardiner, Schodde, Terry, Steinert, Denio, Zenos, Beattie, 
 Morse, Warfield, and Willis J. Beecher. 
 
 Most Bible students will be able to recognize among the 
 English and American scholars those whom they are 
 acquainted with. Among the German writers many of 
 these names are also familiar. A reference to their names 
 and the position they hold is at least instructive as coming 
 from a man who, during the last twelve years, has made 
 the critical study of the Bible a specialty ; himself a 
 German scholar, and perfectly familiar with the Hebrew, 
 of whom Dr. Theo. L. Cuyler says, in reference to the 
 discussion of the claims of Higher Criticism by Dr. 
 Lyman Abbott, on the one side, and Dr. Behrends on the 
 other, " I do not hesitate to say that for a combination of 
 logical power and thoroughly Biblical scholarship, no man 
 in the Brooklyn pulpit equals Dr. A. J. F. Behrends, and if 
 the Plymouth pastor were to meet him in debate before 
 an impartial tribunal of eminent and erudite Biblical 
 scholars, he would be utterly routed." When, therefore, 
 a man with such a pronounced reputation is particular 
 to notice the inordinate claims of Biblical Higher Critics 
 for superior scholarship, we may be pardoned in repro- 
 ducing that notice. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 FBOPHECY. 
 
 " From the time of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, the canoni- 
 cal prophets put forth the conception of an ideal Coming 
 One." (P. 131.) 
 
 " It was not the miraculous prediction of future events, 
 but the inspired utterance of divine truth." (P. 135.) The 
 writer thus virtually takes the promise of a Saviour out of 
 the Old Testament Scriptures, at least up to the time of 
 Isaiah. This is but another result of rationalistic criticism. 
 I prefer, however, that Dr. Workman and every "Christian 
 scholar" should be judged by the utterances of the Book 
 itself, and will leave my readers to conclude between the 
 rationalism of the writer, whose book we are considering 
 in these pages, and the Scriptures themselves, which 
 give to the world a promised Saviour parallel with the 
 human race after the fall of man, " and for the space of 
 something like a thousand years one prophet after another 
 foretold of Him and His days," without any contradiction 
 or change of hope. " The prophetic form of the coming 
 Messiah, drawn by many pens during a thousand years, 
 and the dispersion of the ancient people, predicted in both 
 Testaments, were the prophecies of Omniscience. The fulfil- 
 ment could not have been brought about by human devices, 
 and certainly the predictions were before the event." 
 
 "From the first prediction. It shall bruise thy head, down 
 to the last, / come quickly, it hath pleased God to predict 
 the coming future " (Dr. W. B. Pope). 
 
PROPHECY. • 19 
 
 We would ask Dr. Workman what he would make of the 
 following ancient prophecies, which are declared by the 
 sacred writers to have been fulfilled, or if not stated to be 
 distinctively fulfilled in so niany words, they are at least 
 applied to Jesus, which amounts to the same thing. As, 
 for instance, the one referring to our Lord as the promised 
 seed of Abraham (Gen. xxii. 18), and applied by Paul 
 (Gal. iii. 8-16): "And the scripture, foreseeing that 
 God would justify the heathcH through faith, preached 
 before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying. In thee shall all 
 nations be blessed." Verse 16: "Now to Abraham and 
 his seed were the promises made. He saith not. And to 
 seeds, as of many ; but as of one. And to thy seed, tvhich 
 is Christ." He is also expressly declared to be the prophet 
 which Moses foretold (Deut. xviii. 15) : "The Lord thy 
 God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of 
 thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto him ye shall 
 hearken." And that Moses meant Christ is proved by the 
 quotation and application of Peter (Acts iii. 22, 23) : " For 
 Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the 
 Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like 
 unto me ; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he 
 shall say unto y^u. And it shall come to pass that every 
 soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed 
 from among the people." 
 
 George Steward, in his great work, "The Mediatorial 
 Sovereignty," begins his chapter on " Mediatorial Sov- 
 ereignty the Doctrine of Prophecy," thus : 
 
 " We now turn to the inquiry, how far the doctrine of 
 mediatorial sovereignty is indicated and confirmed by the 
 collective testimony of prophecy." On page 280 he quotes 
 the 2nd, 8th, 16th, 22nd, 24th, 44th, 47th, 69th, 72nd, 
 89th, 96th, 102nd, 110th, 118th and 132nd as "Messianic 
 Psalms." On page 284 he says the words found in 
 Deuteronomy xviii. 17, must be understood of the same 
 august Person. 
 
 Dr. F. L. Steinmeyer, at that time Professor of Theology 
 
20 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 in Berlin, says, p. 195, in his work, entitled "The Passion 
 and Resurrection of Our Lord Considered in the Light of 
 Modern Criticism " : " The apostles make it perfectly clear 
 in what sense they saw that Scripture, ' Thou wilt not give 
 Thy Holy One to see corruption' (Ps. xvi. 10) fulfilled in 
 the Saviour. Peter does so in his Pentecostal address 
 (Acts xi. 31 seq.), and Paul in his preaching at Antioch 
 (Acts xiii. 35 seq.), by the explanation, 'He whom God 
 raised again saw no corruption.'" 
 
 Dr. Storrs, in his " Divine Origin of Christianity," says, 
 p. 23 : "A general course of prophecy fulfilled — It seems 
 no more to reciuire a mind peculiarly devout to find this in 
 the Bible, than it needs such a mind to see the blending 
 stellar brightness of the Milky-way constellations. Even 
 the cautious and critical De Wette not only held the 
 Old Testament a great prophecy, a great type, of Him who 
 was to come, but attributed to individuals distinct pre- 
 sentiments by divine inspiration of events in the future." 
 Dr. Workman is disposed to belittle the work of Dr. Keith. 
 It " is uncritical, of course." His work on prophecy was 
 written from the standpoint of traditionalism, as Dr. Smith 
 well knows, and was published before the scientific study 
 of the Bible had fairly commenced." (P. 134.) 
 
 Notwithstanding the "uncritical" nature of the work 
 of Dr. Keith, it is still being read, and as far as I know, 
 still being published. In 1878 it had reached \t^ forty-first 
 edition, and was then brought out by Longmans, Green & 
 Co., of London, England. To intimate that such a \v'ork 
 is both unscientific and uncritical is to insult the intelli- 
 gence that demanded the repetition of so many editions. 
 It may be uncritical in the ense of some, but an author 
 that visited the Orient and travelled extensively in Eastern 
 lands for the purpose of accuracy, added to which was his 
 profound scholarship, is supposed to have known something. 
 He belonged to that class of scholars who studied the Word 
 scientifically ; he knew what he was doing, he had facts 
 for his theory and reason for his hope. True, he wrote 
 
PROPHECY. 21 
 
 some time ago, liaving brought out the first edition in 
 1859, and while a great deal has been done since then 
 by scholarship and research, the question is not a ques- 
 tion of the uncritical and unscientific style of Dr. Keith — 
 terms that may be modified by any one that uses them — 
 but v/hether the critical and scientific " modern scholars " 
 of to-day can dispose of Dr. Keith's argument ; whether 
 they have something more scientific, more common- 
 sense, more easily appreciated by the reader and more 
 helpful to the doubting mind. If they have nothing better 
 to offer than their own divisions and differences, their 
 " crazy-quilt " theories, " post-eventum " interpretation of 
 prophecies, their wholesale allegorical evaporation of whole 
 portions of historic narrative — if they have nothing better 
 to offer than the best the Higher Critics of the radical 
 school have given, then let us be critical and scientific, and 
 hold fast that which is good, which scientific criticism will 
 certainly approve of. When a work on " Prophecy," by 
 one of our "modern scholars," runs forty-one editions, 
 then we may possibly wake up a little more to their 
 theories. 
 
 Dr. Keith, in the work referred to above, says : " From 
 the commencement to the conclusion of the Scriptures of 
 the Old Testament it (the coming of the Saviour) is pre- 
 dicted or prefigured. They represent the first act of divine 
 justice, which was exercised on the primogenitors of the 
 human race, as mingled with divine mercy. Before their 
 exclusion from Paradise, a gleam of hope was seen to shine 
 around them in the promise of a suffering, but triumphant 
 Deliverer. To Abraham the same promise was convr yed 
 in a more definite form. Jacob spoke distinctly of the 
 coming of a Saviour. Moses prophesied ... of another 
 law-giver. . . . As the Old Testament does contain 
 prophecies of a Saviour that was to appear in the world, 
 the only question to be resolved is, whether all that it 
 testifies of him be fulfilled in the person of Christ." 
 
 Dr. Stanley Leathes, Professor of Hebrew in King's 
 
22 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 College, London, says : " Chapters xxvii. and xxviii. 
 (of Deuteronomy) are so clearly prophetical that it is impos- 
 sible to make their composition late enough to be other- 
 wise. Chapter xviii. 15 is inexplicable within the limits 
 of the Old Testament." 
 
 Here, then, a modern critical scholar and Dr. Keith 
 agree. 
 
 Dr. Farrar, Dean of Canterbury, truly a modern scholar, 
 said three years ago : " Let us first look at the Old Testa- 
 ment. It has, as you know, thirty-nine books ; but our 
 Lord arranges all the thirty-nine under three heads : the 
 Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Of these thirty-nine 
 books, there are five books of the Law, twelve of earlier and 
 later history (which are counted with the Prophets), sixteen 
 prophetic books, and six books which are in form poetic. 
 Let us glance at the general idea of each of these great 
 sections. Of the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, 
 Genesis is the book of beginnings. Its first nine chap- 
 ters give the story of the Fall and of the Flood. They 
 teach us from the very first the great inevitable laws of sin 
 and of retribution. The rest of the books show us God's 
 methods of leading men back to Himself, not by miracle, 
 but by hope and by mercy and by the agency of their 
 fellow-men. With the Fall was given that earliest promise 
 of the Deliverer which runs through all the remaining 
 books like a golden cord, and with the Flood the rainbow 
 of promise begins to flush and fade. We see it in the first 
 book of the Bible, shedding its yellow lustre on the ebbing 
 waves of the deluge ; we see it in the last book of the 
 Bible — overarching the throne of mercy with its emerald 
 span." 
 
 Dr. Alfred Edersheim wrote : "To say that Jesus 
 is the Christ means that He is the Messiah promised 
 and predicted in the Old Testament ; while the views 
 (Higher Criticism) referred to above respecting the history, 
 legislation, institutions and prophecies of the Old Testa- 
 ment seem incompatible alike with Messianic predictions 
 
PROPHECY. 23 
 
 in the Christian sense, and even with real beHef in the 
 divine authority of the larger portion of our Bible." 
 
 Dr. Dewart, in his able work on " Jesus the Messiah " (a 
 book worthy of the careful perusal of every Bible student), 
 after having shown from the first promise of a Saviour, 
 in Genesis iii., the prophecies which predictively refer to 
 Christ in a most exhaustive manner, says (p. 222) : " As 
 we have seen, the correspondence between the facts and 
 the prophecies is conclusive evidence of fulfilment, in the 
 ordinary Christian sense, apart from the numerous state- 
 ments about certain prophecies being fulfilled. But the 
 testimony of Christ and the apostles is another invincible 
 body of evidence against the negative theory." 
 
 The Rev. C. A. Row, M.A., author of "Christian Evi- 
 dences Viewed in Relation to Modern Thought," writes : 
 "The Scriptures of the Old Testament consist of a very 
 varied literature, legal, historical, poetical, prophetic, hor- 
 tatory and didactic, the composition of which extended over 
 a period of more than a thousand years, and the books of 
 which it is composed are works of at least forty different 
 authors ; yet, notwithstanding this variety of authorship 
 and dates, one Messianic conception pervades the whole." 
 
 To the above could be given many more extracts which, 
 in the main, agree with Dr. Keith, whom Dr. Workman 
 would belittle. But even in view of Dr. Workman's criti- 
 cism, it appears that the most popular and well-known 
 writers are yet so uncritical and so unscientific as to follow 
 the same line of argument as that of Dr. Keith, namely, 
 the argument of "correspondence and fulfilment." 
 
 To all of the above may be added the following names, 
 whose works we have consulted on this subject, and whom 
 we would scarcely like to class as either uncritical or 
 unscientific, for they are certainly modern scholars : 
 
 Dr. Joseph Angus, author of "Angus' Bible Hand-Book "; 
 Bishop Foster, of the M. E. Church ; late Archdeacon 
 Wilberforce, author of " The Incarnation "; Canon Girdle- 
 stone, M. A., author of " Foundations of the Bible "; Bishop 
 
24 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 "Westcott, the eminent classical scholar and translator ; Rev. 
 J. A. McClyraont, B.D., one of the editors of the present 
 Guild Series of Bible Text-Books ; Dr. Alfred Cave ; late 
 Philip Schaff, D.D. ; late Bishop Simpson, of the M. E. 
 Church ; Dr. Watts, of Belfast ; Dr. A. J. F. Behrends, 
 of Brooklyn, N.Y. ; Rev. Francis J. Sharr, Fernley Lec- 
 turer for 1891 ; A. T. Pierson, D.D., author of "Helps to 
 Bible Study"; Prof. Robertson, D.D., University of Glas- 
 gow ; Prof. William G. Moorehead, D.D., United Presby- 
 terian Theological Seminary, Xenia, O. ; Prof. W. H. Green, 
 D.D., LL.D., Princeton Theological Seminary ; Talbot W. 
 Chambers, D.D., LL.D.; Dr. Peloubet, author of the Select 
 Notes on the International Lessons. 
 
 We might also add that among the many theological 
 schools of this continent, verv few indeed will be found to 
 subscribe to the theory advanced by Dr. Workman. It is 
 a theory of radical and not conservative criticism. No one 
 need be afraid of what scholarship may do ; indeed, advan- 
 cing scholarship is confirming the Biblical records more 
 and more. Then the scholarship of any age is not that 
 which is necessarily seen in print. Hence could be counted 
 the thousands of pastors whose scholarship has kept them 
 from running after the novel theories of rationalistic 
 teachers — men with both learning and independence enough 
 to look at the question from every point of view, and yet 
 retaining the logically sound conclusions only of those who 
 could make out a case. Unfortunatelv for the radical critics, 
 they have failed even to disturb the surface of Christian 
 humanity to any large extent. They have been met stroke 
 for stroke, book for book, learned scholar for learned 
 scholar, and all the while the great representatives of 
 Christianity from their professors' chairs and pulpits, have 
 been acting as jurors, and the verdict is overwhelmingly in 
 favor of the conservative school of Biblical criticism. 
 
 "We will only have to wait a little while longer when 
 the whole theory of radical criticism v/ill be ruled out of 
 court." 
 
PROPHECY. 25 
 
 Already the ruling has begun ; divisions are quite fre- 
 quent among the critics themselves, some are abashed, and 
 under cover of the approaching night are making a hasty 
 retreat, while tlie great conservative hosts are advancing 
 and picking the Higher Critics off every rampart and fort- 
 ress they have ever erected. Notice the positions of some of 
 the great universities of to-day. " Among the most famous 
 theological faculties in Germany are those of Berlin, Bonn, 
 Breslau, Greifswald, Halle, Konigsberg, Leipzig and Tubin- 
 gen. In these universities are seventy-three theological 
 professors, of which number thirty belong to tlie radical 
 school, while forty-three belong to the moderate and con- 
 servative ranks." " During the last two years the con- 
 servatives have been rapidly gaining on the radicals, and 
 the reaction against radicalism seems to be assuming 
 formidable proportions among the general clergy and 
 laity." " Radical criticism is represented in Boston, Yale, 
 Harvard, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Union, Chicago and 
 Andover. But conservative criticism holds its ground in 
 Bangor, Yale, Hartford, Princeton, Drew, Madison, Auburn, 
 Rochester, Rutgers, Allegheny, Crozer, Lane, Louisville, 
 Chicago, Evanston, Oberlin, Omaha and Oakland. Yale 
 and Chicago occupy middle ground." ("The Old Testament 
 Under Fire," pp. 99-101). The above references have been 
 made at this juncture, because the theory of prophecy held by 
 Dr. Workman is that which is generally held by the radical 
 critic°, and these references go to show that those holding 
 the traditional belief regarding prophecy have by no means 
 left the field. Or, as Canon Girdlestone very aptly puts it, 
 ** There are about a hundred predictions of Christ in the 
 Old Testament, the oldest about 4000 B.C., and the latest 
 400 B.C." In this he is in full accord with another writer 
 named above. Rev. J. A. McClymont, B.D., who, in 
 referring to the Gospel of Matthew, says : " In the course 
 of the Gospel there are no less than sixty citations of Old 
 Testament prophecy as fulfilled in Jesus." These men are 
 " modern scholars," and know whereof they affirm. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MIRACLES. 
 
 In this chapter our author discredits many of the miracles 
 of the Old Testament. 
 
 1. " Such miracles as the Twelve Plagues are practically 
 synonymous with divine interventions or providential 
 interpositions." 
 
 2. "The account of the destruction of the Cities of the 
 Plain is a graphic description of an ancient volcanic 
 eruption." 
 
 3. " The subsequent turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of 
 salt was likewise due to natural causes." 
 
 4. "The story of Balaam is a traditional account of an 
 ancient angelic appearance, belonging to a time when the 
 idea of animals talking with men was practically universal." 
 (Pages 126 and 127.) 
 
 In reference to 1, there is no doubt they were "divine 
 interventions " or " providential interpositions," as every 
 miracle which the Bible records was ; but here was a 
 special intervention for a special purpose. It was known 
 they would happen, and they came to pass according to the 
 Word of the Lord which He had formerly announced to 
 Moses. - 
 
 Moreover, these miracles were preceded by others, such as 
 the "Burning bush not consumed" (Ex. iii. 3) and "Aaron's 
 rod changed into a serpent" (Ex. vii. 10-12). They belong 
 to the same category as the dividing of the Red Sea, the 
 sweetening of Marah's water, the sending of the daily 
 
MIRACLES. 27 
 
 manna, water from the rock, the turning of part of Israel 
 for faithless discontent, Nadab and Abihu consumed for 
 oflfering strange fire, the earth opening for Korah, Aaron's 
 rod budding, the healing of the Israelites by looking at the 
 brazen serpent. These miracles are just as trustworthy 
 as any others. The narrative that contains them is historic, 
 not symbolical; for if we, by critical evaporation, extract 
 the literal here, what are we going to do with any other 
 part of the Old Testament where miracles are recorded 1 
 No proper reason has ever been given why we should con- 
 sider the Ten Plagues otherwise than miraculous in their 
 character. 
 
 2. We will not deny that God could use the neigh- 
 borhood of Sodom vo destroy the city. He can do what- 
 soever He will. Bu^ in this case He rained down tire from 
 heaven, or fire from the Lord out of heaven. There was 
 not necessarily a volcanic eruption, or even if we were to 
 admit there was, then the miracle would not in the least 
 be affected, as only divine power can use a volcano for a 
 special purpose and at a special time. The narrative, 
 however, precludes the introduction of anything more than 
 what is really stated. The narrative is further confirmed 
 by the use Jesus made of it when He said : " The same 
 day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brim- 
 stone from heaven, and destroyed them all." (Luke xviii. 
 29.) We need no further comment than that of Jesus to 
 establish the historic reality of that occurrence. Not only 
 was it a miracle, but a prophecy fulfilled, which fact alone 
 destroys the theory of a. m^Te natural state of things. 
 
 3. Here, too, Jesus confirms the Scripture when He said, 
 " Remember Lot's wife." 
 
 4. "That this was a vi.jionary scene is a notion which 
 seems inadmissible, because of the improbability of a vision 
 being described as an actual occurrence in the midst of a 
 plain history." (Jamieson, Faussett and Brown.) 
 
 Moreover, on what authority is this made to be a mere 
 traditional account, put there to reflect the ideas of the 
 
28 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 age 1 As far as we have been able to ascertain, our critics 
 have a most fertile source of imagination from which they 
 draw whenever it seems to suit their purpose. Not 
 that they do these things intentionally, but because *' they 
 fancy that everything must accord with their theories." 
 But they are bound to disappointment, as not only are 
 there divisions among themselves, but one by one they are 
 getting back to sounder modes of criticism, which appear 
 less ridiculous in the eyes of the reading public and more 
 sensible from their own standpoint. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 IMMORTALITY."^ 
 
 The conclusion that we arrived at, after reading this 
 chapter, was that the Egyptians had a clearer idea of the 
 immortality of the soul than the Israelites, that there is no 
 definite teaching in the Old Testament regarding future 
 rewards and punishments. In fact, our author is embold- 
 ened to say, " No distinction is drawn in tlie Hebrew 
 Scriptures between the condition of the righteous and the 
 condition of the wicked in the other world." (P. 145.) 
 
 The very meaning of the word " Sheol " is too hastily 
 given. "The Hebrew Sheol, like the Greek Hades, repre- 
 sents, it is true, 'a shadowy abode of the dead.'" It means 
 this, but a good deal more ; otherwise many passages of 
 Scripture are left unexplained. 
 
 Jacob said, " I go down into Sheol unto my son mourn- 
 ing." (Gen. xxxvii. 35.) 
 
 " Ye shall bring my grey hairs with sorrow to Sheol." 
 (Gen. xlii. 38.) 
 
 In these passages the grave is evidently meant, and 
 not the sliadowy abode. 
 
 " The Lord killeth and maketh alive, he bringeth down 
 to Sheol, and bringeth up." (1 Sam. ii. 6.) God certainly 
 does not bring up from hell or the shadowy world, unless 
 we are prepared to believe in the doctrine of conditional 
 immortality. 
 
 * In this chapter we have used the argument of the late Moses 
 Stuart, in a condensed form, contained in his work on " Future 
 Punishment," pages 105-169. 
 
30 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 " The snares of Sheol encompassed me ; the deadly nets 
 came upon me." 
 
 " Thou shalt not let his hoary head go down to Sheol in 
 peace." 
 
 " He that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more." 
 
 "0 that thou wouldst hide me in Sheol." 
 
 "If I wait, Sheol is my house." 
 
 " In death there is no remembrance of thee: in Sheol 
 who shall give thee thanks ? " 
 
 After giving the above passages and many others, Moses 
 Stuart, that eminent Hebrew scholar, makes the remark : 
 " There can be no reasonable doubt that Sheol does most 
 generally mean the under world, the grave or sepulchre, 
 the world of the dead, in the Old Testament Scriptures." 
 
 If no distinction is drawn between the condition of the 
 righteous and the wicked in the Old Testament Scriptures, 
 what are we to make of such passages as have reference to 
 life and Jeath, with a nlainly stated future meaning ? Take 
 those that emphasize life : 
 
 " Ye shall keep my statutes, and my judgments ; which 
 if a man do, he shall live in them." (Lev. xviii. 5.) 
 
 Also, Nehemiah ix. 29 ; Ezekiel xx. 11, 13, 21. 
 
 " Keep my commandments, and live." (Prov. iv. 4 ; 
 vii. 2.) 
 
 " Hear and your soul shall live." (Isa. liii. 3.) 
 
 "If thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin 
 not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live; he shall not 
 die." (Ezek. iii. 21.) See also Ezek. xviii. 9, 17 ; xxxiii. 
 13, 15, 16, 19. 
 
 " Seek ye me, and ye shall live." (Amos iv. 5, 6.) 
 
 "Thou wilt show me the paths of life." (Psa. xvi. 11.) 
 
 " She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her." 
 (Prov. iv. 22.) 
 
 " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the 
 issues of life." (Proverbs iv. 23.) See also Proverbs x. 
 11, 17; xi. 30; xii. 28; xiii. 12, 14; xiv. 27; xv. 4, xvi. 22; 
 xviii. 21 ; xxi. 21 ; Ezekiel xxxiii. 15; Malachi ii. 5, 
 
IMMORTALITY. 31 
 
 In the New Testament the instances are very numerous 
 John V. 40; vi. 33, 35, 48, 51, 53, 63; viii. 12; xi. 25; xiv 
 6 ; XX. 31 ; Acts iii. 15; Romans v. 17, 18; viii. 2, 6, 10 
 2 Corinthians ii. 16; iii. 6;iv. 10, 12; Galatians iii. 21 
 Philippians ii. 16 ; Colossians iii. 4; 2 Timothy i. 1, 10 ; 
 James i. 1 2 ; 1 Peter iii. 7 ; 2 Peter i. 3 ; 1 John i. 1 ; v. 
 12, 16; Revelation ii. 7, 10; xxi. 6; xxii. 1, 14, 17. 
 
 Hence it is quite clear that both Old and New Testa- 
 ment writers deal with the subject of future reward very 
 much the same way, in their employment of the word 
 "life." 
 
 The corresponding words, " die " and " death," are also 
 used, but to denote, not natural, but spiritual death, with 
 a future meaning. 
 
 "The soul that sinneth shall die." (Ezek. xviii. 4; xx. 17.) 
 "Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?" 
 (Ezek. V. 21.) (See also Ezek. v. 24, 26, 28.) "I have no 
 pleasure in the death of him that dieth." (Ezek. v. 32.) 
 
 "He that hateth reproof shall die." (Prov. xv. 10.) 
 "The wicked man shall die in his iniquity." (Ezek. 
 xxxiii. 8.) " See, I have set before thee this day life and 
 good, death and evil." (Deut. xxx. 15.) "I have set 
 before you the way of life, and the way of death." (Jer. 
 xxi. 8.) "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked." 
 (Ezek. xviii. 32.) 
 
 But Sheol has a secondary meaning, which our author 
 failed to give ; and, when used, designates the " world of 
 woe." 
 
 " They spend their days in wealth and in a moment go 
 down to Sheol" (Job xxi. 13.) "The wicked shall be 
 turned into Sheol^ and all the nations that forget God." 
 (Ps. xix. 18.) "Her feet go down to death, her steps take 
 hold on Sheol." (Prov. v. 5.) 
 
 "But he knoweth not that the ghosts are there, and that 
 
 her guests are in the depths of SheoV^ (Prov. ix. 18.) (See 
 
 also Num. xvi. 30, 33 ; Deut. xxxii. 22 ; 1 Kings ii. 6 ; 
 
 Ps. xlix. 14, 15; Is. v. 14.) How can any one, examining 
 
 8 
 
32 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 the above passages, come to any other conclusion, but 
 that future rewards and punishments are clearly and dis- 
 tinctly taught, though by no means so clearly or so fully 
 taught as in the New Testament, where " Life and immor- 
 tality are brought to light by the Gospel." 
 
 With regard to the Egyptians having a more distinct 
 idea than the Hebrews on the (juestion of immortality, 
 even granting the contention for the sake of argument, 
 can we suppose Moses, '* who was learned in all the 
 wisdom of the Egyptians," to have been ignorant of the 
 doctrine ? Nor is it supposable that the people among 
 whom were prophets, priests and writers on religious sub- 
 jects, should be more ignorant of so important a subject 
 than their neighbors. The supposition is decidedly in 
 favor of these nations having their ideas revived by coming 
 in contact with the Hebrews whose views were much 
 clearer than their own. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 RELIGION. 
 
 " Religion was a racial peculiarity of the Hebrews." 
 (P. 49.) " The religion of Israel started as a tribal mono- 
 theism, but it rose to an ethical monotheism, the germ of 
 which goes back to very remote times." (P. 87.) 
 
 By such statements our author will find hosts of sym- 
 pathizers, both among Deists and Agnostics. This we 
 regard as one of the most dangerous concessions of the 
 whole book. Let us reason backward. The religion of 
 Israel started as a tribal monotheism. But there was a 
 God interested in His creature, man, even before Israel 
 was a tribe. Man, then, was polytheistic, or, to use Dr. 
 Workman's own words, there was "a gradual ascent 
 from fetichism and polytheism to the worship of a 
 single God;" but, before, he imagined he ought to 
 worship Something^ having as yet no idea of a Some One. 
 What was man ? Had he any god at all? According to 
 the above he had not. There must have been a time in 
 man's history when he was without God ; but in the course 
 of time he imagined he heard something or saw something 
 — in his dreams possibly. Then he tried to make an image of 
 what he imagined was either his greatest blessing or greatest 
 curse. His ideas of the thing worshipped determined his 
 actions. Then it happens that this something must have 
 life. Around him are so many manifestations of life, in the 
 heavens above and in the earth beneath and in the waters 
 under the earth, that all are invested with a personality 
 
34 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 that becomes real. Hence appear the numerous deities of 
 the polytheist. But all this time there is a man with an 
 immortal spirit, with a double responsibility upon him, to 
 make his way in the world, and also to make a 
 God that will suit him best. Time goes on, and the 
 same man that had fought his way from very " remote 
 times " through fetichism to polytheism, now resolves all in 
 one, and at last becomes a monotheist — a " tribal mono- 
 theist." That is, the God of the Scriptures has been 
 gradually evolved from a " germ," which goes back to 
 the " remotest times." Revelation, therefore, was not 
 necessary according to such a process ; natural religion 
 has been all-sufficient, and man's imagination and reason 
 have dc ne for him what revelation proposes to do. Then, 
 if man could do so much toward revealing God, reaching 
 up to the Deity through so many forms, he was perfectly 
 capable of compiling and composing his own scriptures, 
 sufficient for the times in which he lived ; therefore, 
 we must expect to find traces of that development in 
 his writings. 
 
 To do so we must exclude the Bible, for we have no evi- 
 dence of such a process as described above. We do see 
 traces of such a development among the comparative 
 religions. But inasmuch as we deny the assumptions con- 
 tained in the above quotations, it is quite plain that our 
 duty is to show that religion is a revelation of God, and 
 therefore neither racial nor the result of a process of 
 evolution. 
 
 In taking the ground that God is the same yesterday, 
 to-day and forever, we also take the ground that He 
 revealed Himself to man from the beginning, and was 
 never left without a witness who could testify that he 
 knew God, whom to know is life everlasting. That, parallel 
 with this revelation of Himself, was there a "revealed 
 religion," which was not a " racial peculiarity," but a 
 universal fact, so far as the human race in its beginning 
 was concerned. The opening words of Scripture, " In the 
 
RELIGION. 35 
 
 beginning God created the heavens and the earth," are proof 
 of the fact that when Moses wrote, the people to whom he 
 wrote were monotheists. From the very beginning of his- 
 tory, as far as Moses takes us back (and we still hold to 
 the fact that he takes us farther back into the realms of 
 veritable history than any one else), man was a worship- 
 ping being. He worshipped a God of power, righteousness 
 and mercy, in fear, love and dependence. The first man, 
 therefore, that we have any knowledge of, knew no god 
 but the unchangeable God of the Scriptures. Whatever 
 beliefs or forms of worship we find after that are the 
 result rather of the degeneracy of man than that the forms 
 of Animism and Polytheism were parts of the system that 
 evolved the idea of the true God. 
 
 Moses and Isaiah had the same majestic conception of 
 God. Compare Deut. vi. 4 with Is. xliv. 8. " Why should 
 they not, since God revealed Himself to both." He did not 
 reveal His plans to both alike, but He did Himself. The 
 moral teacliing in Leviticus xix. 18 can well be compared 
 with Rom. xii. 19. (See also Prov. xxv. 21, 22, and Matt. 
 V. 44.) 
 
 Some may be ready to call this an invidious comparison, 
 for was it not said by them of old, " an eye for an eye and 
 a tooth for a tooth " ? Yes, the same thing exists to-day so 
 far as the civil law is concerned. The reference here is to 
 the civil rather than the moral law, a distinction which 
 should always be kept in mind. But that a righteous God 
 required a righteous life from the days of Adam to Jesus, 
 according to opportunity, is, we believe, the true teaching 
 of the Old Testament Scriptures. Let us take some of the 
 most ancient of the Oriental nations to illustrate that 
 humanity's conception of God in the beginning was mono- 
 theistic. We will begin with Egypt. *' The fundamental 
 doctrine was the unity of the Deity, but this unity was 
 not represented ; but the attributes of His being were 
 represented under positive forms, and hence arose the 
 multiplicity of gods that engendered idolatry." (Sir Gard- 
 ner Wilkinson.) 
 
36 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 Mr. Cooper, Honorary Secretary of the Society of Bibli- 
 cal Archseology, says : " First of all, the Supreme Deity 
 of the Egyptians was Amnion Ra, the spiritual author 
 of all existence — physical, moral, and everything else."* 
 
 Dr. Sayce, in his chapter on " The Egyptian Religion," 
 says: "The names of one god are at times very numerous; 
 for example, in one inscription the Sun-god Ra is addressed 
 under seventy-two different names, and a whole chapter of 
 the ' Book of the Dead ' is given up to the names of Osiris. 
 In such lists we often find one god identified with another, 
 and indeed with several others ; so then it is evident that 
 a large number of the minor deities are merely forms of 
 the great gods, and the same statement applies even to 
 the great gods themselves. For example, the god Ra, when 
 he rose in the morning, was called Harmachis, at mid-day 
 he was called Ra, in the evening he was called Atum or 
 Tum. . . . The Egyptian called every god nutar 
 (power); but, in addition to this, he seems to have had an 
 idea of God which will bear some comparison in sublimity 
 with our own." For example, let us take an extract from 
 a hymn : 
 
 *' God is One and Alone, and there is none other with 
 Him. God is One, the One who has made all things. God 
 is Spirit, the Spirit of Spirits, the Great Spirit of Egypt. 
 The Divine Spirit God is from the beginning, and has 
 existed from the beginning." To all of which J. A. S. 
 Grant (Bey), of Cairo, Egypt, agreed, when he said at the 
 Parliament of Religions : "In the ancient Egyptian 
 religion, therefore, we have clearly depicted to us an un- 
 named almighty Deity, who is uncreated and self-existent." 
 
 China. — Dr. Legge, the great authority on all things 
 pertaining to China, says : " The Chinese fathers knew 
 God as the Supreme Ruler, whose providence embraced all. 
 Tien has much the force of the name Jehovah, as God 
 Himself explained it to Moses. ... Li was to the 
 
 * (( 
 
 Inspiration of Holy Scriptures." Rev. Francis J. Sharr. 
 
RELIGION. 37 
 
 Chinese fathers, I believe, exactly what God was to our 
 fatiiers, whenever they took that great name upon their 
 lips." Is it not true, also, that present-day Chinese 
 philosophers go back to one whom they call the " Great 
 Supreme," from whom emanated Yin- Yang, from whom 
 the elements sprang, and by whom man was created ? 
 
 India tells the same story as China and Egypt. Pro- 
 fessor H. H. Wilson says : " There can be no doubt that 
 the fundamental doctrine of the Vedas is monotheism. 
 
 . . M. Adolph Pietet, in his great work, ' Les 
 Origines Europiennes,' gives it as his opinion that the 
 religion of the undivided Aryans was a monotheism more 
 or less defined, and both Pietet and Muller maintain that 
 traces of the primitive monotheism are visible in the Veda, 
 that the remembrance of a God, one and infinite, breaks 
 through the mists of idolatrous phraseology, like the blue 
 sky that is hidden by a passing cloud." "We conclude, 
 therefore, that the knowledge of the divine functions and 
 attributes possessed by the Vedic Aryans was neither the 
 product of intuition, nor experience, but a survival of the 
 result of a primitive revelation."* Persians, more especially 
 ancient Persians, at present the representatives of the 
 ancient national religion of Persia, are to be seen mostly 
 in India, and go by the name of Parsees. They, however, 
 are true followers of Zoroaster, and are called sometimes 
 Zoroastrians. By going back to the beginning of this 
 religion we find it monotheistic, and its expounders to day 
 claim for it a belief in one God, known under different 
 names. 
 
 The Rev. William Arthur, in his admirable volume, 
 " God Without Religion," takes us back geographically to 
 the ancient centres of civilization, and the farther back he 
 goes proves the more conclusively the contrary of the 
 evolution theory held by Dr. Workman. 
 
 Dr. Workman is perfectly consistent in his conclusion 
 
 * Rev. Maurice Phillips, of Madras. 
 
38 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 regarding the development of God in the human mind, 
 beginning, as he does, with the "germ" in the man, and it 
 being a " germ so remote," it can scarcely be called by that 
 name. But how unlike God to start man in such a way ! 
 How contrary even to the most natural way of thinking ! 
 As a rule, we do not in our childhood begin with the many 
 and get back to one. It is rather the other way ; we go 
 from monosyllables to polysyllables. Therefore, instead of 
 taking the ground that monotheism presupposes polytheism, 
 we think it is more rational to suppose that the simpler 
 belief should precede the more complex; or, as Max Muller 
 says, " The more we go back, the more we examine the 
 germs of any religion, the purer I believe we shall find the 
 conceptions of the Deity." 
 
 Dr. Townsend, in his "Elements of Theology, says : 
 
 " Monotheism is that system of religion which treats of 
 one God. This appears to have been the original faith of 
 mankind. This is as we should expect, provided the 
 Scripture representations are correct — that originally God 
 created but one man, and disclosed to him the truth ; that, 
 later, the earth was swept of its inhabitants by the deluge 
 of Noah ; that but one family, and that one educated in a 
 monotheistic faith, and impressed by the most startling 
 providences which have appeared on earth, and which were 
 believed to be under the direction of one personal God, 
 went forth from the ark to re-people the earth and per- 
 petuate the facts of this history in monuments and 
 traditions. 
 
 "All those nations among whom have prevailed various 
 forms of polytheism and pantheism give strong evidence in 
 their early history of a faith strictly monotheistic. The 
 leading minds of all polytheistic nations have been 
 monotheistic. 
 
 " The history of the religious thought of mankind, it is 
 true, has not been in all respects progressive. Starting 
 from monotheism, the tendencies have been polytheistic 
 
RELIGION. 39 
 
 and pantheistic, followed by a return to monotheism in 
 proportion to civilization, intelligence, and piety. It is 
 singular that Darwin and Herbert Spencer have not learned 
 that there are no movements on straight lines ; all things 
 move in curves and circles. The way out is the way back, 
 reversed." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 MORALITY. 
 
 *' The Bible records a progressive morality. No one 
 can carefully study it without perceiving a progress in 
 moral teaching, as well as a development in religious 
 doctrine ; nor can any one impartially compare the Law 
 of Moses with the Gospel of Christ without observing a 
 difference of moral standard in them." (P. 97.) 
 
 " But it may be asked, Is inspiration compatible with 
 imperfect morality 1 Certainly it is ; because, if a man 
 honestly conforms to the highest moral standard of his 
 time, he is a truly moral man." (P. 98.) 
 
 John Stuart Mill is said to have stated there might be 
 a world in which two and two would make five. As yet 
 we are not aware that any one has discovered that world. 
 It seems to be a common thing, however, for a certain class 
 of theologians to explain and excuse the immoralities, 
 weaknesses and inhumanity of certain Old Testament 
 incidents by the difference of " moral standard." 
 
 But what is a moral standard, or, as we believe, more 
 properly, Who is the moral standard ? No one, we will 
 presuuie, will question when we say, God is the moral 
 standard. This being the case, we may expect to find an 
 embodiment of His mind concerning morality somewhere 
 and somehow. This we find in the moral law. But before 
 that He had said to Abraham, " Walk br/ore Me and be 
 thou perfect. ^^ 
 
 But some may say the law was not given till Moses ; 
 
MORALITY. 41 
 
 therefore, as sin is the transgression of tlie law, how were 
 people to know 1 This raises the question of knowledge 
 and fact. It is a fact that before Moses there was moral 
 law ; not written upon stone, but upon the fleshy tablets of 
 the heart. This moral law was known to the federal head 
 of the race, and ran on from them, but not of them, for 
 God alone is law-giver, just as the instinct of the creature 
 may be in the creature, but not of the creature. Every 
 man born into the world, therefore, is born with a con- 
 science that reveals to him moral law. Man knew a 
 perfect God from the beginning ; this is certainly the 
 record of the Bible. The Decalogue was a fact, and men 
 were not at liberty to break it any more before it was 
 written on stone than after it was written. There were as 
 holy men before the written law as ever after it — witness 
 Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. God 
 is still the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The lives 
 of these men, their surroundings considered, are all as 
 sublime from a moral standpoint as any in history. By 
 what moral standard did they live 1 By the same moral 
 standard that afterwards sustained John the Baptist, 
 Peter, John, James and Paul. 
 
 Righteousness, truth and purity have ever been the 
 same ; it could not be otherwise with a perfect God as 
 Father of humanity. The time in which a man lives may 
 have something to do with his appreciation of the standard 
 of morality. He may not be able to see the whole truth 
 any more than the Greenlander is able to see the whole 
 sun as much as those who are farther south. Light is the 
 same, however, in the north as in the south, and comes 
 from the same source, though not as much of it ; but the 
 fault is not with the sun. So we believe that men are 
 conditioned morally the same as physically. The oppor- 
 tunities for light are not all the same. Now, apply this 
 spiritually, and what have we? Nothing less than the 
 Sun of Righteousness, who has always shone upon this 
 world, is shining to-day on all lands where humanity is, 
 
42 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 though not with the same significance. But, to steal, com- 
 mit adultery, worship false images, covet, are wrong, just as 
 wrong in China as in England or America ; but the judg- 
 ment following the wrong will not be the same in both 
 instances, as the responsibility is not the same. But this 
 would open up a field too wide for our present purpose. 
 At the same time, when so much is being said about 
 " progressive morality," we do well to stop before admit- 
 ting, as some would, that " the advancement and condi- 
 tions of the age must make both room and demand for the 
 revelation before it will be given." We prefer to think 
 that the great and good God always made ample provision 
 for His creatures, and that His revelation, given at crea- 
 tion to Adam, when properly used, was sutticient to 
 develop in man the highest morality. Indeed, we question 
 whether a higher type of morality has ever been known to 
 the world than was manifested in such lives as stated 
 above, all of whom undoubtedly knew but one universal 
 righteous God, and kept also every precept, afterwards 
 written upon the tables of stone, which was no new reve- 
 lation to man, but merely a new way of stating the law 
 for national purposes, what the people hitherto had been 
 required to keep. This same law, afterwards called the 
 Law of Moses, was referred to by the prophets as the 
 standard of morality, whose burden was " back to the 
 law " (not forward to some new moral development), as 
 the burden of our preaching to-day is — back to Christ. 
 Strange does it not seem that Ezekiel should refer to 
 Noah, Daniel and Job, as having special influence because 
 of their righteousness (Ezek. xiv. 14), who are given as 
 prominent a place in the same connection as that which 
 Jeremiah gives to Moses and Samuel.* Notwithstanding 
 from Noah to Daniel there was a lapse of about 1,779 
 years, and each one lived in different ages, separated by 
 hundreds of years, yet they were men specially noted for 
 their righteousness, according to the testimony of holy 
 
 *Jer. XV. 1. 
 
MORALITY. 43 
 
 writ. We cannot, therefore, think that " morality," which 
 according to Chancellor Burwash is " the conviction of 
 right in the conscience," is progressive at all, but is one of 
 those fundamental " convictions " that runs parallel with 
 the race. There are as bad men in the world to-day in 
 every community, notwithstanding the light they have, as 
 there were before the Flood. 
 
 If men, by the wilful desire, disregard these first prin- 
 ciples, and this disregard is transmitted from generation 
 to generation, until a wholly different state of things 
 appears, the fault is not in the revelation, but in the 
 subjects of the revelation, whose sins are visited upon the 
 third and fourth generation, who must get hack to the first 
 principles, and not wait for a different kind of morality 
 than what has been common to all who have been wit- 
 nesses of God in every age of the world. 
 
 The names by which God chose to reveal Himself to His 
 ancient people were Elohim, Eloah, Jehovah, Adoni. 
 The most frequently used terms, however, are Elohim and 
 Jehovah, translated in our Bibles as " God " and " Lord." 
 The name God is common to thirty-seven books of the Old 
 Testament ; and that of Lord quite common to thirty-six of 
 these books. His attributes, such as chesed, cJianan, 
 translated " mercy " (which may also mean kindness), run 
 through the Scriptures from Genesis to Zechariah ; aheh, 
 "love," from Genesis to Malachi ; toh, *' goodness," from 
 Exodus to "Zechariah ; channuri, chanan^ " graciousness," 
 from Exodus to Malachi; crek aj)hy "long-suffering," com- 
 mon to Exodus, Numbers, Psalms, Jeremiah ; nasa^ salach, 
 "forgiveness," common from Genesis to Isaiah, and from 
 Exodus to Amos. 
 
 In Exodus we read that God is glorious in holiness ; in 
 Amos, that He hath sworn by His holiness. In Deuter- 
 onomy lie is the faithful God ; in Isaiah He is the Lord 
 that ih faithful. 
 
 We are left, therefore, to no other conclusion but that 
 God was known from the beginning as the " Lord God, 
 
44 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 merciful and gracious, long-suflfering and abundant in good- 
 ness and truth." (Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7.) Indeed, take this 
 passage in connection with another found in the same book 
 (xv. 11), "Glorious in 'loliness, fearful in praises, doing 
 wonders," and we have the most perfect expression of the 
 divine attributes in the whole Bible ; and this description 
 was given by its first writer. 
 
 Surely there is no progressive morality here, so far as 
 the standard is concerned, at least ; and whatever differ- 
 ences there were among the nations at that time of the 
 world's history, that standard was just the same then as now. 
 No one would think of comparing the Turkish Empire 
 with the British nation in morals, either public or social. 
 Yet the light first came to that part of the world over 
 which Turkey rules. The Fiji Islands are the most relig- 
 ious of all places in the world, yet they have only had 
 about sixty years of Christianity. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 ANTH1WP0M0BPHI8M. 
 
 " We are not to infer from the description that the 
 Deity really exists in the shape of a man, or that he actu- 
 ally appeared to Abraham with a human body, and walked 
 and talked and ate with the old patriarch." (P. 122.) 
 
 When God speaks in Scripture, how are we to interpret 
 such an exercise 1 What language did He use 1 Certainly 
 a language understood by those whom He addressed. If 
 He spake, why not see, hear, walk, touch, etc. 1 If He did 
 not speak, then we are at a loss to understand a great deal 
 of the Old Testament language. Moreover, if He did not 
 speak when the writers credit Him with talking to His 
 people, what reason have we for assuming that He heard 
 them 1 If, however. He could hear the people as they 
 prayed to Him in their own language, why could He not 
 speak to them in their own tongue 1 If He did not hear, 
 then what reason have we for believing that He hears 
 now ? Take away the fact that God spake, and you just 
 as reasonably shut Him out from hearing also ; when, lo ! 
 the institution of prayer is forever abolished. 
 
 In the incident referred to (Gen. xviii.), the narrative 
 distinctively refers to the Lord appearing unto Abraham. 
 His was no unusual occurrence, for the Lord had appeared 
 before, and He appeared at different times afterwards. 
 He had already appeared to Hagar (Gen. xvi.) as the angel 
 of the Lord, speaking as only God would speak : "I will 
 multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be num- 
 bered for multitude." (Gen. xvi. 9.) Hagar was so impressed 
 ■with the manifestation that she called the name of the Lord 
 
46 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 that spake unto her : " Thou God seest me." (Gen. xvi. 13.) 
 This same Lord appears to Lot (Gen. xviii. 33), Jacob (Gen. 
 xxviii. 31, 32), Moses (Exod. iii.), Manoah and Jephthah 
 (Judges xiii.). He says to Moses (Exod. iii. 6): "I am the 
 God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, 
 and the God of Jacob." The term used in the second verse 
 is "angel of the Lord"; in fourth verse, "the Lord "; in 
 sixth verse, " God." Each of the references declares him 
 who appeared to be " Jehovah," as both His Omniscience 
 and Omnipotence are repeatedly shown. 
 
 After these incidents, then, are we to suppose that God 
 did not appear ; that He was not a guest of Abraham ; 
 that He did not rain fire from heaven upon Sodom ; that 
 He did not appear to Jacob as he dreamed ; that Moses 
 heard no voice from the burning bush; and that the parents 
 of Samson were not conscious of the presence of God '? Take 
 away the appearances of God, His speaking and hearing, from 
 these incidents, and you take away a good deal from the 
 Bible. You take away ev^erything surrounding these inci- 
 dents, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's flight, 
 the burning bush and Moses' commission, the history of 
 Samson, etc. Do that and you discredit Genesis, Exodus, 
 and Judges. Discredit these books and you discredit all, 
 according to the same analogy. If the speaking and hear- 
 ing and seeing of God on these occasions were all sym- 
 bolical, why may such not be the case throughout the 
 whole Bible where the appearance of God is recorded 1 For 
 ourselves, the appearances of God, just as the narrative 
 declares them, and the incidents in connection with such 
 appearances, stand or fall together. If God sees and hears 
 to-day, as we believe He does, what was to hinder Him from 
 doing the same 6000 years ago 1 
 
 One instance we have not as yet adduced, because of its 
 liability to be misunderstood in connection with the others, 
 namely, the appearance of the captain of the Lord's host 
 to Joshua. (Joshua v. 13.) "Some say a created angel in 
 human form appeared, but the ancient Jewish Church 
 and the majority of the Christian Fathers agree in the 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 47 
 
 belief that it was the second person of the ever-blessed 
 Trinity, the Word — He who said, *No man hath seen God 
 (the Father) at any time. The Only Begotten, who is in 
 the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.' This 
 view is confirmed by the command to Joshua (verse 15 and 
 by vi. 2), where the person who here appeared to him is 
 called Jehovah, and issues his commands with authority. 
 . . . Clearly, therefore, this was not a dream nor vision." 
 
 The above is the comment of John Lloyd, M. A., F.R.H.S., 
 author of " Analysis of Hebrew Text of Genesis i.-xi.," 
 "Analysis of Hebrew Text of Ecclesiastes." His comment, 
 therefore, on this incident makes all the other incidents 
 stronger. So here at least is one " modern scholar " whose 
 commentary on Joshua is a text-book for students, and 
 who believes that God could speak, see and be seen in the 
 manifestation that He chose to appear in. 
 
 The remarks of Dr. W. B. Pope, the eminent theologian, 
 may be of interest here also : "In the earlier books of the 
 Bible, the appearances of God or Jehovah, the theophanies, 
 as they were called, were sometimes in the form of angels 
 or men. Moses spake to Jehovah face to face. In the 
 plains of Mamre three men appeared to Abram, while one 
 Lord spake to him ; but one Angel, and one Man, is pre- 
 eminent. Of him, Jehovah said, " Afy name is in him." 
 It was the Angel of Jehovah who gave Abraham the first 
 promise, swearing " by Myself." With him Jacob wrestled, 
 and Hosea says that this being was even Jehovah, God of 
 hosts. 
 
 The position of these well-known authors referred to 
 in this chapter is decidedly against the position taken by 
 Dr. Workman, whose methods of interpretation, if adopted 
 by many (which we are far from believing is the case 
 to-day), would be very disastrous to faith in the " founda- 
 tions of belief." 
 
 From the foregoing it will be seen that our contention 
 is not that God necessarily exists in " form as a man," but 
 that whenever it suited His purpose He appeared just in 
 the way the Scriptures declare He did. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 " The spiritualizing of Scripture for the sake of obtaining 
 a Christian meaning, or with a view of solving a moral 
 difficulty, is as unscientific as it is unauthorized." (P. 56.) 
 
 He thus misconstrues the plain, symbolical language of 
 Scripture to be met with everywhere. Dr. Workman is 
 surely not going to fasten upon us the shackles of mediaeval- 
 ism when every portion of Scripture was literalized, appear- 
 ing afterwards in the Church as dogmas, however astonish- 
 ing they might be. This method of interpretation would 
 lead us to accept a great many of the errors of the Romish 
 Church, such as substantiation, auricular confession, and 
 the worship of the host. We must certainly spiritualize a 
 great many of Christ's sayings, otherwise they are most 
 unintelligible. In fact, we can scarcely account for such 
 an expression on Dr. Workman's part when this is the 
 very thing he has done himself, and is striving to do 
 throughout his whole book, at least so it appears to us. 
 
 What strange reading, amounting, indeed, to a contra- 
 diction, in w^hich Dr. Workman apparently opposes him- 
 self. For on page 25 we read, " Hence, in primitive times, 
 no doubt, some features of the story were regarded as literal 
 facts which, at the present time, are not so regarded ; but 
 the structure of the narrative indicates that the inspired 
 writer purposely clothed his description of the Garden, as 
 well as his account of the Fall, in somewhat symbolic 
 language. . .• 
 
INSPIRATION. 49 
 
 ** This latter portion of Scripture is an allegorical or a 
 parabolical representation of the beginning of moral evil 
 in human nature. As ' a sublime allegory of the birth of 
 conscience,' it describes what happens in the experience of 
 men to-day as truly as it describes what happened in man's 
 experience at the dawn of history. . . . Inasmuch as 
 the doctrine of a personal devil does not belong to Mosa- 
 ism, and does not appear in the Old Testament before the 
 time of the Exile, the best interpreters of Genesis do not 
 hold that the story of the Fall teaches the primeval per- 
 sonality of Evil." (Pages 25, 26.) 
 
 Here Dr. Workman uses the " unscientific " and " un- 
 authorized " method of interpretation so much that he gets 
 rid of a personal devil, the literal story of the Fall, and 
 consequently destroys the very structure of the Old Testa- 
 ment by taking away its foundation chapters — in other 
 words, by spiritualizing them into a meaning that very few 
 writers hold, and these by no means necessarily regarded 
 as the only scholars of the day. Let Dr. Workman be 
 assured that nine out of every ten of the seats of learning 
 on this continent are opposed to his interpretation — 
 seats of learning that for breadth of scholarship and 
 accuracy of knowledge are in no way inferior to the 
 " scholars " so often quoted by him. Certain it is that the 
 whole body of Methodist ministers and teachers, with a 
 very few exceptions, are decidedly opposed to spiriting away 
 the story of the Fall. It certainly seems unaccountable 
 how Dr. Workman can use the very method that he 
 opposes in others. For let Dr. AVorkman cease to employ 
 the method which he describes as " unscientific " and 
 " unauthorized," and all the novelty of his book disappears. 
 It may, however, be instructive to Dr. Workman to know 
 that Dr. Sayce, the eminent Assyriologist, whom he some- 
 times quotes, does not agree with him so far as the Fall of 
 Man and the site of Paradise are concerned. There is 
 nothing in the writings of that eminent scholar to indicate 
 that the first few chapters of Genesis are an allegory. He 
 
50 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 treats the narrative as literal history. His words are : 
 " The garden which God planted was in Eden, and 
 Eden, as we learn from the Cuneiform records, was the 
 ancient name of the field or the plain of Babylonia, when 
 the first living creatures had been created. . . . The 
 rivers of Eden can be found in the rivers and canals of 
 Babylonia." * There is no allegory here. 
 
 ' " It is as unwarrantable for men to claim that his 
 (Christ's) reference to the story of Jonah proves that the 
 incident is historical, or that he believed it to be his- 
 torical." (P. 60.) 
 
 " In claiming that the story of Jonah is not literal but 
 tropical history, Christian scholars do not deny that Jonah 
 was a real personage, or that the outlines of the narrative 
 rest upon a basis of fact." (P. 61.) He thus makes figura- 
 tive what is literal, and therefore impugns the wisdom of 
 Christ and His Apostles, besides leaving it to human 
 reason to say what are and what are not the inspired facts 
 of Scripture. He therefore makes it difficult for the 
 student of Scripture to understand what are the plain 
 narratives of fact. 
 
 With reference to the above stricture on the Book of 
 Jonah, we are perfectly safe in saying that Christian 
 scholars do not all regard the book as tropical; the weight 
 of evidence seems to be on the other side. They further 
 consider such methods as those followed by Dr. Workman 
 and a few others not enough to materially alter the case 
 in any way, scarcely enough to create a sensation, and 
 a long way from being enough, either by their scholar- 
 ship or reputation, to affect the current of thought, which, 
 after all, is growing stronger in the direction of the super- 
 natural in the Bible and the literalness of such books as 
 Jonah. In every "Teacher's Bible" published by the 
 representative " Bible houses " Jonah is declared to be a 
 literal and not a " tropical " book. The Bible publishing 
 house is not in existence yet, so far as we know, that would 
 
 * " Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments," pp. 25, 26, 
 
INSPIRATION. 51 
 
 publish in its aids to teachers anything else. This is sig- 
 nificant, as they certainly supply these aids through the 
 most distinguished scholars. 
 
 As against Dr. Workman, we may be permitted to quote 
 Professor Robertson, D.D., of Glasgow University, who 
 says : " The form of the bock is thus historical, and, if we 
 omit the second chapter, the whole reads continuously." 
 The view held by Dr. Workman he calls a " supposition." 
 
 Jamieson, Faussett and Brown, in their Commentary, 
 remark : "The book is prose narrative throughout, except 
 the prayer of thanksgiving in chapter ii." 
 
 "The Chaldaisms in the original do not prove spurious- 
 ness or a later age, but were natural in the language of 
 one living in Zebulun, on the borders of the north, whence 
 Aramic peculiarities would readily arise ; moreover, his 
 message to Nineveh implies acquaintance with Assyrian. 
 Indeed, none but Jonah could have written or dictated so 
 peculiar details, known only to himself." At the expense 
 of being pitied for lack of a due appreciation of the situa- 
 tion, we will quote another "Christian scholar." Dr. Pierson 
 says, in his " Key to the Word " : "To refine away from this 
 story the supernatural element destroys the product as an 
 inspired book. It has been treated as a dream, fiction, 
 fable, parable, apologue, allegory. Jonah has been con- 
 ceded to be an historical personage treated in a symbolical 
 character. . . . But such interpretations make havoc 
 not only of the inspiration of the Word, but of the divinity 
 of our Lord, who treated this as a veritable narrative. 
 (Matt. xii. 39-41.)" Dr. Pusey, in his " Commentary on 
 Nahum," says: "The prophecy of Nahum is both the 
 complement and the counterpart of the Book of Jonah." 
 That the Book of Jonah is veritable history is what four- 
 teen millions of teachers and scholars have been made to 
 believe through the International Series of Lessons. Only 
 occasionally do we hear of the pulpit changing over to the 
 modern view held by a few scholars, while for the pulpit 
 it can be said that, as a rule, it invites the freest criticism. 
 
52 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 Learned scholars there are who symbolize this book ; 
 learned men there are who see in it only an allegory, with 
 a meagre historical basis ; learned men there are who see 
 no historic basis at all for the book, which we claim aflPects 
 other books, and also undervalues the historic narrative of 
 the Christ. On the other hand, there are many learned 
 men who do not accept the Bible at all. The weight of 
 sanctified scholarship, with conscience as well as mind, 
 with heart as well as theory, with scholarship guided by 
 the Holy Ghost more than by the unspiritual rational- 
 ism of some foreign universities, still is with the old 
 interpretation. The theories of the scholars are mostly 
 mere statements based on facts introduced into their 
 minds from doubtful sources. Take the supernatural out 
 of the Book of Jonah, divest it of its historic character, 
 make th references of Christ in such a sacred relation a 
 mere accommodation for the time, — do this with the 
 Book of Jonah and by the same process every miracle 
 performed by Christ can be undervalued. The question is 
 not — Can we see the reason of things, can we fathom them 
 by our logic, or explain them by rhetoric 1 Long ago it 
 was stated that "His ways are past finding out." There 
 are things for faith as well as reason ; for by faith we 
 believe that the worlds were made by the Word of God. 
 If faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained 
 promises, stopped the mouths of liona, quenched the vio- 
 lence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, etc., what was 
 there in the way of faith acting for Jonah, who was 
 servant of a God with whom all things were possible ? 
 Believing in an omnipotent God, there is nothing incredi- 
 ble in the fish story of the Book of Jonah, and any 
 writer does violence to the truth who dismisses in a few 
 sentences the real character of one of the most beautiful 
 histories of God's Word. 
 
 Another phase of this question leads us to what we think 
 more serious considerations, namely. Where are we going 
 to stop ? If we can take out at will the historic references 
 
INSPIRATION. 53 
 
 of Christ ; if Jonah is a myth, what about Moses, Daniel, 
 Isaiah, David, Noah, Abraham, Elijah and Elisha ? Dis- 
 prove Jonah, and how can you prove the others were real 
 persons to Christ's mind 1 If no fish swallowed Jonah, if 
 the incident is purely mythical, notwithstanding Christ's 
 assertioiA to the contrary, what about the serpent in the 
 wilderness, which was lifted up by Moses (Num. xxi. 9), 
 the Queen of the South (1 Kings x. 1), the blood of 
 Zechariah (2 Chron. xxiv. 20), the blood of Abel (Gen. 
 iv. 8), the cleansed Naaman (2 Kings v. 14), Lot and 
 Sodom (Gen. xix. 16), Lot's wife (Gen. xxvi.), the creation 
 of male and female (Gen, i. 27)? Jesus referred to all of 
 these as real historic verities, but not more so than to Jonah. 
 The following apt illustration by the Rev. Francis J. 
 Sharr, the Fernley Lecturer for 1891, is to the point here : 
 " *For example, does His — i.e., our Lord's — use of Jonah's 
 resurrection as a type of His own depend in any real degree 
 upon whether it is historical fact or allegory V In plain 
 English, was it quite honest on the part of our Lord, know- 
 ing, as He did, that Jonah was a myth, to refer to his 
 preaching to the Ninevites, and to his being in the belly 
 of the fish, and to use these as illustrations and arguments 1 
 Let us suppose a case. Here is a gentleman wishful to 
 enter Parliament, and he becomes a candidate with a view 
 to represent a certain district. He has a meeting of the 
 electors, and pledges himself, if they will only «end him, 
 that he will at once remove some of those anomalies of 
 which there are loud complaints. He pledges himself to 
 do his best to abolish those pensions paid for doing the 
 duties of offices that have long become extinct, and which 
 hitherto no Government has honestly attempted to deal 
 with. ' Send me,' he urges, ' and I give you a solemn 
 promise that as Hercules cleansed the Augean stables, so 
 I will sweep away these abuses.' They send him. Twelve 
 months pass away, and his voice is not heard in the House 
 at all. At the end of this period he appears before his con- 
 stituents. They reproach him for breach of faith. ' I beg 
 
54 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 you to recall my words,' he says. * I promised you that 
 just as Hercules performed a certain feat of labor, so I 
 would set myself to accomplish a certain task. Now, 
 Hercules was a myth. He never existed, and, therefore, 
 of course, never performed what he was said to perform ; 
 and I have kept my word to you by doing as he did — that 
 is, never doing it at all.' Now, would not these electors 
 feel they were duped 1 Would they not say, ' Though in 
 a sense he had kept his promise to their ear, he ha4 broken 
 it to their hope ' ? Would such conduct as that appear 
 honest and honorable ? If Jonah was a myth in allegory ; 
 if the narrative of Jonah being three days and 
 three nights in the whale's belly was all a fable, what proof 
 could it be of the resurrection 1 Again, if Jonah was a 
 myth, so, of course, was his mission to Nineveh, and by 
 treating history to that sort, we might reduce it all to 
 myth and fable." 
 
 " None of the historians of the Bible claims exceptional 
 enlightenment in regard either to the collection of facts or 
 to the narration of events." (P. 08.) He thus makes the 
 Bible, like any other book, to depend on knowledge and 
 circumstances for accuracy; for, says he, " They collected 
 their facts as fully as their opportunities permitted, and 
 reported them as accurately as their knowledge would 
 allow." (P. 68.) This, to say the least, is forcing out the 
 supernatural with considerable candor. Upon such a state- 
 ment, then what have we ! A purely human book, full 
 of error ; a fallible record scarcely worthy of our respect. 
 They have not given us any more accurate an account of the 
 Creation, the Patriarchs, the Flood, the Judges, the Kings, 
 the surrounding nations, than can be found on the monu- 
 ments or the tablets, the remnants of ancient writers, or 
 any and all other writers who wrote from party, national, 
 or ecclesiastical standpoints. If we are to meet with fraud 
 and error and misstatement anywhere, we must expect 
 some in the Bible also. The writers are not to blame ; 
 they did the best they could under the circumstances, but 
 
INSPIRATION. 55 
 
 they didn't know, and, therefore, what could be expected 1 
 On the otlier hand, every scrawl met with on the pillars 
 of heathen temples, every notice and scratch on the 
 monuments, everything in the form of writing found 
 anywhere on the wide wastes of ancient times, must be 
 taken to be absolutely true. No errors can be found 
 on the stone book, whether written by paid scribe, 
 sycophantic priest, cringing courtier, egotistic monarch, 
 unscrupulous time-server, hated partisan, or ignorant 
 idolater. Who wrote these things on the monuments] 
 we would like to ask. Since they have become the in- 
 structors of "Christian scholars," what were their lives, 
 their position, their belief, that we should place so much 
 credence in what is found written by them ? Did they 
 always stick to facts ? Have we any way of judging that 
 they did 1 Were they always scrupulous in their state- 
 ments 1 Or, were not some of them like the reporters at 
 the seat of the late Turkish war, who reported often accord- 
 ing to their instructions, and not according to their know- 
 ledge ? Human nature was at the time the inscriptions 
 were made, about which so much is being said, just as 
 strange a thing as it is to-day ; certainly no better, if 
 history means anything where those monuments are found. 
 But supposing everything to have been discovered to be 
 true, eve) y inscription a correct summary of facts as far as 
 the knowledge of the writers went, must we judge God's 
 records by them 1 Yea, rather let God be true, let His 
 Word be correct, and let it be the standard of truth, and 
 let all other records be measured by it. But if, as is 
 implied by Dr. Workman, the Bible is the best that could 
 be done with the material that its historians had to work 
 upon, what a mistake has been made ! Why not have kept 
 the revelation back until now, when more opportunities 
 would have been given for accuracy 1 For what is wanted 
 now is not a revision, but a new Bible ; yea, it would seem 
 that in the closing days of this century this were desired by 
 some. The Book which our fathers have believed and 
 
56 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 taught to their children ; that awoke the slumbering nations 
 of Europe ; that, like a mighty search-light, cut its way 
 into the darkness of England in the twelfth century ; that 
 heralded the mighty revivals of the eighteenth century ; 
 that rested as the corner-stone of the constitutional liberty 
 of the greatest republic of all time ; that has always been 
 more in itself than has ever been claimed for it by its 
 most ardent disciples — this Word of God must be changed ! 
 It is too big ; it is not God's Word ; if is man's, compiled 
 by man, whose errors are being discovered now, and there- 
 fore must always have been erroneous — book after book of 
 the blessed Word being discredited, page after page torn 
 out, historic portion after historic portion made into alle- 
 gory, or symbolj or myth ! 
 
 No Adam, no Fall, no Paradise, no Flood, no Jonah, no 
 Job, no Daniel, no Moses for the Pentateuch ! Going, 
 going ! How much further will they try to bring discredit 
 upon the Word ? What is their aim ? Who are these Chris- 
 tian scholars ? Where did they spring from 1 They repre- 
 sent the rationalistic school of biblical interpretation — a 
 school, by the way, that seems to have a special fitness for 
 making the Bible to abound in mistakes and contradictions. 
 Now, while no one thinks that the same supernatural inter- 
 vention was needed for the narrative parts of Scripture as 
 was necessary for the revelation of truth and prophecy, at 
 the same time inspiration was needed for the narrative 
 that the writers might know what to put in and what to 
 leave out, which is an entirely different thing to saying 
 that they reported things as accurately as their know- 
 ledge would allow. The same spirit that revealed the truth 
 also was present to arrange the facts and events that make 
 up the narratives giving us the histories of a Joseph, a 
 Ruth, a David, and not some other persons who lived at the 
 same time. The very harmony of the biblical narrative, to 
 our mind, is a proof of its inspiration, for nothing like it 
 exists in all the annals of literature. In this respect the 
 Scriptures are divinely one. 
 
INSPIRATION. 67 
 
 Then I do not believe that the above statement of Dr. 
 Workman is a correct statement. The men of the Bible 
 did claim, exceptional enlightenment. (This includes his- 
 torians and others.) A contradiction here is all that 
 is necessary. Let the writers themselves state the case. 
 David said : " The spirit of the Lord spake by me, 
 and his word was in my tongue." (2 Sam. xxiii. 1.) 
 Jeremiah says (i. 9) : "The Lord put forth his hand and 
 touched ray mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold I 
 have put my words in thy mouth." (xxxvi. 1, 2.) This 
 word came unto Jeremiah from the Lord saying : " Take 
 thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I 
 have spoken unto thee against Israel," etc. Paul, 
 " Which things also we speak, not in the words which 
 man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, 
 comparing spiritual things with spiritual. I certify you, 
 brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not 
 after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was 
 I taught it, but by revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Cor. 
 ii. 12; Gal. i. 11, 12.) 
 
 Moses constantly reiterates : " And the Lord spake unto 
 Moses." Also in Joshua, " The Lord spake unto Joshua." 
 Isaiah writes according to the "Vision" and the " Word." 
 Jeremiah, " The word of the Lord came to me." Ezekiel 
 says: "The heavens were opened and I saw visions of God;" 
 also repeatedly, " The word of the Lord came unto me." 
 The prophets generally speak as the Lord directed them. 
 
 The following quotations from Dr. Pope and Professor 
 Finney speak for themselves. They, at least, took exactly 
 the opposite view to that of Dr. Workman, which, to our 
 mind, is quite unscriptural : 
 
 " Do the writers of the New Testament manifest any 
 consciousness of this inspiration ? 
 
 "They show it precisely as the ancient ?t'W<ers showed it: 
 by the assertion of an authority in their words not other- 
 wise to be understood ; by hints here and there which are 
 full of significance ; and by the uniform majesty of the 
 whole. 
 
68 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 ** Give instances in illustration of this. 
 
 " St. Luke records the promise of oral inspiration : The 
 Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought 
 to say. (Luke xii. 12.) Compare this with his discourses 
 of St. Peter, St. Stephen and St. Paul in the Acts. St. 
 Peter speaks of the new revelation as making the old more 
 sure; as containing the commandment of the Lord and 
 Saviour through your apostles (2 Pet. i. 19;iii. 2, 16); 
 one of whom, St. Paul, approved the wisdom given him in 
 all his epistles, which are classed with tJce other Scriptures. 
 St. John closes the New Testament I y two notes : / tvas in 
 the Spirit, the same John who bare witness, and was com- 
 manded, Write there/ore ; and remembering the Lord's 
 promise fulfilled in himself, gave the important testimony, 
 It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is 
 the truth. (Rev. i. 10 ; ii. 19 ; 1 John v. 7.) 
 
 "the inspiring spirit and the inspired writers. 
 
 " 1. What is here the specific office of the Holy Spirit? 
 
 "(1) In the unity and intercommunion of the Holy 
 Trinity God is the inspirer : Every scripture inspired of 
 God. Men spake from God, though being moved by the 
 Holy Ghost. All the acts and offices of the Three Persons 
 severally are the acts and offices of the one God. (2 Tim. 
 iii. 16; 2 Pet. i. 21.) 
 
 " (2) The Son is the source and sphere of all revelation ; 
 and still the Spirit of Christ was in the ancient prophets 
 and is the Spirit of truth in the apostles. (1 Pet. i. 11 ; 
 John xvi. 13.) 
 
 " (3) Hence, as the administrator of redemption in all 
 ages, the Holy Spirit is the organ of Divine communications 
 and the inspirer of the writers or the writings that record 
 them. 
 
 " 2. How does the New Testament speak of the Spirit's 
 inspiration in the Old 1 
 
 "In a style which assumes that He both speaks and writes 
 in the ancient oracles. 
 
INSPIRATION. 69 
 
 " (1) Our Lord's solitary testimony to the speaking is, 
 How then doth David in the Spirit call Him Lord 1 
 (Matt. xxii. 43 ; John x. 35.) But we must connect with 
 this, The Scripture cannot be broken, every voice and 
 ever Scripture shares the prerogative of inviolability with 
 this voice and this particular Scripture." 
 
 Dr. Finney says : 
 
 *' The writers of the New Testament unqualifiedly assert 
 their own inspiration, and God confirms their testimony 
 by miracles. (Gal. i. 11, 12; 1 Cor. ii. 10, 12, 13; xiv. 37 ; 
 2 Cor. ii. 17 ; 1 Thess. ii. 13 ; iv. 8 ; 1 John iv. 6.) 
 
 " The writers of the New Testament put their own writ- 
 ings upon a level with those of the prophets and Old 
 Testament writers. (Eph. ii. 20; 2 Peter iii. 15, 16.) 
 
 " It has been generally admitted, that the oral instruc- 
 tions of the Apostles were inspired. But they considered 
 their writings of the same authority with their oral 
 instructions. (John xx. 31; 1 Johni. 1-4; 2 Thess. ii. 15 ; 
 1 Cor. XV. 1 ; Eph. iii. 3 ; Acts xv. 28.) 
 
 "They consider their own writings as of such high 
 authority that an unqualified reception of them and obedi- 
 ence to them is everywhere made by them an indispensable 
 condition of salvation. 
 
 " The belief that the Old Testament was given by inspira- 
 tion of God was universal among the Jews, and Christ and 
 his Apostles invariably confirm this opinion. (Luke xxiv. 
 27, 44 ; 2 Peter i. 21 ; 2 Tim. iii. 16.) 
 
 " They speak of the Old Testament as the Word of God. 
 This is so common with them that I need not cite instances. 
 
 " The Old Testament writings are called the command- 
 ments, testimonies and ordinances of the Lord. 
 
 " Every act of obedience or disobedience to the Old 
 Testament writers is considered by Christ and the Apostles 
 as obedience or disobedience to God. 
 
 " There is not an instance in which Christ or the 
 Apostles intimate that a single sentence of the Old Testa- 
 ment is either spurious or uninspired. 
 
60 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 " This is incredible if both Christ and his Apostles did 
 not regard the Old Testament as given by the inspiration 
 
 of God." ^ ^ 
 
 Then what are we to make of the oft-repeated phrase, 
 "The Lord said unto Moses," if the *' historical writers 
 claim no exceptional enlightenment '"J If the phrase means 
 anything, it means that Moses claims to have been in direct 
 correspondence with God when he declared himself to the 
 people, stating things, indeed, which were afterwards writ- 
 ten under his direction and supervision, if not by himself. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CITATION. 
 
 Before referring to the statements of our author here, 
 I would like to notice what is a perfectly clear matter of 
 history, namely, that the Old Testament which we use to-day 
 is substantially the same as that which Jesus Himself used. 
 Indeed, it is conceded on the highest authority that 
 the very books which we regard as belonging to the Old 
 Testament were every one of them in use at least one 
 hundred years before Christ. There are some writers, and 
 with good reason, who find no difficulty in tracing the Old 
 Testament, substantially as we have it to-day, back to the 
 time of Ezra. We will not stop to make good that claim, 
 as it is sufficient for our purpose to know that the book 
 which we teach to our children was taught to Jesus when 
 He was a child, and taught by Him to the multitudes. 
 He does not quote from every book, but from the majority 
 of them, and never once does He challenge their authen- 
 ticity. That He was versed in the Scriptures all will cer- 
 tainly admit. He was taught them, and He not only knew 
 them, but He knew them the best of any one in the world. 
 No one will ever know them as well, nor will any one make 
 as good use of them as He, not only because He spake as 
 never man spake, but He knew they testified of Him, and 
 was, therefore, prepared to state what portions were 
 fulfilled in Him. He sacredly guarded the Scriptures (the 
 many books), as also the Scripture, the one book containing 
 the whgle. H^^d any of the books which He quoted been 
 
62 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE, 
 
 spurious He would not have been slow to declare them as 
 such. How different was Plis attitude to the Old Testa- 
 ment to that which He sustained to the Church of His 
 day ! The Church had been in existence before Him, but 
 how He challenged its spirit and purpose, how He laid 
 bare their false pretentions is plain in His many contacts 
 with the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus loved the truth and 
 fulfilled it. The Pharisees revered the law, but made it 
 void by their traditions. Yet we are informed by Josephus, 
 supposed to be the greatest Hebrew of his day outside of 
 Christianity, that so sacredly did his people treasure the 
 Scriptures, the very same indeed that we have, that they 
 would endure the rack, and even death, rather than give 
 them up, or allow them to be taken from them. Josephus, 
 beyond doubt, had a better opportunity of knowing what 
 were the books of the Old Testament than the most 
 learned of the critics of to-day. He regarded, for instance, 
 such a book as Jonah as real history. (See his "Antiqui- 
 ties," Book 9, chapter 10, section 2.) 
 
 Here, then, we have, on the one hand, a Jewish critic 
 and historian quoting as real history the same portion to 
 which Jesus referred ; and on the other hand, while no 
 opinion is expressed by the Master as to the literary 
 quality of His quotation, yet He who knew all things, 
 being familiar with the literature of His day, and, there- 
 fore, knowing how the Jews must have regarded their own 
 literature, makes use of an incident in their history which 
 must have been familiar to them all. Had He used it in 
 any other way than as an historic reference it is likely He 
 would have been challenged. In dealing, therefore, with 
 the citations of Jesus, it must be assumed that in no way 
 would He mislead the people, nor would He use as history 
 anything that was not founded on fact. 
 
 "Christ's utterance in the New Testament regarding 
 any Old Testament book does not raise, much less decide, 
 the question either of its age, or of its authorship, or of its 
 literary character," (P, 63,) Dr, Workman will, no doubt, 
 
CITATION. 63 
 
 admit that at least Jesus knew the books of the Old 
 Testament, that He quoted very often from these books, 
 that He believed them to have special reference to Him- 
 self, and as such He applied them. 
 
 He is at the head of a class of students among whom 
 are Peter, James and John. They have read the Old 
 Testament also. They are acquainted with the prophets. 
 The names of Moses, David and Isaiah are familiar to 
 them. When Jesus speaks of them they recall their own 
 knowledge of the same. They are accustomed to believe 
 His words. He is to establish the great fact of history — 
 His own life among men. Is it thinkable that He would 
 deal with mythical and legendary matter, that He would 
 pass off as history to His disciples what had no existence 
 in fact, or that He did not know what He was doing when 
 He quoted from the Old Testament writers? "They testify 
 of me," He said. Therefore, when He spake of Moses, He 
 meant Moses ; of Jonah, He meant Jonah ; of Isaiah, He 
 meant Isaiah. The very fact that He quoted them was 
 proof of their existence. He called the books after their 
 names, not only as they were understood, but He under- 
 stood them to be as they were quoted by Him. He knew 
 one Moses, one David, one Isaiah, not a multiplicity of 
 these persons. The argument is sometimes used that in 
 quoting from Wesley's hymns we employ the same method 
 as Christ employed, as the Methodist Hymn-book is one, 
 while the authors are many. But we know the authors, 
 and their names are appended to the hymns, and any one 
 who would quote Newman for Toplady, or Wesley for 
 Watts, would be regarded as very inaccurate in statement. 
 No one with any literary taste at all would care to do such 
 a thing. Yet if one whom we knew to be well versed in 
 hymnology were to quote from the Methodist Hymn-book, 
 and say that Wesley, or Watts, or Charles Wesley wrote 
 so and so, we would be apt to accept his statement as 
 being correct ; though if he should make an error it would 
 only prove he was human. But Jesus was divine ; all 
 
 d 
 
64 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 knowledge belonged to Him. He knew what was in men. 
 He could tell the reasoning in their hearts. He knew their 
 thoughts afar off. Nathaniel, Judas, Peter, the woman of 
 Samaria, were all known to Him before He made Himself 
 known to them; and so were the books of the Old Testa- 
 ment, so were their authors. Hence, the very fact of His 
 citing them is proof of theJr genuineness, and such has been 
 the opinion of the Church since the days of His actual 
 citations. 
 
 The citations of Jesus certainly raise the question of the 
 value of the citation in point ; next, what is the import of 
 the citation 1 The value of the citation is seen in the fact, 
 that while Jesus was among men at the time He used the 
 Old Testament Scriptures, He had been thought of by 
 others, hundreds of years before, who wrote of Him, " For 
 before Abraham was I am." 
 
 There is more authority in the simple citation, " It is 
 written," when used by Jesus, than in a whole library of 
 adverse criticisms. Note how He questions : " How readest 
 thonl" "What is written in your law?" "Have ye not 
 read ? " " Have ye not read that which was spoken to you 
 by God?" "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one 
 tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." 
 We therefore still incline to the opinion that "our Lord's 
 witness to the inspiration of both Testaments is to those 
 who believe in Him the sum of all evidence. As the Son 
 of God incarnate He re-utters the entire Old Testament 
 as His own ancient oracles made new. They died in Him 
 to their transitory meaning, and rose with Him to the 
 power of an endless life." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 EVOLUTION. 
 
 "God is represented first as a creative Being, next as an 
 almighty Being, next as a self-existent Being, then as a 
 holy Being, and afterwards as an absolute Being. The attri- 
 bute of omnipotence does not appear in Scripture till the 
 age of the patriarchs ; self-existence, till Moses ; holiness, 
 till the theocracy ; omnipresence, till canonical prophets." 
 (P. 48.) 
 
 He thus disparages the revelation of God to His people 
 of Himself, and explains the moral development of the 
 race by the principles of evolution. By accepting the 
 theory of evolution the author assumes what is contrary 
 to the teaching of Scripture, and also what science has 
 never been able to demonstrate. This unproved theory, 
 we believe, lies at the very foundation of the methods used 
 by the higher critic ; in fact, radical criticism and evolu- 
 tion go hand in hand, which, when adopted, lead to fanci- 
 ful theories of interpretation, instead of sound reasoning 
 according to facts. It leads also to the rejection of faith, 
 which always must underlie our interpretation of the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 The first great triumph of faith, as recorded by the 
 writer of the Hebrews, is a belief " that the worlds were 
 framed by the Word of God, so that things which are 
 seen were not made of things which do appear." We are 
 quite aware that the original reads somewhat differently, 
 but not sufficiently so in any way to alter the sense. 
 Faith therefore asserts itself by accepting the dictum of 
 
66 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 revelation as against the unaided voice of reason, which 
 in this place utterly fails to give an explanation of any 
 theory of creation except that which is based on divine 
 revelation, which faith accepts. 
 
 Accepting, then, that God is Creator, does it not follow 
 that He is omnipotent and self-existent 1 Where, then, is 
 the force of saying that the attribute of omnipotence does 
 not appear till the patriarchs, and of self-existence till 
 Moses 1 These -are implied in tixe very first words of the 
 Bible, " In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
 earth." Instead of indicating God the Creator (by Gen. 
 i. 1), God the Self-existent (Exod. iii. 14), and God the 
 Almighty (Gen. xvii. 1), the author could have stated with 
 equal propriety that Gen. i. 1 proclaims all three. In fact, 
 we are but stating what is implied, when we say that every 
 natural attribute of God is implied in that one verse ; for 
 in that one passage the eternity, spirituality, unchangeable- 
 ness, omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence are all 
 proclaimed. The Eternal God alone could be in the begin- 
 ning; none but the spiritual could be before all things. 
 The Omnipotent alone could create ; the 13 nchangeable 
 alone could govern the changing worlds ; Omniscience was 
 there in thought, and Omnipresence saw the first gleam 
 of light upon this globe, and watched also the burning 
 suns of a million worlds, for He created the heavens. If 
 we fail to give an explanation of the origin of things, we 
 can at least give a glorious statement as a matter of belief, 
 which is so far beyond any explanation ever attempted by 
 the evolutionist that we prefer rather to stand in the clear 
 sunlight of faith than to stumble in the night-gloom of 
 evolution. 
 
 The history of the evolution theory is really the history 
 of an attempt to explain the unexplainable. Not so the 
 " Mosaic Cosmogony," " which has taken a very decided 
 position and is ante-evolutionary throughout the whole 
 range of animal and vegetable organisms. Whether the 
 record speaks of the origin of herb or tree, of fowl or 
 
EVOLUTION. 67 
 
 creeping thing, of cattle or beast of the earth, it is careful 
 to state that each was made 'after its kind.' As if fore- 
 casting the antagonism of our modern evolutionists, this 
 ante-evolutionary phrase is repeated again and again, so 
 as to bring the doctrine of a direct creative origin into 
 special prominence, and proclaim it with special emphasis." 
 
 " Men talk loosely about evolution as a thing of every- 
 day occurrence, and adduce as an instance the evolution of 
 the chick from the egg. This, however, is not what theo- 
 retic evolutionists mean by evolution. Their doctrine is 
 that the higher organic forms have been evolved from 
 lower forms, the great pioneer of theory recognizing the 
 intervention of the Creator at the outset in the creation of 
 certain primordial forms. In support of this theory we 
 are referred by its advocates to the varieties which have 
 come forth under the manipulation of pigeon fanciers and 
 cattle breeders, to the phenomena of embryology, to cer- 
 tain abnormal modifications of particular forms in which 
 nature has seemed to move per saltum (by a leap), and to 
 the testimony to a progression from lower to higher forms 
 furnished by the fossil remains of extinct species." 
 
 But (first) " nothing beyond a variety of the same species 
 has ever been produced ; and (second) that when the hand 
 of man is withdrawn. Nature asserts itself and testifies to 
 the truth of the Mosaic doctrine by obliterating every trace 
 of what, through his agency has been wrought, and by 
 restoring the variety to the original specific type." * 
 
 Evolution is, therefore, not the last word which science 
 has to pronounce. Even provided the theory be correct, 
 what then ? What shall the future of the race be 1 The 
 evolutionist has no right to stop at man, not even at Christ, 
 as He appeared on earth, for who can tell (according to the 
 evolution hypothesis) but that when men become a thou- 
 sand times, and if a thousand why not a million times, 
 more developed than they are now, the conception of 
 
 *Dr. Robert Watts, " Reign of Causality." 
 
68 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 the Christ of the Gospels will not suit them 1 Indeed, He 
 does not suit some already. To them He is a man that 
 made mistakes, one that assumed many things, an idealist. 
 Sorry comfort this to the Christian, poor food for humanity, 
 yet such theories are being combated to-day. (See Ullmann 
 on the " Sinlessness of Christ," Schaff on the " Person of 
 Christ," and Steinmeyer on the " Passion and Resurrection 
 History.") 
 
 Sometimes we hear from the pulpit that it does not 
 matter how man came so long as he did come ; the man- 
 ner of his coming is of no consequence ; there is just as 
 much omnipotence displayed in growing a few primordial 
 germs, a start in world-making, as in taking the Mosaic 
 account of creation as a standard. 
 
 Yes, but it makes a great deal of difference when God 
 says that there are special creations of kinds, and when 
 man says there is only one creation of all kinds. For our- 
 selves in no way can we reconcile the evolution theory 
 with the Scriptures, and we lay at the door of the evolu- 
 tionists the mischief that has been wrought in biblical 
 teaching and interpretation, — for the evolution theory is 
 still not proven. 
 
 " We may safely assume the same sort of evolution for 
 the ages before the Scriptures were produced, namely, a 
 gradual ascent from fetichism and polytheism to the 
 worship of a single God." (P. 48.) 
 
 Here, we believe, as stated above, is the secret of the 
 entire fabric of " Higher Criticism." The higher critics 
 are evolutionists ; many of them hold to the Darwinian 
 theory, which has never been accepted by the leaders of 
 thought in the churches and in the scientific world. 
 The theory is not as popular to day in the universities 
 of the old land as it was twenty-five years ago. Evolu- 
 tion, as taught by Darwin, is an assumption ; neither 
 science nor revelation has noted the gradual evolution of 
 man. He was not evolved, he was created. This is the 
 biblical fact ; this fact has never been disproved, and it 
 
EVOLUTION. 69 
 
 never will be. The first man, Adam, was created in the 
 image of God. This God he knew ; he knew no other 
 God. It was only after man had descended from the high 
 plane on which he was created that he became an idolater 
 or polytheist. 
 
 Just think of it, a Methodist minister — for Dr. Work- 
 man is still such — seemingly coinciding with Spencer's 
 view of the development of the " religious idea," and the 
 book containing such a coincidence endorsed by Chancellor 
 Burwash ! for " whatever Mr. Spencer's personal views 
 may be, the doctrine of his books is fatalism, materialism, 
 atheism. These words are not used as terms of opprobrium 
 at all, but as exactly descriptive of the system : There is 
 no personal God. There is no immortal soul. There is 
 nothing but necessity without and necessity within." * 
 
 It must surely be startling to a Christian public to hear 
 from the Principal of the Wesleyan Theological College, 
 Montreal, that Dr. Workman seems to coincide with the 
 arch-agnostic, Herbert Spencer, on the origin of the relig- 
 ious idea. 
 
 " I claim more. I claim that while, in the realm of 
 science, evolution is an unproved theory, in the realms of 
 literature and history it is demonstrably false. It is not 
 true that the earliest literature of a nation is the crudest, 
 and its latest the best. It is not true that the line is one 
 of steady improvement. This is not true of Greece, or 
 Rome, or Germany, or France, or England, or the United 
 States. Shakespeare and Milton have not b( n eclipsed. 
 Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are still unrivallad. Madi- 
 son and Jefferson were not pigmies compared to our pres- 
 ent statesmen. Washington is still without a peer. We are 
 not more skilful builders than the men who reared the 
 pyramids ; nor are we greater architects than the men who 
 designed and superintended the cathedrals. We have not 
 eclipsed the old masters in painting, sculpture and music. 
 
 * B. P. Browne, in " The Philosophy of Herbert Spemer," p. 23. 
 
70 THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 Civilizations do not necessarily grow better as they grow 
 older. Turkey, India and China prove the reverse. They 
 have been going down. The machines are everywhere and 
 always against righteousness and improvement. Progress 
 is not due to them, but to the men who break away from 
 them." (Dr. A. J. F. Behrends.) 
 
 " Seeing that the first chapter of Genesis teaches neither 
 geology nor chronology, there is nothing in it inconsist- 
 ent with the doctrine of evolution." (P. 85.) 
 
 We will allow two names, eminent in the department of 
 science, to conclude this review, as their words very appro- 
 priately come in here. 
 
 GENESIS AND MODERN SCIENCE. 
 
 " On the one hand there are the materialistic scientists 
 who scoff at the idea of a supernatural inspiration of the 
 Bible text. On the other hand there are the theologians 
 who limit their recognition of inspiration in the Bible to 
 its purely spiritual truths. But over against these two 
 classes are reverend Christian scientists and reverend un- 
 scientific Christians, who believe that God revealed to the 
 Bible writers facts as well as principles, historic as well as 
 prophetic ; and that no one who knows less than God 
 knows will be able to show that God was mistaken in the 
 facts which He revealed." 
 
 " In the very front rank of American scientists stands 
 Professor James D. Dana, of Yale University. As a 
 geologist and a naturalist he has an eminent position in 
 the estimation of European scholars. In comment on the 
 latest work of Professor Guyot, Professor Dana adds : 
 * We believe, with Professor Guyot, that science does 
 already afford great help toward an understanding of this 
 ancient inspired chapter (Gen. i.) on cosmogony, and that 
 the brief review of the majestic march of events before 
 man makes a wonderfully befitting prelude to God's 
 message of law and love to man, constituting the Bible.' 
 As a result of his own scientific studies. Professor Dana 
 
EVOLUTION. 71 
 
 affirms that the system of creation indicated in the narra- 
 tive in Genesis is 'a fact that displays purpose in the 
 author of the document, and knowledge beyond that of 
 ancient or any time, and philosophy more than human.' 
 'Geology,' he says, 'has ascertained many details with 
 regard to the earth's life and the upward gradations of the 
 various tribes. But the grand fact of progress, and the 
 general order in the succession, were first announced in 
 the cosmogony of the Bible.' " 
 
 " Sir J. William Dawson, of Canada, is a scientist of such 
 eminence in his immediate sphere of geology that he has 
 but recently been chosen President of the British Associa- 
 tion — the highest assembly of English-speaking scientists. 
 He certainly is entitled to an intelligent opinion — as a 
 scientist — on this subject. Referring to the first chapter 
 of Genesis, he has said : ' The contents of this chapter, 
 relating, as they do, to matters which preceded the advent 
 of man, must have been just as much the result of direct 
 inspiration as if they had contained a prophecy of the dis- 
 tant future.' Recognizing the fact that many features of 
 this record were extant long before the days of Moses, he 
 believes that its substance ' was a reflation to some ante- 
 diluvian patriarch, perhaps to Adam himself.' It requires 
 some temerity, not to say presumption, on the part of one 
 who is not a master in the realm of science, to claim that 
 the President of the British Association is talking non- 
 sense, when he insists that no irreconcilable differences 
 exist between Genesis and geology." 
 
 "So long, then, as such men as Dana and Dawson continue 
 to affirm the wonderful correspondence of the two records 
 in their principal features, and to assert the possible com- 
 pletion of this accord in all the features, through the 
 progress of scientific knowledge, men who make no claim 
 to pre-eminence either as scientists or as theologians will 
 do well to continue to accept the Bible story of creation as 
 a revelation from God of facts of nature, which will doubt- 
 less be fully confirmed by the intelligent study of nature. 
 
72 THE OLD TESTAMENT ^TS OWN DEFENCE. 
 
 . . . One thing is certain. It requires less credulity 
 to accept the Bible narrative of the order of creation as, 
 in its earliest form, a direct revelation, from God, than it 
 would to accede to the proposition that it was evolved as 
 a fanciful myth in the brain of primitive man."* 
 
 In two of Sir William Dawson's latest works, "The 
 Meeting-place of Geology and History" and "Salient Points 
 in the Science of the Earth," this subject is again referred 
 to. Sir William says : ''In the first place, there can now 
 be no doubt that the order of creation as revealed " (the 
 italics are ours) " to the author of the first chapter of 
 Genesis, corresponds with the results of astronomical and 
 geological research in a manner which cannot be accidental. 
 This old document thus stands in the position of a prophecy 
 which has been fulfilled in its details." 
 
 Hear also his " Summary of Results," beginning page 
 210 (" Meeting-place of Geology and Science " ) : 
 
 1. "We have found no link of derivation connecting 
 man with the lower animals which preceded him. He 
 appears before us as a new departure in creation, without 
 any direct relation to the instinctive life of the lower 
 animals." 
 
 2. " If we inquire as to the nature of the interval which 
 separates man from the lower animals, we find that it 
 exists in the reference both to his rational and physical 
 nature." 
 
 3. " And even if we admit the doctrine, as yet unproved, 
 of the derivation of one species from another in the case 
 of the lower animals, we are unable to supply the 'missing 
 links ' which would be required to connect man with any 
 group of inferior animals." 
 
 4. " No fact of science is more certainly established than 
 the recency of man in geological time." 
 
 5. " It would seem, however, that the Bible history, as 
 well as such hints as we can gather from the history of 
 
 * Sunday School Times, Dec. 18th, 1886, 
 
EVOLUTION. 73 
 
 other nations, limits us to two or three thousand years 
 before the Deluge of Noah, while some estimates of the 
 antiquity of man, based on physical changes or ancent 
 history, or on philology, greatly exceed this limit." 
 
 6. " There is but one species of man, though many races 
 and varieties." 
 
 7. "The precise locality of the origin of man can be 
 defined on probable grounds." 
 
 8. "The traditions which ascribe human origin to a 
 ' Mountain of the North,' refer to the second dispersion, 
 and coincide with the Ararat of Genesis and the * Moun- 
 tain of the North,' on which the ship of Hasis-adid was 
 supposed by the Chaldeans to have grounded."