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Lorsquf la document est tfop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul clichA. il est filnU A partir de I'angle supArieur gauche, de gauche A droite,/ et de haut an bas, en prenantie nombre d'images nteessaire. Les diagrammes^suivants ttlustrant la mAthoda. V-;- -:^^ -:-■ --.. --^.: A--:;-; .^^:: i-,.'.:^^.^^-.., ; , : --,. . y^;--.i---:- ■:T:'72---: '?:;:i'-r-: . ■ ■ ■ ■ ■"■■ ■ '\ ■ ■...■■■■■■.;■.*•■,;■ ' .' . 4 5 6 X * - ■ ' . ■ ■ * ■ • > Miaiocopi^ nsoujTioN tist chart (ANSt^nd ISO TEST GHART No 2) ^■■-1 ■/• ■: ?■ M ^IPPLIED IIVHGE > Irife S^ t6S3 East Main Street « Rocheater, N^ York 14609 USA *" (716) 4«2- 0300 -Phone (716) 288 - 5989 - Fax '■Mi ' q6£ ill' . \M-r, '-v/. 15.- .?-.3<- OF CHRIST •/ REtiAKUINC. THE aiLD TESTAMENT ■fe ^>V II^EpNtlJLAbLE VVITH THE THEORIES OF ':' ' \ r RADlbAL. HIGHER CRITICS. nv REV. JOHN RKYNOLIDS, WlJyiXSOR, (hST. IlEINC. • ; k.*".-'-^,'' Ube annual Xecture ■ .•'■. ♦• ■• ^ .■■.■■■ / ■ .■■'..-■ DELIVERED BEFORE THE THEOLOGICAL UNION OF THE LONIK3N CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST CHURCH, IN THE PRESBYTERIAN tHURCH, KIDGETOWN, » ' GNT., JUNE 9TH, 1894. • " *>"e8y or fanaticism in Christendom hap ever failed to sicure adherents -ood Chrwtmns A,,d any theory respecting the Biblerit/pro^Sndcd by ■fh. a.-iP*'!;'^"'"'' ""d advocated with in^jen^dty. can alwaysrtckon oV receivine iw.t^J'J of many smcere believers. But /or alt that t hi theory may be i^iih roots an • ■ •- ■ . ■">.■■.,• • ■ ■ ■ " ■ ' '■' ■•;' •.:.^':v'''C: ,: ■■■■■■■■ \ ■^■: ■■/■:■■': : ■ .■; ■ \-.- ■/. ■ - .^.■.■ -,^. ■: ' « --■■ :^:V;v-;; ' ■ ■•* :■ ■ ^•^ ^ '■■>^.. J' PKEFATORY. ' ..n i THE thtiino (Ii8cu88ed in the following lecture wus jj&signed fco the lecturer by the Theological Union of the London Conference of the Methodist Church. HjwJ We been left to select our subject, another and less diiHcult one would have Ijeen our choice* To keep the lecture within reasonable Jiniii^^we have been compelled to confine our attention to ti^general featiires and salient points of the subject discussed. We hope that we have not in any part sacnficed clearness to condensation. I . In our discussion of this important theme, we have assumed the following points : 1. The Existence of a Personal God, infinitely wiset and good. ^- . ^ ■. 1 2. That He is abundantly capable of making a revelation of himself and of His purposes to man. 3. That it is antecedently probable that God would make such revelation to the human race. 4. That. man is capable of apprehending such revelalion, otherwise it would not be made, if God is wise and god. -t- ^ ■;•';/ ./ ■■. V; >, ./-l ^ «••■ 5. That (Sod \uw mndo nuch iev«lfttlon to man. 6. That thAlId aiul the Now Testaments contain this I'j'ivelation. 7. That the writers of «• The Wihh " were amply guiiU'd hy the Holy Ghost in recording such revoUvfion, *' at sumlry ^imes ami in divers manners." •f 8. That Christ was the Hon of G(m1 and essentially divine. ^ 9. 'That, therefore, all His teaching is " without^ the Jeast mixture of error," and is infallible truth. In the preparation of the lecture tlw following works have afforded us much valuable help and suggestion : Prof. Wm. Robertson Smith's "Old Testament in the .Tewish Church ;" ** The Early lleligion of Israel," by Prof. James RoljeHson ; "Christ and Criticism/' by Dr. CM. Mead ; " ChristUiiComprobator," by Bishop Ellicott ; " Moses and His Recent Critics," by Dr. T. Chaml)ers ; " Jesus the Messiahj" by Dr. Dewart ; and some others, l)esides current literature of some of the higher periodicals. The writer of this lecture makes no pretensions to specialty, nor to special originality. He believes he is only averagely original. If the method of treatment adopted by hini has been adopted by others, he is not aware of the fact. We hope this effort to subserve truth may have God's blessing upon it. J. R. ^r ■ 4.1-. ^.. 4 >•• ■j-i, iff * '! THi: TKACHINO OF CHRIST REUARDUNCJ THK OLD TESTAMKNT SCRIPTURES IS IRRE- CONCILABLE WITH THE THEORIES f OF RADICAL HIGHER CRITICS. 1. The Tlu'orieM of Radical it Ujher Critivs rfifard-- in]i the Old Testament. Accordinj; to these, wc are asked to believe that the Old Testament is to a very large extent inadoj^ip, of -books that were smuggled into the collectioi|^|^ artifice and fraud; of books deliberately forged, and that 'found their way into the canon by virtue of a false impression as to their authorship, and of books so largely interpolated and chiuiiged by partisan writers that the original meaixing ai»d intent are often buried up in the mjiss of unau- t|hentic and misleading additions. / And this, without a,ny exaggeration, is the outr come of the speculations of that particular critical school which to-day professes to be the only truly scientific on^e ! ' - The Pentateuch and Joshua are regarded as athiost wholly made up of myth, legend and fiction, and very largely of forged productions brought into currency by frai^d. Only a few scraps of trustworthy tradition* are thought to bo discovorablo. In Judges, Hamuol and Kings is found motet hU- toricdl matter, particularly those parts wMch appar- ently favor the critical theory I But these t)ook« are all supposed to be tjo largely "worked over" by later writers for partisan- purposes that, as a whole, they cannot be relied on. As to the Books of Chronicles, though they con- tain some truth, the history is so thoroughly soaked- with the priestliness of the authoi\ that^ey are practically of no value. 1 Ruth and Rsther are interesting Stories, with no afioertainable foundation in fact. Th0 books of Ezra and Nehemiah are more trustworthy, but in repre- senting the cerenaonial law introduced by these men as Mosaic, they have to be corrected according to the critical hypotheses. ' The poetical and prophetical books also ^ are re- garded with considerable respect, though, like the cruel persecutors of old, they will have Ii^iah "sawn asunder.'' .^ But the*' Psalms, contrary to previous views held by critics, are mostly or altogether relegated tc^a late post-exilic period. This il done without the sKghtest historical (evidence, in opposition, indeed, to all the ^ . '-■■.:'■«';■■■ '■'. ■■*■■:'-■ ... ■ • evidence attainable, particularly to the superscriptions in the Septuagint,. which take us back to a period contemporaneous with that in which the Psalms are supposed to have been cOmppsed. So that here, too, ■ ""w .■■■.■> ■ ■ ■ . ■ ' * '\ ■ -B»i ■ , ■'■•■,■■■■■■.■'■"'.■ -....' : . -■ ■■> ■ -A: ...^ ;■■•:•■■■..:•. ■ . ■ ■ ' - "J » L':''^': ■ .■.,■■■■._-.■--..■- ■ ; ■ -..,"_< .■ " _, . .; ■ .'■-.";.■'";■ ■■ ■■ _- ■./....■■■■...;;.* '.' '.■ ■' : ' !\A I.r . ^ . . . ■ ;. i . ^ ,■ . we are onked to believe in ft very extensive "falsifi- cation oi history, and a falsification which must, in a very larf^e degreof have bet^n consciously and j^le- li be rately perpetrated. The prophetical books, with few exceptions, are left comparatively undisturbed by the majority of even tW advanced critics. But some radical critics, especially in France, have reached the conclusion that these books, too, are all post-exilic ! How soon this hypo- thesis will be trumpeted as a " result " of the Higher Criticism cannot yet be said. Such, in general terms, is the Old Testament as it is pictured to us by the radical critics of the present day. And whatever else may be said iil)Out -this representation, it must be said of it that it does not agree with the view evidently entertained by Christ and His immediate disciples. Books known to have such an origin and such a character as the radical critics ascribe to a large part of the Old Testament could not have been spoken of with such reverence as Christ always expressed towards those Scriptures. II. Are we Jufitijie^^'sonal God, or in the existence of supernal wral agents and forces in the universe, is unreasonable and tinscientijic. t» "^-i. tr- 10 ..) *^ And yet reasonabje and .scholarly men pf all ages find it much less difficult to believe that a j personal God has created this glorious universe than that it was all evolved from impersonal atoms, incapable of aeeinff, hearing, planning, willing/or even thinking, while the universe is so evidently the result of thought and of a diBHigning mind, infinitely wise. The existence of a personal God has been amply and fre(iuently proved, .5. AsHUTnimjJ.he non-existence of r-. . ■ :V'-'r 11 .<^ t- .i - . were also priests, and sonietiines priests were, also prophets. ' 8. The Radical HiqJter Oritlcn have also contended that the Linguistie Features and Literary Style of "the Books of Moses," arid other Books of the Qltl Testament, prove a much later origin tlian'is gnier- ully ascribed to therd. Literary candor compels us to admit that the weakness of the objections drawn from the linguistic features and literary style of the Old Testament has been conceded even by higher critics themselves. A recent writer says, "At this point there has been a change of front, if not a com- plete backdown ! " What was formerly regarded by the critics as the earliest of the components of the'Pentateuch is now, by the prevailing school of critjcs,niade the latest. And the linguistic features have not been considered a barrier to either view 1 ; . Dp. Isaac M. Wise (a learned Jewish Rabbi, and President of the Hebrew Union College^ Cincinnati), one of the best Hebrew scholars in America, if^ot ■ ■.■•■''. in the world, says that *' their assumed differences of diction, which critics say distinguish Deuteronomy and characterize it as a work of later origin than the former books of the' Torah, is imaginary only! The critics," he declares, '' possess no reliable standard by which to fix the age of any portion in the ancient classical Hebrew ! " This last sentence goes /like a swift javelin to the heart of the whole matter. Great pretensions must fall before it. Classifiers* of " Archa- '*w .-■ '■• ' ;• '■'. 12 4 isms/' and similar "antiques" found in the Hebrew text, and the discoveijers of " modern phrases," must find their vocation j^o^je and useless. There is "no reltable standard "by which they can work. Thus the attempts to father the theory of " pious fraud " upon^the Old Testament writers have utterly failed. Professor Davison assures us that their attempts in this respect have been " altogether with- out success." ' 9. The critics tacitly (jrant that the Traditional 'Kiett; (as it is called by them) of the Old Testament was the view of Christ and of His Apostles, \0. Bui they also assume that Christ was aware of the Fictitioiis Character of .7mich of (he Old Testament writings, and that He did not' correct th^ errors prevalent regarding the same, hut actually sanctioned them. In other words, Christ was himself a radical higher critic, but was not sufficiently honest to declare His real views on the subject ! It took, nineteen centuries df the Christian age to evolve men sufficiently honest to declare the truth in regard to the Old Testa- ment Scriptures ' It seems that Christ, according to the critics, had the light, " the true light," on this subject nineteen hundred years ago. But He cruelly (may we'^not say?) suffered the world to'^ope ijbs way filong the dark and dangerous "highways and by- Ways" of natural evolution, until at last Wellhausen, Kuenen, Wjlliam Robertson Smith and their companions in criticism, arose "amid the encircling gloom," and, with % u •t^^ ■•» ' ■. '.\ J ■\ / 13 benevolence and honesty superior to Christ's, said, * Let there be liglit, and there was "—what ? "And there was" evolved and published what has been appropriately denominated "the crazy-quilt theory" ot* the Old Testament writings ! . II. Anuthevsect'wnof Ike Had ical Critics, revolting at the hlasjihenixy of (tttrlhntinff conscums iinpoft' ture to Ghrist, amumes that He was ^really lynorant of the true date (^ the case, and naturally adopted arid j)rodahned the popular- vleiu of the Old Tes- tament Scriptures. That is, He was so ignorant of those Scriptures as to propagate, unwittingly, errone- ous ideas concerning them, according to the theories of modern critics, whoassume to know a greatdteal more on this subject thari Christ himself ! . ^ III. Let U8 vow proceed to exwniine the Viervs of*^ Christ reyat'dvag Ihe Old Testament writinys, and io confipare His Views with the Theories of Modern Radical Critics, 1. In a general way, we -may say that it is evident Christ rooted himself and His religion in the Old Testament. By that He himself elected to stand or fall. " They (the Old Testament Scriptures) are they that 'testify of me." That there is a vital and pro- foundly important relation, or connection, between the Old Testament and the New is conceded by the higher critics themselves. Dr. William Robertson Smith, perhaps the ablest critical writer in the English-sp^iak- ing world, makes this statement in the preface to his celebrated work on " The Old Testament in the Jewish y- Church *': " The great vahie of liistorical (^riticism is that it maken the Old Testament more Aeal to us. Christianity can n6ver separate itseti' fi'om itj historical basis on the religion of Israel. The revelation of God in Christ cannot be divorced from .the earlUr revela- ti(|ti^on ^.l)tch our Lord built," p. 7. Dr-BewtiH observes that, " The relation of the Old Testament to the New is as the blossom to the fruit, as the foundation to'the complete structure, as the hope- inspiring promise to the joy-gjving fulfilment." The prophecies of the Old Testament invest the Neii^Testament with a divine sanction, because " they show the Christian dispensation to^^e the outcome of God's purpose, the fultilments of the New Testament vindicate the supernatural origin of the Old Testaiuent Revelation, and reflect back upon it the Kght of the glory of the latter days. . . - It has been pertinently said :" Tii<4 Bible can never be rightly studied unless the two Testaments are com- prehended in their unity and harmony. If the Old Testament is in the New in fulfilment, the New Testament is in the Old in promise." All through the New Testament it is assumed that the religious teach- ing of the Old Testament was supernatural ly revealed and of divine authority. Any theories, therefore, that would reduce the Old Testament Scriptures to a mere natural outgrowth of the religious life of the people of Israel, wQuld con- tradict and disparage the authority lof the N'ew Testa- ment. (■' Jeslis the Messiah," p. 18.) \ 15 \ ■ 4 Dr. G. P. Fislier a-sHcHs that " OhriHtians hoM to the obvious hiotoricul fact that the Old Dispeuyitioii Htunds in an orfjanic relation to the new," and thai '* the literature of the Bible is to bediHerentiatecf from all other literature us being pervaded by another spirit, which is due to the fact that it is produced on the plane of Hevelation." ("The Christian Religion.'') , Canon Liddon says-: "For Christiansiiit will be enough to know that our Lord JesiiB Christ has set the seal of His infallible sanction on the whob of the • Old Testament. He found the Hebrew canon just as ;we have it in our hands to.-day, and He treated it as an authority which Was above discussion. Nay more, "lie Went put of His way, if wc-may reverently speak thus, t6 sjiriction not a few portions of it which oyjr modern scepticism too eagerly rejects;" ... ■ When He would warn His hearers against the dan- ger of spiritual relapse, He bids them " remember Lot's wife.!' When He would point out how worldly engagements may blind the soul to coming judgment, He reminds them how "men ate and drank, married and were given in marriage until the day when Noah entered into the ark, and the Hood came and destroyed them ■.all." •- \: ' ' ,. .■■ ■ ;-. ■ When He would put His finger on a fact in past Jewish history, which, by its admitted reality, would * warrant belief in His coining resurrection, He points to Jonah, " three days and three nights in the whale's ^^'' ■...■.:.■■;/■■' J*^«^ ''->2[k 16 When, standing on the Njount of Olives, with the Holy (^ity at His feet, He would qtiote ii prophecy, the fulfilment of which would mark for His followers that its impending doom had at last arrived, Ho desires them to *' flee to the mountains," when they " shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the Prophet, standing in the holy place." Are wo to suppose that in these and other references to the Old Testament, our Lord was only using what are called ad /iominem arguments, or talking down to the level of popular ignorance, which He did not him- self share / Not to point out the inconsistency of this sup- position with His character as a perfectly sincere reliffious teacher, it may be observed that in the Ser- mon on tne Mount Ho carefully marks off those features of* the popular Jewish religion which He rejects, in a manner which makes it certain that had He not himself believed in the historic truth of the events and the persons to which He thus refers, He must have said so ! But did Ho then share a popular belief which our higher knowledge has shown to be popular ignorance, and. was He mistaken as to the worth of those Scrip- tures to which; He so often and so confidently ap- pealed ? ■ ■^:~/., ' -■ There are those who profess to bear the Christian name, and who do not shrink from saying as much as this. ' But they will find it difficult to persuade man- \kind that, if He could be mistaken on a matter of 17 such strictly religious importanco as this, He can bo safely trusted about anything ei.se. ^' •' Yes, the trustworthiness of the Lord Jesus Christ is thus involved in this question. And if we believe that He is 'the true light of the world,' we shall resolutely close our ears against any suggestions of the falsehood of the Hebrew Scriptures which have received the stamp of His divine authority." ("The Divinity of Our Lord/') / 2. Christ frequently taught that Ho^was^Jbringing about the fulfilment of "the law and the prophets." He evidently had clearly in mind the fact of a certain historical preparation for His coming; along which Israel had been divinely led, and on the basis of that history; He avowedly stood. He spoke fre- quently of a necessity constraining Him to act in fii|- Hlment of the prophecies : ^" "But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" (Matt. xxvi. 54.) "The Son of Man indeed goeth, as it is written^ of him." (Mark xiv. 21.) "Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scripture. And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suft'er, and to rise from the dead the third day." (Luke xxiv. 45, 46,) U v;^ We are certainly not to understand these pas- sages in the sense of His playing a " B|^/^ but in the Sense that the Old Testament had already laid the foundation on which He was to build. \- ■• ^.■ :'."S w'-' 18 He plainly axHUined, not only that the Ohl Testa- ment waH a divine revelation, but that the history of Israel, recorded in it, was the divine preparation for Him, so that the truthfulness of His testimony and of its teaching]; were most intimately connected. These facts show thdt the relation which Christ consciously bore to the Old Testament did not lie on the surface of His teaching, but beloimed to its very substance. It cannot be regarded as an accident of His position, nor &s due merely to a naWal impulse, to state truth in forms suited to His hearers. It was part of His " self-consciousness!!" He represents him- self as organically related to the preceding revelation, and as realizing the original ideal of Israel. (John i. 49 and 51.) He conceived that revelation to be the historical preparation for Him. In so doing, He assumed the Old Testament to be historically as well as doctrinally true, His relation to it was so funda- mental to His testimony to himself that it would appear impossible to pronounce the one true and the other false. • In the light of this fundamental position, which He claimed wilh reference to the earlier revelation, we are to read the specificldlusions which tjhrist made to the Old Testament itself. These may bji sum- marized under a few heads: 1. He assumed histoHcal statements madef in Jtlie Old Testament to he true. "Honor thy fattier and. thy mother," (Exodus xx. 12.) Je3us qubted this w^ 0, §7?^t^jte3r-w 19 ■^mp^ •# " I as A coiuinand of (iod — " Kor (io«l commanded, aay- inj(, Honor thy father and thy mother/' etc. (Mutt. XV. 4.) .. / His opponents, tlie IMiarisees, anked Him at one time, !' Why did Mosen then coiiimand to ^ivo a writinj^of divorcement?" (Referring;: to Deut. xxiv. 1.) What a fine opportunity hacit'lirist to inform them that Mo.ses never wrote the Hook of Deuter- onomy ! But instead of that, " He .saith unto them, MoHeH, beci^UHO of the hanhies.s of your hearts, suf- fered you to put away your wivejj: but front the bejjinning it was not so." (Matt. xix. H.) ('hrist assumes here tlie Mosaic orij^ln of J)euteronomy. He assumes the account of the brazen serpent, in Numbers xxi. 6-9 to be strictly historical, and He declares plainly that it was " lifted up by ' Moses ' in the wilderness." - • The Book of Leviticus^chap. xii. 3 — contains the law of circumcision. Christ declares (John v^i. 22^ 23) that " Moses, gave unto you circumcision," and calls it "the law of Moses." • In John V. 45, 4G, He asserts that "Moses wrofee of Him. (See* references for instances.) > "The blood of righteous Abel " was actually shed, as stated in Qenesis. (Matt, xxiii. 35.) " David did eat the shewbread." (1 Sam. xxi. 3-6.) " What David did." (Matt. xii. 3.) Under parabolic form He outlines Israel's history (Matt. xxi. 33), besides references to "Sodom arid r-' .J - *>. ^r^l--* i itM^ % m^K Ooinorrali," " tho Qiioen of Shoba," Noah, Ahralmm, Lot, Jofiah and other phiccN and porHoiiH, that tho radical critics regard aH purely Hctitioun. TheHO refefenecH cannot \h3 roasonably uxplaincMJ, except on theHupposition that Ho regarded the Hacred narrativoa aH v<»ri table history 2. Chrid cited the Old TeHtarrunt an '* Scripture'' or with the fomuUd rcjjuhirly used in (jiLOtinff sacred wordn: " // /« written:' To the (ievil,,'' Ho " (Johuh) "anHWcrod and .said, It U written, Mq||NniHll not live by bread alone, but by every wopj thilt procoedeth out of the mouth of God." (Deut. viil. :](^ Matt.iv. 4!) And observe, tho devil did not reply, " That is written in a forced book, and is entirely Hctitiou.s," which it is if the radicfl^l critics are correct 1 The devil appears to be less a^||kicious than some hiodern biblical critics. With whal respect and confidence 'Mii.s Satanic majesty" quoted Psahn xci. as the WoMi,of God ! "It is written, He shall give his angels charj^e concerningj thee," etc/ i He did not question for a moment that he was (( noting %^iri« promise, though he made a mis- application oifSiiy./ , "Jesus saidlj^g^^n^lg^' is .^rittcn again. Thou shalt not ^^t"P^H|^P^thy^d.'' (Deut. vi. l(j.) Thus, Christ re^5^[%f^I^^"*^6ilfidmy as the authori- tative Word of Uod. To it He appealed, and we think He knew a great deal more about it than modern critics. Again» quoting from Deuteronomy (Matt. iv. -» / •*• . »■ ^ % \% . ^RP . % ^* I i0 U8 dealt Satan that blow with " the nwofU of 'e Spirit" which nent him (JiHCoinHtod from the HoM. •; For it i« written, Thou nlialt worship the Lorttthy •* f(K)(l,iin«l him only Hhalt thou f-fs x» V ./ # "''.v: Vk ^--i^ "^;; -%/)«: 5i I I r; I by name. See Matt. xiii. 14, and Isa. vi. 9—" The prophecy of Isaiah ; " Mark vii. 6— " Isaiah prophesied of you," Isa. xxix. 13; Matt. xxiv. 15— "Daniel the prophet," Dan. ix. 27; xi. 31 ; xii. 11. "Have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him?" (Mark xii. 26, and Ex. iii. 6.) Christ certainly believed that Moses was called of God to be the deliverer, leader and lawgiver of , His ancient people, as narrated in Exodus and other books of the Pentateuch. The intelligent Christian knows that the radical higher critics pronounce this whole account "idealized history '*; -i.e., a mere fiction, written some six or eight centuries after the time of Moses ! 5, "The Book of Paalms" is ascribed by Christ to "David," David himself (not somebody else, as Cheyne msertsy saith" in the Book of jPsalms." (Luke XX. 42 and Psa. ex. 1.) 6. And finally, Christ spoke of the' Old Testa-- ment as a whole in phrases which show that its compass and principal divisions were tm same then as now. "On these two eommaridments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matt. x^ii. 40.) " And beginning at Moses and all the jfrophets, he ex- pounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." (Luke xxw. 27.) We know that the Hebrew^ivided the Old Testa- ment into three parts : (1)/' The Law,"« comprising Khe five books of Moses^C^) " The Prophets," com- prising the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel,' I: 'i •*r'i ,^l.r<.N«i^^ f i :"<''■ ■.'"■■ t 1 ftiid 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets ; (3) " T^e Scriptures." Under this title were placed : ^ (a) The Pi^alms, Proverbs, JoR^ .i {h) Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesias- tes, Esther. (c) Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles. If, then, " Christ found the Hebrew canon just as we have it in our hands to-day;" as Canon Liddon asserts, it is impossible to resist the inference that Christ expressly taught both the inspired authority and the. historical truthfulness of the Old Testament. " Fafth in Christ's authority forbids us to believe that the Old Testament consists largely or predomi- nantly of the writings of men who deliberately dis- torted and falsified history, forged codes of la^, and succeeded by cunning trickery in imposing up^n the Jews, as of divine origin and authority, what other- wise could never have gained acceptance at all. A collection of books, consisting in great^ jpart of such productions, cannot possibly be regarded as entitled to any peculiar respect. StilHless can they be held up as of inspired authority. But Christ and the New Testament writers do speak of them as of divine authority. Therefore, the opposing critical view must be abandoned, or else Christ, as a religious teacher, must be deemed untrustworthy."— :i)r. J/cac?, This is the short and simple argument which cannot be invalidated by smooth words, and which, , *■ .. . 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