AS CONTAINED IN DR. SANDAY’S LECTURES ON "THE ORACLES OF GOD."

2. The Human Element in the Bible.-Continued.

"It may be asked, then," he says, " independently of any I critical inquiries, Where can we draw the line, and say, 'Hitherto, and no further." ? We admit that the Bible has shared the fate of other books in its subsequent history. May it not also have shared the fate of other books in the circumstances
of its origin ?"

Surely it is impossible to argue from the one to the other. Are we to refuse to believe in the miracle of creation because natural law, as men say, rules in what has been created day by clay ? Must the Bible be written upon paper that cannot tear, or with ink that cannot be blotted, or all its copies be sealed manifestly with the seal of heaven, in order that we may believe in its absolute divinity? Christ was the "Word made flesh; "yet was He in the world with no visible exemption from the lot of other men, with no halo of divine glory to fence Him off from the persecution, the misrepresentation, the unbelief, the misunderstanding, of those around Him.

But we see how easily, if faith fails at one point, it will be forced to yield at every one. Satan knows the value of but one concession, and will not hesitate to press it to the full result. So Dr. Sanday :-

"We admit that the writers spoke and wrote in the language of their contemporaries,-with many at least of the same faults of style and diction, with some at least of the same defects of knowledge. But if with some, why not also with others? They were not perfectly acquainted with the facts of science :is it certain that they would be more perfectly acquainted with the facts of history?"

It is absurd to put questions of language side by side with questions of truth and accuracy. The Galilean dialect may serve the divine purpose, just as well as what they spoke at Jerusalem, and Hellenistic Greek convey the truth as accurately as that of Plato or Demosthenes. But even defects of knowledge may be readily owned in Moses or the apostles. We need not suppose the one to be "perfectly acquainted with the facts of science" in order to have written Gen. 1:aright; or either of them to be "perfectly acquainted with the facts of history." They needed, and they had, divine superintendence and guidance everywhere, and that where they knew, as well as where they did not know. Moses may have known very well Melchisedek's ancestry, the day of his birth and the day of his death, and he certainly did not know that to have put these into his narrative would have spoiled the apostle's argument more than fifteen centuries afterward. Yet it would, in fact, have done so none the less, as we see the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 7:3) building upon these omissions.

But these "defects of knowledge" which Dr. Sanday is determined that we shall "admit," and as to which he emphatically denies that we know where to draw the line, if allowed, as he supposes, to appear in Scripture, would raise questions indeed. The cross and the resurrection are "facts of history;" have they come to us from the hands of ill-informed writers? And the nativity; as to which, they must have got their knowledge from others,- and indeed Luke tells us so, while he in no wise specifies his informants! All this probably put together after the fashion that the professor believes to have been the mode in which the Bible has been evolved,-that is the correct term to-day,-evolved for us. Here is the process :-

" In the secular writings of antiquity, there are many phenomena which are not in exact accordance with the literary practice of our own day. A later writer will incorporate the work of an older writer, often with but slight alteration. The annals that are transmitted from age to age receive gradual accretions in their course, and there is often no external mark to show where the older matter ends and the new begins. Institutions which are well established in one age are assumed to go back to an earlier age than can really be claimed for them. Certain great names stand out in the history round which stray documents and stray incidents appear to crystallize. When a group of writings is collected together, the name which stands at the head of the group is held to cover every member of it. And in like manner laws and customs which grow up by slow degrees are referred to some one great lawgiver who was the first to formulate the leading provisions of the code with which the are associated. There is no deception about it. It is the same sort of process that we see going on every day where oral tradition is at work. Wherever some notable character has passed over the stage, in after-time things come to be set clown to him with which he has no real connection. We must throw ourselves back into an age when writing is the exception and hearsay the rule. There comes a time when regular histories are written; but before that, tradition has been at work molding and combining the facts which history records."

So much for the credibility of the Bible. It is a patchwork of old with new, where only our great critics can distinguish the one from the other. All the evils of oral tradition which we had fondly imagined Scripture had been expressly given to preserve us from are found in that very Scripture. And in order that we may not resent this imputation of fiction or forgery, as contradictory to the whole character of purity and truthfulness which shines out everywhere in the Bible, we are gravely assured that there is "no deception about it"! though it must be confessed we have been deceived. We have merely forgotten to "throw ourselves back" into an uncritical age, when pious frauds were no frauds, or at least no harm, and we must not make harm of them.

" The body of proof is weighty, and cannot easily be rejected. Why should it be rejected ? The grounds, when we come to think of it, are mainly those of our own imagination."

And Dr. Sanday repeats his misapplied text as perfectly convincing, that "we have this treasure in earthen vessels," and fortifies it with another-that God's ways are not as our ways. Then, growing bolder, he observes,

"We can imagine the Bible in some of its accessories more perfect than it is-what we at least might think more perfect. But if it had been so, it could never have been in such close contact with human nature. Its message could never have come home to us so fresh and warm as it does. As it is, it speaks to the heart, and it does so because, according to a fine saying in the Talmud, it speaks in the tongue of the children of men." (!!)

Kind critics ! we have been ungrateful, as men indeed have so often been to their best benefactors! But how good it is to have an interpreter such as Dean Ireland's professor to explain this to us ! Who could have thought, simple as it is when you really believe it, that the " mis-takes of Moses," or the mistakes of others for him, the patchwork and pious frauds of his successors, shall make Scripture fresher and warmer to the heart than if all were proved true and perfect! Here, surely, we have a triumph over infidelity such as we could not have dared to imagine. Christian and unbeliever may now go on side by side, emulating each other in joyful discovery of the blunders of inspiration by means of which the fresh-ness and warmth of its message will be continually increased !

A note at the end of the lecture adds more confusion. it is intended to show "the gradual nature of the steps| which lead up from questions of what is called the lower criticism (which deals with the text,) to questions of the higher criticism (which deals with authorship, etc.), and the difficulty of drawing a hard and fast line between them." But there is really no difficulty, and his examples:prove none. The trustworthiness of a text is one thing ; the trustworthiness of the original, when plainly shown to be that, is quite another. No one pretends that the first. chapter of Genesis is not genuine; but there are unhappily many who treat it none the less as untrustworthy, as unscientific. Let the Lord's words be believed, that! "Scripture cannot be broken," and the disputation as to what is Scripture will be very little serious. But indeed the proofs also upon which the higher criticism relies little serious also :they are made to seem much only by! quantity being made to stand for quality; what is serious in them is but the unbelief of which they are the real and incontestable proof. F. W. G.