the Hebrew scriptures as of divine authority. So also in his encounters with the Pharisees, his constant appeal is to the record of the Old Testament Have ye not read? What is written in the law? How readest thou? Objections drawn from the record he meets, not by repudiating it wholly or in part, but by a fair interpretation of its meaning. A notable example of this we have in his solution of the question put to him by the Pharisees respecting the Mosaic law of divorce.1. In answer to his exposition of the primitive law of marriage, they asked: "Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?" The reply of Jesus was: "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so." In another place he said of the hundred and tenth Psalm: "David himself said in the Holy Ghost, the Lord said unto my Lord," 2 etc. He recognized this psalm as written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; nor is there the shadow of a reason for supposing that he wished to distinguish it from the psalms as a whole. He simply referred to it as containing one of the declarations concerning the Messiah made, like all the rest of them, "in the Holy Ghost." Again, after his resurrection he said to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" How necessary? Plainly, because there must have been a fulfilment of all things written concerning him in the scriptures of the Old Testament. Accordingly, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself";4 and afterwards said to the assembly of the apostles in Jerusalem: "These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses,

1 Matt. xix. 3-9.

2 Mark xii. 36.

8 Οὐχὶ ταῦτα ἔδει παθεῖν τὸν Χριστὸν καὶ εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ; Luke xxiv. 26.

4 Luke xxiv. 25-27.

and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning me."1 The above are samples of the way in which our Lord was accustomed to refer to the scriptures of the Old Testament. What inference could his hearers draw from such words? What inference did any one of them ever draw, except that he ascribed to the Hebrew scriptures as a whole divine. authority? Finally, the Saviour clinches the argument by his words on the mount: "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, until heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."2 Could he who came with his fan in his hand to sever the chaff from the wheat have spoken thus of the law had he known it to be only a heap of unwinnowed wheat-error and truth mixed together? And if he received the law as pure wheat-truth unmixed with error - who can deny that he gave the same honor to the psalms and to the prophets? We do not affirm that our Saviour occupied himself with verbal criticism, or questions respecting the agreement or disagreement of the Greek version with the original Hebrew in particular passages. We shall endeavor to show in a future Number that inspiration, though it necessarily employs human words, has its proper seat not in the letter, but in the spirit; and that the same truth communicated by inspiration of the Holy Ghost may be expressed by two or more writers in two or more forms of words. What we now insist upon is, that the Saviour received the whole Old Testament as a divinely authoritative record of God's dealings. with men, and of the truths which he has revealed for their salvation.

Will it be said, in reply, that herein the Saviour accommodated himself to the current belief of the age? That he spoke and acted in harmony with that belief, ancient and venerable, coming down from the days of Ezra, is certain. When Paul affirmed of the Old Testament as a whole: "all scripture is given by inspiration of God"; and Peter, that

1 Luke xxiv. 44.

2 Matt. v. 17, 18.

8 2 Tim. iii. 16.

1

"the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," they spake not merely as apostles, but as Jews, giving the universal belief of the nation in respect to the Hebrew scriptures. But the doctrine of accommodation means that one, for prudential reasons, conforms himself to a current belief, without regard to its truth or falsehood. To say that in the matter of the divine authority of scripture. our Lord thus accommodated himself to the age in which he lived is to cast upon him an unworthy imputation, not only without evidence, but against evidence. The most powerful and influential body among the Jews of our Lord's day was the sect of the Pharisees, who sat in Moses's seat, and were the acknowledged leaders of the people in religion. They held firmly the traditions of the elders. Yet our Lord set aside these traditions in a very unceremonious way. All classes of the Jews were firm in the belief that their expected Messiah would establish a temporal kingdom a kingdom, indeed, of truth and righteousness, but yet a temporal kingdom with its seat at Jerusalem. Yet the Saviour carefully avoided the utterance of any word that might seem to give his sanction to that belief; and before Pilate he publicly declared that his kingdom was not of this world. On the other hand, he expressly sanctioned the current belief of the Pharisees respecting the resurrection, angels, and spirits. He gave also the full sanction of his authority to the doctrine, current in his day, of eternal rewards and punishments. Why this difference? The answer is found in his words to Pilate: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." 4 All current beliefs that were in accordance with truth he sanctioned, but none that were based on falsehood. But he did undeniably sanction the belief of his day in the divine authority of the Hebrew scriptures; and from his decision there can be no appeal to those who receive

2 Peter i. 21.

8 Matt. xxii. 23-33.

2 John xviii. 36.
John xviii. 37.

him as the Son of God, who dwelt from eternity with the Father, and knew all his counsels.

The divine authority of the record of revelation contained. in the Old Testament being admitted, we infer at once, by analogy, that of the apostolic writings. Otherwise we should be reduced to the necessity of placing the apostles on a lower plane than Moses and the prophets, whereas the Saviour places them, in their office as teachers, above all their predecessors. He says of John the Baptist: "Verily, I say unto you, among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." In a certain sense it might be said that the least believer who is in the kingdom of heaven is greater than any believer before its establishment. But the context naturally restricts us to prophets - men possessing the spirit of prophecy with its extraordinary endowments. John's greatness as a prophet lay in his near relation to Christ as his fore-runner, and the one chosen by God to see him and testify to him before the people. But the least prophet in the kingdom of heaven was greater than he, as having a nearer relation to Christ and fuller revelations concerning him. But if we deny to the writings of Christ's own apostles, chosen by him to establish his church, and endowed on the day of Pentecost with the gift of the Holy Spirit, that divine authority which we concede to the things written concerning Christ" in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms," we make them not greater than John and the prophets before him, but less than the least of them, which is a true reductio ad absurdum. Holding, then, the divine authority of the record left us by Moses and the prophets, we must, a fortiori, admit that of the writings of Christ's own apostles, who were greater than they.

2. Our second argument is drawn from the necessity of the case. Though our Lord finished the work which the Father gave him to do on earth, he did not finish the revelation of

1 Matt. xi. 11.

his gospel. On the contrary, he said to his disciples just before his crucifixion: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all the truth";1 a plain intimation that these "many things," reserved for future communication, should be imparted to them not by himself in person, but through the Holy Spirit. And what were these "many things"? One of them was the purely spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom. This was not understood by the apostles till after the day of Pentecost; for we find them asking, just before his ascension, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" a question which he declined answering, while he referred them to the promised gift of the Spirit. Another of the things which they could not bear during our Lord's personal ministry, was the abolition of the Mosaic law, and thus of the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles. This great truth was so connected with the import of Christ's propitiatory sacrifice (to be next considered) that the unfolding of the two necessarily went hand in hand with each other. By the preaching of the cross the apostles taught doctrinally that in Christ there is neither Greck nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free; but Christ is all, and in all"; and they taught the same truth prac tically by their decisions in respect to the Gentile converts. Then, again, what a rich unfolding we have in the apostolic epistles of the meaning of Christ's death on Calvary, and, in connection with this, of the doctrine of justification by faith! Faith in Christ's person had always been required. This the apostles had before his crucifixion. But faith in Christ crucified for the sins of the world they could not have till after the counsel of God had been revealed by his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to heaven. We might specify other truths, as, for example, what Paul says of the resurrection and the spiritual body. But those that have been men

1 John xvi. 12, 13.
See Acts x., xi., and xv.

2 Acts i. 6-8.

8 Col. iii. 11.

1 Cor. xv.; 1 Thess. iv. 13-18.