ART. III. THE AUTHORITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AS A RULE OF DUTY.*

By Rev. WILLIS J. BEECHER, Prof. in Auburn Theological Seminary. RECOLLECTING the three delightful years of my own Seminary life in Auburn, the sound teachings and warm religious influence of these revered fathers in Christ, our studies and our recreations, the social welcome we received, and the cordial fellowship of the churches, our Bible classes, our neighborhood prayer-meetings, our work of prison evangelization; calling to mind how, in those days, the Holy Ghost fell upon us, reviving the people of God, causing us to walk in a radiant glow of light, and sealing anew the call of many, in permitting them to point souls to Christ; thinking of our large-brained, great-hearted, noble-souled Brother, for two years my class-mate and daily companion, whom we alumni peculiarly respected and loved, and were glad to have in the service of our Alma Mater, and whose place I am now called to take, because God has said to him "Come up higher;" measuring the responsibility in becoming the associate of these wise teachers, at whose feet I would rather still sit and learn their associate in training ministers for the eager, perishing millions of the nineteenth century, I am tempted to come before you with utterances of feeling rather than of thought, with requests for your sympathies and prayers, rather than with appeals to your reason. Glancing at my appointed field of work, the Hebrew Language and Literature, I find reason for a yet deeper sense of insufficiency and of dependence upon God.

For two generations, the Old Testament has been made a great strategic centre in the battles of reform. Around it have struggled the various contending opinions on slavery, on temperance, on peace and war, on capital punishment, on the rights of women, on nearly every vital public question. Each party either claims the Hebrew Scriptures as sustaining its own view, or attacks them as opposing that view, or tries to settle the question by broaching some new opinion as to their authority.

* Inaugural Address delivered at Auburn, May, 1871.

In these discussions, all the long-felt peculiar difficulties of the Old Testament are renewedly brought out. Why observe the Mosaic Sabbaths, but neglect the Mosaic burntofferings? How about the slaughtering of the Canaanites, women and children as well as warriors? and of Agag, Saul's brave and helpless prisoner of war? What of that devotional sentiment of the Psalmist, "Happy shall be he that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones?"

Through causes thus suggested, diverse theories of the Old Testament have come to prevail, among evangelical Christians as well as elsewhere. I am not reopening a closed question, but discussing one already open, when I enter upon the theme chosen for this occasion, namely,

THE AUTHORITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AS A RULE OF DUTY.

Perhaps evangelical teachers agree that the Old and New Testaments are alike binding as the Word of God; but they do not agree as to whether the two are equally binding. Assuming the divine authority of the New as a standard, what is the relative value of the divine authority of the Old? Is it equal, or inferior, or superior?

use.

The New Testament speaks of the "apostles and prophets" as constituting no unequal foundation of our faith. And on the other hand, it likewise speaks of " the law" as a "schoolmaster to bring us to Christ"- -a schoolmaster of whom we no longer have need. In the usual popular, fragmentary conception of things, these two classes of expressions are not contradictory. Ordinarily it makes little difference which we Custom agrees with the New Testament in employing both. We speak of the old law as annulled, and also appeal to it as yet in force. Within proper limits, this is correct. But when we come to widen out the two affirmations, and to regard them as scientific formulas, their difference becomes important, and they themselves contradictory. Either God's law is eternal, or it is not eternal. It can not be at once, and in the same sense, both eternal and non-eternal. Either the two Testaments are equally binding, or they are not. They can not be at once, and in the same sense, equally and unequally binding.

If we say that the one class of affirmations shows that parts of the Old Testament are of perpetual obligation, while the opposite affirmations show that other parts are abolished, then where is the dissecting knife keen enough to separate between the eternal and the transient, the moral and the ceremonial, the vital and the necrose, in the body of God's written Word?

One would naturally suppose that every part of God's law is, of course, eternal; that the passages which declare this are the ones which aim at scientific verity; and that when a Scripture writer or any one else calls a part of the law null, with reference to any given instances, he simply means that the law was never intended for those instances.

Yet, strange to say, this is hardly the prevalent view. Let me state this latter view in the form of citations from a popular text-book. The book was written by a Christian gentleman, who returned late to heaven, leaving a blessed memory; and is studied as an utterance of ascertained scientific fact, by thousands of educated young people in our colleges and schools. On page 138 of this work, which I purposely leave unnamed, we read: "The design of the Old Testament mainly is to reveal a system of simple law; to exhibit the results of such a system upon the human race; and to direct the minds of men to the remedial dispensation which was to follow."

Mainly, notice, to exhibit law and its results; incidentally to foreshadow redemption. On pages 139, 140, the statement is repeated, more in detail: "God, in various modes suited to their condition, made known his will to the whole human race. They all, with the exception of a single family, became so corrupt that he destroyed them by a general deluge. He then selected a single family, and gave them his written law, and, by peculiar enactments, secluded them from all other nations, that the experiment might be made under the most favorable circumstances. At the same time, the effects of natural religion were tried among the heathen nations that surrounded them. The result was a clear demonstration that, under the conditions of being in which man was created, any reformation was hopeless, and that unless some other condi

tions were revealed, the race would perish by its own vicious and anti-social tendencies, and enter the other world to reap the reward of its guilt forever. While this is said to be the

not intended to be It was intended to

main design of the Old Testament, it is understood that this is its whole design. be introductory to the new dispensation, and also to teach those to whom it was addressed the way of salvation."

Again, on page 145, it is said: "The distinction of nations or individuals is nowhere adverted to in the New Testament. Its precepts are clearly intended for men of all ages and nations; and hence they never involve anything. either local or peculiar, but are universally binding upon all. And it may be supposed to contain all the moral precepts, both of natural religion and of the Old Testament, together with whatever else it was important to our salvation that we should know. If, then, a revelation has been made in the Old Testament which is repeated in the 'New Testament, we shall be safe in making the latter revelation the criterion by which we shall judge respecting the precepts of the earlier. That is to say, no precept of the Old Testament, which is not either given to man as man, or which is not either repeated, or its obligations acknowledged under the new dispensation, is binding upon us at the present day."

Following out these principles, it is hinted (page 183) that certain parts of the Mosaic law of the Sabbath are reenacted in the New Testament, and that the parts not thus reenacted are no longer binding. And on page 221, the author declares : "Now the New Testament is in many respects not only at variance with, but in opposition to, the precepts of the Old." And again: "If the laws and precepts of Moses are of unchangeable obligation, the precepts of the New Testament must be surrendered, and the teachings of the Saviour of mankind become an absolute nullity." And on page 138, he mentions, "The progressive development of the moral law."

Now, if some of these statements, being erroneous, need refutation, and if others, being peculiarly liable to be misunderstood, require to be defined and limited, still the refuting, defining and limiting are not aimed against this particular

author, but against the multitude who hold similar views. The passages quoted exhibit the most widely-known and most widely-accepted attempt that has been made in this country, to obviate the peculiar difficulties of the Old Testament by drawing a distinction between that and the New. This and kindred attempts, it will now be maintained, are both needless and futile.

I. They are needless. They are so because, without any such distinction, these peculiar difficulties can be fully disposed of. The strictly universal rules of conduct are very few. Morality is chiefly taught, whether in the Old Testament, in the New, or elsewhere, in particular precepts. We may distinguish between the form and the content of any such precept; or, in other words, between the precept itself and the cases to which it applies. Hence it is possible to affirm that every moral precept is in itself eternal and universal, and yet to deny of certain moral precepts, that there will ever occur a second case to which they can apply.

Hence a precept, once applicable, might thereafter conceivably have eternal existence as a mere empty form. But most moral precepts retain an existence that is not merely void. Like other particular propositions, each comprehends certain propositions more general. Some of these more general forms may be widely applicable, and may thus render the precept morally valuable and instructive long after its specific applicability has ceased.

This may be more popularly expressed. Any correct moral precept is binding upon those to whom it was originally given, in the circumstances in which they then were. But since every such precept implies an eternal principle of right, as well as a direction to do something, it is binding upon every being in the universe, who is, so far as the precept is concerned, in precisely the same condition with those to whom it was given. If any one is in some respects only in the same conditions, it is binding upon him so far as his condition is the same. In other words, the directions given in any particular instance will apply in any other instance that may arise, so far as the two are parallel, and no farther.

This distinction is not "got up" for the purpose of saving