The
Divine Origin of the Bible
Benjamin B.
Warfield
Contents:
I. THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BIBLE
III. THE TEACHING OF THE BIBLE
IV. SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF' THE BIBLE
V. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ACCOUNTING FOR THE BIBLE
When the Christian asserts his faith in the divine origin of his Bible,
he does not mean to deny that it was composed and written by men or
that it was given by men to the world. He believes that the marks of
its human origin are ineradicably stamped on every page of the whole
volume. He means to state only that it is not merely human in its
origin. If asked where and how the divine has entered this divine-human
book, he must reply: "Everywhere, and in almost every way conceivable."
Throughout the whole preparation of the material to be written and of
the men to write it; throughout the whole process of the gathering and
classification and use of the material by the writers; throughout the
whole process of the actual writing, - he sees at work divine
influences of the most varied kinds, extending all the way from simply
providential superintendence and spiritual illumination to direct
revelation and inspiration.
It is of great importance to distinguish between these various ways in
which the divine has been active in originating the Scriptures, but it
is of vastly greater importance to fix the previous fact that it is in
the Scriptures at all and has entered them in any way. The present
essay aims, therefore, without raising any of the many questions which
concern the distinguishing of the various activities of God in
originating his Scriptures, to busy itself with the one previous
question: Is there reason to believe that God has been concerned at all
in the origin of the Bible?
The question thus proposed is a very general one. And it is a very
immense one - almost limitless. It is, of course, utterly impossible to
do more than touch upon it in any reasonable space, and all that could
be urged in a single paper or in any reasonably circumscribed series of
papers would bear a very small proportion to all that might be urged -
to the mighty case that could be made out. No attempt can be made,
therefore, toward fullness of treatment. A series of propositions most
baldly stated will only be laid down one after the other, and it will
be left to the reader to develop and illustrate them and bring out
their combined force, which will, however, it is hoped, be immediately
partly evident from their simple statement. An effort will also be
made, in the choice of the propositions and their ordering, to frame an
argument of a kind which will demand, as of right, entrance into every
mind; one, therefore, which will depend for its force on no original
assumptions, but will begin rather with simple and patent facts - will
simply put these facts together and then inquire what kind of facts
they are and what they imply. Thus the reasoning will take the form of
an inquiry rather than an argument - of an induction rather than a
demonstration. The conclusions reached may not be so sharply and
accurately defined as if reached by other methods, but they have the
advantage of being obtained by a process to every step of which every
man's mind ought to be open.
Our purpose is to look upon the Bible simply as one of the facts of the
universe, of which every theory of the universe must take account, and
for which, just as surely as for gravitation, it must make account or
itself die, and then ask (and press the question): What kind of a cause
must be assumed to account for it just as it is and just as it arose in
the world? Thus we may inductively come to an answer to the query:
"Must we assume superhuman activities at work in the genesis of this
book?"
Without further introduction, we begin the inquiry at once.
I. THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
1. The basal fact from which our inquiry takes its start is the very
indisputable and patent one that in the world there is such a book as
THE BIBLE. There is a definite volume, well known and always the same
in contents, about which there need be no mistake, which goes under
this name, and under this name is accessible to all. This very patent
fact is the first that we need to notice.
2. It is another fact, hardly less patent than the last, that this book
occupies a unique position in the world of civilized man. No other book
stands to-day among men for what the Bible stands for. We are not
asserting here that it has a right to the position it occupies or the
power it exerts: we simply assert that it is undeniable that it holds
that position and exercises that power.
The legislation of civilized nations is profoundly affected by its
teaching; the social habits of cultured people are largely determined
by its scheme of life; the governmental forms of powerful countries are
built on its principles, and their functions are carried on under its
sanctions. Rulers are entrusted with the exercise of their powers,
witnesses are credited in the deposition of their testimony, only after
oaths sworn upon or according to it. Everywhere it has percolated
through the fabric of civilization, and modern society is built up upon
the lines drawn by it.
Still further, where it most dominates, there is most life. It is the
great Protestant nations - those who most rest upon this book - which
are the most prominent nations, the most full of abounding life and
enterprising energy, the most impressive on the destinies of man. It is
even the pioneer of civilization; instead of following, it breaks the
way for material advancement. Go where you will, if you find life, you
will find also the Bible; and you will find it in the very midst of the
organism. You will find it in the hall of legislation, and in the laws
that are there framed; in the courts of justice, and in the justice
that is there administered; in the colleges of learning, and in the
learning that is there imparted; at the home-firesides, and in the
moral training and homely virtues which are there inculcated. In a
word, it is, as no other book has ever been to a single nation, bound
up with all civilization and progress and culture.
3. It is worth our notice, still further, that this position of power
and influence has been attained and held by the Bible through a most
remarkable history. Confined for ages to a rough, isolated corner of
the globe, in the keeping of a small and peculiar tribe of men, it
almost without a moment's warning, like a great lake receiving a new
accession of waters, immediately on completion, burst all boundaries
and deluged the world. It came commended by no external pomp of
appearance, attended with no force of arms. Alone and single-handed, in
the face of stinging contempt and bloodthirsty cruelty, it opposed
ancient prejudices, long-settled habits, customs and religions, every
consideration of self-interest or indulgence or safety, and swept them
away like so many straws. By its simple, despised presence among men it
conquered. It mattered not where it went; human society in every stage
of development, under every form of administration, and composed of
every race of men, everywhere alike yielded itself to it.
We cannot overstate the case; it is even impossible for us to mentally
realize the profundity of the change induced. Look only at the straws
of external action which, veering suddenly around, advertise to us the
change of wind beneath and behind. See the revolution in the sentiment
which the sight of a cross kindled.
Who can estimate, again, the profound revolution which was necessary in
men's very habits of thought, in their inmost consciousness, before
sacrificial ordinances could fall into neglect. Just think of it. From
the beginning of the world sacrifices had been universal. Men knew, and
had from the beginning known, no other way to express the deepest facts
of their consciences. The habit had been ground in upon the race not
only for a lifetime, but for a world-time. Everybody everywhere
spontaneously fled to this rite as the fit expression of the sense of
sin and the hope of deliverance. And yet, in little more than fifty
years after the introduction of Christianity into his province, Pliny
complains that it had almost put a stop to sacrifices there. A
world-habit, dominant from the beginning, thus rolled back upon itself
in a single generation! We cannot possibly appreciate the greatness of
this conquest. Sacrifices had been almost the whole life of the people:
from childhood sacrifices had met each man in every form, in every
quarter, in every act, in every duty of every day's business. Not only
could he not engage in any of the graver duties of the citizen without
being confronted with them everywhere; he could not rise from his bed
in the morning, retire to it at night, partake of his necessary
sustenance, without a recognition of a god or the performance of a rite
at every step. And yet Christianity came, not undermining the principle
which underlay sacrifices, but emphasizing it, and still they fled away
from its presence.
Beneath such external changes, conceive, if you can, the immense
revolution that was wrought. Not only was the whole practice of
religion altered, but also the whole theory of religion; not only the
whole practice of morals, but the whole theory of morals. Vices in
former repute were suddenly raised to the highest pinnacle of virtues;
virtues in former repute were thrust down to the lowest hell of vices.
Everything was overturned.
Is it asked whether the human means employed in gaining this grand
victory were not sufficient to account for it? Look at them. A dozen
ignorant peasants proclaiming a crucified Jew as the founder of a new
faith; bearing as the symbol of their worship an instrument which was
the sign of ignominy, slavery and crime; preaching what must have
seemed an absurd doctrine of humility, patient suffering and love to
enemies - graces undreamed of before; demanding what must have seemed
an absurd worship for one who had died like a malefactor and a slave,
and making what must have seemed an absurd promise of everlasting life
through one who had himself died, and that between two thieves.
Did their voices fall on willing or docile ears? This was the age of
those princes of scoffers, Celsus and Lucian.
Did they prosecute their work in peace and quietude? They were thrown
to the lions until the very beasts were satiated with their prey. Their
blood seemed only to water the field of the Lord.
Thus, in the face of all discouragement and cruel persecution, the
Bible found itself established with incredible rapidity in the hearts
of an immense Christendom. In less than seventy years it was known over
all the then known world; within little more than a single century it
had won to itself "almost the greater part of the whole state."
Do you say that this, despite all appearances, must have been an
exceptional age and an exceptional experience? We reply that it is the
experience of the ages. When corruption had brought back an age of
darkness and the Bible was once more lost from real life, it required
but a Luther to tear off the veil for it to re-enact the same history
and sow Europe with the blood of its votaries till a harvest could be
reaped of equal victory. It cannot be necessary to repeat the story of
the noble conflict. You know it well, and know that it was a Bible war
and a Bible victory. The same history is even now working itself out
about us. Madagascar, under our eyes, has repeated it. Every corner of
the globe has felt the tingling of the mighty impulse. Even here, in
America, we are living amid historical wonders, our eyes unopened to
the sight. Rapidly as the population of the United States has grown
since 1800, the proportionate increase of the votaries of the Bible has
outstripped it. Yet so quietly has it all been done that we live
utterly oblivious of it until, through painfully gathered statistics,
the fact is made to look us squarely in the face.
How certain a fact, then, it is that the Bible has reached its present
wonderful position and influence through a most remarkable history, and
a history which it is still continuing on exactly the same lines!
4. It is important to note, next, that throughout all this history, and
still to-day, this great influence which the Bible has exerted has
been, and is still, purely and only beneficent. All its power has been
exerted in the direction of the elevation of man and loving ministry to
his needs. Of course we are in no danger of forgetting that the truth
of this statement has been of late challenged in some quarters. But
neither can we forget three other facts: 1. That it is not challenged
by the well-informed and unprejudiced even among those who deny the
divine origin of the Bible. 2. That the methods by which it is
attempted to make the Bible appear in any other rôle than
that of a
cornucopia of good for man will (as Dr. Fisher has lately very clearly
shown) avail equally to prove that love is a curse and the household
fireside, with all its blessings, a very nest of corruption. Of course,
it is not denied, either of love or of the Bible, that it sometimes has
been the cause of pain; each has often ennobled man through the pain
and self-sacrifice called out by it. Nor is it denied of either that it
has been made at times the excuse of crime, but both have cried out
upon the wickedness which would hide behind their sacred skirts. 3.
That those who put forth the challenge have been led to do it only
because the teaching of the Bible has so leavened society and the
usages of modern life that it is almost impossible for men to believe
that the world could ever have existed without the restraining and
ennobling influences which now seem naturally to dominate us, and yet
which really have their root in the Bible. A true picture of the boon
which this book has really been to the world can be obtained only by an
examination of two classes of facts - those belonging to the condition
of society before it entered into its beneficent reign on the one hand,
and on the other those belonging to the condition into which society
lapses whenever the Bible in any degree loses its hold upon men. The
shamelessness of Roman society under the early emperors will give us
the norm of the one; the horrors of the Italian renascence and of the
French Revolution will give us the norm of the other. It is not
necessary to stop now to pollute these pages with the recital of the
depths of degradation from which the Bible rescued man, and from which
its potent influence (witness the Italian renascence and the Reign of
Terror) alone keeps him rescued: they may be read in any accredited
history of the times, and it is certainly justifiable to assume as fact
what is recognized as fact by all competent historians.
Thus, then, the Bible is seen to tread the ages like the fabled goddess
under whose beneficent footfall sprang beautiful flowers wherever she
went. Hospitals and asylums and refuges for the sick, the miserable and
the afflicted grow like heaven-bedewed blossoms in its path. Woman,
whose equality with man Plato considered a sure mark of social
disorganization, has been elevated; slavery has been driven from
civilized ground; letters have been given by Christian missionaries,
under the influence of the Bible and in order to its publication, to
whole peoples and races. Who can estimate that boon? Thus Cyril and
Methodius gave alphabet and written language to the vast hordes of the
Sclaves; thus Ulphilas, to the whole race of Teutons; thus even Egypt,
mother of letters, first received a manageable alphabet. Thus still
to-day tribes and peoples sunk in barbarism are being lifted by the
Bible to the ranks of literary nations. So the work goes on, and still
to-day, as ever before, the Bible stands in all the world exercising
everywhere its immense power in the restraining of all evil passions,
in the advancement of all that is good and tender and elevating, in
pouring out benefits unspeakable to the individual and the state.
5. All this immense influence for good which the Bible is exercising
over the minds and hearts of men is due to a most deep-seated and
steadfast conviction in their minds that it is from God and constitutes
a law given from heaven for amending the lives and ameliorating the
condition of men.
If this be a fanaticism, it is a most beneficent and a most remarkable
fanaticism, far from easy to account for on the hypothesis that it is a
fanaticism. Did men rush to embrace a delusion which had nothing to
commend it to them amid the scoffs of Celsus and the ridicule of
Lucian, against their every interest and against their every
inclination, and that when the majesty of Rome was unsheathed to fright
them back and the jaws of the lions yawned to engulf them? Men do not
usually spring so to die for a delusion which offers so little and
threatens so much. Then, too, how has the fanaticism so grown? How is
it that it still holds captive so many millions of those whose
intellect is of the clearest and whose culture is of the highest? How
is it that it still embraces the civilized world? But, however it be
attempted to account for it, here is the fact. The great influence
which the Bible has ever exercised has been always, and still is
accounted for by those who yield to it on their sincere conviction that
this book, which differs so in power from all other volumes, differs
from them equally in origin, being alone of books God's book, while all
others are men's.
6. This conviction is traced by them not solely to the visible power
and influence of the book, nor solely, conjoined with that, to the
manifest grandeur and divinity of its contents and character, but also
(continuing to dwell now on external particulars) to marvelous
circumstances which attended the giving of this marvelous book to the
world. Those who wrote its latter portion and sent the whole abroad
asserted that they acted under commission from God and authenticated
their mission by a series of astounding miracles. Thus the miracle of
the book is appropriately believed to have sprung from the center of a
God-endowed company.
We cannot pause now to prove that these miracles really occurred. All
that can be said is that the testimony they rest on is irrefragable,
and that they must be admitted to have occurred or the foundations of
all history are swept away at a stroke. It is enough here to note how
appropriately the wonderful history which has been wrought out by the
Bible is made to spring from open miracles. All is here consistent and
appropriate; and if those miracles which are asserted to have happened
really happened, all is explained and constitutes a harmonious whole.
Otherwise, we are landed in great difficulties and inconsistencies.
If we will ponder the facts which we have so baldly stated, it seems
that we must conclude that the external history of this book is such as
will so harmonize with a supernatural origin for it as to take away all
strangeness from the assertion of such an origin. And what is that but
saying that the history of the book suggests a supernatural origin for
it - even raises a presumption in favor of such an origin for it? This
book is certainly unique in the power it possesses: is it not unique in
its source of power? It is certainly furnished with an influence
possessed by no other book. Whence came it?
II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BIBLE
And now let us open the volume and see what kind of a book this is
which has exerted such remarkable power through so long and so
wonderful a history. We have all, doubtless, a notion of the kind of
book a volume is likely to be which will exercise vast influence over
men - a masterly argument, say, well ordered and set foursquare against
all possible opposition, each part fitted with consummate skill to each
other part, and the whole driven with relentless force and unswerving
purpose straight to the intended goal; or a fervid appeal, say, based
on the primal emotions of the heart, with burning and well-chosen words
touching each string of that mystic harp, beating out from them all one
burst of answering music. A consummate master of thought and speech may
be thus conceived of as so catching the human heart as to hold it
almost permanently. Yet his influence would be limited - notably, by
this: the radius of the circle of his sympathies. Certainly no man has
yet arisen able to frame a writing of universal and age-long influence,
simply because no one has arisen yet wholly above the environment of
the social customs and age-influence in which he was bred. And
certainly it is inconceivable that a book should exert great influence
over a wide expanse of territory and through long stretches of time
which was not consciously framed for influence by an intelligent and
competent mind. All this being true, it is assuredly worth our most
serious attention that the Bible is the only book in existence which
has any pretensions to being universal and lasting in its influence;
and yet, if it be not of superhuman origin, it could not have been
framed consciously for influence. Let us look into this fact somewhat
more closely.
7. On first throwing open this wonderful volume we are struck
immediately with the fact that it is not a book, but rather a congeries
of books. No less than sixty-six separate books, one of which consists
itself of one hundred and fifty separate compositions, immediately
stare us in the face. These treatises come from the hands of at least
thirty distinct writers, scattered over a period of some fifteen
hundred years, and embrace specimens of nearly every kind of writing
known among men. Histories, codes of law, ethical maxims, philosophical
treatises, discourses, dramas, songs, hymns, epics, biographies,
letters both official and personal, vaticinations, - every kind of
composition known beneath heaven seems gathered here in one volume.
Their writers, too, were of like diverse kinds. The time of their
labors stretches from the hoary past of Egypt to and beyond the bright
splendor of Rome under Augustus. They appear to have been of every sort
of temperament, of every degree of endowment, of every time of life, of
every grade of attainment, of every condition in the social scale.
Looked at from a purely external point of view, the volume is a rough
bale of drift from the sea of Time, a conglomerate of
débris brought
down by the waters and cast in a heap together. Nay, not only are there
heterogeneous, but seemingly positively conflicting, elements in it.
One half is a mass of Hebrew writings held sacred by a race which
cannot look with patience on the other half, which is a mass of Greek
writings claiming to set aside the legislation of a large part of its
fellow. Yet it is this congeries of volumes which has had, and still
has, this immense influence. The Hebrew half never conquered the world
until the Greek half was added to it; the Greek half did not conquer
save by the aid of the Hebrew half. The whole mass, in all its
divinity, has attained the kingship.
The question which will not down is, Can the miraculous power of this
book be explained by the measure of power to which other books are able
to attain? Where does this book, seemingly thus cast together by some
whirlpool of time, get its influence? If influence is not natural to
such a volume, must it not point to something supernatural in it?
Whence came it?
8. We may look, however, on a still greater wonder. Let us once
penetrate beneath all this primal diversity and observe the internal
character of the volume, and a most striking unity is found to pervade
the whole; so that, in spite of having been thus made up of such
diverse parts, it forms but one organic whole. The parts are so linked
together that the absence of any one book would introduce confusion and
disorder. The same doctrine is taught from beginning to end, running
like a golden thread through the whole and stringing book after book
upon itself like so many pearls. Each book, indeed, adds something in
clearness, definition, or even increment, to what the others proclaim;
but the development is orderly and constantly progressive. One step
leads naturally to the next; the pearls are certainly chosen in the
order of stringing.
An unbroken historical continuity pervades the whole book. It is even
astonishing how accurately the parts historically dovetail together,
jag to jag, into one connected and consistent whole. Malachi ends with
a finger-post pointing through the silent ages to a path clearly seen
in the Gospels. The New Testament fits on to the Old silently and
noiselessly, but exactly, just as one stone of the Jewish temple fitted
its fellow prepared for it by exact measurement in the quarries; so
that, on any careful consideration of the two coexisting phenomena -
utter diversity in origin of these books, and yet utter nicety of
combination of one with all - it is as impossible to doubt that they
were meant each for the other, were consciously framed each for its
place, as it is to doubt that the various parts of a complicated
machine, when brought from the factory and set up in its place of
future usefulness, were all carefully framed for one another.
But just see where this lands us. Unless we are prepared to allow to a
man some fifteen hundred years of conscious existence and intellectual
supervision of the work, we are shut up here to the admission of a
superhuman origin for this book. It is difficult to see how this
argument can be really escaped. It will be perceived that it is
analogous to what is often urged from the phenomena of the natural
universe to prove for it a divine origin. Indeed, all the arguments
urged in the one sphere are also capable of being urged in the other.
The gradual framing of the Bible through a period of fifteen hundred
years excludes human supervision. Now, the Bible, as a whole, is a
result or an effect in the universe, and it must have had, as such, an
adequate cause, which, since the result is an intelligent one, must
have been an intelligent cause: there is the ontological argument, and
it proves a superhuman intelligent cause for the Bible. It consists of
orderly arranged parts, of an orderly developed scheme: there is the
cosmological argument, and again it proves the activity of an
intelligent cause (and much else not now to be brought out) of at least
fifteen hundred years' duration. It is itself a cause of marvelous
effects in the world for the production of which it is most admirably
designed, and its whole inner harmony and all its inner relations are
most deeply graven with the marks of a design kept constantly before
some intelligent mind for at least fifteen hundred years: there is the
argument from design, attaining equally far-reaching and cogent
conclusions as in the realm of nature. The analogy need not, however,
be drawn out further. An atheist of the present day spoke only sober
truth when he declared that the divine origin of the Bible and the
divine origin of the world must stand or fall together. The arguments
which will prove the one prove also the other. Butler proved this
proposition long ago. It stands indubitable; so that absolute atheism
or Christianity must be our only choice.
9. Another point in which the unity of the Bible is strikingly apparent
needs our attention next: amid all the diversity of its subject-matter,
it may yet be said that almost the whole book is taken up with the
portraiture of one person. On its first page he comes for a moment
before our astonished eyes; on the last he lingers still before their
adoring gaze. And from that first word in Genesis which describes him
as the "seed of the woman" and at the same time her deliverer - with
occasional moments of absence, just as the principal character of a
play is not always on the stage, and yet with constant development of
character - to the end, where he is discovered sitting on the great
white throne and judging the nations, the one consistent but gradually
developed portraiture grows before our eyes. Not a false stroke is
made. Every touch of the pencil is placed just where it ought to stand
as part of the whole. There is nowhere the slightest trace of wavering
or hesitancy of hand. The draughtsman is certainly a consummate artist.
And, as the result of it all, the world is possessed of the strongest,
most consistent, most noble literary portraiture to be found in all her
literature.
Yet we are asked to believe that this grand result has been attained,
not by the skilled limning of a Michelangelo, but by the disconnected
dabblings of a score and a half of untrained forgers, who, moreover,
were ever at cross-purposes with each other. Why, if the creation and
successful dramatization, through a few short years, of such a
character as Hamlet required the genius of a Shakespeare, what genius
was required for this astoundingly successful creation and
dramatization of such a character as that of the GOD-MAN through the
ages of ages and aeons of aeons - from the time when at his Father's
side he sat, coequal with him, before all worlds, to the time when
these same worlds shall be swallowed up in the final fire! One should
certainly rather risk his sanity in the assertion that the play of
"Hamlet" had formed itself by the fortuitous concourse of the
alphabetical signs and made its own portraiture of the subtle Dane,
than on the assertion that this portraiture of the GOD-MAN had been
attained apart from the constant supervision and active labor of a
consummate mind. If we should thus consider this portraiture only as a
fiction, it would demand for its author something more than has yet
been seen in man. As it is undeniable now that it occupies the chiefest
portion of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and binds the portions
it occupies together as a consistent dramatization of itself, it is
equally undeniable that these portions of the Bible, at any rate, owe
their origin to a mind able to superintend their composition for at
least fifteen hundred years with a genius hitherto unexampled among men.
10. One other bond of connection between the parts of the volume must
needs be adverted to briefly - that formed by numerous predictions of
coming events given in the earlier portions and accounts of the
fulfillment of them in later portions, by which these later portions
are proved to be but the intended outgrowth and conclusion of the
former. These predictions run through an immense range both of time and
of circumstance, and are made too precise and detailed in form, and too
precise and detailed in the account of their fulfillment, for it to be
possible to doubt, on the one hand, that they were real predictions,
or, on the other, that they were really fulfilled. Thus the various
books are drawn close together; and if the Bible, externally
considered, may be likened to a bale of drift, these prophecies, given
in one part and reaching their fulfillment in another, are the strong
cords which bind the bale securely together and make it one whole. The
unity induced by this means is, indeed, complete and most conclusive to
its own divine origin.
11. Thus we are led to appeal to prophecy, and that not only to prove
the unity of the plan of Scripture, but, independent of and far above
that - by its very nature as prediction of things yet hidden in the
future - as an irrefragable proof of the divine origin of the whole of
the closely-knit volume in which it finds place. It is not a function
of human intellect to read the secrets of unborn ages; and the
existence in this book of accurate, detailed predictions of even
unimportant and certainly incalculable events of the far future
demonstrates its divine origin.
It is, of course, impossible in this brief essay to illustrate the
character and convincingness of Scripture prophecy, or even to indicate
instances of its unquestionable fulfillment in detail. Were there
space, we might point to the immense number of independent predictions,
seemingly opposite, or even contradictory, to one another, before their
fulfillment, found on the coming of Christ to be harmoniously gathered
up and fulfilled in his unique personality and work - predictions
covering not only the great outlines of his work and the marked traits
of his person, but publishing ages beforehand the very village in which
he should first see the light, the homage on the one hand, and the
abuse on the other, which he should receive, the life he should live
and the death he should die, even to the most minute description of the
pains he should suffer and the scoffs he should endure as he hung upon
the tree - yea, even the exact price of his blood and fate of his
betrayer. Or, again, we might point to that ever-living witness to the
truth of prophecy in the Jewish race upon whom everything that has been
prophesied has been and is being duly fulfilled; or, again, to an
infinite multitude of minute details of predictions touching many races
and nations which have with infinite might fulfilled themselves
everywhere. Space would fail, however, for such an enumeration. And it
is the less necessary, now that the feverish efforts, on the part of
those who wish to escape from the power of the Bible, to assign later
dates to the prophetical books than most cogent proof from many
quarters will allow, amount to an admission that the prophetical
element in them cannot be denied. In prophecy, therefore, we have a
continual miracle set in the midst of the Bible, to stand in all ages
as a sure proof that it comes from God. As each prediction is in turn
fulfilled before the eyes of each age which witnesses it, a miracle
performs itself (and attests itself in the act) which is as cogent and
sufficient evidence of the divine origin of the Bible as if all the
miracles of the apostolical age were rewrought in our presence to
reaffirm its teaching. Thus we see, in perhaps a new light, the meaning
of our Lord's pregnant saying: "If they hear not Moses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the
dead."
As, then, when we considered the external history of the Bible, we were
driven back, step by step, through marvelous circumstances to open
miracles of power proclaiming and demonstrating the divine origin of
the book, so here, as soon as we look within it in even the most
cursory way, we repeat the same process and move back from marvel to
marvel, until we reach the open miracle of prophecy, again
independently proving the divine origin of the book after a fashion
which cannot be escaped or legitimately questioned.
III. THE TEACHING OF THE BIBLE
The same process is only again repeated, and cumulative evidence for
the divine origin of the Bible obtained, when we look somewhat deeper
into its contents and ask after the character and witness of its
teaching - a subject broad as the earth itself and full of
self-evidence, but upon which we have as yet not even cast a glance.
The character and the nature of the contents of the Bible alone are
enough to prove its divine origin. If men cannot have made the miracles
of power by which its publication to the world was accompanied, nor the
miracles of prophecy by which its progress through the world has been
accompanied, no more can they have manufactured the miracles of
teaching of which its contents consist. Independently of all other
evidence, the miracle of the contents demands a divine origin. This,
again, may be made plainer by some specifications, which again,
however, must be presented in a very naked and fragmentary way.
12. Let us note, then, first of all, the unspeakable elevation and
grandeur both of the teaching itself which this book presents and of
the assumptions on which it bases that teaching.
The conception of God which is here presented - how unutterably divine
is it! Apart from the Bible, man has never reached to such a
conception. This element of it, and that element of it, has, indeed,
through the voice of nature, separately dawned upon his soul; but the
complete ideal is conveyed to him only by this book. Infinite and
eternal spirit - pure and ineffable - unlimited by matter, or space or
time, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in essence and attributes! And
what a circle of attributes! Infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite
justice, infinite holiness, infinite goodness, infinite mercy, infinite
pity, infinite love! Verily, if this conception be not a true image of
a really existent God, the human heart must say it ought to be. And
this is the conception of God which the Bible holds up before us - more
than that, which it dramatizes through an infinite series of infinitely
varied actions through a period of millenniums of years in perfect
consistency of character. Everywhere in its pages God appears as the
all-powerful, all-wise, necessarily just and holy One; everywhere as
the all-good, all-merciful, necessarily pitiful and loving One. Never
is a single one of these ineffable perfections lost or hidden or veiled.
The Bible's conception of the nature of man is of like nobility. Framed
in the image of God, he was made like him not only in the passive
qualities, but also in his endowment of active capacities. Even freedom
of action - unbound ability to choose his own future – were
placed in
his grasp. So, also, the Bible's teaching as to the duties that man,
even after he has made his fatal choice, owes to God and his neighbor,
all founded on the principle of love; its teaching as to the
possibilities before man and the destiny in store for him, culminating
in the possibility of his enthronement as co-ruler of the universe with
his divine Redeemer; its teaching as to the relation of man to the
physical and irrational universe as responsible head over it; its
teaching as to the origin of this universe itself and its purpose and
destiny, - all reach the acme of grandeur. These instances must serve
us as specimens of the grandeur of its teaching.
13. We must note, still further, that both the general tenor of the
Bible and its special assertions are all in precise accord "with what
the profoundest learning shows to be the actual state of the universe,
as well as what the deepest and largest experience establishes as the
actual course of nature." And it is a very pertinent question how it
happens that the Bible was able, alone of ancient books, to forestall
the conclusions of the latest science of the nineteenth century. It has
taken scientific thought up to to-day to bring its conceptions of the
origin of the world to the point at which Moses stood some three
millenniums ago. This, again, must serve us now as a specimen fact
(among a multitude) proving that "whoever wrote this book knew more
than we know, and knew it distinctly when we knew nothing."
Yet, although possessed of a knowledge thus unspeakably advanced beyond
all of their time, the writers of this book do not seem to have been
proud of their possession or anxious to display it; they do not even
formally transmit their knowledge, but simply act and speak on its
presupposition; so that when we reach an equal stage of advancement to
theirs, without having been hitherto conscious of its presence, we
suddenly find it there continually implied and constantly underlying
every part. It is thus always most deeply felt by those most conversant
with the progress of knowledge, and yet does not in any degree clog the
understanding of the book for the purpose for which it was given by
those who are as yet ignorant of the basis of physical or philosophical
fact assumed.
14. Thus we are led to take note of another general characteristic of
biblical teaching - the fact that all its great truths are universal
truths; i.e., truths capable of reaching and making entrance into and
taking a strong hold upon the heart of man as man, and of all men
equally, independently of their race-affinities, intellectual
advancement or social standing. That this should be so is undoubtedly a
great wonder, and it is redoubled when we remember that it is
correlated with great and remarkable knowledge. Usually, when the
profound philosopher speaks, he needs philosophers for his audience;
and yet here is a book which naturally and without effort betrays
acquaintance with the deepest reaches of modern discovery, and yet in
its every accent speaks home to the child as readily as to the sage.
In still another respect this same fact - namely, that the truths of
the Bible "find us" - has probative force, since, herefrom, it is
equally evident that the Bible is suited to man and that its asserted
truths are instinctively recognized by man as actual truths. The Bible
thus certainly comes with a message to man - one that is recognized by
each man who needs its words as specially for him, and that is
witnessed to instinctively by each as true. How does it happen that
this book, alone among books, reaches the heart alike of the Bushman
and of a Newton? of a savage lost in the horrors of savagery and of a
Faraday sitting aloft on the calm and clear if somewhat chill heights
of science? This universality of effect seems to prove a corresponding
universality of intention. But who of men has ever been able to hold
before him as recipients of his book all men of all ages? Who has been
able to calculate upon the hearts and characters of men removed from
him by such stretches of both time and circumstance? Who could have
been able to adapt a message penned in a corner, ages agone, to the
mental position of the nineteenth century and the hearts of a Newton
and a Faraday? Yet we must assume for the Bible an author who was
capable of this. Was Moses capable of it? Was an anonymous forger of
his name?
15. We must, however, turn to note another general characteristic of
Scripture - the remarkable simplicity of its manner and the transparent
honesty of its tone; so that its words, even when describing the most
utter marvels, possess that calm, quiet ring which stamps them with
indubitable truthfulness. If we are asked why we trust a friend in whom
we have every confidence, and credit his every statement, we may be
somewhat at a loss for a definite answer. "We know him," we say. This
same evidence is good also for a book. We may judge of the truthfulness
of men's writings by all those little intangible characteristics which
when united go toward making a very strong impression of actual proof,
but which one by one are almost too small to adduce or even notice,
just as we may judge of the trustiness of men's characters by all the
innumerable looks, gestures, chance expressions, little circumstances
which make their due impression on us. Combined, they are convincing,
though each by itself might seem ambiguous or valueless. The conclusion
in each case is, however, valid and rational, and the evidence is
unmistakably good evidence. Now, for the Bible, this evidence is
unusually strong; and thus it happens that men who do not know how to
reason, and who are incapable of following a closely-reasoned argument,
are accepting the Bible on all sides of us on truly rational and valid
evidence, and accepting it on like evidence as divine. They are
continually reading accounts of miracles so numerous and so striking
that the witnesses of them could not be mistaken; so embedded in a
narrative of such artlessness, gravity, honesty, intelligence,
straightforwardness as palpably to be neither fraud nor fancy that they
form part and parcel of it and are absolutely inseparable from it; so
embedded in a narrative which approves itself by a thousand simple and
inimitable hints and traits to be transparently truthful and
trustworthy that they must stand or fall with it. Now, this is most
rational evidence, and evidence so strong that it is as difficult for
the honest mind to resist it as it is for us to express it.
16. It becomes surely, then, of sufficient importance to justify
special notice that in the midst of this narrative, and scattered all
through it, we find calm and simple, but frequent, constant, and
steadfast, assertions of a divine origin for itself. So honest and
transparently truthful a narrative, filled with marks everywhere of
superhuman knowledge, naturally enough does not, in the pride of human
nature, claim all this superhuman knowledge for its human authors, but
ascribes it all to God; naturally enough empties its human authors of
any credit for knowledge before the time of knowledge and plans beyond
the reach of man and ascribes it all to God. And its very honesty and
simplicity of statement, the transparent honesty of this statement,
proves the assertion truthful and trustworthy. Here, then, once more,
we reach through orderly steps, exhibiting at each stage marks of God's
hand, the assertion of a divine origin; here, once more, after walking
through the aisles and nave and choir of a grand cathedral filled all
along with the marks of genius in its planning and execution, we reach
again the wall, and, lo! on it the marks of the chisel and the
superscription of the Architect that prove it was made by a competent
mind and did not grow.
It is very difficult to see but that the argument, if fully drawn out
and illustrated, is conclusive.
IV. SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF' THE BIBLE
Another, and an even more cogent, argument might be presented from a
consideration of some special characteristics either of the whole Bible
or of some of its parts - an argument hitherto untouched. This argument
would soon, however, grow much too vast to be included in this essay.
We must content ourselves with only pointing at a distance to only one
particular which might, were there space, be urged most convincingly.
17. We refer to the progressive character of the teaching included in
this book, with the special cases which might be adduced under that
head. It begins with first principles expressed in outward symbol, and
advances gradually to the full system, working out its approaches in
history before delivering it in dogma. We do not urge simply that this
progressive scheme is consistent with a divine origin for it; we urge
that this supremely wise method of delivering truth and training a
people, taken in connection with the unity of the system throughout the
whole, is consistent with nothing else. No doctrinaire made this Bible
- see what kind of work they do in the history of Middle-Age Florence
and Revolutionary France - but a most consummate statesman who knew
what was in man and how to mould him to his purposes.
We would appeal, in this connection - progressiveness - specially to
the practical and practicable character of Old-Testament legislation.
And thus we are led to assert that those very passages concerning
polygamy and kindred themes (which have been made an occasion of gibe
against the Scriptures) are themselves a most cogent argument for their
divine origin. We Americans ought to know by this time that the best
way to secure polygamy unharmed and enshrine it unconquerably under the
protection of a nation is to write on the statute-books inoperative
laws against it. The Bible was framed by too wise a statesman to fall
into that error, and we who enjoy Christian homes to-day have to thank
God for it. The unspeakable wisdom of dealing at that age, and under
those circumstances, with polygamy, divorce, slavery by regulative
laws, which in regulating discouraged, and in discouraging destroyed
them, makes strongly for a superhuman origin of the legislation.
So, again, growing out of this same progressive system, we could appeal
most strongly to the ritualistic system of symbolical worship given to
the Jews and by law secured from failure, by which object lessons - all
schoolmasters to lead to something better and higher - were
ineffaceably taught to a whole nation, which was thus prepared to
receive the spiritual lesson meant for it.
Still again we should appeal to the wise method of New-Testament
legislation through great principles rather than specific ordinances,
thus securing absolute universality in connection with perfect
definiteness; or again to the remarkable tenderness and beauty of this
legislation, especially apparent in the cases of slaves, wives and
children and temporal rulers - a phenomenon in the age when it was
given enough of itself to suggest a divine origin for the one book
which contains it; or still again to the wise silence of the same
legislation on many subjects on which it must have been very tempting
then to legislate, but legislation on which we can see now would have
imperiled the success of the main purpose for which the book was given
and obtained no corresponding gain.
On all these and like points, however, it is not now possible to touch.
We pass on, therefore, to our last remark.
V. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ACCOUNTING FOR THE BIBLE
18. That the Bible, thus standing in the world, being of such sort, and
having had such a history, has yet to be accounted for on the
hypothesis that it had only a human origin. Here it stands, just such a
fact in the universe, a substantive thing, tangible and that can be
examined. The ingenuity of men has been feverishly busy with it these
hundreds of years. Yet the world still awaits a theory which will
render an adequate account of it on any other hypothesis than that it
came from God. Theories have been attempted, but one after another they
have broken down of their own weight or have had justice executed upon
them by fellow-unbelieving hands amid the plaudits of all men of all
parties. Thus it happens that up to to-day no hypothesis except that of
superhuman interference has been able to stand a half century as an
account of the origin of this book. What is this but the confession
that without the assumption of superhuman interference this book cannot
be accounted for? that these miraculous claims and these miraculous
assertions cannot be rationally or satisfactorily explained away? Look
for one moment at the efforts made to account on natural grounds for
the miraculous element in the New Testament. First, a school arose
which tried to work on the assumption that whenever a miracle is
recorded the event described did really happen, indeed, but that it has
been exaggeratedly and mistakenly described as miraculous, and not
merely natural, by the New-Testament writers. The sick were healed, but
by medicinal means; the dead were raised, but only from seeming, not
real, death. That attempt to explain away the miraculous failed, as
requiring as great a series of miracles of wonderful coincidences as it
explained away. Another then arose which wished to account for it all
as a series of myths, holding that there was a kernel of truth in each
event described, but that this kernel had gathered much falsehood
around it as it rolled through time, from mouth to mouth, before it got
recorded in our Bible, just as a snowball grows almost unrecognizably
greater as it rolls down a long slope. But this attempt was wrecked
hopelessly on the lack of a soil for the myths to grow in (that is, of
snow to frame the balls of) and of time for them to increase in (that
is, of any hill for them to roll down). Then another rose on its ruins
- an elaborate theory of party strifes and forgeries and re-forgeries
of books in every conceivable interest; so that the same material was
worked over and over again by false and designing men, to serve each
new notion, until the final outcome was our New Testament. Again this
theory was wrecked on the lack of time for all this elaborate process
before the date at which adequate proof is in hand for the existence of
the books. The whole elaborate scheme falls with the failure of the
attempted rape of the second century. It cannot be true unless all
history is false.
Time is lacking for the New Testament to have grown in, if considered a
product of time; whence, then, came it? Soil is lacking for it to have
developed in, if considered a human development; then, whence came it?
All schemes which have hitherto been invented to account for its origin
without God have pitiably failed, and there is no particular reason to
look for anything more cogent to be advanced in the future. If,
however, this book cannot be accounted for apart from God, we seem shut
up to account for it as from him. Certainly, the only rational course
is to accept it as from him until it is able to be rationally accounted
for without his interference.
With this we may fitly close our inquiry. The query with which we
started seems abundantly answered. A supernatural origin for the Bible
appears cumulatively proven.
In closing, it would be well for us to take note of one or two facts in
regard to the argument which has been offered. Let it be observed, then:
1. That no attempt has been made to distinguish between a superhuman
and a divine origin for the Bible. This is not because the two are not
separable, but only because they are, in our present argument,
practically the same.
2. That no attempt has been made to distinguish between the divine
origin of the system and that of the books recording that system. This,
again, is not because the two are not separable, but only because, so
far as the argument has been pressed - though not much farther - the
two need not be practically separated.
3. That no question has been raised as to the extent of the divine in
the Bible. This is due to three facts: Because this question need not
be raised primarily for the establishment of the faith, but is
necessarily a consequent one to be raised after the general divine
origin of the book is admitted; because, again, the humble Christian
often looks upon and draws life from the Bible without raising this
question, simply accepting what he reads as divinely given to
strengthen his faith; and because, again, it was impossible in one
essay to treat both questions.
4. That, nevertheless, the facts and arguments which have been adduced
in a general way to prove the general divine origin of the Bible not
only prepare the way, but even, narrowly questioned, will raise a
strong presumption, for the further conclusions that this book has been
not only in a general way given by God, but also specifically inspired
in the giving, that thus its every word is from him, and that it is
worthy of our reverent and loving credence in its every particular.
* Originally published in 1882,
by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia; Pa.