the substance of all Scripture is God's Word. What is not part of the record of God's Word is no part of Scripture. Only we must distinguish between the record and the Divine communications of God's heart and will which the record conveys." Defining his position still further, the same illustrious scholar said: "We may say that silver is contained in the mould into which it is run. If the silver is only in the leaden ore, the man who has no means of smelting is no richer by having it in his possession. If the Bible only contains the Word of God mixed with man's word, like silver in the leaden ore, then no one could use Scripture for his own religious life who did not possess the requisite scholarship, as in the other case the man could not get silver without having a smelting to separate it from the leaden ore. Therefore that view is untenable. But there is another way in which Scripture may contain the Word of God, the pure Word of God – as the mould contains the silver seven times tried. The pure silver takes the shape of the mould – it may be an imperfect shape – but it is pure silver, and the man is enriched thereby at once without any further act."
Once more, when Biblical criticism has done its utmost, when every one of its established results is acknowledged to the full, there is still a problem. Grant the furthest claim of the critical analysis. Divide the Bible as you have it into innumerable shreds, painted differently. What then? You have not explained the living combination. How were these innumerable scraps brought together and endowed with this indomitable vitality? It is the same problem as is presented in Christianity. The parts, as an apologist has said, may be taken to pieces, and people may persuade themselves that without Divine interposition they can account for all the facts. "Here is something from the Jews, something from the Greeks, an element contributed by this party, another by that, a general coloring by people who held partly of both. You may take down Christianity in this way, and spread it over the centuries. But when the operation is done the living whole draws itself together again, looks you in the face, reclaims its scattered parts from every century back to the first, and reasserts itself to be a great burst of coherent life and light centring in Christ. Just as though you might take a piece of living tissue and say, here is only so much nitrogen, carbon, lime, and so forth, but the energetic peculiarities of life going on before your eyes would refute you by the palpable presence of a mystery unaccounted for." So it is with the Bible. How were these elements put together? Who breathed into the whole the breath of life so that it became a living creature, as Luther says, with eyes and hands and feet? Take the problem of the Gospels. One may say lazily that it is an insoluble problem, and one may say it wisely. In any case, how was it that these writers succeeded in drawing the picture of the Stainless? How was it that the stream was never allowed to become turbid at any moment? One act, one word, one attitude might have been condemned by all generations of the faithful. How were they kept from misunderstandings, these men who were always misunderstanding, when the story came to be written? An artist and poet of great note died some twenty years ago, and quite a number of his friends have put on record their impressions. The most intimate of these friends has refrained. He has contented himself with saying that they have all missed the true man, the heroic, the noble man. Are we not in the presence of the supernatural in dealing with a fact like this, that the sinful should understand the Sinless so perfectly as to record no thought, no deed, no word which bears upon it the mark of their human frailty? Shelley said once: "There are two Italys, one of the green earth, the transparent seas, old ruins, the warm, radiant atmosphere; the other is of the Italians, with their works and ways." There are two Bibles, the Bible cut in pieces by analysis, the Bible as we have it. The time will come when one will pass into the other, but it will not come till the finality and Divinity of the Bible are confessed, just as the moment will come when the spell of Italy will pass into the soul of her people, and the contrast will fade away. What we say about the Bible, when admitting everything that criticism has secured, is that criticism has only made it clearer than ever that it is a house not made with hands.
Once more, and especially of the Old Testament, we have the witness of Christ. This is a witness which has been misunderstood and overdriven. But in its essence it is a witness which is admitted by believing critics themselves to be absolute. To us it is not enough to say that Jesus Christ is an inspired soul, obedient to the laws of His own nature. It is not enough even to say that He holds a regal rank among souls and an exceptional relation to God. It is not enough to say that He is the Saint of saints. He is more than that, even very God of very God. But take the lower position. Admit everything that can be urged in the circumstances of His humanity, and still it remains true, as Dr. Robertson Smith has said that "there can be no question that Jesus Himself believed that God dealt with Israel in the way of special revelation, that the Old Testament contains within itself a perfect picture of His gracious relations to His people, and sets forth the whole growth of the true religion up to its perfect fulness." Dr. Robertson Smith added: "We cannot depart from this view without making Jesus an imperfect teacher and an imperfect Saviour." Did He who said, "No man knoweth the Father but the Son and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him," did He mistake His Father for another in the pages of the Old Testament? It is incredible, incredible upon any theory of the person of Christ that can be held by Christians.
"The Spirit of God maketh the reading, and especially the preaching, of the Word an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners," says the Shorter Catechism. Is it so certain that the preaching comes before the reading? Human words, when they are best, give the forms of what truth the speakers see, but the brightest forms have neither the lustre nor the grace of the forms of the Spirit. They are at best poor, dull, inharmonious echoes of the heavenly music, and it is through the Word of the Lord pre-eminently that the power of the Lord must spread from heart to heart.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
OLD TESTAMENT
The Expositor's Bible is unique. There have been innumerable commentaries, homiletical, didactic, exegetical, and critical; mostly dealing with the books text by text, or paragraph by paragraph. This series adopts a different method. It aims at bringing out the general teaching of each book, and of each of the divisions into which the book naturally falls. The reader is furnished with all the information necessary to enable him to understand the history, philosophy, and theology, the practical wisdom and devotional poetry of the Sacred Scriptures; but his mind is not bewildered by abstruse technicalities, and his attention is not distracted from the main issues by long discussions on minor details. This plan has, of course, been partially anticipated, there have been similar expositions of books or portions of books; such expositions have usually been sections of elaborate works; but in the Expositor's Bible we have for the first time a series exclusively devoted to such exposition, and embracing the whole Bible. The series illustrates the catholicity of scholarship; its contributors represent several Evangelical churches, and various schools of Biblical Criticism. There are Anglicans like the Bishop of Derry, Presbyterians like Prof. G. A. Smith, and English Free Churchmen like Dr. Maclaren.
"Of old time God spake unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners."1
In the Old Testament we have the record of this Revelation so far as the mind could grasp the Divine utterance and so far as words could describe the Heavenly Vision. Ever since the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, and for that matter even earlier, devout Jews and Christians have been busy with the interpretation of the Scriptures of the Old Covenant. Not only so, but also the inspired words of prophets and psalmists, sown in the good soil of believing hearts, have brought forth an abundant harvest of theological and devotional literature. The Old Testament and the literature of which it has been the occasion form an important portion of the Christian inheritance.
Each new generation needs to take stock afresh of this sacred legacy, so that it may obtain from ancient learning, study and inspiration the true message for its own times. The tares must be gathered out from the wheat, and the chaff separated from the grain. Truth, too, constantly
Hebrews, I. 1.
