-we find still shrinking from the danger of human disapproval;—we see John still exhibiting the same union of deep love and burning zeal;— them pursuing different paths of teaching, exhibiting different styles of writing, taking hold of the truth from different sides. 6. Again, we do not find the Apostles put in possession at once of the divine counsel with regard to the Church. Though Peter and John were full of the Holy Ghost immediately after the Ascension, neither at that time, nor for many years afterwards, were they put in possession of the purpose of God regarding the Gentiles, which in due time was specially revealed to Peter, and recognized in the apostolic council at Jerusalem. 7. These considerations serve to shew us in what respects the working of the Holy Spirit on the sacred writers was analogous to His influence on every believer in Christ; viz. in the retention of individual character and thought and feeling,—and in the gradual development of the ways and purposes of God to their minds. 8. But their situation and office was peculiar and unexampled. And for its fulfilment, peculiar and unexampled gifts were bestowed upon them. One of these, which bears very closely upon our present subject, was, the recalling by the Holy Spirit of those things which the Lord had said to them. This was His own formal promise, recorded in John xiv. 26. And if we look at our present Gospels, we see abundant evidence of its fulfilment. What unassisted human memory could treasure up saying and parable, however deep the impression at the time, and report them in full at the distance of several years, as we find them reported, with every internal mark of truthfulness, in our Gospels? What invention of man could have devised discourses which by common consent differ from all sayings of men-which possess this character unaltered notwithstanding their transmission through men of various mental organization-which contain things impossible to be understood or appreciated by their reporters at the time when they profess to have been uttered-which enwrap the seeds of all human improvement yet attained, and are evidently full of power for more? I refer to this latter alternative only to remark, that all considerations, whether of the Apostles' external circumstances, or their internal feelings respecting Him of whom they bore witness, combine to confirm the persuasion of Christians, that they have recorded as said by our Lord what He truly did say, and not any words of their own imagination. 9. And let us pursue the matter further by analogy. Can we suppose that the light poured by the Holy Spirit upon the sayings of our Lord would be confined to such sayings, and not extend itself over the other parts of the narrative of His life on earth? Can we believe that those miracles, which though not uttered in words, were yet acted parables, would not be, under the same gracious assistance, brought back to the minds of the Apostles, so that they should be placed on record for the teaching of the Church? 10. And, going yet further, to those parts of the Gospels which were wholly out of the cycle of the Apostles' own testimony,-can we imagine that the divine discrimination which enabled them to detect the 'lie to the Holy Ghost,' should have forsaken them in judging of the records of our Lord's birth and infancy,—so that they should have taught or sanctioned an apocryphal, fabulous, or mythical account of such matters? Some account of them must have been current in the apostolic circle; for Mary the mother of Jesus survived the Ascension, and would be fully capable of giving undoubted testimony to the facts. (See notes on Luke i. ii.) Can we conceive then that, with her among them, the Apostles should have delivered other than a true history of these things? Can we suppose that St. Luke's account, which he includes among the things delivered by those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word from the first, is other than the true one, and stamped with the authority of the witnessing and discriminating Spirit dwelling in the Apostles? Can we suppose that the account in the still more immediately apostolic Gospel of St. Matthew is other than the same history seen from a different side and independently narrated? 11. But if it be enquired, how far such divine superintendence has extended in the framing of our Gospels as we at present find them, the answer must be furnished by no preconceived idea of what ought to have been, but by the contents of the Gospels themselves. That those contents are various, and variously arranged, is token enough, that in their selection and disposition we have human agency presented to us, under no more direct divine guidance, in this respect, than that general leading, which in main and essential points should ensure entire accordance. Such leading admits of much variety in points of minor consequence. Two men may be equally led by the Holy Spirit to record the events of our Lord's life for our edification, though one may believe and record, that the visit to the Gadarenes took place before the calling of Matthew, while the other places it after that event; though one in narrating it speaks of two dæmoniacs, the other, only of one. 12. And it is observable, that in the only place in the Three Gospels where an Evangelist speaks of himself, he expressly lays claim, not to any supernatural guidance in the arrangement of his subject-matter, but to a diligent tracing down of all things from the first; in other words, to the care and accuracy of a faithful and honest compiler. After such an avowal on the part of the editor himself, to assert an immediate revelation to him of the arrangement to be adopted and the chronological notices to be given, is clearly not justified, according to his own shewing and assertion. The value of such arrangement and chronological connexion must depend on various circumstances in each case:-on their definiteness and consistency,-on their agreement or disagreement with the other extant records; the preference being in each case given to that one whose account is the most minute in details, and whose notes of sequence are the most distinct. 13. In thus speaking, I am doing no more than even the most scrupulous of our Harmonizers have in fact done. In the case alluded to in paragraph 11, there is not one of them who has not altered the arrangement, either of Matthew, or of Mark, and Luke, so as to bring the visit to the Gadarenes into the same part of the Evangelic History. But, if the arrangement itself were matter of divine inspiration, then have we no right to vary it in the slightest degree, but must maintain (as the Harmonists have done in other cases, but never, that I am aware, in this) two distinct visits to have been made at different times, and nearly the same events to have occurred at both. I need hardly add that a similar method of proceeding with all the variations in the Gospels, which would on this supposition be necessary, would render the Scripture narrative a heap of improbabilities; and strengthen, instead of weakening, the cause of the enemies of our faith. 14. And not only of the arrangement of the Evangelic History are these remarks to be understood. There are certain minor points of accuracy or inaccuracy, of which human research suffices to inform men, and on which, from want of that research, it is often the practice to speak vaguely and inexactly. Such are sometimes the conventionally received distances from place to place; such are the common accounts of phænomena in natural history, &c. Now in matters of this kind, the Evangelists and Apostles were not supernaturally informed, but left, in common with others, to the guidance of their natural faculties. 15. The same may be said of citations and dates from history. In the last apology of Stephen, which he spoke being full of the Holy Ghost, and with divine influence beaming from his countenance, we have at least two demonstrable inaccuracies in points of minor detail. And the occurrence of similar ones in the Gospels would not in any way affect the inspiration or the veracity of the Evangelists. 16. It may be well to mention one notable illustration of the principles upheld in this section. What can be more undoubted and unanimous than the testimony of the Evangelists to THE RESURRECTION OF 5 To suppose St. Luke to have written "It seemed good to me also," if he were under the conscious inspiration of the Holy Spirit, superseding all his own mental powers and faculties, would be to charge him with ascribing to his own diligence and selection that which was furnished to him independently of both. Yet to this are the asserters of verbal inspiration committed. THE LORD? If there be one fact rather than another of which the Apostles were witnesses, it was this: and in the concurrent narrative of all four Evangelists it stands related beyond all cavil or question. Yet of all the events which they have described, none is so variously put forth in detail, or with so many minor discrepancies. And this was just what might have been expected, on the principles above laid down. The great fact that the Lord was risen,-set forth by the ocular witness of the Apostles, who had seen Him,--became from that day first in importance in the delivery of their testimony. The precise order of His appearances would naturally, from the overwhelming nature of their present emotions, be a matter of minor consequence, and perhaps not even of accurate enquiry till some time had passed. Then, with the utmost desire on the part of the women and Apostles to collect the events in their exact order of time, some confusion would be apparent in the history, and some discrepancies in versions of it which were the results of separate and independent enquiries; the traces of which pervade our present accounts. But what fair-judging student of the Gospels ever made these variations or discrepancies a ground for doubting the veracity of the Evangelists as to the fact of the Resurrection, or the principal details of the Lord's appearances after it? 17. It will be well to state the bearing of the opinions advanced in this section on two terms in common use, viz. verbal and plenary inspiration. 18. With regard to verbal inspiration, I take the sense of it, as explained by its most strenuous advocates, to be, that every word and phrase of the Scriptures is absolutely and separately true,—and, whether narrative, or discourse, took place, or was said, in every most exact particular as set down. Much might be said of the à priori unworthiness of such a theory, as applied to a Gospel whose character is the freedom of the Spirit, not the bondage of the letter: but it belongs more to my present work to try it by applying it to the Gospels as we have them. And I do not hesitate to say, that being thus applied, its effect will be to destroy altogether the credibility of our Evangelists. Hardly a single instance of parallelism between them arises, where they do not relate. the same thing indeed in substance, but expressed in terms which if literally taken are incompatible with each other. To cite only one obvious instance. The Title over the Cross was written in Greek, and, being reported in Greek by the Evangelists, must represent not the Latin or Hebrew forms, but the Greek form, of the inscription. According then to the verbal-inspiration theory, each Evangelist has recorded the exact words of the inscription; not the general sense, but the inscription itself, not a letter less or more. This is absolutely necessary to the theory. Its advocates must not be allowed, with convenient inconsis tency, to take refuge in a common-sense view of the matter wherever Matthew, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. Luke, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. John, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. Of course it must be understood, that I regard the above variations in the form of the inscription as in fact no discrepancies at all. They entirely prevent our saying with perfect precision what was the form of the inscription: but they leave us the spirit and substance of it. In all such cases I hold with the great Augustine, whose words I have cited in my note on Matt. xiv., when treating of the varying reports of the words spoken by the Apostles to our Lord during the storm on the lake of Galilee, and cannot forbear citing here again : "THE SENSE OF THE DISCIPLES WAKING THE LORD AND SEEKING TO BE SAVED, IS ONE AND THE SAME: NOR IS IT WORTH WHILE TO ENQUIRE, WHICH OF THESE THREE WAS REALLY SAID TO CHRIST. FOR WHETHER THEY SAID ANY ONE OF THESE THREE, OR OTHER WORDS, WHICH NO ONE OF THE EVANGELISTS HAS MENTIONED, BUT OF SIMILAR IMPORT AS TO THE TRUTH OF THE SENSE, WHAT MATTERS IT?" 19. Another objection to the theory is, that if it be so, the Christian world is left in uncertainty what her Scriptures are, as long as the sacred text is full of various readings. Some one manuscript must be pointed out to us, which carries the weight of verbal inspiration, or some text whose authority shall be undoubted, must be promulgated. But manifestly neither of these things can ever happen. To the latest age, the reading of some important passages will be matter of doubt in the Church and, which is equally subversive of the theory, though not of equal importance in itself, there is hardly a sentence in the whole of the Gospels in which there are not varieties of diction in our principal MSS., baffling all attempts to decide which was its original form. 20. The fact is, that this theory uniformly gives way before intelligent study of the Scriptures themselves; and is only held, consistently and thoroughly, by those who have never undertaken that study. When put forth by those who have, it is never carried fairly through; but while broadly asserted, is in detail abandoned. This has been done, as far as I have seen, in all remarks of verbal-inspirationists on this part of my Introduction to the Greek Testament. A most curious idea has been propounded on the example above given, viz. that by forcing into accord the words of the title in Mark and Luke, and believing it to represent a translation from the Latin inscription, we may suppose those in Matthew and John to have been, the one the original Greek, the other a translation from the Hebrew (!). 3 |