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arise, unique in character, holy in life and purpose, so like and yet so unlike men, that they could not decide whether he was human or divine; and what now, also, if it were found that this very Mormon book was the only book that described and predicted this man: that all contradictions, stories, rites, and laws met in that good man in a harmony like that which exists only between cipher and key, so that his life made the book significant? This case is not supposable. A book so written could not anticipate a life so lived. And yet this is substantially what Kuenen has supposed. His theory, swathed with vast learning, demands the belief that the post-exilian "sopherim," to use the half contemptuous word of Rev. S. Baring-Gould,* palmed a fraud upon the Jews of their age-a fraud that turns out a few centuries later to be a marvelously exact pre-delineation of the Messiah, that a book whose source and substance are fraud, was fulfilled by a person whose every deed, and thought, and breath was holy. Now establish the relation between Moses and the Gospels, and the theories of the rationalistic, of the mythical, and of the critical schools fall-mole ruit sua-never to rise. That fraudulent priests should prove to be most famous prophets -this, man cannot be persuaded to believe. Indeed, the continuity between the first five books of the Bible and the four Gospels is already so apparent in so many points as to furnish a sufficient argument against the critical theory. The "charcoal sketch" in the Pentateuch is so exactly like the divine portrait in the Gospels, that candor readily admits that but one mind conceived both, and but one hand drew both.

But, secondly, the adequate unfolding of the relation between Moses and the Gospels has vast homiletic value. To establish that relation will give authority to the types

* "Some Modern Difficulties," page 106.

and symbols of the Pentateuch. The marrow, the very soul of the Gospel, is in them.

It is there as it is nowhere else. There is a vast deal there that is nowhere else. But these types are distrusted, and their authority questioned until their vital connection. with Christ is admitted, until it is seen that He is in them. and they in Him.

The disciples could make nothing of the parable: "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares"-the disciples could make nothing of any of this until He identified the terms of the parable: "He that sowed the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom," What authority could the parable have had until He set its bounds? It left us on a trackless ocean without star or compass. And so it is with the types, symbols, and ceremonies of Moses. Uncertainty allows them to grow effete, but when their vital and exact relation to the Gospel is discovered, they become authoritative and widely instructive.

etc.

It is hazarding little to say that there is vastly more Gospel in Moses than in the Gospels. The soul of the Gospel is divine atonement for sin. How little of atonement we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. How very, very much of it symbolically in Moses! Now, besides all else that our adorable Lord is, He is certainly the key to Moses. "I came to fulfill," He said.

He Himself directs us to Moses to learn of Himself. The key is the vital thing for admission to the treasurehouse, but it is not the house. The Gospels give admission to the Pentateuch, which is rich in Gospel stores.

There would have been no Gospel in the lily's spotless white, if Jesus had not pointed to it as the work of God. But now the flowers of the field bloom fragrant with

truth. We could have seen no Gospel, either in the falling or the feeding sparrow, if Jesus had not indicated it. And now all this lesson is there as it is nowhere else. We might never have dreamed that there is Gospel in the constitution of the family. But now every pulse of parental affection says-it cannot possibly be so said by any other voice-"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?" And now, just so when Christ is seen linked with these Old Testament symbols-a rejected Joseph, a curious tabernacle, a bleeding or a burning ox, a goat led into the wilderness, and all the rest of which there is so muchthey come to us in as authoritative lessons as the flowers of the field or the fowls of the heavens, and like them preach as no other voice can or does.

The irreverence and, perhaps, the aim of the higher criticism must be deprecated as it is at present behaving. But in the end, a devout exegesis will find itself greatly indebted to it. It was the enemy who taught Israel of old the glory and comfort of their own monotheistic, nonidolatrous code politically; and perhaps the enemy is again divinely intended to teach us the value of the documents of that same code theologically. And when that value is ascertained, and the relation between the old covenant and the new broadly established, the Pentateuch will no longer be called an effete book, nor will it be supposed to be so inferior to the Gospels. They are not related as new and old, not even as fountain and broad flowing stream, but rather as material and model. When the Israelite in the wilderness saw the accumulating piles of material that finally went into the erection of his tabernacle, what could he make of that unorganized mass? With both boards and curtains it was stuff for neither a house nor a tent. But to Moses, who had seen the pattern

in the mount, that pattern explained every curtain and board, every nail and rod, every loop and tach, while yet lying in a disorderly heap. The Gospels are to the law what that pattern was to the material intended to realize it. The Gospel becomes a complete temple of worship when it is erected with all the material furnished by the law.

*

III. The Gospels and the Law are related by means of direct quotation and reference. According to Turpie there are just one hundred quotations in the Gospels from the Old Testament, thirty-eight of which, or twelve less than one-half, are from the Pentateuch. The greater number of these are made, or commented on, by Jesus himself. Besides these quotations there are about forty allusions or references, more or less direct, in the Gospels to the Pentateuch-about forty, if the list in Davidson's "Hermeneutics" was correctly counted. These quotations have provoked much study, and have given rise to more than one learned volume, the latest of which is by Crawford Howell Toy, professor in Harvard University.

The discussion of this particular relation between the New Testament and the Old brings us again face to face with Jesus.

What is His authority as an interpreter of the Pentatench? Or, if we are to meet the Neologians, what is His ability in interpretation? Some would hesitate to bring Jesus into this controversy at all.

Dr. George T. Ladd, of Yale College, in his recently published work, warns against what he calls "the peril ous venture of committing the honesty and competency of Christ to every detail of the contents" of the Old Testament. It is a greater peril to refuse to call the most

+ Page 510.

*The New Testament View of the Old."
"The Doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures," page 34.

competent witness. Any honest reader of the Gospels must admit that He did in some sense indorse Moses.

There is a peril, however, and it is a great one, in committing Him to our view, of the teaching of either Testament. It lurks in a lazy assumption that He has done for us what evidently He intended we should do for ourselves by earnest study and the cultivation of a devout spiritual insight. He came, not to interpret in detail, or at all. All that He did do in this field is purely incidental. He came to fulfill the Old Testament Scriptures. It is ours to interpret and to show the profound meaning and measure of that fulfillment. But how is that to be done without bringing Him into this question? And whatever may be thought of the inexpediency of committing Jesus on this point, we have no choice left. He comes in necessarily. He was long ago brought in. Loyalty to Him will not call it inexpedient to defend IIim when assailed.

Either to avoid or to preserve the divine authority, but more likely because Jesus' words crossed his views, John Solomon Semler, professor in Halle, gave currency more than a century ago (he died in 1797) to the so-called "Accommodation Theory." Although the theory is generally assigned to Semler, he did not invent it. "It was a favorite," says Alexander, of the followers of Des Cartes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its complexion would suggest an origin still nearer the dark ages.

This "impious theory" long ago brought Jesus face to face with this question. It is not a "favorite," however, of living Neologians, as may be seen in Professor Toy's book, who nevertheless is confronted by Jesus and seeks

*See W. L. Alexander's "Connection and Harmony of the Old and New Testaments," page 148; and Davidson's "Hermeneutics," page 694.

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