CHAPTER III.

THE BIBLE GOD'S REVELATION PROVED BY

HISTORY.

OW we contend that the Bible, and the Bible

only, contains a true revelation of God to man, or rather, we should say, the Bible contains a true record of all the revelations that God has made to man, ending with the crown and flower of them all-the Christian religion. Before we proceed to consider the fitness of God's revelation contained in the Bible, we will pursue the historical argument a little further to show that those nations alone which have received the Bible have developed a pure and Christian civilization. And first let us take the Jews. That nation was chosen by God to be the depositary of the earlier or Mosiac revelation, and at a time when the earth was overspread by idolatry, was selected to be a witness to the oneness of God. Do we find then such a moral

superiority in the Jewish race over the contemporary Gentiles as to afford witness of the greater light they received? We unhesitatingly reply in the affirmative. We find all through the history of the Jews, from Abraham to Christ, a succession of holy men of God who bore testimony to one Supreme and Holy Being, whose will was the law of their lives, and whom they obeyed at the sacrifice of all that men count dear. No efforts of sceptical criticism can dispose of the fact that such men existed; it is childish to suppose that men like Abraham, Moses, and Elijah, were the creation of fancy, like the legendary prophets of heathendom. There is about their lives, as recorded in the Bible, such a perfect naturalness and consistency as utterly rebuts the idea of their being figments of human imagination. Their sins and shortcomings are narrated with the same simplicity as their virtues; there is never the least attempt to gloss over the failings of Old Testament Saints; there is no attempt to palliate sin, there is no attempt to bring down the claims of the Eternal to the level of feeble humanity. God is ever represented as claiming absolute homage, and man as

being favoured in proportion as he yields it. The biographies of Old Testament Saints present a marvellous contrast to the spurious hero-worship of man. Compare the Greek legends of Hercules with the story of Abraham, or the Roman myths about Romulus with the inspired account of Moses, and the stamp of God's truth is seen in forcible contrast to man's invention. Even if it could be proved— which we do not admit that much historical inaccuracy is incorporated in the Old Testament, it is impossible to deny that a long succession of holy men of God flourished before the coming of Christ, and no other contemporary nation showed anything like it. True, it may be said that the Jewish nation broke out again and again into idolatry, that it imitated the worst vices of surrounding nations, and was almost chronically in a state of rebellion against God, and some may urge that on this account it was none the better of God's revelation. We deny the force of this. The Jews when they sinned did so against a clear revelation of duty, and were often brought back in deep contrition to seek the face of the Most High. They never shut their ears entirely to the voice of

God's prophets, and even when an Ahab was on the throne, there were still seven thousand men who had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. We find periods of great national mourning for sin, as in the days of Nehemiah, and we look in vain in all the heathen world for anything analogous to this. When the Gentile nations thought that they had offended some deity, they hastened to appease him by some foul and bloody sacrifice, as Agamemnon, for instance, offered up his daughter Iphigenia to propitiate the winds which delayed the Grecian fleet; but the Jews alone testified that repentance towards God meant a moral reformation. Jewish history indeed presents a continued struggle between the unbending claims of Divine holiness and the stubborn self-seeking heart of man, and reflects, as in a mirror, the eternal conflict that goes on in each struggling soul of man, and is replete with lessons, sometimes allegorical, sometimes typical, often plain and literal, which will never cease to educate even the Christian conscience in some of the deepest concerns of our spiritual nature.

But we readily admit that the Old Testament

dispensation was in some respects a failure. Looking at it from the human standpoint, and judging it by its effect on the nation, it did not succeed in securing a general allegiance to the Most High. An undertone of sadness runs through the whole history of the Jews; in that unique example the Old Testament affords of the history of a nation narrated with exclusive reference to its relation to God, the prevailing note is one of complaint, that the favoured race were so stiffnecked as to bring on themselves repeated chastisement, and towards the close of the volume the darkness deepens, and the nation that rejects God is at last cast off by Him. The Jewish dispensation was a preparation for a higher one, "the law was our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ," and when the only begotten Son was ushered into the world the song of angels was "Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace and good will to men." The era of types and ordinances had passed, and the full flood of Gospel light had dawned on mankind.

What evidence does the history of Christendom. afford to the strength and purity of this new