Biblical Revision, its duties and conditions / A sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral at the special evening service, on Sunday, March 13, 1870

Transcribed from the 1870 Strahan & Co. edition by David Price.
A SERMON PREACHED IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL AT THE SPECIAL EVENING SERVICE, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 1870
By HENRY ALFORD, D.D. DEAN OF CANTERBURY.
STRAHAN & CO., PUBLISHERS 56, LUDGATE HILL 1870

“Every scribe that is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”—Matt. xiii. 52.
The Scribes were the guardians of the law, and its readers and expounders to the people. It is related of Ezra, that he was “a ready scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given: he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” But in exercising this guardianship the Scribes were only representing the Church of which they were members. They were a class of persons told off for especial attention to this duty, which in fact belonged to the whole community. To the Jews as a people, the Apostle tells us, were committed the oracles of God: and the Church in all times is the witness and keeper of Holy Writ, as of a sacred deposit committed to her. The character assigned in the text to the Scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, belongs, in all its particulars, to her, who both is the sum, and constitutes the ideal, of all such guardians and expounders.
With these few preliminary remarks, we may apply our Lord’s words immediately to ourselves. The Christian Church throughout the world is now the guardian of the Holy Scriptures. All that the Jews had, we have, with the inestimably precious addition of the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ. These Scriptures all Christians regard as the revelation of God to man. Other works rise and are built up from below: this alone we receive as let down upon us from above. All art, all science, all theology, which is but a system built up by inferences from Scripture, these are of man, and constructed on earth. They may rise higher, and become truer, as one race is advanced in skill or in knowledge; but they began below, and will ever carry with them the infirmity of all that is born on earth. Whereas the sayings and the lessons of this book are not of man, nor did they take their beginnings here. They have come to us indeed through human words, and by means of human action; but they did not arise originally in the breasts of men; they came from Him who is Himself the first spring of morals and the highest fountain of truth. Between philosophy reared up from below, and the facts, and rules, and motives, which they disclose, there is always a gap which our reason cannot bridge over. God’s sovereignty, man’s free will—God’s creative agency, man’s inductions of science—God’s interference with physical order, man’s establishment of physical law—one member of each of these pairs will ever remain discontinuous from, and in the estimate of human reason irreconcileable with, the other. And because this Book is unlike all other books, because its voice comes to us from another place, and is heard in deeper and more secret chambers of our being than all other voices, because its sayings have for our humanity a searching and conserving and healing power which none other possess, therefore it is that to keep these Holy Scriptures in all their integrity as delivered down to her is the solemn trust of the Church throughout the world: a trust simple, direct, indefeasible.