Other impossibilities came forward: the insufficient dimensions of the ark to take in all the creatures; the unsuitability of the same climate to arctic and tropical animals for a full year; the impossibility of feeding them and avoiding pestilence; and especially, the total disagreement of the modern facts of the dispersion of animals, with the idea that they spread anew from Armenia as their centre. We have no right to call in a series of miracles to solve difficulties, of which the writer was unconscious. The ark itself was expressly devised to economize miracle, by making a fresh creation of animals needless.
Different in kind was the objection which I felt to the story, which is told twice concerning Abraham and once concerning Isaac, of passing off a wife as a sister. Allowing that such a thing was barely not impossible, the improbability was so intense, as to demand the strictest and most cogent proof: yet when we asked, Who testifies it? no proof appeared that it was Moses; or, supposing it to be he, what his sources of knowledge were. And this led to the far wider remark, that nowhere in the book of Genesis is there a line to indicate who is the writer, or a sentence to imply that the writer believes himself to write by special information from God. Indeed, it is well known that were are numerous small phrases which denote a later hand than that of Moses. The kings of Israel are once alluded to historically, Gen. xxxvi. 31.
Why then was anything improbable to be believed on the writer's word? as, for instance, the story of Babel and the confusion of tongues? One reply only seemed possible; namely, that we believe the Old Testament in obedience to the authority of the New: and this threw me again to consider the references to the Old Testament in the Christian Scriptures.
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But here, the difficulties soon became manifestly more and more formidable. In opening Matthew, we meet with quotations from the Old Testament applied in the most startling way. First is the prophecy about the child Immanuel; which in Isaiah no unbiassed interpreter would have dreamed could apply to Jesus. Next; the words of Hosea, "Out of Egypt have I called my son," which do but record the history of Israel, are imagined by Matthew to be prophetic of the return of Jesus from Egypt. This instance moved me much; because I thought, that if the text were "spiritualized," so as to make Israel mean Jesus, Egypt also ought to be spiritualized and mean the world, not retain its geographical sense, which seemed to be carnal and absurd in such a connection: for Egypt is no more to Messiah than Syria or Greece.—One of the most decisive testimonies to the Old Testament which the New contains, is in John x., 35, where I hardly knew how to allow myself to characterize the reasoning. The case stands thus. The 82nd Psalm rebukes unjust governors; and at length says to them: "I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most high: but ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes." In other words:—"though we are apt to think of rulers as if they were superhuman, yet they shall meet the lot of common men." Well: how is this applied in John?—Jesus has been accused of blasphemy, for saying that "He and his Father are one;" and in reply, he quotes the verse, "I have said, Ye are gods," as his sufficient justification for calling himself Son of God; for "the Scripture cannot be broken." I dreaded to precipitate myself into shocking unbelief, if I followed out the thoughts that this suggested; and (I know not how) for a long time yet put it off.
The quotations from the Old Testament in St. Paul had always been a mystery to me. The more I now examined them, the clearer it appeared that they were based on untenable Rabbinical principles. Nor are those in the Acts and in the Gospels any better. If we take free leave to canvass them, it may appear that not one quotation in ten is sensible and appropriate. And shall we then accept the decision of the New Testament writers as final, concerning the value and credibility of the Old Testament, when it is so manifest that they most imperfectly understood that book?
In fact the appeal to them proved too much. For Jude quotes the book of Enoch as an inspired prophecy, and yet, since Archbishop Laurence has translated it from the Ethiopian, we know that book to be a fable undeserving of regard, and undoubtedly not written by "Enoch, the seventh from Adam." Besides, it does not appear that any peculiar divine revelation taught them that the Old Testament is perfect truth. In point of fact, they only reproduce the ideas on that subject current in their age. So far as Paul deviates from the common Jewish view, it is in the direction of disparaging the Law as essentially imperfect. May it not seem that his remaining attachment to it was still exaggerated by old sentiment and patriotism?
I farther found that not only do the Evangelists give us no hint that they thought themselves divinely inspired, or that they had any other than human sources of knowledge, but Luke most explicitly shows the contrary. He opens by stating to Theophilus, that since many persons have committed to writing the things handed down from eye-witnesses, it seemed good to him also to do the same, since he had "accurately attended to every thing from its sources ([Greek: anothen])." He could not possibly have written thus, if he had been conscious of superhuman aids. How absurd then of us, to pretend that we know more than Luke knew of his own inspiration!
In truth, the arguments of theologians to prove the inspiration (i.e. infallibility) of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are sometimes almost ludicrous. My lamented friend, John Sterling, has thus summed up Dr. Henderson's arguments about Mark. "Mark was probably inspired, because he was an acquaintance of Peter; and because Dr. Henderson would be reviled by other Dissenters, if he doubted it."
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