Here then is a quotation from the xxxth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy,—a quotation introduced in the way of argument, in support of a proposition: the remarkable circumstance being, that St. Paul adduces the words of Moses with extraordinary license. For first, he omits as many of the Prophet's words as make little for his purpose, while he introduces a very remarkable alteration in some of the words which he retains: amounting to a substitution of one sentence for another. And next, there is one single word, which he expands into an important phrase; and that merely to suit his own argument. But the strangest thing of all is the interpretation which he delivers of words, which as we have just seen, are partly his own,—partly, the words of Moses: by which interpretation, the most strikingly Christian character is fastened upon sayings pronounced by the ancient Lawgiver in the land of Moab, to the Jewish people.—We do further, for our own part, most freely admit, that the place,—as it stands in the Old Testament,—neither at first, nor at second sight, seems to have any such meaning as the Apostle assigns to it. I will remind you of the words in Deuteronomy, by reading the entire passage:—"This commandment which I command thee this day, ... is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in Heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to Heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." ... Now, I say, one of ourselves might read this passage in the Book of Deuteronomy over a hundred times, and never suspect that Moses, when he so wrote, was writing concerning faith in Christ: and yet we have the sure testimony of the Holy Spirit to the fact that he was.—The inquiry, "Who shall ascend into Heaven?", signifies, we are told, "Who shall ascend,—to bring down Christ from above?"—And just so, the other clause, "Who shall descend into the deep?", is declared to be an incomplete expression: the full phrase being,—"Who shall descend,—to bring up Christ[538] from the dead." ... Now we never desire to see a non-natural sense fastened on the Inspired Word. With Hooker, we "hold it for a most infallible rule in expositions of sacred Scripture, that, where a literal construction will stand, the furthest from the letter is commonly the worst." We contend therefore that whereas we have here the explicit assurance that Moses wrote of none other than Christ,—though his words do not bear upon them any evidence of the fact,—it is a mere trifling with holy things, to call the fact in question.
Here, however, we shall be reminded that the great Apostle,—though professing to quote,—confessedly argues in part from his own language, which is not the language of Moses. Moses says,—"Who shall go over the sea for us?" (τίς διαπεράσει ἡμῖν εἰς τὸ πέραν τῆς θάλασσης;) And since the version of the LXX is what the Author of the Epistle to the Romans follows in this place, it is reasonable to expect that he would adhere to that version, or at least to the sense of that version, in the exhibition of so important a clause as the present. Whereas, instead of "Who shall go over the sea," we find St. Paul writing,—"Who shall go down into the deep?" (Τίς καταβήσεται εἰς τὴν ἄβυσσον;)—language evidently highly suggestive of the mysterious transaction to which the same St. Paul says it contains a reference[539]; but certainly not the language of Moses. And we shall be reminded that this is not merely phraseology rescued from vagueness, and made definite; but it is the actual substitution of one thought for another. This is what will be said; and if it be followed up by the assertion that here, therefore, we have a clear example of Scriptural Accommodation, it might seem, at first sight, impossible to deny the fact.
For our own parts, we are inclined to meet the present difficulty, and every similar one, in quite another spirit; and dispose of the objection, somewhat in the following way. The same God who gave us the Scriptures of the Old Testament, gave us the New Testament also. The Bible is one. He who inspired the Law, inspired the Gospel. The Holy Ghost pleads with us in both alike.—Surely, therefore, He who spake of old time by the Prophets, may be allowed, when, in the last days, He speaks by the Apostles of Christ,—to explain His earlier meaning, if He will. Surely, He may tell the Israel of God,—if He pleases,—what He meant by the language He held of old time to Israel after the flesh! Yea, and if it seemeth good to Him to call in the wealth of His ancient treasury, in order to recoin it that He may the more enrich us thereby:—if it pleases Him to take His ancient speeches back again into His mouth, in order that He may syllable them anew,—making them sweeter than honey to our lips, yea, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb;—what is Man that he should reply against God? What should be our posture, at witnessing such a spectacle, but one of Adoration? What, our becoming language, but praise?
It is easy to anticipate the answer that will be made to all this. We shall be told that we are, in some sort, begging the question. The Bible is an Inspired Book, indeed: but what is Inspiration?—Moses wrote the Book called "Deuteronomy:" St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans. And St. Paul,—quoting a passage out of the older record,—has substituted a sentiment of his own for a sentiment contained in the writings of Moses. He does the same thing in other places; and elsewhere, as here, he proceeds to reason upon the data he has so obtained. This, it will be said, is the phenomenon which we have to deal with.
But, we reply, it is manifest that he who so argues,—with all his apparent good sense, and fairness,—is entirely committed to a theory concerning Inspiration; and that a very unworthy one. The Bible comes to us as an Inspired Book; claiming to be the very Word of God. The Holy Church throughout all the World, doth acknowledge it to be so. Surely, therefore, it is for us to study its contents by the light of this previous fact.—But quite contrary is the method of our opponents. They treat the Bible as if it were an ordinary Book. They submit its contents to the same irreverent handling as they would the productions of a merely human intellect. They not only reason about its claims from its contents,—but they would even pronounce upon its claims, from the same evidence. They dare to sit in judgment upon it. Hence their lax notions on the subject of Inspiration. They first run riot among statements which are too hard for them; and when they have perplexed themselves with these, till the field is strewed with doubts, and the limits of unbelief and mistrust have become extended on every side,—Inspiration, like an ill-defined boundary-line on a map, is suffered faintly to hem in, and enclose the utmost verge of the unhappy domain.—Whereas, we maintain that a belief in the Bible, as an Inspired Book, should, at the outset, prescribe a limit to human speculations.
Let this belief encircle us exactly, and entirely; and define, at once, the area within which all our reasonings must be taught to marshal themselves, and to find their full development. In brief, our opponents meet our remonstrance by another; but, as we contend, an unreasonable one;—at least, as proceeding from men who, no less than ourselves, allow freely the Inspiration of Scripture. We say,—The Bible is the word of God. Fill your heart with this conviction, and then humbly address yourself to the study of its pages.—It is argued on the other side,—The pages of the Bible are full of perplexing statements. They evolve strange phenomena, interminably. Convince yourself of this; and then make up your mind, if you can, about the Inspiration of the Bible[540].... I shall have occasion, by and by, to explain more in detail the spirit in which the Divine Logic,—Inspired reasoning as it may be called,—is to be approached. For the moment, I am content to waive the question; and to be St. Paul's apologist, almost as if I had met with his words in an uninspired book.
Solemnly protesting, then, that the ground we have just occupied is the only true ground on which to take our stand; but withdrawing from it because we do not fear the appeal to unassisted Reason, even in matters of Faith,—so that the proper limits and conditions of inquiry be but observed;—we proceed to inquire whether,—apart from Revelation,—there be not good ground for believing that the words of the ancient Hebrew Lawgiver and Prophet contain and mean the very thing which the Christian Apostle says they do.—We change our language at this stage of the inquiry. We no longer assert, (as before we did,) that the Holy Ghost speaking by the mouth of Moses, must have meant, what the same Holy Ghost, speaking by the mouth of St. Paul, declares that He did mean. We are willing to study the sacred text solely by the light which grave criticism and patient learning have thrown upon it.—Our inquiry now, is this;—Although the words in Deuteronomy, read over attentively by ourselves, suggest no such Christian meaning as we find affixed to them in the Epistle to the Romans,—is there no reason, traditional or otherwise, for supposing that they do envelope that meaning; yea, so teem and swell with it, that the germ of the flower may be actually detected in the yet unopened bud?... I proceed to this inquiry.
1. And first, it is obvious, to any one reading the xxixth and xxxth chapters of the last Book of Moses, that they contain another Covenant, beside that of Horeb. This is expressly stated in the first verse of the xxixth chapter:—"These are the words of the Covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the Covenant which He made with them in Horeb[541]." Not to stand too stiffly thereupon, however[542], let it be at least freely allowed that even if we choose to regard this chapter and the next as a renewal only of the Covenant made in Horeb, it is a distinct renewal;—both in respect of time and of place. Of time,—for whereas the Covenant of Sinai belongs to the first of the forty years of wandering, the Covenant of Moab belongs to the last. Of place,—for whereas the other was made at the furthest limit of the people's wanderings, this belongs to their nearest approach to Canaan.—And I confidently ask, After such an announcement, and at a moment like that,—the forty years of typical wandering ended, and the earthly type of the heavenly inheritance full in view, Jordan alone intercepting the vision of their Rest;—shall we wonder, if here and there a ray of coming glory shall be found to flash through the language of the dying patriarch? if some traces shall be discernible, even in the language of Moses, of the dayspring of the Gospel of Christ?
2. We find that it contains not a few sayings in support of such a presumption. The 10th verse opens the covenant, and in the following solemn language:—"Ye stand, this day, all of you, before the Lord your God: the Captains of your tribes, your Elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel;—your little ones, your wives, and the stranger that is in thy camp,—from the hewer of thy wood, to the drawer of thy water." And what was the intention of this solemn standing before the Lord? Even—"that thou shouldest enter into Covenant with the Lord thy God, and enter into His oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day."—The purport of the Covenant thus to be made, was, that God might establish Israel that day for a people unto Himself, and that He might be unto them a God,—(an expression elsewhere appropriated by the Great Apostle to the Christian Church[543],)—as He had ... sworn unto their fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. So that we have here the renewal of the Evangelical Covenant made with Abraham, and renewed to Isaac and Jacob,—which is clearly distinguished in Scripture from the Legal Covenant, made with their children 430 years after; and which is declared ineffectual to disannul the earlier one, confirmed before by God, and pointing entirely to Christ[544]. That earlier Evangelical Covenant then, it was, which was renewed in the land of Moab;—in the course of renewing which, the words of the text occur.
3. And that it was indeed the Evangelical, (not the Legal Covenant,) which is here spoken of, is abundantly confirmed by the subsequent language of the passage: for Moses proceeds,—"Neither with you only do I make this Covenant and this oath; but with him that standeth here this day with us before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day[545]:" meaning, (as the ancient Targum expounds the place,) "with every generation that shall rise up unto the world's end." It was the same Covenant, therefore, which is made with ourselves; "for the promise is unto" us, and to our "children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call[546]:" "not according to the Covenant which God made with the Fathers of Israel in the day that He took them by the hand to bring them out of the Land of Egypt[547]."