[117] Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, passim.
[118] Decline and Fall, chap. lxiv.
[119] Macfarlane's Seven Apocalyptic Churches.
CHAPTER IX.
Moses And The Prophets.
In the foregoing chapters we have found, that we have great need of God's teaching; that he has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to show us the way of life; that the gospel preached by him and his apostles has proved itself the power of God, by saving men from their sins; and that this gospel is truly recorded in the New Testament. From these facts, already settled, we proceed, according to our plan of investigation, to examine those which may be more obscure; to examine the Old Testament by the light of the New.
The great majority of Jews and Christians have always believed, that the world was in as great need of God's teaching before the coming of Christ as it has been since; that God did put his words into the mouths of certain persons, called prophets; and that he caused them to tell them truly to their neighbors; that he enabled these prophets to make predictions of future events beyond the skill of man to calculate, and to do miracles which the power of man could not perform, as proofs that they spake the Word of God; that he caused them truly to record in writing a great many of these revelations, and so much of the history of the times in which, and of the people to whom, they were given, as was needful for a right understanding of them; that he has so managed matters since, as that these revelations and narratives have been faithfully preserved in the books of the Old Testament; that we are bound to believe these revelations to be true, not because we can otherwise demonstrate their truth, but because God, who can not lie, has declared it; and that we are bound to do the things they command, not merely because we see them to be right, but because God commands us.
It is needful to consider the divine authority of the Old Testament distinctly from that of the New, not only because it is a distinct subject in itself, and because our plan of investigation leads us backward from the known and established fact of the divine authority of the New Testament to the discovery or disproof of the like character in the Old; but because a great many persons admit, in words at least, that Christ was a teacher sent from God, who, either in so many words, or in effect, deny the divine authority of the Old Testament. Some of the modern Rationalists have revived the creed of the Gnostics of the first century—that the Hebrew Jehovah was a being of very different character from the Deity revealed by Jesus Christ. They will extol to the skies the world-wide benevolence, compassion and kindness of the gospel of Christ, in contrast with the alleged national pride, bigotry, and exclusiveness of the Hebrew prophets. Others are desirous of appearing remarkably candid in bestowing on the Old Testament a liberal commendation as a collection of religious tracts of merely human origin, and of various degrees of merit; some of them of extraordinary literary excellence, well suited to the infancy of the human intellect, and highly useful in their time in raising men from fetichism and idolatry to the worship of one God; but which, containing many errors along with this grand truth, have been set aside by the more perfect teachings of Christ and his apostles, much in the same way as the old Ptolemaic astronomy was displaced by the discoveries of Newton. Others still are willing to acknowledge the Old Testament as inspired, provided we will allow Shakespeare and the Koran to be inspired also. Besides all these, there are several scores of scholars anxious to conceal its nakedness under theories of inspiration made and trimmed in a great many styles, but all cut from the same doctrine, to wit, that God revealed his truth aright to Moses and the prophets, but they went wrong in the telling of it. Now, all these notions are refuted by the fact, that God is the Author of the Bible.