But yet this historical and internal evidence of the authority of the Old Testament is but the smallest part of that which we possess, who have the testimony of Christ on this subject. For this testimony removes the question from the mists of antiquity, and even from the debatable ground of historic certainty, and resolves the whole process of searching for, and comparing and examining a host of second-hand witnesses, into the easy and certain one of hearing the Author himself say, whether he acknowledges this Book to be his or not. Christians receive the Old Testament as the Word of God, because Jesus says so.
Now, reader, it is of the utmost importance that you should stop just here, and give a plain, confident answer to these questions: Dost thou believe upon the Son of God? Is Jesus the Messiah of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write? Are you perfectly satisfied of the truth of the New Testament, and willing to venture your eternal salvation upon the words of Christ contained in it?
For, if not, of what use is it for you to trouble yourself about the Old Testament? You might as well waste your time in examining the genuineness of the bills of a broken bank; they may be genuine or they may be forgeries; but who cares? They will never be paid. If the first promises of the bank of heaven, to send the Messiah eighteen hundred years ago, have been fulfilled, its other paper may be also valuable; if not, it must be equally worthless. If the New Testament be not of divine authority, you may place the prophets on the same shelf with the Poems of Ossian; and then follows the serious consequence, that there is not a grain of hope left for you or for any man on earth. If Jesus be indeed an Almighty Savior, and if he has indeed risen from the dead, then, through the power of his mighty love, your filthy soul may be washed from its sins, and your mortal body may be raised from the rottenness of the grave. But if Christ be not risen, you are yet in your sins. You have no notion that any of the gods of the heathen, or the precepts of the Koran, can purify your heart. You know well that Infidelity never sanctified any of your comrades. Conscience tells you that you are not any better now than you were a year ago, but worse. You are yet in your sins; and in them you must live and die! Aye, while your immortal soul lives, while the laws of human nature continue, you must carry those brands of infamy on your character, and daily progress from bad to worse; sinking deeper and deeper in the contempt of all intelligent beings; and, were there no other avenger, in the remorse and despair of your own mind, you must experience the horrors of perdition. Jesus, able to save to the uttermost, all that come unto God by him, is your only hope. There is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved. If his gospel be true, you may be saved; if it is false, you must be damned.
If you have the shadow of a doubt of the truth of the New Testament, go over the subject again; re-read the former chapters of this book; pray to God for light and truth; above all, read the Book again and again; and if, in your case, as in that of one of the most famous teachers of German Neology—De Wette—the careful study of the New Testament impels you to rush through all the mists of doubt to the higher standpoint of a lofty faith, and the sunshine of real religion; and if with him you can now say, "Only this one thing I know, that in no other name is there salvation than in the name of Jesus Christ the crucified, and that for humanity there is nothing higher than the incarnation of Deity set before us in him, and the kingdom of God established by him,"[154] you may then go on with your inquiry into the divine authority of the Old Testament. With the Master himself before you, the Author, the Inspirer, by whom, and for whom, the prophets spake, and to whom all the Scriptures point, you will not think of wasting time in examining second-hand evidence; but go direct to Jesus himself. His testimony will not be merely so much additional testimony—another candle added to the chandelier by whose light you have perused the evidences of the Scriptures; it will shine out on your soul as the light of the Sun of Righteousness with healing on his wings. Every word from his lips will awaken in your heart the voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son. Hear him." What saith Christ, then, respecting the Old Testament?
The moment you open the New Testament to make this inquiry, you are met by a reference to the Old. "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham," is its formal title; and the most cursory perusal tells you that you have taken up, not a separate and independent work, which you can profitably peruse and understand without much reference to some foregoing volumes—as one might read Abbott's Life of Napoleon without needing at the same time to study the History of the Crusades—but that you have taken up a continuation of some former work—the last volume in fact of the Old Testament—and that you can not understand even the first chapter without a careful reading of the foregoing volumes. Before you have finished the first chapter you meet with the most unequivocal assertion of the harmony of the gospels and the prophecies, and of the divine authority of both—"Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet," etc. The whole tenor of the New Testament corresponds to this beginning, teaching that the birth, doctrine, miracles, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of the Lord, are the fulfillments of the Old Testament promises and prophecies; of which no less than a hundred and thirty-nine are expressly quoted, beginning with Moses and ending with Malachi.
We can not explain this by saying, with the mythical school of interpreters, that this was merely the opinion of the writers of the gospels and of the Jews of their age; whose longings for the Messiah led them to imagine some curious coincidences between the events of Christ's life and the utterances of these ancient oracles to be ready fulfillments; and that Christ did not deem it needful in all cases to undeceive them. For to suppose that Christ—the Truth—would sanction or connive at any such sacrilegious deception, is at once to deprive him, not only of his divine character, but of all claim to common honesty. So far from the Jews longing for any such events as those which fulfilled the prophecies, they despised the Messiah in whom they were fulfilled, and refused to believe in him; and his disciples were as far from the gospel ideal of the Messiah, when Jesus needed to reproach them with, "O fools, and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken."[155] It was not the Jews, nor yet the disciples, but the Lord himself who perpetually insisted on the divine authority of the Old Testament as the Word of his Father, and the sufficient attestation of his own divine character, after this manner: "Ye have not his word abiding in you; for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. * * * Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"[156]
His first recorded sermon contains a remarkable and solemn attestation to the divine authority of the Old Testament, and of his own relation to it as its substance and supporter, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."[157] The whole of this discourse is an exposition of the true principles of the Old Testament, stripping off the rubbish by which tradition had made void the law of God, and enforcing its precepts by the sanction of his divine authority. And in one of his last discourses after his resurrection: "Beginning at Moses, and the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. * * * And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures."[158]
In this distinct enumeration of the whole of the Scriptures of the Old Testament; in the assertion that they all treated of him, and that their principal predictions were fulfilled in him; and in his bestowal of divine illumination to enable them to understand these divine oracles—we have such an indorsement of their character by the Truth himself, as must command the faith and obedience of every believer in him. Had no objections been raised against particular doctrines or features of the Old Testament, we should stop here; perfectly satisfied with the attestations to the truth of its history, given by the continual references, and to the authority of its precepts, by the solemn formal declarations of the Son of God. But some popular objections to its completeness and perfection demand a brief notice.
1. The general character of the Old Testament being then ascertained beyond doubt, our first inquiry must be as to the integrity and completeness of the collection. For it is manifest that their divine authority being admitted, any attempt to add to them any human writings, or to take away those which were from God, would be a crime so serious in its consequences, that it could not escape the notice of him who severely rebuked even the verbal traditions by which the Jews made void the law of God. Now we are told by some that a great many inspired books have been lost; and they enumerate the prophecy of Enoch; the book of the Wars of the Lord; the book of Joshua; the book of Iddo the seer; the book of Nathan the prophet; the acts of Rehoboam; the book of Jehu, the son of Hanani; and the five books of Solomon, on trees, beasts, fowls, serpents, and fishes; which are alluded to in the Bible.
If the case were so, it is difficult to see what objection could be raised against the divine authority of the books we have, because of the divine authority of those we have not; for it is not supposed that one divinely inspired book would contradict another. Nor yet can we see how the loss of these books should disprove their inspiration, much less the inspiration of those which remain, any more than the want of a record of the multitude of words and works of Jesus himself which were never committed to writing,[159] should be an argument against the divine authority of the Sermon on the Mount. It will hardly be asserted that God is bound to reveal to us everything that the human race ever did, and to preserve such records through all time, or lose his right to demand our obedience to a plain revelation of his will; or that we do well to neglect the salvation of our own souls until we obtain an infallible knowledge of the acts of Rehoboam.