CORRESPONDENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 56, 7 March 1889, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

MR GU.LLIVJER'S; ADDRESS.

; (To the Editor,) i g IB ._-_One would think that it was I more the function of a Christian minister to expound Scripture rather than dwell so much on men's laulfcy conceptions of tho sacred writings. Better drink at the foum. tain rather than wander by the river where ie carries away the tilth of a great city. Mr Gulliver hardly exhibits the standard of taste. Gonosis, says he, contains three separate traditions of the creation of the world and of mon. This opinion, I presume, is based upon the fact of the difference in the names of the Divine Being throughput Genesis. .But' we must havo Bomothing ' more than Mr Gulliver's bare word for this. A very important school of critics represented by suoh-names as Hengstengberg and Havernick dispute the plurality of 'the authorship of Genesis. Another important body of. critics, while believing that there is' evidence of the employment of two records, admits an absoluteunity in the plan. But how does Mr Gulliver know that the statements in Genesis are tradition rather than histoi-y ? The Elohist, it is said, wrote the first chapter and the first, three verses of the second chapter of Gencsifs. In this position God is represented as tho Alriiighty God of tho whole earth. In the Jehovistio passages God is exhibited as.in closer personal relations to mau. Looking at the question in an unsophisticated way, would it not be natural for one. writer to use. various forms according to tho aspect of his subject as presented to his mind ? One mode of address ;may be requisite for the general aspect a»d another for the enumeration of details. One kind' of language is appropriate to .the great amphitheatre of the universe, wihile a different is suitable to the snored precincts of home. Tho writer»of the article Jehovah in Chambers's Encyclopedia dee"m. tho subject handled so deftly by Mr Gulliver "A very nice and difficult controversy." The preacher, however, pronounces as dogmatically as if he were proclaiming a universally admitted truth. Again, in the account of the flood there seems no such disparity as to necessitate the assumption of a plurality of authors. Tho record is presented in varying form. It was said of Dr. Chalmers that there was but one idea in one of his sermons. It was presented, however, in so many beautiful ways that his mind was compared to a kaleidoscope. Such is emphatically . tho case in Genesis. But ' even if it were tho case that the divino _ penman drew his information from ancient documents it would not militate against the unity of tho composition. Is there a sharp line of demarcation between tho human arid tho divine? Are there no outside influenceis apparent in Isaiah and John? How much reading and experience as well as spiritual life went to prepare Daniel before he wrote the book called by his name? is a compactness and organic unity about the book of Genesis which manifests oneness of authorship ; although there is not wanting evident prools of the "hand of a later editor, or editors. But this. 1 opine, docs not derogate from its claims to inspiration and being the veritable Word of God.—l am, etc., E. Macau sland.