SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5282, 16 January 1879, Page 4

SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

Ma Sidey's Sermon.— No. 111. In my lecture, last Sabbath evening, on the imagined impossibility of God's revealing himself to Moses at Sinai, and to the world through the person of Christ, we saw that everything depended on the idea we entertained of God and of man. The "naturalists" in theology accepted the position, that God was a person above the world ; thr,t he adjusted the world at first, with minute care, and set it under the operation of certain great fixed laws, which admitted of no change or interference.; and that he took no more care of it. He gave it over to a dry nurse, and turned his back upon it, as an indifferent parent ; leaving our race especially to run its own course and follow its own devices. The " supernaturalist " in theology, on the other hand, proceeded on the ground that God was at once above the world in his nature and essence, and in the world, by his will and power ; that he created the world at first, and put it under the operation of natural laws, which were yet subordinate to his will ; and that he cast a watchful eye over all its operations, by his providence. To $lris,it added the thought that foreseeing the fall of man into sin, he provided a remedy for it from eternity, in the redemption of it by his son, by which he would work to the restoration of man to dignity and blessedneßS,in thorough harmony withhis freedom. In this respect he continued the mighty God, and the everlasting Father, pursuing . his children with kindness, that he might win them to himself. Under the one conception of God, and of man, that was founded on it, it was impossible for God to reveal himself to men, as represented in the Scriptures. Under the other, it was the most natural and noble exercise conceivable. It was a means of showing forth the glory of the Divine nature. : This evening we proceed to the consideration of another branch of the same style of thought called " Historic Criticism," by means of which the same opponents of the Christian faith endeavor to undermine its divine character. Let me first exhibit the way in wMch it originated. Schenkel, an eminent / German scholar, wrote a sketch of the life / of Christ, in which he endeavored to ex- ' «U If » fcn e miracles of Christ by natural K,m "tancea. Strauss followed him, in ' S™« *-"* ° f writin s a li£e of Christ > ' «« JK* »;*k remorseless satire, he de-«-imSNCor^** of Schenkel. No mohshed the grcm. , d lin ohrUt , 8 natural hypothesis c otu. .^ unds • miracles. He at the same w "LJiu- nr the principle that they wer© my JJS ° r fables, without any historic foim*™ on ; 'Baur, one of Strauss's most taffiow scholars, performs the same work to his former master, that he had done to Schenkel. He laughed at the idea that myths or fables could have been imposed on the educated and quick-witted Pharisees and Sadducees and Romans, in the very age, or near to it, in which the events took place. He no sooner overwhelmed his late master than he propounded a new theory to reach the same end. He could not admit the personal government of the world by the good God, nor his interposition to save the race from sin, by the life and death of his son. He admitted no prophecy and no miracle. There was ho objective revealing of God to man, but only a subjective hearing of his voice, as he spoke through thehumanmind. As the arguments of his predecessors , failed to establish this view, he propunded another called Historic Criticism. The object of this was to show that the books of Scripture were not written by the authors to whom they are attributed, nor at the times in which they were said to have been penned. The way in which 'this conception was sought to be established was by the application of a keen literary taste, which was to tell the authorship of different books by the use of special words and by the relevation or otherwise of their styles— to fix the ages in which they were written, by allusions - to present or to past times and circumstances. In short, to tell the quality and character of the authors, and of the times at which they wrote, by taste, as the wine-testers are supposed to tell a vintage, . or the age of a wine, by their exquisite sense of taste. Another method pursued by them is to carry on a comparative estimate of the different religions of the world with that of Christ, in which every effort is put forth to lessen the distance r between Christianity and other forms of - faith, and to bring them to the same level. They hold them up as all of equal authority and common worth. To this , falls to be added the earnest use of natural ' analogies or coincidences to explain scrip- > tural statements. By these means, they try to remove the supernatural element from the book of God, and from the life of the Church ; and where they do not succeed they simply cut out the pas- ' - sages altogether from the Scriptures, as incompatible with a revelation from God. This conclusion is fixed and certain with , -them, as, it was with the Mythists and - the Natural Explanation men, that there ' is no immediate interference with our '■'•' world by God— that there can be no such 'thing aa prophecy to foreshadow the 'divine purposes, nor miracle to witness the divine presence with' sinful man. ; . There is no such thing as any objective communication of God with man, nor can be. The only way in which men can hear a divine voice is through the subjective operations of their own mind. All | ' thought, or truth, id simply the outwork- !;: ing of the human soul, in its continual developments. That is the fundamental wi . idea of what is called Historic Criticism, . and the methods by which it works. There can be no doubt that many men - of mighty mind Have favored this theory, and done their, very best to advance it. The highest authorities state that no one iSi of them surpassed Baur, either in natural l ' talent, or culture^ or industry. He Was ■••'■ one of the giants in all these particulars. He was the chief of what is called the Tubingen school, and has scarce left any ! 'fit successor, although there are still great --/.minds at work upon it. Nowwhat is the character 'or" 'their work ? By this operation of literary taste, of comparative religions, ' gions, and .of natural Allusion, what are they accomplishing ? There are scarcely two of them who reach the same results. Some deolare that none of the five books - . '.' were written by Moses ; some that a part of them were written by him ; and others that Deuteronomy was the first written ; and so with the other books of the Old and the New Testaments. Notwithstand- ' -ing' that something over one hundred words are found in Luke and the Acts of the Apostles that are met with nowhere ■\ else in the New Testament, some of the ■;. followers of this school will not allow that V these books were written by Luke. On '"> ,iib condition must anything be allowed t.. which goes to prove a supernatural interferehce of God with man ; and should any passage or circumstance prove too obdurate for critical canons, they just cut it out, as one of them does with Matthew ▼„ 17, which declares that not one jot or . tittle of the Law shall fail, when he found that he could not get quit of the Sabbath v -with that divine word. Another remark- -* able thing in connection with those who . . espouse this theory of Historic Criticism is that they are all opponents of a divine revelation. Almost without exception, ■"■ -they deny any special action of God with -, man. And though many of them are '■ ' men of great intellect and great scholarship, ludicrous instances have now and again occurred to show their extreme *"' credulity. One of these was recalled to ' me 'the other day. "Dr. Reinhold, of says Rev. Gavin Carlyle, *' : !'ih four admirable articles on this sub--1 ]eot in the Weekly Revieio, "revolted by the methods of Strauss and his coworkers, wrote the story of 'Amber Witch ' as a tale of olden time. All the ; Tubingen, reviewers of the Strauss school ; fell into the trap, accepted it as a genuine ancient chronicle, speculated, as to the to which it belonged, &c, and would not believe Reinholdj till he produced the most ample testimony, that it '» irw Wft awa original worV

We have the same critical spirit applied to other books as well as the Bible. _ For example, many of the men of fine critical taste have been proclaiming Homer, the grand old Greek poem, to have been composed by many authors. The tide is now setting in, headed by Mr Gladstone, one of the best Greek scholars of our age, to show that it was the product of one mind. And so with many others. While criticism deals with all kinds of subjects, there is no class of works to which the same unreasonable application of it is carried as to the Scriptures. These declare themselves 'perpetually to have come from God— to have been given to man by the Holy Spirit ;— and yet the critics will not allow that they came from God, or that they could have come from Him. There must be nothing prophetic or miraculous in what is to solve the problem of the universe. And what is the present position of this school. In Germany, where it sprang, and where, indeed, almost everything pertaining to the higher learning in philosophy and theology has taken its start, in later times, it is well nigh run out. In Tubingen there is no representative of the Tubingen school at this moment. As Joseph Cook, in his third volume of lectures, says, "In the German Universities the uncontrovertible fact is that the Ritualistic lecture-rooms are now empty, and the Evangelical crowded -, while fifty or eighty years ago the Ritualistic were crowded and the Evangelical empty. Lord Bacon says th^t the best materials for prophecy are the unforced tendencies of educated young men. Take up any German yearbook, look at the statistics of the Universities, ascertain which way the drift of educated youth is now setting in the most learned circles in the world, and you have before you no unimportant signs of the times." He carries out this principle to Berlin University, now the staunchest defender of the Evangelical faith ; to Leipsic, agreeing in the main with Berlin ; to Halle, where the successful antagonists of the subtlest scepticism now teach ; to Tubingen, having Evangelical teachers; and to Heidelberg, where anything that can be called Rationalistic has its seat. Having stated these features he proceeds — "Now, which of these institutions is most patronised by German theological students. ... I found Dorner's, Muller's, and Tholuck's lecture-rooms crowded, and Schenkel's empty. In 1872-3 there were but twenty-four German theological students at Heidelberg ; and I have heard Schenkel often, and never saw more than nine, eight, or seven students in his lecture-room. Against twenty-four German students at Heidelthere are one hundred and thirtyj. w0 $+• Leipsic, two hundred and fifty- „«»«« I* Wn.' l^ two hundred and thirtySTrt BeriitL J*«t counting both the native and the foreign tnC^l ■***»* in these institutions, the wW? number at Rationalistic Heidelberg is thirty-iv ur 5 at Evangelical Halle, two hundred and eighty-two ; at Evangelical Berlin, two hundred and eighty ; at hyper-Evangelical Leipsic, four hundred and twelve." He says this gives us a fair test of the drift of educated youth in Germany, and points most emphatically to the wane of Historical Criticism and its conception of God in his relation to his universe. Things have not quite reached this point in England or Scotland, but there are not wanting signs to show that the wave of its progress is about its height in those countries ; that it is on the increase in France and Switzerland, and on the recess in America ; and that from various causes in these colonies, especially the keen pursuit of material things and the easy-going spirit that can dispense with investigation, it may have a considerable way to make. It is something to know that in the land of learning and speculation, where thia question of Historic Criticism had its origin and its highest triumphs, it has completely run its course. Having thus looked at the question and its methods, and the attitude of a large part of the world to it, we now proceed to the consideration of Mr Colenso's application of it. 1. Let us attend to the time when Mr Colenso, guided by Historic Criticism, says the five books of Moses were written. In summing up his account of the new Lectionary,~and a new commentary of the Scriptures, written by certain bishops and ministers of the Church of England (Rationalistic ones no doubt), he says—" I will say, after more than 20 years' study of the matter before me, that it is my conviction that these three facts may now be regarded as established by a very general consent of competent modern scholars not pledged to the Bupport of traditionary views— (l.) That no part of the original story of the Exodus can have been composed before the time of Samuel (i.e., eleven hundred years before Christ and four hundred years after the death of Moses). (2.) That Deuteronomy was written not long before the Babylonish Captivity (i.e., somewhere about 700 years before Christ); and (3) that the Lavitical Legislation originated during the captivity, by which the notion of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is shown to be untenable." Under the heading Historically Mr Colenso afives another version. Ho says— " This fact is accounted for (viz., that prior to the time of Nehemiah the Sabbath was never spiritually kept, but was the same as the new moon) when we find that the first copy of the Decalogue, as well as the second, dates from a late age in the history of Judah — that it was never really binding on the Jews," &c. ; "that the earliest production of " the Decalogue was somewhere about four hundred and fifty years before Christ. By comparing theße two passages it would seem that Mr Colenso's twenty years' study had not sufficed to give him any very clear idea of the time at which the books of Moses were written. In one place part of them were written 1100 years before Christ, and another part about 700 years before Christ ; and yet in another place the decalogue, one of the chief parts of the first, cannot be supposed to be written till about 450 years before Christ. In this case again we have another example of the versatility of the negative school, for there is not one of them within my reach that agrees with either view of his computation. Mr Colenso's idea of competent scholars must be very limited, or he thoroughly sympathises with his school that no man has any right to be called a scholar who does not accept the position that God cannot supernaturally reveal himself to man, and that there can be no prophecy, and no miracle. Why, nine-tenths of the most eminent scholars in this science at this moment in Germany, and a large proportion of them in England and America, are dead against Mr Colenso. They hold that the books were written by Moses, "The constant and invariable ancient testimony, never disputed among the ancient Jews was, that the Pentateuch was all written by Moses. It is recognised as his by all the prophets and historians of the Old Testament, by the writings of the Apocrypha, by Philo, by Josephuß, by all the New Testament writers, arid expressly and repeatedly by Christ himself. This matter rests upon the universal tradition and belief of the Jews of all ages in the same manner as the authorship of the classic writera of Greece and Rome rests on the testimony of the nations to which they respectively belong." Professor Moses Stuart, of America, an eminent and acute scholar, suggests that Genesis was written during the abode of Moses in the land of Midian, from previously existing materials, and that it is one whole without confusion. That Exodus, Leviticos, and Numbers might well have been written during the forty years in the wilderness. " The whole wears the air of a historic journal, as well as record of legislation, which was engaged in as often as circumstances called for it. Everything is more or less minutely recorded according to the restive, importance a,t the. tfme yhpn it

the journal of a man who was often interrupted in writing by the pressure of his other engagements. It bears the mark of being a Bories of brief compositions, written in a manner independently of each other, for they were written doubtless at very different times and places, and some of them quite remotely from each other." Regarding Deuteronomy the same, author says, " Deuteronomy appears to my mind as the earnest outflowings and admonitions of a heart which felt the deepest interest in the welfare of the Jewish nation, and which realised that it must soon bid farewell to it. . . Such aglow as runs through all this book it is vain to seek for in any artificial or supposititious composition." Delitzch's view is much the same. He says " The second depicts the inauguration at Sinai. Of the third and fourth, the former narrates the spiritual, the latter the political organisation of the kingdom by facts and legal precepts. The fifth repeats the whole in a hortatory style, embracing both history and legislation, and impresses it upon the hearts of the people for the purpose of arousing their fidelity to the covenant and securing its duration." Mr Colenso speaks of the men who take this view as pledged to traditionary beliefs, by which he would insinuate that they were incompetent to the task of determining the question. And now we may add, if Mr Colenso had not been pledged to support the irrational theory that God could not help man, that there could be no prophecy and no miracle, we never should have heard him pleading for those views of the origin of the books of Moses. If any man is pledged to a line of belief it is himself. But does Mr Colenso give no indication of the proof which leads him to it. He does, of the threefold kind to which I have referred. 1. There is the evidence drawn from the Apocrypha, which Mr Colenso assures us are accepted by the Roman and Greek Churches as equally authoritative as the canonical writings. In the second book of EBdras it is stated that the Law was burnt and that Esdras sought that the gift of the Holy Ghost might be given to him to restore the law, and that a tradition existed among the Jews that he recovered the very identical words of the Pentateuch. It is a noteworthy fact that the writer of Esdras makeß no claim himself to have restored the law. He speaks about understanding growing in his breast and that the five men who retired with him wrote the wonderful visions of the night. But there is not a word about his restoring either law or Prophets. It is another noteworthy fact, that any value to be drawn from— the words, in the line of Mr Oolenso's argument, implies, that Ezra and the writer of Esdras are one and the same person, and that there was only one copy of the Law in existence. Conclusions looked at from internal or external evidence a» lHost improbable. Two pr three facts aboafr these apocryphal books will shew thk. While all the books of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew the apocryphal books are only in Greek. ' They were all composed after the spirit of Prophecy had ceased in Israel. Many learned men have very strong reasons for believing that some of the Apoc. books ' among which is this very one of Esdras are posterior even to the birth of Christ.' None of the authors pretend to inspiration except Wisdom, which proves itself not to have been inspired. No part of the Apoc. is found quoted by Jesus Christ, or by his Apostles. It was not received as canonical by the Church of Rome until the Council of Trent in the year of our Lord 1546. The Jews never admitted these books as forming part of their sacred writings. There is no reason whatever to believe that Esdras was written by Ezra ; or that any force attaches to this idea that there was but one copy of the Law iv existence. Every King on his consecration had to get a copy for himself and probably also the chief priests. There were doubtless many copies of the Law at all times extant. And yet, on the thought that the law was burnt, Mr Oolenso attributes the writing of the books of Moses to a period subsequent to the captivity. If ever an illustration of extreme credulity, by a very determined unbeliever was given, we have it here. It looks something like a drowning man catching at a straw. An instance of more foolhardy advocacy of a caose it would be difficult to discover. Evidence of this kind is worth nothing in any case. 2. The second proof is the non-histo-rical character of the book»of the Chroniicles, which Mr Colenso assures us, is of very great importance in the argument, although to reach that, men must cast aside all traditionary views. He says, it was written with a purpose, namely, the whitewashing of the villainous Kings. He lays down a number of arbitrary testa, to determine its worth, such as, that the records of the Kings and Chronicles do not state the very same things in the very same way. Why should they ? At length he hangs the case on the circumstance that Abijah walked in the sins of his fathers, spoke a pious addreßs to his army, and then had a great victory oeer Jeroboam, slaying 500,000 men. Had Mr Colenso only looked at the explanation given in 6th verse, that God gave, the Kingdom to Jiidah, for the employment of Abijah, and believed in God's wording, through Judah to accomplish his purpose of sending a Saviour to the world, he would have ceased to wonder at the instrument he employed. As to,, the number of men engaged in the contest from so thickly peopled a country, there iB nothing to make any critic wonder, except persons of the mental idiosyncrasies of Mr Colenso. Had I only some of the crushing replies given to Bishop Colenso, when he published his " Pentateuch examined" by me, on this question of the numbers of the people, this point would be seen in its true lights. There was nothing inconsistent with the numbers employed in great works, like the building of the pyramids. Keil, one of the acutest of German critics, sees nothing peculiar about them. In the light of bo many other aspects of overwhelming evidence, in favor of the historical character of the writings, this is of the very smallest importance. Mr Colenso states that the writer of the Chronicles lived centuries after the writer of the Kings. Might I ask Mr Colenso, how he knows. So far as my information goes, the author or compiler of either, under the guidance of the Divine spirit, is not easily known. 3. The next thing adduced, m proof of the unhistorical character of the records, is the Moabitish stone, on which the King of Moab records his tha»ks to his God " Chemosh," for his victory over the Israelites , whereas it is said, in 2 Kings, 3, to have been a very great victory for the Jews. Of course Mr Colenso must tell us both narratives cannot be true, and the probabilities are all on the side of the Heathen monument agaimt the Scriptures. One would have thought that any honest critic might have found the explanation in the narrative. At the closing part of the chapter after the fighting was past, we are told that the King of Moab, when he saw the hopelessness of his case, took and offered up his son to his God, Chemosh, and that there was "indignation against Israel, and they* departed from him and returned to their own land." Viewed in the light of the use of the clause, in other passages of Scripture, the phrase, "there was great indignation against Israel tells of Gods anger and judgment against sin. By the deed of horror, as Keil says, to which the allied host drove the Kirn? of Moab, a heavy divine judgment came against Israel; that is, the besiegers feared the anger of God, which they had incurred by giving occasion to the human swrin.ee, so strictly forbidden in the law, and desißted from the siege, without taking the castle or subjugating Moab again to Israel. Have we not in this, a very sufficient^explanation of I<h,o ; writing on & c W>WW»

stone, as given by Mr Colenso. It i» not here that any breach oan be made in the historical character of a sacred record. To these, there falls to be added the oft repeated statement, that no. objective voice was heard from God, but only a subjective one, by man's soul, to secure that it is only the God within us that speaks and not the God above us, and you have all that is given, of the nature of proof, of the unhistorical character of the sacred narratives. Now, I aisk any intelligent reader, who has the slightest anxiety to possess some really satisfying view of the principles which govern and animate the world, as they lie around and within himself, and as they must be met by him, to give any satisfaction to his own spiritual nature, to determine the place and the value of Historic Criticism as so conducted. Starting with the foregone conclusion, that God cannot interfere with our world ; that he cannot interpose in love to save our race, as represented in his word ; that he cannot employ prophecy to foreshadow his action, or miracles to establish it, omr Historic Critics cutaway or destroy everything in the word of God, which says, thut the everlasting God does either. This is surely judging with a purpose, with a vengeance; and shows a very resolute purpose too, to accomplish its object, if it should involve the most utter absurdities in thought and life, to which any mau could be asked to give a credence. We still have the Jews, the people to whom God committed the oracles of hia truth and love, as their national trust. They are a specially intellectual people, as little likely to be misled or deceived on such a question as any race of men. And how have they stood by their trust ? They have never once been unfaithful to it. They have never wavered in their belief, as to what constitutes their scriptures, and have always repudiated the authority o£ the Apocrypha. The Lord Jesus rebuked, them with withering words for their unbelief, and other things, but he never uttered one word against them so far as we know, for their care of the Scriptures. And now they are scattered all over the world, and have passed through every kind of oppression, and yet they standout everywhere a separate and distinct nationality, a living miracle of the care of Ood towards them, and they carry everywhere with them their Scriptures and their Sabbath, in testimony of their faith. Have we not here an historic witness to God's truth ? And it is one which is supported by the large mas 3of scholarship in every age. In the light of the evidence submitted to them, soholars have said, with a wonderful unanimity, that the judgment of the Jews is right. Similar things might bo said of the New Testament Scriptures. Shall we then, at the bidding of those who turn this new phase of the wheel of fortune, as turned by unbelievers, cast off all faith in the one book, which tells us that God's love extends to sinful men. It is above all things improbable. This new instrument will soon find a grave beside a hoary host of others, who lie in disgrace, after their ignominious defeats on the truth of Heaven condemned by none more than those who found it did not suit their purpose. Criticism— Historic Criticism — has its place and its work ; and were it to confine itself to its sphere, it would bring blessings to our race. To find that place it must accept the active agency of the Deity in the government of our world,his interposition to save it through his son and the use of prophecy and miracle by him, as instruments by which he carries out his loving purposes to men. But denying all these, or simply meeting them with negations, in the infirmity of sinful nature, it will bring little good to our race. We may sum up this lecture, in the words of Peter, as the resume of the world's past. Amid all fading things " the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word, which by the Gospel is preached unto you." Next Sabbath evening I shall consider the inspiration of the Scriptures, and, if possible, their witness to the Sabbath.