THE MORAL GLORY OF JESUS CHRIST A PROOF
BY
WILLIAM
G. MOOREHEAD, D. D.,
President Of Xenia Theological Seminary, Xenia, Ohio
The glories of the Lord Jesus Christ
are threefold: Essential, official and moral. His essential glory is that which
pertains to Him as the Son of God, the equal of the Father. His official glory
is that which belongs to Him as the Mediator. It is the reward conferred on
Him, the august promotion He received when He had brought His great work to a
final and triumphant conclusion. His moral glory consists of the perfections
which marked His earthly life and ministry; perfections which attached to every
relation He sustained, and to every circumstance in which He was found. His
essential and official glories were commonly veiled during His earthly sojourn.
His moral glory could not be hid; He could not be less than perfect in
everything; it belonged to Him; it was Himself. This moral glory now illumines
every page of the four Gospels, as once it did every path He trod.
The thesis which we undertake to
illustrate and establish is this: That the moral glory of Jesus Christ as set
forth in the four Gospels cannot be the product of the unaided human intellect,
that only the Spirit of God is competent to execute this matchless portrait of
the Son of Man. The discussion of the theme falls into two parts:
I. A brief survey of Christ’s moral
glory as exhibited in the Gospels.
II. The application of the argument.
1. CHRIST’S MORAL GLORY THE HUMANITY
OF JESUS
1. The moral glory of Jesus appears
in His development as Son of Man. The nature which He assumed was our nature,
sin and sinful propensities only excepted. His was a real and a true humanity,
one which must pass through the various stages of growth like any other member
of the race. From infancy to youth, from youth to manhood, there was steady
increase both of His bodily powers and mental faculties; but the progress was
orderly. “No unhealthy precocity marked the holiest of infancies.” He was first
a child, and afterwards a man, not a man in child’s years. As Son of Man He was
compassed about with all the sinless infirmities that belong to our nature. He
has needs common to all; need of food, of rest, of human sympathy and of divine
assistance. He is subject to Joseph and Mary, He is a worshiper in the
synagogue and the Temple; He weeps over the guilty and hardened city, and at
the grave of a loved one; He expresses His dependence on God by prayer.
Nothing is more certain than that
the Gospel narratives present the Lord Jesus as a true man, a veritable member
of our race. But we no sooner recognize this truth than we are confronted by
another which sets these records alone and unapproachable in the field of
literature. This second fact is this: At every stage of His development, in
every relation of life, in every part of His service He is absolutely perfect.
To no part of His life does a mistake attach, over no part of it does a cloud
rest, nowhere is there defect. Nothing is more striking, more unexampled, than
the profound contrast between Jesus and the conflict and discord around Him,
that between Him and those who stood nearest Him, the disciples, John Baptist,
and the mother, Mary. All fall immeasurably below Him.
THE PATTERN MAN
2. The Gospels exalt our Lord
infinitely above all other men as the representative, the ideal, the pattern
man. Nothing in the judgment of historians stands out so sharply distinct as
race, national character — nothing is more ineffaceable. The very greatest men
are unable to free themselves from the influences amid which they have been
born and educated. Peculiarities of race and the spirit of the age leave in
their characters traces that are imperishable. To the last fiber of his being
Luther was German, Calvin was French, Knox was Scotch; Augustine bears the
unmistakable impress of the Roman, and Chrysostom is as certainly Greek. Paul,
with all his large heartedness and sympathies is a Jew, always a Jew. Jesus
Christ is the only One who is justly entitled to be called the Catholic Man.
Nothing local, transient, individualizing, national, or sectarian dwarfs the
proportions of His wondrous character.
“He rises above the parentage, the
blood, the narrow horizon which bounded, as it seemed, His life; for He is the
archetypal man in whose presence distinctions of race, intervals of ages, types
of civilization and degrees of mental culture are as nothing” (Liddon).
He belongs to all ages, He is
related to all men, whether they shiver amid the snows of the arctic circle, or
pant beneath the burning heat of the equator; for He is the Son of Man, the Son
of mankind, the genuine offspring of the race.
UNSELFISHNESS AND DIGNITY
3. The Lord’s moral glory appears in
His unselfishness and personal dignity. The entire absence of selfishness in
any form from the character of the Lord Jesus is another remarkable feature of
the Gospels. He had frequent and fair opportunities of gratifying ambition had
His nature been tainted with that passion. But “even Christ pleased not
himself;” He “sought not his own glory;” He came not “to do his own will.” His
body and His soul with all the faculties and activities of each were devoted to
the supreme aims of His mission. His self-sacrifice included the whole range of
His human thought and affection and action; it lasted throughout His life;
its highest expression was His
ignominious death on the cross of Calvary.
The strange beauty of His
unselfishness as it is displayed in the Gospel narratives appears in this, that
it never seeks to draw attention to itself, it deprecates publicity. In His
humility He seems as one naturally contented with obscurity; as wanting the
restless desire for eminence which is common to really great men; as eager and
careful that even His miracles should not add to His reputation. But amid all
His self-sacrificing humility He never loses His personal dignity nor the
self-respect that becomes Him.
He receives ministry from the lowly
and the lofty; He is sometimes hungry, yet feeds the multitudes in desert
places; He has no money, yet He never begs, and He provides the coin for
tribute to the government from a fish’s mouth. He may ask for a cup of water at
the well, but it is that He may save a soul. He never flies from enemies; He
quietly withdraws or passes by unseen. Hostility neither excites nor exasperates
Him. He is always calm, serene. He seems to care little for Himself, for His
own ease or comfort or safety, but everything for the honor and the glory of
the Father.
If multitudes, eager and expectant,
press upon Him, shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David,” He is not elated; if
all fall away, stunned by His words
of power, He is not cast down. He
sought not a place among men, He was calmly content to be the Lord’s Servant,
the obedient and the humble One. It was invariably true of Him that “He pleased
not Himself.” And yet through all His amazing self-renunciation, there glances
ever and anon something of the infinite majesty and supreme dignity which
belong to Him because He is the Son of God. The words of Van Oosterzee are as
true as they are beautiful and significant: “It is the same King’s Son who
today dwells in the palace of His Father, and tomorrow, out of love to His
rebellious subjects in a remote corner of the Kingdom, renouncing His princely
glory, comes to dwell amongst them in the form of a servant *** and is known
only by the dignity of His look, and the star of royalty on His breast, when
the mean cloak is opened for a moment, apparently by accident.”
SUPERIORITY TO HUMAN JUDGMENT AND
INTERCESSION
4. The Gospels exhibit the Lord
Jesus as superior to the judgment and the intercession of men. When challenged
by the disciples and by enemies, as He often was, Jesus never apologizes, never
excuses Himself, never confesses to a mistake. When the disciples, terrified by
the storm on the lake, awoke Him saying, “Master, carest thou not that we
perish?”, He did not vindicate His sleep, nor defend His apparent indifference
to their fears. Martha and Mary, each in turn, with profound grief, say, “Lord,
if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” There is not a minister of
the gospel the world over who would not in similar circumstances explain or try
to explain why he could not at once repair to the house of mourning when
summoned thither. But Jesus does not excuse His not being there, nor His delay
of two days in the place where He was when the urgent message of the sisters
reached Him. In the consciousness of the perfect rectitude of His ways, He only
replies, “Thy brother shall rise again.” Peter once tried to admonish Him,
saying, “This be far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee.” But Peter
had to learn that it was Satan that prompted the admonition. Nor does He recall
a word when the Jews rightly inferred from His language that He “being man made
Himself God” (John 10:30-36). He pointed out the application of the name Elohim
(God) to judges under the theocracy; and yet He irresistibly implies that His
title to Divinity is higher than, and distinct in kind from, that of the Jewish
magistrates. He thus arrives a second time at the assertion which had given so
great offense, by announcing His identity with the Father, which involves His
own proper Deity. The Jews understood Him. He did not retract what they
accounted blasphemy, and they again sought His life. He is never mistaken, and
never retracts.
So likewise He is superior to human
intercession. He never asks even His disciples nor His nearest friends, and
certainly never His mother Mary, to pray for Him. In Gethsemane He asked the
three, to watch with Him, He did not ask them to pray for Him. He bade them
pray that they might not enter into temptation, but He did not ask them to pray
that He should not, nor that He should be delivered out of it. Paul wrote again
and again, “Brethren; pray for us” — “pray for me.” But such was not the language
of Jesus. It is worthy of note that the Lord does not place His own people on a
level with Himself in His prayers. He maintains the distance of His own
personal dignity and supremacy between Himself and them. In His intercession He
never uses plural personal pronouns in His petitions, lie always says, “I” and
“me,” “these” and “them that thou hast given me;” never “we” and “us,” as we
speak and should speak in our prayers.
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS
5. The sinlessness of the Saviour
witnesses to His moral glory. The Gospels present us with one solitary and
unique fact of human history — an absolutely sinless Man! In His birth
immaculate, in His childhood, youth and manhood, in public and private, in
death and in life, He was faultless.
Hear some witnesses. There is the
testimony of His enemies. For three, long years the Pharisees were watching
their victim. As another writes, “There was the Pharisee mingling in every
crowd, hiding behind every tree. They examined His disciples, they
cross-questioned all around Him. They looked into His ministerial life, into
His domestic privacy, into His hours of retirement. They came forward with the
sole accusation they could muster — that He had shown disrespect to Caesar. The
Roman judge who ought to know, pronounced it void.” There was another spy —
Judas. Had there been one failure in the Redeemer’s career, in his awful agony
Judas would have remembered it for his comfort; but the bitterness of his
despair, that which made his life intolerable, was, “I have betrayed the
innocent blood.” There is the testimony of His friends. His disciples affirm
that during their intercourse with Him His life was unsullied. Had there been a
single blemish they would have detected it, and, honest historians as they
were, they would have recorded it, just as they did their own shortcomings and
blunders. The purest and most austere man that lived in that day, John the
Baptist, shrank from baptizing the Holy One, and in conscious unworthiness he
said, “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” Nor is His
own testimony to be overlooked. Jesus never once confesses sin. He never once
asks for pardon. Yet is it not He who so
sharply rebukes the
self-righteousness of the Pharisees? Does He not, in His teaching, seem to
ignore all human piety that is not based upon a broken heart? But yet He never
lets fall a hint, He never breathes a prayer which implies the slightest trace
of blameworthiness. He paints the doom of incorrigible and unrepentent sinners
in the most dreadful colors found in the entire Bible, but He Himself feels no
apprehension, He expresses no dread of the penal future; His peace of mind, His
fellowship with Almighty God is never disturbed nor interrupted. If He urge
sorrow upon others and tears of penitence, it is for their sins; if He groan in
agony, it is not for sins of His own, it is for others’. He challenges His
bitterest enemies to convict Him of Sin (John 8:46). Nor is this all. “The
soul,” it has been said, “like the body has its pores,” and the pores are always
open. “Instinctively, unconsciously, and whether a man will or not, the
insignificance or the greatness of the inner life always reveals itself.” From
its very center and essence the moral nature is everthrowing out about itself
circles of influence, encompasses itself with an atmosphere of self-disclosure.
In Jesus Christ this self-revelation was not involuntary, nor accidental, nor
forced: it was in the highest degree deliberate. There is about Him an air of
superior holiness, of aloofness from the world and its ways, a separation from
evil in every form and of every grade, such as no other that has ever lived has
displayed. Although descended from an impure ancestry, He brought no taint of
sin into the world with Him; and though He mingled with sinful men and was
assailed by fierce temptations, He contracted no guilt, lie was touched by no
stain. He was not merely undefiled, but He was undefilable. He was like a ray
of light which parting from the fountain of light can pass through the foulest
medium and still be unstained and untouched. He came down into all the
circumstances of actual humanity in its sin and misery, and yet He kept the
infinite purity of heaven with Him. In the annals of our race there is none
next to or like Him.
ASSEMBLAGE AND CORRELATION OF
VIRTUES
6. The exquisite assemblage and
correlation of virtues and excellencies in the Lord Jesus form another
remarkable feature of the Gospel narratives. There have been those who have
displayed distinguished traits of character; those who by reason of
extraordinary gifts have risen to heights which are inaccessible to the great
mass of men. But who among the mightiest of men has shown himself to be evenly
balanced and rightly poised in all his faculties and powers? In the very
greatest and best, inequality and disproportion are encountered. Generally, the
failings and vices of men are in the inverse ratio of their virtues and their
powers. “The tallest bodies cast the longest shadows.” In Jesus Christ there is
no unevenness. In Him there is no preponderance of the imagination over the
feeling, of the intellect over the imagination, of the will over the intellect.
There is in Him an uninterrupted harmony of all the powers of body and soul, in
which that serves which should serve, and that rules which ought to rule, and
all works together to one adorable end. In Him every grace is in its perfect
ness, none in excess, none out of place, and none wanting. His justice and His
mercy, His peerless love and His truth, His holiness and His freest pardon never
clash; one never clouds the other. His firmness never degenerates into
obstinacy, or His calmness into indifference. His gentleness never becomes
weakness, nor His elevation of soul forgetfulness of others. In His best
servants virtues and graces are uneven and often clash. Paul had hours of
weakness and even of petulance. He seems to have regretted that he called
himself a Pharisee in the Jewish Sanhedrin and appealed to that party for help,
for in his address before the proconsul Felix he said, “Or let these same here
say, if they found any evil doing in me, while I stood before the Council,
except it be for this one voice, that I cried standing among them, Touching the
resurrection of the dead I am called in question by you this day.” John the Apostle
of love even wished to call down fire from heaven to consume the inhospitable
Samaritans. And the Virgin mother must learn that even she cannot dictate to
Him as to what He shall do or not do. In Jesus there is the most perfect
balance, the most amazing equipoise of every faculty and grace and duty and
power. In His whole life one day’s walk never contradicts another, one hour’s
service never clashes with another. While He shows lie is master of nature’s
tremendous forces, and the Lord of the unseen world, He turns aside and lays
His glory by to take little children in His arms and to bless them. While He
must walk amid the snares His foes have privily spread for His feet, He is
equal to every occasion, is in harmony with the requirements of every moment.
“He never speaks where it would be better to keep silence, He never keeps
silence where it would be better to speak; and He always leaves the arena of
controversy a victor.” His unaffected majesty, so wonderfully depicted in the
Gospels, runs through His whole life, and is as manifest in the midst of
poverty and scorn, at Gethsemane and Calvary, as on the Mount Of
Transfiguration and in the resurrection from the grave.
OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNISCIENCE
7. The evangelists do not shrink
from ascribing to the Lord Jesus divine attributes, particularly Omnipotence
and Omniscience. They do so as a mere matter of fact, as what might and should
be expected from so exalted a personage as the Lord Jesus was. How amazing the
power is which He wields when it pleases Him to do so! It extends to the forces
of nature. At His word the storm is hushed into a calm, and the raging of the
sea ceases. At His pleasure He walks on the water as on dry land. It extends to
the world of evil spirits. At His presence demons cry out in fear and quit
their hold on their victims. His power extends into the realm of disease. Every
form of sickness departs at His command, and He cures the sick both when He is
beside them and at a distance from them. Death likewise, that
inexorable tyrant that wealth has
never bribed, nor tears softened, nor human power arrested, yielded instantly
his prey when the voice of the Son of God bade him.
But Jesus equally as certainly and
as fully possessed a superhuman range of knowledge as well as a superhuman
power. He knew men; knew them as God knows them. Thus He saw into the depths of
Nathaniel’s heart when he was under the fig tree; He saw into the depths of the
sea, and the exact coin in the mouth of a particular fish; He read the whole
past life of the woman at the well, although He had never before met with her.
John tells us that “He needed not
that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man” (John 2:25). He
knew the world of evil spirits. He was perfectly acquainted with the movements
of Satan and of demons. He said to Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to
have you that he might sift you as wheat: I made supplication for thee that thy
faith fail not” (Luke 22:31,32).
He often spoke directly to the evil
spirits that had control of people, ordering them to hold their peace, to come
out and to enter no more into their victims. He knew the Father as no mere
creature could possibly know Him.
“All things are delivered unto me of
my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know
the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him”
(Matthew 11:27).
A difficulty will be felt when we
attempt to reconcile this infinite knowledge of men, of the unseen world, and
of God Himself, which the Son of God possessed, with the statement in Mark that
He did not know the day nor the hour of His Second Advent. But the difficulty
is no greater than that other in John, where we are told that His face was wet
with human tears while the almighty voice was crying, “Lazarus, come forth.” In
both cases the divine and the human are seen intermingling, and yet they are
perfectly distinct.
Such are some of the beams of
Christ’s moral glories as they shine everywhere on the pages of the Four
Gospels. A very few of them are here gathered together. Nevertheless, what a
stupendous picture do they form! In the annals of our race there is nothing
like it. Here is One presented to us who is a true and genuine man, and yet He
is the ideal, the representative, the pattern man, claiming kindred in the
universality of His manhood with all men; sinless, yet full of tenderness and
pity; higher than the highest, yet stooping to the lowest and to the most
needy; perfect in all His words and ways, in His life and in His death!
Who taught the evangelists to draw
this matchless portrait? The pen which traced these glories of Jesus — could it
have been other than an inspired pen? This question leads us to the second part
of our task, which can soon be disposed of.
2. THE APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENT
Nothing is more obvious than the
very commonplace axiom, that every effect requires an adequate cause. Given a
piece of machinery, complex, delicate, exact in all its movements, we know that
it must be the Product of a competent mechanic. Given a work of consummate art,
we know it must be the product of a consummate artist. None but a sculptor with
the genius of an Angelo could carve the “Moses.” None but a painter with the
hand, the eye, and the brain of a Raphael could paint the “Transfiguration.”
None but a poet with the gifts of a Milton could write “Paradise Lost.” Here
are four brief records of our Lord’s earthly life. They deal almost
exclusively with His public
ministry; they do not profess even to relate all that He did in His official
work (cf. John 21:25). The authors of these memorials were men whose names are
as household words the world over; but beyond their names we know little more.
The first was tax collector under the Roman government; the second was, it is
generally believed, that John Mark who for a time served as an attendant on
Paul and Barnabas, and who afterward became the companion and fellow-laborer of
Peter; the third was a physician and the devoted friend and co-worker of Paul;
and the fourth was a fisherman. Two of them, Matthew and John, were disciples
of Jesus; whether the others, Mark and Luke, ever saw Him during His earthly
sojourn cannot be determined.
These four men, unpracticed in the
art of writing, unacquainted with the ideals of antiquity, write the memorials
of Jesus’ life. Three of them traverse substantially the same ground, record
the same incidents, discourses and miracles. While they are penetrated with the
profoundest admiration for their Master, they never once dilate on His great
qualities.
All that they do is to record His
actions and His discourses with scarcely a remark. One of them indeed, John,
intermingles reflective commentary with the narrative; but in doing this John
carefully abstains from eulogy and panegyric. He pauses in His narrative only
to explain some reference, to open some deep saying of the Lord, or to press
some vital truth. Yet, despite this absence of the smallest attempt to
delineate a character, these four men have accomplished what no others have
done or can do — they have presented the world with the portrait of a Divine
Man, a Glorious Saviour. Matthew describes Him as the promised Messiah, the
glory of Israel, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham; the One in whom the
covenants and the promises find their ample fulfillment; the One who
accomplishes all righteousness. Mark exhibits Him as the mighty Servant of
Jehovah who does man’s neglected duty, and meets the need of all around. Luke
depicts Him as the Friend of man, whose love is so intense and comprehensive,
whose pity is so divine, that His saving power goes forth to Jew and Gentile,
to the lowliest and the loftiest, to the publican, the Samaritan, the ragged
prodigal, the harlot, the thief, as well as to the cultivated, the moral, the
great. John presents Him as the Son of God, the Word made flesh; as Light for a
dark world, as Bread for a starving world, as Life for a dead world. Matthew
writes for the Jew, Mark for the Roman,
Luke for the Greek, and John for the
Christian; and all of them write for every kindred, and tribe, and tongue and
people of the entire globe, and for all time! What the philosopher, the poet,
the scholar, the artist could not do; what men of the greatest mind, the most
stupendous genius have failed to do, these four unpracticed men have done —
they have presented to the world the Son of Man and the Son of God in all His
perfections and glories.
A FACT TO BE EXPLAINED
How comes it to pass that these
unlearned and ignorant men (Acts 4:13) have so thoroughly accomplished so great
a task? Let us hold fast our commonplace axiom, every effect must have an
adequate cause. What explanation shall we give of this marvelous effect? Shall
we ascribe their work to genius? But multitudes of men both before and since
their day have possessed genius of the very highest order; and these gifted men
have labored in fields akin to this of our four evangelists. The mightiest
minds of the race — men of Chaldea, of Egypt, of India, of China, and of Greece
— have tried to draw a perfect character, have expended all their might to
paint a god-like man. And with what result? Either he is invested with the
passions and the brutalities of fallen men, or he is a pitiless and impassive
spectator of the world’s sorrows and woes. In either case, the character is one
which may command the fear but not the love and confidence of men.
Again, we ask, How did the
evangelists solve this mighty problem of humanity with such perfect Originality
and precision? Only two answers
are rationally possible:
Let it be assumed that these four
men, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were personally attendant on the ministry of
Jesus that they saw Him, heard Him, companied with Him for three years. Yet on
their own showing they did not understand Him. They testify that the disciples,
the Apostles among the number, got but the slenderest conceptions of His person
and His mission from His very explicit teachings. They tell us of a wonderful
incapacity and weakness in all their apprehensions of Him The Sun of
righteousness was shining on them and around them, and they could see only the
less! He told them repeatedly of His approaching death, and of His
resurrection, but they did not understand Him; they even questioned among
themselves what the rising from the dead should mean (Mark 9:10) poor men! And
yet these men, once so blind and ignorant, write four little pieces about the
person and the work Of the Lord Jesus which the study and the research of
Christendom for eighteen hundred years have not exhausted, and which the
keenest and most hostile criticism has utterly failed to discredit.
But this is not all. Others have
tried their hand at composing the Life and Deeds of Jesus. Compare some of
these with our Four Gospels.
SPURIOUS GOSPELS
The Gospel narrative observes an
almost unbroken silence as to the long abode of Jesus at Nazareth. Of the void
thus left the church became early impatient. During the first four centuries
many attempts were made to fill it up. Some of these apocryphal gospels are
still extant, notably that which deals with the infancy and youth of the
Redeemer; and it is instructive to notice how those succeeded who tried to lift
the veil which covers the earlier years of Christ. Let another state the
contrast between the New Testament records and the spurious gospels: “The case
stands thus: our Gospels present us with a glorious picture of a mighty
Saviour, the mythic gospels with that of a contemptible one. In our Gospels He
exhibits a superhuman wisdom; in the mythic ones a nearly equal superhuman
absurdity. In our Gospels He is arrayed in all the beauty of holiness; in the
mythic ones this aspect of character is entirely wanting. In our Gospels not
one stain of sinfulness defiles His character; in the mythic ones the Boy Jesus
is both pettish and malicious. Our Gospels exhibit to us a sublime morality;
not one ray of it shines in those of the mythologists. The miracles of the one
and of the other stand contrasted on every point.” (Row).
These spurious gospels were written
by men who lived not long after the apostolic age; by Christians who wished to
honor the Saviour in all they said about Him; by men who had the portraiture of
Him before them which the Gospels supply. And yet these men, many of them
better taught than the Apostles, with the advantage of two or three centuries
of Christian thought and study, could not produce a fancy sketch of the Child
Jesus without violating our sense of propriety, and shocking our moral sense.
The distance between the Gospels of the New Testament and the pseudo gospels is
measured by the distance between the product of the Spirit of God, and that of
the fallen human mind.
UNINSPIRED “LIVES OF CHRIST”
Let us take another illustration.
The nineteenth century has been very fruitful in the production of what are
commonly called “Lives of Christ.” Contrast with the Gospels four such “Lives,”
perhaps the completest and the best, taken altogether, of those written by
English-speaking people — Andrews’, Geikie’s, Hanna’s and Edersheim’s. The
authors of our Gospels had no models on which to frame their work. The path
they trod had never before been pressed by human feet. The authors of the
“Lives” have not only these incomparable narratives as their pattern and the
chief source of all their material, but numberless other such “Lives”
suggestive as to form and construction, and the culture and the research of
eighteen centuries lying behind them. But would any one venture for a moment to
set forth these “Lives” as rivals of our Gospels? Much information and
helpfulness are to be derived from the labors of these Christian scholars, and
others who have toiled in the same field; but how far they all fall below the
New Testament record it is needless to show. Indeed, all such writings are
largely antiquated and scarcely read, though they are quite young in years, so
soon does man’s work decay and die.
Let the contrast be noted as to size
or bulk. Andrews’ book contains 615 pages; Geikie’s over 1,200; Hanna’s over
2,100; Edersheim’s, 1,500 pages. The four combined have no less than 5,490
pages, enough in these busy days to require months of reading to go but once
through their contents. Bagster prints the Four Gospels in 82 pages; the
Oxford, in 104; Amer. Rev., 120. In the Bagster, Matthew has but 23; Mark, 13;
Luke, 25; and John, 21. Less than one hundred pages of the Four Gospels against
more than five thousand four hundred of the four “Lives.”
Countless volumes, great and small,
in the form of commentary, exposition, notes, harmony and history are written
on these brief records. How happens it that such stores of wisdom and knowledge
He garnered in these short pieces? Who taught the evangelists this superhuman
power of expansion and contraction, of combination and separation, of
revelation in the words and more revelation below the words? Who taught them so
to describe the person and work of the Lord Jesus as that the description
satisfies the most illiterate and the most learned, is adapted to minds of the
most limited capacity, and to those of the widest grasp? Whence did they derive
the infinite skill they display in grouping together events, discourses, and
actions in such fashion that vividly before us is the deathless beauty of a
perfect Life? There is but one answer to these questions, there can be no
other. The Spirit of the living God filled their minds with His unerring wisdom
and controlled their human speech. To that creative Spirit who has peopled the
world with living organisms so minute that only the microscope can reveal their
presence, it is not hard to give us in so brief a compass the sublime portrait
of the Son of Man. To men it is impossible.
INSPIRATION EXTENDS THROUGHOUT THE
BIBLE
Now if it be conceded that the Four
Gospels are inspired, we are compelled by every rule of right reason to concede
the inspiration of the rest of the New Testament. For all the later
communications contained in the Acts, the Epistles, and the Revelation, are
already in germ form in the Gospels, just as the Pentateuch holds in germ the
rest of the Old Testament.
If the Holy Spirit is the author of
the Four Gospels He is none the less the author of the entire New Testament. If
He creates the germ, it is He also that must unfold it into mature fruit. If He
makes the seed He must likewise give the increase. To this fundamental truth
the writers of the later communications bear the most explicit testimony. Paul,
John, James, Peter and Jude severally intimate that what they have to impart is
from Christ by His Spirit.
Furthermore, if we admit the
inspiration of the New Testament we must also admit that of the Old. For, if
any one thing has been established by the devout and profound study and
research of evangelical scholarship it is this, that the Scriptures of the Old
Testament hold in germ the revelation contained in the New. The Latin Father
spoke as profoundly as truly when he said, “The New Testament lies hid in the
Old, and the Old stands revealed in the New.” Ancient Judaism had one supreme
voice for the chosen people, and its voice was prophetic. Its voice was the
significant word, Wait. As if it kept reminding Israel that the Mosaic
Institutions were only temporary and typical, that something infinitely better
and holier was to take their place; and so it said, Wait. Wait, and the true
Priest will come, the Priest greater than Aaron, greater than Melchizedek — the
Priest of whom these were but thin shadows, dim pictures. Wait, and the true
Prophet, like unto Moses, greater than Moses, will appear. Wait, and the real
sacrifice, that of which all other offerings were but feeble images, will be
made and sin be put away. If any man deny the inspiration of the Old Testament,
sooner or later he will deny that of the New. For the two are inseparably bound
up together. If the one fall, so will the other.
Already the disastrous consequences
of such a course of procedure are apparent in Christendom. For years the
conflict has raged about the trustworthiness, the integrity and the authority
of the Old Testament. Not long since one who is identified with the attacking
party arrayed against that Scripture announced that the victory is won, and
nothing now remains save to determine the amount of the indemnity. It is very
noteworthy that the struggle has indeed measurably subsided as to the Old
Testament, although there are no signs of weakening faith in it on the part of
God’s faithful children, and the fight now turns with increasing vigor on the
New
Testament, and pre-eminently about
the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Men who are Christians at least in name,
who occupy influential seats in great Universities and even Theological
Schools, do not shrink from impeaching the New Testament record touching the
Virgin Birth of the Lord Jesus, His resurrection from the dead, and His promise
of one day returning to this earth in majesty and power. One cannot renounce
the Scriptures of the Old Testament without relaxing his hold, sooner or later,
on the New.
Christ is the center of all
Scripture, as He is the center of all God’s purposes and counsels. The four
evangelists take up the life and the moral glory of the Son of Man, and they place
it alongside of the picture of the Messiah as sketched by the prophets, the
historical by the side of the prophetic, and they show how exactly the two
match. So long as the Four Gospels remain unmutilated and trusted by the people
of God, so long is the doctrine of the Bible’s supreme authority assured.
God spoke to the fathers in the
prophets: He now speaks to us in His Son whom He hath made Heir of all things.
In either case, whether by the prophets or by the Son, the Speaker is God.
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