CONSERVATISM,

OR, BACK TO OUR BIBLES.

Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. John 6:68.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. The opening of Thy words giveth light. Psalm 119:105 and 130, R. V.

I

T is not my purpose in this closing discourse

on Isms, to waste your time and mine by considering the claims of "Higher Criticism"; though I have been asked by some to do so. Suffice it to say that the Church has no reason to fear the results of the criticisms of the Bible. And so long as the sixty or seventy "Higher Critics" are not agreed among themselves, and in fact not one of them holding the same views that he did a few years ago, thus making it easier for us to believe that in each individual case there are two "higher critics," than to believe there were two Isaiahs so long as this is so, we had better leave the subject alone. The late Doctor A. J. F. Behrends, of Brooklyn, made a thoughtful examination of the criticisms of the Bible, and shortly before his death published a book entitled "The Old Testament Under Fire." Among other things he said this of the higher critics: "The

swords have broken at the hilt, and the lances have snapped in the hands of those who have hurled them. The Scriptures are coming out of the smoke and fury of the battle without a scar, and without the smell of fire upon their garments." In another connection, he says of the Bible: "It is represented as the fixed and immovable center of Divine truth, forever settled in heaven. It provides the basis of an infallible certainty; just as the sun, by its invisible but constant and efficient energy, secures the stability of the planetary system. Such a basis there must be somewhere, if our religious convictions and hopes are to be anything more than the creations of individual and diseased fancy." Let us then come to our subject, in the conviction that the prophets and apostles knew more about the will of God and the Scriptures they wrote than the critics "who are on a still hunt for Elohists, and Jahvists, and Redactors." David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said: "The statutes of the Lord are right." Right as to authenticity; right as to history; right in ethics; right in doctrine. John, who knew the mind of his Master, said: "Thy Word is truth." Paul, a scholar among scholars, says: "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which. is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good

work." But, you say, these are simply declarations. How are we to know that the Bible is the product of the Infinite Mind?

The Bible Is Its Own Living Witness that It Came from God.-The Word of the Lord is not left to the mercy of our defenses. It does not need to be propped up with human arguments. It stands in the brightness of its own quenchless life. It breathes with the breath of the Holy Spirit. And what the breath of God has inspired, the breath of man can not blow out. It moves forward from beginning to end with a sincerity of purpose, with a devoutness of spirit, with a majestic mission, with a unity amid diversity which compels the conviction that it came from God. There is no other such book in the world. Like the sun, it shines with ancient and unborrowed ray. When we take into consideration the fact that the Bible was written by about forty men, whose lives covered a period of probably sixteen hundred years; when we think of its character, so grand in its revelations and so loving in its spirit; so sublime in its imagery, yet so plain and practical in its precepts; shining as it does in the zenith of our modern civilization, studied, loved and revered by the best people in the world, translated into more than 240 languages, circulated more widely than any hundred other books, it is its own witness that it is the product of an Infinite and Superintending Mind.

Our faith in it can not be a delusion, for we walk in its light and warmth as in that of the noonday

sun.

The Prophets and Apostles Disclaim Originality. For weak, sinful men, unaided by divine wisdom to have written such a book, so full of rebukes for their sins, abounding with such high ideals and sparkling with supreme wisdom, would have been more of a miracle than for God to clothe himself in human form and speak to humanity out of His own being. The writers of this book uniformly disclaim originality. One of the prophets says: "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and His Word was in my tongue.' Peter says: "The prophecy came not in old time, by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." Paul says: "I certify you, that the Gospel which was preached of me was not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." Were these men dishonest? Were they impostors? If so, why did not the people in their day, or in the century following, prove that they were? The Christian fathers who immediately succeeded the apostles, refer to them as men who were divinely inspired. Clement of Rome says: "Give diligent heed to the scriptures, the true sayings of the Holy Spirit." Justin Martyr says: "I think not that the words which you hear the prophet

speaking are uttered by himself; being filled with the Spirit, they are from the Divine Logos which moves him." Origen says: "The Sacred Books breathe the fulness of the spirit. There is nothing in the law or in the gospels which did not descend from the Divine Majesty." Such statements might be multiplied, showing that the leading thinkers and choicest spirits in the early days of Christianity felt that the apostles were what they claimed to be, the servants of God, who wrote as the Spirit moved them, and that such inspiration ceased with the last book of the New Testament, and that no man was to add to or take from the things written in this book of infallible authority.

The Literary Character of the Bible.-When we take into consideration the scholarship of the men who wrote the Bible, its literary character is proof that it has God for its author. Where in the realm of literature can you find anything more grand than expressions like these: "The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet." "He bowed the heavens also and came down, and darkness was under his feet." And again: "He looketh on the earth and it trembleth; he toucheth the hills and they smoke; who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and meted out. the heaven with a span; and comprehended the dust of the earth in a balance, and weighed the