The divine human in the Scriptures

Preface

A true faith in the Scriptures must have its strength in the Scriptures themselves. This would seem to be a proposition of the clearest reason. If the Bible be the word of God with a human voice, then must it speak to the human soul directly as no other word, no other voice, can speak. Too much have we relied on outward helps. Not casting away, then, but leaving behind our Apologies for the Bible, our Philosophies of the Bible, our Reconciliations of the Bible with Science, we should come directly to the Scriptures, with the rational as well as reverent belief, that if they are divine they must contain within themselves their own strong self-evidencing power. We would say to the young man disturbed with scepticism, Read your Bible. We would say to all who have difficulties which they honestly wish removed, Study the Scriptures, meditate therein by day and by night —

It is the only true and lasting cure of scepticism, whether for an individual or an age. It might be thought that there is some risk in the prescription, and doubtless it may be so with its first effects ; for the difficulties and stumbling-blocks may show themselves before the deep verities have begun to arrest and amaze the soul : but let there be perseverance, and the divine medicine will reveal its power ; " the sun of righteousness will at length arise with healing in its wings."

At no time, we believe, are such thoughts more important

IV PREFACE.

than at present. Faith is weakened by habitual reliance upon outward props, even when sound. The age, aud all serious minds of the age, are called to the inward study of the word itself. In the signs of the times we seem to hear the voice that came to Augustine in his memorable conversion-struggle in the garden, " Take up the book and read — take up the book and read." It seems to say to us with a new emphasis, ~E,pevvare rag ypacpdg, " Search the Scriptures," explore the Scriptures, there are hidden treasures there, there are living waters there ; study the Scriptures, they contain more than knowledge, the words they speak unto you, " they are spirit and they are life."

The above thoughts are not made directly the subject of the following book, but they suggestively pervade it, and may, therefore, justly occupy its prefatory page.

The writer would merely add, that the present volume has grown out of what was intended as an introduction to another work on the Figurative Language of the Scriptures, and which, with the divine permission, he hopes soon to give to the public. Some of the thoughts in such intended introduction were deemed worthy of being treated at greater length, and with more liberty. Hence the expansion which has resulted in the book here offered to the Church. It is hoped that it will be found to occupy that ground of our common Christianity which carries us above all narrow sectarianism. Whatever may be its defects, in other respects, it is believed to be evangelical, churchly, catholic in that true sense of Catholicism which is acknowledged by all true believers.

Chapter I

The Word — How used in Scripture — "Written — Incarnate — The Perfect Analogy — The Word of Truth — The Word of Life — The Term, "Son of Man"— The Pure Humanity of Christ— No Man ever so Human— The Humanity of the Written Word — Analogy in the Conception and Formation of each— The Divine in the Human— All Revelation Anthropopathic, whether in the Flesh or in Language.

The written Word — the incarnate Word.

It is no mere fanciful or verbal analogy that

connects these two ideas. This is shown by

the fact that there are passages of Scripture

where it is difficult to distinguish between

them, or to determine with certainty that

one of them is the exclusive sense, or that

both are not comprehended in one essential 2 and inseparable significance. There is the sloyog 'AXrjQeiag, and the Adyog Zwijc, the Word of Truth, and the Word of Life. " Of his will he begat us through the word of truth." Is it the written word here, that is, the truth conveyed in it as presented to the mind, or is it " the Word that became flesh," Christ in the soul, not as truth merely, but as a living power? the Word of Truth, the true Word — by a well-known Hebraism so common in the New Testament — the true Word in the sense of the real Word, the living Word, the tftiyvToq loyoq, or in-growing Word. So. also, " Sanctify them through thy truth, thy Word is truth." It is the rationalist's favorite text. In interpreting it he thinks only of truth, as the food of the intellect, and that, too, not always as Bible truth, but truth in general, reason, doctrine, knowledge, as the regenerating, soul-nurturing, sanctifying power. So is it most commonly taken, even by the soberest theologians ; but it is far from being certain that this is the right interpretation, or, at least, the only true interpretation of the language. It was not the favorite interpretation of the early Church ; it has not been the interpretation, at least the exclusive interpretation, of the most spiritually-minded in later times. '* Sanctify them," consecrate them, set them apart, in thij truth, iv %r\ alrj&da oov. It may be doubted whether iv is instrumental here, as commonly taken, or does not have a deeper significance, as in that inexhaustible language, tv nvtviiaii, iv Xqlotw. 11 Sanctify them in thy truth/' says the Redeemer, and then, as though to guard against human misapprehension of this intercessory pleading, the sentence is added, "Thy Word," 6 Aoyoo, 6 rrog, the Word that is thine, the Word that pre-eminently represents the Infinite Father, the " Image of the Invisible God," the Incarnate Word, that " is the truth,'7 the sanctifying truth, or the true sanctifying Word, by union to which men become holy, separate from the world, united

T II E I) I V 1 N E H UMAX to God, and "partakers of the Divine nature." It is the Word of Truth, or the true Word, not as a dogma, a thought, an intellectual verity, though in relation to the highest and most religious things, but an indwelling, energizing presence, — truth alive in the soul, entering into and constitutive of its ver}r being. The other — the rationalistic or dogmatic view — has also its evidence. The affirmation of the one aspect is not the denial of the other. Both may be united ; both may be regarded as inseparable parts of one idea, or the manifestation of the infinite in the finite ; for the highest truth we have is anthropopathic ; it is a representation to the sense, and in sense-conceptions, of the ineffable and the eternal that can be received in no other way. Thus it is that the Word of Truth and the Word of Life may be regarded as essentially connected ; but certainly, if we attempt to separate them logically in our minds, as we may do, care should be taken not to convert the living aspect into the figure, and make the naked, abstract truth the higher and more powerful reality.

The Written, the Incarnate Word. It may be called analogy, but the analogy, the proportion, is perfect. As the divine to the human nature in Christ, so is the divine thought, the divine life in the Scriptures, to their human form. It is perfect in kind, perfect in degree ; it is analogous, ava Xoyov, throughout. In both we have the infinite in the finite, the divine in the human, the ineffable in the forms of sense, the essential as exhibited in the phenomenal, — the absolute, the eternal, the unconditioned as represented in the relative, the temporal, the flowing images of time and space. So in degree ; the thought is carried to its ultimate in each. Christ is not only human, but most intensely human. Never was there a man so purely man as this "second man, the Lord from heaven." Never man spake so humanly, felt so humanly, loved so humanly, lived so b THE DIVINE HUMAN

humanly, died so humanly. Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, he had a purer humanity than any of the other sons of Adam, inasmuch as it was free from that demoniac adulteration which had been produced by sin. Hence is he so emphatically called, and so delights to call himself, the Son of Man. The term has more meaning than it seems at first view to possess. In the Syriac, the Saviour's native dialect, it is the name for humanity itself. Bar nosho, the Son of Man, is man generically ; the filial part of the compound denoting the identity, and continuance, and purity of the generic idea. Hence is he appointed to judge humanity (John v., 27), " because he is the Son of Man." It is only from Christ's most perfect manhood that we rise to the best thought of his divinity. He could not have been so perfect a man, so complete in his finiteness, had he not been also divine and infinite. The mystery no mind can solve ; the fact is not only most glorious for our apprehension, but the ground of all our hope. This is more fully dwelt upon in a subsequent chapter ; it is here stated as an introductory or ground idea. And so of the written Word. The analogy is without a flaw. No book is so purely human as the Bible ; there is no one in which the actors are so purely men. Its language, idioms, figures, are all addressed to our most intense, and therefore most universal humanity. This is proof of its divinity. Nothing but an inspiration in the human, breathing through it, penetrating and sounding every part of it, could have so brought out the human. Its language, therefore, whilst most intensely ours, is, of all language, the most divine. The philosophic or scientific styles of speech would have betrayed their purely earthly origin, by their partial, their one-sided, and therefore false anthropopathism ; for it would have been anthropopathism still, though not the divine anthropopathism of the Scriptures. The very attempt to get above humanity would have produced a distorted and inhuman representation. The Scriptures, like Christ, come down to us — come down to us perfectly; they occupy the common plane of our nature. Hence their language, if inspired at all, is inspired throughout. The very words and figures are full of the divine breath, and are therefore to be searched for the divine thought, the divine emotion, that fills out this perfect humanity.

Thus, too, is the analogy perfect in respect to the conception and generation of both Words, or both these expressions of the divine in human form. Christ's humanity was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary. It was thus a true humanity, linked in its life-source with our humanity, and growing out of it. We can conceive of an artificial or mechanicallyformed Christ, — if we may use the strange expression, — such as was fancied by some of the old heretics who denied the miraculous conception. We can think of a new being,

IN THE SCRIPTURES.

made outwardly and inwardly like the human race — so like that sense and thinking could discover no difference — something like Agassiz's fancy in respect to separate Adams or centres of creation. But such a humanity, if we may call it so, would not have been our humanity. Such a being would not have been our brother, any more than an inhabitant of the remotest visible star. There would be no common point in time and space in which his life could be numerically one with ours, or ours one with his. There could have been no abiding generic unity. Such a human, we say, would not be our human. And so, on the other hand, can we conceive of an artificial written word, or a mechanical inspiration of the Scriptures. It might have been written on the sky, or, what would have been very much the same thing, by men employed, not as thinking, feeling, conceiving, in all their freedom as men, but as outwardly moved, as amanuenses or involuntary utterers. But this would not have been 2* our Scriptures, our revelation, our most human as well as most divine book. It would not have been an inspiration in the human, and through the human. Its thought must link itself with our thought, its emotion with our emotion, as light from light, and life from life. Through the divine " o'ershadowing " power it is conceived in human feeling, nurtured in human thinking, fashioned in human imagery, and brought out at last in human language. Thus, as ultimate products, and through this linked series of generation, the very words are inspired, not merely the thoughts or emotions, as though these could be separated from the words.

For how can there be feelings that do not fashion to themselves images, and how can there be images in the mind that do not arrange themselves in thoughts, and how can there be thoughts that do not take the form of words ! The process is inseparable. The first inspiration, or inbreathing, has in it, not only virtually, but in design, all the rest. Thus the very words of Scripture are inspired. This is the great truth, the living truth, that forms the only basis of any hopeful interpretation. The language is what God meant it to be. It is his chosen method, his best method, for revealing himself to human minds. As the Infinite must be unknown, unthought, or clothe himself in the forms of the finite, so this is the form he has selected as the most human, the most perfect in its finiteness. He has taken this rather than the style of science and philosophy, even as Christ came in the purest and most universal humanity instead of that false anthropomorphism that might have been preferred by the more ambitious forms of human thought. Our philosophy may not like the word ; there is none, perhaps, to which the common irreligious thinking affects to be more opposed ; but we cannot escape from the thing itself ; and why should we wish to escape from it ? All religion, all revelation, is a divine anthropopathism. No other is conceivable. The Written Word, the Incarnate Word, however we may regard them as differing in rank, are analogous manifestations of the same condescension in the Infinite and Ineffable Personality.

Chapter II

The Language of the Bible Divinely Chosen — Principle of Interpretation — " No Iota of the Law shall fail " — Patristic Interpretation— The Great Bible Thoughts, then new— The Fathers found them everywhere — The Modern Yiew of the Scriptures as a Fragmentary Book — Traditional Interpretation — Christ in the Scriptures — The Hero-Messiah — Hieronymus and Matthew Henry — De Wette and Davidson — The Professional Scholiast and the true Homeric Interpreter — The Unity of the Scriptures — Modern Interpretation finds too little in them.

The previous thoughts furnish the ground of a most important hermeneutical position. The canon and its preamble may be thus stated — The language of the Bible is divinely chosen — its words and figures are designed to be just what they are ; ' ' eloquia Domini, eloquia casta, argentum igne examination, probatum terra, purgatum septuplum ; the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tried, seven times refined" We may therefore search them, and rationally search them, for a divine significance. ]NTot one jot or tittle of it shall fail to reward our study. Christ has given us assurance of this ; the Light of the World hath told us that the Scriptures are every where full of Him and His salvation. He himself found rich meanings lying under words and forms of speech in which the Sadducean rationalists of his day saw nothing. We may, therefore, expect to discover in them " treasures new and old.7' We shall see " wondrous things out of the divine law," and these will be, not merely conceits of our own minds, but thoughts substantial, living ideas, having in themselves evidence that they are true fruits, not of any mere human thinking, but of the tuxpwoq IdyoQ, the " iiigr 'owing word," the life-giving word that saves, that is, heals, makes sound, our souls, — the icord that coessentiates itself with our spiritual life, in distinction from the knowledge that lies only in the sense and memory, or, at the utmost, only lodges in the chambers of the speculative intellect, instead of entering into the very growth of the spiritual constitution.

Interpretations grounded on such an idea may, indeed, be visionary. Although there is a divine warrant for thus studying the Scriptures, there is none for the individual human infallibility. Even as fancies, however, if they be but the fancies of a sanctified imagination, they may still have about them the holy fragrance of a true original inspired conception, and thus, in fact, be nearer the inner truthfulness, than many a more scientific exegesis to which, critically, no objection could be taken. This latter remark holds true of many an interpretation of the earlier Fathers that is held in contempt by the modern scholiast. The Cross, the Regeneration, the Church, the Few Life, the Spiritual Temple, the New Humanity, the New Jerusalem or City of God, — these glorious ideas then so fresh and wonderful, together with their sacramental signs, they found in many a text where the modern exegesis finds them not, and where we are compelled to say, the modern exegesis is correct, dry, hard, and sometimes, even worthless, as it may seem to be. Thus Hieronymus, in his Commentaries, often finds in the Scriptures what is not there logically, or even metaphorically, — at least in the particular passage to which he assigns it. Yet even in such cases, the interpretation is but the vivid outgrowth of true Biblical ideas ; that is, of ideas that men would never have had without the Bible. They are living seeds sown in the souls of holy men from the "ingrowing word," and they come out every where, often irregularly and in wild luxuriance. The very extravagance of their germination shows, not only the fertility of the new soil, but the rich life that was in the original seminal power. Is it irrational to think that more of this true power of the word may be learned from minds in such a state than from the colder hermeneutics, even though the latter may give us the more correct interpretation of particular passages ?

These great Bible thoughts, as we have said, were then new and wonderful. The shadows of them had been forecast from the sequestered Jewish religion, but their morning splendors were then just rising above the world's horizon. Hence it is not strange that these earliest Christian writers found them almost every where, lying under many a figure and prophecy where a cooler, and, perhaps, a less truly Bible-instructed imagination, fails to detect their appearance. There was to Christ a light in the Old Testament that the blinded Sadducee saw not. Paul had some key to the interpretation of the older Scripture utterly unknown to the rationalist, whether Jewish or Christian, and the use of which seems nrystical even to true lovers of the Sacred Writings. And so these holy men, in the early days of the Christian life, had a method of interpretation which we should study closely before we venture rashly to reject it as wholly fanciful or absurd. Some of their errors are very obvious ; we see very plainly where they were wrong ; and yet how often is even the coldest reader compelled to wonder at the exceeding aptness of the suggested thought, the strange coincidence of idea, although he himself, perhaps, would never have found it, never even suspected its existence.

Is there not some tenable ground lying between the free fancies of the earlier, and the exceeding dryness of the most modern interpretation ? We think there is, and that the Christian mind will, ere long, find it. We must make more of the Scriptures, or give them up. One thing is certain : this rationalistic interpretation, so called, cannot long support a living Christianity. We say it even of the better kind, such as that of the school of Stuart, Davidson and others, for whom we feel all respect. Some of these are pious as well as learned men, but their piety was nurtured under a Scriptural training quite different from that which they are now introducing. The traditional interpretation of the Church, the living word, has entered into their spiritual growth, and they cannot wholly get rid of it. In others, who have had less or more of this old spiritual manna, the barrenness is becoming palpable and painful. The school of which we speak has great learning, and, in one sense, great value, but that value is only relative. It must rapidly depreciate unless regarded as subordinate to something else held in reserve. Without this, its philological interest, now its greatest charm, must soon give way to some superseding intellectual advance, and then there comes a soul-famine, or we must go back to the old traditional views of "Christ and his kingdom " as underlying all Scripture. We must revive that idea of which the Patristic exegesis is so full, and in which some contemned modern commentators, the "preaching commentators," as they are called, so greatly abound, — the idea of the Greater Temple, the higher spiritual house, that the Greater Son of David was to build for the Lord. We must take again, as the key of all right interpretation, that ancient myth, if any prefer to call it so, of the Hero Messiah, who is announced in the very beginning of Genesis, the suffering, warring, conquering Messiah, whose last great battle with the foe is so graphically described in the closing book of Revelations. It is all along one divine plan :

We trust it is not pedantic or irreverent to accommodate to the immeasurably higher idea this introductory language of the great heathen poet, " The purpose of God has been ever receiving its accomplishment since the ancient day when they two first engaged in strife^ the dark Power of Evil, and He who was to become the Woman's promised Seed, our Prince I mm ami el, Son of Man, and Son of God — He of whom it is said that even from the beginning: of earth's creation his "delight was with the children of Adam." It is, in fact this sacred fiov\r\ ever receiving its fulfilment, that proves the Bible, with all its strange divisions into separate rhapsodies, as they may seem to some, to be indeed the work of one mind and on one great scheme. It is "the Book of the Wars of the Lord," of the great Theophanies, of the Supernatural in Humanity ; it is the History of Redemption, no longer now the critics' fragmentary Iliad, but the most unique as it is immeasurably the grandest of epics.

"All things that are written in the Law, and in the Psalms, and in the Prophets concerning me, must be fulfilled.'7 This was the ground of the Patristic interpretation. Such was the ground of all interpretation esteemed Christian until a very late period. The most undisputed tradition of the universal Church, the consent of Latin, Greek and Protestant exegesis, the verdict, we may say, of an eighteen hundred years Christianity, is not to be rashly set aside without risking the very idea of a supernatural revelation, and running into utter despair of any light from above.1 If an idea so cardinal, so central, so catholic, is given up as false, where is there another in which we can expect to find the unity of the Bible, and without unity, who can believe it to be, in any sense, worth believing the Book of the Lord.

The interpretations of the Fathers may be often unbiblical in their special applications, and yet the product of a biblical spirit having, as a whole, a truer view of the mind of God and Christ in revelation than is entertained by the piece-meal critic who so proudly scorns what he is pleased to style their defective knowledge of hermeneutics. They do, indeed, often find Christ where he is not in the words; their boasting contemners do, doubtless, more frequently overlook him where he is really present in the spirit. We may admit that Hieronymus is often wrong, oftener, perhaps, than the interpreter of the modern school ; we may concede that Mathew Henry is less learned (so it is the fashion to speak of this humble Christian,) than De Wette or Davidson : still may we believe, on the deepest and most rational grounds, that both the Latin Father and the Puritan divine had really a closer communion, of thought as well as feeling, with the great Biblical ideas, and were, on this account, with all their errors, whether of knowledge or fancy, in the truest and profoundest sense, the best interpreters. The enthusiastic lover of Homer may often see in his favorite poet what the cooler scholiast disproves, and correctly disproves ; still we do not hesitate to maintain not only that our rhapsodist has more of the Homeric spirit but that he is also — in respect to all great and essential ideas — the best guide to the Homeric thought. The scholiast, or the more modern critic of a certain school, may have a keen eye for the digamma and the metrical hiatus, he may be sharp in scenting out anachronisms and supposed interpolations, he may bring out the best senses of some long hidden archaisms, he may clear

24 T H E J) I V I N E H U M A N

up many an interesting matter of ancient custom, or of ancient geography ; but the other has found more than this, even that without which all the rest is comparatively worthless, and to which the professional scholiast may be wholly blind ; he has discovered in Homer that which makes him love him and study him intensely for his own sake, and not merely as a professional anno tat or who would be equally laborious and correct on any other ancient book in which there might be a similar professional interest. The wondrous bard has raised his whole soul to a higher sphere of thought ; he is no longer the mere scholiast ; he believes in Homer ; and this faith carries him over all the difficulties that annotators have ever raised in respect to his matter or his text. Such enthusiastic admiration may have had, in some respects, a blinding effect ; it may have produced a disposition to discover too much, or what may not really exist, but it has also led to that communion with the very soul of the great

IN THE SCKIPTUKE8. 25

poet, to that interior thought or spiritual sense, as we may truly call it, without which scholia on Homer are of little more value than though they had been wasted on the most miserable of his Byzantine imitators.

We believe that this most modern interpretation is finding far too little in the Scriptures. Given by the divine mind, these holy books must have in them a depth and a fulness of meaning that the human intellect can never exhaust. If they are holy books, if they are Sacrce Scriptures, as even the neologist conventionally styles them, then can there be thrown away upon them no amount of study, provided that study is ever chastened by a sanctified, truth-loving spirit, that rejoices more in the simplest teaching, and in the simplest method of teaching from God, than in the most lauded discoveries of any mere human science. Is it in truth the word of God — is it really God speaking to us ? then the feeling and the conclusion which it necessitates are no hyperboles. We cannot 3 go too far iii our reverence, or in our expectation of knowledge surpassing in kind, if not in extent. The wisdom of the earth, of the seas, of the treasures hidden in the rocks and "all deep places," of the subterranean world, or of the stars afar off, brings us not so nigh the central truth of the Heavens, the very mind and thought of God, as one parable of Christ, or one of those grand prophetic figures through which the light of the infinite idea is converged, whilst, at the same time, its intensity is shaded for the tender human vision.

Chapter III

Verbal Inspiration — How is it to be understood ? — The Mechanical Theory — Inspiration through Human Emotions and Conceptions — The Divine in the Human throughout — The Last Product inspired as well as the First — In what Sense the Words and Figures sometimes more specially designed than the Thought itself — Trite Truths — Old Truths of the Conscience Recoined in new and striking Language — Difference between Moral and Scientific Truth — Extent or Comprehension sufficient in the one, Intensity demanded in the other — Algebraic Symbols — The Love and Wrath of God — The colder Ethical Language — Even this contains Figures, but they are dead — Illustrations — The Bare Formula, " God is averse to Sin," compared with the Burning Scriptural Language — The Tender Language of the Bible — Its Intense Humanity — Can the Infinite reveal Himself, at all in Language ?