The prophets and kings of the Old Testament. A series of sermons preached in the chapel of Lincoln's Inn

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Preface To The Thied Edition

The dear and honoured friend to whom the First Edition of this book was dedicated is gone to his rest. If it had been a polemical treatise^ I could not have borne to associate his name with it at first ; I should leave it now without the sanctity which his memory gives to it. Since I regarded the Kings and Prophets of Israel as the subjects of a divine education, as the expounders of that education to their nation and to all nations, I felt that I had some title to ask his sympathy with it. For no one more delighted to contemplate them in that aspect ; they were never to him merely interesting figures of a bygone age ; they were his personal friends, who helped him to bear the burden of his own thoughts and his own time. As his conversation had done much to give me this living, human interest in the characters of Scripture, — a human interest not separate from their relation to the divine Teacher, but the consequence of it, — I felt that the publication of such a book as this was a fit opportunity for acknowledging my manifold obligations to him.

Yet many who knew and loved him may consider that there was some incongruity in presenting a volume specially national to Mr. Erskine. He cared xvi PREFACE TO THE THIED EDITION.

little for politics. When he spoke of a divine Education, he meant, unquestionably, the Education of individuals — the various processes by which they are led out of darkness, and through darkness, into light. It was this Education which he rejoiced to trace in the lives of others and in his own. It was because he felt in himself, and saw in others, how imperfectly the Education had attained that end to which it was, nevertheless, always pointing, that he resisted as immoral and atheistical all theories which limited it to the threescore years and ten of our earthly pilgrimage. Now, I had learnt — partly from Coleridge's "Statesman's Manual '^ — to consider the Prophets of Israel especially as Politicians; as men who were profoundly concerned in the well-being and continuity of their nation; who watched with intense anguish the influences which were detaching its present from its past, and both from the future ; who believed that it would be held together, through all generations, amidst all its crimes and its follies, by Him who is, and was, and is to come. The false gods, the idols of sense and of fancy, the corrupt likenesses of men's selfish fears and longings, which hindered Israelites from trusting in the Unseen and Everlasting Lawgiver, and Judge and Teacher, — ^who alone made them a people, — ^inspired these seers with unspeakable horror ; only in the conviction that the idols would be abolished, that the Righteous King would prove Himself to be supreme, could they find any comfort. This faith, it seems to me, was essentially national. There was implied in it the vision of a Society for all Nations ; one in which each particular Nation should enjoy its own proper life, and should fulfil its own purpose in

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PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. xvu

the divine Economy. But it was not what learned men in our day call Semitic ; it was Israelitic strictly and simply.

That thoughts of this kind did not take much hold of Mr. Brskine, I knew. It often struck me that if he could have entered into them, he would have had greater influence over his Presbyterian countrymen; he would have understood better what their old Covenant signified; he would have been regarded less as a mere protestant against the exclusiveness of their Calvinism; his idea of God, as an Educator, would have quickened many conceptions of Him as a Ruler and a Judge which had become petrified in their minds. I was much possessed by / this feeling when I first published this book. It has

become deepened in me while I have considered, in reference to recent controversies about the Union of Church and State, the theories of a distinguished divine whom Mr. Brskine reverenced and loved for the geniality of his character and the warmth of his heart, whom Scotland regards as one that made her old theology in some degree palatable, or at least tolerable, to the philosophers and economists of this generation.

The defence of Establishments which Dr. Chalmers put forth in his London Lectures between thirty and forty years ago, must have received many a useful correction^ even a severe commentary, from the zeal and struggles of the writer's latter years. These may have modified greatly the influence of it on his own countrymen. But for those to whom the Lectures were addressed, — ^for our parties in the South, — ^his apology had, and has still, many attractions. For (1) taking the law of Supply and Demand as the proper rule for

A* xviii PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

Government in dealing with other commodities, he pleaded a special exemption for the commodity called Eeligion. That being disagreeable to the tastes of men, and yet necessary for their health, needed the State bounty and encouragement which it was right to withdraw from com, and meat, and articles of clothing, these being general objects of desire. Such a proposition at once commended itself to the ordinary Conservative who maintains that Religion is needful for the preservation of decency and of property, and to those of the evangelical school who build their theology upon human depravity. However difficult it might be for the last to reconcile the theory of Dr. Chalmers with the general success of their preaching and the special success of his own, it was too much in harmony with the fundamental article of their creed to be rudely tested by facts. (2) He was in agreement with a majority of High Churchmen and many Dissenters, in his estimate of the State as a body which might, when it was under pious influences, do service to Religion, but which had no sacredness or divinity of its own. (3) His theory met the opinion of a majority of what are called the liberal or broad Churchmen, inasmuch as it only contended for the State patronage of some form of Religion, the particular form, subject to certain conditions, being indifEerent.

So many hostile sentiments were enlisted in favour of this method of presenting the question, that one could not have wondered if it had been generally accepted as the only true issue on which the parties were to join and the controversy to be decided, even though it had been brought forward by a far less eloquent, popular and devout thinker than Dr. Chalmers.

PRBPAOB TO THE THIED EDITION. xix

But tliis theory has undergone a severe shock. The Protestant Establishment in Ireland was the true exemplification of it. That was an instance — ^perhaps the only complete one in Europe — of a religion selected by the State, and set up under its protection. Many admirable reasons could be given why the State, for its own protection, and for the education of the Irish people, was bound to create this Establishment and to maintain what it had created. But it could not. The disunion between Church and State, which was the consequence of the experiment, was too palpable — ^too terrible; at whatever risks it must be abandoned. We may contemplate those risks with some trembling ; but they are inevitable. What rests on the sand of a mortal policy must fall down.

The ' Policy ^ which overthrew the Irish Establishment may, Mr. Miall thinks, be applied to the Union of Church and State in England. Of course, the policy of ' Cabinets of Churchmen,^ followed or not followed by ' a party of Dissenters,' will be applied, in all possible ways, to this Union. If it is not a real one — not one grounded in the order of God, in the constitution of things — ^it will come to naught ; no calculations of Statesmen or Churchmen will uphold it. But those who have learnt from the Old Testament to see in a nation the mightiest testimony for the righteous Grod, and for His government over the world; those who have learnt from the New Testament to look upon the Church as no artificial fabric, but as the great witness for the Unity of Man in the Son of Man — as essentially Catholic, and therefore as the sustainer of the life of each nation; — ^those who believe that the Church cannot

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be separated from the Nation without becoming a narrow and cruel sect, or a mere aggregation of sects ; those who beUeve that the nation which tries to stand by itself must renounce its humanity as well as its divinity, must reduce itself into a mere trading company; they will trust in God to shew that what has been built with ^ bricks for stone, with slime for mortar,' by whatever name we call it — religious or secular — ^must perish; that His word, however we may please to describe it as merely of the earth, must endure. If the Kingdom of Heaven is a merely future kingdom, reserved in some distant star for some happy individuals, rulers or people have a right to declare that it is no concern of theirs. If it is an Eternal Kingdom, by which all the acts of Monarchs, Nobles, Clergymen, Shopkeepers, Beggars are governed and judged, it will make its power felt though all High Churchmen and Low Churchmen, Conformists and Nonconformists, Conservatives and Liberals, agree to break its bonds asunder and to cast away its cords from them.

OAMBBIDOB! : JiMMj 1871.