The world's greatest classic

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The World’s Greatest Classic n

II What Does the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures Mean? 29

II What Does The Inspiration Of The Holy Scriptures Mean?

Daniel Webster, being asked upon one occasion how he succeeded in having such clear and transparent ideas on every subject, which he discussed, replied, “By attention to definition.” Is not the cause of many distorted conceptions of Biblical truths and misapprehensions of Christian doctrines due to inadequate attention to definitions? There is a class of writers who speak of inspiration in a loose, misleading sense, as equivalent to great intellectual endowment or genius. They see no difference between the inspiration of Moses and Solon, David and Burns, Solomon and Shakespeare, Isaiah and Milton, except it may be in degree. What do we mean by inspiration when we speak of the writers of the Bible? Biblical inspiration is the extraordinary presence of the Holy Spirit in and with the sacred writers in the entire work of writing by which they were qualified to give a record of the matters which God designed them to communicate free from error. This being so, the inspiration of the writers of the 29

Bible differs from the intellectual illumination possessed by such great geniuses as Newton, Bacon and Shakespeare who penetrated deeper and saw farther into the hidden causes of natural phenomena and the secret workings of the human heart than ordinary minds, both in kind and degree. No man of intelligence and candor can pass from the writings of Shakespeare which by general consent have been placed in the forefront of the world’s literature to the Bible without feeling that the difference between them is one of kind as well as degree.

It may clear this subject of much of the obscurity which has gathered around it if we carefully and sharply distinguish inspiration from those things with which it is too often confounded, but from which it essentially differs. Inspiration differs from revelation. The subject matter of the Bible is derived from two sources; it consists of truths directly and immediately revealed by the Holy Spirit to the minds of the writers and of events which fell under their own observation, or which they learned through various channels — events which were known to others as well as to them. God, for instance, revealed to Moses the order of creation from chaos to cosmos, and the nature and form of the religion he was to teach the Hebrews, describing its elaborate ritualism down to the minutest detail. But when Moses narrates the character of the departure of the Hebrews out of Egypt and describes the wilderness through which they subsequently passed, he states facts and describes scenes which were known to multitudes of others as well as to him. Paul received the gospel which he preached and an account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper by revelation, but when he narrated the supernatural circumstances connected with his conversion, he described things which others had witnessed as well as he. Between these two things which constitute the subject matter of the Bible — the direct and immediate disclosures by God of truth previously unknown to the mind, and the narrative of events which had occurred on the earth before the eyes of men — there is a vast and obvious difference, but inspiration has to do with the written record of both alike.

Moses and Paul were infallibly guided in narrating the historic events which were known to others as well as to them and also in recording the truths which had been directly revealed to them. The function of inspiration is to transmit an infallible record of those truths and events which God designed for the instruction and guidance of mankind, whether they were revelations from heaven or the history of events which occurred among men. It does not follow from this that every statement contained in the Bible is either inspired or true ; or that every action recorded is stamped with the Divine approval. Care should be exercised to distinguish between what the Bible records and what the Bible inculcates. The Book of Job contains the speeches of God, Satan, Job and his friends, but neither Satan, Job nor his friends spoke by inspiration. The insinuations and accusations of Satan were false. The speeches of Job’s friends were built on false premises and consequently reached conclusions which God condemned. Because we believe that Rabshakeh delivered the speech recorded in II Kings 1 8th Chapter, and Festus delivered the speech given in the 25th Chapter of the Acts, it does not follow that we must believe that they spoke by inspiration. All inspiration does is to assure us with infallible certainty that these persons are correctly reported and that they uttered the sentiments attributed to them. So the fact that the conduct of Gehazi in following Naaman and asking him for gifts Elisha had refused, and the treachery of Judas in betraying the Son of God to death are portrayed in the Bible does not stamp their actions with divine approval. Inspiration simply assures us that these men acted as they are represented.

Inspiration does not mean verbal dictation. There are specimens of verbal dictation in the Bible. Doubtless in the Decalogue we have the very words which Jehovah uttered on Mount Sinai and then wrote on slabs cut from the granite rocks of Horeb. But the instances of verbal dictation are few. The minds of the writers of the Bible were not passive when inspired. They were not in the hands of the Holy Spirit as the unconscious instrument is in the hands of the musician who causes it to send forth whatever sounds he pleases. The Holy Spirit was in them and with them guiding their minds, stimulating their memories without interfering with their conscious freedom, or destroying their individual idiosyncrasies. This is seen in the fact that the different writers differ so widely in style. The style of Isaiah differs as much from the style of Paul as the style of Bishop Butler in his “Analogy” differs from Addison in the “Spectator.”

Inspiration is not to be confounded with personal holiness. Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar were bad men and yet they received supernatural communications from God as well as Abraham and Joseph who were distinguished for their piety. Although Balaam was a bad man yet once he was inspired and compelled to act as the mouthpiece of Jehovah and utter sublime prophecies in regard to the approaching conquests and future glory of the Hebrews at the very moment he had been hired by their enemy to curse them. Inspiration simply renders a man when he speaks as

God’s representative infallible so that whether he foretells some future event or narrates an historic fact, or teaches a doctrine, or inculcates a duty, what he says is free from error or mistake.

The inspiration of the Bible does not involve the inspiration of the translators. Previous to the invention of printing, copies of the Scriptures could only be multiplied by the pen. Even though the utmost care was exercised in the transcription of manuscript, mistakes might and did creep into these copies. The translation of these copies from the Hebrew and Greek tongues into the Latin, English, German and other languages was a human work performed by fallible men. The acknowledged existence of such inaccuracies in the common text has led to repeated revisions of the Scriptures. Inspiration is claimed only for the autograph text, but in the revisions that have been made in the light of recent progress in archaeology, philology and Biblical criticism, not a single truth or vital doctrine of Christianity has been disturbed. Only verbal inaccuracies incidental to the work of transcription have been discovered.

The proofs of the inspiration are numerous and varied. It will be sufficient to indicate a few of them. We have the testimony of our Lord Himself in regard to both the Old and the New Testaments. In His discussions with the Jews and in His teachings, He appealed to the Old Testament in a way which implied that He considered it divine in its origin and authoritative in its utterance. He urged His hearers to search the Scriptures affirming that they portrayed His character and foretold His work. “Had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me.” To His opponents who propounded to Him a question in the hope of entangling Him: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures.” This passage read in its connection shows that He regarded the Scriptures as authoritative and infallible. This same truth He affirmed in the strongest terms to His disciples subsequent to His resurrection. To the two disciples whom He joined as they journeyed to Emmaus, He said: “O fools and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken; Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” And to the assembled apostles in the upper room in the evening of the day that He rose from the dead, He said: “These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms concerning Me. Then opened He their understandings that they might understand the Scriptures.” It is unnecessary to multiply citations to show that Christ affirmed the inspiration of the Old Testament. He is not less explicit in regard to the inspiration of the New Testament. When He commissioned His apostles to go out into the world as His ambassadors, He said to them: “When they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak but the spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” Thus He affirms that when the apostles were called to defend His cause they would be miraculously guided by the Holy Spirit. And in His farewell discourse delivered on the eve of His crucifixion, He said: “The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.” “He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak; and He will show you things to come.” If these words mean anything, they teach that the apostles were under the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit, both in narrating past events and in recording things which were to be revealed to them.

The apostles also affirmed the inspiration of the Old Testament and declared that what its writers said God said. They asserted their own inspiration and God endorsed their claims, approved of their teachings by signs and wonders and miracles.

The unity of the Bible, the singleness of purpose which pervades it from beginning to end is another proof of its inspiration. All in it centers in one Person — that of the Redeemer, and has respect to one object — that of the redemption of the race from sin. The very fact that it was written by so many men, differing so widely in native endowment and culture, living in lands so greatly unlike and so many centuries apart, yet all dominated by the same purpose is a strong proof that they must have been under the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit. Although the Bible was not written for the purpose of teaching science, philosophy, ethnology or history, and when it touches upon these subjects it touches upon them incidentally, yet it is never in error on these points. Much of the Bible was written at a time when the most cultured, philosophic and scientific men in the world believed and taught absurd and childish theories in regard to the origin, nature and structure of the universe. Who kept the writers of the Bible from error so that their teachings are in harmony with the latest established facts in all these departments of progressive knowledge? The writers of the Old and the New Testament themselves, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Christian church in all ages reply that it was the Holy Spirit. The transforming and ennobling effect of its teaching upon individual and national character supports its lofty claims. Are not the nations which walk in its light in the vanguard of the world’s civilization? It is as easy to believe that human power called the matter of the universe out of the womb of nonentity, set the sun in the heavens and launched the stars in their orbits as that the Bible is simply and wholly human in its origin.

“Inspiration is a special energy of the Spirit of God upon the mind and heart of selected and prepared human agents which does not obstruct nor impair their native and normal activities, nor miraculously enlarge the boundaries of their knowledge except where essential to the inspiring purpose; but stimulates and assists them to the clear discernment and faithful utterance of truth and fact which could not otherwise have been known. By such direction and aid through spoken and written words in combination with any divinely ordered circumstances with which they may be historically interwoven, the result contemplated in the purpose of God is realized in a progressive revelation of His wisdom, righteousness and grace for the instruction and moral elevation of men. The revelation so produced is permanent and infallible for all matters of faith and practice, except so far as any given revelation may be manifestly partial, provisional and limited in its time and conditions, or may be afterwards modified or superseded by a higher and fuller revelation adapted to an advanced period in the redemption progress to which all revelation relates as its final end and glorious consummation.

“Inspiration is an influence within the soul, divine and supernatural, working through all the writers in one organized method, making of the many one, by all one book, the book of God, the book for man, divine and human in all its parts; having the same relation to all other books that the person of God has to all other men, that the church of the living God has to all other institutions.”

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The Gospel of John has been pronounced “The most original, the most impprtant, the most influential book in all literature.” Some of the greatest minds of Christendom, — Origen, the greatest Biblical exegete, Chrysostom, the most eloquent of the Greek Fathers, Jerome, the most scholarly, and Augustine the most influential of the Latin Fathers, Luther and Calvin, the most eminent of the Reformers, have all expressed themselves in the strongest terms of its matchless beauty and priceless worth.

We read a book with more interest when we know the life of the author. John was the son of Zebedee and Salome, probably their youngest son, and the brother of James, the first member of the Apostolic band to suffer martyrdom. Little is known of his father Zebedee, beyond the fact that he was a Galilean fisherman, who resided in the city of Bethsaida and was sufficiently prosperous to have hired servants to aid him in his business. He was so far in sympathy with the 40 religious movement of the time as to offer no objections to his sons giving up their business and becoming peripatetic disciples of Jesus. Salome, John’s mother, was a woman of deep religious convictions, a devoted follower of Jesus who contributed of her means for his support and one of the women who carried spices to his tomb. That she was not without ambition is seen in the nature of her request that her two sons might occupy positions of conspicuity in the Kingdom of Christ, one on the right hand and the other on the left hand. She is generally regarded as the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, thus making Jesus and John cousins. John was probably some ten years younger than Jesus. He first comes into notice as a scholar in the preparatory school of John the Baptist. But he was among the first to become a disciple of Jesus, not only a member of the Apostolic band, but also one of the favored three, and the most beloved of them all. He with his brother James and Peter alone witnessed the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration, that scene of highest exaltation in the life of our Lord; and also the scene of Gethsemane, that scene of deepest agony. He leaned on the breast of Jesus at the last supper, followed him to the court of Caiaphas, and was the only one of the Apostles present at the cross. He was the first of the Apostles on the morning of the resurrection to visit the empty tomb, having outrun Peter. Thus we see that he sustained the most intimate relation to Jesus during His entire public ministry.

In the Acts, John takes a minor part compared with Peter and Paul. He seems to have left Jerusalem sometime after the year 50. After the martyrdom of Paul, Ephesus became the scene and center of his labors. He was banished for a time to the barren rocky little isle of Patmos in the iEgean sea, and while there received those wondrous visions which he has embodied in the Apocalypse. According to the unanimous testimony of antiquity, he returned after his banishment to Ephesus, then “a center of Grecian culture, commerce, and religion” and there at an advanced old age died about the close of the first century, the precise year not being known.

Probably the character of no one of the great personages of the Bible has been more often misconceived or more frequently incorrectly portrayed than the “beloved disciple.” He has been too often regarded as a soft, tender almost femininely affectionate spirit, lacking masculine strength and positiveness. To see how wide this view is of the truth, we have only to recall the title which Jesus gave John and his brother before their spirits were tamed, — “Boanerges,” “Sons of thunder” ; or his almost savage anger at a Samaritan village for refusing to receive his Master, and his desire like Elijah to call down fire from heaven to consume it; or the fact that he of all the apostles was the only one who dared to go to the cross. We have only to turn to his writings, whether in the Apocalypse “where the thunder rolls mighty against the enemies of Christ and His Kingdom,” or to his epistle where he hurls terrible anathemas against the false teachers of his day, to see that he was virile and stern when occasion requires as well as tender and loving. In his character we have masculine strength and an ardent temperament united to womanly purity, susceptibility and tenderness, all refined, ennobled and consecrated by divine grace.

What is the object and design of this gospel? We have four biographies of Jesus. When we come to study their several contents, we find that each one of the four evangelists had a specific object in writing his history and that that object determined the selection of the material he used. Matthew, the Jew, wrote, as internal and external evidences combine to show, chiefly for the Jews, the converted and dispersed people of his nation, and for those whose minds were open to conviction. As a consequence, we find that he traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, and sets him forth as the fulfiller of the Old Testament. His

44 The JVorld’s Greatest Classic

aim is to show by parable and miracle, by the life and sufferings of this Divine Person that He meets, matches and fulfills all the prophecies regarding the Messiah. Mark has evidently written for another class of people, and so he makes no mention of the genealogy of Jesus at all. He wrote for the Roman, a lordly and conquering people, who judged character by its achievements. Consequently, we find that Mark begins his history with the wonderful historic career of Jesus, sets Him forth graphically in his pages as the Son of God, anointed by the Holy Ghost, clothed with almighty power, the Great Wonder Worker under whose control and command were the invisible powers and forces of the universe. Luke, a man of Greek descent and Greek culture, wrote for the Greek converts. He therefore carries back the genealogy of Jesus, not to Abraham the founder of the Jewish nation as Matthew does, but to Adam the first man. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is set forth by parable and miracle, in his compassion and prayers, as the Son of Man, universal in His sympathies.

When we take up the Gospel of John and read it as a biography, the first thing that strikes us, whether we compare it with other gospels or with the requirements of a complete biography, is its omissions. There is not a word said in this gospel of the birth of Jesus, or His baptism, or of

His transfiguration. No mention is made of His Sermon on the Mount, or of that prayer taught the disciples which we have all learned in infancy. John does not record a single one of those matchless parables which sparkle and shine like jewels on the pages of the other gospels, nor does he record a single miracle of our Lord having cured one possessed with a demon. When we turn from the omissions to what is peculiar to this gospel, we find that it is strikingly differentiated from the other gospels. Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham, and Luke to Adam. Moses begins his record with the beginning of creation. But John sweeps back far beyond them all, back into the depths of the unmeasured eternities and declares that “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by Him.” There are only eight miracles recorded in this entire gospel. Six of these miracles are peculiar to John. Take these six miracles, — the turning of water into wine; the curing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda; the healing of the nobleman’s son; the restoring sight to the blind man; the raising of Lazarus from the dead; and the great draught of fishes, miracles which John alone records, — and examine them and you will find that they exhibit a higher manifestation of power than the miracles recorded in the other gospels. In the case of water turned into wine, we have the very nature of the substance with which he started changed into another substance without a word being spoken. In the case of the nobleman’s son, the youth was healed at a distance, without Jesus having seen him at all. In the case of the blind man, the power of vision was bestowed upon one who had been born blind! Lazarus was raised out of the grave after he had been there long enough for decomposition to have begun its work.

The Gospel of John is largely made up of the conversations, discourses and words of Jesus, almost an autobiography of God in the flesh. If John does not give us the Sermon on the Mount, he alone gives us the interview of Jesus with Nicodemus which is the gospel in miniature, and his conversation with the woman of Samaria. He also gives us His farewell address to His disciples which, in its sublimity and thrilling grandeur, stands matchless and alone in the whole realm of literature. If he does not report the prayer Jesus taught His disciples, he alone reports that prayer offered the night before His crucifixion in which the Eternal Son of God opens His heart to the invisible Father and carries us into the very holy of holies. John tells us himself why he wrote this gospel. He did not undertake to give a full and complete history of the life and deeds of Jesus. There were many things which He did in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book. But what he wrote was written that “ye may believe that Jesus is Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, ye may have life in His name.” John wrote not distinctly for the Jew or the Roman or the Greek, but for the converts of all nations, for Christians who had multiplied greatly during the last quarter of the first century.

Where and when was this gospel written? There are internal evidences that this gospel was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place in the year 70, and by one who was familiar with the topography of Jerusalem, the localities of Palestine, and the customs of the Jews. Take such statements as “Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem about fifteen furlongs off”; “He went forth over the brook of Kedron where was a garden”; “In the place where he was crucified there was a garden.” No doubt after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, many of these gardens were obliterated and the general aspect of the surrounding localities changed, for Titus cut down all the trees to make crosses to crucify the Jews. John, therefore, speaks of these places not as they were at the time when he wrote, but as they had been in the lifetime of Christ. Then he explains Jewish customs, as when he speaks at the marriage of Cana, of the water-pot being placed there “after the manner of the purifying of the Jews.” There is no ground for questioning the generally accepted opinion that John wrote his gospel in the city of Ephesus, sometime during the last ten years of the first century.

Go back in imagination to the time of John, and glance for a moment in thought at one feature in his special preparation for writing this crowning work of Revelation. Mary, the mother of Jesus, after the crucifixion, by the request of Jesus Himself, made her home with John. How often must He, who filled so large a place in the lives and thoughts of these two, have been the subject of their conversation! How much John must have learned from her concerning things which she had hid away in her heart and none knew but her, and which flashed additional light on what he knew! It is easy to picture to ourselves Mary and John sitting night after night talking over the past, he listening with tearstained face as she described events, narrated incidents, repeated sayings which through a period of thirty years occurred in the privacy of the home. May not some of the tender charm of this gospel be due to the fact that through it a mother’s heart speaks? It was after fifty years of meditation, when the other gospels had for years been in circulation, twenty or twenty-five years after all the other apostles were dead that John, in the mellow ripeness of old age but with intellectual powers unimpaired, under the illuminating influence of the Holy Spirit, wrote this Gospel.

Glance at an outline of the structure of this book. Without attempting any analysis of its contents, it may be said in passing that this gospel is divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction, and includes the first eighteen verses of the first chapter. In this introduction, Jesus is set forth as eternal in His existence, divine in His nature, the Creator of all things, and the revealer of God to man. The second part extends to the close of the twelfth chapter. It is the self-manifestation of Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Word in His life, teachings, and works, to the Jews, the Samaritans, and the Gentiles. John alone records the visit of the Greeks to Him on the last day of public ministry in the temple. The third part extends from the end of the twelfth chapter to the end of the seventeenth chapter, and embraces the closing interview of Jesus with His disciples, His farewell discourse and sacerdotal prayer. The fourth part includes the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth chapters, and contains an account of His betrayal, arrest, trial, condemnation, crucifixion and resurrection.

The fifth part is the epilogue and consists of the closing chapter. It contains His interview with His disciples on the lake shore subsequent to His resurrection, and His memorable conversation with Peter. This gospel of twenty-one chapters can be read with thoughtful deliberation in less than three hours.

This gospel which Wescott calls “the Divine Hebrew Epic” is preeminently and emphatically the Gospel of the Incarnation, that is of the perfect union of the human and the divine in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The theme is that “the Word was God,” and that “the Word became flesh” and dwelt in the midst of men. John begins his gospel with the preexistence of Jesus, “in the beginning” before creation or time “was the Word”; and he ends it with the adoration of this incarnate divine person, in the exclamation of the convinced Thomas “My Lord and my God.”

In the Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we have the history of a divine man. In the Gospel of John, we have the history of a human God. “I and my Father are one.” “He that hath seen me hath seen my Father.” “O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” It is the Gospel of love. It is in the fourth gospel alone we read that precious declaration which contains the essence of Christianity, “God so loved the word that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” In its pages, God is set forth as love, giving in the Incarnation and historic mission of His Son, the greatest possible proof of His love for mankind. It is the gospel which contains the new commandment, “Love one another.”