The church before the flood

Front matter

THE

CHURCH BEFORE THE FLOOD.

THE REV. JOHN CILMHING, D. D.

Preface

One loves to trace the stream upward to its fountain. Christianity was first preached in Paradise. Adam and Eve were the first believers. Abel was the first Christian martyr. They lived and loved, . and prayed and praised, in the grey and misty dawn. They looked forward and upward to the rising of the Sun of righteousness, and rejoiced in the increasing light. In their faith and hope, the " woman's seed " was all and in all. By faith Enoch and Noah walked with God. These ancient saints did not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from the mouth of God.

The Church I ever regard, not as an ecclesiastical hierarchy — Episcopate or Presbyter ate — however useful these features may be in their place, but as the company of faithful Christians, the congregation vi PREFACE.

of all believers. On earth it has been sometimes hidden, often few, occasionally visited with exterminating persecution, yet never extinguished. " Lo, I am with you always to the end of the world," is her inherited promise. "Where two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," is her experience. " I give unto them eternal life, and none shall pluck them out of my hand," is her safety. All our visible churches are merely provisional or temporary arrangements, till that which is perfect comes ; that is, till " the manifestation of the sons of God." Then that which is provisional shall be done away, and that which is perfect will alone remain.

It is in vain that we belong to the outer andvisible, if we be strangers to the inner and true church. May we feel it personally important to edify the latter, and less and less our interest or duty to quarrel about the former.

The author hopes to present in another volume The Church of the Patriarchs, as soon as he can spare time to arrange it.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE BIBLE 1

H. GENESIS AND GEOLOGY . . 41

Chapter I. The Bible

" Hast thou ever heard Of such a book ? The Author, God himself ; The subject, God and man, salvation, life, And death — eternal life — eternal death."

" All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." — 1 Tim. iii. 15, 16.

" Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our earning." — Rom. xv. 4.

We have in the existing church what the Church before the Flood had not, a written rule Df faith. This is an inestimable privilege. ;f God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by bis Son.' 5 We have all that Adam, and Enoch, and Noah had, and very much more, far more clearly revealed. In this introductory chapter

B let me make some remarks on this precious Record.

The Bible is not a disquisition on astronomy, or philosophy, or geology, or other science. Man can wait the slow process of discovery in science, but he cannot wait a single moment for an answer to the question, 66 What must I do to be saved?" because in that moment his soul may be required of him. It is, therefore, wisely and beneficently arranged, that the results of science shall be from slow discovery ; and it is no less beneficently arranged that the disclosure of the way of salvation shall be instant and complete. The Bible, therefore, leaves the Copernican and the Ptolemaic systems of astronomy to settle their disputes, and replies primarily to the anxious question, " What must I do to be saved ? " The Bible is not a discovery ; it is a revelation. Between these two words there is a broad and important distinction. A discovery is that which man makes, and which man can enlarge ; a revelation is that which God gives, and which God alone can add to. When Columbus found America, he made a discovery; and subsequent voyagers have left mankind better acquainted with that continent than he

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himself was : it was a discovery that man could make,, and that man can still mend. But the Bible is not a discovery which has been reached by the soaring wing, or by the sustained and persevering industry of man ; it is a revelation that comes down from heaven in all its beauty and in all its completeness, so much so, that he that attempts to add to it takes the place of God, and u shows himself as if he were God/ 5 professing to mend what is already perfect, and to add to that which God has pronounced complete.

The Bible is an eminently popular book ; it is emphatically the book, not for the college, nor for the scientific hall, but for the people. The figures which it employs are drawn from the most familiar and every-day experience ; the colouring spread over it is, in the nineteenth century, fresh as it was when it was first given, and is still fitted to attract and arrest the multitude, Human works endure, and are popular, in proportion as they partake of this universality. The Bible has the great element of catholicity in its bosom ; it is a book not for a coterie, nor for a sect, nor for a party, but for all mankind. And while it speaks to all at once^ it speaks to each separately, with no less distinctness and emb 2 phasis. The great congregation can listen to God's voice sounding in the Bible ; the solitary man in his closet can hear its sweet chimes in his soul also ; it provokes a resonant echo in the heart of the humblest listener. Like God's own omnipresence, the Bible reaches to the loftiest spirit, and prescribes the laws and the direction of his orbit ; and it descends to the humblest artisan, and tells him at once, in its own majestic and paternal tones, how to be happy and holy for ever. All history, all criticism, all hermeneutics, (if I may use a long word,) all archaeology, are not, and may not be, substitutes for the Bible, nor do they add to the Bible ; they are meant simply to show the Bible in its own exclusive and dominant position. When the critic sits down to illustrate the Bible, he simply tries to put it before us just as it was put before the Corinthians, so that we may, from the standingpoint which the Corinthian Christian and the Roman Christian had, see the same glory sweep by, and hear the same voice speak from the heavens to our listening and obedient heart.

The Bible is composed of a great many books, and books that are cumulative (if I may use the expression) and progressive. Genesis gives the

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unity, the origin, the apostasy of our race,, and the promise of a Saviour. Leviticus, Exodus, and Deuteronomy are the outlines and shadows of the approaching Sun, seen by Levi, in some such way as the sun in the firmament is seen by the astronomer through a smoked lens : the eve of the one is not able to endure its intensity ; the minds of the others were not prepared for the full blaze, the meridian splendour, of the Sun of righteousness. Job is a specimen of the deep yearning and craving of the human heart, amid the waves and billows of sorrow and affliction, for a comforter and redeemer. Solomon is a manifestation of human wisdom in its loftiest discoveries, but of its unsatisfactoriness in them all. Ruth is for the genealogy of the Saviour — important, because it presents to us a beautiful link in that genealogy. Isaiah brings into the desolations of the Captivity the splendours of a glorious day. Ezekiel gives us visions of the future temple, the spread and triumphs of the kingdom of the Messiah. Haggai sees the temple lighted up with a glory to which the first temple was a stranger. Malachi, like an early morning star, heralds in the approaching rays of the Sun, saying, " Into you that fear my name shall tlie Sun of righteousness rise; 55 and, after four hundred years of silence, John the Baptist appears as if he were Malachi risen from the dead, responding to his prophecy, by saying, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. 55 The Gospels unfold the biography of the Son of God. The Acts of the Apostles carry into practical development the functions, the attributes, and powers with which they were invested ; and the Apocalypse is the close of all the glories of the past, the prophetic dawn of all the splendours of the future, telling us in words, sure as rising and setting suns, that as the world began with paradise, the world shall close with paradise again.

In looking at the whole Bible we find the following data : — It contains in all sixty-six books, by forty different writers. It presents history, biography, parables, letters, proverbs, poems, speeches. Some of them were written by kings, some by shepherds, some by herdsmen, some by vine-dressers, some by tent-makers, some by a physician. They were composed in different circumstances, in successive centuries, in various phases of joy, of sorrow, of affliction, and of tribulation. Between the first writer in

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Genesis, and the last writer in the Apocalypse, 1500 years intervened. Now, must we not conclude, in tlie exercise of common sense, that in men of so varying professions, placed in so varying circumstances, subject each to his peculiar and idiosyncratic trials, there is evidence of special inspiration, when we find that without collusion there is perfect concord, without preconcert perfect harmony, that without design or adjustment their notes, not from nearness but relation, should constitute the varied harmonies of heaven ? Is it not evidence that there must have been struck, to guide and to develope them, one grand key-note, Christ,- and him crucified ? In one part of this wondrous book the scholar is addressed in language so exquisitely beautiful, in thoughts so freshly drawn from the depths of our human experience, that he listens, and admires as he listens. In another part, the weary artisan who has returned from his day's work, hears the voice of his Father, and finds that voice his noblest opiate and his sweetest lullaby. In one part the Bible speaks to babes ; in another part it speaks to grown men. It draws its imagery from agriculture, from commerce, from politics, from poetry, from nature, and from art ;

so that there is not a human being, however strange and peculiar his taste, who shall not find in this wonderful book the common Christianity conveyed in those formulas and figures, and illustrated by those analogies which come home to his heart with the greatest emphasis, and convey most vividly the great truths that belong to his everlasting peace. If a shepherd wants to read his Bible, he will find allusions that will make it familiar to him as household words : if a king sits down on his throne to read the Bible, he will meet with illustrations there that are meet for the inmate of the largest and the most splendid palace ; if the artisan, or the sailor, or the soldier, read the Bible, he will see the same truths illustrated by imagery with which he is practically familiar, and so coming home to his heart, with a power so real and so decided, that he will feel that never book spake like this book, as it was said of old of its author, " Never man spake like this man."

But it is very remarkable, that, while there is all that is needed to edify, all that is fitted to charm and to instruct, there is not one word adapted merely to gratify an itching curiosity^ If I had been writing a book that I wanted to

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be very popular, and if I had been desirous of using the most likely elements, I should have taken care to give responses to the thousand and one curious questions that humanity ever asks and never comprehends. If I had been narrating, even as a human being, and wishing to speak sincerely, that Lazarus rose from the dead, I should have tried to throw in some expressions or sketches of his wonderful experience when separated from the body — not that it would have done man good, but it would have gratified his curiosity, and made my work acceptable. But upon that and kindred subjects the Bible is silent. " Lord, are there many that be saved?" How often have we asked this question ! How fine was the answer — " Strive to enter in at the strait gate ! " Again, the question is asked, "What shall this man do?" Hear the answer — " What is that to thee ? Follow thou me." The silence of Scripture is sometimes its most thrilling eloquence. The blanks and chasms in Scripture — the questions it leaves unanswered — the problems it bequeaths unsettled — the perplexities it leaves unsolved, are to my mind some of the strongest and brightest credentials that the Bible has God for its author, truth, for its matter, everlasting joy and felicity for its happy issue.

The Bible consists not merely of so many individual books, but of two great divisions. The Old and New Testament are the two great sections of the book called the Bible. What is the difference between them? The Old Testament is a lock with wards and interstices, far more complicated than Chubb or Bramah could contrive ; and the New Testament is the exquisitely cut key, which, applied to the lock, completely unlocks it, and opens a door of entrance to the bright vision of light and immortality, clearly brought to view. The Old and New Testament are different portraits of the same great and glorious original. The Old Testament is the portrait seen by moonlight; the New Testament is the same portrait seen by sunlight ; the one hazy and dim, but still real; the other bright and illuminated, like a noon-day landscape, on which the minutest and most majestic features may be read and understood by him that runs while he reads.

We have these books in all their integrity. Oh ! what a ground of thankfulness to God is a Bible, — unmutilated, unshortened, uncorrupted

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The Socinian has tried to abstract from it that which is Divine ; the Romanist has added to it that which is human ; but we have this book still in its inspired integrity ; it is here that one can see a providence in our divisions. While our differences may be the evidences of human weakness, they have been over-ruled by God to be the means of the Bible's preservation. If a Church of England man had tried to put in a word in favour of Episcopacy, the Independent would have pounced upon him and shown the fraud; if the Scotch Churchman had tried to put in a word in favour of his Confession of Faith, the English Churchman would have exposed him in the light of noon-day ; if the Baptist had interpolated a word about plunging, the Psedobaptist would have instantly shown it should be sprinkling. Thus our little divisions, which are the evidences of our frailty, have been overruled, in the good providence of God, to be the means of keeping in its unmutilated integrity and perfection that blessed book which is the anchorage ground of us all.

The very existence of the Bible has always appeared to me a perpetual miracle. This book, lying upon the pulpit, or upon the desk, or upon the table j is itself a glorious sign. Suppose there were to come into our presence a man who had lived eighteen hundred years — suppose he had been cast into the sea a dozen times, and was never drowned — suppose arsenic and prussic acid had been administered to him, according to the best prescriptions, and yet he was never poisoned — suppose he had been riddled with bullets, and yet is not numbered with the slain — if that man were to march into a room this day, and to present himself before us, what would be inferred? That God's omnipresence must have been his shield, and God's omnipotence his safety at every moment. This book, the Bible, has been cast into the flames, and it is not burned ; it has been thrown into the sea, and it is not drowned ; it has been buried in the pestilential notes of Douay, and it has been seized in the bearlike grasp of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and yet it is not crushed. At this day it comes before us in primaeval purity and majesty, and thus eighteen centuries demonstrate what Jesus uttered in the first century, " Thy word, O Lord, is truth." But more than this. There are certain books called the classics, written in Greek and

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Latin, some of them beautifully written, many of them with intermingling corruptions, and appeals to what is worst and most wicked in our common humanity. Now, it is remarkable that unregenerate human nature would any day prefer a book written by man that will minister to its corruptions, to a book written by God that rebukes those corruptions. Yet the classics, those books that man tried to save, the books that he loved because they prophesied good about him, the books that he laboured, and suffered, and expended to protect and preserve, are all of them mutilated, and many of them totally lost ; while this book, which all men hated till they came under its supremacy, and which all men persecuted, because, like the prophet, it prophesied evil concerning them, remains in all its perfection and integrity to this day. Does not this prove that God has been with this book from the beginning until now ?

The Church of Some tells us, we got the Bible from her, and that we ought, therefore, to take her opinion of it, her limits, restrictions, and counsel in the interpretation of it. I suspect, however, that we rather snatched it from her grasp, than got it as a present from her generosity ; but at all events, in whatever way we got it, we are certainly most thankful to God that so blind a woman kept in her hand for us so bright a light, and left it for our guidance ; and all our regret is, that she was so blind as not to see its light herself. But that same Church turns round and says, "As you got the Bible from us," or, to put it in a phraseology not uncommon, "As you are indebted to the Church for the Bible, you ought to take the Church's interpretation of it." I must demur, " The apostles got the Old Testament from the Jews ; but if they had taken the Jews' interpretation of the Bible, they would have joined with them in crucifying the Lord of glory. We will take the Bible from you, but we will not take your interpretation of it." Suppose a will is brought into a court of justice, and that two persons who signed the will are brought forward as witnesses to the genuineness and authenticity of the document : the moment they have given their testimony, one of the witnesses, very communicative and obliging, says to the judge, "My lord, now that we have signed the will, and shown it to be genuine, and handed it to you in this court, an uncorrupted and authentic document, I beg to inform your

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lordship that the will leaves 500/. to my friend, 250/. for myself, and 1000/. for somebody else." What would the judge say? " Gentlemen, you are excellent witnesses to the genuineness of the will, but the interpretation of the document you must leave to other parties altogether." If the Church of Rome insists that she did convey the document to us in all its integrity, we say, "We are exceedingly obliged to you ; but if you insist that you are therefore to interpret the document, we tell you at once that you come into court simply as witnesses to its genuineness ; we cannot accept you in any office in which you have not even presented yourselves, or, at least, in which you ought not to present yourselves." But if she will insist that we shall not have the Bible unless we take her opinion of it, we must tell her that we will dispense with all her services ; that we extremely regret it ; but that faithfulness to the Author of the Bible necessitates it. For it happens that the Church of Rome was not the only Church during the last eighteen centuries. There was the Greek Church that she separated from, or that she says separated from her, about the sixth century: and there was an Anglo- Saxon Church in England, before a Popish monk came over. The Romish Church is not the old Church, she is quite mistaken, she gets into the dotage of age, instead of asserting the evidence of age ; there was a church here that protested against her novelties long before the days of Hildebrancl, and even of Gregory the Great : there was also in Scotland the old Culdee Church, the Syriac Church, and other sections of the Church universal scattered throughout the whole world. I will apply to one of these. Everybody is trying to find out new plans for supplying this great metropolis of ours with pure water ; suppose one company came to me, and said, (I do not say they do say so ; I am only putting the case hypothetically,) " We will supply your family with water, but we have been persuaded, by careful chemical investigation, that to cover the interior of the conduit pipes with a solution of arsenic is one of the most wholesome practices that the ingenuity of man has ever devised. If you will have water from our company, you must take it in our pipes, use our ducts and our cisterns, or not one drop shall you get for breakfast, dinner, or tea." What would be our answer ? " Gentlemen, you have a right to entertain your opinion

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IT about the excellency of arsenic, but I am convinced that it is very poisonous, and if you will not give me water without arsenic, I "will apply to another company,, that will give me clean water without any such chemical preparation as you have prescribed/*' So with the Church of Borne. If she will not give us pure water, just as it wells from the fountain of living water, we will turn our backs, and have recourse to other springs that God has dug in his beneficence, and get living water from the ocean and fountain of life, not only without arsenic, but, what is nearly as good, without money and without price.

It is a most interesting and precious fact, that the Bible is now written, or, if we prefer a more hk lern expression, printed. The commentaries of man vary ; they change their form and their

: a like the clouds that follow the setting sun ; but the great rock remains the same when the shadow is upon it, and after the shadow is gone. The sand-drifts rise and float about the pyramids, but the pyramids remain. The comments and controversies of man, of divines, of ministers, of laymen, have raised the smoke, and stirred the dust : but they have been all outside c the book, which still remains a stereotype, a fixture, like the Rock on which it is spread for reading — the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

-flf the truths of Christianity had been left till now to oral transmission, they had become a complete travesty by this time. Like a snow-ball starting from the mountain-top, it would have rolled downward, accumulating all sorts of rubbish, till it became one frozen and useless mass, lying in the valley below. But, blessed be God, whatever is changed, the Bible is the same ; whatever creeds have been mended, the Bible remains ; whatever new schools have been instituted, the Bible abides, it is still an accessible fixture ; " The grass wither eth, and the flower fadeth, but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."

The Bible is pronounced by an apostle to be 6e67rvev(no9, inspired, or breathed into, by God. We do not here enter upon the nature and the limits of inspiration. I am one of those who unfortunately differ from some very great men, to whom I am not fit to hold the candle, who do not believe that every word in this blessed book is the very best for the purpose

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that could have been selected — that the Bible is verbally inspired as a record by God ; so that when I listen to it I listen as if to the spoken word of God, sounding like a voice amid the gorges of the hills, reverberated in a thousand repetitions, but every echo and reverberation the voice of my God and of my Father.

This holy book is the only image of himself that God has bequeathed to mankind. There is one exception, if I may use the expression, to a part of the second interdict of his law ; and it is the Bible, which is the very likeness of God. I could never bear to see pictures of our blessed Lord in churches ; I think they are not lawful. When one sees a picture of Christ, what is it really ? A man upon the cross : so was the thief at each side of him. I can see one bearing a tree, but not bearing my sins ; — I can see an agonized sufferer, but I cannot see the satisfying God; — I can see the outer man, which is the least important, but of the inner man, where the curse was felt, where the satisfaction was made, where the atonement lay, no picture (and I have seen the choicest and noblest on the continent of Europe) can convey to me any just or adequate idea. But c 2 we have one true sketch of Christ, in the 53rd of Isaiah : this is the true crucifix. I wish we could break down all the wooden or priestly ones, and substitute Isaiah's in its stead. The whole Bible itself is the image of Christ, as he is the image of God. It is remarkable that the Church which has worshipped images of wood, and stone, and brass, and silver, and gold, — images of men that were not, images of men that were not worthy to be, and images of men that ought not to have had images at ail, — has never, in this rage for image worship, thought of worshipping the likeliest image of God, the Bible ! Why ? Because if she had bow r ed down to adore it, its great voice would have said, " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God^ and him only shalt thou serve."

This blessed book, while it is thus the voice of God, is yet given in varied strains. If the Bible had been written as a large didactic essay, or a very eloquent oration, it would have been nothing like the book that it now is. The very fact that Paul's style is in it, and that Peter's style, and John's style, and Matthew's style, in all their varieties, are perfectly preserved, but all inspired by the same breath, makes the

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Bible come home to my bosom and business with far greater and richer effect. We have all the variations of this harmony, but one key-note ; we have manifold instruments to constitute the choir, but all the instruments are pervaded by the breath of the Almighty.

The Bible has been translated. The translation of the Bible is " a great fact/' that Protestants glory in. It is one of our deepest convictions, that the Bible should be in a language understood by the people. It was translated by Tindale, in 1530 ; by Coverdale, in 1535 ; by Cranmer, in 1539 ; at Geneva, in 1560 ; by the bishops, in 1568 ; and by the celebrated authorized translators, as they are called, the most accomplished scholars and eminent divines of their day, in the year 1611. With all its faults, our translation is matchless ; and (what is far better than any eulogium of mine) all the alterations that have taken place in its opponent and rival the Douay version — I have followed them, and do not speak at random — are approximations to the authorized translation of 1611. It is very singular that, wherever there is a difference between the two versions, (although I would engage to prove to any Boman Catholic that the creed of Pius IV. and the canons of the" Council of Trent are wrong, out of his own version,) there is often seen not a little inclination in the Douay translation to help a very crotchetty dogma, that had been established some hundred years before.

We add one more remark, which we should never fail to do when speaking of the defects of our translation, — that if all these defects in our own translation were adjusted, and the words literally and strictly rendered, it would only tell more markedly in favour of evangelical and Protestant Christianity.