Things New and Old.
Bible Treasury, 2nd Edition, Volume 1, September 1857.
(1st. Edition, September [01 1857 261])
[01 1857 257]
In almost all the critical works of our times, we find a deep-seated deadness of the mind to the real essential character of the divine word; a blindness which is incapable of seeing the spiritual and heavenly character of scripture. It is only by remembering this sad fact, that one can comprehend how it was possible for criticism to subject the text to such cruel tortures: only thus one can account for the cool indifference with which such indignities to God's word are regarded, even where they are not received. And this spiritual disorder arises simply from the fact, that the fundamental relations of the heart to God and divine things are not right; that there is wanting fear and reverence before His majesty, not to speak of confidence in His love; that light and darkness are not really distinguished, and carefully kept separate (Isaiah 66:2). From olden times it has been thought a heinous crime to remove landmarks; but it is the boast of our day to blot out the holiest of all boundary-lines, that between truth and error. Man — Satan — invents something intermediate, and is applauded for boldness and originality of thought. Our fathers knew well what they said when they maintained that the testimony of the Holy Spirit was the worst canon of Bible criticism. He who emancipates himself from this subjection of the conscience to the word of God, is an unbiblical critic. Let us not sever, on any point, knowledge and the conscience; let us give way to no sophisms, however specious, but adhere in theological questions of all kinds to moral bearings and connections. This is, above all, an imperative obligation in the case of those sacred writers to whom we are indebted for all the revealed light we possess, and of whom we find throughout, that their sense of God's authority and truth was strong and delicate in a most eminent degree (1 Tim. 2:7; John 19:35; 2 Peter 1:16). It is by no means narrow-minded to proceed from such a starting point; it is inward liberty from the thraldom of human wilfulness; it is natural, sound, unsophisticated sense, which alone leads us to a right, holy, and thorough understanding of the truth. Men have lost faith in the supernatural, not because they have gained, but chiefly because they have lost knowledge of nature, no less than of what is above nature.
Modern theology deeply needs to be reminded of that word, "God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions." I know from my own experience, in which I was not spared the passing through the furnace of criticism, that it is the simple foundation truths, to which our conscience bears witness, that form the decisive and all-pervading element, and that they are able to refute the dazzling deductions of a science which refuses to place itself in the light of God's all-righteous countenance. In a time like ours, when the gospel, not only in its links with the mysteries of Christ, but even in its most simple and essential elements, is foolishness to the Greeks, yea, to the noblest among them, it is of paramount importance to be faithful in these first principles, which, however insignificant they may appear, are the foundation of all the rest. IGNOTUS.