LECTURE IV

And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.-Exod. xx. I foll.

We have considered the Old Testament in its historical aspect as the record of a divine movement towards the human race, which formed the startingpoint of a higher religion; and we have attempted to estimate the character and value of this record, regarded as a collection of historical documents. It is now our task to survey the Old Testament as the account of a progressive self-revelation of God.

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews opens his letter with the words θεὸς ὁ λαλήσας, and it may be observed how closely such an exordium corresponds with the apparent object of the writer in keeping himself anonymous. To this great Christian apologist God is the one speaker in revelation. Human agency falls entirely into the background. Throughout redemptive history a single voice, the voice of God, was making itself heard, speaking by the prophets in divers portions and in divers manners; and the highest function of the Scriptures, whether of the Old or New Testament, is to transmit from age to age the record of that continuous utterance. God spake. Revelation had its several parts, stages, chapters or acts. whole could only be judged retrospectively in the light of the final result. The key to the meaning of the voice, which spake to the fathers by the prophets, was the Word made flesh. It was the divine message to

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man contained in the life and labours, the death and glorification, of Jesus Christ, that illuminated and interpreted the method of divine action in the past. The Incarnation enables us to distinguish what is fragmentary and provisional in revelation from what is complete and final. The divers modes of divine selfcommunication were adapted to the existing needs and capacities of human nature at each particular stage of its development. In visions and dreams, in types and symbols, in precepts and ordinances, in voices and prophecies, in the unmistakeable language of outward fact and in secret communications to elect souls, God spake to mankind. Revelation is one because its Author is one, and we approach the Scriptures with this end in view above all others-that we may know God: what He is in Himself, what He has wrought in history, what are His thoughts for human nature, and what His purposes for the universe. In Scripture the word of God comes to us through the medium of human language; but it is the very mind of God which unveils itself therein, teaching us how to live according to His will, and revealing to us what in His eternal being and character He is.

In this lecture I wish to consider, first, the progressiveness of the divine self-revelation, and secondly, its content. We must glance at the spiritual education of man described in the Old Testament, and we must examine the import of the successive names or designations by which Almighty God condescended to make Himself known to His creatures.

I.

The idea of progressive revelation has profoundly influenced all modern attempts to reconstruct the history of Hebrew religion 1. It has been the legitimate and necessary outcome of applying to the Old Testament those historical or comparative methods of

1

Cp. Oettli, Der gegenwärtige Kampf, &c., p. 11.

study which have proved so fruitful in other fields of knowledge and were themselves suggested, or at least encouraged, by the recognition of the evolutionary principle in nature. The modern habit of mind is to study institutions, social phenomena, opinions, literature, creeds, in the light of their development. We delight in the observation of growth or process, and there is perhaps no department in which study based upon this method has been more serviceable than in that of Christian apologetics. It has assisted us to estimate aright the inevitable defects of early morality and religion. It has enabled us to form a true judgment of the divine dealings with mankind during the primitive stages of its spiritual development. It has, we may say with reverence, vindicated the character of Almighty God by imparting the necessary point of view from which His recorded commands, requirements, and modes of action should be regarded. It has opened our eyes to the infinite wisdom, tenderness, and patience of the actual course which redemptive love has pursued. Indeed, the contemplation of the patience exhibited in the moral government and education of the world may, in some cases, have led thinkers to qualify or correct their conception of the laws which guide the operations of nature itself. They have learned that the perplexing slowness and apparent imperfection of physical processes corresponds to the comprehensiveness of the divine plan for the universe1. Further, the divine character revealed in Jesus Christ prepares us to recognize the principle of accommodation in the Old Testament. The direction of the movement therein described is towards a liberation of human nature from the shackles of a rudimentary state. There was evidently a law of progress at work in the Mosaic system; some element which exerted a steady and continuous upward pressure. At the same time there was a gradual extrication of eternal principles from their local, material, and temporary embodiment,

1 See a striking passage in Flint's Theism, pp. 258 foll.

and to this process no doubt the teaching of the prophets mainly contributed. It has indeed been maintained that the chief ethical and religious ideas of Judaism were practically the creation of the prophets, but there are ample indications that their task was rather that of bringing to light principles which, in a germinal form at least, had been asserted by Moses himself; and that the foundations of Hebrew religion had already been deeply laid in the days of the nation's youth 1. It was indisputably the preaching of the prophets that brought home to Israel's consciousness the moral conditions attaching to its privileged position; but from the first the nation had been instructed that its special relationship to Jehovah, the holy God of redemption, involved a call to separation from the sins and pollutions of Semitic heathenism. Granted that the nature and meaning of its vocation was for centuries very imperfectly realized by the Hebrew people, it is at least abundantly evident that the religion of the Old Testament originated in the fact of an election—that is, in a special consecration of Israel to the service of its Redeemer. And the enduring value of Israel's religious history lies to a great extent in this-that it expands and enriches our whole conception of deity. For it bears witness to the operation of an omnipotent Being who stoops from His throne to become the educator of man, and who is guided in His dealings with our race not merely by a fixed purpose of love, but by a perfect insight into human limitations. In His Son God has explicitly revealed the principle which had all along determined the method of His self-manifestation. We are told that the Saviour of men spake the word unto them as they were able to hear it. And while the advance of knowledge has filled these words with

1 Cp. König, The Religious History of Israel, ch. xi.

2 Mark iv. 33; cp. Isa. xxviii. 10. Oettli, op. cit. p. 19, remarks: 'Im Lichte der Offenbarung sich uns die Entwicklung nunmehr als Erziehung darstellt.'

deeper significance in proportion as it has taught us to take more sober views of human nature and its capacities, practical experience has vindicated the intrinsic reasonableness of the wearisome tardiness which has marked the onward progress of revelation. 'Grace submitting to delay,' it has been beautifully said, 'is only love consenting to be guided by wisdom'.' The protracted discipline to which the chosen people of God was subjected, was the one and only means, so far as we have faculties for judging, by which the blessings of a higher religion could have been in the long run secured for mankind at large.

We proceed, then, to illustrate the progressive character of the Old Testament religion; but it will not be superfluous in passing to remind ourselves that Christian criticism is distinguished from purely naturalistic by its belief in a supernatural revelation. We speak indeed of the 'progressive development' of religious ideas. It must not, however, be forgotten that the Old Testament exhibits not merely an inevitable evolution of human thought, but a progressive self-manifestation of God. Israel's religion is a religion not of thinkers but of prophets, whose characteristic formula is Thus saith the Lord. It presupposes the immanence of God in history and the reality of His self-communications. With this prefatory remark we enter upon our subject, and we may begin by directing attention at once to the beneficent moral purpose which lies upon the very surface of the Old Testament dispensation. The goal of the entire redemptive movement was an ethical one, the salvation and perfecting of human nature. Thus in judging of any particular stage of Israel's religious or moral attainment, we are bound to take into account the dominating tendency of the entire Old Testament. The observation of tendencies is, as Bishop Butler reminds us, a true source of knowledge. It gives us

1 A. B. Bruce, The Chief End of Revelation, p. 112.

2 See The Analogy, Part I, ch. iii.