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more exalted, more precious, more universal, more diffusive and penetrating, more indispensable to the human race, more 'profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works,'1 than any other books which the world has ever seen or known. They contain, as no other books contain, all things necessary to salvation; they reveal, as no other books reveal, the will of Heaven. Amid much which they themselves teach us to regard as transitory and imperfect, even as 'weak and beggarly,'2 they enshrine more clearly and more authentically than any other writings the messages of God. This is true of the books of the Old Testament. It is incomparably more true of the New Testament, from which we learn the glad tidings of eternal life.

1 2 Tim. iii. 16.

2 Gal. iv. 9; Rom. viii. 3; Heb. vii. 18. The line of thought in this chapter is found in not a few of the Fathers. For instance, St. Chrysostom, speaking of Ps. cxxxvii., says, exactly as I have done, 'Though these words are pregnant with rage and vengeance they are the expression of the fury of the captives. The prophets often do not speak their own mind, but represent the passions of others.' Elsewhere he gets over the difficulty (e.g. in Ps. cix.) by calling it 'a prophecy in the form of a curse' (see Chase, pp. 55, 72).

CHAPTER VI

ANTITHESES OF SCRIPTURE.

'What is the straw to the wheat? saith the Lord.'-Jer. xxiii. 28. 'Amid changing interpretations (our aim is) not to add another, but to renew the original one; the meaning, that is, of the words as they first struck on the ears or flashed before the eyes of those who heard and read them.'-JOWETT.

THUS far we have spoken mainly of the Old Testament, and it would be possible indefinitely to expand the proof that it contains some elements which reflect the lower standard of rude ages, and that its moral teaching and spiritual nobleness are not on one uniform level.

It will be sufficient to touch on but one more illustration -namely, the marked difference between the Law and the Prophets; between Mosaic and Gospel principles; between Levitism and spiritual religion.

i. When we read the books of Numbers and Leviticus we can hardly wonder that Pharisees thought that the whole world 'depended on the right burning of the two kidneys and the fat.' Turn to the Prophets, and we find an almost contemptuous disparagement of the rites and sacrifices of the current ceremonialism.1

1 Is. i. 11-14; Hos. vi. 6; Jer. vi. 20, vii. 21-23; Amos v. 21-24; Mic. vi. 6-8, &c. I do not quote Ezek. xx. 25, as the meaning is uncertain.

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It is from among the antitheses, and even the antinomies of the Bible-which are in themselves relative and fragmentary, but are often supplementary and complementary to each other-that we must gather its final revelation.

ii. Even if we turn to the New Testament we find distinct differences in the modes of representing the truth. No one can read the Fourth Gospel after the first three without observing the impress of a different mind. The old Fathers were broadly right when they described the first three as 'bodily,' and the fourth as the 'spiritual' Gospel.

iii. Again, from the dawn of criticism, all readers have noticed the marked differences of standpoint which separate the teaching of St. James from that of St. Paul, and the teaching of St. John from that of both. There is no irreconcilable contradiction, but there is wide divergence in the method of presentation.

Luther, with the self-confidence which marked some of his utterances, said bluntly that St. Paul taught 'We are saved by faith,' and St. James 'We are saved by works,' and that it was nonsense to pretend to harmonise the two utterances. But that depends entirely on the question whether the 'faith' and the 'works' meant exactly the same thing on the lips of St. James and of St. Paul; and we know by careful examination that they did not.

iv. But it is when we contrast the Old Testament with the New that we perceive most fully the chasm which separates some portions of Scripture from others. We can no longer be surprised that books should have been written like the Antitheses of Marcion to set forth these apparent oppositions.

Many sects of the early heretics felt themselves so entirely unable to adjust the balances of revelation, or to understand the contrasted presentations of the Jehovah of the Hebrews and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they abandoned the Old Testament altogether. They represented it as the work of an inferior or even of an evil deity, whom they called the Demiurge or Creator of the World. Marcion's book was composed of texts which he regarded as irreconcilably in contradiction with each other-such as, on one side, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' and on the other, 'I say unto you, Resist not evil;' or, on one side, 'Cursed be he who keepeth back his sword from blood (of the Moabites),'1 and on the other, 'I say unto you, Love your enemies.'

Can any amount of sophistry maintain that there is not an immense chasm between the spirit of the dying prayer of Zachariah the son of Jehoiada, 'The Lord look upon it and require it,' and the dying prayer of St. Stephen, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge'? And do we not see the chasm bridged by the prayer of Christ as He was nailed to the Cross, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'?

Marcion, by the admission of his opponents, was an able and honest man, however deeply he was mistaken. Had he and others like him been able to grasp the fact that the Old Testament contains only the record and the outcome of a multifarious, fragmentary, and progressive revelation, they might have been saved from falling into false and Manichean views.

v. But even in the Old Testament is there no difference in the point of view between 'Noah offered burnt offerings; and the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and said in His heart,

1 Jer. xlviii. 10.

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I will not again any more curse the ground' (Gen. viii. 21), and 'Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it Thee, but Thou delightest not in burnt offerings' (Ps. li. 16); or 'Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire' (Ps. xl. 6)? Or between the injunctions of the Pentateuch (e.g. Num. xxix. 1-40) and such passages as Is. i. 11-14, Jer. vii. 21-23, Hos. vi. 6? I do not say that the points of view are wholly irreconcilable, but undoubtedly they differ.

vi. And it was strange that men did not learn from the New Testament itself the true way to remove their perplexities.

While the Rabbis were teaching that the world was only created for the sake of the Mosaic Law; that every jot and tittle of it was divinely stored with supernatural mysteries; that God Himself wore phylacteries, and daily repeated the Sh'ma-Paul was teaching, as a fundamental position of the Gospel, that the Levitic Law was typified by the bondwoman and her son who were to be cast out, and not to share with the son of the freewoman; and by 'Mount Sinai in Arabia which gendereth to bondage.' It was a ministry of the letter and of death; at the best a transitory flash, an evanescent glory.

One of the earliest sub-Apostolic writers, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, whose book was regarded as so sacred that it is appended to the Sinaitic manuscript of the New Testament and was read aloud in public worship, was so filled with the hatred of Judaism that he went much farther than St. Paul. He argued at length that the Levitic dispensation had only been enforced upon the Jews in anger and as a positive evil; and that the practice of circumcision, which the Law commanded on pain of Divine vengeance, had never been anything but concision,