HELL AND THE DIVINE VERACITY. 



501 



would have been addressed to him ? Again, not 

 only did Jesus accept the entire narrative of the 

 Pentateuch, but on the details of that narrative 

 he founded important rules of conduct. In treat- 

 ing of the right of divorce, he appealed to the in- 

 stitution that was "from the beginning; " primi- 

 tive institutions he assumed to be ideally the best. 

 His reasoning suggests two reflections : 1. W hat- 

 ever the primitive form of marriage was, strict 

 monogamy it was not. 2. The question as to 

 primitive marriage, though indirectly full of in- 

 struction, has no direct bearing on conduct. As 

 soon as science shall have determined whether 

 primitive societies were endogamous or exoga- 

 mous, modern communities will not be constrained 

 to adapt their marriage laws to the primitive mod- 

 el : any more than those of us who believe slavery 

 and cannibalism to have been primitive institu- 

 tions are therewithal bound to become slavehold- 

 ers and cannibals. 



These illustrations are given in no captious 

 spirit, but in order to show how hollow is the 

 truce that has been patched up between ortho- 

 doxy and modern research. Especially hollow is 

 the truce between orthodoxy and biblical criti- 

 cism. For example: Jesus ascribed the 110th 

 Psalm to David ; ' and the context shows that, in 

 so ascribing it, he was not adapting himself to 

 conventional phraseology, but that he thought 

 that it was verily and indeed spoken by David. 

 On the other hand, the "Four Friends" deny 

 that it was by David ; indeed, it was manifestly 

 spoken not bi/, but to a Hebrew ruler. 2 The " Four 

 Friends," who write in a thoroughly Christian 

 spirit, forbear to point the moral of their state- 

 ment; but they can hardly have been ignorant 

 that, in making the statement at all, they were 

 charging their Master with error. It is yet more 

 obvious that their interpretation of the contempt- 

 uous apostrophe, " Ye are gods," is at variance 

 with the amazing interpretation reported in the 

 Fourth Gospel. Indeed, according to modern 

 criticism, hardly one of the texts quoted from 

 the Old Testament is rightly interpreted in the 

 New. " Of prophecies in the sense of prognos- 

 tication" says Coleridge, " I utterly deny that 

 there is any instance delivered by one of the 

 illustrious Diadoche whom the Jewish Church 

 comprised in the name Prophets — and I shall re- 

 gard Cyrus as an exception, when I believe the 



1 Matthew xxii. 43, 44; compare Acts ii. 34, 35. 



4 I say " ruler " (not " king "), since there is a great 

 difference of opinion as to when this psalm was writ- 

 ten. The "Four Friends" place it during the mon- 

 archy; while our best biblical critic, Dr Davidson, is 

 inclined to relegate it to the time of the Maccabees. 



137th Psalm to have been composed by David." 

 In effect, this remarkable passage denies that the 

 so-called Hebrew prophecies were predictions. 

 On the other hand, Jesus believed them to be, not 

 merely predictions, but predictions so plain that 

 the Jewish nation was held guilty for not dis- 

 cerning their fulfillment. Thus, on so vital a 

 question as prophecy, the opinion of the chief 

 Christian philosopher of our century was dia- 

 metrically opposed to the opinion of Christ. 

 Other Christian writers follow Coleridge's lead. 

 For instance : the Master is alleged to have fore- 

 told that a prophecy of Daniel was about to be 

 fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem, which was to 

 be " immediately " followed by the end of the 

 world. 1 Yet, not only has a certain interval al- 

 ready elapsed between the destruction of Jeru- 

 salem and that of the world, but we learn, even 

 from Christian authorities, that the passage at- 

 tributed to Daniel had no reference to the sack 

 of Jerusalem by Titus — that it was not by Dan- 

 iel — that it was not a prophecy, but a forgery. 

 Hence, the book of Daniel furnishes a crucial 

 test of rationalism. Laodicean liberals some- 

 times boast that they have given up their ortho- 

 doxy concerning the Old Testament, but that 

 their orthodoxy concerning the New remains un- 

 impaired. Now, if there is a point whereon ra- 

 tional critics from Porphyry to Zelkr are agreed, 

 it is that the prophecy in Daniel is unauthentic. 

 If there is a point which lukewarm liberals are 

 loath to give up, it is that every word of Christ 

 came from God. To what, then, does their 

 theory amount ? Even to this shocking result : 

 that God professed to have inspired the pseudo- 

 Daniel, and thus became accessory after the fact. 

 A similar mode of reasoning applies yet more 

 directly to the theory of " inspired personation," 

 a theory which seems to find favor with the ac- 

 complished divine who has written the article 

 Bible in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," and who 

 has justly been described in a religious journal as 

 the most orthodox of biblical critics. That theory 

 practically is, that the author of Deuteronomy, 

 who was not Moses, was inspired to say that he 

 was Moses {Deo per mendacium gratijicari). Yet, 

 peradventure, for this theory something may be 

 said. We have seen that, on the orthodox hy- 

 pothesis, St. Stephen's speech was verbally in- 

 spired. Yet, when professing to give the very 

 words of Amos, he quietly substituted Babylon 

 for Damascus ; in fact, he manipulated the proph- 

 ecy, so as to make it seem to have been fulfilled 



J Matthew xsiv. 15, 29. 



