286 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870- 



ment, how closely His words attached themselves to its 

 teaching, how He found foreshadowed in the Books of 

 the Old Covenant everything which in His own person 

 and history is &quot; now expressed in verity.&quot; At bottom, 

 then, we must still hold fast the old Reformation position, 

 that the Old Testament, like the New, is able to make 

 us wise unto salvation, comes to us, not with transient 

 human authority, but with eternal Divine power, and so 

 must always occupy, in religious instruction, a place 

 side by side with the New. 



A large question, however, remains. Though the 

 Old Testament, like the New, is the record of a Divine 

 Revelation, they belong to different stages of Revelation. 

 The Old Testament leads up to Christ, but the New 

 Testament shows us Christ. What the Old Testament 

 left incomplete, the New Testament fills up. The one 

 plan of salvation unfolded itself gradually, and only the 

 New Testament gives the plan in its full development. 

 How are these facts to bear on our practical use of the 

 record of the growing and of the completed Revelation ? 

 This is a question which the Reformers, and still more, 

 their successors, never fully answered, indeed, never fully 

 set before them. They were more interested in the 

 unity than in the differences of the two dispensations. 

 Justly laying stress on the fact that Christ is to be found 

 in the Old Testament, they were often tempted to find 

 Him there in the same way, and with the same clearness 

 as in the New. And so in spite of the better example 

 of Calvin and other great divines, a tendency arose to 

 ignore the historical character of Revelation, the gradual 

 development of God s saving purpose from age to age. 

 That use of the Old Testament came to be thought 

 soundest which extracted from it the greatest amount of 

 specifically New Testament doctrine. And doctrine 

 being thus thrust into one-sided prominence, the Old 

 Testament History came to be valued only as an illustra 

 tion of doctrine. It was forgotten that without saving 



