84 



THE REV. A, H. FINN ON 



So does the glory of the Christ — the Christ who came " to seek 

 and to save that which was lost," and to be " a Light to lighten 

 the Gentiles " — reflect back upon and illuminate the mistier 

 regions of the Old Scriptures, and show us that they were all 

 under the guidance of one Mind. In this way, and in this way 

 alone, the many differences that distinguish the various books 

 melt away and are lost sight of in the light of the fuller 

 Revelation, and the many elements which go to make up the 

 whole collection of the Scriptures shine out like the firmament 

 of the heavens^to display the glory of God. 



It is wonderful enough to find that, in the light of the New 

 Testament, a clear plan and purpose is traceable which unifies 

 the forty volumes of such different characteristics as go to make 

 up the Old Testament, but the modern critical views about that 

 collection would set before us something infinitely more startling. 

 According to these, there was a still larger number of authors 

 as well as a number of editors, most of them so obscure that 

 their names are unknown and all remembrance of their existence 

 has utterly perished. The writers were none too sagacious 

 in the use of the materials at their command, writing down 

 folk-lore, myth, and legend as veracious history, colouring 

 the past with false tints derived from their own times, inserting 

 as predictions uttered in bygone ages what were really notices 

 of recent events, often betraying themselves by sheer anach- 

 ronisms, evohdng out of their own imaginations a structure 

 that never existed, cloaking their own anonymity by the use of 

 revered names, and attributing their own inventions to nothing 

 less than Di\dne authority. Quite as inept were the various 

 editors. They mixed up ancient documents with writings centuries 

 later in date : they set side by side, or interwove intricately, 

 inconsistent accounts of the same events : they put together 

 quite unnecessary repetitions, or fit their extracts from different 

 writers so clumsily together that they do not cohere : they 

 arrange their materials in such an order as to give an altogether 

 misleading view of the history. Yet the final result of aU this 

 patching and repatching, interpolation, glossing, and rearranging 

 is a collection which for centuries has been regarded as genuine 

 and sacred, and moreover displays the consistent working out 

 of a sublime Divine plan ! 



Truly this would be an astounding miracle, which we might 

 be ready to believe if a case of printer's type, put together at 

 random, were found to spell out a poem of great beauty, or if the 



