Untitled article by T. D. Bernard

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · September 3, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 12

THE SCRIPTURES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

By T. D. Bernard

This collection of various and occasional writings presents to us a gradually progressive scheme, fully wrought out in its several stages, and advancing in a natural order of succession.

First a person is manifested and facts are set forth, in the simplest external aspect, and under the clearest light, and with the concurrence of a fourfold witness. This witness also is itself progressive, and in the last Gospel the glory of the person has grown more bright, and the meaning of the facts more clear.

Then in the book of Acts, Christ is preached as perfected, and as the refuge and life of the world. The results of his appearing are summed up and settled: and men are called to believe and be saved. Those who do so find themselves in new relations to each other: they become one body, and grow into the form and life of a Catholic Church.

The state which has thus been entered needs to be expounded, and the life thus begun needs to be educated. The apostolic letters perform the work. The questions which universally follow the first submission of the mind receive their answers, and so the faith which was general grows definite. The rising exigencies of the new life are met, both for the man and for the church; and we learn what is the happy consciousness, and what the holy conversation, which belongs to those who are “in Christ Jesus.”

Lastly, as members of the body of Christ we find ourselves partakers in the corporate life and a history larger than our own. We feel that we are taken up into a scheme of things, which is in conflict with the present and which cannot realize itself here. Therefore our final teaching is by prophecy, which shows us, not how we are personally saved and victorious, but how the battle goes upon the whole; and which issues in the appearance of a holy city, in which redemption reaches its end, and the Redeemer finds his joy; in which human tendencies are realized, and divine promises fulfilled; in which the ideal has become the actual, and man is perfected in the presence and glory of God.

Only the written word of God, confidingly followed in the progressive steps of its advance, can lead the weakest or the wisest into the deep blessedness of the life that is in Christ, and into the final glory of the city of God.—T. D. Bernard. M. A.