SERMON BY PROF. F. H. NEWHALL, D. D., WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.”—Matt. 24:35.
It is very obvious that the question of the essential truthfulness of Scripture is not to remain open until all its manifold facts are seen to form a harmonious and symmetrical whole. Every candid objector must concede that there may be evidence sufficient to produce the conviction of essential truthfulness, although many details and minutiae may appear exceptional. Not until we know all things, can we see all truth to be perfectly harmonious with itself. In our study of nature and of history, after being perfectly convinced of certain truths, we always find ourselves carrying along packages of exceptional facts, which we cannot at the time adjust to others, but which we are sure that we can, as we grow wiser, drop into their proper places. “Nature,” says Tyndale, “is full of anomalies, which no foresight can predict, and which experiment alone can reveal. From the deportment of a vast number of bodies, we should be led to conclude that heat always produces expansion, and that cold always produces contraction. But water steps in, and bismuth steps in to qualify this conclusion.” Yet the anomalies of which Tyndale speaks, when followed out, lead to the discovery of higher harmonies in nature. By a bold sweep of inductive reasoning, Newton grasped the truth of universal gravitation. He came into that close sympathy with nature that led him to judge by unmistakable intuition that he felt the throb of her heart. There were certain facts that could not then be reconciled with this induction, yet so overwhelming was the evidence in its favor that he felt sure that deeper study and broader observation would bring them into harmony. The history of physical science has justified this faith.
Apparent irregularities in celestial phenomena have led to some of the grandest discoveries of astronomy. Mysterious variations in the position of certain fixed stars, carefully observed and studied for more than twenty years, led Bradley to the discovery of the great and fruitful facts of aberration and nutation; the first furnishing final proof of the progressive motion of light, and the second showing that the pole of the earth, instead of describing a smooth and uniform circle in its revolution, traces a wave-like curve among the stars. These two facts have given to modern astronomy its precision and accuracy. Planetary perturbations have been the harvest-field of recent astronomical discoveries. Certain irregularities in the path of Uranus led some who feebly held the clue of nature to speculate whether the law of gravity at that immense distance operated in all its rigor; but the true astronomer saw mirrored in these perturbations another world, pacing its solitary rounds as the outmost sentinel of the solar system. Nature’s laws are thus often found by the philosophers to be knotted in discrepancies, which, when patiently disentangled, have furnished him threads to guide him through new labyrinths of fact and law. Scripture discrepancies are thus the clues to higher harmonies. The true philosopher does not demand a demonstrated theory of these irregularities in nature. The logical understanding is not troubled by them if a plausible hypothesis of reconciliation can be invented. A reasonable mind, which has satisfied itself on independent evidence as to the essential truth, is content if imagination can suggest any adjustment of exceptional facts. In this respect, we should go to Scripture, as the true philosopher goes to nature.
It may be in the first place remarked that modern criticism, with all its acuteness, has not discovered new discrepancies of any importance.
Colenso and Strauss repeat objections that were urged against the first Christian apologists. The Wolfenbüttel Fragments urge the same difficulties in the gospel genealogies, and the same differences between the Jesus of John and the Jesus of the Synoptics that were fully discussed by the early Christian fathers. Mr. Parker thus stated the discrepancy between the law and the gospel: “Here are two forms of religion which differ widely, set forth and enforced by miracles: the one ritual and formal, the other actual and spiritual; the one the religion of fear, the other of love; one finite, and resting entirely on the special revelation made to Moses, the other absolute, and based on the universal revelation of God, who enlightens all that come into the world; one offers only earthly recompense, the other makes immortality a motive to divine life; one compels men, the other invites them. One half of the Bible repeals the other half: the gospel annihilates the law” (Disc. p. 324). But we find the original apostles themselves profoundly pondering this problem of the antithesis between the law and the gospel, and the first generation of Christians bewildered and confused about its solution. Paul’s acutest logic and profoundest spiritual apprehension were taxed to the utmost to clearly state and fairly solve this problem. It rent the first church at Jerusalem; it brought upon Paul his heaviest labors and fiercest persecutions; it gave rise to the epistles to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Hebrews; the echoes of this controversy ring through every Pauline speech and letter; it was one of the causes or occasions of the formidable and wide-consuming heresy of Gnosticism. Mr. Parker declared this discrepancy irreconcilable and fatal. So did the heretics and persecutors of the first two centuries; and the Gnostic philosophers stated this discrepancy at least as sharply, and urged it more vehemently than Mr. Parker. Yet in spite of it, Christianity has become what she is. In her very cradle she throttled this dragon, and will she tremble before the dragon’s seed to-day? If she proved the old and the new covenants to be identical in essence, when it was only by faith that she saw the Christian flower and fruit in the Judaic husk, much more will she triumph when the fragrance of those flowers comes wafted to us through historic centuries, when those ripened fruits are dropping on all lands.
Another preliminary thought of special importance is this: the perfect simplicity, the guileless confidence with which the Scripture writers spread apparently conflicting statements before us, is most suggestive and instructive. While the earliest commentators, Jewish and Christian, often manifest the greatest anxiety to reconcile and harmonize these discrepancies, the Scripture writers calmly go on their way without giving them the least attention. No editorial explanation is offered to adjust the two narratives of creation; they are simply set side by side with all their divergencies and contrasts. There is no editorial weighing of conflicting statements in the gospels, no word of comment to harmonize the different accounts of Christ’s birth and resurrection. Thus is spread over all the Scripture the artlessness of conscious truth. To the candid mind this impression is irresistible. Everywhere assuming in the most solemn manner its divine truthfulness, yet nowhere anxious to vindicate its consistency with itself, it reveals a sublime consciousness of integrity that to a healthy soul is most impressive and convincing. So when Moses wove into his history the patriarchal narratives of creation, he left each to tell its own story. So he wrote down the decalogue of Exodus and of Deuteronomy, without minute reference to the stony tablets—not careful, as a forger would be sure to be, to use the identical words in both copies. So Ezra gives us the first and second records of the kings of Judah and Israel, without any editorial alterations and corrections to bring them into harmony. The value of these discrepancies is thus very high in enabling us to understand the real nature of the documents in which they occur. They show that we have in the Scripture narratives the original documents, the genealogical records, statutes, speeches, songs, having all the flavor of contemporary authorship, such as would be called in our day the raw material for history, rather than history itself. These materials have never been digested and assimilated into a uniform whole in the mind of any philosophical historian. No Thucydides has woven them into an artistic treatise. So the gospels are memoirs, memorabilia of Christ’s life, sayings, and doings, set down by different authors, at different times and places. The original facts have not been filtered through the imaginations or judgments of professional authors, but are spread before us in what criticism calls rawness, incompleteness, and redundancy—not fitted to each other, or adjusted to any system or theory whatever. Thus the narratives are often abrupt, fragmentary, assuming and suggesting much that is not said, and disappointing by leaving much unsaid. Thus Mark assumes that the reader is already well acquainted with Jesus and with John the Baptist. John adds a supplement to his gospel, giving an account of Christ’s appearance at the Lake of Tiberias. The history of the Acts breaks off abruptly in the midst of Paul’s imprisonment without hinting anything about the result of his appeal unto Cæsar. Discrepancies are inevitable in such a mass of materials; but how valuable are they as showing the real character of the materials themselves, proving them to be the original data on which all systematic history must be founded. We have here no secondary formations of critical conclusions or mythical imaginings to dig through in order to reach the primitive facts. The discrepancies of the gospels thus furnish weapons with which Strauss’s whole theory may be overturned. This must be admitted by any candid mind that does not start with the dogmatic assumption that the supernatural, being unnatural, is never to be believed on any evidence whatever.
I. The first class of discrepancies that we note are those which arise from diversities in form, while yet there is identity in matter. Truth is presented us here in manifold draperies; in phenomena, terrestrial and celestial; in shadows and symbols; in actions and language; in history, biography, argument, speech, and song; in exhortation, parable, and proverb. It is declared, inferred, intimated, presupposed, yet it is ever one and the same truth speaking with all these various voices, to the various moods and conditions of humanity. Historic statement may be essential to reach one phase of mind, and parable or allegory to reach another, and this drapery of truth may by its wonderful variety display the highest wisdom. As matter is obviously more important than form, if there be essential identity in matter, diversity in manner and form is not only not to be deprecated, but is to be desired.
In the evangelical narratives, Matthew says that at Jesus’ baptism, a voice from Heaven was heard, which said: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (3:17); while Luke (3:22) tells us that the words were: “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” Now, it is perfectly clear that both Matthew and Luke cannot have given us the precise form of words. One uses the second person, and the other the third; in the one, the voice addresses the Saviour; in the other, John, or the multitude; yet the matter is identical. The truth is the same, whether spoken in the second person or the third. Such discrepancies as this may make insuperable difficulties for an interpreter, who regards the Scripture writers as the mere amanuenses of the revealing Spirit, but cannot perplex him who intelligently distinguishes between matter and form. That the inspired writers themselves made this distinction is obvious from the freedom that they exercise in quoting each other, and from the varied phraseology in which the same writer describes the same events, and reports the same spoken words. In Luke’s narrative of Paul’s conversion as given in Acts 9:6, we read: “And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.” Paul himself relates this conversation in his speech on the stairs of the tower of Antonia (Acts 22:10), in this language: “And I said, What shall I do, Lord? [instead of ‘What wilt thou have me to do?’] And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus [instead of ‘the city’]; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do” (instead of “what thou must do”). Again, in Paul’s speech before Agrippa (Acts 26:16), we have the revelation made to him after his visit to Ananias blended with that made on the road to Damascus; for there we read that Christ says, “But rise, stand upon thy feet; for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen,” etc. In his defense before Agrippa, the time and place of this revelation were not essential; it was the fact that he preached to the Gentiles in obedience to a heavenly vision that he would emphasize.
If there were any place where literal exactness might have been expected, it would certainly be in the copying of the decalogue; commands written in tables of stone, where the verba ipsissima would not only seem to be of the highest importance, but where they must also have been familiar. Yet, on comparing the two records of the decalogue given in the Pentateuch (Ex. 20 and Deut. 5), it is perfectly clear that both cannot be literal copies from the tables—e. g., in the opening of the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day.” Exodus gives us the verb zakor and Deuteronomy the verb shamor; while Deuteronomy inserts the connective particle waw before all the commandments, from the sixth to the tenth inclusive. In fact, the reason for the observance of the fourth commandment, as given in the Exodus copy, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,” etc., is wholly omitted in Deuteronomy, and in its stead we find an exhortation parenthetically interjected, “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt,” etc. Colenso presses these discrepancies as demonstrating that the Pentateuch is not historically reliable; but the objection can have no weight except with one who confounds matter and form. The Scripture writers are all too much busied with the essentials of truth to be critically punctilious about its drapery. They produce broad impressions, aiming at the average heart and conscience, instead of choosing phrases for critical ears. Spiritual freedom emancipated them from the restraints of form that cramped the Rabbis and fathers as with fetters of iron. The early Christian fathers, as Clement, Polycarp, and Justin, show much of the same freedom in quoting Scripture phraseology; but as we approach the mediæval era, the letter stiffens into a stony hardness and coldness that crushes out the spirit.
If, then, the objector press the question, “Was the word spoken on Sinai zakor or shamor? Was the declaration at the baptism ‘Thou art’ or ‘This is?’” we reply that we do not know, and that it is not essential that we should know; for literal exactness is not essential to the real purpose of revelation. Had it been so, faithful phonographers could have given us better gospels than the inspired evangelists; a Galilean Boswell would have been selected rather than the spiritual and contemplative John. But while the divine Spirit, bringing all things to the remembrance of the disciple, does not call up in his memory the precise language of the heavenly message, he does suggest its precise import—in Luke as related to the world without, in John as related to the world within. Not to the weakness or ignorance of the human co-worker in revelation, not to caprice or accident, are we to charge these irregularities or variations from literal exactness in the records. Not, as some have taught, because the substance is from the Spirit, and the form from man, do we find these diversities; for both form and substance are from the Spirit and from the man. The word is divine and human—the divine coming through the human. By this variety in form, the divine Spirit would teach us that truth, while ever the same, is yet ever manifold. The stiff, precise formula can set forth only one of its aspects; its whole meaning cannot be cramped into an inflexible sentence. The Scripture is not addressed to the logical understanding, but the man. It is not a collection of dry and bristling formulae, but of living truths, which, like the cherubim of the apocalyptic vision, look before and after, above and beneath, without and within. Science may gather up these truths as well as she can, and arrange them in her cabinets of philosophical theology, but she has no right to demand that the winds of the Spirit should blow, and the Sun of Righteousness shine by her tables and formulas.
II. In the second place, there are apparent discrepancies, not only between different Scripture authors, but between different works of the same author, arising from differences in the point of view. The same truth is viewed on different sides, or in different connections, or is differently applied for the enlightenment and instruction of the reader. Under this head comes the subjective condition of Scripture authors. They are greatly diverse in mental character, education, and circumstances. They are scattered through a series of ages, in different lands, in different civilizations, and barbarisms. This it is that gives the Scripture its infinite variety, its wonderful manifoldness in thought and expression, its inexhaustible adaptability to man at all periods of life, and in all the varied phases of thought and feeling, and even to the whims and caprices of this manifold human nature. God speaks through kings and through herdsmen, through lawgiver130and statesman, philosopher and poet, through shepherd, fisherman, and tentmaker. He calls a lonely Nomad from far off Ur of the Chaldees, who wanders all his life, pitching his tent among his flocks and herds. He talks with the lawgiver among the grandeurs of Egyptian civilization. He speaks to the prophet orator who pours forth warning and invective and consolation in the gateways of Jerusalem. He touches the harp-string of the shepherd-poet so that it thrills through all time. He speaks from the miry prison of Jeremiah, and from the banks of the Chebar, where Ezekiel sits amid the solemn and sublime monuments of Assyria. He speaks through Solomon, the royal sage, as on his ivory throne he receives ambassadors from the ends of the earth; through Daniel the captive, and Nehemiah the cup-bearer, mourning the desolation of Zion. The dry Matthew, the graphic Mark, the circumstantial Luke, the mystic John, the stern James, the fiery Peter, and the logical Paul, each are channels through which one and the same Spirit pours the water of life upon a thirsty world. This wonderful variety cannot exist without wonderful diversities. Seer and sage, poet and logician, king and peasant, each sees his own vision of the same truth, and tells us what he sees. He who hath ears to hear can feel that the epistle to the Romans chords with the Psalms of David, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah with the great shout of the triumphant church in the Apocalypse. Many-sided humanity could be reached only by this many-voiced revelation. Man must be addressed by man, else he could not understand; but manifold men are requisite to touch all the sides of man. The infinite Spirit must use a vast number and variety of finite channels to pour itself upon the world.
Take, as a first illustration of this species of discrepancy, the two distinct narratives of the creation as given in the first two chapters of Genesis. The second narrative is evidently distinct and independent, going back to the very beginning, and bearing a regular title. “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.” So we afterward read as titles, before the histories of the successive patriarchs, “These are the generations of Adam, . . . Seth, Noah,” etc. Whether the two narratives originally proceeded from one or two different authors, we do not now consider; for, whether originally composed, or only finally revised by the inspired author of the Pentateuch, is comparatively unimportant. The contrast between the two records is striking, and objectors have declared the discrepancies to be inexplicable. If the book of Genesis commenced with the fourth verse of the second chapter, although we should have no distinct account of the creation of the heavenly bodies, we should still have a full narrative of the formation of the earth and all its inhabitants, and especially a full detail of the primeval history of man. The first narrative gives a record of six creative days, the second speaks of the day when God created the heavens and the earth. If the second narrative stood alone, we should certainly speak of the creative day instead of the creative week. The first narrative brings man upon the scene at its close; the second, at its opening. The first narrative speaks of man as created in God’s image, male and female; while the second speaks of a single man, formed from the dust of the earth, and of the woman formed from the man. Thus, if we had the first narrative without the second, we should think of the human race as brought into being in numbers, like the lower animals, at the close of the sixth creative day. Of the individuals Adam and Eve we should know nothing. Had we the second narrative without the first, we should certainly think that a single man was created as the first solitary inhabitant of the earth, that after he had begun to feel his solitude, the lower orders of animals were brought into being, and that the woman was created last of all. But all these diversities vanish when we consider that we have here the same events described from two different points of view. In the second narrative the order is logical; in the first it is chronological. The first gives us creation as viewed from without, as it might be described by a spectator from another planet, taking his stand upon the earth, and from thence beholding the grand panorama move for the six successive days; the second as viewed from within, as described by the being for whom earth with its furniture and all its lower inhabitants was made. It is earth as seen by man and as related to man. In the first narrative the successive creative steps are followed and described with serene, impassive grandeur, and man is beheld taking his throne of dominion at the close of the scene; its creation as it might have been outlined by a seraph, adorning the creative majesty, but having no throb of interest in us. But man is the center of the second narrative. All nature is focalized in him. As it is interesting only from its relations to him, it is described, not as it was made, feature after feature, in historical succession, but simply as related to him. The first is the world as it is in itself; the second is the world as related to man. Thus are the two narratives not contradictory, but supplementary to each other; the first furnishing a broad and grand background for the warmer detail of the second. They are related to each other as a landscape sketch to the picture of a single inhabited spot, which may be but a speck or a line on the sketch, but which so enlarges in the picture as to dwarf or hide whole landscapes of background. The man of the first narrative is a great, solitary king, with earth as his palace, the animate creation at his feet, the sun and stars burning as his lamps in the firma- ment above. We cannot clearly see his face nor hear his voice. The man of the second narrative stands so near us as to hide the mountains, sun, and stars; but we can hear him talk with God and with his own heart, as it first throbs toward the being who was made bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.
The greater part of the supposed discrepancies between the different gospels disappear when we consider that the same facts are seen from four different points of view. Many, most of these difficulties, have been created by the presupposition that either one of the evangelists composed a strictly consecutive chronological history. Rules of composition deduced from the classic models have been vainly appealed to, and applied in the interpretation of the gospel narratives. Neither one of these writers aimed to produce a history after the model of Tacitus or of Thucydides. There is no attempt at a philosophical history of the origin of Christianity, no analysis of the character of the Saviour, no skillful historic perspective, no artistic grouping of events, no chronological unfolding of the mustard-seed truth which is destined to root itself through the entire earth and lift its head to heaven.
The discrepancies which have been most insisted on as real, and not apparent, are chronological diversities, the order of a few minute events in time—events which all describe as transpiring within the limit of three brief years. Now, while all these historians paint the same general series of great events, from our Lord’s birth to his resurrection, yet none of them profess to give such minute chronological data of his public ministry as would be necessary to cast the events of those last three years into the form of a diary. Although many eminent authors have written as if this were possible, and many critics seem to regard it as a great desideratum, we neither expect that it will ever be attained, nor do we think that it was ever designed by the Spirit, who is the real author of the gospel. But while neither evangelist professes to write a journal, each not only has his own object, but makes it sufficiently plain.
Matthew, who wrote in Hebrew, or rather Aramaic, for the Christian Jews of Palestine, tells us at the opening of his work that he is to set forth Christ as the son of David, the son of Abraham. Mark, the preacher to the Gentiles, calls his work the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God. Luke, the companion of Paul, who had stood by that mighty apostle, as, amidst the stormiest persecution, he aimed his Heaven-directed blows at the partition-wall which separated Jew and Gentile, writes for the instruction and edification of those Gentile churches which he had helped to plant in the soil prepared by the Jewish synagogues scattered through all the Mediterranean islands and peninsulas. Matthew looks backward, as indicated by his Hebrew garb, and sees the gospel linked to prophetic Judaism; Mark’s eye and heart are filled with the present; while Luke, with something of a Pauline intuition, looks far into the future and abroad over the Gentile nations.
These three writers regard the gospel in its aggressive aspect; their eye is on its foes; they give us the words and the works of Christ as directed to those without; it is Christ as seen and heard by a world lying in wickedness. But John gives us the gospel as seen from within, the gospel as it was poured into his heart while he leaned on Jesus’ bosom. These are the rich, deep discourses in which, when shut in with the chosen twelve, or when gathering still closer to his heart the chosen three, Jesus unveiled the most awful mysteries. Renan tells us that the Christ of John is not the Christ of the first three evangelists. This statement is true, and yet it is false. Socrates, in the cell, talking of immortality in that little circle of chosen, devoted friends, is not Socrates before the tribunal, defending himself against the charge of blasphemy. The face that was turned toward the tyrant and the sophist was not the face that was turned toward Phædo and Crito. Yet without the quiet faith and calm philosophy of the cell, we could not understand the bold plea and stern rebuke at the tribunal.
So John shows us the fountain, while the other evangelists trace the streams; the three synoptics show us the beams of light that burst from little Galilee upon a darkened world—John shows us the Sun of Righteousness.
III. Not only may apparent discrepancy arise from difference in the points of sight taken by the authors, but also from the same difference in the hearers or readers of Scripture. Scripture is as diverse as the man whose infinitely diversified wants it mirrors, whose myriad-chorded nature it touches—diverse as the nature on whose bosom man is cradled. As man is one under all shades of color, babbling all varieties of language, dwelling in all climes, having ever the same central wants, the same sadness and gladness; so is this book most divinely human in its vital unity amid infinite diversity. Now, if we take up our abode in the center of Sahara, it may be easy to quarrel with nature; so if we pitch our tent amid the rites of Leviticus, the cavils and doubts of Ecclesiastes, or the strange and startling symbols of Ezekiel, we may easily quarrel with Scripture; yet there is an Arab to whom the desert is home, and there is a tropic soul for whom the jungles of Ezekiel are none too rank and warm. He who stands on John’s mount of vision does not care to follow the steps of a Pauline demonstration; and he who ever plods along logical highways can never swoop upon truth with apocalyptic intuition.
Scripture addresses diverse faculties, as well as diverse men. The song may perfectly harmonize with the syllogism, yet it is hard for the man who is influenced mainly by reason to agree with him who is swayed mainly by feeling, and harder to see that it is the same truth under different aspects that they both believe. It takes a comprehensive mind to distinguish the same voice now speaking to reason, now to understanding, and now to imagination, as the chemist sees the same water now exhaling in vapor, now dropping in rain, now feathering in snow, and now flashing in ice. The graceful drapery of a symbol reveals to one a truth that another refuses to see, unless skeletoned in a dogma. When Socrates roused himself from his last stupor to adjure Crito not to forget to sacrifice a cock to Æsculapius, he declared his faith in immortality far more clearly and beautifully than when arguing away the doubts of Simmias. He would have his friend carry a thank-offering for him to the god of health, because that through death he had found life at last. Yet dull men have quoted this passage of the Phædo to prove that Socrates died in superstitious doubt! They could understand the reasoning that plodded toward truth by short, slow steps, but could not understand the Platonic symbolism that revealed truth as by a flash of lightning.
IV. There is also an apparent discrepancy between the whole and part, between the concise and the detailed narratives of the same events. This is closely connected with what we have just discussed as discrepancy arising from diverse points of view—in fact, as will appear from our illustrations, is the same under another phase. Sometimes one writer sketches what another paints—as the second chapter of Genesis fills out a sketch given in two verses of the first; as Mark adds graphic touches and warm colorings to the bare outline of Matthew; as Luke, in the book of Acts, draws out into minute narrative incidents just alluded to in the Pauline epistles. Events are grouped together in single verses or lines of the Psalms and the prophets, which, in the Old Testament narratives, are painted in full historical perspective. Under this head are to be explained most of the diversities in the genealogical tables of Scripture. As these records of lineage furnished the framework for the most cherished hopes of the Hebrew people, they are preserved with exceeding care. The prerogatives and privileges of the priesthood, the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies and of historic promises, and especially the splendid Messianic hopes of the nation, all were guarded and guaranteed by these genealogical catalogues. Yet, where the ancestors of the same individual are several times given, comparison shows that some links in the chain are frequently dropped; it is not necessary in the mind of the author always to unroll it at full length; it is enough to mention several selected ancestors scattered along the line, and thus a man may be styled the son of an ancestor of the third or fourth generation. Ezra, the scribe, who had complete access to all these records, gives his priestly lineage up to Aaron, the founder of the priesthood, and yet omits several generations that are given in the first book of Chronicles. So when Matthew, for mnemonic purposes, as well as to set forth the three great epochs of Hebrew history—its patriarchal childhood, its royal maturity, and its provincial decline—groups the ancestors of the Saviour in three fourteens, or double sevens, headed respectively by Abraham, the patriarch, by David, the royal minstrel, and Jechonias, the exiled monarch, he drops out, for the sake of symmetry, three generations. Yet that these three omitted names were perfectly familiar to him is evident from the fact that they were well-known historic names, the names of kings of Judah, the events of whose reigns were fully recorded in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Every Jew, with the Old Testament in his hand, knew the names of Amariah, Joash, and Ahaziah; had these been the names of obscure or unknown individuals, the case would have been very different. But no objector at this day doubts that Matthew had the Old Testament history before him, in Hebrew and Greek, substantially the same as we have it to-day. It was not, then, through ignorance that these historic names were omitted, but by design, because their insertion would not agree with the author’s plan in the presentation of his subject. Objectors may criticise this plan, that it is not according to classic models; they may object to the Hebrew conception of the object and character of history, and may complain that these records are imperfect and unsatisfactory when judged by the rules of composition that have been drawn from heathen histories. But all this does not prove that these authors are inconsistent with themselves or each other, and does not in the least impeach their reliability when their real standpoint is found. And in this respect no more is demanded for them than for any heathen authors; for no author can be understood and seem to be consistent with himself and with truth, until we fully understand his point of view. In this respect, every author is a law unto himself, and so every school of authors and every literature has its own laws, which are to be candidly and thoroughly studied as facts, before any theory of the subject can properly be constructed. A man has no right to dogmatize about the Hebrew histories who is willfully blind to the principles on which those writers looked at all historical events. Everything is viewed by them in its relation to the divine government and purposes. Events are selected and grouped, set in the foreground or background, according to this plan. Thus, in the passage before us, generations are so selected from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, to Joseph, the last descendant of Judah’s royal line, as to set forth in three corresponding and symmetrical pictures the successive phases of Hebrew history till God’s purposes concerning that wonderful people ripen into fulfillment. When the long-promised Seed of Abraham, the Branch from the stem of Jesse, the King of all kings, appeared in this royal line, the nation, having fulfilled its mission, sank from human history.
The same law of Hebrew composition is also seen in the Apocalyptic vision of the hundred and forty-four thousand that were sealed of the twelve tribes of Israel. Dan is omitted from the list, probably because of its idolatrous apostasy, and Joseph is inserted instead of Ephraim, his son, who is regarded as joined to his idols. No one will pretend that the author of Revelation was ignorant on so familiar a subject as the names of the tribes.
This habit of compressing a genealogical series, dropping out intermediate links, thus giving a part for the whole, when it is not the author’s design to spread out the whole family history of an individual, but simply to show the relation to some remote ancestor—as when Ezra is shown to be the son of Aaron by the mention of several intermediate generations, and in like manner Christ is set forth as the son of David, the son of Abraham—this habit of representation should be considered in calculating chronology from genealogical series. Much more time may have elapsed than would be inferred from supposing the series before us to be complete.
Thus, an event which is just sketched in one narrative may be fully painted in the parallel narrative, and the contrast may easily be magnified into a discrepancy.
A knowledge of this law of the Hebrew narrative furnishes, moreover, valuable aid in studying the events of the creative week. The events which are assigned to successive days need not have succeeded each other in the strict order of time, but may have lapped upon each other in the way already mentioned, like six slides of a telescope partly drawn out. Thus the creation of the firmament commenced on the second day, but it was a process running through the second, third, and part of the fourth. The separation of land from water—in other words the upheaval of the continents—was a process which commenced on the third day, but continued through the remainder of the creative week.
V. There are two other kinds of apparent discrepancy that we will mention, arising from the limitations of the human mind, considered as the recipient of revelation. The first is the discrepancy, or rather contrast, between the subjective and the objective, between things as they really are, and things as they appear. Of the essence of things we know nothing; it is only by the attributes that come within the reach of our faculties that we can judge of things themselves. By these attributes we can learn enough about different natures to answer all life’s practical ends; but it would be very shortsighted to suppose that from this source we can learn enough to satisfy all speculative cravings, or can thus imagine how things appear to beings differently constituted. Human perception is not the gauge of the universe. For aught we know, the rose may show to more highly endowed intelligences, or even to the insects that hover over its petals, a hundred other attributes as pleasing as color and odor, for which human language has no names. Objectively, God, the infinite one, is unknown and unknowable to man; “his ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts;” “no man hath seen God at any time.” Yet, subjectively, he reveals himself through these very thoughts and ways of ours in his written word, while the incarnate word makes us see the invisible God. This is a paradox, but it is the paradox not only of revelation, but of all instruction. The lessons must ever be accommodated to the capacity of the pupil, to be of any advantage whatever. And so there will ever be an antithesis between subjective and objective truth—that is, between truth as it is, and as it is conceived. If we insist on the objective reality, and proudly scorn all subjective aids, our God becomes an inaccessible, icy absolute, the thought of whom freezes every moral impulse into death; but if we allow ourselves to be instructed by God through the same symbolism by which we instruct each other, then can we accept the statements, “They saw the God of Israel,” and, “No man hath seen God at any time,” and feel that there is no contradiction.
VI. The last kind of discrepancy that we shall mention is that which necessarily arises from progress in revelation. It is the contrast between the sketch and the picture, between the seed and the tree, between the foundations and the temple. The egg would be called dead, most confidently, by him who had never seen the eagle that is folded in the germ; the law is dead to him who has never felt, through the embryonic envelope of precept and ceremony, the quickening of the gospel germ that waits the age-long broodings of the Spirit to bring it into perfect life. Revelation comes in successive stages adapted to advancing man. The patriarchal, Mosaic, prophetic, and Christian revelations are successive stages in the same great process, each intermediate step starting from those which precede, and suggesting those that follow. The lofty ethics and sublime visions of the prophets, both in form and substance, presuppose the Mosaic law and ritual. The Psalms of David could never have been sung in a nation that had not been trained for centuries in the statutes of the Pentateuch; the epistle to the Romans requires as its preface131not only the gospel according to the evangelists, but the gospel according to Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah.