Respect the Old Testament.
By Talbot W. Chambers
THERE are not so many discouraging features in the aspect of our times as the opposition shown by some to the study of the Old Testament by the young. It indicates a great lack of clearness and comprehensiveness of view in relation to the nature and claims of the Scripture. And all experience shows that a failure here is far-reaching in its results. Any disparagement of the older Scripture reacts fatally upon the later. Often men do not dream of such a thing, but all the same the effect follows. 1. The Old Testament should be taught in the Sunday-school because it is a constituent part of the word of God, resting upon precisely the same authority as the rest of the volume. If men are to learn the whole counsel of God, they must study the whole record of that counsel. Is there any arrogance equal to that of separating that which God has joined together? 2. All the encomiums of Scripture in the New Testament refer to the Old. Paul called it the sword of the Spirit, and said that as being inspired it was profitable for teaching and training so as to furnish the man of God completely for every good work. Eph. 6:17; 2 Tim. 3:16, 17. Our Lord used it to repel the tempter, to rebuke the Sadducees, to instruct the disciples, and to utter his own last words on the cross. 3. The Old Testament is as much needed to understand the New as the New is to illumine the Old. The later presupposes the earlier and builds upon it at every step. Borrow at first distributed the New Testament alone in Spain, but afterwards found this to be a mistake, for people previously ignorant of the Bible could not get hold of the force and meaning of the gospels and epistles without the aid of the antecedent disclosures. And what becomes of Christ's references to the fathers, and Paul's appeals to Abraham and David, and the priestly argument of the epistle to the Hebrews, if the Old Testament be not read and considered? 4. A chief peculiarity of the Bible is that it records a progressive revelation, all the stages of which are closely interlocked together. Its completeness and glory are seen only when this fact is recognized and receives its due weight. Are our children to be trained in studious ignorance of this capital truth? 5. The Old Testament is peculiarly fitted to interest and please the young. So much of it is history, or rather chronicles, annals, which tell their own story and possess the advantage which the concrete has over the abstract. More than once I have seen lads reading in turn at family worship lose the place because, interested in the narrative, they had read on to see the issue. Again, the biographies of the older Scripture are very fascinating. From Abraham to Daniel there is a long list of worthies, wonderfully varied in character and circumstances, but all attractive by the power inherent in an absolutely truthful memoir, which furnishes an inexhaustible mine of interest and suggestiveness. What Christian mother could get along without the story of Joseph, of Samuel, of David? Further, the element of the marvelous so prominent in the Hebrew records seems exactly adapted to meet youthful tastes. The creation and the deluge, the plagues of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea and the Jordan, the hailstones on Gibeon, the exploits of Samson, the narrow escapes of the son of Jesse, the miracles wrought by Elijah and Elisha, the story of Esther, of Jonah, and of Daniel and his friends,—are all adapted to meet the natural craving of the young for the abnormal and supernatural. But they meet it with truth, and with truth intimately associated with moral and religious ideas, so that the effect is as wholesome as it is gratifying. Once more, the poetical portions of the Old Testament are indispensable, whether it be the didactic or gnomic utterances in the book of Proverbs, which sum up the wisdom of all ages and exhibit the insight and shrewdness of "Poor Richard" without his narrowness and sometimes questionable morality, or the Psalms of David, so sweet, so rich, so varied, so adapted to the nature of man as man always and everywhere. What injustice to a child can be greater than to cut him off from the study of compositions like these, the models of their kind? Instead of lessening the attention given to the Old Testament we ought to increase it, make it more intelligent and searching, and above all bring to view its manifold, close, and intimate relations to the New, so that the young shall see and feel that the two Testaments combine to make one whole, and that whole is the word of God.—Talbot W. Chambers, D. D., in Old Testament Student.