Testimony to the Truth of the Bible by Rev. J. Cumming, D. D.

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 15, 1875

Testimony to the Truth of the Bible.

By Rev. J. Cumming, D. D.

TYRE from its ruins, Sodom from its ashes, Rome in her apostasy, Jerusalem in her degradation, the Arab in his tent, the Jew upon our streets, all living and lasting, even if unconscious witnesses, proclaim that this book has God for its author, truth for its matter, as it has immortality and glory for its issues.

Let me suppose for a moment, that a number of persons in different ages and places had been engaged in making various parts of a marble statue; suppose a person in Petersburg made a finger, a second in Rome a hand, a third in Edinburgh an ear, a fourth in Athens the body, and so on till the whole was completed, but all without communication with one another, and in different ages as in different lands.

Suppose that when all the fragments were brought together they formed that magnificent statue, called the Apollo Belvedere; would you not say, that some superintending statuary must have guided and given an impulse to every chisel; that some beau ideal, some great archetype must have been placed before each of them, after the form of which they were inspired constantly to work? in other words that they composed the parts, not as their own fancy prescribed, but as the presiding power directed? This is the fact in reference to the Scriptures.

Let us take the portrait of our blessed Lord. Isaiah describes his sorrows, Malachi his triumphs; the dying patriarch proclaims his empire, and the sweet psalmist of Israel the extension of his kingdom; one prophet gives one feature, and one another; and looking at the parts in detail, irrespective of the original and comparing one with another, we should say they are so contradictory that they can never belong to the same being. At last, Bethlehem and Gethsemane rise above the horison—Calvary lifts its awful head—the Son of God appears upon the cross—what prophets said is compared with what Christ is; and lo! all the parts deliniated by the pens of the prophets in distant and different centuries, at first apparently contradictory, come to be put together, and they constitute the "brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person." By this alone it is proved that the prophets "wrote as they were moved and guided by the Holy Spirit," and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah.—Rev. J. Cumming, D. D.