THE IMPORTANCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
The following vindication of the Old Testament is from a lecture delivered before the students of Yale College a few years since:— The events, the interpretations, and the applications in government of the divine nature and attributes, in the Old Testament, have no parallel in the New Testament—not even in the Apocalypse. That supreme work of the divine nature which Christ came to interpret and to illustrate, and which must precede the believing of the Lord Jesus Christ, is delineated in the Old Testament scriptures as it is delineated nowhere else. All the elements of spiritual truth which are revealed respecting God in the New Testament have their first germinant form in the Old Testament.135 THE NEW TESTAMENT SEEN THROUGH THE OLD TESTAMENT.
I do not know where in the New Testament you can find any such dramatic and soul-shaking representations of God as were made to Moses; as were made to the prophet on the side of the mountain where he had fled; as were made in the later prophecies—for instance, those of Isaiah and Jeremiah; and as were made in the book of Job—the mightiest drama ever written, and one which leaves all other dramas poor and pulseless in the comparison. I know not where else you can find any such description of the glory, the largeness, the infinity, and the eternity of the divine nature, as is contained in the Old Testament. You certainly cannot find it in the Gospels. You can find it only to a slight degree, if at all, in the Epistles. The Apocalypse is pictorial, opalescent, and wonderful; but if you search you will find that most of its figures, and its sublimest scenes, are but reproductions from the Old Testament—that they were found in the Old Jewish Scriptures in one form or another before they were put into the drapery of that wonderful later book. Every man, therefore, must go to the New Testament through the Old Testament, either really or virtually. That is if he reads and accepts the representations of the divine nature and government as they are found in the Old Testament, then he goes to the New Testament, really, through the Old, as through an open door, or as through an illuminated passage-way. And to one who goes to the New Testament thus, there is great power in Christ. Gentleness in Him that delivered the law upon Sinai is gentleness indeed. There is nothing so gentle as the touch of one who is dying of exhaustion; but gentleness under such circumstance is weakness, and is nothing. There is nothing more common than the self-renunciation of a man who cannot help himself. There is nothing in the world so empty as virtue when a person does not care what he has done, and would just as lief have done one thing as another. Benevolence, where it is only absolute indifference to moral quality, is very easily understood, and is very cheap. But when God is represented, in the grandeur of his power, as one who is controlling the universe for the up-building of a future kingdom; as one who loves righteousness; as one who stands forever, saying, “I am patient with sin; I am long-suffering; I am full of kindness; and rather than man should suffer, I suffer;” as one in whom lenity and meekness are attributes of thunderous power, of universal unobstructed government, of sovereignity and majesty—then these elements have a meaning which could not have, standing simply and only by themselves. Thus Jesus Christ sprouts out of the Old Testament; Messiah is a blossom of the God of the Old Hebrews; and you need to see the stem and the leaves as well as the mere blossom. The salient familiar traits of Christ do not receive illustration, and have not power with men, unless they are shown upon a back ground of the unknowable—that is, of God, in such transcendent condition, extent, and altitude, as passes knowledge. In view of the statement that everybody must virtually come to the New Testament through the Old, you may ask me, “Do you not believe that a Christianly bred child, a child that has received instruction in the New Testament alone, and has been taught what is right and what is wrong, what is virtuous and what is unvirtuous, is salvable, and may enter the kingdom of Heaven?” Undoubtedly I do; because, although the child is imperfectly educated, the Old Testament is not left out. It is in the mother. We are to take into consideration the religion that is in nature. Reflected light is a thousand times more than direct light. Direct light is the most brilliant; but yet, in every forest, under every rock, behind every house, everywhere, there are gradations of reflected light. Not only does the truth of God exist positively and directly in this world, but it is reflected in a thousand ways. There is a truth of God that comes out of laws; there is a truth of God that comes out of institutions; there is a truth of God that comes out of manners and customs in Christianly bred communities; there is a truth of God that comes out of men’s characters that have been incarnated and embalmed; and you get a secondary light of truth where you do not get the first downfall of the light of truth. And so a child may be educated to know Christ Jesus without having read a word of the Old Testament. POWER OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Many parents do not dare to let their children go to the Old Testament. They say there are in it many things that shock the refinement of modern Christians, and that they do not want their children to see. There are, it is true, many things in the history of the race which are not agreeable. So there are many things in the growth of every child that are not agreeable, and we take him off in the nursery, and do not show him in the parlor; but they are necessary parts of life, though they do not belong to polite society. And there are parts of the Old Testament which do not belong to polite literature; but they belong to life, notwithstanding. Life has knots and twists in it which must be taken account of in a true delineation. Old Cromwell wanted to be painted with the wart on his face; and the Old Testament paints warts on the faces of its heroes. Now, if parents are fastidious about the Old Testament, the consequence is that their children are weakened, unless they get its reflected light—and then they are not half so strong as they would otherwise be. I would rather take my child by the hand, and walk with him right straight through from Genesis to the last book of the Old Testament, and read every bit to him, unfolding and explaining it, than to have him deprived of the power which comes from familiarity with it—all the time keeping before his mind the thread of moral principle which runs through it; for there is not more certainly a spinal cord that runs down to the lumbar vertebræ than there is a magnificent idea of God running right through the Old Testament from beginning to end—of a God known, but unknowable; of a God righteous, and seeking to build up righteousness in his creatures; of a God administering reward and penalty; of a God inspiring love and fear. And having opened up the sweet encouragement and hope which are so abundantly to be found in the Old Testament, I would then open up the New Testament view of God’s interior disposition, as made manifest through the Lord Jesus Christ. I beseech of you do not be ashamed of the Old Testament. If you are ashamed of it, God grant that you may suffer persecution, for I do not think a man ever suffered persecution, and fought the bravely against it, that he did not take refuge in the Old Testament. It came out of storms, and it is helpful to men who are in the midst of storms. There is bone in it—bone that has flesh and skin on it, and that is clothed with beauty. It is a wilderness; there are some rudenesses in it, to be sure, but these rudenesses were unavoidable, and they were not without some use. The Old Testament is wonderful in many ways—wonderful in its growths—wonderful in its visions—wonderful in its total effect. And it is indispensable as a back ground to the New Testament. As mountains would be undesirable to live in, but as, nevertheless, they are fathers of all the streams that make the level plain sweet and beautiful, so the Old Testament, though it contains some things which are not attractive, is the source of those truths which run into the New Testament, and make it fertile.