"The testimony of two men is true," says the "Faithful Witness."
He appeals to the law for this, and the law speaks as follows: "One
witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any
sin, of all that one sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses or at the
mouth of three witnesses shall a matter be established." (Deut. xix.
15.) The apostle also cites this law of witness, to which God has very
plainly conformed His manifestation of Himself to man. For nature and
Scripture are just this twofold testimony in its full breadth; while
yet He has so constructed His Word as to be itself twofold, and so
sufficient. The Old Testament thus unites with the New, and who that
has considered it in the least but must appreciate the power of this
for conviction? For such power in twofold witness proceeds largely from
the diversity of character and interest that they present. They are
otherwise different - contrasted; yet here they agree: different in
such sort that you realize there is no collusion between them - no
treachery; nothing but the necessary unity of truth could make them
one. And how will this be strengthened in proportion as the contrast is
manifold, and yet the unity pervasive: and this in the two Testaments
is what so demonstrates them to be of God.
The Old Testament
is in Hebrew, the language of a special people, with whose history it
has grown up, and to whom it addresses itself. It is the religion of a
nation, one of the families of the earth - its horizon earthly, its
sanctuary a worldly one, its services ritualistic, ornate, elaborate,
intrusted to a special priesthood. God is here behind a vail which none
can penetrate; man - all men - are shut out; none can see Him and live;
for merciful as He is, He cannot clear the guilty, and who (let him do
his best) is not guilty?
This legal, sacerdotal, exclusive
system, the incarnation of conscience, but a bad conscience, in what
utter contrast is it to the free, spiritual, all-embracing spirit of
Christianity! "The Lord hath said that He would dwell in thick
darkness," says Solomon on the day of the dedication of the temple. (1
Ki. viii. 12.) "We walk in the light, as God is in the light," answers
the apostle. (1 Jno. i. 7.) "Who can by no means clear the guilty,"
says the Old Testament voice. (Ex. xxxiv. 7.) "That justifieth the
ungodly," says again the New Testament (Rom. iv. 5.) "No man can see Me
and live," is the elder utterance. (Ex. xxxiii. 20.) "He that hath seen
Me hath seen the Father," are His words who is Himself the spirit
incarnate of the New.
Here are two witnesses how diverse: can
it be that after all under these statements, so seemingly conflicting,
there is nevertheless a perfect unity? Can there be a fullness of truth
which embraces and harmonizes all? Yes, surely: admit what the New
Testament so abundantly affirms and illustrates, the essential
opposition between law and grace, and yet that the first is handmaid to
the other - then, on the basis of law, all the Old Testament utterances
are but the sentence of God upon the self-righteousness of man; while
the New Testament reveals the heart of God in grace, upon the basis of
a righteousness by which the law also is magnified. and made
honourable, and able to forego its penal claim.
Thus they can be
reconciled; but is this reconciliation an afterthought? Is it perhaps a
human, though wonderfully wise, contrivance for adjusting matters
between them? Are there perhaps yet two authors instead of one; and
these still human not divine? This question, so necessary to be
answered, receives from the Old and New Testaments together its full
and entire satisfaction in the consideration of that typical system
which pervades everywhere the former, while it anticipates and
prophesies the latter.
This typical system is, all through the
Old Testament, the complement and corollary of the strictly legal part.
If a soul stricken with the conviction of sin sought for relief and
acceptance from God, it was shut up to sacrifice, the ordained way of
approach for every one who would draw near to Him; and here he found
what, except in its typical teaching, contained no ray of light. Why
should the blood of an animal shed by the hand of the offerer avail
before God for the sin of him who shed it? You must illumine that with
the light of the gospel before you can understand it. Understood, it is
then the illumination of all else: it is the establishment of law; it
is the vindication of grace; it is the heart of God bursting out over
all the barriers that mans sin could oppose to it, - God who is light,
now in the light, revealed.
Yes, the witnesses are one; their
testimony is one; they have one Author; grace is no afterthought. The
later word, addressed in his own language to the Gentile, is but the
necessary development and issue of the earlier one. The earlier is
interpreted by the later: the typical communication by the plain speech
now.
He appeals to the law for this, and the law speaks as follows: "One
witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any
sin, of all that one sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses or at the
mouth of three witnesses shall a matter be established." (Deut. xix.
15.) The apostle also cites this law of witness, to which God has very
plainly conformed His manifestation of Himself to man. For nature and
Scripture are just this twofold testimony in its full breadth; while
yet He has so constructed His Word as to be itself twofold, and so
sufficient. The Old Testament thus unites with the New, and who that
has considered it in the least but must appreciate the power of this
for conviction? For such power in twofold witness proceeds largely from
the diversity of character and interest that they present. They are
otherwise different - contrasted; yet here they agree: different in
such sort that you realize there is no collusion between them - no
treachery; nothing but the necessary unity of truth could make them
one. And how will this be strengthened in proportion as the contrast is
manifold, and yet the unity pervasive: and this in the two Testaments
is what so demonstrates them to be of God.
The Old Testament
is in Hebrew, the language of a special people, with whose history it
has grown up, and to whom it addresses itself. It is the religion of a
nation, one of the families of the earth - its horizon earthly, its
sanctuary a worldly one, its services ritualistic, ornate, elaborate,
intrusted to a special priesthood. God is here behind a vail which none
can penetrate; man - all men - are shut out; none can see Him and live;
for merciful as He is, He cannot clear the guilty, and who (let him do
his best) is not guilty?
This legal, sacerdotal, exclusive
system, the incarnation of conscience, but a bad conscience, in what
utter contrast is it to the free, spiritual, all-embracing spirit of
Christianity! "The Lord hath said that He would dwell in thick
darkness," says Solomon on the day of the dedication of the temple. (1
Ki. viii. 12.) "We walk in the light, as God is in the light," answers
the apostle. (1 Jno. i. 7.) "Who can by no means clear the guilty,"
says the Old Testament voice. (Ex. xxxiv. 7.) "That justifieth the
ungodly," says again the New Testament (Rom. iv. 5.) "No man can see Me
and live," is the elder utterance. (Ex. xxxiii. 20.) "He that hath seen
Me hath seen the Father," are His words who is Himself the spirit
incarnate of the New.
Here are two witnesses how diverse: can
it be that after all under these statements, so seemingly conflicting,
there is nevertheless a perfect unity? Can there be a fullness of truth
which embraces and harmonizes all? Yes, surely: admit what the New
Testament so abundantly affirms and illustrates, the essential
opposition between law and grace, and yet that the first is handmaid to
the other - then, on the basis of law, all the Old Testament utterances
are but the sentence of God upon the self-righteousness of man; while
the New Testament reveals the heart of God in grace, upon the basis of
a righteousness by which the law also is magnified. and made
honourable, and able to forego its penal claim.
Thus they can be
reconciled; but is this reconciliation an afterthought? Is it perhaps a
human, though wonderfully wise, contrivance for adjusting matters
between them? Are there perhaps yet two authors instead of one; and
these still human not divine? This question, so necessary to be
answered, receives from the Old and New Testaments together its full
and entire satisfaction in the consideration of that typical system
which pervades everywhere the former, while it anticipates and
prophesies the latter.
This typical system is, all through the
Old Testament, the complement and corollary of the strictly legal part.
If a soul stricken with the conviction of sin sought for relief and
acceptance from God, it was shut up to sacrifice, the ordained way of
approach for every one who would draw near to Him; and here he found
what, except in its typical teaching, contained no ray of light. Why
should the blood of an animal shed by the hand of the offerer avail
before God for the sin of him who shed it? You must illumine that with
the light of the gospel before you can understand it. Understood, it is
then the illumination of all else: it is the establishment of law; it
is the vindication of grace; it is the heart of God bursting out over
all the barriers that mans sin could oppose to it, - God who is light,
now in the light, revealed.
Yes, the witnesses are one; their
testimony is one; they have one Author; grace is no afterthought. The
later word, addressed in his own language to the Gentile, is but the
necessary development and issue of the earlier one. The earlier is
interpreted by the later: the typical communication by the plain speech
now.
Thus, then, as to the testimony of tie written Word. But now
if there be another testimony to God, and the book of nature be also
His book, - and Scripture itself affirms this, yea, who that believes
in God could deny it - then these two witnesses must also agree in one,
and that which is enigmatical and obscure be interpreted by the clearer
- the earlier, therefore, once more by the later, and not the reverse.
Notice, too, that there is no ground for wonder, if the two should seem
not only diverse in character, as they are, but contradictory even,
which they are not. We might expect this; while, by the analogy of
Scripture, we may expect also that this apparent contradiction will end
in clearer agreement at last, and in greater breadth and fullness of
testimony.
Even as we consider this now, the reality of the
analogy between the book of Nature and the Old Testament comes into
fuller light, and gains assurance. If the Old Testament be the
proclamation of law, and this be its supreme characteristic, how easy
it is to see that Nature is even more emphatically in some sense the
kingdom of Law. This is, in the eyes of more than Prof. Drummond, what
gives to it order and solidity. Grace here assuredly seems, at first
sight, to have no place, nay, to be in contradiction, until we are
reminded that in the elder book of Revelation it is in symbol and type
that we find the teaching of this, and are led to realize that Nature
itself, more entirely even than the Old Testament, is an object lesson,
a divine hieroglyph, a type-teaching. This it surely is; and although
as a whole we may not as yet have the full key, yet in all ages
nevertheless its lessons - have been taught and learnt, - in the
earliest perhaps most simply. As we grow older we lose the unsuspecting
faith of childhood, which in many respects is the truest wisdom; our
very language, which was at first pictorial, becomes hard and abstract,
its symbols merely arbitrary and algebraic, divested of the heart and
pathos which men drank in first from nature's breast, and now have
learnt to be ashamed of as the babble of the nursery.
But we
are coming back to Nature! perhaps: yea, to such extreme faith in it
that now our one knowledge is to be that of natural science, and beyond
it we are agnostics - know nothings. If that were so, it would be but
the surest proof that the old faith in nature nevertheless is dead. I
may use the words, but scarcely realize the thing, when I speak of
faith in laws, or faith in a machine. Here, too, "the law is not of
faith." The factory-rattle may interpret perhaps; but faith is of the
heart, and there is no heart. We have got back to the .old mythology,
and understand how Chronos (Time) produces and devours again his
children; but do not ask me, then, to confide in Chronos. No: vanity of
vanities, all is vanity. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.
Yet
here a hint from that old Jewish law in which we have already found the
character of a true witness may appeal to us. It was when man found
himself as it might seem, in the grip of the law, and without hope from
it - .when, though with the consciousness of sin upon him, he sought in
his distress to God, - the law itself referred him to that typical
system, in which the heart he sought in God was found. Is it not so
again, that when we turn to Him it is, and only so, that nature reveals
her really illuminated side, and warms and kindles as with a summer
breath? Assuredly, it is so: and reason itself cannot rest satisfied
short of that which satisfies heart, conscience, mind alike - not a
part only, but the whole of man.