Some of us who wish, as we say, to come back to Christ, shut up the Old Testament, so exquisitely rendered into our mother tongue, because we do not see how its records of war and crime and lust fit in with the noble teachings of our Saviour. 1 think there must be some mistake here, for the Jewish Bible was, so far as we know, the only literature to which the Lord Jesus had access, It was His custom to attend the synagogue on the Sabbath day and to hear it read; and on one occasion, when they delivered to Him the Book of Isaiah, He did not lay it aside as if it were out of date, nor question the authorship, as if this determined inspiration, but opened the Book, as did Wycliffe, and found the place, as one who knew it well. Humbly accepting our limitations of memory, He read a passage, and only closed the parchment when, with the Word in men's minds, it had served its purpose. And He handed back the roll to the minister, to be preserved as a record of supreme value for generations to come.
He who as Man had stood before them to read, then sat, as Lord and Master, to teach. Their eyes were fastened no longer on the inscribed page but on Him ; and what He said was that the written words, so far from being obsolete, were that day actually fulfilled. The Spirit of Isaiah-this was the Spirit that was upon Him. He also would preach to the poor. He also would heal the broken-hearted. He also would deliver the captives. He also would enlighten the blind. He also would liberate the bruised. It was the graciousness of His Old Testament message that astonished them all.
An Unerring Mirror
And it was the breadth of the Old Testament, not its narrowness, that afterwards angered their minds and endangered His life. He said nothing original when He told them that the widow who was blessed by Elisha was, like Naaman the leper, whom he healed, a heathen beyond the pale of Judaism. The stories were as familiar to those Nazarenes as the cliff from which they would have hurled the Man who recalled them. This tribal volume," as some people regard it, brought home to Him, and through Him to His hearers, how there should be no salvation offered to them which was not available for all mankind, how God so loved, not one nation only, but the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.
We condemn those narrow-minded people for not appreciating the Old Testament's universal message. But how many of us would listen patiently if some preacher were to tell us that enemies of our country have received comfort from God of which we, with our privileges, have proved unworthy? We have talked about our superior altruism, but is not our quarrel with the Old Testament just this--that, like the men of Nazareth, we are humiliated at discovering ourselves in that unerring mirror. The War and the crime and the lust therein described find us out, and bring us under the general condemnation which envelops all mankind. We do not like to think that it is only the "poor," "the broken-hearted," "the captives," "the blind," and " the bruised " who are born once more in the acceptable year of the Lord. We are restless at the assertion that on our nation, as a nation, no blessing is granted which is not to be shared by us with all the nations under heaven.
Christ called Himself a Householder who brings forth treasures, new and old, not one without the other, but both. He spoke of the Scriptures as a garment which clothes the soul, and as a bottle which preserves the life. He did not alter or add to what had been written. The inserted patch would have torn the context. He did not pour the new wine of His Gospel into the ancient literary form; He developed his own vehicle of expression--a proverb--a prayer--a parable--a blessing--a lament--all gathered from the past, but all made new, like a fresh wineskin. And so it is to-day with our creeds, and churches, and constitutions. Under the stress of His abundant wisdom they are ever breaking down. There is dissent, and again dissent; and His new wine is spilled and wasted because human institutions and human systems cannot contain One who exceeds the Heaven of heavens.
Old and New
Not that He abolished cloth and wine. He made these and all things new. The old song of Hannah became the new song of Mary. The prophecies of a suffering Messiah became prophecies of a Messiah triumphant. The old miracles became new miracles. The old kingdom became a new kingdom; the old Jerusalem, a new Jerusalem. In the Sermon on the Mount there is not one thought which cannot be traced to the Old Testament. Blessed "was Abraham's favorite word. Moses, like our Lord, pronounced woes. Aaron made it a rigid rule that every sacrifice must be salted with the salt of self-criticism. Joshua warned us that we must choose this day whom we would serve--God or Mammon--we cannot have both.
Take the Beatitudes. The Psalmists knew how near was God to the contrite spirit, that it is the man of a pure heart who sees the face of the King on His holy hill; that the meek--the men who obey as sons obey a father--inherit the earth, as their Father's estate, not by conquest, but by right, since to conquer oneself is to have conquered the universe. It was David who taught us that with the merciful, God shows Himself merciful. It was Solomon who held that the path of the just is as a shining light. It was Jeremiah who won the happiness which comes by persecution and despiteful usage. It was Isaiah who promised comfort to those who mourn. It was Amos who found a famine that was not of bread, a thirst which was not of water, a yearning for the words of the Lord. In the New, we read of the house built on the rock and the house built on the sand. And, in the Old, we are advised that, except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.
One and Indivisible
The Bible is one and indivisible. You cannot tear it apart. It stands or falls as a whole. And it is not by neglecting the Old Testament that we gain a better knowledge of our Saviour--quite the reverse. The men who looked forward to Him have many lessons to teach us who look backward, and it is He Himself who asked us to search their writings. He would have us take time over them and so discover Him. Those people, in His view, "greatly err" who remain ignorant of these Scriptures. o He would not countenance the questions of the Samaritan woman, for He told her plainly that the Jews knew what they believed and would give Salvation to the world; and when He rose from the dead, He granted His special company to disciples who were still patiently discussing the Prophets. After he had ascended, the early Christians steadily pursued their study of the Hebrew Bible; their sacred Epistles were full of it, and the Revelation of John is a mosaic of which every jewel as it gleams is drawn from that inexhaustible treasury.
For He comes to us as a Greater than Solomon in his wisdom and a Greater than Jonah in his zeal. Reading His Old Testament, not for criticism but for food, He found there His own Divinity, for otherwise how did David call Him Lord, who was also his Son? And He found there eternal life, for otherwise how was God the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if the patriarchs who are dead have ceased to be? And it was from those same writings that He quoted when He told us that God desires mercy and not sacrifice, lest we condemn the guiltless. A Book that He used with such effect--words that rose to His lips so frequently and with such strengthening comfort--verses which so unfailingly solved His hardest problems-- do we not realize that in His love and prevision of our needs He has handed them on to us, not as burdens, but as sustenance, as a staff to uplift as much as a rod to correct us?
The Test of Truth
It was not the ideals of the Jews that were wrong--they and all of us have had excellent ideals. The difficulty is to carry them out. The ideals of Jesus summed up all others, but He did not forget, as we like to do, the actual depravity of mankind. He tested the book, not by prettiness, but by truth. We criticize the slaughter of the Amalekites, What was that incident compared with the present War, which Christ foretold? We are horrified by the material doom of Edom and Moab. How about the spiritual doom which He pronounced upon Capernaum and Bethsaida and Chorazin? The Babylonians captured Jerusalem. What was that calamity in comparison with the prophesied siege by Titus? There was a flood of water in the days of Noah. What was its terror by the side of the lakes of fire which man's wickedness has devised for man?
Knowing that these things would come to pass, Jesus did not flinch at the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. He said it would be more tolerable for them in the day of judgment than for some of us. He did not question the repentance of Nineveh; He warned us that the Ninevites will rise up as our judges. He did not criticize the discipleship of the Sheban Queen; He asked us to consider her as our example. He did not attack the ancient sacrifices of bulls and goats; He offered Himself at the hour of the evening sacrifice, a perfect Victim, to make for all our sins a complete and final atonement. And it seems as if, deliberately, He put His divine imprimatur on those ancient miracles,--the fiery serpents, the manna, the healing of Naaman, the experiences of Jonah--which criticism most furiously declares to be incredible. And indeed, not less remarkable is the fact that the Psalm in which David refers to his son as "Lord," and so indicates the Majesty of the Messiah, has been assailed by modern scholarship with especial violence, and roundly dated as "post-exilic." With all respect to learned men of to-day, I hold to the Incomparable Wisdom of Him Who, as "the Mighty God," seems to have foreseen these attacks.