BY PROFESSOR GAUSSEN, D.D., GENEVA.
WE would fain that people should understand that this human individuality to which our attention is directed in the Scriptures, far from leaving any stain there, or from being an infirmity there, stamps upon them, on the contrary, a divine beauty, and powerfully reveals to us their inspiration.
Yes, we have said that it is God who speaks to us there, but it is also man; it is man, but it is also God. Admirable Word of God! it has been made man in its own way, as the eternal Word was! Yes, God has made it also come down to us full of grace and truth, like unto our words in all things, yet without error and sin! Admirable Word, divine Word, yet withal full of humanity, much-to-be-loved Word of my God! Yes, in order to our understanding it, it had of necessity to be put upon mortal lips, that it might relate human things; and, in order to attract our regard, behoved to invest itself with our modes of thinking, and with all the emotions of our voice; for God well knew whereof we were made. But we have recognised it as the Word of the Lord, mighty, efficacious, sharper than a two-edged sword; and the simplest among us, on hearing it, may say like Cleopas and his friend, “Did not our hearts burn within us while it spoke to us?”
With what a mighty charm do the Scriptures, by this abundance of humanity, and by all this personality with which their divinity is invested, remind us that the Lord of our souls, whose touching voice they are, does Himself bear a human heart on the throne of God, although seated on the highest place, where the angels serve Him and adore Him for ever! It is thus, also, that they present to us not only that double character of variety and unity which already embellishes all the other works of God, as Creator of the heavens and the earth; but, further, that mingling of familiarity and authority, of sympathy and grandeur, of practical details and mysterious majesty, of humanity and divinity, which is recognisable in all the dispensations of the same God, as Redeemer and Shepherd of His Church.
Such did the Word of God behove to be.
Like Immanuel, full of grace and truth; at once in the bosom of God and in the heart of man; mighty and sympathising; heavenly and of the earth; sublime and lowly; awful and familiar; God and man!
Studied under this aspect, considered in this character, the Word of God stands forth without its like; it presents attractions quite unequalled; it offers to men of all times, all places, and all conditions, beauties ever fresh; a charm that never grows old, that always satisfies, never palls. With it, what we find with respect to human books is reversed; for it pleases and fascinates, extends and rises in your regard the more assiduously you read it. It seems as if the book, the more it is studied and studied over again, grows and enlarges itself, and that some kind unseen being comes daily to stitch in some fresh leaves. And thus it is that the souls, alike of the learned and the simple, who have long nourished themselves on it, keep hanging upon it as the people hung of old on the lips of Jesus Christ. They all think it incomparable; now powerful as the sound of mighty waters; now soft and gentle, like the voice of the spouse to her bridegroom; but always perfect, “always restoring the soul, and making wise the simple.”
To what book, in this respect, would you liken it? Go and put beside it the discourses of Plato, or Seneca, or Aristotle, or Saint Simon, or Jean Jacques. Have you read Mahomet’s books? Listen to him but for one hour, and your ears will tingle while beaten on by his piercing and monotonous voice. From the first page to the last, it is still the same sound of the same trumpet; still the same Medina horn, blown from the top of some mosque, minaret, or war-camel; still sybilline oracles, shrill and harsh, uttered in an unvarying tone of command and threat, whether it ordain virtue or enjoin murder; ever one and the same voice, surly and blustering, having no bowels, no familiarity, no tears, no soul, no sympathy.
After trying other books, if you experience religious longings open the Bible; listen to it. Sometimes you find here the songs
of angels, but of angels that have come down among the children of Adam. Here is the deep-sounding organ of the Most High, but an organ that serves to soothe man’s heart and to rouse his conscience, alike in shepherd’s cots and in palaces; alike in the poor man’s garrets and in the tents of the desert. The Bible, in fact, has lessons for all conditions; it brings upon the scene both the lowly and the great; it reveals equally to both the love of God, and unveils in both the same miseries. It addresses itself to children; and it is often children that show us there the way to heaven and the great things of Jehovah. It addresses itself to shepherds and herdsmen; and it is often shepherds and herdsmen who lift up their voices there, and reveal to us the character of God. It speaks to kings and to scribes; and it is often kings and scribes that teach us there man’s wretchedness, humiliation, confession, and prayer. Domestic scenes, confessions of conscience, pourings fourth of prayer in secret, travels, proverbs, revelations of the depths of the heart, the holy courses pursued by a child of God, weaknesses unveiled, falls, recoveries, inward experiences, parables, familiar letters, theological treatises, sacred commentaries on some ancient Scripture, national chronicles, military annals, political statistics, descriptions of God, portraits of angels, celestial visions, practical counsels, rules of life, solutions of cases of conscience, judgments of the Lord, sacred hymns, predictions of future events, narratives of what passed during the days preceding our creation, sublime odes, inimitable pieces of poetry—all this is found there by turns; and all this meets our view in most delightful variety, and presenting a whole whose majesty, like that of a temple, is overpowering. Thus it is that, from its first to its last page, the Bible behoved to combine with its majestic unity the indefinable charm of human-like instruction, familiar, sympathetic, personal, and the charm of a drama extending over forty centuries. In the Bible of Desmarets it is said, “There are fords here for lambs, and there are deep waters where elephants swim.”
But behold, at the same time, what unity, and, lo! what innumerable and profound harmonies in this immense variety! Under all forms it is still the same truth; every man lost, and God the Saviour; every man with his posterity coming forth out of Eden, and losing the tree of life, and the second Adam with his people re-entering paradise, and regaining possession of the tree of life; ever the same cry uttered in tones innumerable, “O heart of man, return to thy God, for He pardoneth! We are in the gulf of perdition; let us come out of it; a Saviour hath gone down into it. . . . He bestows holiness as He bestows life.”
“Is it possible that a book at once so sublime and so simple can be the work of man?” was asked of the philosophers of the last century by one who was himself too celebrated a philosopher. And all its pages have replied, No—it is impossible; for everywhere, traversing so many ages, and whichever it be of the
God-employed writers that holds the pen, king or shepherd, scribe or fisherman, priest or publican, you everywhere perceive that one same Author, at a thousand years’ interval, and that one same eternal Spirit has conceived and dictated all; everywhere, at Babylon as at Horeb, at Jerusalem as at Athens, at Rome as at Patmos, you will find described the same God, the same world, the same men, the same angels, the same future, the same heaven; everywhere, whether it be a poet or a historian that addresses you, whether it be in the plains of the desert in the age of Pharaoh, or in the prisons of the capitol in the days of the Cæsars; everywhere in the world the same ruin; in man the same impotency; in the angels the same elevation, the same innocence, the same charity; in heaven the same purity, the same happiness, the same meeting together of truth and mercy, the same mutual embracing of righteousness and peace; the same counsels of a God who blotteth out iniquity, and who, nevertheless, doth not clear the guilty.
We conclude, therefore, that the abundance of humanity to be found in the Scriptures, far from compromising their divine inspiration, is only one farther mark of their divinity.—The Plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures.
Rev. Walter Scott at Raasay.
A PUBLIC meeting of an interesting kind was held in the Free Presbyterian Church here on the evening of Monday, 18th March. Rev. D. Macfarlane, pastor of the congregation, presided. He stated that he had asked the Rev. Walter Scott, of Australia, who was visiting the Western Isles, and whom he had met at the Portree Communion, to preach for him on the Sabbath. He had thought also that they would like to hear something from him about the state of the cause in the distant land where he laboured, hence their meeting that night.
At the chairman’s request, Mr. Scott opened the meeting with devotional exercises, reading a portion of Acts xxviii., and commenting on the words in verse 15, “When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.” Mr. Scott remarked that the significance of the occasion here referred to, and of the effect of thankfulness and cheer which it had upon the Apostle, was his experience of isolation and trial through the opposition of former brethren. That at such a juncture he should meet with those from distant parts who were friendly and sympathetic towards him was a circumstance so providentially encouraging to him that, whilst it led him to thank God, it also nerved him hopefully in connection with the uncertain future which was before him. Mr. Scott went on to point out that there was room, he felt, for a kindred sentiment in connection with the meeting he was addressing. To himself it was matter of joy to find those in Scotland who were
so heartily in sympathy with the church in Australia which he represented, and with the particular testimony which, in that distant land, they were seeking to maintain. And their pastor had indicated a similar satisfaction in reference to his visit to them. Such mutual experience he felt to be the more significant owing to the testing providences which were at work, whether in Scotland or at the Antipodes. In one sense, it was a time of separations both at home and abroad. Yet, under such common trials through former brethren, was it not comforting if, as church positions under such sifting processes came to be more exactly defined, those like-minded were thereby discovered and drawn more nearly together? He was glad that they in the old land appreciated the expression of sympathy which his church, small as it was, had commissioned him to convey to them. There was much that was similar, even circumstantially, in the two positions. Although the Union with Voluntaries in Australia had taken place much earlier, yet the situation resulting from it was such that, in the Colonies, as well as at home, there were three distinct parties—there was the United Church; then there were the Free Presbyterians (for the church he represented used the same name even as themselves); and, again, there were those who, while still outside the Union, were not prepared to be so definite in their testimony, and who, in the latitude which they claimed, were found, for instance, using paraphrases in public worship equally with the inspired Psalms. He believed this distinction obtained as between the parties referred to in Scotland also. He rejoiced that, in regard to purity of worship, as well as in other matters, the Free Presbyterian Church, from which he came, and that in Scotland, were at one. In Australia they had even gone further. They had synodically acknowledged the perpetual obligation of the National Covenant of Scotland, and of the Solemn League and Covenant, for maintaining and carrying on a work of Reformation in the Three Kingdoms, as sworn and subscribed by all ranks in Scotland and England in 1643, and particularly as renewed in Scotland in 1648, as well as the duty of renewing these Covenants, with suitable confession of sin, in a Bond suited to present circumstances. In this way they desired to put themselves in line with the Second Reformation period and its attainments, and to recognise the principle of the Covenanted uniformity ignored by the Revolution Settlement of 1688. He hoped the Free Presbyterians of Scotland would do the same. Mr. Scott proceeded to refer to the particular circumstances of his own charge on the Clarence River, New South Wales. He mentioned that his immediate predecessors had been the Rev. Alexander M’Intyre, of Strontian, well known in the west of Scotland as a powerful and successful preacher; and the Rev. John Finlayson, of Coigach, both of whom had been highly appreciated in Australia. Moreover, his own people had come mainly from the Western Islands; and he himself, through his
maternal ancestry, had connection with Skye and with a former minister of Snizort, Rev. Roderick M’Leod. His manse, like their own, was on an island, on which they had two churches. [At the mainland end of the charge, namely, at Grafton, the congregation, as in Raasay, are deprived of the use of their church building, which is held by the party separated from them in a practically empty condition, those who erected it having had to worship in a hall even during Mr. Finlayson’s time]. In these respects there was a correspondence between the Raasay case and his own. Mr. Scott testified to the pleasure he had experienced in associating with their pastor, whose stand in 1893, and since, he had in Australia viewed most sympathetically. If spared to return to his people he said it would be with feelings of even deeper and closer interest in them and their Church. He hoped they in Scotland would not forget the cause which the Free Presbyterians of Australia were struggling to maintain in difficulties even greater, perhaps, than what obtained at home.
The Chairman, in thanking Mr. Scott for his address, expressed the happiness which the visit had afforded him. It had been peculiarly pleasant to him as having been the first visit to him of a minister outside of their own body since 1893—since he had been visited for the purpose of being deprived of his church and manse. The position and principles of the two churches represented seemed so far identical. It was singular that they had even the same name—although in adopting such a title in Scotland they had not recognised that already in Australia it was the name used by those witnessing for the same principles. He expressed the sympathy which they all felt with their friends in New South Wales. Mr. A. Macfarlane, schoolmaster, Raasay, spoke in similar terms of appreciation. Referring to the Union Church in Australia, he said he had sat in the Synod of Glenelg when the Rev. Dr. Mackay of Harris, formerly of Australia, had been twitted with the fact that whilst opposing union at home he had been identified with it abroad. He remembered the deep regret which Dr. Mackay then expressed that he had had any hand in that union. Their expectations of blessing by it had been, he said, sadly disappointed, so that he was glad to be dissociated from it and to return to Scotland, therefore, Mr. Macfarlane remarked, what they had just heard enabled them to understand the position even more clearly. He added that in Scotland they were accustomed to associate Australia in their minds with the idea of gold. But from the statement they had been listening to, they must come to the conclusion not only that there was gold in Australia, but that the gold of that land was good—there was bdeillium and the onyx stone. There was a large attendance at the meeting, and the deepest interest was manifested throughout. The Rev. Mr. Macfarlane interpreted certain portions of the address in Gaelic. After the singing of the last three verses of the 122nd psalm, the benediction was pronounced by the pastor.