JEWS ARISTOCRATS 5 The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. GEORGE ELIOT in Forty Thousand Quotations Prose and Poetical, p. 104. The revelations of prophecy are facts which exhibit the divine omniscience. So long as Babylon is in heaps; so long as Nineveh lies empty, void, and waste; so long as Egypt is the basest of kingdoms; so long as Tyre is a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; so long as Israel is scattered among all nations; so long as Jerusalem is trodden underfoot of the Gentiles; so long as the great empires of the world march on in their predicted course,-just so long we have proof that one Omniscient Mind dictated the predictions of that book, and "Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man.' H. L. HASTINGS, from an address before the Sixteenth Annual Convention of the Massachusetts Y. M. C. A., at Spencer, Mass. I know not why it should be considered so strange a thing that God should make a revelation to man. If I mistake not, it would have been much stranger if he had not.... Shall not a father speak to his own child? MARK HOPKINS, D.D., LL.D., at one time President of Williams College. Indeed we cannot reject prophecy and still be Christian in our thought. ROBERT MCWATTY RUSSELL, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Bible Doctrine and Our estimate of the worth of the Old Testament will depend largely upon our attitude to the Hebrews as the recipients and custodians of God's revelation to men. Their history is "like a piece of shot silk; hold it at one angle and you see dark purple, hold it at another and you see bright golden tints." The Old Testament, above all other books, has spiritual and religious value as the record of God's revelation to the world.... The Old Testament is an integral part of the Word of God, a source of inspiration, and a guide to ethical life. The problem of our day is to rediscover its value and to portray it to men.... That the Old Testament has historical value is obvious to every student of antiquity. It is the Ariadne's thread to the archaeologist. (Cf. Genesis 10 and 14.) It is likewise the fountain head of what is known as "the philosophy of history.' The Hebrews were the first to take a teleological view of the world, the first to interpret human events in terms of God's providence. Other histories displayed the disciplinary love of God, but it was left for the Hebrews to discern that love and to describe it in terms of God's love. To them it was not enough to study mere events, they sought the underlying principles and showed the nexus of cause and effect. Ottley, in eulogizing this quality in Hebrew historians, goes so far as to define their inspiration as "the ability to see God's hand in human events." .... Few men adequately appreciate what the Old Testament has meant to Christianity.... It has wrought itself into the very warp and woof of Christianity. This was possible because the essence of the Old Testament is love.... Men are wont to say that the Old Testament reveals a God of justice, whereas the New Testament, a God of love. Such a statement is much narrower than the facts. The God of the Old Testament is also the God of the New, and His name is love: to this the Psalms, Deuteronomy, and especially the prophecies of Hosea bear witness. GEORGE L. ROBINSON, Ph.D., Professor Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, McCormick Theological Seminary, The Abiding Value of the Old Testament.-1911. It must be remembered, however, that the Bible contains gold, and almost anyone is willing to dig for gold, especially if it is certain that he will find it. It is certain that one will find gold in the Bible, if he digs.... We cannot all be profound students of nature; we can all be profound students of Scripture. Many an otherwise illiterate person has a marvelous grasp of Bible truth. It was acquired by study. There are persons who have studied little else, who have studied the Scriptures, by the hour, daily, and their consequent wisdom is the astonishment and sometimes the dismay of scholars and theologians. R. A. TORREY, Dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, How to Study the Bible for Greatest Profit, pp. 11-13. Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin of Kentucky, of parents who could hardly read; born a new Moses in the solitude of the desert, where are forged all the great and obstinate thoughts, monotonous like the desert, and, like the desert, sublime; growing up among those primeval forests, which, with their fragrance, send up a cloud of incense, and, with their murmurs, a cloud of prayers to heaven;. reading no other book than the Bible, the book of sorrows and great hopes, dictated often by the prophets to the sound of fetters they dragged through Nineveh and Babylon. ... EMILIO CASTELAR, in Holy-Days and Holidays, compiled by Edward M. I wish to bear a personal testimony to the value of Bible Prophecy. Years ago I was attending school in a college town, and in the course of my reading came on to the "Age of Reason" by a certain noted infidel. Various contributing circumstances at just the right moment swept me from the faith in which I had been reared, and I gave up every idea I had of God, or Christ, or salvation. For seven years I drifted, just drifted. Finally I was led by the rapidly developing spirit of religious persecution shown in several of the states about the year 1880 and onward, to re-examine the prophecies of the Bible. I read thoroughly, and spent months is research of history. When I compared the eleventh of Daniel with its most marvelous and accurate fulfillment, I yielded to the overwhelming conviction that the Bible is the work of an omnipotent and omniscient God. Daniel and the Revelation became DANIEL, REVELATION my earnest study. Later I yielded my life to the faith of my early youth, and have never since ceased to praise my Heavenly Father for sparing me from going onto the rocks of infidelity to my final ruin. No man, in my judgment, can give a thoughtful earnest study to Daniel and the Revelation, and the events already fulfilled, without knowing that there is a God who reigns over all; and then the life of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels will lead him to the Saviour's feet. JUSTUS G. LAMSON, Chaplain Hinsdale Sanitarium, 1919. The general diffusion of the Bible is the most effectual way to civilize and humanize mankind. CHANCELLOR KENT, in The Biblical Review, January, 1918. Prophecy is equivalent to any miracle, and is itself miraculous. Alexander Keith, in "Evidence of Prophecy," page 13, truly says: "If the prophecies of the Scriptures can be proved to be genuine; if they be of such nature as no foresight of man could possibly have predicted; if the events foretold in them were described hundreds or even thousands of years before those events became parts of the history of man; and if the history itself correspond with the prediction, then the evidence which the prophecies impart is a sign and a wonder to every age; no clearer testimony or greater assurance of truth can be given; and if men do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.' If the prophecies were false, nothing could admit of easier detection; if true, nothing could be more impossible to have been conceived by man. Time infallibly must refute or realize them. Of the thousand predictions made in the Bible, some eight hundred have been fulfilled, and others are fulfilling now. EARLE ALBERT ROWELL (A Converted Infidel), Field Secretary of the American Bible Society, The Bible in the Critics' Den, or Modern Infidelity Challenged and Refuted, p. 106. History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy. James A. Garfield, in Forty Thousand Quotations Prose and Poetical, p. 953. In the prophecy of Daniel is found the first definite chronological prophecy of the first advent of Christ. J. ELWIN WOODWARD, Historic and Prophetic Diagram of the World, p. 92. But along with this inflexible demand for righteousness, the prophets revealed attributes and characteristics in God so lovely, so tender, so faithful, that to remain in ignorance of the prophetic writings is to deprive the soul of a vision of God which every soul of man deeply needs.... It is impossible to overstate the loss to spirituality, to comprehension of God in himself and in his immutable purposes toward the earth and the race of men, resulting from this stupid neglect of nearly one-fourth in bulk of the Bible. C. I. SCOFIELD, D.D., What Do the Prophets Say?, pp. 23, 24. 8 SARGENT'S PAINTINGS The tourist who goes to Boston in quest of works of art soon finds his way to the Public Library, and among all its treasures he discovers nothing more interesting and helpful than Sargent's paintings of the Old Testament prophets. Sargent was an artist rather than an interpreter of Scripture; his creations are more worthy of note for their individuality than for their likeness to these men of the Bible; and so the tourist who brings away with him from Boston a vision of this work of art, as well as a copy to hang in his home, should turn to his Bible to learn how well the artist has reproduced the majesty of Isaiah and the sweetness of Hosea, but how dismally he has failed to show the strength of Amos and the tenderness of Jeremiah. These men of old should appeal to all of us who are interested in personality. Nowhere in all history and literature, not even in the Bible, can we find a body of men who for character and attainment surpass these prophets of Judah and Israel. Where, for example, in all the history of these two nations can we find four kings, to whom the world is so much indebted as to the four prophets mentioned above? Where among all the priests? And even among the apostles, as portrayed in "The Last Supper," which four should we select? If we scan our own age, with all its boasted progress, we shall look in vain for four such giants of thought and action. These comparisons are hazardous, for we cannot weigh men as we weigh cattle; but only when we set the prophets over against other men of might, do we begin to value the "force of their inspired personality." The prophets could not have excelled in public speech had they not also been gifted with poetic powers. Even when not speaking in words which could be printed as poetry, they employed that sort of heightened prose which is close akin to verse. But in many of their loftiest messages, such as the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, they were speaking with all the rhythm, the beauty and the power of the most exquisite poetry; and if such passages were printed in our English Bible in a some-what worthy form, we might catch a vision new and strange "Like some watchers of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken." ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD, The Prophets-Elijah to Christ, pp. 11, 12, 22. The Bible is the most quotable book in all literature. You may take Shakespeare and Dante together, take Milton and Horace, put in the Koran and Confucius, and then boil them all down, and the quotable things in all of them put together are but a fraction of the sayings in the Bible that fasten themselves in your mind. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE, in The Bible as Good Literature, quoted in Greatest Things About the Bible, pp. 28, 29; compiled by J. Gilchrist Lawson. Prophecy is the head light of Christianity, flashing its rays o'er the track of time.... It is a staff for weary pilgrims to lean upon, as they journey toward the kingdom.... It is a sword of truth for the Christian soldier in his battle with infidelity. It is the X-ray of Omniscience photographing history. It is the seal of inspiration. POETICAL BOOKS 9 It is divine eye-salve imparting sight to the blind. It is the handkerchief of consolation wiping away tears.... What the light-house is to the storm-tossed mariner, the red-signal light to the engineer, and the alarm-bell to the fireman, that prophecy is to the saint. It is a danger-signal. What the anchor is to the ship, the brake to the car, and the bridle to the horse, that prophecy is to the true Christian. It is a check. What a foundation is to a house, capital to a business, and facts to a proposition, that prophecy is to faith. It is a solid basis. What bread is to the hungry, water to the thirsty, and shelter to the outcast, that prophecy is to hope. It is an absolute necessity. H. W. BOWMAN, in The Greater New York Special, published by The Greater In an age when the closest scrutiny is given in all lines of both scientific and religious investigation, and proof is required ere men will accept any claims, especially when such claims partake of the supernatural, the man who asserts faith in the Word of God is oftentimes ridiculed and classed as an easy dupe or a fanatic. It is then that the powerful claims of prophecy make themselves respected, and an answer is given which startles the uninitiated, and causes the candid mind to pause and investigate, and finally yield to a weight of evidence, overwhelming and positive. There is no argument so strong, no philosophy so potent, to overthrow the cavils of the unbeliever, or to silence the challenge of the infidel, as the voice of prophecy. W. A. WESTWORTH, in The Greater New York Special, published by The The Salvation Oration, Isaiah 24-27, described the songs of praise arising after the silence of despair. The Shiloh Oration of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 7-10, depicted in terrible terms the results of unrighteous living. Many passages from these ancient books are among the brightest gems of the world's oratory. The wonderful imagination of Isaiah brings before our eyes his vision of the dead kingdoms arising from their graves to exult over Babylon as she falls into the grave, Isaiah 14:9-20. In like manner, to cheer the oppressed of his people, Ezekiel gives the elaborate description of Tyre as a stately ship brought to silence in the midst of the seas, Ezekiel 27. Nahum, in his short book, describes the awful majesty of God as he leads the forces of destruction against Nineveh.... The element of poetry is very large in the Bible. The Books of Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Lamentations are entirely poetical. The line between poetry and rhetoric being less sharply marked in the Hebrew than in our English literature, the great orations of the Prophets not infrequently rise into poetic strains. In the historic books also a vivid story sometimes bursts forth from prose into poetry. He who has the poetic ear will also gladly recognize that many of the sayings of Christ are gems of poetry, radiant with beauty and ringing with music. FERDINAND S. SCHENCK, D.D., LL.D., The Oratory and Poetry of the Bible, pp. 24, 203. |