Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][ocr errors]

GERMS OF THOUGHT.

דוד

rank was the practice of raising the dead, &c., that a law was passed to put put it down. Both Greece and Rome were overrun with sorcerers, and the people accepted them, just, because they accepted a spirit-world. Travellers and missionaries have stories to tell of the superstitions of the people in rela tion to spirits in all parts of the earth. Not long ago, in the most enlightened nations in this world, people laid their hands upon a table and forthwith believed that spirits were hovering around them, and waiting to tell them both the age that their grandmother attained and the hour of her decease, cand suchlike wonders. More recently, people went in their carriages and paid their guineas to hear spirits play the banjo, &c. But does all that outrage reason more than the philosophy that smiles at the belief in the existence of a spirit-world sh to the sai ti toucan all imagine ei (4) Personal experiences suggest it. You can all imagine yourselves in circumstances where you could not help feeling the presence of a spirit-world. You are a greater coward than you think. It is easy to laugh at ghost stories, &c., at the fireside. Suppose yourself alone at midnight in an old castle, in the depth of a gloomy forest, as you hearkened to the strange unearthly noises and explored the gloomy vaults from which they came, and thought of the ghastly work that had been wrought in the dungeons, &c., you would be more than flesh and blood if you did not assume the existence of a

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

spirit-world.fore reminded

Secondly: We are here reminded that there is usually fear in the supposed presence of spirits. The disciples "were troubled." But why should there be fear? (1.) It will not do to say that it is because a disembodied spirit is a mystery; for mystery is oft attractive. (2.) It will not do not to say that fellowship with the spirit-world is unnatural. Nothing ought surely to be more natural (3.) It will not do to say that the fear arises altogether from a misconception of the relation we sustain to the spirit-world. That accounts for it in part only. True, it is a misconception about an eclipse of the sun, a comet, &c., that fills men with terror

[merged small][ocr errors]

on first beholding. But why, under such circumstances, do men fancy that wrath is meant towards them? Just because there is a sense of guilt; and that explains fear in connection with the spirit-world.

III. THE UNRECOGNISED SAVIOUR.

[ocr errors]

It was Jesus whom they took to be a spirit. How often we make the same mistake!'

First: What is chastisement?

1

We take it for the spirit

of retribution, &c. And how distressful is the thought! Brethren, it is Jesus coming on the wild waves to save us from an awful danger. For "whom the Lord loveth he

chasteneth," &c.

Secondly! What is Death? We think sometimes that it is a hard relentless spirit that comes to tear us from all we love; sometimes that it is a spirit of destruction that comes to annihilate. How awful are such thoughts? Brethren, it is Jesus coming to save us from sin and sorrow, &c. What means this, "Watch and pray, for in such an hour," &c. ; and this, "I will come again, and receive you," &c.; and this, "Behold, I have the keys of Hades and Death," &c. Preston. H. J. MARTYN.

Thinkings by a Broad-Bibleman.

(No. II.)

SUBJECT: Bible Nurses.

HRISTIANITY has suffered much more from the kisses than from the blows of its enemies; but, most of all, has it suffered from the timid or injudicious and overweening kindness of its friends. The Bible is well able to go without crutches, and yet how many simple Christians are never satisfied unless they can prop it up without. reference to the soundness of their facts or the reasonableness and con

VOL. XX.

M

[ocr errors]

sistency of their conclusions. Not only is our authorized English version received, as we say commercially, "with all faults," by a large portion of its readers, but with all the hereditary and educational prejudices of our childhood. Even the advanced author of one of the notorious "Essays and Reviews" has gone with the stream in assuming that the tower of Babel was built to enable our forefathers to get beyond the reach of a second deluge. We do not instance, this because we believe the motive to have been a friendly one towards Inspiration, but simply to show how deeplyseated is the bias towards these traditionary riders on the Bible-text. tavonds

[ocr errors]

To give another illustration. Every old-fashioned reader of the Bible, as a matter of course, takes the field on behalf of the Unicorn-mane, tail, tassel, collar, gold chain, and all

་་,

[ocr errors]

just as he is traditionally represented in the royal arms;. though, so lately as old John Lydgate's time, that creature was described as an "antelope." And why? Simply because it is supposed-and only supposed-that the Scriptures describe such an animal; and, therefore, with a love as tender as that which a mother feels for her idiot or illformed offspring do these Bible-nurses watch over its very mistranslations and glosses, lest the sacred text, which is altogether guiltless, should suffer from the unbelieving raillery of its foes. Thus Swan, in his "Speculum Mundi,"a work now out of date, but formerly a text-book at Cambridge-contends not only for the existence of this onehorned anomaly, but tells us, moreover, that the horn is a "very rich one"-"excellent and of surpassing power," and possesses the singular virtue of expelling poison from the water which the creature is about to drink. We have even in our own day many authors who go softly in the wake of these ancestral prejudices, telling us virtually to beware of facts lest they should cross the creed of our babyhood, and compel our belief before it has been scrutinized through our grandmother's spectacles. "A solemn prayerful study of geology," says a writer of this school, "cannot be wrong; but great watchfulness and caution are required." Let us improve the hint. A glance at the midnight heavens cannot be wrong, provided you see there no heterodox planet-no infidel group of stars.

To return, however. To stake the credibility of the Bible on the orthodoxy of the unicorn would be not only dan

gerous but perfectly gratuitous. Let the careful reader consult every text in which the animal is mentioned, and rejecting the italics of our version, he will find that none of them refer to a beast with only one horn. True it is, that in our Latin and Greek translations (which are no more inspired than the English) a creature, popularly called by a name signifying "one-horn," is referred to; but the name may have been given with as little reason as that which in the present day designates a poor beetle a "death-watch," an unoffending bird the "goat-sucker," or the "water-wagtail bold," a "dish-washer."

Men, otherwise truly great and fully abreast of the age, too often share this weakness, and fall into the error of overcarefulness for God's truth. Dipping into Dr. Raleigh's discursive homilies on Jonah, we were surprised to find a mind like his gratefully accepting, with reference to the "great fish," such evidence as that of the huge fossil teeth found in the Mediterranean. “If," says he, "God could speak to the fish, we can thank it, and turn our thanks into the form of kindness to all creatures. The creature is dead and gone. Perhaps some of its teeth may be among those fossil teeth which have been found in great numbers on the shores of Malta and Sicily, and which are allowed by naturalists to belong to a larger race of fishes than the existing ones!"

We should hardly have expected so retrograde an allusion in the present day. Old John Ray, in his " Dissolution of the World," might press these glossopetru into his service two centuries ago as proofs of the Deluge, but the reference seems unworthy of the advanced philosophy of the day, especially as no petrified or fossilized remains belong to a period so recent, by many ages, as that of the prophet of Nineveh; or could be referred to any existences of the post-diluvian, or even the post-Adamite period. The allusion is therefore injudicious, as betraying an uneasy hankering after a "larger race of fishes than the existing ones," and thus laying open a weak side to the adversary. Palæontology had no more to do with Jonah's time than blue-skinned Britons and Druidic rites have to do with ours; and what a fearful leverage it gives the sceptie, to plead in apology for a Scripture fact, a conjecture that falls to pieces when looked at from a geolo-" gical stand-point.

But this, by the way only. We might refer to many books, which, written with the best intention, seem to us very

likely seriously to compromise the originality or dignity of Scripture truth. Let us select as a type, "Stones Crying Out" an appeal to the written rocks of Sinai, in confirmation of the story of Israel's wanderings in the wilderness. This work is an "improvement," in the pulpit sense, of the facts and deductions very modestly and fairly stated in the Rev. Charles Forster's "One Primeval Language." The variety of opinions entertained by men of great learning and research as to the antiquity and value of these inscriptions, would, of itself, be almost sufficient to render any reference to them, as authorities, undesirable, as we are not likely to settle a question of fact by showing how widely dissentient are the opinions of the best informed upon the subject. Our work proceeds upon the basis that these written rocks" were engraved by, or bear a cotemporary reference to, the Israelites during their long wanderings in the wilderness. But to this theory there are so many and such grave objections, that it seems most unsafe to base on it any conclusions that may jeopardize the credibility of the inspired record, by shifting the onus of proof to memorials of such doubtful origin and antiquity.

Our objections to this interpretation of the "written rocks" are so many and so grave, that we cannot but think those who adopt it are doing ill service to the cause of Revelation, which has not only no need of such helps, but is far better without them. They are briefly these

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

First We only know them to be as old as the sixth century of the Christian era.

1

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Second: Though some of the characters have a faint resemblance to the Hebrew, the language is almost uniformly Arabic.

Third: The type and key of these characters are found in the famous Rosetta stone, which dates twelve centuries later than the period at which it is assumed that they were written.

"

Fourth: A still more serious objection to this hypothesis is suggested by the tenor of the inscriptions themselves. Is it at all likely that the wandering Israelites, would thus record their own shame with " an iron pen in the rock for ever," and describe themselves as "kicking," "reviling," "slothful," "muttering," "biting," "railing," "cursing," "vociferous rebels," according to Mr. Forster's interpretation. KRÁS

Fifth: And as certainly would their pious leader, and his

« PreviousContinue »