The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A Set of Parish Sermons

Here we have the Old Testament, an infinitely good book, giving us infinitely good advice and good news, and news too concerning God—God’s laws, God’s providence, God’s dealings, such as we get nowhere else.  And shall we believe that this infinitely good book is founded upon falsehood? or that the good men who wrote it could fancy it necessary to stoop to falsehood, and take the devil’s tools wherewith to do God’s work?  That they may have been imperfectly informed on some points there is no doubt; for the Bible tells us that they were men of like passions with ourselves, and they may not always have been true to the Spirit of God who was teaching them, even as we are not, though he teaches us.  They only knew in part and prophesied in part; and now that which is perfect is come, that which is in part is done away; the mystery of Christ was not revealed to them as it has been to us by the holy apostles and prophets of the new dispensation, of which St. Paul says, comparing it with the knowledge which the old Jews had when the gospel came, That the glory of the law had no glory, by reason of the more excellent glory of the gospel.  They may, I say, have made slight errors in unimportant matters, though it is far more probable that those errors have crept into the text, as the Scriptures were copied again and again through many centuries by different scribes, of whose perfect good sense and honesty we cannot be certain.  But who that really values his Bible cares for them any more than he cares for the spots on the sun which he can find through a telescope?  The sun still shines, and gives light to the whole earth, and the Bible still shines, and gives light to every soul of man who will read it in reverence and faith.  But that the prophets ever invented, or ever dared to tamper with truth, is a thing not to be believed of men whose writings are plainly, by their own meaning and end, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.

One more reason—and a reason which to me is unanswerable—for believing, like our forefathers, that the Old Testament is true.  The Old Testament, as well as the New, tells us of the ‘noble acts’ of the Lord—of certain gracious and merciful and just things which the Lord did to the children of Israel.  But if that be not true, what follows?  That God has not done the noble acts which men thought he had, and therefore that God is not as noble as men thought he was; that men have actually fancied for themselves a better God than the God who exists already.

Absurd.

Absurd, truly; and if you choose to call it by a harder name still, you have a right to do so.

Do not you think that God must be better, not worse; more generous, not less; more condescending, not less; more just, not less; more helpful, not less, than man can fancy or describe?  Are not the riches of Christ unsearchable, and the mercies of the Lord boundless?  Is he not able and willing to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think?  Did not even St. Paul say that he only knew in part and prophesied in part?  And must it not be true of the whole Bible what the beloved apostle St. John says of his own Gospel, ‘And there are many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written?’

Bear that in mind, remembering always that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New likewise; and whenever you read, either in the Old or New Testament, of the noble acts of the Lord, say boldly, as millions of hearts have said already, when the good news of the Bible came to them, ‘This is so beautiful that it must be true.  The Spirit of God in the Bible, and the judgment of the Church in all ages, bears witness with my spirit that this is true.  So ought God to have done, and therefore surely so hath God done.  Shall not the Judge of all the earth do RIGHT?’