ARTICLE VII.

THE HIGHER CRITICISM AND MESSIANIC PROPHECY.

BY THE REV. EDWARD HARTLEY DEWART, D.D.

THE prominent place given to prophecy in the Bible makes a right conception of its character and purpose a matter of the greatest importance. "The moral instruction it contains, the great events it announces, the revelation of the divine character and of the nature, establishment, and purpose of the kingdom of God which it affords, —all combine to invest prophecy with the profoundest interest." This estimate applies with special point and force to Messianic prophecy, because of its relation to the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the fullness of time "came to seek and to save that which was lost."

There are two extremes that should be avoided in the study and exposition of prophecy. One class finds in the Bible more minute predictions and literal fulfillments than a sober and scholarly exegesis will justify. They almost assume to be prophets themselves, by the confidence and minuteness with which they apply predictions of Scripture to past and future history. Another class of expositors either repudiate supernatural prediction of future events, or silently ignore it, and substitute an ideal paraphrase of biblical prediction and fulfillment, which is based upon a theory of evolution that does not seem to require the direct action of a living personal God to account for prophets or prophecy. We are not shut up to the acceptance of either of these extremes. We are simply bound to accept as act

ual prediction and fulfillment whatever is proved by proper evidence, and is in harmony with the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Those who make a hobby of such minute and literal interpretations and applications of prophecy are fairly open to condemnatory criticism. But it is not just to represent those who reject theories of prophecy that ignore the supernatural, as if they held views which placed Bible prophecy on a level with divination or fortune-telling.

Much has been written about the origin of prophecy. One would suppose that among believers in a divine revelation there could be little diversity of opinion on such a point. Some, as if animated by a desire to depreciate Old Testament prediction, have assumed that it arose from a natural desire to foresee the future; and that prophecy was common to all the great primitive religions. It is utterly absurd to suppose that any curiosity about the future could have developed into the prophetic vision that gave to the world the Hebrew prophecies, or that they can be accounted for by ascribing them to keen insight or poetic genius. That prophecy was common among other nations, and not peculiar to the Hebrews, is contrary to the facts. The heathen divinations were not prophecy. All unprejudiced Christian scholars will agree with Professor Orelli, who says: "We come to the conclusion that no phenomenon analogous to biblical prophecy, even in form, is anywhere to be found in the world of nations."

It is alleged by others that Hebrew prophecy is developed from the consciousness of the prophet and the conditions of his life. Canon Driver says: "It is a fundamental principle of prophecy that the historical situation of the prophet should be the basis of his prediction." Dr. Edward Riehm teaches that psychologically prophecy "comes to have its roots in the general consciousness of the proph ets, and is educed from the same according to the laws of organic development." This comes near to implying that

the circumstances transpiring around him, acting upon the mental powers and religious sentiments of the prophet, call forth the prophecy. It is freely admitted that generally there is something in the prophet's message specially adapted to the people of his own time, and commonly a local coloring. But these things are not the producing causes of prophecy. The great facts of prophecy, especially of Messianic prophecy, and the testimony of the holy seers themselves, as to the way they received their knowledge, contradict this theory. All the prophets testify that they received their prophetic messages in a different way, even by special revelation from God, who "revealeth his secrets to his servants the prophets." Dr. Riehm can scarcely mean all that the words quoted seem to imply, for he says: "It is an undeniable fact that the prophets themselves were most clearly conscious of announcing, not their own thoughts but the thoughts of God revealed to them, not their own words but the word of God laid upon their hearts and put into their mouths." The particular way in which these revelations were made is of secondary importance. Of this we can know nothing but what we learn from the prophets themselves. The fact is more essential than the mode. What we do know from the Scriptures is, that "in divers manners" the Spirit of God revealed to the prophets a knowledge of sacred truths and future events, which no human sagacity without supernatural aid could have enabled them to gain. In the words of Dr. Küper of Germany, "Prophecy is not a psychological product, but a divine revelation."

The origin of the Messianic hope has been almost universally held to be the promise given to our first parents in the dark hour of their expulsion from Eden. In the primitive ages Messianic intimations are comparatively few and generally indefinite. The idea of the selection and training of a nation to be a divine agency to make

known to the world the knowledge of the true God, and his glorious purposes for the redemption of humanity through Christ, is a more sublime and wonderful conception than can be found anywhere outside of the Bible. In the later periods of Hebrew history the inspiring voice of Messianic prophecy grows clearer. The utterances of the prophets become more definite. Their faith gathers a more exultant strength. The hope of a mysterious coming Deliverer and a great national redemption brightens, and broadens in its range till its luster illumines the whole horizon of Hebrew thought and life, and even embraces the Gentile world. This was not by the mere development of a germinal idea. It was the outcome of the clearer light revealed to the prophets.

Different prophets present the Messiah in different characters and under different figures, so that it must have been very difficult for the people to whom these prophecies were addressed to see how they could be fulfilled in one person. Sometimes the prophecy begins with pictures of deliverance from present national woes; and, as the vision opens more fully, there are promises of broader and higher blessings than can be limited to any one nation. Coming down the stream of history to Malachi's time, we find references to the time and place of Messiah's birth and to his character and life. Most striking of all, we have in the description of the suffering Servant of Jehovah in the fifty-third of Isaiah, a graphic picture of the suffering Redeemer, who yields up his life as a vicarious sacrifice for sinners, and through whose suffering healing and justification are to be obtained by the "many.” In the New Testament many of these prophecies are referred to as predictions of Jesus the Christ, that were fulfilled by his incarnation, life, and death; though it should not be assumed that no prophecies are Messianic but those referred to in the New Testament. The general Christian

belief concerning Messianic prophecy and fulfillment has not been a result of strained interpretations of particular texts of Scripture, or of efforts to make the facts conform to a preconceived theory. It rests upon the evidence of the long line of accumulating prophetic predictions, which our Lord and his apostles accept as spoken of him, and which the events of his ministry fulfilled. Is there anything in the discoveries of science, or the attested results of modern biblical criticism, that shows the belief of the church on this subject to be baseless or unwarrantable? We answer this question with an emphatic negative.

In estimating the influence of the dominant school of biblical criticism on prophecy, it is necessary to bear in mind that these critics deal but little in exegesis, or the exposition of the meaning of Scripture. That is not the chief object of their criticism. Their main work consists of efforts to ascertain the sources to which the writers of the Old Testament books are indebted, to assign these sources to their supposed authors and redactors, and to find out the time and occasions when they were written. An English biblical critic, speaking of Kuenen and Wellhausen, the high priests of this critical cult, says: "It has apparently escaped them both that there is anything high in idea, noble in motive, regenerating in social influence, in the literature they have set themselves to dissect." The actual critical conclusions of their studies, stated in brief general terms, are: That the books were mainly compiled by anonymous authors and redactors, from documents by writers of whom nothing is known; that they were compiled at much later dates than has been commonly supposed, or than the order and contents of the books themselves suggest; that the greater part of them have not been written by those to whom they have been ascribed; that the Pentateuchal laws are mainly late compilations of different dates, placed in a fictitious historical setting. As the re