Comprehensive Exegesis. 505 scientific in its method, and equally scientific in its scope and comprehension-an exegesis that shall push steadily forward on the long path that it has still to hew out for itself toward its distant goal. Perhaps no one has recognised this demand more clearly than the lamented Hofmann of Erlangen, especially as regards the more comprehensive exposition of the Scriptures. It is indicated in the title of his great work, left incomplete at his death: "Die heilige Schrift des neuen Testaments zusammenhangend untersucht "—an invaluable bequest to Biblical science, notwithstanding its serious defects, especially as a philological commentary. The works of Baumgarten and Godet have already been spoken of. Similarly valuable, though in another sort, are Bernard's Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, and R. Payne Smith's Prophecy a Preparation for Christ. The general movement towards a more comprehensive exegesis of the New Testament has followed two chief directions. On the one hand, it has aimed at the systematic exposition of the historical contents of the Gospels; these studies now constitute a theological cursus by themselves, with a rapidly-enlarging body of literature, to which Ebrard, Lange, Greswell, our own Norton, and others, have made such splendid contributions. On the other hand, it aims at a comprehensive genetic presentation of the doctrines of the New Testament in their historical unity-a line of inquiry already somewhat fruitful, but promising results of still greater value to Biblical science. To sum up all in one word: let us penetrate beneath mere phenomena and mechanism, and discern powers. "Living is the word of God and powerful" (Heb. iv. 12), says the Divine. Word of itself. He who detects the working of forces will inevitably be led to work constructively in reaching his conception of their products. The sublimest harmonies of the material universe have been disclosing themselves to modern. science under the concept of force. Long before modern science, David had a poet's glimpse of the same truth, when he saw the sun "coming as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race." Essentially the same conception is embodied in the title "Celestial Physics," that Kepler gave to one of his astronomical treatises. So Goethe not only sees, but feels and hears, the resistless approach of the dawn: 1 "Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, With a crash the Light draws near." But the Christian revelation did not find expression in the working of external forces. The sphere in which its communication took place was the human soul-a sphere of being where inconceivably mighty energies are in activity, and which constitutes a universe of phenomena even more varied and complex than those of external nature. In the forms of that inner world were disclosed the truths of revelation—that law of Jehovah to which David, in the Psalm quoted above, ascribes a perfection beyond that of the visible heavens. If the Bible be indeed the Word, and not merely the words of God, a continuous discourse held with the soul of man through sixteen centuries,—it has a cosmic harmony of its own sublimer to the thoughtful mind than that of the stellar universe. Who shall be the Kepler to interpret the dynamics of this cosmos-to demonstrate the Divine wisdom as exhibited in the adjustment of those forces whose resultant is revelation, the "living and powerful" word? Such an one will impart a fresh and deeper meaning to the great astronomer's hallelujah after the discovery of his third law of the planetary motions: "Father of the world, what moved Thee thus to exalt a poor weak little creature of earth so high that he stands in light a far-ruling king, almost a god? For he thinks thy thoughts after Thee." Various corollaries from the principles set forth in the preceding pages will suggest themselves to those who are engaged in exegetical study or instruction. With the mention of three I will bring the discussion to a close. First, the Scriptures should be read consecutively more than it is now the fashion to do, and also in large portions at a time. The preacher must ponder his one text; the exegete spend weeks of critical study upon a single paragraph; a single chapter may be the soul's food for many a devotional hour, 1 Faust, Second Part; Rayard Taylor's translation. Consecutive, continuous reading. 507 and lift it to the seventh heaven of rapture; but this is not the way to know the Bible. We must abandon piecemeal reading, surrender ourselves to the Bible in the spirit of which Mrs. Browning speaks: "Gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge, Soul-forward, headlong into a book's profound, Impassioned with its beauty." Chrysostom is said to have had Romans read aloud to him twice a week; we read at the most a chapter at a sitting; yet the whole Gospel of Mark can be deliberately read aloud in two hours, the prophecy of Habakkuk in twenty minutes. Kinglake, in his History of the Crimean War, refers to the necessity of a consecutive, continuous reading in the investigation of historical documents. "It may seem strange," he says, "but the truth is, that the general scope of a lengthened official correspondence is not to be gathered by merely learning at intervals the import of each despatch." If we hope to eradicate habits of feeble intermittent attention and disjointed thinking, if students of the Bible are to be less satisfied with a scrap-book knowledge of its contents, and the necessarily superficial or distorted view of its teachings that flourishes in such a soil, there is here pointed out at least one remedial method. Secondly, with the majority of Biblical students their exegetical work should be largely and systematically expended upon an English version. Far be it from the writer to depreciate the study of the original. But the great body of pastors, and also of laymen, who desire to search the Scriptures for themselves, are conscious of a painfully inadequate knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, or, with the best linguistic training, have but limited leisure for independent exegetical study. What is to be done? Put aside the original? No; but, along with a thorough grammatical scrutiny of special passages in the Greek and Hebrew, let them work on a larger plan with an English version. Many have doubtless been unconsciously deterred from continuous systematic study of the Scriptures by the notion that exegesis, properly so called, begins and ends with the original text. On the contrary, there is only here. and there a scholar who can apprehend the drift and logical connection of a series of chapters without resorting to the repeated reading of a translation. In order to obtain a single collective impression, his mind must not be diverted by attention to peculiarities of form or idiom; he must read it in that language in which he can also think. But it is not the object of this Article to discuss this important practical subject. I would only urge the more general extension of rigorous exegetical methods to the study of our English Bible. A third corollary concerns the question of Inspiration. The theology of our day finds itself persistently met by the demand for a theory of inspiration that shall draw a clearer line of demarcation between the human and the divine in the Scripture, that shall serve as a rule by which to eliminate the subjective, the relative, the transitory, and arrive by a short method at the absolute objective truth of revelation, whether considered as history or as doctrine: It is plain, from the foregoing discussion, that this demand is premature. Of the inspiration of the Bible as a book, the Bible itself, as might be expected, says comparatively little. When we ask what in it. is the product of a direct, personal, supernatural agency of the Divine Spirit that question, so far as concerns a scientifically formulated theory, must wait long for an answer. It is in the organic unity of the Bible that the clearest manifestations and proofs of inspiration are to be discerned. Of the fact of such a unity we are not without proofs, though on the part of most believers they are rather felt than perceived. But the scientific exposition of that unity is the task of exegesis, and, as already intimated in a previous paragraph, it has scarcely more than entered upon its accomplishment. The solar system of revelation moves in a vast and majestic orbit; the forces determining the line of its orbit are numerous and complex. Biblical science has only begun to accumulate the data by which to determine its direction or its governing law. This reply, I am aware, will not satisfy an objector who occupies anti-supernaturalistic ground. He will claim that it virtually surrenders our position to the rejecters of inspiration. To him we may further reply that the delay in solving the problem is not the fault of theology alone. Communication of supernatural truth, if it take place at all, must, from the nature of the case, be determined by antecedent conditions of language and of mental constitution, existing not only in the individual, but in the race to whom the communication is made. To distinguish between the human and the Divine in the production of a historical record such as the Bible, presupposes data derivable only from the sciences of language, mythology, and ethnic psychology. These sciences are comparatively recent and immature. Though they have contributed much to the progress of historical criticism, their chief labour is still to collect facts and verify provisional theories. In establishing definite laws of historical development their success is largely prospective. In this state of the case, with many of the requisite data lacking, it is by no means surprising that theology has thus far philosophised with but imperfect success upon the question of inspiration, and has failed to establish upon a thoroughly scientific basis whatever theory it may have propounded. WILLIAM ARNOLD STEVENS. ART. VII.-The Collapse of Faith.1 THE HE manifold phases of religious doubt and questioning which have succeeded one another so rapidly in this our mobile and sensitive generation, are well expressed by a few descriptive phrases, which are more or less significant and forcible. The metaphor which lurks behind each one of these phrases is at least suggestive of reflection and inquiry. "The Eclipse of Faith" suggests the darkness and gloom which for the moment may oppress the individual or the community. But it also suggests the conviction, or at least the hope, that this condition is only temporary. The sun is not extinguished because it is darkened. The individual man, or the community, perhaps needs only to change its position in order to come again into the bright and blessed light. "The Decay of Faith" emphasises some diseased or abnormal action of the powers, from which recovery is possible. Should such a decay terminate in the dissolution of the individual, the life of the community may still go on, and perhaps with renewed energy. Both these phrases imply, if they do not express, the under 1 From The Princeton Review. |