p. 29Ladies and Gentlemen,—
We have all heard of the “higher criticism.” The line of reflection I am submitting to you I consider the higher demonstration. It is unconnected with, and independent of, all far-off or external questions of authenticity, or credibility, or historic accuracy, and such like. It proceeds on very solid and simple ground. It takes the Book as the current fact we know it to be. It ponders its narrative, and shews that its truth is a necessary conclusion from what it is in itself, without reference to the obscure investigations with which it is popularly supposed to be associated. You understand, the object is not to disparage other lines of demonstration. Far from it; every argument has its own weight. Beauty and strength are everywhere in this important matter. Every line of study converges in demonstration. But some lines are both less obvious and more easily p. 30 grasped than others. Such is the one to which I solicit your renewed attention.
You will pardon me if I detain you for some time with the case of Moses, whose work is the basis of the entire system of Divine revelation upon the earth. I have already spoken of his successful extrication of Israel from Egyptian bondage without military means, and of the subsistence of their large assembly in a region destitute of supplies, as involving the necessary co-operation of extra-natural power. I ask you now to consider the chronic mutinies that agitated the congregation, as proving both the truth of the narrative, and the presence of a super-human regulation in the camp.
The Israelites are no sooner out of Egypt, encamped by the Red Sea, before the crossing, than they say to Moses (on hearing of Pharaoh’s approach), “Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness” (Exo. xiv. 11).
They are no sooner across the Sea than, finding themselves in a desert land, they say, “Ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (xvi. 3).
They had no sooner got over this difficulty through the supply of manna and quails than, finding water scarce, they again broke out, “Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me” (xvii. 3, 4). p. 31 This difficulty being solved by the supply of water from the rock, they camp before Sinai, and in the absence of Moses in the mount for forty days, they weary of their position, and say, “As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him” (xxxii. 1).
Then they tire of the manna and weep for vexation, saying, “Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: but now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes” (Num. xi. 1-6).
Then when, afterwards, the spies, who were sent to search the Land of Promise, brought back a good report of the character of the land, but a discouraging report of the difficulties in the way of a successful invasion: “All the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron . . . and they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt;. . . . and all the congregation bade stone them with stones” (Num. xiii. 32, 33; xiv. 1-10).
Then, at a later stage, we have the revolt against Moses on the part of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. and 250 princes of the assembly, with whom the whole congregation took part, saying to Moses and Aaron, “Wherefore lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a prince over us? . . . Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them” (Num. xvi. 1-13).
Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, there may not appear p. 32 to you to be much in this exhibition of constant perversity on the part of the Jews in their very earliest writings. In fact you may, on the whole, feel it to be rather a tiresome story. But consider: how came such a story to be written? There it is. Somebody wrote it: and somebody wrote it long, long ago. And whoever wrote it, had a reason for writing it, for history is never written without a reason. Either it was written because it was true—in which there would be an all-sufficient reason; or it was written because, not being true, it was desired to please the Jews by an invented history.
Ladies and Gentlemen,—Excuse me for apparently insulting you by asking you not to evade this issue. Face the problem, and make your choice. The problem is there. It is not a fanciful one. The story is in the hands of Christendom. It must have an origin. It did not write itself. There was an object in writing it: either to tell the truth, or to please. You see I am debating the matter on very low ground. I am treating the writings of Moses as a merely human production, for the sake of argument.
What do you say? Can you think it was written to please? Is it possible that such a story could please? What generation of Jews could ever be gratified, to be told that their fathers were such a stiff-necked, unbelieving, and disobedient people that “it went ill with Moses for their sakes, because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips:” and that “. . . therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against them, insomuch that he abhored his own inheritance and gave them into the hand of the heathen?” (Psa. cvi. 32, 33, 40).
Ladies and Gentlemen,—We have Jewish writers p. 33 and Jewish histories written from the merely natural Jewish point of view. Do you find them at all pitched in this unflattering key? Do they not, like all natural historians, try to glorify their ancestors by attributing great and excellent qualities to them? Yet Moses, and every Bible writer, speaks in the disparaging way illustrated in these extracts.
No, Ladies and Gentlemen, you cannot, on a calm consideration of the matter, come to the conclusion that the Bible history of the Exodus was written to please. The character of the history forbids it, while Christ’s endorsement of the history excludes it.
You may say it does not matter much whether it is true or not. You may say it is lugubrious at the best, and that, if it is true, so much the worse for the unhappy race whose murmurs and discontents it preserves on the page of immortal history.
Ladies and Gentlemen,—There is an entirely different face to put on that point which, with your permission, I shall try to exhibit at our next meeting.