The Press.
London, England, 1855-06-02 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Possibly, however, the most interesting,
though not. in our opinion the most valuable,
portions of the work before us will be con-
sidered those in which the preacher enters on
the discussion of scripture history, scripture
characters, and scripture authority iu general.
The boldness of his views on these questions
will to many be startling, and to some painful ;
but there is one point on which we desire to
express our cordial agreement with him, and
that is, the need of a liberal charity in our
judgment of those actors in the great conflict
between good and evil who are brought before
us in the Old Testament. Those who were on
the side of God were not always wholly good,
nor were their opponents, on the other hand,
entirely evil. The Gentile nations were not
without some testimony to the presence of the
Holy Spirit among them, nor yet was the
Jewish Church cognisant of the entire counsel
of God. We should remember that priests,
prophets, azid kings, whether of Jehovah or
Baal, are alike men, and just as full of deep
human interest as if no supernatural light had
been thrown around their conduct ; that the
servants of the Lord very frequently worked
in ignorance of their high mission ; and that
then, as now, human passions and human
crimes were the instruments of the Divine
purpose. Deborah, the avenger of Israel, was
no less the Syrian fanatic; the betrayal of
Esau by his brother and Uriah by his king
are but common examples of Oriental perfidy;
we may loathe the vow of the Gileadite, and
mourn with the mother of Sisera
Surely it is not without a sickening of the heart that
any right-minded person can hear some atrocious deed
elaborately defended, or even propounded as an act of
faith, because it happens to be recorded in the scriptures
of the Old Testament. Nor, again, are we warranted in
supposing that actions otherwise wrong were rendered
right by any special command of the Most High, unless
some trace of such command appear to be distinctly re-
corded. Rather, indeed, we should be careful to preserve
the fine edge of our conscience unturned and its percep-
tions keen lt is well know!. that the nations
between the Tigris and the Mediterranean have never ab-
stained in their warfare from either treachery or bloodshed.
Suppose, then, we read in the Book of Judges that Syrian
shepherds, twelve centuries before Christ, were gentle, and
upright lovers of truth, it would have been a reasonable
question, where the originals existed from whom so fair a
picture was drawn.—Pages 93-4.

This fidelity Mr. Williams considers (vide
p. 47) to be a very strong argument in favour
of the authenticity of scripture history, so
different to the " usual genius of Oriental
" narrative, which delights rather in pompous
" and inflated exaggeration." There is much
force in the argument thus educed, which is
nevertheless open to an objection, though
perhaps not of any great weight. Whenever,
it may be said, we can be certain, as in the
Old Testament, of the direct personal inter-
vention of the Deity in the affairs of men—
whenever it is not a matter of opinion Khich
is the cause of God, and which of his enemies—
then we are at liberty to judge of human
actions by a different standard, and to discard
that code of laws from which, under no other
conceivable circumstances, is it safe to depart.
If we know—if we do not merely believe, but
know—that a particular person is the agent of
the Almighty, we do not require the produc-
tion of a " special command for every act of
his career; we have faith in his character of a
divine messenger; he becomes invested in
our eyes with a portion of the divine attri-
butes ; and we are not unwilling to admit that
vengeance is his.

One more extract on this subject will com-
plete the representation of Mr. Williams's
theory :

We may read Moses, not for his physical geography,
but for his Ten Commandments and his history. We may

read the Book of Joshua, not for its astronomy, but for a
tremendous example of the law by which God sweeps cor-
rupt nations from the earth. We may find in Kings and
Chronicles, not imaginary and faultless men, but sultjects
of Divine Providenze, instances of divine teaching, and all
that blending of interest with instruction which the history
of a devout people, told with reference to the Judge of the
whole earth, is ever calculated to afford Nor
let the natural metaphor, by which men call a sacred
record " The Word of God," ever blind us to the fact that
no text has been found, from Genesis to Revelations, in
which this holy name is made a synonym for the entire
volume of Scripture.—Pages

To these passages, taken by themselves, we
can give, as before stated, our willing assent ;
yet we are sorry they should be connected