The longing for a Deliverer and Redeemer of himself and his race was
the strongest and deepest feeling in the heart of every Jewish patriot.
His whole life was grounded and centred on the promise and hope of such
an one. Just therefore when his utterances would be most human and
noble, most in sympathy with the cries and groanings of his own nation
and the universe, they would all point to and centre in that Deliverer
and Redeemer—just in so far as they were truly noble, human, and
Godlike, they would shadow forth His true character, the words He would
speak, the acts He would do. Doubtless the prophet would have before
his mind any notable deliverance, and noble sufferer, or deliverer of
his own time; his words would refer to these. But from these he would
be inevitably drawn up to the great promised Deliverer and Redeemer of
his nation and his race, because he would see after all how incomplete
the deliverance wrought by these must be, and his faith in the promise
made to his fathers and to his nation—the covenant of God in which he
felt himself to be included—would and could be satisfied with nothing
less than a full and perfect deliverance, a Redeemer who should be the
Head of men, the Son of man, and the Son of God.
Men may have insisted, may still insist, on seeing all sorts of
fanciful references to some special acts of his in certain words of
the Bible. But I must again insist that men’s fancies about the Bible
and Christ are not the question, but what the Bible itself says, what
Christ is. The whole book is full of Him, there is no need to read Him
into any part of it as to which there can be any possible doubt.
Holding this faith as to the Scriptures, I am not anxious to defend
them. I rejoice that they should be minutely examined and criticised.
They will defend themselves, one and all, I believe. Men may satisfy
themselves—perhaps, if I have time to give to the study, they may
satisfy me—that the Pentateuch was the work of twenty men; that Baruch
wrote a part of Isaiah; that David did not write the Psalms, or the
Evangelists the Gospels; that there are interpolations here and there
in the originals; that there are numerous and serious errors in our
translation. What is all this to me? What do I care who wrote them,
what is the date of them, what this or that passage ought to be? They
have told me what I wanted to know. Burn every copy in the world
to-morrow, you don’t and can’t take that knowledge from me, or any man.
I find them _all_ good for me; so, as long as a copy is left, and I can
get it, I mean to go on reading them all, and believing them all to be
inspired.