Old Testament

“ The New Testament really carried us to the times of the Old Testament. It was the Renaissance of Greek thought and art that changed the "thorns and thistles" of theology into the golden fruit of science. ”

“ Thus much thought I to speak of the old Testament, wherein Almighty God openeth unto us his mighty power, his wisdom, his loving mercy and righteousness: for the which cause it ought of no man to be abhorred, despised, or lightly regarded, as though it were an old scripture that nothing belonged unto us, or that now were to be refused. ”

“ The Old Testament, therefore, is the final record of a revelation extending through thousands of years, finding at last its most exalted expression in the messages of the Hebrew prophets, and its clearest reflection in the thoughts and experiences of the priests, sages, and psalmists of ancient Israel. ”

“ I know that many Christians regard the Old Testament as the foundation and the New as the superstructure, and while many admit that there are faults and mistakes in the Old Testament, they insist that the New is the flower and perfect fruit. ”

“ It is a matter of common knowledge that within the last few decades a tremendous change has come over our estimate of the value of the Old Testament, and that this change is of the gravest importance for our understanding of religion. ”

“ Thus I finished the Old Testament, considerably shaken in faith; but as the Old Testament belonged to a long past dispensation, I considered it of little value anyway, and approached the study of the New with the hope that all difficulties would be removed and all doubts made clear. If the New Testament was truly inspired of God and infallibly true, what difference did it make if the Old was doubtful and uncertain? ”

“ The irresistible fascination which has drawn many of the most brilliant scholars into the Old Testament field is a proof that it has lost nothing, of its power and attractiveness. Already the circle of those who have rediscovered the Old Testament is rapidly broadening. Observation and experience confirm the conviction that all that is lacking to make that devotion universal is a right attitude toward it and an intelligent familiarity with its real origin, contents, and teachings. ”

“ As the repository of a great and varied literature, as a record of many of the most important events in human history, and as a concrete revelation of God's character and will through the life and experiences of a race and the hearts of inspired men, the Old Testament has a vital message marvellously adapted to the intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual needs of to-day and supremely fitted to appeal to the thought and imagination of the present age. ”

“ If you bring up a child on the fact that all the Old Testament stories are untrue, a bundle, where they are miraculous, of obviously impossible fairy tales, what’s going to happen to the New Testament? ”

“ Now the Old Testament is throughout supremely true to the facts of human nature and human experience. It is practically a transcript of them as seen in the light of revelation. In a time, therefore, when in morals and religion physical fact is being allowed to override or pervert psychical fact, the Old Testament view is peculiarly wholesome. It helps to restore the balance and to keep man's thoughts sane. ”

“ It reviews Old Testament history, disclosing the stream of God's redeeming purposes flowing down through the older times. It reviews New Testament history, disclosing the broadening and deepening of that purpose for us men and for mankind in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and his Church. ”

“ In the Old Testament an ideal is projected into the future by inspired men, and in Christ and His kingdom it is realized. Moreover, if you look to the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles or to St. Matthew’s Gospel, you will see how full the early Christians were of the sense of this realization, of the sense that in the Old Testament is a forecast and in the New a fulfilment. ”

“ To the majority of us, who turn to the Old Testament simply as the record of divine revelation and as a guide to life, the essential thing is to put ourselves into touch with these ancient prophets, who taught by illustration as well as by direct address, and ask, What was the ethical or spiritual truth that illumined their souls and finds concrete expression and illustration through these primitive stories? ”

“ The attempt which is often made to show that the New Testament writers have established, by their testimony, the Old Testament canon, as containing just those books which are in our Old Testament, and no more, is a most unwarrantable distortion of the facts. ”

“ As the Old Testament possesses no order, no arrangement, and no distinct system of either morals or religion, and no regular connection in its history, we have to treat it in the same unsystematic order in which we find it, and to expose many foolish errors and stories which seem almost beneath the dignity of any respectable writer to notice. ”

“ The Old Testament is an anticipatory figure of all the New Testament tells us. The Mosaic dispensation contains, as in an allegory, what the Christian religion shows us in reality; the history of the People of God, its principal personages, its sayings and doings, the very accessories round about it, are a series of images ”

“ Besides, prophecies fulfilled, seem the most proper of all arguments to evince the truth of a new revelation which is designed to be universally promulgated to men. For a man who has the Old Testament put into his hands, which contain prophecies, and the New Testament afterward, which is said to contain their completions, and is once satisfied, as he may be with the greatest ease, that the Old Testament existed before the New, may have a complete, internal, divine, demonstration of the truth of Christianity, without long, and laborious enquiries. ”

“ I assert, without fear of contradiction, that no English author has ever ventured to put into a book a tenth part of the filth that is to be found passing throughout the Old Testament. In schools where the Bible is read and learnt it is a well-known fact that idle and prurient-minded boys spend a considerable portion of their time in looking up and gloating over all those filthy stories with which the Old Testament teems. ”

“ A Testament is a will; and the Bible is God's will made for man's good, and for his guide through life. The Old Testament tells of God's love and care for the Jews, and His thought of Christ can be traced through all its pages. There is a good deal in the Bible that a child cannot understand, and the queer names make it very hard reading. ”

“ No people ever felt so strongly as the people of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, that conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern. ”

“ PREFACE During the past generation the Old Testament has commanded equally with the New the enthusiastic and devoted study of the great body of biblical scholars throughout the world. Two out of every three graduate students in our universities who specialize in the general field of biblical literature choose the Old as the special centre of their work. At the same time the tendency of the rank and file of the Christian church within the past decade has undoubtedly been to neglect the older Testament. ”

“ Nay, if it be not true, the Old Testament must be false, and all the glorious promises which shine so brightly in it, and the performance of which was limited within certain periods of time, must be a great delusion, which we are sure they are not, and therefore must embrace the New Testament to support the reputation of the Old. ”

“ When we have assured ourselves that the Bible is really as old and as truthful a record of history as it pretends to be, and that it has for it such human testimony as leads us to admit historic facts in general, we shall occupy ourselves with its contents, with the influence which this wonderful book, this ancient testament of our royal Sire, exercises upon the heart, the mind, the general culture, by which it leads us to our inheritance, and enables us to assume our place in our destined home. ”

“ We have before us that part of the Bible which we call the Old Testament, containing the acts and monuments of the church from the creation almost to the coming of Christ in the flesh, which was about four thousand years—the truths then revealed, the laws then enacted, the devotions then paid, the prophecies then given, and the events which concerned that distinguished body, so far as God saw fit to preserve to us the knowledge of them. ”

“ How Christianity depends on the Old Testament, or what proofs are to be met with therein in behalf of Christianity, are the subjects of almost all the numerous books written by divines, and other apologists for Christianity, but the chief and principal of these proofs may be justly supposed to be urged in the New Testament itself, by the authors thereof; who relate the history of the first preaching of the Gospel, and profess themselves to be apostles of Jesus, or companions of the Apostles. ”

“ He created the human body and is the author of sin, which springs from matter and not from the spirit. The Old Testament must be either partly or entirely ascribed to him; whereas the New Testament is the revelation of the beneficent God. ”

“ A theory is already propounded, both in private and in a naïve simple way in sermons, that the {229} Old Testament is of no particular moment, all that we need being the New Testament, which has been defended by our valiant apologists and expounded by our admirable interpreters. ”