the
most minute and tender prophecy concerning the Messiah's sufferings for
his people, and rejection by them, has dropped out of sight! We are
asked to believe that the name of the prophet who gave this dramatic
picture of what was to take place on Calvary seven hundred years later,
has been lost in the fog of the passing centuries! We are asked to
believe that the name of the author of the first thirty-nine chapters,
the less important part of the book, has been preserved, but oblivion
has overtaken the author of the book from the fortieth chapter to the
end.

The assumption is an affront to the intelligence of the ordinary reader
of the Bible. It is an impeachment of the honesty of the authors of the
gospels, which the unshaken faith of God's people can never concede.

The reader can now sum up the testimony of Matthew, Mark (see i. 3,
R.V.), Luke, John, and John the Baptist, all of whom with one voice
contradicts the critics. We also prefer, with these witnesses, to
discredit the men who are picking out clauses, verses and chapters here
and there, and guessing them off to authors of their own invention, who
have never been known or heard of.

It is not sufficient for the critics to say that these New Testament
authors knew better, but deferred to popular sentiment, based on
tradition. That can not satisfy our estimate of them as God's divinely
appointed teachers, chosen to make record of the momentous truth on
which the salvation of a lost world hangs. Men, ready to lay down their
lives for the truth, were not the men to play fast and loose with the
Word of God, in deference to a supposed popular sentiment.

Further, our critical friends have assumed to decide for the prophets
that they must prophesy out of their immediate surroundings in such a
marked way, with such continued reference to the events of the period,
that the prophecy must be located in that period. If the critic cannot
find these particular local earmarks, he must push the prophecy to a
point of time with which he can make it synchronize, and which will
satisfy his literary judgment. By this law of determining dates, the
critics claim that the book of Isaiah is a composite work, produced by
different authors and at different times.

On this assumption the latter part of the book of Revelation was not a
revelation to the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos. The first part of
the book may be adjudged as his. But presently the matter of the book
p