the Church itself, concerning the
Book of Exodus, which was formerly accepted with confidence by all
Christians.
But one thing can neither be doubted nor denied. Jesus Christ did
certainly treat this book, taking it as He found it, as possessed of
spiritual authority, a sacred scripture. He taught His disciples to
regard it thus, and they did so.
Therefore, however widely His followers may differ about its date and
origin, they must admit the right of a Christian teacher to treat this
book, taking it as he finds it, as a sacred scripture and invested with
spiritual authority. It is the legitimate subject of exposition in the
Church.
Such work this volume strives, however imperfectly, to perform. Its
object is to edify in the first place, and also, but in the second
place, to inform. Nor has the author consciously shrunk from saying what
seemed to him proper to be said because the utterance would be
unwelcome, either to the latest critical theory, or to the last
sensational gospel of an hour.
But since controversy has not been sought, although exposition has not
been suppressed when it carried weapons, by far the greater part of the
volume appeals to all who accept their Bible as, in any true sense, a
gift from God.
No task is more difficult than to exhibit the Old Testament in the light
of the New, discovering the permanent in the evanescent, and the
spiritual in the form and type which it inhabited and illuminated. This
book is at least the result of a firm belief that such a connection
between the two Testaments does exist, and of a patient endeavour to
receive the edification offered by each Scripture, rather than to force
into it, and then extort from it, what the expositor desires to find.
Nor has it been supposed that by allowing the imagination to assume, in
sacred things, that rank as a guide which reason holds in all other
practical affairs, any honour would be done to Him Who is called the
Spirit of knowledge and wisdom, but not of fancy and quaint conceits.
If such an attempt does, in any degree, prove successful and bear fruit,
this fact will be of the nature of a scientific demonstration.
If this ancient Book of Exodus yields solid results to a sober
devotional exposition in the nineteenth Christian century, if it is not
an idle fancy that its teaching harmonises with the principles and
theology of the New Testament, and even demands the New Testament as the
true commentary upon the Old, wh
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