e because of its
insistence on pure and spiritual religion, and its condemnation of all
cold and external formalism. These words of the prophet Isaiah imply a
lofty conception of true religion: "What unto me is the multitude of
your sacrifices? saith Jehovah: I have had enough of the
burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not
in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to
appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my
courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto
me; new moon and sabbath, the calling of {261} assemblies--I cannot
away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your
appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary
of bearing them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine
eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your
hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil
of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do
well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead
for the widow."[26] And the prophetic definition of religion, "He hath
showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of
thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with
thy God?"[27] is in no wise inferior to that given in the New
Testament: "Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is
this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to
keep oneself unspotted from the world."[28]

Finally, how can we estimate highly enough the devotional value of the
Old Testament as illustrated, for example, in the book of Psalms? Here
we have the outpourings of human souls in the closest fellowship with
their God, giving without restraint expression to the most various
emotions, hopes, desires, and aspirations. What other literary
compositions lift us into such atmosphere of religious thought and
emotion? {262} Surely, the sweet singers enjoy a preeminence from
which they can never be dethroned.

It is quite safe, therefore, to assert, that as long as human nature is
what it is now the Old Testament must remain an ever-flowing fountain
of living truth, able to invigorate and to restore, to purify and to
refine; to ennoble and to enrich the moral and spiritual being of man.
"No man," says A. W. Vernon,[29] "save Jesus, ever had the right to lay
the Book ... a