is not less the accomplishment of what Yahaweh promised to Israel than are the successes that Israel has achieved through Moses or David or Solomon or Isaiah or Nehemiah or Maimonides or the Rothschilds.

Fulfilment in

Christ

But even the view we have thus far been taking is comparatively a low and narrow view to take of the outcome of the promise made to Israel. It shows up dwarflike by the side of the out- the person of come in the person of Jesus Christ. If the Christian doctrines be true, the doctrines of the incarnation, the trinity, the person of Christ, the atonement, salvation, immortality, then there is in the character of Jesus the Saviour, offspring of Jacob and of David, a fulfilment of the promise so vast that even the achievements of the religion that Jesus founded are by comparison insignificant.

Even from a theologically agnostic point of view the wonderful personality of Jesus, coupled with the unequalled acceptance he has had among men, render him a fact greater and more important than a whole cycle of other facts. Much more, if the doctrines of immortality and of the incarnation and the atonement are true, then the kingdom of the promise is eternal in the world of the blessed, and is as much beyond the largest temporal greatness as eternity is beyond time. If they are true, then the person of the divine-human Saviour, Deity incarnate in a man of Jewish blood, is as much greater than the great things we have been considering as God is greater than men. So far as duration is concerned there is no final fulfilment for an eternal promise; but there was a climacteric fulfilment, one whose sublime. height will never be exceeded, in the historical manifestation when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

So much for the facts in which the promise made to Israel finds its accomplishment. When we are scanning the career of Israel in search of these facts, we should look at the whole historical process, and not at some relatively narrow and circumscribed portion of it.

Possibly we need to remind ourselves that the fulfilment is still in progress. It is not correct to say that it was accomplished on the cross and at the resurrection, with the implication that these were the last end of the process. If one holds that the culminating fulfilment is in the person of the divine-human Saviour, as manifested in Jesus Christ, he must none the less hold that there are remainders of the eternal fulfilment yet to be wrought out, alike in the Israelitish race, in the spread of the kingdom on the earth, and in the blessedness in heaven of the recipients of the promised blessing.

CHAPTER XVII

THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY

VERY familiar among the theologians is the argument given in such works as Keith On the Prophecies, or Bishop Thomas Newton's Dissertations on The old arthe Prophecies which have remarkably been gument from prophecy Fulfilled, or in its appropriate place in many of the full treatises on Dogmatics. It is to the effect that there are in the scriptures many hundred predictions which have come true. In particular, it is said that the Old Testament contains numerous predictions concerning a personage called the Messiah, who was to come at a certain time in the future; that these predictions sketch his character, give beforehand his biography, mention details in his career, his sufferings, his death, and that these details correspond remarkably to those of the career of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the New Testament. It is therefore inferred that, since it was beyond human power to foresee these details, the foresight of them must have been by divine inspiration; and thus that the facts prove at once the divine authority of the prophets who foresaw, and the divine mission of the Christ who was foreseen.

I do not attack or undervalue this argument. It has superficial defects, but it is in its essential nature impregnable. We cannot shut our eyes, how- Its ever, to the fact that it is now much less decadence influential than formerly. Some of the reasons for this

are not hard to find, and they show that the argument, however valuable, needs to be restated.

Its influence has been weakened by the indiscriminate claims which some of its advocates have made. When you claim instances and fail to make your claim good, your claim ought, logically, to go for nothing. Practically, however, it counts against you, bringing suspicion on any other claims you may make.

Again, many even of the valid instances used in this argument are instances whose validity is not at once apparent, but has to be argued in order to have it accepted. Instead of cogently using the instance, you have to exhaust your logical energy in vindicating your right to use it.

Again, the argument as commonly presented lacks unity. It deals with facts that seem to be disconnected and heterogeneous. Indeed, some of the presentations make the unconnected character of the facts an important part of the argument. They assume that marvellousness is a special proof of divineness. But our generation is not easily convinced by proofs of this sort. In its study of God and of miracles, as in its study of ordinary nature, it believes mainly the truths which it can classify and reduce to statements of law, and looks with suspicion on that which is incapable of being so treated.

Yet again, the argument as commonly presented is historically associated with the assumption that prediction is the main thing in prophecy. This our generation rejects. It is convinced that the prophet is a forthteller rather than a foreteller; that miraculous prediction, however real, is only one item in prophecy, and not the most important item. This doubtless diminishes for the time being- by suggestion, of course, and not

by logical necessity—the influence which arguments from prediction have over us.

Further, the interpreters of the past have treated as predictions many passages that were not properly such, but expressions of fears or hopes or wishes or opinions, or statements as to existing tendencies. Confused habits of interpretation have been established. With similar confusion of thought, the opponents of the argument from prediction are now affirming that the prophets made many predictions that were proved false by the events; that the fulfilment of what the prophets foretold was a haphazard matter; that the thing sometimes came true, and sometimes not. There is at present enough of confusion of thought to dull the edge of the traditional argument.

The argu

to be restated

When to considerations like these we add others based on the general sceptical and agnostic tendencies of our age, and on the effect of the current theories of criticism, whatever be the weight or the ment needs bearing any one may assign to these, we reach at least one conclusion; namely, that it is not superfluous to inquire whether some better way can be found of stating the argument from prophecy. It seems to me that there is such a way, and that it is indicated by the treatment of the subject given in the preceding sixteen chapters.

sional conclusions. Are

In these chapters, let us remind ourselves, we have reached, strictly speaking, only provisional conclusions. We have been asking: What did the prophets Our proviclaim? rather than: What were the actual facts? We have taken the statements of fact they true? as we found them, and have tried to get an orderly understanding of them. Now that we have been over the ground, we are ready for the inquiry whether the