4. The Doctrine of the Old Testament in Relation to the Fatherhood of God

CHAPTER IV THE DOCTRINE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN RELATION TO THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD

ONE of the difficulties hindering men from perceiving that, from the standpoint of Christian truth, the Fatherhood of God is the clue to all His dealings with mankind, has been the doctrine of the Old Testament. The deeper causes which have led men comparatively to neglect the Fatherhood of God, and to build their theology rather upon the basis of the Old Testament than on that of the New, must be investigated in the next chapter.

Confining ourselves, meanwhile, to what is more super ficial, but not therefore uninfluential, it may be said that readers of the Holy Scriptures, being until recently without the means of apprehending the laws of their development, treated the Old Testament simply as being of equal authority with the New, and came to it first. In reading the New Testament, therefore, they were so permeated by the truths and principles of the Old that they made these unduly their guides to the interpretation of the New. In the Old Testament they found the truth of the sovereignty of God every where supreme. This, therefore, they naturally adopted as being His characteristic relationship to mankind, and most in accordance with the majesty which they reverenced and obeyed. The Fatherhood, therefore, was either left out of account altogether, or treated as a special grace, onlymanifested to the chosen few in the peculiar intimacy of their fellowship with God; while even the general relations of the elect to God, still more those of the universe and of unregenerate mankind, were explained by His sovereignty.

Thus the Divine sovereignty became to them, substantially, the highest and most influential relationship revealed either in the Old or in the New Testament. Even this was often narrowed and hardened by an imperfect apprehension of many of the aspects of Old Testament theology and religion, and by the introduction, into the conception of sovereignty, of elements, at once more rigid and more complex than belonged to the period of the Old Testament, being derived from the analogies of human sovereignty as this was developed in more recent times. As to all these problems concerned with the interpretation of the Old Testament and with its relationship to the New, ours is the first generation which has the means of sound decision within its reach. We are able to apply more scientific methods of investigation, and can use the ever growing materials drawn from the comparative study of religions and from the general history and philosophy of religious thought and life. But, above all, we have become familiar with the idea of development in revelation and spiritual life, in theology and religion, and are able to use it as the basis of inquiry, and to perceive by its means the formative principle explaining the sequence and interdependence of the different stages of thought and life which are discovered. We are able, as was never the case before, to realise the extent to which revelation is necessarily relative to the faculty for apprehending it, and to understand how this latter is limited by the age and environment, by the lessons of the past, and the outlook of the present. Thus, as to the truth and life revealed and enjoyed in a particular age, we can say why God’s method being what it is it was as we find it, no less and no more; how it prepared the way for fuller revelation and higher life in the future. In particular, it becomes clear how necessarily inadequate the results attained at any stage must be to the end of the development, and how the crowning fulfilment, transcending the preparation for it, must become the standard by which the preparatory process is judged, and supply the light in which its truths are held. Hence it is impossible for us any longer simply to put the Old Testament side by side with the New, treating each, and the separate books contained in each, merely as a collection of separate, though harmonious, oracles; the method of old - fashioned demonstration of doctrines by proof-texts selected haphazard and torn from their context. For us the New Testament is both the ripe and complete fruit of the Old Testament, and something more. In this is involved, that the New Testament takes up into itself and fulfils the whole eternal substance of the Old, and that what remains is seen to have been the protective sheath thrown out in the process of growth; a product of life whose function was to safeguard the life it enfolded, and which now remains, both as the setting of that life and as the means by which its original development is understood.

Thus the permanent significance of the Old Testament depends upon its relation to the New. The Law and the Prophets, being fulfilled, are also judged by Christ. All permanent elements in them are taken over by Him, and glorified in the transition. All elements which are unable to bear this transition pass away, having served the purposes of that stage in the revelation of God and the salvation of man to which they belonged. And the Old Testament as it stands is a body which, while many of its elements, taken severally, are well-nigh ideally complete, cannot, as a whole, be treated in itself and apart from the New Testament, in which it is fulfilled, harmonised, transfigured, and transcended, as being a direct and adequate guide to the mind and will of God, perfectly and finally revealed in Christ. This being our general standpoint, it will be necessary for us to pursue the following inquiry. In the first place, we must endeavour to trace the development in the Old Testament of the consciousness and doctrine of God’s relationship to men from its earliest to its latest forms, attempting to lay hold of its main features, and avoiding, as far as possible, what is either uncertain or controversial. We must, in the second place, investigate the meaning of the characteristic conception of the Old Testament that of the covenant between God and Israel. We must then pass on to examine, in the third place, the Kingship of Jehovah as it is set before us in the Prophets, the Book of Proverbs, and the Psalms. We shall then be able to discover, not merely the nature of the Old Testament doctrine of the relationship of God to men, in its different phases, but also its relations to the New Testament doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, and the way in which it prepared the way for the latter.

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE KELATIONSHIP OF GOD TO MEN IN THE OLD TESTAMENT At the outset, attention must be called to the fact that the literature of the Old Testament as it stands does not correspond with the historical development of its theology.

It is of course both unnecessary and undesirable to discuss here the history and chronological order of the sacred books.

It is sufficient for our purpose to remark that, while the Bible begins with the account of creation, the history of the Old Testament religion, strictly speaking, begins with the religion of the patriarchs. When we study the Old Testament theology as it is developed from its patriarchal beginnings to its forms as finally elaborated, we shall be struck with the contrast between the course of its growth, as revealed in the religious consciousness of men, and the usual procedure of theological argument and exposition. In carrying on the latter, men usually start by discussing whether or not there is a God, having concluded that He exists, they then proceed to invest Him with suitable attributes, and to define their conception as to His relationships to the universe as a whole. Then, finally, they descend from this abstract, speculative, and universal position, to consider His relations to mankind and to individual men, out of which arises the religious consciousness as such. But this course exactly inverts the historical process by which men were led to know and to conceive of God; and the historical process, as it took place, was both the only course intellectually possible, and also the only one possessing, from first to last, spiritual worth. To attempt to trace the relations between the religion of the Old Testament and other religions would lead us too far afield. But, confining our outlook to the Old Testament, we may confidently affirm that personal experience went before argument or speculation; the revelation, therefore, before the distinct intellectual apprehension of God. Men did not proceed outside themselves to a Godless world, and then reason to an abstract God as its remote source. They found God present to their consciousness, and influential in their lives. They knew Him; and, had they produced a theistic argument, it would have been, in effect, God is known to us, therefore He is. Further, the consciousness of personal relations went before universal conceptions, and it was through the sense of relations sustained that there came the growing revelation of the Divine Being, who constituted those relations. Men knew nothing of a God; but spoke of the God of our Fathers, our God, or my God. They took up towards Him the attitude of worship, trust, and obedience before even asking themselves, still less denning andproclaiming, what were the exact attributes which characterised Him whom they reverenced. To begin with, they recognised the sovereign but gracious Being, who commanded and watched over the life of the race-father and of his descendants.

Thence, in the progress of revelation and of the consciousness which apprehended and reflected upon it, they proceeded out wards, till the Divine presence and sovereignty filled the whole world, and was extended backwards to creation, as its source. The Lordship, which originated and controlled the universe of things seen, was further recognised to be supreme over the unseen. And, lastly, the Divine Being, whose personal relationship was still experienced as the immediate reality, but whose glory was seen to fill heaven and earth, revealed, through His relationship to the spirit of man and nature, the wealth of all those attributes, which were in tuitively discerned and then described by inspired men. In short, the course of the Old Testament revelation was, in principle, similar to that which took place in the experience of St. Paul concerning our Lord, as we have seen witnessed by the Epistle to the Colossians. There the apostle, beginning with the personal experience of redemption in Christ, is led to extend His Lordship outwards from men to the universe, and backwards from redemption to creation, developing, as he proceeds, those dogmatic assertions as to the person of Christ which are necessitated by the relations He sustains. This general account of what actually took place corre sponds with the only conception of what could possibly have taken place, which is tenable in the light of man’s general development. Man, as a religious and moral being, must have been conscious of God long before his experience was wide enough, his reason strong enough, or his reflexion profound enough, to enable him to receive an adequate revelation of the nature of God, much less to unfold such a revelation in an elaborate theology. Revelation is determined, not only by the grace and power of God as the giver, but by the capacity of man as the receiver. In the simple and personal religion of the fathers lay the potentiality of all that was to come, but the unveiling of it could only be “ in many parts and in divers manners,” as the growing power and enlarging consciousness of men enabled them to receive it. A brief reference to the history of Revelation as it is presented to us in the Old Testament, will enable us to verify in detail the general statement which has just been made. The dealings of God with Israel begin with the call of Abraham, of which an account is given in Genesis 12:1-9. An act of sovereign grace and election on the part of God, leading to the setting up of special personal relations with Abraham, calls forth, on the patriarch’s side, a special act of faith and obedience, which determines both the temper and the course of the whole of his subsequent career. This act of special choice is renewed to Isaac (Genesis 26:1-6) and to Jacob, at Bethel (Genesis 28:10-22). The whole narrative from Gen. 12 to the end of the book is the story of the personal dealings between God and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their families. His grace to them, their self-surrender to Him, in these the whole meaning of their lives is found.

Such a relationship involves, doubtless, a disclosure of His glory by God to them, and a corresponding apprehension of it by them. His authority over them, His will and power to guide and bless them, together with their obedience to and satisfaction in Him, implicitly contain all that is involved in His Godhead, as subsequent ages apprehended it. And the revelation of it was made to them according to their power and need. For example, when God announces to Abraham the making of His covenant with him and his seed (Genesis 17:1), He declares, “ I am God Almighty “ (El Shaddai). But what strikes us is the relative character of the revelation. Doubt less the all-sufficiency of God, as we understand it, is implicitly contained in the announcement, but the whole tenor of the revelation is, so to speak, Abraham-wards. The all-sufficiency is, primarily, towards Abraham and his seed, and subserves the personal relations between God and them; though, of course, ultimately, all-sufficiency towards those who experience God’s saving grace involves His sovereignty over the universe. In the same manner, this relative Godhead and the personal relations in which it manifests itself are set in the forefront of the fuller revelation made to Moses. We are told: “ Moreover He said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob “ (Exodus 3:6; see also Exodus 3:13). The great advance in the progress of revelation which was made by the instrumentality of Moses began with the assumption by God of a new name, or rather by the placing of a new and fuller meaning on an old name. 1 But foremost is the resumption with Israel of the personal relations in which God had stood to their fathers. The commission to Moses is: “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared unto me” (Exodus 3:16). And the result of that resumption is a great act of national redemption. The Divine message continues: “ I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt: and I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt “ (Exodus 3:16-17). The new name Jehovah, whatever more may be implied in it, is, above all, relative to this resumption of personal relations with Israel, and to the redemption in which that resumption is manifested. And this aspect of the whole is emphasised by the First Commandment, which is at the foundation of the Covenant of Sinai: “ I am Jehovah, thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt

1 See p. no. have none other gods before Me “ (Exodus 20:2-3). Only in the Fourth Commandment does the general statement appear: “ In six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is” (Exodus 20:11); and it is extremely significant that in the version of the Fourth Commandment given in Deuteronomy, instead of this reason for keeping the Sabbath, there is substituted: “ And thou shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand, and by a stretchedout arm; therefore Jehovah, thy God, coinmandeth thee to keep the Sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).

Throughout, the religious obligation is based primarily upon the personal, or national, spiritual relationship, and upon the redemption which has issued from and given further effect to it. Thus “ Jehovah,” afresh revealed, is “ thy God,” renews and carries a stage forward the old relationship; in this relationship He “ brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” signalising His fidelity to the old purpose by a new act of redemption; and upon the relationship and the redemption He founds an act of exclusive appropriation, in which, however, is offered to the people perfect satisfaction, “ Thou shalt have none other gods before Me.” Grace, redemption, appropriation, this is the order on God’s part; surrender, service, fellowship, this is the order of the people’s response. So also this exclusive spiritual relationship is foremost in the Deuteronomic First Commandment: “ Hear, Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might “ (Deuteronomy 6:4, Deuteronomy 6:5). The Book of Deuteronomy represents a substantial advance in the fulness of its teaching. The supremacy of Jehovah over His people is throughout insisted upon, and made the basis of His law. But there appears a new emphasis on His creatorship, both directly set forth (e.g. Deuteronomy 4:32), and indirectly in the warning against being drawn away into worshipping “ the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,” “ which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all the peoples under the whole heaven” (Deuteronomy 4:19). But, again, the impression made by a careful perusal of the book is of the striking way in which general statements about God are made subordinate to His spiritual relations to Israel, and the redemption which gives effect to them. The basis of the whole is a living experience of God. And the whole effect is summed up in the great utterance of Jehovah by Moses, to the people: “ Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles wings, and brought you unto Myself “ (Exodus 19:4). The glory of the “ eagles wings,” the attributes of Jehovah, may become the subject of abstract or general reflexion; but, as first revealed, they were seen as relative to a special and gracious relationship to Israel, and as putting forth their almighty power in an act of deliverance and loving appropriation. In these features of the Book of Deuteronomy the general course of the development of the Old Testament revelation becomes clear. First, the presentation of God to the spiritual consciousness and experience of men of faith; then, His providential and redemptive manifestation in the issues of their personal, family, and national life. But His spiritual and redemptive sovereignty, in their experience, demands His sovereignty in all time and space, over all men and all worlds. And this creative sovereignty, first seen in relation to Israel, as involved in the nature of His Lordship over them and in the glory and grace of His dealings with them, becomes, in later times and with the growing maturity of their receptive and reflective faculties, the subject of more universal and dogmatic statements. Prophets and psalmists expatiate on the glories of the Divine attributes, and on the range of the Divine sovereignty: these become the subject of the meditation of “ the wise.” At length, spiritual apprehension has well-nigh reversed the original order, as is seen in Isa. 40-66, in which Old Testament revelation and theology have perhaps their final and grandest expression.

There the glory of the Creator overarches all things and fills the spiritual eye. The special relation to Him of Israel is that of those “that wait upon the Lord” (Isaiah 40:31). But He is described as “ the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,” who “ fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding “ (Isaiah 40:28). Thus revelation has proceeded from the personal to the national, from the inward to the outward, from the spiritual to the natural, and from the relative and particular to the absolute and universal.

And, in the course of this advance, another new and most important feature has made its appearance. Not only has the spiritual experience of Jehovah, as inwardly sovereign, been extended and completed by the full vision of His sovereignty over the universe, but the conception of the coming universalisation of those spiritual relations, which hitherto had been the exclusive privilege of Israel, dawns upon prophetic minds as the glory of the future. Isaiah and Micah predict: “ It shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow into it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge between the nations, and shall reprove many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more “ (Isaiah 2:2 - Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:1-3). And Isaiah foretells in the most glorious strain of Old Testament evangelism: “ In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and He shall send them a saviour and a defender, and He shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day; yea, they shall worship with sacrifice and oblation, and shall vow a vow unto the Lord, and shall perform it. And the Lord shall smite Egypt, smiting and healing; and they shall return unto the Lord, and He shall be entreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth: for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance “ (Isaiah 19:19-25). Religion, which has hitherto operated to divide, having supplied both the watchwords and the enthusiasm of strife, shall henceforth unite, this is the meaning both of Isa. ii. and of Isaiah 19:23; and the greatest privileges, hitherto restricted to Israel, shall be shared out equally with those nations who had been his enemies and oppressors.

Thus Old Testament revelation, having proceeded from the spiritual relations of God to His servants to the glory of His cosmic relations and of His eternal attributes, finds its inevitable goal in the universalising of those special spiritual relations, with the personal and national forms of which it began.

It is impossible not to be struck here with the similarity between the process of the Old Testament religion and that which we have observed in the New Testament in regard to the Fatherhood of God. The latter, being revealed at first in the unique spiritual consciousness of our Lord, was in the next place apprehended as a personal experience by believers in Him, then seen by a generalisation from special experience in the glory of “ the Father,” and finally perceived to be the universal and governing relationship in all God’s dealings with the world. So in the case of the Old Testament revelation of Jehovah, the whole is on a lower plane than thefulness of the New Testament unveiling of God, but it follows a similar law: beginning with the personal and experiential, rising to the general and abstract, and completed in the foreknowledge (not the actual realisation) of an equal spiritual fellowship, embracing and blessing all mankind. Each process illustrates the other. And the growingly catholic spirit of the Old Testament, equally with the distinct teaching of the New, forbids us to reserve a lower relationship of God to men for mankind in general than that which is experienced by believers. On the contrary, the Old Testament is at one with the New in teaching, by its highest and noblest utterances, that the special experience of the chosen manifests a universal relationship of God to men, which, by His grace, all may eventually be brought to apprehend and enjoy.

II. THE COVENANT The dominating conception of the religious bond between God and Israel is, in the Old Testament, that of the Covenant.

We must now proceed to investigate the origin, nature, and development of this conception.

It is obvious, at first sight, that the living experience of the true God, which, as we have seen, is the basis of Old Testament revelation and religion, involved the mosb marked differentiation between those who possessed it and those who did not. The knowledge of God was, from first to last, that which distinguished Abraham, the patriarchs, and Israel, in all the periods of their history, from the peoples who sur rounded them. And this distinctive experience, growing up within a personal relationship, represented an act of choice on the part of God, and a response of faith and self -surrender on the part of the men chosen by Him. Further, the solemnity of the choice and of the response emphasised the separation between Israel and other peoples, as being far more complete than could have been brought about by any other kind of distinctions. And it made the special relationship between God and His people both dominant and permanent. All this is conveyed by the term “ covenant.” Reaching its maturity in the dealings of God with Israel as a nation, the Covenant was, in the first instance, inaugurated by God with Abraham.

After years of fidelity have followed upon the patriarch’s obedience to the original call of God, we are told that God appeared to Abraham, guaranteed that the gracious relation ship subsisting between them should be continued to the patriarch’s descendants, and instituted the rite of circumcision, as a sign of separation to God and from other peoples. And this is spoken of as God’s covenant with Abraham and his seed (Genesis 17:1-14).

What is involved in this covenant is decisive as to the meaning of the conception throughout the whole history of Israel. It is the extension to the religious relation, of the solemnities of mutual agreement constantly observed between the Hebrews whether tribes, families, or individuals in worldly affairs, and exercising such an influence over their thought that the term “ covenant “ is applied to well-nigh everything, even in the sphere of natural phenomena, upon which man can confidently count. 1

Before tracing the development of the Covenant from its patriarchal foundation, we must, however, pause to notice the previous mention of a covenant, namely, that between God and Noah after the Flood (see Genesis 9:8-17), if only in order to show how distinct the use in that passage is from the conception of the Covenant as defining the relationship of God to His people, and how nearly it approaches to the figurative use just mentioned.

We are told that “ God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you: and with every living creature that is with you, the fowl, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that go out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. And I will establish My covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.”

It is obvious that there is here no selection, unless it be of the living from the non-living. It is a universal covenant between the Creator and the created, in the establishment of which Noah and his sons are treated as the representatives of all living creatures beneath them and after them.

Two ideas, therefore, are contained in this particular covenant. In the first place, there is the recognition of a subordinate independence of the creature over against the Creator. The sovereignty of God does not override creation, nor do His dealings with His creatures ever sink to the level of a fate which gives no intelligible account of itself to them. God and the creatures, as represented by man at their head, stand face to face in personal relations, which are ordered and 1 SeeSchultz, Old Testament Theology (Eng. trans.), 2:2, 3. defined. The form of the covenant sets forth the union in the creatures of hoth dependence and independence, and proclaims the Divine purpose to respect both the one and the other. The finite life of which God is author has a quasimdependence, which involves, despite His absolute rights, the necessity of His entering into personal relations and arrangements with it, so that all, in proportion to their reason, may know on what they may surely count. In the second place, God assures those whom He sets in personal relationship to Himself of the steadfastness of His purpose towards them. He will fulfil creation by preservation.

He will educate and perfect the life He has created by a stable and consistent world-order, which shall be free from any interruption caused by caprice or indifference or anger aroused by the unworthiness of the creature.

Thus we have here the earliest statement of a world-order, and of the spiritual conditions in the character, purpose, and grace of God, upon which that order rests. We are taught that God can be bound only by Himself, but that, in creating, He has bound Himself to a course from which He will not turn aside. And the knowledge of this solemn engagement God makes the basis for the spiritual and moral training of mankind. Such is the meaning to be put upon this earliest covenant. But the Covenant as distinctive of Old Testament religion had its earnest in the relationship of God to the patriarchs, and was inaugurated in its completeness with Israel at Sinai. The account of the inauguration of the Covenant and of its terms is given to us in Ex. 20-24. The Law as then given is expressly termed “ the book of the Covenant “ (Exodus 24:7). The whole of it is to be read in the light of its opening words: “ I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before [or beside] Me “ (Exodus 20:2-3).

Let us study the form of it. In the first place, the Covenant is based upon revelation and upon the sovereign right of God. He addresses the people as Jehovah, and thus appeals to the new and special revelation of Himself, which prepared the way for the new Covenant. But He claims them as His own, demanding of them a national confession in accordance with His rights.

“ I am Jehovah, thy God.”

Here, then, we find God, so to speak, confronting the people, in order to come into permanent spiritual relations with them. And this is the form which the institution of a covenant must necessarily take. In thus manifesting Himself, Jehovah undoubtedly availed Himself of the conception of the relations of God to man characteristic of the Semitic races. The religions of the Aryan races so tended to the conception of union between God, on the one hand, and nature, or man, on the other, as to be in danger of confusing them. Thus the religion of these races taught the Fatherhood of God, or of the gods, in a physical sense. The Greeks idealised them selves in their conceptions of the gods. And philosophy, notably in India, but to a large extent also in Greece, fell into pantheism. But the Semites regarded God as confronting and commanding nature and man. He is “ Baal “ (Master), or “ Moloch “ (King). Even the worshippers of Jehovah were accustomed to call Him Baal; for Hosea tells the people: “ And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call Me Ishi; and shalt call Me no more Baali “ (Hosea 2:16). 1 Hence, just as St. Paul carried over the fruits of his Pharisaic training into Christianity, and these characteristics were utilised and ennobled by the Spirit of Christ, so in the giving of revelation God selected, for the establishment of His covenant, a people the whole tendency of whose minds fitted them to receive and to express the conception of the Divine sovereignty. And to the people, thus prepared, Jehovah manifests Himself in the giving of law.

But, in the second place, though God reveals Himself in the exercise of authority and the giving of law, yet His lawgiving is a manifestation of grace, and His covenant relation ship is based on a great act of redemption. “ I am Jehovah, thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt”

1 There is a close connexion between the significance of “Lord” and that of “Husband” in the name Baal, and it must not be forgotten that, in the ordinary Semitic theologies, Baal, as the supreme male divinity, was husband to the female, Ashtoreth.

Authority has been transfigured by grace; exclusive loyalty and obedience are claimed on the ground of saviourship, and the relationship brought about by saving help is the constraint to duty and service. The declaration of the First Commandment, therefore, at once recites the Divine favour of the past, and assures of the Divine faithfulness in the future. And it is on the ground of this that the demand of consecration is made upon the people, a demand the extent of which the whole of the law moral, ceremonial, and adminis trative is intended to unfold, so far as the hardness of their hearts will permit.

Hence there was not only a gospel before the law, but a gospel in the law. The supposition of a “ covenant of works,” understood in the bare sense of Keformed theology, distorts the whole, and misrepresents alike the spiritual relationships upon which the Covenant was based and the motives to which it appeals. So, again, to represent the terrors of Sinai as primarily due to the wrath of God and to the guilty dread of sinful men, in presence of a law given to condemn them, is to misinterpret the meaning of the whole scene. It is the majesty of the Creator, who appears to set up His kingdom over the elect of His creatures, which is set forth, and not His wrath. Imperfect as the Covenant is, and inadequate as is man’s power to keep it, its institution is, from first to last, an act of grace; though there is awfulness even in the gracious approach of the thrice-holy God to frail and sinful men. It is not that God comes to condemn, but that sinful flesh cannot bear His glorious presence. 1 And it is in this light that the prophets always regard the Covenant, as crowning the deliverance from Egypt. It constitutes the foundation and the form of all the subsequent life of the nation. In all time of their unfaithfulness and of God’s subsequent withdrawal from them, the appeal is made to this great inauguration. Even Amos treats the sad out come of the nation’s history as a falsification of hope. “ Hear this word,” he says, “ that the Lord hath spoken against you, children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought

1 Hence man cannot see the face of God, and live (Exodus 33:20; see also Genesis 32:30; Deuteronomy 5:24; Judges 6:22, Judges 6:23, Judges 6:13-22). up out of the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities” (Amos 3:1, Amos 3:2). And Hosea, speaking of Jehovah’s dealing with His unfaithful people in order to bring them back to Himself, says: “ Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her... and she shall make answer there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt” (Hosea 2:14, Hosea 2:15). And after the same fashion Jeremiah says: “ Thus saith the Lord, I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals; how thou wentest after Me in the wilderness in a land that was not sown “ (Jeremiah 2:2). Thus, despite the claims of the Law, the Covenant is throughout treated as a covenant of grace. The claim to the loyal obedience of the people is based upon the manifestation of the Divine love and grace, as is the husband’s claim to the faithfulness of his wife. And this view receives its grandest expression in the account of God’s choice of Israel given in Isaiah 40:1-31. Isaiah 46:1-13. The revelation of the name Jehovah is relative to the deliverance from Egypt, and to the Covenant which was its sequel.

There is considerable difficulty in ascertaining the exact original meaning of the name. It is beyond our province to enter here into this discussion. 1 And there is a further difficulty. In Exodus 6:3 God is represented as saying, “ By my name Jehovah was I not known unto them.” Yet the name is present in the history, previous to the times of Moses, for his own mother, Jochebed, bears it; and the commission given by God to Moses, as it is stated in Exodus 3:15, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is My name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations,” implies that the name Jehovah was that of the patriarchal God.

There is one way of harmonising this apparent discrepancy, namely, by understanding that Jehovah revealed through 1 For a careful statement the reader may be referred to Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, p. 280, ct seq.

Moses a new significance of an old name, and that that new significance was in close connexion with the fuller relations with God into which Israel was about to enter by means of the Covenant. To know and to trust in the absoluteness, the steadfastness, the consistency of God, was of the highest moment for those who received a covenant from Him as the basis of their spiritual and national life and hope. And this was the assurance contained in the name Jehovah, as explained through Moses. The philological origin of the name does not affect its Covenant meaning. The revelation of Him who is what He is, in giving assurance of His absoluteness, stead fastness, and consistency, did more. It bore witness to all those attributes of God, which had been manifested in His absolute purpose, and in His unchanging relation with the fathers and with their descendants. If the question were asked, What is He? or to what will He abide faithful? the answer was given in the unfolding of His holy character, with its grace, righteousness, and might, in the relationships constituted by Him and subsisting between Him and the chosen people. Thus the gospel of the Covenant, the pledge of its permanence, is contained in the name Jehovah. It empha sises for the whole future the sovereignty of Jehovah’s allperfect character, and is the starting-point for a progressive revelation of all the glories contained in it. But it will be apparent, upon reflexion, that the whole stage of revelation represented by the Divine Covenant, and by the name Jehovah as relative to it, is so highly special as of necessity to be merely provisional. The special features set forth by the Covenant are the moral nature of the relationships between God and man, the righteousness and grace, as well as the selective choice, by which God constitutes them, and the solemn responsibility resting upon the people to enter into them and fulfil them.

Amos gives perfect expression to what is involved in his declaration: “ You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities “ (Amos 3:2). The Covenant represented a unique fellowship between God and His people, and laid upon them a unique moral responsibility. It was all-important for the religion and redemption of mankind that by this means the immoral naturalism of early religion should be for ever transcended, and that the reality and awfulness of the spiritual relations between God and men should, once and for all, be revealed and apprehended. But the very need for such a special revelation and apprehension prevents Old Testament religion, as embodied in the Covenant, from giving a full and complete exhibition of the relations between God and man, and of their ground. The religion of the Covenant makes its starting-point with the sovereign and gracious act of choice, which separates Israel to God; it fixes attention upon that act of choice and what is involved in it. At every point, therefore, there is a special determination which excludes from view aspects which yet must be considered before the final and complete truth can be received. The Covenant sets before us Israel, separated from the nations by Divine election, and endowed with all those spiritual qualities which make fellowship with God at once possible and obligatory. But it is clear that here all the ultimates are left unexplained. The creation of Israel was before his historical election; and although he is elect among the peoples, yet he belongs to mankind. Now this special act of choice, embodied in the Covenant, in order to the inculcation of those special truths which were supremely necessary at that stage of revelation, brings into prominence what was subsequent to creation and narrower than mankind. But the final and complete revelation must, above all, be both ultimate and universal; must begin with creation, and with the spiritual relationships involved in it; and must embrace mankind, explaining what is the peculiar privilege of any one race by the common possibilities of all. And the progress of Old Testament revelation is towards the fulfilment of both these conditions, and towards their fulfilment in their necessary interdependence. God’s creatorship and His relationship to mankind, as ordering all men and ultimately saving them, of which His favour to Israel is a special and typical manifestation, fill the foreground, for example, of the Book of Isaiah, and with their prominence the conception of the Covenant, though not of the election of Israel, falls into the background. The statement, therefore, of revelation and religion in terms of the Covenant, and of the name of Jehovah, which is relative to the Covenant, are in the highest degree important, as marking a stage in God’s redemptive disclosure of Himself; but, for the very reasons which made them so important for the time, they are inadequate to convey the complete meaning of the truth, as it is made manifest in the “fulness of the times.” And the growth of the Old Testament, to the full glory of its final maturity, tends so to supplement them, by filling out their meaning, as to supersede them, at least in the form in which they were originally held.

III. THE KINGSHIP OF GOD The relationship of God to Israel, as manifested and realised in the Covenant, is subordinately conceived in a fourfold way in the Old Testament writings. His institution of the Covenant for a supreme moral end sets forth His absolute Lordship, and this aspect is brought out withunsparing fidelity in the stern teaching of Amos. But, on the other hand, the choice of Jehovah was an expression of His love, and of a yearning sympathy which desired the nation for fellowship with Himself. And this suggested to the tenderer spirits of Hosea and Jeremiah the most intimate and gracious of all human covenants that of marriage.

Jehovah was the Husband of His people, and the permanence of His purpose was due to the steadfastness of an undying love. Or, again, the relationship was regarded from the standpoint of the salvation which was contemplated in it, and then Jehovah was spoken of in countless prophecies and psalms as “the Kedeemer.” And, finally, the mingling of authority and love in Jehovah’s relationship to Israel, taken in conjunction with His Guardianship of their immaturity, suggested the relationship of Fatherhood (see, for example, Hosea 11:1; Jeremiah 3:4). But all these may easily be subsumed, so far as their Old Testament use is concerned, under the dominant conception of Jehovah’s Kingship, being but different aspects in which that Kingship presents itself, in different circumstances, with respect to different necessities, or to different types of prophetic minds.

Jehovah is King in Israel. Prophets are His messengers, declaring His will; or, viewed from the priestly side, the temple is His dwelling-place, the priests are His ministers, and the services are the ceremonial of His court. The ordinary instruments of civil government whether kings or judges are His representatives and servants. They are bound to rule Israel with a view to the accomplishment of Jehovah’s purposes, representing in their own conduct His character and the ends of His kingdom, maintaining also the character of the people as a holy nation, a peculiar inheritance of Jehovah, in the midst of the surrounding heathenism.

It was the great business of the prophets to enforce and to expound the Kingship of Jehovah. They declared His exclusive rights, as against the unfaithfulness of idolatrous worship. They dwelt upon His all - sufficiency, as against the secular spirit, which deprived the nominal profession of the nation of all spiritual and moral value. They made war upon all unrighteous and licentious social conditions and habits of conduct, as being indeed a state of active rebellion against the authority and the laws of the thriceholy King who reigned in Jerusalem. The prophets agree with the people in giving expression to a faith in Jehovah’s Kingship over the nation, which is common, if not to all, at least to the vast majority; they differ from the majority in that they appreciate the spiritual and moral content of that Kingship, and endeavour to conform their own life and that of the nation to it. A little consideration will again show that, as in the case of the Covenant, so the conception of God’s Kingship is relative to the particular stage of revelation and religion reached in the Old Testament. Let the religious relationship be apprehended from the side of moral authority; let the religious unit be not the individual, but the community, and & the community when it has reached the cohesion and organisation of a nation, with the civic life of a great capital at its head; and let that nation be arrayed for unceasing conflict on behalf of the integrity of its peculiar life spiritual, moral, and physical with the surrounding nations, and these influences in combination, not only will make the conception of God’s Kingship inevitable, but will make any other conception both inadequate and unsuitable to the necessities of the times. And these were exactly the conditions of Israel during the prophetic period of its history. As to the first, God was realised by the Hebrew, if he attained to the prophetic faith, as the God of holy character, commanding the conscience.

Eeligion was the solemn and ethical choice of Him and correspondence with His will, under the twofold sanction of blessing upon obedience, and of curse upon disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:1-68, Deuteronomy 30:1). The categorical imperative of duty lay at the heart of Hebrew, as of all worthy, monotheism; and God, as the source of that absolute command, is appro priately conceived to be King. In the second place, the unit of religious life is, throughout most of the Old Testament, not the individual, but the nation. This does not mean, of course, that there is not to be found in the Old Testament an individual experience of acceptance with God and of fellowship with Him. The contrary of this is everywhere manifest. But though there is a growth towards individualism, as we shall see later on, 1 yet, through out the whole course of the Old Testament, the individual has not come into full realisation of his individuality. His relationship to God is in and through his membership of the holy community of Israel. Nothing stands in the way of his appropriation to himself of all the blessings which belong to Israel; but it is as an Israelite that he must appropriate them. They belong to the nation before they belong to the individual. Hence in most of the Psalms we find that the highest experience of personal religion is realised in the congregation, within the Holy City, and at the Holy Place; that it is dependent upon these conditions to a degree that is strange to our modern religion, even when it insists most strongly upon churchmanship.

1 See p. 137. But this community was organised as a city and a state. The development of the state, also, proceeded step by step with the growth of the effective headship religious and civil of Jerusalem. The Divine Head, therefore, of this great national unit could not be other than its King. He was the bond of the national fellowship, His glory was the splendour of the Holy City; its order and governmentproceeded from Him, enthroned in the midst.

But, in the third place, Israel was struggling for its existence, and, above all, in its noblest representatives, for the integrity of its spiritual and moral life. The stress of conflict is everywhere felt throughout the writings of the prophets and the Psalms. The God whom the people worship must therefore, of necessity, be the God who fights for them, and under whose banner they fight in every field of warfare, whether the physical, by which the nation maintains its independence and its territory intact, or the spiritual, by which it resists the heathen customs which endanger its spiritual and moral life. This experience of Jehovah is familiar to us, whether in the cruder form represented by the lost “ Book of the Wars of Jehovah,” or in such noble Psalms as the 46th, “ God is our refuge and strength,” or the 68th, “ Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered.” But the God who fights for Israel, and for whom Israel fights, is naturally thought of as King. In thus asserting that the Old Testament doctrine of Kingship is relative to the way in which Israel apprehended religion, to the stage of its general development, and to the emergencies of its natural position, there is nothing which, even by implication, lessens the divinity of the revelation. This will become increasingly clear when we consider the providential wisdom which led men to realise the sovereignty of God before they learnt His Fatherhood. But revelation proceeds step by step with the general development of those who receive it, stands in vital relationship to the whole of their life as they receive it, and utilises their changing conditions and circumstances to enable them to receive and to reflect special and manifold aspects of the full truth, which is gradually being revealed. And the conditions in which Israel stood during the great period of its history, not only enabled it to receive the truth of God’s Kingship, but made His Kingship the only relationship which could serve the needs of their higher life on all its sides. The soundness of this general conclusion may be tested by reference to the Aryan religions. It may be said that Sanskrit, Greek, and Eoman religions all have a doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, whether as Dyaus-pitar, Zeus Pater, or Jupiter, and this in the early, the national, and the struggling periods of their history; that is to say, just in those stages when we have said that the Divine King ship was the only relationship answering to the needs of Israel. The agreements and differences between the Hebrew and the Aryan religions, when studied, alike confirm the soundness of our conclusion. We may here assume, without discussing, the fundamental contrast between the Semitic sense of the apartness and the dominance of God and the Aryan sense of His affinity with men.

1. But, in the first place, it must be borne in mind that the Aryan religions were predominantly not ethical, but nature-worships. The ethical and spiritual nature of Hebrew religion enabled it to apprehend the spiritual and moral Headship of Jehovah. But the physical relationship was foremost with the Aryan. Hence the physical Fatherhood of God was in the foreground, and the glory of God lay in His immensity and happiness, not in His holiness. There were divinities for the ethical aspects of life, as, for example, among the Greeks, Themis; or Zeus was qualified by special epithets to represent the ethical features of his relations to men: thus we find Zev< epicelos, oprcios, evio<&gt, i/cecrios, and the like. But the ethical was never in the ascendant, and therefore the imperative of duty never received an adequate religious basis in the relationship of God to men.

2. In the second place, the Divine Kingship made its appearance with the development of the city or state. Zeus became ayopalos, or @ov\alos, in the Greek city; Jupiter was qualified as Stator, or Imperator, at Borne. Or, again, special divinities took charge of the city, as Pallas Athene of Athens.

3. And, in the third place, there were special gods and goddesses of war, who acted as the leaders and helpers of those who were under their protection.

Thus a doctrine of Divine Kingship did make its appearance among the Aryan races, under the same conditions as in Israel, but it was modified by naturalism, by polytheism, by local cults, and by specialisation, in particular places or for particular emergencies, of certain aspects of the Divine relationship to men representing a transient monotheism for the practical needs of life. And thus it was possible not only for a doctrine unworthy though it was of the Divine Fatherhood to be first, but also for it to persist while other and special provision was made by means of polytheism for the special civic and militant necessities which required a king; the ethical necessities never being sufficiently imperative to demand any serious measure of satisfaction. The doctrine of Jehovah’s Kingship, which originally ministered to the ethical and national needs of Israel, was gradually extended, as we have already seen, to embrace His Lordship over the heathen, His absolute power over nature as its Creator and upholder, and His dominion over the heavenly hosts. Thus, finally, He is “Lord of hosts,” a title which, while originally it may have referred to His Lordship over earthly hosts in battle array, or over the heavenly bodies, ultimately came to be applied to His sovereignty over the angelic ministers who stood nearest to His throne, and were the most faithful and efficient instruments of His will.

Once more, as King, Jehovah was Redeemer. As His sovereignty was established by a great act of redemption, so the ultimate purpose of His kingdom was to accomplish redemption for Israel, and, in the end, for the world, with a completeness which taxed the utmost powers of prophetic imagination in order to set it forth. And the glory of the Divine sovereignty is realised in proportion as the vastness and persistence of His redemptive purposes are apprehended in prophetic vision.

If all this be true, we should expect to find prophecies and psalms corresponding to the various aspects of the Divine sovereignty, and to the various needs which the expression of it satisfied.

We should look, for example, for psalms in which the solemn note of God’s ethical Kingship is struck; for others, again, where He is to the nation what a king is, as the bond of its unity and the orderer of its government; for others which represent the militant attitude of the people and of their King; while in others His Lordship over the nations and over the universe of the seen and unseen would be celebrated.

Or, again, we should expect to find any or all of these aspects in combination. And the whole collection would reflect the stages of the nation’s spiritual development, the phases and emergencies of its life, as well as the characteristic qualities and experiences of its psalmists. And in the writings of the greater prophets we should expect to find a growing completeness of expression, striving after the harmonious utterance of all these elements of the truth, and succeeding, according as the growing fulness of the Divine revelation accumulated treasures of wisdom, and as these treasures were appropriated by men whose faith and insight were adequately prepared to receive and to set them forth.

And, once more, we should expect to find a growing experience of God as Redeemer, set forth by prophets as the explanation of world-history, but inwardly realised with everincreasing fulness, as the powers and needs of individual life were stirred to full consciousness. The extensive glory of prophetic vision, having reached its height, would be succeeded by the intensive glory of the inward experience of the individual saint. By means of this double progress, the full meaning of the redemptive Kingship would gradually be set forth, both in the range and triumph of its world-wide achievement, and in the grace and tenderness of its personal benediction of believing hearts.

All this is exactly what we do find. We must attempt briefly to trace this twofold development: firstly, the prophetic development of the doctrine of God’s Kingship, and then the saintly realisation of its spiritual meaning. THE PROPHETS The first two prophets whose writings call for notice, Amos and Hosea, are important, not so much for the detailed exhibition of God’s Kingship which they give, as for the contrasted view which they take as to what is involved in the kingly relation of Jehovah to His people.

Amos

Amos gives ideal expression to the ethical aspect of God’s Kingship, regarding it as the supreme authority for securing a great moral end an end so sovereign that, when it is frustrated, the Divine Kingship is manifested in a punishment so condign as altogether to destroy the special and gracious relationship between God and Israel, which existed only to realise this moral end. The keynote of the whole book is to be found in the great declaration: “ Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities “ (Amos 3:1, Amos 3:2). The peculiar fellowship of Jehovah with His people was for the accomplishment of an ethical end; and when that end was unrealised, the relationship, which existed for it, would be broken off. Thus does Amos turn the force of the Divine covenant against those who boasted of it in carnal security.

Nothing can be grander than the spectacle of this plain herdsman of Tekoa coming forth, impelled by the irresistible word of Jehovah (see Amos 3:3-8), as a prophet to denounce the evil of his times, with an indignation unmatched for its moral sublimity and for the uncompromising directness of its utterance. The nature of the man, moulded by the influences of his ordinary surroundings, was exactly fitted for this stern mission to his generation. Feeding his flocks and dressing his sycomore trees (Amos 7:14) on the rugged uplands of the wilderness, he had dwelt alone, simple, courageous, austere, in the company of the moral law within, of the starry heavens and the most awful phenomena of nature without. He had watched the glory of the heavens, had trembled before the storm, breaking out in darkness, fire, and flood. These had but proclaimed to him the majesty of Him who had uttered His law to Israel, and the terrors of the retribution which would overtake their violation of it. “ Seek Jehovah, and ye shall live; lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour and there be none to quench it in Bethel: ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth; seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth; Jehovah is His name; that bringeth sudden destruction upon the strong, so that destruction cometh upon the fortress “ (Amos 5:6-9).

Moreover, from the rocky heights, whence he had surveyed not only Israel and Judah, but Philistia and Edom and Moab, not only had all human life been dwarfed in comparison of the greatness of God, but men of all races were reduced well-nigh to a level, special privileges being obliterated by the fact that a common nature brought all under common obligations to supreme moral laws. If Israel and Judah had privileges, it was only in order to enable them the better to fulfil these obligations of righteousness resting upon all. As this grand and simple man came down to mix with the life of the centres of worship, government, and commerce, filled with this overwhelming sense of the Divine Kingship over conscience, nature, and mankind, it was to receive a terrible shock from the superstitions, immoralities, and crimes prevailing among all the nations of which he heard, but most of all from these evils, as he witnessed them at Bethel, aggravated by hypocritical perversion of Jehovah’s law. He declares God’s judgment against other nations in a series of oracles, but he utters the severest and most hopeless denunciations against Israel, whose responsibilities were measured by the greatness of his opportunities. He cries on behalf of Jehovah, “ I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer Me your burnt offerings and meat offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream “ (Amos 5:21 - Amos 5:25). And his prophecy ends by the proclamation of hopeless Deuteronomy 1:1-46 “ I saw Jehovah standing beside the altar; and He said, Smite the chapiters, that the thresholds may shake; and break them in pieces on the head of all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword; there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape” (Amos 9:1). The election of Israel is completely set aside on account of his unpardonable sin. “ Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? [That is to say, all these nations are on a level; God’s hand has ordered the settlement of the Philis tines and the Syrians, equally with that of Israel.] Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth “ (Amos 9:7, Amos 9:8). The completeness of the retribution upon the nation which, brought into special relations with Jehovah, has thus entirely failed to fulfil righteousness, is the finishing touch put upon the ideal representation of Jehovah’s Kingship, as being absolute over nature and man, in order to the realisation among men, by the authority of His law, of the righteousness which is supreme and perfect in Himself.

Hosea In striking contrast with this view is the representation given by Hosea.

1 I am constrained to agree with those critics who see in the closing passage of the book interpolations subsequently introduced to bring it into fuller agreement with prophetic teaching elsewhere. The prophet is himself as widely different in temperament and training from Amos as it is possible to imagine.” Tender and sympathetic in disposition, idealising the objects of his affection so that they appeared worthy of it, and yearning over them with undying hope and compassion, however basely they disappointed him, all these qualities had been exercised to the full in his dealings with his unfaithful wife. By means of the conception of the Covenant, Hosea had been led to find in his own married relationship the analogy of that between Jehovah and Israel, and to see in his own tender love, with its idealism, its yearning hope, and untiring longsuffering, a shadow of the same qualities in God, unfailingly manifested to Israel.

Thus the prophet learned to treat the bitter experiences of his own private life as providential, and from the highest prophetic standpoint to look upon them as important, simply as enabling him to receive this all-important truth about God. 1 Hence Hosea preaches a doctrine of Divine pity, in almost complete contrast to the uncompromising sternness of Amos.

“ How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within Me, My compassions are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city” (Hosea 11:8-10). This is Hosea’s conclusion, where Amos had declared: “ Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, children of Israel? saith the Lord “ (Amos 9:7).

Punishment has its place, and a most important one, in God’s dealings with Israel, according to Hosea, but it is as the instrument of love, and remedial in its purpose. Thus, after the Divine judgments have laid her vines and her fig trees waste, we are told: “ Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the 1 See for this interpretation Dr. George Adam Smith, The, Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. i. chap. xiv. valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she shall make answer there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt “ (Hosea 2:12-15). This being the prophet’s dominant point of view, it is not surprising that Israel’s backslidings should once and again present themselves to his mind as the rebelliousness of youthful immaturity rather than as the offences of an unfaithful wife, and that he should then regard Jehovah’s attitude as being that of a tender and wise father rather than that of a forbearing husband. Hence he says, “ When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt “ (Hosea 11:1). And this Fatherhood takes almost an individual form, for he says, “ It shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not My people, it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God “ (Hosea 1:10).

But, whether the figure be taken from husbandship or from fatherhood, the main effect of the teaching is the same.

It is to present an aspect of the truth which is exactly complementary to that to which Amos gives expression. The Covenant represents not only the ethical command of God, but the unspeakable yearning of the Divine love, which seeks Israel for its own exclusive fellowship. And the King ship of Jehovah sets forth not merely the authority by which He will enforce His demand, but the spiritual influence and discipline by which He will in the end secure its fulfilment.

Thus, if Amos lays stress upon the apartness of God, witnessed to in His Kingship, Hosea brings out the affinity, which is equally implied. It is the business of the later prophets, and, above all, of the New Testament, to harmonise these contrasted elements of the truth, by showing them united in a more comprehensive whole.

Isaiah

It is to the Book of Isaiah that we must look for the completest, most balanced, and most magnificent representation of the Kingship of Jehovah anywhere to be found. The two parts of the book set it before us under differing conditions, and therefore with characteristic differences of manifestation. In Isa. i.-xxxix. the Kingship is normal; not indeed in the sense of realising its great spiritual ends, for the city is in rebellion, only veiled by a hypocritical cere monialism, against the Divine law, but as existing over a duly constituted city and state. In Isa. xl. Ixvi. the city has been destroyed, and the state is fallen, and hence the Divine Kingship is displayed in a work of national restoration. These two parts must therefore be dealt with separately.

Isaiah i. xxxix. Here we shall find all those elements and aspects which have been set forth above.

1. The key to the whole is to be found in that great vision of God, described in chap, vi, which formed the turning-point in Isaiah’s life, at once qualifying him and commissioning him for his prophetic ministry, and containing the substance of the truth to which he was witness. “ I saw Jehovah sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1): this supplies the key to all Isaiah’s prophecies. The vision sets forth, in equal balance, the transcendence and the immanence of God. If His throne is “ high and lifted up,” His train fills the temple; if He is thrice holy, yet “ the whole earth is full of His glory.” And the threefold ascription of holiness “ to the Lord of hosts “shows that His Kingship is the expression of His absolute perfection. Moreover, the answering worship of the seraphim, representatives of the whole creation, sets forth worship as rapture, service as freedom, the realised Kingship of Jehovah as the life of the creation. Once more, in order that man, made conscious of his sin in sight of God and within hearing of that worship which utters the true meaning and end of creation, may experience the blessedness of Jehovah’s kingdom and enter into His service, a sacrificial ministry of redemption provides atonement for and purification from his sin (Isa. 6:57). And the completeness of the reconciliation is measured by the fulness of the service: “ I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I; send me “ (Isaiah 6:8).

2. Throughout this whole vision the ethical meaning of God’s Kingship is set in the forefront, and it explains that strenuous insistence upon personal and social righteousness which fills the whole book, and notably chaps. i.-v. It is the key to the solemn announcements of impending judgment, which throughout the early chapters re-echo the teaching of Amos. But Isaiah has practically solved the seeming contra diction between Amos and Hosea, by his teaching of the salvation of the remnant contained in the name of his son Shear-jashub (Isaiah 7:3), and still more clearly set forth in the great passage which treats the presence of Immanuel as the pledge of the overthrow of the invader, even when he has reached “ even to the neck,” and “ the stretching out of his wings” has filled the breadth of the land (Isaiah 8:7-10).

3. This doctrine may perhaps, be taken as the means which enables Isaiah at once to enforce, with all sternness, the awfulness of Jehovah’s law, and yet to lay equal stress upon the abiding meaning and the blessed significance of Jehovah’s Kingship over the nation. This national note reaches its most splendid expression in Isaiah 33:13-24.

There the starting-point is the purging of Zion from its “sinners” and “godless ones.” But, when that has been accomplished, the prophet sets forth in glowing language, and with the noblest poetic inspiration, the righteousness, the safety, and blessedness of “ Zion, the city of our solemnities,” which abides as “ a quiet habitation,” in which Jehovah makes up for all natural deficiencies, being present “ in majesty, a place of broad rivers and streams “; unaccompanied by the usually attendant danger, “ wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby” (Isaiah 33:20-21). All this is realised by the city, because “Jehovah is our Judge, Jehovah is our Lawgiver, Jehovah is our King; He will save us” (Isaiah 33:22).

4. And to all this the militant aspect of Jehovah’s Kingship is added in the glorious episode of Sennacherib’s invasion: “ Then Isaiah the Son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to Me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word which Jehovah hath spoken concerning him: the virgin daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel “ (Isaiah 37:21-23). The defiance against Assyria is hurled equally in the name of Jehovah, and of the Holy City, which He protects.

5. Again, Jehovah’s Kingship over all nations has its conipletest expression in Isaiah. It is set forth in a threefold way.

(1) The series of burdens (Isa. 13-23) review, after the manner of Amos, but with a far wider range, the whole life of the Gentile peoples, trying them by the standard of the spiritual and moral truths, which, for Isaiah, were intended to shape the temper and conduct of all men, and necessarily determined their ultimate fate.

(2) The nations are represented as the instruments of Jehovah’s purposes.

We are told: “ And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all pastures” (Isaiah 7:18, Isaiah 7:19), where of course the fly and the bee represent the countries which they inhabit. So, later on, we read: “ Ho! Assyrian, the rod of Mine anger, the staff in whose hand is Mine in dignation! “ (Isaiah 10:5, et seq.). It is, however, made manifest that these heathen nations are Jehovah’s instruments by an inferior relationship to that of Israel. “ In that day,” the prophet says, “ shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, which is in the parts beyond the river, even with the king of Assyria” (Isaiah 7:20).

(3) This Lordship has its evangelical promise, as is seen in Isaiah 2:1, et seq, and in Isaiah 19:18-25, the high-water mark of Old Testament catholicity, to which sufficient reference has been made above. 1 6. The Kingship of Jehovah over nature is rather assumed 1 See p. 103. in Isa. i.-xxxix. than set forth. It is so in a twofold way.

First, in the awfulness of His power, which, when He arises in judgment, is manifested rather over than through nature; as, for example, in the passage which foretells that “ men shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into the holes of the earth, from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake mightily the earth “ (Isaiah 2:1Isaiah 2:9). And, secondly, in the transforming power, which God exercises over savage beasts and barren nature, as He accomplishes the fulness of His redemptive purposes for His people (see Isaiah 11:1-16 and Isaiah 35:1-10).

7. The frequent title, “ The Lord of hosts,” and the vision of the seraphim in chap, vi, show how the Kingship of Jehovah embraces the unseen, as well as the seen, world.

8. It is in these two chapters, Isaiah 11:1-16 and Isaiah 35:1-10, that the redemptive purpose of Jehovah’s kingdom, which ultimately triumphs after His justice has accomplished the work of destruction necessarily precedent, is revealed. Thus Jehovah’s Kedeemership is finally manifested as the highest glory and ultimate end of His Kingship. And His Redeemership, while primarily on behalf of the elect remnant of His people, embraces the whole world of creation in its range.

9. Finally, it is significant that as we have seen Jehovah’s Kingship to be in closest connexion with the Holy City, Jerusalem, and to secure its inviolability, so also it stands specially related to the appearance and triumph of the Messianic King. Of course the conception of the Kingship of God is distinct, and in large measure independent of the special predictions of the Messiah. Conceivably, the first might have existed without the second. On the other hand, the full realisation of the manifold glories of Jehovah’s King ship, as His highest relationship to men and as the expression of His spiritual perfection in His authority over the world, gave a higher dignity and importance to the kingly office as existing in Jerusalem. This was seen to be the earthlyreflexion and the intended instrument of Jehovah’s sovereignty. And thus the prophet was guided, in presence of the miserable failure of Ahaz, alike in character, conduct, and policy, to realise the glory of an office which should have made him vicegerent of the Most High, to receive and proclaim the tidings of the coming of Irnmanuel, who should realise the Divine in the human, and should display the glory of a Kingship which, exercised by the grace of the sevenfold Spirit of God resting on him, should be the instrument of final salvation to Israel, and of redemption to the ends of the world (Isa. 7.-9:7, Isaiah 11:1-16). Thus Jehovah as King, the Holy City and the Messiah, realising the Divine presence and Kingship on earth, stand in natural and almost necessary relations to one another in Isaiah’s thought.

Isaiah 40-66. In this second portion of the book all is changed. Jerusalem has fallen, the nation is in exile, the judgments foretold in the first portion have exhausted them selves, producing substantially the effects for which they were sent. Thus the opening proclamation is: “ Comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she hath received of Jehovah’s hand double for all her sins “ (Isaiah 40:1, Isaiah 40:2). Hence the gospel now to be preached to the downfallen but penitent people, is that of God’s steadfastness: “ The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever “ (Isaiah 40:8); and of the certainty of His triumphant manifestation, in spite of all obstacles: “ Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: and the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it” (Isaiah 40:4, Isaiah 40:5).

Hence a new and more tenderly gracious aspect is worn by Jehovah’s Kingship in this section. Every feature which marked the former section is present. The ethical, national, and militant aspects of His Lordship are emphasised; so is the Lordship of Jehovah over the nations, Cyrus being the Lord’s “anointed,” raised up for the redemption of God’s people (Isaiah 45:1-7), as the Assyrian had been formerly used as the rod of Jehovah’s anger against them. Signifi cantly, the evangelical predictions of Gentile salvation, which marked the former portion, are here subject to a limitation.

It is the salvation of Israel from the nations that is celebrated, and therefore it is the paraniountcy of Jerusalem among the nations that is ultimately to be secured (see, for example, Isaiah 10:11-12).

But, in presence of the nation’s downfall, and in conse quence of Jehovah’s steadfastness and of His purpose to reveal His glory, His Kingship is transfigured by a Bedeemership, revealed in utmost power and tenderest grace. Hence the chief stress is laid upon three elements, which made Jehovah’s Kedeemership so constraining over Himself and so effective in the world.

(1) First, there is the almightiness of God, as it is once and again set forth, but with greatest power in the magnificent passage (Isaiah 40:12-26), as contrasted with the nothingness of idols. This attribute ensures that, whatsoever He takes in hand, He will unfailingly accomplish.

(2) But, in the second place, there is the condescension of God’s grace, which chose Israel, which will for ever be faithful to that choice, and manifests itself in the magnanimity of a full forgiveness for the sins of the past. The passages setting forth this grace are too numerous and familiar for quotation.

(3) And, lastly, there is the righteousness of God. This guarantees at once His steadfast maintenance of His original covenant and His redemptive activity, in order to secure, at all costs, that, by His restoring and protecting power, the position of Israel in the world shall correspond both with the Divine election and with the dignity and worth of the national calling. Again, the references to this righteousness are too numerous to quote. By these three the power, the grace, and the righteousness of God the certainty of the national restoration and transfiguration is assured, and it is by these three that the Divine King is revealed as, above all, the Redeemer, of whom throughout their history it can be said, that “in all their affliction He was afflicted “ (Isaiah 63:1-19). But with the transformation, under adversity, of Jehovah’s Kingship, till He appears as the faithful and compassionate succourer of His people, there comes also a change in the Messianic ideal. In the first portion, the Messianic King corresponded on earth to the Divine King in heaven; in the second portion, the Servant of Jehovah corresponds to the Redeemer, whose highest glory is that He compassionates and redeems His people. The ideal of the nation’s calling is not different perhaps, but it is seen on the Godward side. It is “ the servant of Jehovah,” and only His representative in proportion to its faith and obedience. The ideal spirit is that of “ waiting upon Jehovah “ (Isaiah 40:31); the only spirit, which can receive and experience His redemptive grace and might. And whereas, in the first part, Jerusalem, regnant and representative of Jehovah, was glorified in the Messianic King; so, in the second part, Israel, the servant waiting upon Jehovah in humility and faith, has its ideally perfect embodiment in the prophetic Servant, described in Isa. xhi, whose obedience is so absolute that, as the 53rd chapter sets forth, He submits to bear the sin of the people, which is laid upon Him, and the vicarious chastisement with which it is visited. Hence, because He so perfectly waits upon God in loyal trust and self -surrender, He becomes the most signal object of God’s redemptive grace, and its vehicle to the whole nation, for whose sin He has atoned. “ He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many; and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transoressors yet He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors”. May we not sum up by saying that, in the second portion of Isaiah, God’s Kingship, transfigured as Redeemership, has become perfectly fatherly, at least towards Israel; and that in the atoning Servant we have a perfect filial response?

Jeremiah The remaining prophets, with the exception of Jeremiah, have little to add to the portrayal of the Kingship of Jehovah by the four great prophets whose teaching we have examined. But Jeremiah adds more than one original feature. In many respects he reproduces the teaching of his predecessors, notably in His setting forth of the Covenant relations between Jehovah and his people, after the manner of Hosea, under the form of the marriage relationship (e.g. Jeremiah 3:1-25).

Yet, while thus adopting the teaching especially of Hosea and Isaiah, in changed circumstances, he breaks away altogether from the distinctive teaching of Isa. 1-39, that the Kingship of Jehovah and the inviolability of Jerusalem are correlates, and declares that the Kingship of Jehovah will be manifested in the destruction of Jerusalem (e.g. Jeremiah 19:1-15, Jeremiah 21:1-10). No wonder that he appeared unpatriotic to a generation which lulled itself to sleep in careless security, in the memory of the great deliverance from Sennacherib and of Isaiah’s attitude in regard to it. But if, in this respect, Jeremiah seems to echo the severity of Amos, while at other times he recalls the tenderness of Hosea, he completes Isaiah’s teaching as to the salvation of the remnant by his prediction of the new redemption, which will succeed the downfall and will blot out the memory of the earlier deliverance from Egypt, and of the new covenant, which will supersede that instituted in the wilderness.

Jeremiah taught, with Hosea and Isaiah, that it was impossible for God utterly to cast off His people; yet the sterner necessities of Divine justice must be satisfied by the downfall of the nation, to be followed by its restoration, under a covenant which, unlike the former one, should ensure the fulfilment of the great spiritual end of its election. Hence he says, “ Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that it shall no more be said, as Jehovah liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, as Jehovah liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from the countries whither He had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers” 1 (Jeremiah 16:14, Jeremiah 16:15).

1 Among the indications that the writer of Isa. 40-66 had Jeremiah before him, it may be pointed out that Jeremiah foretells that before this The graciousness of this crowning redemption is set forth in moving language in the 31st chapter, and it is followed by the announcement of the new covenant, which again establishes the relations of Jehovah with His people on a normal and durable basis. But this new covenant carries, in its spiritual conditions, the guarantee of itspermanence and of its realisation of the holy purpose of Jehovah. “ This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith Jehovah; I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah: for they all shall know Me from the least unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

Over this reconstituted state, and in keeping with it, reigns the Messianic King, “ the righteous Branch,” raised by Jehovah unto David (Jeremiah 23:5). The main stress, there fore, is laid by Jeremiah on the new experience of Jehovah’s graciousness, bringing the knowledge of forgiveness and the transformation of the heart, as fitting Israel for the covenant and Kingship of Jehovah. And this is in keeping with the distinctive presentation of Jehovah’s Kingship given by Jeremiah. If in Isaiah the Kingship is the expression of Jehovah’s absolute perfection, in Jeremiah it is the explanation of the spiritual satisfaction only to be found in Jehovah. It is this aspect which accords with the tenderness of the prophet, with his spiritual susceptibility and yearning aspiration. It is because of the satisfaction of this hunger and thirst of his heart for God, that Jeremiah turns with a wrath, which has both wonder and pity in it, towards those who can depart from the only source of satisfaction to serve false gods. As showing this relationship of Jehovah’s Kingship to the subjective needs of the heart, the following two passages may be cited. “ A restoration, “First I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double” (Jeremiah 16:18); while the second part of Isaiah opens with the declaration, “She hath received of Jehovah’s hand double for all her sin “ (Isaiah 40:2) glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary. Jehovah, the hope of Israel, all that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, because they have forsaken Jehovah, the fountain of living waters. Heal me, Jehovah, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for Thou art my praise.

... Be not a terror unto me: Thou art my refuge in the day of evil” (Jeremiah 17:12-17). In the second passage the objective ground of this subjective satisfaction is set forth. “ He hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding hath He stretched out the heavens. When He uttereth His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens: and He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth: He maketh lightnings for the rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of His treasuries. Every man is become brutish and is without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them. They are vanity, a work of delusion: in the time of their visitation they shall perish. The portion of Jacob is not like these; for He is the former of all things; and Israel is the tribe of His inheritance, Jehovah of hosts is His name” (Jeremiah 51:15-19). With this expression of the subjective blessedness springing from Jehovah’s Kingship, and from that alone, the unfolding of its meaning is complete. The remaining Prophets A word will therefore suffice for the remaining prophets.

Micah is most fitly placed side by side with Isa. 1-39, though the range of his prophecies is much narrower. But the picture of Jehovah’s kingdom given in the 4th and 5th chapters of Micah, opening with the same prophecy as is found in Isaiah 2:14, and continuing with a prediction of Jehovah’s redemptive reign in “ Mount Zion “ (Micah 5:2, et seq.), is substantially the same as Isaiah s. Moreover, the representation of Jehovah’s controversy with His people, and of His ethical requirements, as expressed by Balaam, given in Micah 6:1-8, corresponds with the opening chapter of Isaiah. The final representation of Jehovah as the hope of His people, the certainty of whose ultimate mercy brings patience under His indignation (Micah 7:7-20), again recalls the teaching of Isaiah. Nahum, Zephaniah, and Joel set forth the sterner and judicial aspects of the Kingship of Jehovah.

Nahum sets forth the consequences to the world of Jehovah’s character and omnipotence, as these latter are described in the great declaration: “ Jehovah is a jealous God, and avengeth; Jehovah avengeth, and is full of wrath; Jehovah taketh vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies. Jehovah is slow to anger, and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty, Jehovah hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet “ (Nahum 1:2-3, et seq.).

Zephaniah and Joel endeavour to awaken the people to realise how great and terrible “ the day of Jehovah,” for which they longed in carnal security, will be, though both predict that mercy and salvation will follow it. The Book of Jonah witnesses to the universal Kingship of Jehovah by assuming it, and declares also the wealth anduniversality of His evangelic grace, which has regard to repentance, whether that of a disobedient prophet or of a heathen city. With Ezekiel we reach the approximation of the prophetic and priestly points of view, as is clearly seen in the closing chapters (Ezek. 40-48). In addition to this, the only noteworthy features for our particular purpose are the description of Jehovah’s kingdom by means of the mystic visions of the earlier chapters, and the detailed stress upon conjugal relations as representing those between Jehovah and His people, after the example of Hosea and Jeremiah, but with greater fulness of detail and less reserve. The post-exilic prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, are, when we consider their times and circumstances, naturally chiefly occupied with the relations of Jehovah’s Kingship to the institutions of national worship.

Proverbs

One concluding word may be said as to the Book of Proverbs, which, in its teaching as to the Divine kingdom, may be said to be the prophetic view translated into terms of reflective wisdom. God’s kingdom is at once so transcendent, immanent, and universal, that He constitutes the nature and conditions of all being, from the lowest to the highest. His law is the creature’s life, and the identity of these two is explained by the part which Divine wisdom has played in the foundation and government of the world. Hence “ the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge “ (Proverbs 1:7); and “ all they that hate “ the wisdom which has been the counsellor of God in the constitution of their life, “ love death “ (Proverbs 8:36). At the same time, as the last quotation shows, God’s kingdom is directed by rational and moral principles, and allows a quasi-independence to creatures endowed with reason. And hence the wisdom which was with God in creation dwells in the midst of men, to guide them and exhort them (Proverbs 1:20-33) on behalf equally of the Divine purpose and of their own well-being. THE PSALMS We pass now to consider the saintly realisation of the kingdom of God as it is exhibited to us in the Psalms.

It is this feature of subjective realisation in the national or individual experience of what is objectively seen andproclaimed as a world-explanation by the prophets that is distinctive of the Psalms. The collection, as a whole, contains examples of such realisation of all the separate aspects of God’s Kingship named above, and of all possible combinations of them. Some Psalms are prevailingly ethical in their note, while others set forth the relationship of Jehovah to Israel, and celebrate the glories of the nation or of its Holy City, as governed by Him. In many of these the clarion of holy war resounds. In some the sovereignty of God over nature is described, though generally with a view to the accomplishment of the purposes of His holiness, and to the protection of His chosen. Some, again, are chiefly occupied with the redemptive work of God, dealing with the character from which it proceeds, the purposes it has in view, its achievements in the past, its unfailing activity in the present, its certain triumph in the future. Others are more general, and with varying degrees of fulness dwell upon all these. In short, leaving out a few didactic Psalms, this may perhaps be taken as a complete classification of all those Psalms which belong rather to the community than to the individual. But there are a large number of what may be termed Psalms of individual experience; and it is with these that we are here chiefly concerned. The peculiarity of these Psalms is that, according to them, what God is seen to be in relation to the nation which is in covenant with Himself, that He is experienced to be in relation to the believing member of that nation. The aspects of God’s kingdom, which are set forth from the objective and universal standpoint by the prophets and are celebrated by the community, become the ground of trust and the interpretation of life to the individual saint.

God is their Redeemer, their Eock, their Light, their Salvation, the source of their spiritual satisfaction, their King and Lord. These Psalms, then, tell of the dealings of God, so conceived and experienced, in relation to the individual life, with its joys and sorrows, its trials and temptations, its crises and emergencies, its sins and its salvation. Often they tell the story of God’s apparent withdrawal of His presence and help; and then they describe the eager, and it may be agonised, quest after Him, followed by the joyful discovery and renewed consciousness of His presence and salvation. The language of peace and exaltation succeeds that of bewildered and troubled search.

Generally, as has been said, all this is realised by the individual as a member, and because he is a member, of the holy community. He may even feel that, if the integrity of his membership were damaged, the manifestation of God’s grace to him would be restrained. This is certainly the case in those Psalms which are occupied with lament at separation from the holy place at which, or from the sacred assemblies in which, the revelation of God is fully made. The Psalmist, however, being a member of the elect community, in harmony with its ideal and in full communion with it, is conscious that God is to him, in the issues of his own individual life, what He is to the community as its Lord and Kedeemer. But this very fact of individual consciousness, of the verification by personal experience of the national faith, necessarily tended to throw the national into the background, and to bring into the foreground, as time went on, the dealings of God with the individual spirit and life. This was especially the case where such personal experience was given to unofficial individuals; for the position of officials, whether priests or kings, made their experience represent at once more and less than that of private men, it being easier to extend the privileges of the nation to its representatives than to unrepresentative individuals. At length, the basis of faith, so far as it is conditioned by membership of the community, becomes little more than subconscious, though it never altogether disappears, and there is given a completed repre sentation of the grace, redeemership, and fellowship of God, as individually experienced, which forms a point of immediate contact between the Old Testament and the New. As the result, it may be said that these Psalms set forth almost perfectly the fatherliness of God. And yet the doctrine of His Fatherhood is completely absent. The nearest approach to it is found in the declaration, “ Like as a father pitieth his children, so Jehovah pitieth them that fear Him” (Psalms 103:13), where, however, only the fatherliness of Jehovah, and that in its attitude to weakness and helplessness, is spoken of, and not His Fatherhood. Whenever the formal relationship between God and the Psalmist is spoken of, it is always that of Kingship, so far as its authority is concerned, and that of Redeemership, if the spirit and ends of His Kingship are expressed. How is it, we ask, that so fatherly a manifestation of Jehovah’s grace, as many of the Psalmists had experienced, never suggests His Fatherhood?

Two reasons will give the explanation.

1. In the first place, experimental piety is seldom, as such, originally creative on the formal side, but subjectively realises the presence of God in the formal relations, revealed by means of the prophets, the authoritative teachers, and the general consciousness of the religious community. Spiritual experience is active within the borders of the great conceptions of God’s relationships to the world and man, current in the particular time and place, and does not break forth beyond them. This is true, for example, of Christian hymnology, which corresponds in various ages and churches to the great prophetic or dogmatic conceptions which characterise them. In the same way, the prophetic and dogmatic conceptions of the times underlie the Psalms; it is the calling of the Psalmist to verify them, not to go beyond them. Hence the general reasons, which have been stated, for the predominance in the Old Testament of the doctrine of God’s Kingship, hold good for the Psalmists, equally with the Prophets, and even for those Psalmists who bring out most fully the individual aspects of religion.

2. But there is another reason. In proportion to his personal consciousness of God, the sense of sin, of unworthiness, and of insignificance visits the Psalmist, and growingly as the work of spiritual education advances with the ages.

How should such a man, conscious of his guilt, overwhelmed by the thought and experience of God’s mercy and condescension, rise to the conception of God’s Fatherhood, when even in the New Testament this is only revealed in the sinless consciousness of the Son, and experienced by others as mediated in and through Him? Moreover, with the consciousness of sin, the sense of God’s authority is heightened, and it is part of God’s gracious dealing with sinners that this should be Song of Solomon 1:1-17

And, further, the positive consciousness of salvation given to such a man must needs be that of redemption from evil by the forth-putting of condescending grace and might. God, when He enters into fellowship with a sinner, must of necessity be known as the Redeemer. The only means by which the Fatherhood of God can become the ruling conception even of Christians, is the transference of the redemptive office, not ultimately or exclusively, but proximately and generally, to the Son. And the redemptive office suggests Kingship before it suggests Fatherhood, although it is by no means incompatible with Fatherhood.

1 See Dr. D. W. Simon, Reconciliation by Incarnation, p. 142.

Yet, on the other hand, these Psalms of individual experience prepare the way for the New Testament doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, in a twofold way. Firstly, in setting forth the redemptive grace of God, marked as it is by fatherliness, in relation to the manifold conditions and varying temperaments of individuals, they accumulate a wealth of spiritual and moral content under the form of God’s Kingship, and give to that Kingship a many-sidedness and intimacy which cause it growingly to approximate to the higher and closer relationship. Thus they prepare saintly spirits to receive the new creative revelation, when it is so given that the spiritual difficulties in the way of its reception are removed, as they are in the fulness of Christian truth.

And, secondly, with the growing predominance and fulness of individual experience, the relationship of Kingship becomes less and less adequate to the experience of direct fellowship with God. The sense of affinity must necessarily, eventually, outgrow that of apartness. While the prevailing consciousness was that of membership of a congregation, Kingship was a sufficient and the most suitable relationship for God. But as individual relationship to God comes to be apprehended as direct and immediate, and eventually as the ground of relationship to the sacred community, the conception of Kingship begins to become subordinate. And though the last stage was never completely reached in the Psalms, yet we are brought to the very eve of it, and may conclude by saying that the ripest spiritual consciousness of the Psalmists can only be crowned by the revelation of the Fatherhood of God, and by the recognition of it as the source of all His dealings with believing hearts. To sum up. On each line of our inquiry we have found both the incompleteness of the Old Testament and also its preparatory training for the New. Its method of advance, so far as realised faith is concerned, from the particular to the universal, furnishes a striking analogy in many respects to that of the New. Its dominant conception that of the Covenant clearly omits from view, for a paedagogic purpose, those ultimate realities which the New Testament reveals.

And, lastly, its doctrine of the Divine Kingship, whether declared in growing fulness of meaning by the Prophets, or subjectively experienced by the Psalmists, culminates in an apprehension of the fatherliness of God, at once general and individual in its manifestations, which waits to be consum mated by the revelation of His Fatherhood, when in the fulness of the times the work of redemption finds room for all the Old Testament aspects in a complete whole.

It was in the Divine order of truth and grace that the Kingship of God was revealed before His Fatherhood. The truth of first consequence to immature and sinful men was that of the righteousness of God of the perfection of His righteous character, both in itself and as giving the law to men and guiding the world to righteous ends. With this revelation the higher spiritual history of mankind begins. And the truth of God’s relations to mankind, which corre sponds to this ethical revelation, is His sovereignty. Just as the more narrowly ethical aspect of life is not the whole, though of the greatest importance, so the kingly relationship of God is not the whole, though for ever profoundly true.

Without the previous revelation of righteousness and King ship, the conception of the Fatherhood of God must sink to naturalism and sentimentality. But the Old Testament revelation passes over into the New. The sovereignty of God is transfigured by but is present in His Fatherhood, and His righteousness sets forth the nature of His love, and is the grandest manifestation of it. To give due effect alike to the Fatherhood of God to His love for and affinity with men as transcending and embracing all other relations, and to His righteous sovereignty as included in that Fatherhood, is the noblest and yet the most difficult task set to theology, as it interprets the world and man in the light of God.