p. 166 | THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, March 17, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 11

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW.

The plan of the International Sunday-School Lessons having been assailed by sundry religious papers, the Sunday-School Times of March 11, 1885, takes occasion to defend the plan against the attacks of its enemies. The language with which the “study of the Old Testament in equal prominence with the New” is urged, is so sound and forcible that the readers of the REVIEW will be glad to see it in print; and it can doubtless be used with good effect by our ministers before the conflict is over. Below is the passage referred to:—

“As to the study of the Old Testament in equal prominence with the New, it was claimed then, as it is even more zealously claimed now, by the intelligent advocates of this system of Bible lessons, that only by such study can the New Testament be fully understood or appreciated, even by children; and that Christ himself is best known to and best loved by those who become familiar with the Book which he loved, which he commended to his loved ones for their study, and which breathes of him in its every page of narrative, of precept, of poetry, and of prophecy. As a matter of fact, the scholars in our Sunday-schools are better informed now of Christ and his salvation than those who preceded them, or than they themselves could have been without their intelligent study of the Old Testament with the New, in the last dozen years or so. Meanwhile, they have been enabled to see more clearly the unity of the Bible as a whole, and they are, in consequence, better prepared to meet the persistent assaults which are making upon the very foundations of our religion, in the current criticisms of our day,—scholarly, sophistical, sneering, or silly,—against the Old Testament writings, all the way along from Abraham Kuenen and Robertson Smith to David Swing and Heber Newton.

“The suggestion that Christ is not found in the Old Testament, and that turning away from the study of the New Testament we necessarily turn away from the study of Christ’s life and work, is a suggestion that indicates a lack of familiarity with the innermost teachings of both Old Testament and New. ‘If I were younger,’ says Martin Luther, in his Table Talk, ‘I would seek all the words of the New Testament in Moses and the Prophets. By placing expressions and texts of the two together, grand and wonderful expositions of Scripture would be obtained.’ How Martin Luther would enjoy the International Lessons, if he were here now to have a part in their weekly expositions! ‘He who possesses a genuine love of Scripture,’ says Adolph Saphir, pungently, ‘can bear the attempt to separate the New from the Old Testament as little as that mother who appeared before King Solomon could endure the thought of her living child being divided by the sword into two. “In no wise slay it!” was her eager exclamation. To divide is to slay. And thus it is with the living child of God’s Spirit—the Scripture. It is one. The same God who hath spoken in these last days by the Son, spoke at sundry times and in divers manners by the prophets unto the fathers. The foundation of the temple of revelation is Moses; the superstructure, the prophets, evangelists, and apostles; Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.’ ‘Oh that we were wise and read the Scripture, the whole Scripture from Genesis to Malachi, and the inspired commentary from Matthew to the Revelation.’”