III.

Let us then begin by considering the 22nd Psalm. Let us see what witness it gives to a sincere enquirer, possessed of the ordinary means of investigation. But it will lead us more directly to our object, if, before entering upon this enquiry, we provide ourselves with tests, or criteria, by which to examine whether 'single examples of prophecy' may reasonably be referred to a higher than human origin.

Three such tests were many years ago laid down by a venerated divine of this University in his 'Discourses on Prophecy.' They are briefly these :

1

(1) Known promulgation prior to the event.

(2) Sufficiency of correspondence between the prediction and the result.

(3) Chronological, or moral remoteness, in the date or in the nature of the event. The first excludes forged or manipulated prophecies; the second, equivocal coincidences; the third, random forecasts, felicitous guesses, sagacious anticipations, predictions in the form of universal principles, which, as Mr. Coleridge says, 'contain the grounds of their own fulfilment.' Gibbon speaks of a prophecy which was affixed to an equestrian statue in Constantinople, about A.D. 955, to the effect that Russia in the last days should be mistress of Constantinople. He goes on to mention that there are writers who witness to this fact about A.D. 1100. Perhaps,' he adds, the present generation may yet behold the accomplishment of the prediction, of a rare prediction, of which the style is

' Davison, Discourses on Prophecy, viii.-ix. 374–426.

Gibbon's lan

unambiguous and the date unquestionable.'1 guage implies that a style sufficiently unambiguous and a date sufficiently certain would be enough to establish a species of vaticination inexplicable upon ordinary principles. And it would occur to most persons at once to cite the prophecies which relate to the fall and dispersion of the Jewish people. But those who believe in the Divine origin of prophecy can afford to be more exacting, and to give additional stringency to the tests proposed by Mr. Davison. They may claim beyond those—

(4) That the prediction, though capable of being considered separately, shall not in itself be detached and isolated, but part of a connected and systematic whole.

(5) That the sufficiency of correspondence shall be enhanced by a prediction not absolutely general and colourless, but enriched with a certain number of particular adjuncts.

(6) On the moral side-That the prediction shall not be of a nature merely to gratify private feeling, or stimulate an otiose curiosity, but shall have some reference to an end worthy of a Divine Author.

That these tests are necessary will readily be understood. Very extraordinary forecasts may be made by sagacious men, from the application of historical analogy, or from the possession of general principles ;—every general principle being a species of prophecy pregnant with repeated fulfilments. Of this kind was the anticipation of Polybius that Rome would become imperial, because he had observed that democracies and aristocracies

1 Decline and Fall, chapter lv.

end in empires. A less well-known illustration is afforded by Archbishop Browne's sermon, preached in Christ Church, Dublin, on Easter Day, 1551, in which he said of the Jesuits that the Society shall be cut off by the hands of those who most succoured them; that at the end they shall become odious to all nations, having no resting-place upon earth, and then shall a Jew have more favour than a Jesuit.' In such cases there is a want of that moral remoteness which has been laid down as necessary to give us a conviction of a superhuman origin. Examples might be multiplied of men, who, under an intense feeling of righteous indignation, have been led to give utterance to sayings which have been accepted by their contemporaries as the sentence of the Judge of all the earth. National wickedness has elicited from men of fervent piety impassioned invectives which have been strangely fulfilled, as in the case of the marvellous prediction of the French Revolution delivered by Beauregard in Notre Dame, thirteen years before that event. But none of these can submit to be confronted with all the tests which have been laid down, in order that our interpretation of the 22nd Psalm may be compared with them.'

Let us now proceed to contrast the Rationalist and Christian interpretations of that Psalm.

i.

The former may fairly be represented by Professor Reuss, of Strasburg, whose exposition is as follows: 2

1 Appendix. Note B.

2 La Bible. Traduction Nouvelle, avec Introductions et Commentaires.

Par Edouard Reuss, Professeur à l'Université de Strasbourg. Cinquième Partie, pp. 115-121.

'Here is a Psalm, simple, transparent, without any grammatical difficulty, confining itself to generalities, making no allusion to particular facts which can only be discovered by critical combinations more or less ingenious; which yet has caused heated controversies and incredible divisions among commentators, who have been misled by the necessity of finding imaginary traces of an individual history.

"The piece is composed of two parts. In the first, the person who speaks deplores his misfortune, speaks of mortal dangers which menace him, describes the state of humiliation and misery to which he is reduced, and implores with cries the succour of a God who seems to have abandoned the suppliant. This fervent prayer, from the very fact of its maintaining the relation between the faithful and his God, gives him the hope of being heard. Thus, the second part of the poem places itself at the stand-point of this perspective, and passionately implores the aid of Divine Grace, so as to forget the present situation. More than this-the horizon is enlarged, and the glory of the future appears brilliant in proportion to the darkness and sorrow of the momentary abasement. The main question is to know who speaks in the Psalm ? The inscription tells us that it is David, and, of course, the pursuit of Saul forms the stock of the exegesis which feels constrained to subscribe to the conjectures of the Rabbis. We shall not amuse ourselves by discussing an impossible interpretation.

But the subject of the Psalm, the person who speaks in it, is it really an individual? He consistently speaks

in the singular. The third and fourth strophes appear to exclude all doubt on the subject. "I am a worm and no man," "Thou art He that took me out of the womb," and the rest. In spite of all this we are of a different opinion. The second strophe, in speaking of "our fathers," already puts them in relation to the present situation. And this allows us to see a more perfect parallelism between the two epochs of the history, no matter of what epoch the poet thought in speaking of the times when the prayers of Israel were more promptly heard. Again; unless my feeling of the passage greatly deceives me, the long list of ferocious beasts places us in presence, not of individuals, but of assembled enemies, hostile peoples. But the four concluding strophes absolve us from the necessity of further hesitation. In them, the deliverance of this so-called individual becomes the subject of thanks for all Israel present and future. The Unhappy One changes into the unhappy ones. Finally, in view of this deliverance, the entire Pagan world will be converted. The Psalm depicts and deplores the profound misery of the people of God under a Pagan tyranny. Every one knows that Jesus, nailed to the cross, pronounced the first words of this Psalm. That circumstance constrained Christians from the first to recognise their Lord Himself in the person who speaks in it. The partition of the garments of the Crucified, and the lot cast upon His coat, were immediately made out, and later on it was discovered that the LXX had translated, "They dug My hands and My feet," instead of " as a lion." Not only did they see a direct allusion to the punishment of