THE QUESTION OF EVIDENCE
We can obviously not expect that those who hear our words will accept them on trust, and we ought not to wish it. One of the first vital considerations for all of us as preachers is that we should be quite sure that what we say is true. Then we must be sure that we have adequate and reasonable grounds for that certainty. And finally, we must be confident that we can explain those grounds when asked, and give to any man that asketh a reason for the hope that is in us.29

The people who ask us may be broadly of two kinds. They may be of that number, still very large, who have no doubts about the authority of the Bible as the Word of God, but are not convinced that it bears the meaning we give. For them, the proof is to refer them to the Bible itself, and this is done, of course, in nearly all our doctrinal lectures and teaching. But they may be those who have so far succumbed to modern unbelief that the Bible itself, and all the works of God which it narrates, are open to suspicion or frankly discredited. Clearly it is no use to quote the Bible as proving any issue to such people, until their doubts are set at rest.

There has sometimes been a disposition to be impatient with such people. " If people will not accept the Bible, you can do nothing with them ": and it has to be recognized that our problem is much more difficult in such cases, for we have to start further back before we can find a ground of agreement. But we ought to realize, sympathetically, that for many people who have grown up under present conditions, disbelief in the Bible is much more natural than belief; while for many people who do accept it still, the " belief " is much more traditional than reasoned. And we ought to be prepared to recognize that there may be seekers among the unbelievers as well as among the believers, and be sufficiently confident of our own belief to provide the evidence.

This means that some proportion of our preaching must be devoted to establishing the authority of our Faith. Some proportion only, let it be said, and let us guard against the opposing tendencies of taking all for granted, or laying 'so much foundation that we never build the superstructure. In lectures, at least, we have to assume that those who listen may vary from unbelief to near conviction, and vary the topics accordingly.

We have at least these means of showing the authority:
(a) The Historical Truth of the Bible.
(b) The Internal Harmony of the Bible.
(c) The Witness of Prophecy.
(d) The Resurrection of Jesus.
(e) The Witness of Jesus to the Bible.

None of these is to be despised, but (d) and (e) taken together, are incomparably the most important. For they present the Truth of what we have to say in a fashion which also demonstrates its urgency. If it is true that Jesus rose from the dead, then the claims which Jesus made for himself are also true; and his claims upon men and his promises to them are valid. His witness to the Old Testament is then indisputable, and we have established the inspiration of the Bible with precisely the emphasis which we want: as the Book which is centred in Jesus and the purpose of redemption through his work.

Of course the demonstration itself that Jesus did rise, and the consequences which follow from it, cannot be entered into here; but it is instructive to note (for our own advantage and for further use) the vast consequences which a few pregnant passages illustrate. The risen Jesus lost no time in relating what had happened to what the prophets had said, and we could well envy the two who received that comprehensive survey: " Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself."30 The risen Jesus is our authority for preaching; 32 he is the basis for the command to repent, 4,16 the assurance of God's judgments16 and of the Resurrection of other dead32 He is the ground for confidence on the part of those who have been bereaved of their loved ones " in Christ."33

The fact that many people who are unconvinced about the Bible as a whole accept the resurrection of Jesus is in its favour. It is a gigantic gap torn in the defences of unbelief; all the consequences we have named follow from it (including the Bible), and any one who will follow where this fact leads is bound to be convinced.

The value of (a) is real but more limited. To be historically true does not, in itself, prove that the work is divine, unless the incidents which are proved true could not have happened humanly, in which case God's hand is seen in the event (though not necessarily in the record). Thus the claim of Sennacherib that he shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage34 is incidental proof of the Bible record that he got no further, and supports the supernatural destruction of his host.35 But the proof that Jericho was destroyed by fire36 shows no more than that the writer of the account was very well-informed. This is a Substantial achievement, especially when so much effort has been spent to suggest that he was not, but it has a limited range. Archaeological evidence can show that the facts of the record are right, and strongly suggest that the record itself must be (for example) an eye-witness record and not the corrupted fruit of centuries of oral transmission; and this makes the events themselves infinitely more probable.

But care is needed. It is needed first to avoid extravagant claims which the evidence may only partly support: thus, Woolley's investigations and those of Langdon have "proved" he reality of a very large Flood, but they have not "proved" Noah. The Sumerian Legends of the Great Flood have points if resemblance with Genesis 6, and point to a widespread tradition of which Genesis is much purer than the other stories, which have survived, but they do not prove the details of the record. With every piece of such evidence, the Genesis story becomes more acceptable and objections to it more unreasonable, but the proof must come from elsewhere. (It comes, in fact from (e): the risen Son of God has proved the Flood and Noah). 37 The most popular works on archaeology need to be read soberly in this connection.

Care is needed also to put the evidence in its place. If ever we allow ourselves to become obsessed with the evidential importance of potsherds and inscriptions and water-laid clay, we might conceivably forget that this is ground-work only, in both senses. It does not begin to preach (as the resurrection of Jesus does continually), and preaching is our business.

This objection cannot be levelled against (b). Whilst the gospel message is not as clearly involved as in (d), it is evidently not absent. Taking the harmony of the Scripture by itself, we can show, both on the large scale and after the fashion of Blunt, 38 that the Book breathes a unity humanly unaccountable. But we can also show that the Genesis story of the Fall leads us naturally to the Mosaic institution of sacrifice, and this to the work of Jesus in his death. We can show that the promise to Abraham and the first kingdom of God point clearly to the coming of the Son of David, " whose right it is," and forward again to the kingdom restored. The whole consistent record of God's dealings with men is plainly related to God's dealings with the particular group of men we happen to be addressing, and therefore we can preach and prove at the same time.

This is true also of (c), if we use it in the right way. Limited prophecies of the extinction of the nations of the ancient world might not at first seem so, until we see them in the light of the non-extinction of the Jewish nation, and then they speak of the unchanging purpose of God, as well as of the truth of the record. But the prophecies of the successions of world empires point always to the great culmination with which those who look forward to it are very closely concerned. Moreover, they speak of Christ. The prophecies concerning the Jews lead us naturally to the King of the Jews, and in the hands of Paul39 lead us on to the time of the resurrection of the dead, while in these days the signs of their partial fulfilment sound a note of urgency which ought not to be silent. And the prophecies about the Messiah speak for themselves their message of his purpose.40

There is a wrong way, though, of using prophecy, and this, too, can become an obsession which hampers the preaching of the Gospel. We need a warning against it very early in our preaching career, for the temptations seem to be very strong. That is to go beyond the tried and certain fulfilment of prophecy in the past (sometimes the quite recent past), and seek to impose meanings upon those forecasts which have not yet been fulfilled. The second Great War in which these words are written has provided telling object-lessons of the folly of this presumption, and there are not a few interpreters who have come before the public with assured forecasts of approaching events, which they have later silently withdrawn. With their discomfiture we are only moderately concerned, but with the disservice to the Truth we have reason for indignation.

The motive, presumably, in advancing these speculations, has been to capture the itching ears of a fickle public. Yet, while it would be wrong to suggest that we should not wish to attract, we must spurn such expedients as these. The greatest names among us have been proved wrong in their expectation of future events, and in such misfortunes, it is the unhappy knack of the unbeliever to attribute the fault to the Book we preach rather than to the preacher. We may (in moderation) concern ourselves in private with the detailed shape of things to come, but the stranger in our midst needs to be taught the certainty of our hope in terms of things which have gone on record, and encouraged to look to the general glorious outline of the hope which is set before us.