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The|Fundamentals There is scarcely a historical book, from Genesis to 2 Chronicles, to which our Lord does not refer; while it is perhaps significant that His testimony includes references to every book of the Pentateuch, to Isaiah, to Jonah, to Daniel, and to miracles—the very parts most called in question today. Above all, it is surely of the deepest moment that at His temptation He should use three times as the Word of God the book1about which there has, perhaps, been most controversy of all. Again, therefore, we say that everything to which Christ can be said, on any honest interpretation, to have referred, or which t ie used as a fact, is thereby sanctioned and sealed by the authority of our Infallible Lord. “Dominus locutus est; causa finita est.” Nor can this position be turned by the statement that Christ simply adopted the beliefs of His day without neces- sarily sanctioning them as correct. Of this there is not the slightest proof, but very much to the contrary. On some of the most important subjects of His day He went directly against prevailing opinion. His teaching about God, about righteousness, about the Messiah, about tradition, about the Sabbath, about the Samaritans, about women, about divorce, about the baptism of John, were diametrically opposed to that of the time. And this opposition was deliberately grounded on the Old Testament which our Lord charged them with misinterpreting. The one and only question of difference between Him and the Jews as to the Old Testament was that of interpretation. Not a vestige of proof can be adduced that He and they differed at all in their general view of its historical character or Divine authority. If the current Jewish views were wrong, can we thiijk our Lord would have been silent on a matter of such moment, about a book which He cites or alludes to over four hundred times, and which He made His constant topic in teaching concerning Himself? If the Jews were wrong, Jesus either knew it,
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