If one should open this book with a preconception of its author as a man of authority, it would fairly take his breath away to witness how deliberately he sets aside many familiar truths and substitutes for them unfounded conceits. Not since I first read Renan's life of Jesus and Baur's life of Paul have I met with an author who so constantly impresses me in this way. I shall present as illustrations in this article some of his assertions respecting the preaching of Peter, and the life of the [277] primitive disciples, from which a general conclusion may be drawn.

      Let any one who is not familiar with the speeches quoted from Peter in the first four chapters of Acts, read them carefully, and then read this:

      The Messianic realm belonged in Peter's thought, just as in the thought of his contemporaries, not to this æon, but to another, and before its inauguration must come the day of judgment and the "end of the world;" that is, the end of the present age. That Jesus was already Lord and Prince and Saviour did not mean that his kingdom was already a reality, and that he was exercising dominion therein, but only that he was preparing the way for its realization. By the outpouring of the Spirit he was fitting his followers for it, and making its speedy establishment possible. The outpouring was a sign of its approach, but not of its actual presence (p. 63).

      Here we have a King on his throne, exalted to the right hand of God, "Lord and Prince and Saviour," and sending down by his authority the Holy Spirit of God, yet his kingdom is not yet established; he is not yet exercising dominion in it. If there is any more complete nonsense than this, I don't want the trouble of reading it.

      Again, speaking of the promise of Peter in his first discourse, he says:

      All the blessings promised by the prophets, and longingly anticipated by the fathers, he assures his hearers they will yet enjoy, if they repent and thus secure forgiveness and the Holy Ghost. In the present is offered the opportunity, not of realizing a present salvation, but of making certain the enjoyment of a future salvation.

      Here is a deliberate omission of the baptism enjoined by Peter in connection with repentance and forgiveness, and disregard of this ordinance is characteristic of the writer. But more surprising, here is also a denial that the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit brought a present salvation. I think it impossible that [278] the author obtained these thoughts from studying the passages on which he comments; he brought them with him, and injected them into the passage.

      He says of the disciples in Jerusalem:

      They continued to discharge the various duties that devolved upon them as Jews, including participation in the temple worship, and in the offering of the regular daily sacrifices (p. 64).

      Here, I suppose, is a slip of memory, for surely Professor McGiffert knows that no one participated in the daily sacrifices except the priests by whom they were offered. The disciples, at least many of them, did not go up to the temple to pray, but with the offering of the regular daily sacrifices they had nothing to do.

      This learned Presbyterian professor seeks to deprive us of all divine authority for the Lord's Supper. He does so by denying that Christ appointed it, or that the first disciples observed it. He says:

      That the disciples held a special service and partook of a special communion meal there is no sign. It is far more likely that whenever they ate together they ate the Lord's Supper. Not that it preceded or followed the ordinary meal, but that the whole meal was the Lord's Supper; that they partook of no ordinary, secular, unholy meals, of none that was not a Kuriakon deipnon, a Lord's Supper.

      Their failure to break a special loaf as an emblem of his body, and to drink a special cup as an emblem of his blood, was not an act of neglect or disobedience on their part; for the Lord had given no precept on that subject. On this point we have the following piece of information:

      The fact must be recognized that it is not absolutely certain that Jesus himself actually instituted such a supper, and directed his disciples to eat and drink in remembrance of him, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 11: 24, 25. Expecting, as he did, to return at an early day (cf. Mark 14:25), he can hardly have been solicitous [279] to provide for the preservation of his memory; and it is notable that neither Matthew nor Mark records such a command, while the passage in which it occurs in Luke is omitted in many of the oldest MSS., and is regarded as an interpolation by Westcott and Hort. Even if the words belong in the Gospel of Luke (as some maintain), they are evidently dependent upon Paul, and supply no independent testimony as to the original utterance of Christ (p. 69, and note).

      Several things in this extract are suggestive of the author's point of view. First, if the passage is genuine in Luke, it affords no "independent testimony," because it is dependent on Paul. It is implied that this is a poor dependence. Second, as the Gospel called Luke's was not, according to the Professor, written by Luke, but by some one who lived many years after Paul's death, Paul's testimony, which is here disparaged, was much nearer in time to the original sources of information, and would for this reason, if no other, be more reliable than that of this unknown writer of the third Gospel. Third, Paul declares, in reference to his teaching on the subject, that he received it "from the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:23); and unless this is a false statement, the Lord did, "in the night in which he was betrayed," say of the broken loaf, "This is my body which is for you; this do in remembrance of me." Paul is no great authority with our Professor, even when he states a matter of fact, unless the fact is one that the Professor can harmonize with his critical theory. Fourth, if the ordinance was constantly observed in the churches when Matthew and Mark wrote, and was known as having been appointed by the Lord, there was no necessity that they should say in connection with its institution that its observance was in remembrance of him. Everybody who had ever partaken of it, and everybody who had ever seen others do so, would know this perfectly well. Fifth, the Professor is [280] unaccountably mistaken in saying that the words, "this do in remembrance of me," in Luke's Gospel, are wanting "in many of the oldest MSS.;" for although Westcott and Hort do pronounce them, as he says, all interpolation, they do so chiefly on transcriptural probability, and they claim in support of their decision only one uncial MS. (D), and a few cursives ("Notes on Selected Readings," pp. 63, 64). The words are found in the three most ancient and authoritative MSS., the Alexandrian, the Vatican and the Sinaitic.

      Having thus attempted to obscure the origin of the Lord's Supper, and to confound it with the social meals often enjoyed by the early disciples, Professor McGiffert felt called upon to give its true origin as a memorial feast, and he traces it to the apostle Paul. He says: "Though the Lord's Supper was everywhere eaten by Christian disciples before Paul, it may be said in a certain sense that it was established by him; for it was he, so far as our sources enable us to judge, who first made it a special meal and separated it from all others" (p. 538). He tries to support this affirmation by a course of reasoning, if we may call it such, which runs through a couple of pages; but I will not annoy the reader by quoting, and refuting it. There are some false positions that need no refutation.

[SEBC 277-281]