FROM every quarter come the foes of Christ and His Church. The kings of power, with the w/ riches of empires at their command; the kings of science, with their atheistic philosophy; the kings of oratory, with the poison of asps under their silver tongues; the kings of letters, with their golden pens dipped in blasphemy, are marshalling their hosts unto the battle, while atheists and nihilists, the secretly hostile and the openly profane, unbelievers and disbelievers, the polished skeptic and the political liberalist, the foes of manly sobriety and the betrayers of womanly virtue, the dynamite fiends and the traffickers in souls, swell the ranks of Satan's great army.

The enemy is seeking to undermine the Word of God, to demolish the Gibraltar of our Christianity. Upon the Inspiration and Infallibility of the Holy Scriptures rest, also, the Divinity and Redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. They stand or fall together.

The argument I am to present is that drawn from the unity of the Bible. This unity may be seen in several conspicuous particulars, upon some of which it will be well to dilate.

1. The unity is structural. In the Book itself appears, on close study, a certain, archetypal, architectural plan. The two Testaments are built on the same general scheme. Each is in three parts: historic, didactic, prophetic, looking to the past, the present, and the future. The symmetry of structure appears even in details, as in the Old Testament, where five books of Moses are succeeded by twelve others, historical; then by five poetic, five of the major and twelve of the minor prophets.

Here is a collection of books; in their style and character there is great variety and diversity: some are historical, others poetical; some contain laws, others lyrics; some are prophetic, some symbolic; in the Old Testament we have historical, poetical, and prophetical divisions; and in the New Testament we have historic narratives, then twenty-one epistles, then a symbolic, apocalyptic poem in oriental imagery. And yet this is no artificial arrangement of fragments. We find "the Old Testament patent in the New; the New, latent in the' Old."

In such a book, then, it is not likely that there would be unity; for all the conditions were unfavorable, all the circumstances disadvantageous to a harmonious moral testimony and teaching. Here are some sixty or more separate documents, written by some forty different persons, scattered over wide intervals of space and time, strangers to each other; these documents are written in three different languages, in different lands, among different and sometimes hostile peoples, with marked diversities of literary style, and by men of all grades of culture and mental capacity, from Moses to Malachi; and when we look into these productions, there is even in them great unlikeness, both in matter and manner of statement; and yet they all constitute one volume.

Imagine another book, compiled by as many authors, scattered over as many centuries! Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, contributes an historic fragment on the origin of all things; a century later, Aristotle adds a book on moral philosophy; two centuries pass, and Cicero adds a work on law and government; still another hundred years, and Virgil furnishes a grand poem on ethics. In the next century, Plutarch supplies some biographical sketches; nearly two hundred years after, Origen adds essays on religious creeds and conduct; a century and a half later, Augustine writes a treatise on theology, and Chrysostom a book of sermons; then seven centuries pass away, and Abelard completes the compilation by a magnificent series of essays on rhetoric and scholastic philosophy. And, between these extremes, which, like the Bible, span fifteen centuries, all along from Herodotus to Abelard, are thirty other contributors, whose works enter into the final result — men of different nations, periods, habits, languages, and education. Under the best conditions, how much real unity could be expected, even if each successive contributor had read all that preceded his own fragment? Yet here all are entirely at agreement. There is diversity in unity, and unity in diversity. It is "e pluribus unum." If, at first sight, there be apparent divergence, a further search shows real harmony. As in a stereoscope, the two pictures sometimes appear as distinct, and will not come together, but, as we continue to look, and as the eye rests on some particular point, one view is seen; so in the Word of God. The more we study it, the more does its unity and harmony appear. Even the Law and the Gospel are not in conflict. They stand, like the cherubim, facing different ways, but their faces are toward each other. And the four gospels, like the cherubic creatures in Ezekiel's vision, facing in four different directions, move in one. All the criticism of more than three thousand years has failed to point out one important or irreconcilable contradiction in the testimony and teachings of those who are farthest separated — there is no collision, yet there could be no collusion!

How can this be accounted for? There is no answer which can be given unless you admit the supernatural clement. If God actually superintended the production of this Book, so that all who contributed to it were guided by Him, then its unity is the unity of a divine plan and its harmony the harmony of a supreme intelligence and will.

As the baton rises and falls in the hand of the conductor of some grand orchestra, from violin and bassviol, cornet and flute, trombone and trumpet, flageolet and clarinet, bugle and French horn, cymbals and drum, there comes one grand harmony! There is no doubt, though the conductor were screened from view, that one master mind controls all the instrumental performers. But God makes His oratorio to play for more than a thousand years; and where one musician becomes silent, another takes up the strain, and yet it is all one grand symphony — the key is never lost and never changes except by those exquisite modulations that show the master composer; and when the last strain dies away it is seen that all these glorious movements and melodies have been variations on one grand theme! Did each musician compose as he played, or was there one composer back of all the players? — "one supreme and regulating mind" in this Oratorio of the Ages? If God was the master musician planning the whole and arranging the parts, appointing player to succeed player, and making one strain to modulate or melt into another, then we can understand how Moses' grand anthem of Creation glides into Isaiah's oratorio of the Messiah; by and by sinks into Jeremiah's plaintive wail, swells into Ezekiel's awful chorus, changes into Daniel's rapturous lyric; and after the quartette of the evangelists, closes with John's full choir of saints and angels!

The temple, first built upon Mt. Moriah, was built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither; there was neither hammer^ nor ax, nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building. The stone was cut, squared, polished, and fitted to its place in the quarry before it was brought to the temple platform — the beams and boards were all wrought into the desired form and shape in the shops; and when the material for the temple was on the ground nothing was necessary but to put it together. What insured symmetry in the temple when constructed, and harmony between the workmen in the quarries and the shops, and the builders on the hill? One presiding mind planned the whole; one intelligence built that whole structure in ideal before it was in fact. The builders built more wisely than they knew, putting together the ideas of the architect and not their own. Only so can we account for the structural unity of the Word of God. The structure was planned and wrought out in the mind of a divine Architect Who, through the ages, superintended His own workmen and work. Moses laid its foundations, not knowing who should build after him, or what form the structure should assume. Workman after workman followed; he might see that there was agreement with what went before, but he could not forsee that what should come after would be only the sublime carrying out of the grand plan. And yet no one disputes the singular unity of the structure, though during all those sixteen centuries through which the building rose toward completion, there was no sound of ax or hammer, no chipping or hacking to make one part fit its fellow. Everything is in agreement with everything else, because the whole Bible was built in the thought of God before one book was laid in order. The building rose steadily from corner-stone to cap stone, foundations first, then story after story, pillars on pedestals, and capitals on pillars, and arches on capitals, till, like a dome, flashing back the splendors of the noonday, the Apocalypse spans and crowns and completes the whole, glorious with celestial visions.

You cannot look on that cathedral at Milan, whose first stone was laid in 1386, March 15th, and which after these five centuries is yet incomplete, without instinctively knowing that it must have been the product of one mind, however many workmen may have helped to rear its marble walls and pinnacles. Its unity of design cannot be the result of accident. No, the workmen were not the architect. Every stone was shaped and polished to fit its place in the plan. And so of the Bible: that cathedral of the ages! Whoever the workmen were, the architect was God!

2. The unity is historic. The whole Bible is the history of the Kingdom of God. Israel represents that Kingdom. And two things are noticeable. All centers about the Hebrew nationality. With their origin and progress the main historical portion begins; and with their apostasy and captivity it stops. The times of the Gentiles filled the interval, and have no proper history; prophecy, which is history anticipated, takes up the broken thread, and gives us the outline of the future, when Israel shall again take her place among the nations.

3. The unity is prophetic. Of all prophecy, there is but one center: the Kingdom and the King. 1. Adam, the first king, lost his sceptre by sin. His probation ended in failure and disaster, wreck and ruin. 2. The second Adam, in His probation, gained the victory, routed the tempter, and stood firm. The two Comings of this King constituted the two focal centers of the prophetic ellipse. His first coming was to make possible an empire in man and over man. His Second Coming will be to set that empire in glory. All prophecy moves about these two advents. It touches Israel only as related to the Kingdom; and the Gentiles only as related to Israel. Hence, in the Old Testament, Nineveh, Babylon, and Egypt loom up in the prophetic horizon as the main foes to the Kingdom, as represented by the Hebrews; •md in the New Testament, the Beast, Prophet, and Dragon are conspicuous as the gigantic adversaries of that Kingdom, after Israel again takes her place in history and prophecy.

There are some six hundred and sixty-six general prophecies in the Old Testament, three hundred and thirty-three of which refer particularly to the coming Messiah, and meet only in Him.

4. The unity is therefore also personal:

"In the volume of the Book it is written of Me."

There is but one Book, and within it but one Person. Christ is the center of the Old Testament prophecy, as He is of New Testament history. From Genesis 3 to Malachi 3, He fills out the historic and prophetic profile. Not only do the three hundred and thirty-three predictions unite in Him, but even the rites and ceremonies find in Him their only interpreter. Nay, historic characters prefigure Him, and historic events are the pictorial illustrations of His vicarious ministry. The Old Testament is a lock of which Christ is the Key. The prophetic plant of renown becomes a burning bush, as twig after twig of prediction flames with fulfilment. The crimson thread runs through the whole Bible. Beginning at any point, you may preach Jesus. The profile — at first a drawing, without color, a mere outline — is filled in by successive artists, until the life tints glow on the canvas of the centuries, and the perfect portrait of the Messiah is revealed.

5. The unity is didactic. In the entire range and scope of the ethical teaching of the Bible, there is no inconsistency or contradiction or adulteration. But we need to observe a distinction maintained throughout as to natural religion and spiritual religion. There is a natural religion. Had man remained loyal to God, the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man would have been the two great facts and laws of humanity; the broad, adequate basis of the natural claim of God to filial obedience, and of man to fraternal love. But man sinned. He fell from the filial relationship; he disowned God as his Father. Hence, the need of a new and spiritual relationship and religion. In Christ, God's fatherhood is restored and man's brotherhood reestablished, but these are treated as universal only to the circle of believers. A new obedience is now enforced, resting its claim, not on creation and providence, but on a new creation and grace. Man learns a supernatural love and life.

Upon this didactic unity we stop to expatiate.

In not one respect are these doctrinal and ethical teachings in conflict, from beginning to end; we find in them a positive oneness of doctrine which amazes us.

Even where at first glance there appears to be conflict, as between Paul and James, we find, on closer examination, that instead of standing face to face, beating each other, they stand back to back, beating off common foes.

We observe, moreover, a progressive development of revelation. Bernhard devoted the powers of his master mind to tracing the "Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament." He shows that although there could have been no such intent or intelligence in the writers' minds and although the books of the New Testament are not even arranged in the order of their production, that order could not, in one instance, be changed without impairing or destroying the symmetry of the whole book; and that there is a regular progress in the unfolding of doctrine from the Gospel according to Matthew to the Revelation of St. John.

A wider examination will show the very same progress of doctrine in the whole Bible. Most wonderful of all, this moral and didactic unity could not be fully understood till the Book was completed. The process of preparation, like a scaffolding about a building, obscured its beauty; even the workmen upon it could not appreciate its harmony; but, when John placed the capstone in position and declared that nothing further should be added, the scaffolding fell and a grand cathedral was revealed.

This Book, thus one, structurally, historically and prophetically, didactically and personally, we are to hold forth as the Word of Life and the Light of God, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. We shall meet opposition. Like the birds that beat themselves into insensibility against the light in. the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the creatures of darkness will assault this Word, and vainly seek to put out its eternal light. But they shall only fall stunned and defeated j at its base, while it still rises from its rock pedestal, immovable and serene!