{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_12282/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_12282","id":"gutenberg_12282","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12282","summary":null,"tags":["Bible -- Study and teaching","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Sermons, American"],"text":"The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible\n\nBy\n\nR. Heber Newton.\n\n\"In it _is contained_ God's true Word.\"--_Homily on the Holy\nScriptures._\n\nNew York:\nJohn W. Lovell Company,\n14 & 16 Vesey Street.\n\n\n\n\nWorks by the Same Author.\n\n\nThe Morals. 1. Vol. 12mo, cloth, gilt,           $1.00\nStudies of Jesus. 1 vol. 12mo, cloth, gilt,       1.00\nWomanhood. 1 vol. 12mo, cloth, gilt,              1.25\n\n\nThe above all will be sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price, by\n\nJohn W. Lovell Co.\n14 and 16 Vesey St., New York.\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1883\n\n\n\n\nContents.\n\n\n\n  I. The Unreal Bible.\n II. The Real Bible.\nIII. The Wrong Uses of the Bible.\n IV. The Wrong Uses of the Bible.\n  V. The Right Critical Use of the Bible.\n VI. The Right Historical Use of the Bible.\nVII. The Right Ethical and Spiritual Use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   \"The Gospel doth not so much consist _in verbis_ as _in virtute_.\"\n\n   _John Smith_.\n\n\n   \"Liberty in prophesying, without prescribing authoritatively to other\n   men's consciences, and becoming lords and masters of their faith--a\n   necessity derived from the consideration of the difficulty of Scripture\n   in questions controverted, and the uncertainty of any internal medium\n   of interpretation.\"\n\n   _Jeremy Taylor_.\n\n\n   \"To those who follow their reason in the interpretation of the\n   Scriptures, God will either give his grace for assistance to find the\n   truth, or His pardon if they miss it.\"\n\n   _Lord Falkland_.\n\n[Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century; John Tulloch,\nD.D., II: 181, I:398, I:160]\n\n\n\n\nPreface.\n\n\n\nIt has been my custom for several years to give occasionally a series of\nsermons, having in view some systematic instruction of the people\ncommitted to my care. Such a series of sermons on the Bible had been for\nsome time in my mind. With the recurrence of Bible-Sunday in our Church\nyear, this thought crystallized in the outline of a course that should\npresent the nature and uses of the Bible, both negatively and positively,\nin a manner that should be at once reverent and rational. In the course of\nthis parochial ministration public attention was called to it in a way\nthat has rendered a complete report of my words desirable.\n\nThe views set forth in these sermons were not hastily reached or lightly\naccepted. They represent a growth of years. Their essential thought was\nstated in a sermon that was preached and published eight years ago. My\npositions concerning certain books, etc., have been taken in deference to\nwhat seems to me the weight of judgment among the master critics. They are\nopen to correction, as the young science of Biblical criticism gains new\nlight. The general view of the Bible herein set forth rests upon the\nconclusions of no new criticism. In varying forms, it has been that of an\nhistorical school of thought in the English Church and in its American\ndaughter. It is a view that has been recognized as a legitimate child of\nthe mother Church; and that has been given the freedom of our own\nhomestead, in the undogmatic language of the sixth of the Articles of\nReligion of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It is distinctly enunciated\nin the first sentence of the first sermon in the Book of Homilies, set\nforth officially for the instruction of the people in both of these\nChurches.\n\n   \"Unto a Christian man there can be nothing more necessary or profitable\n   than the knowledge of holy scripture, forasmuch as _in it is contained\n   God's true word_, setting forth his glory, and also man's duty.\"\n\nThe whole controversy in Protestantism over the Bible may be summed into\nthe question whether the Bible _is_ God's word or _contains_ God's word.\nOn this question I stand with the Book of Homilies.\n\nThese sermons were meant for that large and rapidly growing body of men\nwho can no longer hold the traditional view of the Bible, but who yet\nrealize that within this view there is a real and profound truth; a truth\nwhich we all need, if haply we can get it out from its archaic form\nwithout destroying its life, and can clothe it anew in a shape that we can\nintelligently grasp and sincerely hold. To such alone would I speak in\nthese pages, to help them hold the substance of their fathers' faith.\n\nR. Heber Newton.\n\nAll Souls' Church, _March_ 1, 1883.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nThe Unreal Bible.\n\n\n\n   \"The Bible, and the reading of the Bible as an instrument of\n   instruction, may be said to have been begun on the sunrise of that day\n   when Ezra unrolled the parchment scroll of the Law. It was a new\n   thought that the Divine Will could be communicated by a dead literature\n   as well as by a living voice. In the impassioned welcome with which\n   this thought was received lay the germs of all the good and evil which\n   were afterwards to be developed out of it: on the one side, the\n   possibility of appeal in each successive age to the primitive, undying\n   document that should rectify the fluctuations of false tradition and\n   fleeting opinion; on the other hand, the temptation to pay to the\n   letter of the sacred book a worship as idolatrous and as profoundly\n   opposed to its spirit as once had been the veneration paid to the\n   sacred trees or the sacred stones of the consecrated groves or hills.\"\n\n   Dean Stanley: \"History of the Jewish Church,\" iii. 158.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nThe Unreal Bible\n\n\n\n   \"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning\n   those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they\n   delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and\n   ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having traced the\n   course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in\n   order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty\n   concerning the things which thou wast taught by word of mouth.\"--Luke\n   i. 1-4.\n\n\nThis day, in our Church year, calls us to think upon the influence of the\nBible on the advance of man into the Kingdom of God.[1]\n\nSince the growth of written language great books have been the\nwell-springs of thought and feeling for mankind, from which successive\ngenerations have drawn the water of life. Since the introduction of the\nprinting-press books have been, beyond all other agencies, the educators\nof men. And of all books of which we have any knowledge, those together\nconstituting the Bible form incomparably the most potent factors in the\nmoral and religious progress of the western world; and as all other\nprogress is fed from moral and religious forces, I may add, in the\ngeneral advance of Christian civilization.\n\nFrom these books the lisping lips of children have learned the tales of\nbeautiful goodness which have nourished all noble aspirations. Over these\ncharming stories of Hebrew heroism and holiness the imagination has caught\nsight of the infinite mysteries amid which we walk on earth. Their touch\nhas quickened conscience into life. Through their voices the whispers of\nthe Eternal Power have thrilled the soul of youth, and men have learned to\nworship, trust, and love the Father-God. These books have preserved for us\nthe story of the Life which earth could least afford to lose, the image of\nthe Man who, were his memory dropped from out our lives--our religion,\nmorals, philanthropy, laws and institutions would lose their highest\nforce. These books have taught statesmen the principles of government, and\nstudents of social science the cardinal laws of civilization. The fairest\nessays for a true social order which Europe and America have known have\nlaid their foundations on these books. They have fed art with its highest\nvisions, and have touched the lips of poesy that they have opened into\nsong. They have voiced the worship of Christendom for centuries, and have\ncleared above progressive civilization the commanding ideals of Liberty,\nJustice, Brotherhood. Men and women during fifty generations have heard\nthrough these books the words proceeding from out the mouth of God, on\nwhich they have lived. Amid the darkness of earth, the light which has\nenabled our fathers to walk upright, strong for duty, panoplied against\ntemptation, patient in suffering, resigned in affliction, meeting even\ndeath with no treacherous tremors, has shone from these pages. In their\nwords young men and maidens have plighted troth each to the other, fathers\nand mothers have named their little ones, and by those children have been\nlaid away in the earth in hope of eternal life. All that is sweetest,\npurest, finest, noblest in personal, domestic, social and civic life, has\nbeen fed perennially from these books. The Bible is woven into our very\nbeing. To tear it from our lives would be to unravel the fair tapestry of\ncivilization--to run out its golden threads and crumble its beautiful\npictures into chaos.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYet we are threatened to-day with no less a loss than this. The Bible is\ncertainly not read as of old. It is not merely the distraction of our\nbusier lives, or the multiplicity of books upon our shelves, that turns\nmen and women away from these classics of our fathers. Men and women no\nlonger regard these books as did their fathers. They can no longer use\nthem as their parents did; they see no other way to use them, and so they\nleave them unopened on their tables.\n\nAn intelligent lady said to me some time since: \"My children don't know\nanything about the Bible. I cannot read it to them, for I do not know what\nto say when they ask me questions. I no longer believe as I was taught\nabout it: what, then, can I teach them?\"\n\nA confession which, if all parents were as frank, would have to be made in\nmany other households. Where it is still used in home readings, it is, in\nhosts of houses, with the pain which mothers know when their children's\nhonest questions cannot be as honestly answered.\n\nSuch a state of things is sad and dangerous. Unless some way be found to\nread these books without equivocation, they will gradually cease to be\nused in home instruction, and the coming generations will grow up without\ntheir holy influence. This state of things ought not to have been brought\nupon us. The reverent reading of the Bible alone would never have led us\ninto such straits. It is the old story of all human reverence. That which\nwe revere, we exaggerate. Glamor gathers around it. The symbol is\nidentified with the spiritual reality. The image becomes an idol. The\nwonderful thing becomes a fetish. So we end in an irrational reverence of\nthat which is worthy of a real and rational reverence. Then we have a\nsuperstition. Superstition always results in destroying the rightful\nbelief of which it is the exaggeration and distortion.\n\nThis is the common story of superstition, from the totemism of savage\ntribes and the image-worship of semi-civilized peoples on to the\nheathenism of the Mass. Men who felt the reality of a mystic communion\nwith Christ, of which the Supper of the Lord was the symbol,--who felt the\nstrengthening of their characters as their thoughts fed upon the words and\nlife of Jesus,--naturally came to speak of the sacrament in terms of awe,\nwhich magnified the mystery, until at last they bowed down before the\nveritable body and blood of Christ, and trembled with fear as the tinkling\nof the silver bell announced that the priest was bringing God down into a\nwafer! They had really heard God speaking to them through the sacrament;\nand this never could have done them harm. But when they tried to express\nwhat they felt, they exaggerated and distorted the simple symbol of the\nInfinite Presence, identified it with the spiritual reality, and set up a\nChristian idol, a civilized fetish, which has done incalculable harm to\nmen. The spiritual truth became an intellectual lie, and in every Catholic\ncountry superstition has eaten out faith, and reason refuses to reverence\nthe sacrament.\n\nThe Bible has repeated this common story. The spiritual influence felt\nforth-flowing from it, the voice of God heard speaking through it, drew\nman's natural reverence to it. In trying to express the reasons for this\nreverence he has over-stated and mis-stated the nature of these books.\nThe symbol has been identified with the reality. The Bible has become an\nidol, a fetish.\n\nBibliolatry, the worship of the Bible, is responsible for the lack of the\nreasonable reverence these sacred writings merit. This reasonable\nreverence can be recovered only by frankly putting away the unreasonable\nreverence. We must exorcise a superstition to save a faith. We must part\nwith the unreal Bible if we would hold the real Bible. Iconoclasm is not\npleasant to any but the callow youth. It may be none the less needful; and\nthen the sober man must not shrink from shivering the most sacred shrine.\n\nAs runs the Hindu thought, the Destroyer is one of the forms of the Divine\nPower. God is continually destroying worlds and creeds alike; but in order\nto rebuild.\n\n   \"Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying,\n   yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this\n   word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are\n   shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which\n   cannot be shaken may remain.\"\n\nAccording to its root-meaning, \"learning\" is a \"shaking.\" Every new\nlearning shakes society, now as in the days past. As the writer of the\nEpistle to the Hebrews saw, it is God who is shaking society in every such\nnew learning, to the end that \"those things which cannot be shaken may\nremain.\" Man need not fear to follow in the steps of God.\n\nThere is danger now in shaking men's faiths. There is danger, too, in\nleaving men's faith unshaken--unless the Divine process of progress is\nwrong. In the stress and storm of the tossing sea, Faith may go down in\nthe waters. It may also die of dry rot by the old wharves. There is danger\nin rash utterance, but there is at least equal danger in timid silence.\nThe time never comes when a reconstruction does not imperil some great\ninterest. None the less the reconstruction must go on. Delay in pulling\ndown may make building up of the old structure impossible.\n\nAs the story of past civilizations sadly shows, the gulf between the\npopular superstitions and the thoughts of scholars may widen until no\nbridge can span it, and religion perishes in it. It seems to me that the\ntime has come when the pulpit must keep no longer silence. Its silence\nwill not seal the lips of other teachers. Books and papers are everywhere\nforcing the issue upon our generation. Men's minds are torn asunder, their\nsouls are in the strife. It behoves the Churches to remember that great\nword of Luther:\n\n   \"It is never safe to do anything against the truth!\"\n\nWhen the venerable cathedral, in which our forefathers sought God and\nfound Him, grows dangerously unsound; when its columns have crumbled and\nits arches have sprung, and its stout oaken timbers have dried into dust;\nthe guardians of the sacred pile must plan its restoration as best they\ncan. They must shore up its treacherous walls, take out its dead\nmaterials, carve new heads for the saints in the niches of the doors,\nbuild up the edifice anew, following faithfully as may be the old lines,\nand striving for the old spirit. When the scaffolding comes down, we may\nfeel a shock of pain at the strange raw look of that which Time had\nstained with sacredness. But the minster has been saved for our children;\nand, when they shall gather within its historic walls, those walls will\nhave grown venerable again with age, and they will not feel the loss which\nwe have suffered, while as of old, they, too, shall hear the voice of God\nand find His Holy Presence.\n\nI propose to consider with you, carefully but frankly, the real nature and\nthe true uses of the Bible.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLet us examine to-day the traditional view of the Bible.\n\nIt is not easy to define the popular theory of the Bible. Like its kindred\ntheory of Papal Infallibility, it is a true chameleon, changing constantly\nin different minds, always denying the absurdity of which it is made the\nsynonym, ever qualifying itself safely, yet never ceasing to take on a\nvaguely miraculous character. Various theories are given in the books in\nwhich theological students are mis-educated, all of which unite in\nclaiming that which they cannot agree in defining. The Westminster\nConfession of Faith may be taken as the dogmatic petrifaction of the\nnotion which lies, more or less undeveloped and still living, in the other\nProtestant Confessions.\n\nThis Confession opens with a chapter \"Of the Holy Scriptures,\" which\naffirms in this wise:\n\n   \"The light of nature and the works of creation and Providence .... are\n   not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is\n   necessary to salvation.... The authority of the Holy Scripture....\n   dependeth.... wholly upon God, the Author thereof; and therefore it is\n   to be received, because it is the Word of God....\n\n   \"....and the entire perfection thereof are arguments whereby it doth\n   abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God, and establish our\n   full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine\n   authority thereof.\n\n   \"The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own\n   glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down\n   in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from\n   Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added by new\n   revelations of the Spirit.\n\n   \"Being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and\n   providence kept pure in all ages.... in all controversies of religion\n   the Church is finally to appeal unto them.\"\n\nThe notion which the learned divines set forth so elaborately at\nWestminster, art has expressed in forms much better \"understanded of the\npeople.\" Medi\u00e6val illuminations picture the evangelists copying their\ngospels from heavenly books which angels hold open above them.\n\nA book let down out of the skies, immaculate, infallible, oracular--this\nis the traditional view of the Bible.\n\nLet me lay before you some of the many reasons why this theory of the\nBible is not to be received by us.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n_This theory has no sufficient sanction by the Church._\n\n\n\nThe Catholic or OEcumenical Creeds make no affirmation whatever concerning\nthe Bible. This theory is found alone, in formal official statement, in\nthe creeds of minor authority, the utterances of councils of particular\nchurches; as, for example, in the Tridentine Decrees and the Protestant\nConfessions of Faith. There is no unanimity of statement among these\nseveral Confessions. Some of the Protestant Confessions of the Reformation\nera state this theory moderately. Some of them hold it implicitly, without\nexact definition. One at least is wholly silent upon the subject. The\nlater creeds of Protestantism vary even more than the Reformation symbols.\nSuch important Churches as the Church of England, our own Protestant\nEpiscopal Church, and the Methodist Church have nothing whatever of this\ntheory in their official utterances. These three Churches unite in this\nsimple, practical, undogmatic statement (the sixth of the thirty-nine\narticles):\n\n   \"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that\n   whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be\n   required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the\n   faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.\"\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n_The Bible nowhere makes any such claim of infallibility for itself._\n\n\n\nThe prophets did indeed use the habitual formula, \"Thus saith the Lord.\"\nSo did the false prophets, as well as the true. It was the common formula\nof prophetism, indeed, of the Easterns generally when delivering\nthemselves of messages that burned in their souls. The eastern mind\nassigns directly to God actions and influences which we Westerns assign to\nsecondary causes. We are scientific, they are poetic. We reach truth by\nreasonings, they by intuitions. No one can follow the processes of the\nintuitions. To the mystic mind they are immediate illuminations from on\nhigh, inspirations of the Spirit of God. In the realm of law we trace the\naction of natural forces, and are apt to think there is nothing more. In\nthe realm of the unknown we feel the supernatural, and are apt to think it\nall in all.\n\nThe great prophets themselves did not accept this language of other\nprophets unquestioningly. They denied the claim unhesitatingly when\nsatisfied that the messages were not from on high. They distinguished\nbetween those who came in the name of the Lord; and so must we. They tried\nthe spirits whether they were of God; bidding us therefore do the same.\n\nTried by the severest scrutiny of successive centuries, of different\nraces, the great prophets prove to have spoken truly when they declared,\nof their ethical and spiritual messages, \"Thus saith the Lord.\" If ever\nmessages from on high have come to men, if ever the Spirit of God has\nspoken in the spirit of man, it was in the minds of these \"men of the\nspirit.\" But they made no claim to infallibility, or if they did, took\npains to disprove it. Every prophet who goes beyond ethical and religious\ninstruction, and ventures into predictions, makes mistakes, and leaves his\nerrors recorded for our warning. We must try even the inspired men, and\nwhen, overstepping their limitations, they err, we must say, Thus saith\nIsaiah, Thus saith Jeremiah.\n\nNo biblical writer shows any consciousness of such supernatural influences\nupon him in his work as insured its infallibility. Nearly all these\nauthors begin and end their books without any reference to themselves or\ntheir work. The writer of the Gospel according to Luke thus prefaces his\nbook:\n\n   \"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning\n   those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they\n   delivered them unto us which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and\n   ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having traced the\n   course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in\n   order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty\n   concerning the things which thou wast taught by word of mouth.\"\n\nThis is the only personal preface to any of the Gospels, and it is\nthoroughly human. There is not even such an invocation as introduces\nMilton's great poem.\n\nThese writers at times, after the fashion of the older prophets, affirm\nthat they speak with divine authority; but they also as expressly disclaim\nsuch authority in other places. St. Paul is sure, in one matter referred\nto him, of the mind of God, and writes:\n\n   \"Unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord,\" etc.[2]\n\nImmediately after he writes, as having no such assurance:\n\n   \"To the rest speak I, not the Lord.\"[3]\n\nLater on in the same letter he is so uncertain as to add to his judgment:\n\n   \"And I think also that I have the spirit of God.\"[4]\n\nAgain, in the same connection, being conscious of no divine authorization,\nhe gives his own opinion as such:\n\n   \"Now, concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give\n   my judgment.\"[5]\n\nEighteen hundred years after he wrote, men insist that they know more\nabout St. Paul's inspirations than he did himself. Against his modest,\ncautious discriminations, our doctors set up their theory of the Bible,\nclothe all his utterances with the divine authority, and honor him with an\ninfallibility which he explicitly disclaims.\n\nThe New Testament writers use language which seems, to our\ntheory-spectacled eyes, to ascribe an infallible inspiration to the Old\nTestament books. But the words have no such weight. The Epistle to the\nHebrews opens with the words:\n\n   \"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto\n   the fathers by the prophets,\" etc.[6]\n\nThe author of the Second Epistle of Peter writes:\n\n   \"For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men\n   of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.\"[7]\n\nSuch passages as these command the instant assent of all who reverence an\nethical and spiritual inspiration in the prophets, and a real revelation\nthrough them, and they command no other belief.\n\nIn the first Epistle General of Peter we read:\n\n   \"Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched diligently\n   who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what\n   time or what manner of time the spirit of Christ which was in them did\n   point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and\n   the glories that should follow them.\"[8]\n\nAny idea of a progressive revelation implies that there was a light\ncoming on into the world, which to them of olden time showed dimly a\nmystery into which they strove to look further. A vision of ideal goodness\nrose before them. It rested above the ideal Israel, chosen and called of\nGod for a holy work. It shadowed that righteous servant of God with\nsorrow. The lot of the elect one was to be suffering. Thus the world was\nto be saved to God. This the great Prophet of the Exile saw. Christ's\ncoming filled out this mystic vision, and it is fairly translated into the\nterms the Epistle uses.\n\nThe prophets were, in such lofty visionings, under an influence beyond\ntheir consciousness.\n\n    \"The passive master lent his hand\n    To the vast soul that o'er him planned.\"\n\nAll other passages claimed in support of the notion of an infallible Bible\nfail on the witness-stand.\n\nThere is positively nothing in the New Testament which lends a reasonable\ncountenance to such an amazing theory.\n\nEven the stock argument, used when all other quotations failed, disappears\nin the honesty of the Revised New Testament. People who know no Greek see\nnow that Paul did not write \"All Scripture is given by inspiration of\nGod\"; but\n\n   \"Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching for\n   reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.\"[9]\n\nThis is precisely the claim to be made for the Bible, as against the\nexaggerated notions cherished about it. It is good for--all forms of\ncharacter-building. Its inspiration is ethical and spiritual. The test of\nthe inspiration of any writing in it is its efficacy to inspire life with\ngoodness.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n_The Bible carries the refutation of this claim upon the face of its\nwritings._\n\n\n\nThey thrust upon the attention of all who are not blind the traces of\nhuman imperfection, of a kind and an extent which precludes any notion of\na clean copy of a perfect script let down from the skies.\n\nThe Old Testament historians contradict each other in facts and figures,\ntell the same story in different ways, locate the same incident at\ndifferent periods, ascribe the same deeds to different men, quote\nstatistics which are plainly exaggerated, mistake poetic legend for sober\nprose, report the marvellous tales of tradition as literal history, and\ngive us statements which cannot be read as scientific facts without\ndenying our latest and most authoritative knowledge. I shall not enumerate\nthese \"mistakes of Moses,\" and of others. That is an ungracious task for\nwhich I have no heart. It may be needful to remind the children of a\nlarger growth, who persist in believing a saintly mother's beliefs to be\nfinal authority in their studies, that she is not infallible. But one does\nnot care to catalogue her mistakes and taunt her with them.\n\nThat which carries no such reproach in it, but is, when rightly read, an\nhonor to the Bible, may be pointed out, as the Biblical writers, indeed,\ndo for us themselves.\n\nThe marks of a patient and noble literary workmanship are in every\nwriting.\n\nWe can see this as our fathers could not see it, because the glasses\nthrough which to read literature critically have been ground within our\ncentury. Literary criticism is the study of literature by means of a\nmicroscopic knowledge of the language in which a book is written, of its\ngrowth from various roots, of its stages of development and the factors\ninfluencing them, of its condition in the period of this particular\ncomposition, of the writer's idiosyncrasies of thought and style in his\nripening periods, of the general history and literature of his race, and\nof the special characteristics of his age and of his contemporary writers.\n\nEvery educated person knows something of the working of this criticism on\nother books. You have read your Shakespeare with intelligence, and have\nfelt many misgivings as to the genuineness of a few plays, and of passages\nin many plays. The brutalities and beastlinesses of Titus Andronicus\nseemed impossible to the author of \"The Tempest\" and the \"Midsummer\nNight's Dream.\" The historic plays seemed to you often \"padded.\" But there\nwas nothing more than guess-work in your conclusions, and, you suspected,\nin the more pretentious opinions of others. You take up, however, the\nlectures of Hudson or the charming study of Dowden, and you find that\ncriticism is becoming, not merely an art, depending on certain instincts\nand tastes, but a science, building slowly a well-settled body of laws and\nrules, and shaping already a well defined consensus of judgment. The\ngrowth of the English language and literature, the characteristics of\nsociety, of language and of literature in the Elizabethan era, the idioms\nof Shakespeare's contemporaries, the manner of Shakespeare himself, in his\ndifferent periods, have all been so minutely studied as to form a distinct\nspecialty in knowledge. The Shakespearian scholar is a well differentiated\nspecies of the genus scholar, and speaks with a substantial authority upon\nwhat is now a real science. You can follow this teacher into Shakespeare's\nwork-shop, watch the building of his plays, distinguish the hands which\ntoiled over them and mark their journeyman's work, till quite sure where\nthe Master's own inimitable touch caressed them into noble form, and in\nwhat period of his life he thus wrought. There is a new revelation of\nShakespeare to our age.\n\nThis criticism turned upon the great books of the ancients. Niebuhr led\nthe way in reconstructing the early history of the Romans. Dr. Arnold\npredicted that a Niebuhr of Jewish literature would arise. He came duly.\nHis name was Ewald. Successors have followed in abundance. The principles\nand processes of literary criticism were applied to the Hebrew writings.\n\nIn the present immature stage of this science of Biblical Criticism there\nare, of course, plenty of speculations and guesses, of hasty\ngeneralizations and crude opinions. Time will correct these. Meanwhile\nthere is already so much that may claim to be well established as to\nconstitute a new knowledge of these old books.\n\nThe historical books are seen to be the work of many hands in many ages.\nThey gather up the popular traditions of the race, carry down on their\nslow streams fragments from such far back ages that we have almost lost\nthe clue to their story--glacial boulders that now lie strangely out of\nplace in the rich fields of later eras; songs of rude periods, nature\nmyths, legends of semi-fabulous heroes, folk lore of the tribes, scraps\nfrom long-forgotten books, entries from ancient annals, pages torn from\nthe histories of other peoples to fill out the story; the whole worked\nover many times by many hands in many generations.\n\nJust as Thirlwall and Grote give us studies of Grecian history from the\nstandpoint of Monarchism and Republicanism, so in the Kings and\nChronicles we have studies of Hebrew history from a prophetic and priestly\npoint of view.\n\nThe legislation of the Pentateuch, supposed formerly to have been drawn up\nby Moses, appears, as it now stands, to be a codification, made as late as\nthe period of the Babylonian exile, under the influence of the\nhierarchical and ritual system, then crystallizing into the form familiar\nto us all. This codification, like its famous parallel in Roman history,\nthe code of Justinian, collated the decisions and decrees already in\nexistence from various periods, and reissued them as one body of laws.\n\nIt brings together the \"Judgments\" of early days upon questions of civil\nlife--the decisions of tribal heads concerning the rights of person and\nproperty, the counterparts of the \"Dooms\" of English history; the moral\nrules of the local priests in a simple state of society; and the ritual\nand discipline of a late ecclesiastical age. The compilation is not very\nskilfully done, so that we pass from the minuti\u00e6 of a priest's _vade\nmecum_ in a highly developed hierarchical period to the civil statutes of\na rude patriarchal society, whose very crimes are archaic.\n\nThe prophecies break up into fragmentary collections, in which the words\nof many different and obscure prophets are grouped under the name of some\ngreat prophet, as was quite natural in an uncritical age; the whole mass\nbeing arranged with little chronological order.\n\nThe Psalter separates into several books of sacred song, dating from\ndifferent periods. They repeat the same Psalm, and divide one Psalm into\ntwo and join two into one, on principles by no means apparent to us. Some\nof these Psalms are of a highly artificial and mechanical structure. There\nare acrostics, in which the couplets begin with the successive letters of\nthe Hebrew alphabet; double acrostics, and other refinements of literary\ningenuity; the sure signs of a flamboyant and decadent literature.\n\nThe other writings of the Old Testament and the books of the New Testament\nhave yielded similar general results to the touchstone of criticism;\nconcerning which it is needless to speak further.\n\nOur critical glasses bring out, clear and strong, the fact of a human,\nliterary craft in these books, the signs on every hand of the labor of\nbrain and skill of pen through which the literature of a venerable nation,\nand of the infant church born of it, took slow shape into our Bible. Such\na work needs must have in it the traces of human imperfection; and these\nlimitations of thought and knowledge, these mistakes of fallible writers,\nare to be seen by every one, save those who will not see.\n\nIt is impossible after such a study to rest in the illusion of an\ninfallible book, of which, as a book, God can be said to be the \"author.\"\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n_The growth of this theory is plain to us, and discredits its authority._\n\n\n\nThe explanation that Max M\u00fcller makes of the growth of superstitious\nreverence for ancient traditions in Hindu history is suggestive on this\npoint.\n\n\"In an age when there was nothing corresponding to what we call\nliterature, every saying, every proverb, every story handed down from\nfather to son received very soon a kind of hallowed character. They became\nsacred heir-looms, sacred because they came from an unknown source, from a\ndistant age. There was a stage in the development of human thought when\nthe distance that separated the living generation from their grandfathers\nor great-grandfathers was as yet the nearest approach to a conception of\neternity, and when the name of grandfather and great-grandfather seemed\nthe nearest expression of God. Hence what had been said by these half\nhuman, half divine ancestors, if it was preserved at all, was soon looked\nupon as a more than human utterance. Some of these ancient sayings were\npreserved because they were so true and so striking that they could not be\nforgotten. They contained eternal truths, expressed for the first time in\nhuman language. Of such oracles of truth it was said in India that they\nhad been heard, Sruta, and from it arose the word Sruti, the recognized\nterm for divine revelation in Sanskrit.\"[10]\n\nHow, in later times, the great writings of the Hebrews came to acquire the\nsame exaggerated sacredness, we can also observe. We read in one of the\nhistorical books of the Jews that \"Nehemiah founded a library and gathered\ntogether the writings concerning the Kings, and of the prophets, and the\n(songs) of David and epistles of Kings concerning temple gifts.\"[11] This\nformation of a National Library was really the germ out of which grew the\nOld Testament. It was a purely civic act by a layman, but it expressed the\nhonor in which the national writings were coming to be held. It is\ncoincident with this that we find a priestly movement to draw a sacred\nline around the more important writings of the nation.\n\nTradition has credited Ezra, the priestly coadjutor of Nehemiah, with the\nfirst formation of the Old Testament Canon. The two traditions express one\nand the same fact from the secular and ecclesiastical points of view. In\nthe exile, the stricken nation came to value and honor its national\nheritage as never before. Its literary sense was quickened by close\ncontact with the civilization of Babylonia, whose great library\nconstituted one of the chief treasures of the central city. It was natural\nthat on their return to their native land the Jews should gather their\nrace-writings and found a National Library.\n\nThe genius of Israel had always been religious. Its very literature was\npre-eminently religious. That their venerable writings should be received\nas sacred was thus wholly natural. They were in reality sacred writings.\n\nMoreover, a large part of these writings, and that part largely drawn from\nvery ancient times, was composed of judicial decisions, legislative codes,\netc., around which veneration properly gathered. This veneration was\nheightened by the popular traditions which assigned to Moses the bulk of\ntheir legislation, and traced it through him to Jehovah himself. During\nthe exile a remarkable priestly development, which had been running on\nthrough two centuries, at least, culminated in a completely organized\nhierarchy and an elaborate cultus.\n\nIn the process of this final development in Babylonia the legislation and\nhistories of the nation were worked over by priestly hands in the priestly\nspirit. The law of Moses was now for the first time completely set before\nthe people, and on the restoration to Judea was made the law of the land.\nIt became, therefore, in a new sense sacred.\n\nThe fresh, free inspirations of the prophets--inspirations most real and\ndivine--died out in the exile, smothered partly by this priestly\ndevelopment.[12]\n\nWhen no living prophet arose to make men hear the voice of God, men had to\nhearken for that voice in the words of the dead prophets. In the\nsynagogues or meeting-houses which developed during the exile, when the\nholy temple was in ruins, and which, having been found useful, were\ncontinued in the restoration, the writings of the prophets were read each\nSabbath. The true writings of the chief prophets had therefore to be\nindicated. Thus came the canon of the prophets.\n\nThe freedom with which the author of the Chronicles used the material of\nthe older historians which had been taken up into the sacred writings,\nshows that the sacredness attached to them had not isolated them into\nextra-human writings even a century and a half after Ezra.\n\nThe process of exaltation was at work, however, and continued thenceforth\nthrough the national history, increasing as the life of the nation ebbed.\nIt was the period immediately following the destruction of Jerusalem by\nthe Romans, which busied itself in closing the canon of Jewish Scriptures\nDeath bound up that Bible. No new chapters could be added, because there\nwas no more life left to write them. In its dotage this noble nation\nbecame known, by its superstitious reverence for the law, as \"the people\nof the book.\" Learned doctors gravely taught their pupils that \"God\nhimself studies the law for the first three hours of every day.\"\n\nThe superstitious exaltation of the sacred writings, coincident with the\nlapsing life of the nation, was partially responsible for it, as it\ndiscouraged the fresh inspirations of the soul, and suppressed all free\nspiritual thought.\n\nThe genesis of the similar theory concerning the Christian Scriptures\nrepeats the story told above.\n\nThe formation of the Christian Church was a period of astonishing literary\nproductivity, commensurate in extent and worth with the importance of\nChristianity. It was a creative epoch in history. The life and teachings\nof Jesus stirred the minds and thrilled the souls of men. The higher\nspheres brooded low upon our world. Spiritual influences of unparalleled\nmagnitude were working in society. The \"Spirit of God moved upon the face\nof the waters.\"\n\nWritings of all sorts abounded. They carried such weight as their author's\nname or their intrinsic worth imparted to them. Even the most valuable\nwere not so prized or guarded as to prevent some of them from being lost.\nPaul's own letters suffered from this neglect. Had a few copies of these\ninestimable letters been made by the churches to whom they were sent such\na fate could not have befallen any of them. These writings were quoted\nfreely by the early fathers, who rarely cared to give the exact language\neven of the great apostle.\n\nAs the churches multiplied and organized, the need of selection from the\nmultitudinous literature of Christianity was felt. Genuine letters had to\nbe distinguished from spurious letters. Accurate knowledge of the life and\nteachings of Christ had become a vital necessity. The growth of legend and\nfable, in the Apocryphal Gospels, threatened to swallow up the memory of\nthe real Jesus. A sifting process went on in the churches, by which the\nunimportant and objectionable writings were gradually winnowed out and the\nwheat retained.\n\nThe Christian consciousness tried and tested every writing, accepting\nthose which approved themselves inspired by inspiring.\n\nIn the course of time this thoroughly vital process, through which public\nopinion passed upon the Christian writings, was recorded officially in the\nlegislative action of councils, and thus, after many incertitudes and\nvacillations, the selection of sacred writings was finished and the New\nTestament canon was closed. It was closed, as in the case of the canon of\nthe Old Testament, by the gradual loss of free spiritual and literary\nproductivity; closed, as the visions fade and the tides fall within the\nsoul, and the period of criticism follows the period of creation.\n\nThese writings became rightly sacred as the mementoes of the Divine Man,\nand the counsels of the great apostles; a shrine in which men drew near to\nthe supreme manifestation of God upon earth. But they became wrongly\nsacred also, as the lengthening lapse of time isolated these precious\nheirlooms of the Christian household into relics it was blasphemy to\ncriticise; as the falling waters of the river of life stranded high above\nmen's reach the thoughts and experiences of the inspired fisher-folk of\nGalilee. In the Dark Ages, when to read was a sign of distinction, and to\nwrite a schoolboy history like \"Eginhard's Charlemagne\" was a prodigy;\nwhen to lead clean lives, and to labor as hosts are doing now for their\nfellows made a man a saint; the literary and spiritual power of the\napostles was nothing less than preternatural.\n\nIn the Reformation the old story repeated itself.\n\nIn the days of fresh inspiration men surely did not fail to prize the\nblessed books whence had come their new life. But the sense of the divine\nlife in their own spirits enabled them to judge of the inspiration of the\nApostles at once reverently and rationally. They did not hesitate to\ncriticise freely the sacred books. Erasmus wrote of the Revelation:\n\n   \"I certainly can find no reason for believing that it was set forth by\n   the Holy Spirit.... Moreover, even were it a blessed thing to believe\n   what is contained in it, no man knows what that is.... But let every\n   man think of it as his spirit prompts him.\"[13]\n\nLuther wrote of the Epistle of James,\n\n   \"In comparison with the best books of the New Testament, it is a\n   downright strawy epistle.\"[14]\n\nThe ebbing tide again left the second generation critical and not\ncreative. After the sages and prophets of Protestantism came the scribes\nand doctors, and they were concerned not so much with the manly religion\nof free learning which Erasmus cherished, or the ethical and spiritual\nreligion which Luther roused, as with establishing Protestant_ism_ and\nwaging its doctrinal controversies. They wanted an authority for faith and\nmorals to set over against the authority of Rome. The age knew of no other\nauthority than external, extra-natural official authority, the king by\ndivine right in the realm of thought. In the place of the authority of the\nChurch rose the authority of the Bible; an oracular, infallible,\nmiraculous Book, instead of an oracular, infallible, miraculous Church.\nMen could only sustain the elaborate speculative system they had spun out\nof the New Testament letters, by insisting upon the authority of the\napostles in metaphysics as strongly as upon their authority in ethical\nand spiritual principles. When dogma became divine, the books whence it\nwas drawn were deified.[15]\n\nWe simply enter into the heritage of the men who spent two and a half\nyears in elaborating the Westminster Confession, the first chapter of\nwhich petrified this superstitious theory of the Bible. Profoundly as we\nreverence these truly sacred books, for the real revelation they record as\ncoming in the spirits of holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy\nGhost, and supremely in the person of the Son of Man; and rightly as we\nrecognize a Providential purpose in the preparation of these books for the\nguidance of human life; the history of these same thoughts and feelings in\nthe past should warn us from renewing ancient exaggerations, injurious to\nthe best influence of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n_This theory is incapable of a statement which is not self-stultifying._\n\n\n\nTo be an infallible authority upon all the matters upon which it treats, a\nbook must not only be guaranteed in its thought. Thought changes more or\nless in finding an expression. No two statements of an idea or of a fact\ncan be exactly alike. There are no real synonyms. Interchangeable words\nhave each a special shade of meaning. The guarantee must cover the\nphraseology of the original language in which the book is written. The\nwords must be dictated to amanuenses. The thorough-going verbal\ninspirationists are the only logical defenders of infallibility.\n\nBut the guarantee would need to be pushed still further in the case of a\nbook written as was the Bible. The best stenographers make mistakes in\nfilling out their abbreviations and in distinguishing the similar signs\nwhich stand for very dissimilar sounds. Early Hebrew was a language of\nabbreviations. No vowels were used. Consonants stood alone, and their\nconjunction, aided by memory, was expected to suggest the proper vowel\naccompaniments. Vowel points were added to the written language centuries\nafter the last book of the Old Testament was written.[16] Their insertion\ndemanded a guarantee, if infallibility was to be secured.\n\nThis guarantee must then have followed every copyist in the original\ntongues, every translation of the Hebrew and Greek into other tongues,\nevery copyist in modern tongues through the ages before the\nprinting-press, every printer, who, since Gutenberg, has issued a\nBible--if we are to be absolutely sure of having an oracular and an\ninfallible Book.\n\nThe Westminster Confession, indeed, seems to follow its theory through\nmost of these lengths, and a Protestant Council in Geneva in 1675, with a\nmagnificent courage of conviction, actually affirms this supernatural\ndirection of the translators of the Bible. But such notions are of the\nsame nature with the preposterous traditions of the Jews, as to the\ntranslation of the Septuagint; according to which, seventy elders,\nseparated from each other, produced seventy versions, which, on\ncomparison, \"agreed exactly\"; whereby men knew that the Scriptures were\n\"translated by the inspiration of God.\" With such tales we must leave the\ntheory they seem necessary to authenticate in the lumber-loft of\nsuperstitions.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n_This theory of our Bible is, in our age, seen to be the same theory which\nall peoples have entertained of their bibles._\n\n\n\nFor the first time in the history of Europe, Christian people have the\nknowledge by which they can correct their ideas about the Bible, in what\nmay be called a comparative science of Bibliolatry. We know that nearly\nevery race has had its own Sacred Book. These Sacred Books are now within\nthe easy reach of all. Any one can examine for himself the Vedas, the\nZend-Avesta and the other Bibles of humanity. Every one can readily form a\njust judgment of these Bibles. The light which lighteth every man that\ncometh into the world shines from many pages in all of these books. There\nare profound thoughts of God, noble ethical ideals, deep perceptions of\nsin, yearning desires for human good, gleams of life beyond the grave.\nThere are prayers we could use here with a few verbal changes, and you\nwould not recognize their pagan source. There are songs of praise which\nmight be made our canticles. There are parables that the Master Himself\nmight have spoken. But the light which shines from heaven through these\nbooks does not disguise their earthly character. Having no glamor of\ntradition over our eyes, we can see them to be histories, poems,\nphilosophies, rituals, counsels of religion, hallowed by age into Sacred\nBooks.\n\nYet we find precisely the same notions current in each race about its\nBible that we have cherished concerning our own Bible. The Hindu talks of\nhis Vedas as the Christian talks of his Testaments. Nay, we find our\nconceits quite outdone in the dogmas of these heathen. Mohammedan doctors\nof divinity divided into fiercely contesting parties over the question\nwhether the Koran was created or uncreated; the latter theory, as most\nhighly magnifying their Sacred Book, of course, becoming the orthodox\ndoctrine. These learned orthodox divines assured men that the Koran was\nverily eternal and uncreated, and of the very essence of God; that the\nfirst transcript of it had been from everlasting by His throne; that a\ncopy, in one volume, on paper, was, by the hands of the angel Gabriel,\nsent down to the lowest heaven in the month of Ramadan; from whence\nGabriel revealed it to Mohammed in instalments, giving him the privilege,\nhowever, of beholding the heavenly volume, bound in silk and adorned with\ngold and precious stones, once a year.\n\nWe cannot mistake the fact that thoroughly human writings have been\nexaggerated into super-human scriptures by the deference rightly called\nforth towards these venerable books, so influential in the histories of\nnations, so potent in the lives of men; and we can study the phases\nthrough which a wholesome reverence degenerated into a puerile\nsuperstition.\n\nBibliolatry is pushed to a _reductio ad absurdum_ in these pagan worships\nof their Sacred Books. Men will see their folly in the reflected light of\nthese kindred follies, and another superstition will disappear from\nChristendom.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOn these grounds, as on others, the unreal Bible must be expected to pass\naway. The Church at large never properly authenticated it. The Bible\nnowhere calls for such a view of itself. Scripture reveals to a critical\nstudy manifest tokens of its human fallibility, its thoroughly literary\ncharacter. We can trace the growth of this theory, and account for it\nnaturally. As a theory it cannot be stated reasonably. It is a theory\nwhich is shown to be a superstition in the bibliolatries of other peoples.\n\nOur bibliolatry is disappearing none too fast. It has always wrought evil\nas well as good on civilization Like all other anachronisms, its original\nhelpfulness to progress has now become a hindrance. The day when it was of\nservice is past for educated people, whose minds are open, and the evils\nit has caused flow from it still.\n\nIt has bred a superstitious use of the Bible which has always made\nmischief, though a mischief never realized as sensibly as now. It has\ntaught men to turn to these holy books and accept unquestioningly all\ntherein recorded as authoritative on our thought and life. It has barred\nall research which even seemed to contradict its history or science, and\nhas held Europe in mental swaddling-bands, preventing normal growth. It\nhas taught Most Christian Kings to war with easy consciences, after the\nfashion of the Israelites in Canaan, and priests to sing solemn _Te Deums_\nover battle-fields where men lay weltering in one another's blood. It has\ngiven slave-owners the coveted proof that the peculiar system was a divine\ninstitution, and has founded the auction block for human cattle solidly\nupon the laws of God. It has supplied Joseph Smith with a warrant for\npolygamy in the social usages of the Arab sheiks three thousand years ago.\nIt has opened a sacred refuge for every lie and wrong; no wildest form of\nwhich could fail to find some precedent within these Hebrew histories,\nwhich tell the story of a people's upward growth from savagery. It has\nfurnished an arsenal stocked with proof texts, from which, through many\ngenerations, priests and doctors have armed themselves to war with one\nanother; exhausting in ecclesiastical and theological strife the holy\nenergies of Christian enthusiasm, which might else have changed the face\nof the earth. It has arrayed faith against reason, by the necessity it has\nimposed of reconciling every new discovery with the cosmogony of Genesis,\nor the metaphysics of Romans; putting asunder those whom God hath joined\ntogether, in the needless conflict of science and religion.\n\nIt has driven away from the real revelation held in these sacred writings\nincreasing numbers, in the growing generations; deafening their ears by\nits irrational clamor to the voice of the Living God which whispers in\nthese pages, through the holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy\nGhost. It has fathered the doubt which to-day sits, cheerless and chill,\nwithin the hearts and homes of thousands who once rejoiced in the warmth\nand light of God, but who now accept the alternative their teachers\nthrust upon them--\"all or none\"--and throw away the Blessed Book wherein\nGod of old revealed Himself to them.\n\nIt has made the sacred ark of Israel so vulnerable that its defenders dare\nnot challenge the great Goliath of the Philistines, who, year by year,\ncomes forth to strut before the armies of the saints in ridicule of that\nthey hold so dear; and thus it is to be held responsible for the loss of\nthe young men who throw away their ancestral faith and go over to the\napparently victorious side of Unbelief.\n\nIt has slid in a false bottom to men's faith; shoving in a supposititious\nrevelation of miracle above the real revelation which is in nature and in\nman, and in the Christ as the ideal man; and thus holds back that\nreconstruction of belief which Providence is forcing on, as It is shaking\nall things, to settle faith upon the everlasting verities: whereon\nreligion, planting its feet on the solid rock, may lift its head into the\nskies, and worship Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being, the\nGod and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, \"Our Father who art in Heaven.\"\n\nIn the name of religion let it die!\n\nThen there will be a resurrection, and the Bible will live again, clothed\nin a higher form for our most rational reverence. All that ever made the\nBible a Sacred Book, lives on to-day and will live on while these books\nexist. Holy men of old spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. They\nwere most truly inspired. The Biblical writers recorded a real revelation.\nThese books hold for us the words of God. The Word of God speaks to us in\nthe person of Jesus Christ.\n\nThese spiritual realities, no criticism can touch. And these spiritual\nrealities make the Bible.\n\nBook of our Fathers, venerable and sacred, speak still to our souls those\nwords proceeding from out the mouth of God on which man liveth!\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nThe Real Bible.\n\n\n\n\n    \"Out from the heart of nature rolled\n    The burdens of the Bible old;\n    The litanies of nations came,\n    Like the volcano's tongue of flame,\n    Up from the burning core below,--\n    The canticles of love and woe.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    The passive Master lent his hand\n    To the vast soul that o'er him planned.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Himself from God he could not free.\"\n\n    _The Problem._\n\n   The most original book in the world is the Bible.... The elevation of\n   this book may be measured by observing how certainly all observation of\n   thought clothes itself in the words and forms of speech of that\n   book.... Whatever is majestically thought in a great moral element\n   instantly approaches this old Sanscrit.... People imagine that the\n   place which the Bible holds in the world it owes to miracles. It owes\n   it simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought\n   than any other book.--Emerson, _The Dial_, October, 1840.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nThe Real Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   \"Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.\"--2 Peter,\n   i. 21.\n\n\n\"Men of the Scriptures\" was the title assumed by the Karaites, a sect of\ndevout Jews, who, about the middle of the eighth century of our era, threw\naside tradition, and accepted as their sole authority the canonical\nwritings of the Old Testament. Seeing the good that the Bible has wrought\nfor man in the past, we may well emulate the reverence of these Karaites;\nwhile, seeing the unreality of the traditional notion of the Bible that\nthey held, and the mischiefs it has bred, we may well disown their\nsuperstitiousness. Can we gain a view of the Bible which, without\nstultifying our intellectual nature, may satisfy our spiritual nature, and\nleave us free to call ourselves men of the Scriptures? The only road to\nsuch an end must be that which our age is opening so successfully through\nevery field of study; as, dismissing preconceptions, it builds with care\nand candor, upon solid facts, the causeway to a certain knowledge.\n\nLet us take up the Bible as we would any other collection of books, and\nsee if, without assuming anything concerning it, we cannot find our way to\na rational reverence for it, as real as that which our fathers had. The\nlines of our inquiry have been projected by a hand you own as high\nauthority. The results of the survey are in the text. Real men wrote real\nbooks; holy men wrote holy books; and, when we come to account for their\nholy, human power, we can only say--The Divine Spirit stirred in them;\n\"holy men of old spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost.\"\n\nThe Bible is a collection of many writings, in many forms, by many hands,\nfrom many ages. Genuine letters these, whether they be _belles-lettres_ or\nnot; by every mark and sign most human writings, whether they be holy\nScriptures or not; the product of honest toil of brain and hand. Whatever\nmore they are, these are _bona fide_ books, of men of like passions and\ninfirmities with ourselves.\n\nWhat is there in these books which has led Christendom to assign to them\nso high an honor?\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\n\n1. _These books have the venerableness which belongs to ancient writings._\n\n\nWith what interest and care we handle a very old book, and turn its\nwell-worn pages, thumb-marked and dog-eared by men of Oxford or of\nFlorence in the Middle Ages! Unless we are the baldest materialists, we\nwill not reserve for the parchment body of some old book the respect\ncalled forth by its soul. The latest re-embodiment of an ancient writer,\nfresh from the presses of Putnam or of Appleton, merits the honor\nbelonging to the book given to the world so many centuries ago, and fed\nupon by successive generations. Thus I look at the Plato on my shelves.\nHow venerable these writings! Over their great words, on which I rest my\neyes, my fathers bent, as their fathers had done before them; generation\nafter generation finding inspiration where still it flows fresh and full\nfor me. Thus every reverently minded man ought to feel concerning the\nBible. The latest of these books is probably seventeen hundred years old,\nand the earliest has been written twenty-seven hundred years; while in the\nmore ancient of these writings lie bedded some of the oldest fragments of\nliterature known to us. These books have been the constant companions of\nmen and women through two or three score of generations. The crawling\ncenturies have carried these books along with them--the solace and the\nstrength of myriad millions of our kind. Forms, now turning into dust,\nholy in our memories, read these familiar pages. Men whose names carry us\nback through English history knew and prized these writings; Cromwell,\nShakespeare, Chaucer, and the Great Alfred. When Rome was the seat of\nempire, Constantine heard them in his churches. Aurelius informed himself\nabout them. In the lowly hamlet hidden away among the hills of Galilee,\nthe boy Jesus listened to these tales of Hebrew heroism and holiness from\nHis mother's lips. Judas, the hammerer, fired his valiant soul from them;\nand, while wandering in the hill country of Judaea, David chanted, to his\nharp's accompaniment these legends of the childhood of his race. The Bible\nis hallowed by the reverent use of ages.\n\n\n\n2. _These books form the literature of a noble race._\n\n\nThe Old Testament is a Library of Jewish Letters. The germ of the\ncollection was planted by Nehemiah when \"he, founding a library, gathered\ntogether the acts of the kings, and the prophets, and of David, and the\nepistles of the kings concerning the holy gifts.\"[17] This germ grew\ngradually into its present shape. The Apocrypha belongs to it, and is\nrightly bound up in our Bibles, for reading in our churches. These books\nof the Canonical and Apocryphal writings do not cover the whole literature\nof the Hebrew nation. Many writings have been lost inadvertently. Many\nhave been dropped as unworthy of preservation. We have the garnered grain\nof Hebrew literature in our Bible--a winnowed national library. It\nincludes histories, juridical codifications, dramas of love and destiny,\npatriotic songs and state anthems, the hymnal of a people's worship,\nphilosophic writings of the sages, collections of proverbial sayings,\nworks of religious fiction, orations of statesmen, and oracles of mystic\nseers.\n\nThe New Testament is the literature of the Christian Church in its\ncreative epoch; the work still, in the main, of Jewish hands, as Judaism\nwas blossoming into a universal religion. It is thus the literature of the\nmost important religious movement civilization has experienced; a movement\nwhose unspent forces we are feeling still, in the flooding tides of\nprogress. It, too, forms a winnowed library; the siftings of Sayings of\nJesus, lives of Christ, apostolical and other letters, visions and\nromances; and holds the choicest mental products of this fertile era. In\nit are gathered memoirs of the Founder of Christianity, doctrinal and\nethical treatises from the hand of the man who, under Christ, was the\nchief factor in the early Church; similar essays, in the form of letters,\nfrom other more or less important leaders, representing the various phases\nof original Christianity; a fragmentary and free sketch of the apostolic\nlabors, and the last great effort of apocalyptic genius, in the Revelation\nof St. John, the Divine.\n\n\n\n3. _This literature of the Jewish nation and of the Christian Church is\nintrinsically noble._\n\n\nThe Bible has lost much of its fresh charm for us, with whom its finest\nsayings are household words.\n\nWe parsed Virgil and Homer in our boyhood until the aroma of poetry\nexhaled from their hackneyed pages, and we can scarce think of them now\nsave as grammatical exercises. The Bible has thus palled upon our\nimagination, through the uninspiring familiarity of early task-work. But\nwere it possible to read it in our manhood for the first time, how the\nblood would beat and the nerves thrill over some of its pages. We should\nthen understand the sensations of a French _salon_ upon a certain\noccasion. Our shrewd philosopher-minister Franklin, had previously heard\nthe _literati_ wont to gather there ridiculing the Bible, and had guessed\nthat they knew little of it. Upon this evening he observed that he would\nmuch like to have the judgment of the assembly on a certain Eastern tale\nhe had lately come across, unknown probably to most of those there\npresent, though long ago translated into their own tongue. Whereupon,\ndrawing from his pocket a copy of the Bible, he had a Parisienne, let into\nthe secret, read in her sweet tones the book of Ruth. The company was\nthrown into raptures over the charming tale, which lasted until they found\nits name.\n\nHow fresh, with the crisp air of morning, are these tales of primitive\ntradition! How _naif_ these simple stories of Hebrew heroes! What so fine\nin religious poetry as some of the strains from the Jewish Hymnal? What a\nnoble drama is Job, the Hebrew Faust! How wise the proverbial sayings!\nWhat pure passion and lofty imagination stir through the pages of the\ngreater prophets! Where are to be found letters like those of Paul? What\nbiographies have the artless simplicity of the Synoptic Gospels, or the\nmystic spirituality of the Gospel according to St. John!\n\nNo critic of our age has finer literary feeling or more dispassionate\njudgment than Matthew Arnold; and he has edited the second section of\nIsaiah as a text book for the culture of the imagination in English\nschools. In the introduction to this Primer he observes: \"What a course of\neloquence and poetry is the Bible in our schools.\"\n\nGoethe shared Arnold's love of the Bible, and was so constant a reader of\nit that his friends reproached him for wasting his time over it. Burke\nowned his indebtedness to the Bible for his unique eloquence. Webster\nconfessed that he owed to its habitual reading much of his power. Ruskin\nlooks back to the days when a pious aunt compelled him to learn by heart\nwhole chapters of the Bible, for his schooling in the craft of speech, in\nwhich he stands unrivaled among living Englishmen.\n\nEmerson writes:\n\n   \"The most original book in the world is the Bible. This old collection\n   of the ejaculations of love and dread, of the supreme desires and\n   contritions of men, proceeding out of the region of the grand and\n   eternal seems ... the alphabet of the nations, and all posterior\n   writings, either the chronicles of facts under very inferior ideas, or\n   when it rises to sentiment, the combinations, analogies, or degradation\n   of this. The elevation of this book may be measured by observing how\n   certainly all observation of thought clothes itself in the words and\n   forms of speech of that book.... Whatever is majestically thought in a\n   great moral element, instantly approaches this old Sanscrit....\n   Shakspeare, the first literary genius of the world, the highest in whom\n   the moral is not the predominating element, leans on the Bible; his\n   poetry presupposes it. If we examine this brilliant\n   influence--Shakspeare--as it lies in our minds, we shall find it\n   reverent, not only of the letter of this book, but of the whole frame\n   of society which stood in Europe upon it, deeply indebted to the\n   traditional morality, in short, compared with the tone of the Prophets,\n   _secondary_.... People imagine that the place which the Bible holds in\n   the world, it owes to miracles. It owes it simply to the fact that it\n   came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other book.\"[18]\n\nEven what seem to us valueless books turn out, when studied naturally,\nmost interesting and suggestive.\n\nJonah, that stone of stumbling and rock of offence to the modern youth,\nbecomes, when rightly read, a noble writing, full of the very spirit of\nour age. Around the tradition of Jonah, the son of Amittai, a prophet of\nwhom we know nothing in other writings, some forgotten author has woven a\nstory, to point a lofty moral. Jonah feels himself called to go to Nineveh\nand cry against it, because of its wickedness. Quite naturally he does not\nrelish such an errand.\n\nThe prospect of a poor Jew's reforming the gay and dissolute metropolis of\nthe earth, which sat as a queen among the nations, singing to herself, \"I\nwill be a lady forever,\" was not brilliant enough to fascinate him; and\nthe prospect of the reward he would get from the luxurious people of\npleasure, whose well-opiated consciences he should rudely rouse by calling\ntheir intrigues and carousals wickedness, was only too clear. Jonah fled\nfrom his duty. In his flight occurs the marvelous experience with the big\nfish, that has so troubled dear, pious people who have read as literal\nhistory what is plainly legendary. After this fabulous episode, the story\ntakes up its ethical thread. Jonah finds that he cannot flee from the\npresence of the Lord, that he cannot decline a mission imposed from on\nhigh. He goes to Nineveh; cries out against its sins, as God had told him;\nand, as God had not told him, predicts its overthrow in forty days, as a\njudgment on its crimes. But, contrary to his expectations, the city is\nstirred by his preaching; and King and court and people repent and amend\ntheir ways. Whereupon the Divine forgiveness is extended at once to these\nwicked Pagans, and the fate they had deserved is averted. But in this turn\nof affairs Jonah's prediction failed, and so he was displeased and was\nvery angry, and took the Almighty to task quite roundly, for his lack of\nvigour.\n\n   \"Was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore, I fled\n   before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and\n   merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness and repentest thee of\n   the evil.\"\n\nWhat was to become of preachers if, after they had threatened destruction\nupon evil-doers, the Most High went back upon them thus? The later breed\nof Jonahs may profitably study the after scene, in which God is made to\nrebuke the frightful selfishness and hardness which, rather than have\none's theories belied, would have a city damned.\n\n   \"Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored\n   ... and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more\n   than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right\n   hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?\"\n\nThe moral marvel of Nineveh's general repentance on the preaching of an\nobscure Jew is as unnatural as the physical marvel of the fish story.\n\nRecognizing that the whole tale is a parable, which takes upon it purely\nlegendary drapery, and ridding ourselves thus of all the questions which\npuzzle Sunday-school scholars and theologians, we are ready to read the\nmeaning of the parable. God is not the God of any one race or religion. He\ncares for Gentile as for Jew. He sends a prophet of Israel to bid a pagan\ncity repent, that He may forgive it freely. These Pagans understand the\nmessage of the Jew. The commands of conscience are owned and honored by\nthe heathen, even more quickly than by the people of God; whose own\nJerusalem never thus quickly obeyed a prophet's message. The city whence\nhad come Israel's woes is held up as a pattern to the sacred city\nherself. All men, then, are brothers, partakers of the same moral and\nreligious nature; children of One Father, whose voice they hear in\ndifferent tongues, speaking to their souls the same messages of holy love.\n\nThus read, Jonah becomes the protest of liberal Judaism against the\nnarrow, exclusive tendencies of popular piety in Israel. It is the writing\nof some genuine Broad-Churchman of the olden time, proclaiming the high\ntruths of Human Brotherhood under a Divine Fatherhood, breathing that\nspirit of which, long after, another Jew dared say--\n\n   \"And now abideth faith, hope and charity, but the greatest of these is\n   charity.\"\n\nIf such be the hidden value of one of the least attractive of these\nwritings, we may well say, with Milton,\n\n   \"I shall wish I may deserve to be reckoned among those who admire and\n   dwell upon them.\"\n\n\n\n4. _This literature has been very influential in the development of\nprogressive civilization._\n\n\nWhen the writings of Greece and Rome had been buried in the ruins of the\nRoman Empire, the literature of Israel was preserved by the pious care of\nthe Christian Church. The light of Athens went out, and the light of\nJerusalem alone illumined the dark ages. The only books known to the mass\nof men through long centuries were these writings of the Hebrews and the\nearly Christians. Thought was kept alive by them, imagination was fed from\nthem, conscience was educated and vitalized through them. For a thousand\nyears there was practically but one book in Europe--the Bible. When the\nlong gestation of the middle ages was fulfilled, and the modern world was\nborn, while the educated classes read the exhumed classics of Greece, the\npeople still read the Bible. It gave, in the person of Luther, the impulse\nthat restored intellectual liberty and moral health to Europe. It has\ncontinued the best read book of Western civilization; the only book much\nread, until of late, by the mass of men; the one foreign and ancient\nliterature familiar alike to the plain people in Germany and France, in\nEngland and America; the common well-spring of inspiration to thought and\nimagination, to character and conduct.\n\nIt is the Magna Charta of our liberties; the revered companion and master\nof the Pilgrims who sailed the wintry seas, and, on Plymouth Rock,\nbuilding wiser than they knew, founded a nation covenanting freedom of\nconscience unto all men; a nation on whose Bell of Independence runs the\nBible legend, \"Proclaim liberty to the inhabitants thereof.\"\n\nWherever society is found to-day in travail with a new and higher order,\nthe conception can be traced to the seminal words of the Bible. The\ninstitutions and manners of progressive civilization are what they are\nbecause in the heart of that civilization has lain the Bible.\n\nMy brothers, were these books nothing more to us than such ancient\nwritings, the literature of so noble a race, a literature intrinsically\nfine, to which our civilization owes so much of mental and of moral\ninfluence, they should win our reverence, and should shame the wantonness\nof liberalism, falsely so called.\n\nWhat if in these ancient writings there are ancient errors, the marvels\nwhich a child age exaggerated into miracles, stories of savage cruelty and\nbrutal lust in rude, rough times, acts of superstition dark and dreadful,\nutterances which to us are blasphemous ascribed to the Eternal and Holy\nOne? Such faults are inevitable in the literature that records a nation's\ngrowth from barbarism. Were a man in the name of Liberty or in the name of\nTruth to hunt through Homer, to rake together all the errors and\nsuperstitions embalmed in these immortal sagas, to haul up from the\nobscurity where sensible people leave them the lewdnesses suggested or\ndescribed, and then to fling these blemishes at the book in which the\nchildren of Greece and England and America have read with tingling blood\nthe tales which stirred their souls, by what name would we call him? By\nthat name let him stand forth impaled upon the scorn of an age that has\nnot lost the grace of reverence, who, mindless of majestic age, the\ndignity of letters, an influence unrivalled and benign, associations\ntender and most holy, upon these venerable and sacred books spits his\nshallow scepticism, spumes his spleenful sarcasm, and smuts them with his\nown sensuality.\n\nLet Irreverence stay her ribald tongue before these illustrious writings,\nand Indecency vomit her own nastiness elsewhere than on our Bible.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n\nThe Bible lays a yet deeper claim upon our reverence These books\nconstitute the literature of a people whose genius was religion, whose\nmission was its evolution into universal forms, whose writings express the\nmoods and tenses of that development; whose history is the organic growth\nwhich flowered in the life of Him who freed religion from every swathing\nband, and gave the world its pure essential spirit; after Whom all races\nare being drawn as one flock under one Shepherd.\n\n\n\n1. _Israel's specialty in history was religion._\n\n\nEvery people finds laid upon it certain necessary activities, in most of\nwhich all peoples find their common tasks. Every nation must cultivate\nagriculture handicrafts, trade and commerce; must develop social,\npolitical and religious institutions. Each people will, however, do some\none thing better than the rest of its tasks, better than it is done by\nother peoples. Each great race has some commanding inspiration; some\nideal which masters every other aspiration and ambition, energizes its\nefforts and shapes its destiny. It creates a specialty among the nations.\nThe real legacy of each great race lies in the works wrought in the line\nof its highest aptitudes. Thus Rome developed a genius for civil\norganization. She conquered the whole western world, united isolated\nnations under one empire, cleared the Mediterranean for safe and free\ncommunication, opened roads as arteries through the vast body politic,\nestablished post communications for travellers and the mails, carried law\nand order into every obscure hamlet, consolidated a polity which, by sheer\nmassiveness, lasted for generations after the soul of Rome had fled, and\nleft to posterity, in her institutes the basis for modern jurisprudence.\nThus Greece evolved a genius for art, developed architecture and sculpture\nto the highest perfection the world has seen, made statues thicker than\nmen in Athens, made men more beautiful than statues, sighed even after\nVirtue as the Becoming, the Perfect Beauty, left the world temples whose\nruins are inspirations, and marbles whose discovery dates the epochs of\nculture. Israel essayed to do many things that other peoples achieved, and\npromised success in more than one direction. At a certain period she bade\nfair to develop into a martial empire, and to become a lesser Assyria or\nRome. A little later she seemed about to rival the Phenicians in\ncommerce. About the same time she\n\n   \"advanced as far as the Greeks before Socrates towards producing an\n   independent science or philosophy.\"[19]\n\nBut she found herself content with none of these _r\u00f4les_. She had a higher\npart assigned her in the drama of history, to which her secret instincts\nresistlessly drew her. Her predominant characteristic was an intense\nreligiousness. Everything in the life of her people took on a serious and\ndevout tone. Patriotism was identified with piety. Her statesmen were\nreformers, idealists, whose orations were sermons, like the speeches of\nGladstone in the Midlothian campaign, dealing with politics in the light\nof eternal principles. Legislation was developed through the \"judgments\"\nof priestly oracles. Poetry lighted her flames at the altar. Philosophy\nbusied itself with ethics. The Muse of History was the Spirit of Holiness.\nThe nation's ambitions were aspirations. Her heroes grew to be saints. The\ndivine became to her, not the true or the beautiful, but the good. She\nevidently had, as Matthew Arnold said of John Wesley, \"a genius for\ngodliness.\"\n\n\n\n2. _Israel's literature became thus a religious literature._\n\n\nHer histories were written for edification. They present the past of the\npeople in such light as to inculcate virtue and inspire piety. Her poems\nare songs of pure love, like Canticles; or dramas whose plot lies in the\nproblem of evil, like Job; or hymns in which the soul seeks communion with\nGod. The Psalter is the hymnal of the temple choir at Jerusalem. The\nprophets are preachers of righteousness, personal, social, political. Even\nthe writings of her sages or philosophers are almost wholly ethical and\nreligious. No other people's literature is so intensely and pervasively\nreligious. Other nations have religious writings as a part of their\ngeneral literature. Israel's whole literary life was sacred. There is\nscarcely a book left by her to which we may not go to feed religion.[20]\n\n\n\n3. _Israel's literature presents us, in the various moods and tenses of\nher life, with the various phases of religion._\n\n\nThe glory of a truly National Church is that it takes up into itself every\nform of spiritual and ethical consciousness within the nation, and\nexhibits in each successive school of thought, in each movement for a\nnobler social life, a phase of true religion. This is the glory of Israel.\nReligion never separated itself into an institution apart from the State.\n\nThere was no Jewish Church, of which Dean Stanley wrote the history.\nChurch and State were one. Sacred and secular history flowed in one common\nstream. The history of Israel was the history of Judaism. Its choicest\nliterature formed its sacred writings. Religion was never narrowed to a\ntheory, an institution, an \"ism,\" a sect, a school. It was as generous and\nas rich as the broad, free life of the nation. Every factor essential to a\nnoble religion was thus supplied from the sound and healthy life of the\npeople.\n\nThe inner life of the soul was voiced in the hymns of Israel, to which we\nstill turn for the inspiration of personal piety in our private devotions;\nand which lift the public worship of the moderns as they swelled the souls\nof the hosts who waited in the temple courts at Jerusalem, two thousand\nyears ago.\n\nA cultus of character through ritual and discipline was elaborated by the\npriesthood in that wonderful system which, rebaptized, does duty still in\nthe Catholic Church. The true outer sphere for personal religion, trained,\nif need be, by an ecclesiastical cultus, was fashioned by the great\nprophets, the men of the people; who poured their passion for\nrighteousness into aspirations for a true commonwealth, in which Justice\nshould be throned on law, and international relations be ruled, not by\nPolicy, but by Principle. Natural religion was nobly set forth by the\nsages in Proverbs, The Wisdom of Jesus, and the other \"Writings;\" all of\nwhich were characterized by a calm and rational philosophy, that\nrecognized the laws of life and fed the wisdom which obeys them. Even\nAgnosticism, in so far as it is the confession of the inadequacy of every\ninterpretation of the universe, finds despondent yet still earnest\nexpression in Ecclesiastes, and humble, hopeful expression in Job; and the\nsilence of many of the noblest natures of our age, which the churches\nbrand as irreligious, finds place among the phases of religion in their\nSacred Book.[21]\n\nAlmost every form of strenuous ethical life, almost every answer that\nearnest souls have found to the problem of life, is to be drawn from the\nwritings of this many-sided people. Thus their literature feeds a rich,\nand rounded life of religion.\n\n\n\n4. _Israel's literature presents us with the record of a continuous growth\nof religion upward through its normal stages._\n\n\nReligion grows like every form of human life with the growth of man\nhimself. It is coarse, crude and cruel while man is a savage, and as he\nbecomes civilized--by which I mean something more than wealthy--it becomes\nintelligent, reasonable ethical and spiritual. The growth of Israel from\nbarbarism carried with this progress the growth of Israel's religion. In\nthe earliest times which we can historically reach the Israelites were\nsemi-nomadic tribes, slightly distinguishable from their kindred Semites.\nThe religion of the people appears to have been then a commingling of\nfetichism, the worship of things that impressed the imagination, great\ntrees and huge boulders, with the worship of the various powers of nature,\nthe orbs of heaven, the reproductive force of the earth, etc., under the\nusual savage and sensual symbolisms.\n\nFrom such unpromising beginnings, through the successive stages of\npolytheistic idolatries, religion was gradually led up, in the advance of\nthe general life of the people and through the inspirations of a series of\ngreat men, to the recognition of One Eternal and infinite Being; the Lord\nof nature and of man, the Father of all mankind, Holy, Just and Gracious;\nwhose truest worship is the aspirations of his children after goodness.\n\n   \"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,\" writes the\n   Deuteronomist; \"and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine\n   heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.\"\n\nMalachi, looking round upon the manifold forms of worship of the various\nnations, and discerning that through them all the soul of man was feeling\nafter one and the same Divine Being, makes God say:\n\n   \"From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my\n   name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered\n   unto me and a pure offering; for my name is great among the heathen,\n   saith the Lord of Hosts.\"\n\nMicah asks,\n\n   \"What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy\n   and to walk humbly with thy God?\"\n\nOf this continuous growth of religion the Old Testament is the record.\n\n\n\n5. _Israel's literature records the forcing forward of this growth of\nreligion, as by some Power back of man, shaping its ends, rough-hew them\nas it might._\n\n\nThe Niebuhr of Hebrew history rightly pointed out this significant fact in\nthe introduction to his great work.\n\n   \"The manifold changes and even confusions and perversities, which\n   manifest themselves in the long course of the threads of its history,\n   ultimately tend to the solution of this great problem.\"--Ewald: Intro.\n\nA singular succession of great men arise to save and revive and reform\nreligion in every critical epoch. Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah,\nEzekiel, Ezra, Judas Maccabeus come upon the stage, one after the other,\nperform their several parts with singular aptitude, and prepare the way\nfor the next movement when it comes due. The history of the people rightly\nread becomes a mighty drama, in which the right man is never wanting at\nthe right time, and the action moves on steadily toward a climax.\n\nThe experiences of the people, even those most perplexing to the faith of\nthe nation at the time, fit singularly into this organic evolution of\nreligion. The rending of the Kingdom of David, that blighted the fair\nprospect of a martial empire, turned the nation aside from the false\ncareer on which it was entering. The overthrow of the Northern and then of\nthe Southern Kingdom, and the deportation of the people to Babylonia,\nseemingly the ruin of the sister countries, threw them in upon their inner\nlife; and in the exile their religion found its highest reach of thought.\n\nEven that hierarchical movement which so quickly followed upon this bloom\nof prophetism, and which to the superficial look seems only the arrest of\nlife and the beginning of death, reveals a legitimate function in the\norganic processes of the national religion. In this priestly organization\nof institutional religion, all free prophetic inspiration did indeed die\nout for over four centuries. But even this was a necessity for the right\nflowering of religion. The age was not ready, politically or\nintellectually, for the ripening of the thoughts of the prophets. Had they\nripened then, they would have fallen to the ground, as the untimely fruit\nof a too-early spring. Four centuries were to be tided over before the\npolitical and intellectual conditions were found for the blossoming of\nthis flower. This holding back of the normal evolution of Hebraism was the\nfunction of the Priestly Reaction--a curious parallel to the function of\nCatholicism in Medi\u00e6val Christianity.\n\nLike the Catholic Church, the Jewish priesthood held society together\nwhen, in the destruction of the political power, there was no other bond\nof unity. As in the Catholic Church, the High Priest became a temporal\nruler, the Prince of Israel, as he was called; and kept the sacred city\nstill the seat of government. As in Catholicism the institutionalizing of\nreligion that followed the period of free prophetic life was an effort to\nembody that life, to incrust and thus preserve it; and, in the one case as\nin the other, though the crust of institutions choked the further growth\nof spiritual religion, it yet did keep it sluggishly alive within this\nhard bark, through times that else would have proved fatal to it. As in\nCatholicism, this priestly cultus really drilled deep into the natures of\nmen the principles and laws and habitudes of ethical and spiritual\nreligion; and stored the force which, when its rigid routine and fettering\nformalism became unbearable, burst through this crust and opened a new\nworld of fresh, free life.\n\nOf this singular shaping of the nation's experiences to further the growth\nof true religion, the Old Testament is the impressive record.\n\n\n\n6. _Israel's literature thus presents the picture of a nation's patient,\ninsistent pressing forward, through long centuries, toward the fruition of\nits ideal, the realization of true religion._\n\n\nSo continuous is Israel's movement toward the ideal of religion, so\nstraight the line of her advance that it seems as though the nation had a\nconscious aim, seen afar and steadfastly pursued by generation after\ngeneration, unwilling to stop short of attainment. It is the founder of\nscientific Biblical criticism who thus expresses his sense of the\nwonderfulness of this historic movement:\n\n   \"This aim is Perfect Religion; a good which all aspiring nations of\n   antiquity made an attempt to attain; which some, the Indians and\n   Persians, for example, really labored to achieve with admirable\n   devotion of noble energies, but which this people alone clearly\n   discerned from the beginning, and then pursued for centuries through\n   all difficulties, and with the utmost firmness and consistency, until\n   they attained it, so far as among men and in ancient times attainment\n   was possible.\"[22]\n\n\n\n7. _The literature of Christian Israel records the realization of this\nlong sought ideal, the fruition of this organic growth._\n\n\nThe nation found the times ripe at last for the final process of this\nhistoric evolution; the dead cerements of Judaism fell apart, and thereout\nbloomed that perfect flower of religion, the religion of the Christ,\nsimple, free, ethical, spiritual. The extant literature of this last\ncreative effort of Israel constitutes the New Testament. The Gospels tell\nthe story of the life of the Founder of Christianity, clearly enough in\nthe main outlines, and embalm many of the words and deeds of the Son of\nMan. The other writings of the New Testament illustrate the working of the\nthought and spirit of the Christ in the Church bodying around Him through\nthe growth of a century. In them we see that the long cherished ideal of\nIsrael, an Ethical and Universal Religion, had at last incarnated itself\nin The Master whose plans laid the foundation of this new Order; into\nwhich men were coming from the east and from the west, and from the north\nand from the south, and were sitting down in the Kingdom of God.\n\nThe high-water mark of religion in human history is recorded in these\nwritings. To enter into the spirit of these writings is to feel the force\nof the free, full tides of ethical and spiritual life which rose, as never\nbefore nor since, in the dawning day of Christianity. The flow of such a\nforce within the individual soul and through society has been the power\nof the New Testament in Christendom.\n\n\n\n8. _This organic growth of a national religion into a catholic ideal, not\nwithout parallels elsewhere, is, however unique in respect to the\nconditions for a truly Universal Religion._\n\n\nThe scene of this evolution is not the heart of the East, as in Buddhism,\nbut the meeting point of East and West. Palestine is the race centre of\nthe earth. Camels unload in Jerusalem the goods laden upon them in the\nseats of the most ancient empires; and on her pebbly beaches the\nMediterranean rolls, bearing the commerce of Europe. Behind Judea lies the\npast, before it opens the future. Its Race-Man came at the epoch when,\nfirst in history, the East and West were brought together under one empire\nand opened to the free interchange of thought. And when we analyze the\nreligion of the Christ, grown in this central land and coming to the birth\nin this central period, we find that it holds, alone on earth, the\nelements of each race-religion in well proportioned combination.\n\nNo eastern religion, Buddhism not excepted, appears to contain conceptions\nthat satisfy the western mind. The religion of the Christ, however can be\nshown to hold whatever ideas and ideals make vital the great\nrace-religions of the East. It is as many sided as humanity, and presents\na family face to every people. It takes up the ideas and ideals of other\nreligions, disengages and deposits whatever in them is temporal and\ncircumstantial, preserves whatever is essential and eternal in them,\ncombines these vital elements with the polar truths needful to their\nwholesomeness, and crystallizes ethical and spiritual religion into\nperfect forms, forms capable of translation into the idioms of every race\nof earth. This religion of the Christ is the one religion which to-day\nholds the promise and potency of further evolution, in the progressive\ncivilization of mankind on which it is enthroned.\n\n\n9. _Of the literature of the people through whom came this organic\nevolution of the keystoning religion of earth what can we say but that it\nrecords a real revelation coming through genuine personal inspirations\nfrom on high!_\n\nRevelation is the opposite aspect of the mystery which we call discovery;\nthe uncovering of that which was hidden; the unveiling of that which was\nnot known; the coming on of truth into the light wherein man can see it.\n\"Discovery\" expresses the human effort by which truth is thus uncovered\nand found out. \"Revelation\" expresses the divine effort which lies back of\nall human aspirations and endeavors; as the Spirit within man stirs him up\nto seek for Truth, flashes in upon his mind strange hints of where and\nhow she is to be found, allures him onward with the mystic whispers of her\nvoice, until at length he stands upon the mount of vision whence her holy\nform is seen, and cries--\"I have found her!\"\n\nTo him who believes in a Spirit of Truth, guiding men into all truth, the\ngrowth of ethical and spiritual religion into perfect form in Jesus Christ\nis a real revelation. It is the oncoming of the Light which lighteth every\nman that is in the world; the dawning of the day of earth on the hills of\nJudea, over which has risen the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His\nwings.\n\nThis revelation came not to the mystic \"man writ large\" we call society,\ndirect from heaven in abstract form. It came to individual men, struggling\nfor larger light and nobler life, and breathing their higher spirit on\ntheir fellows. Religion is always _life_, the experience of _souls_. We\ncan name the individuals through whom each important advance was made. The\ngreater souls who led the worship of the host welcoming the rising Light,\nthrilled with the vibrations of a voice deeper and holier than the voice\nof man. The lesser souls who formed the chorus of this anthem of The Dawn\nthrilled each alike with this mystic sense of God. That which we must aver\nof every truth discovered or revealed, of every knowledge needful to man\nand won by man; that which we must affirm as the only rational\ninterpretation of the mysterious suggestions rising below the conscious\nthoughts of man, and prompting to noblest benedictions on the race; that\nwe must, with deepened awe, say of the holiest truths shown to the human\nsoul,--Inspired!\n\nWith sincere and reverent confession we must say then in the words of Holy\nWrit:\n\n   \"Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.\" \"Every\n   Scripture profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for\n   instruction in righteousness is God-inspired.\"[23]\n\nThe consciousness and experience of Israel could not have found fitter\nexpression than in the words of our great seer:\n\n   \"I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, and unable to turn\n   his head and see the speaker. In all the millions who have heard the\n   voice, none ever saw the face. That well-known voice speaks in all\n   languages, governs all men; and none ever caught a glimpse of its form.\n   If the man will exactly obey it, it will adopt him, so that he shall\n   not any longer separate it from himself in his thought; he shall seem\n   to be it, he shall be it. If he listen with insatiable ears, richer and\n   greater wisdom is taught him, the sound swells to a ravishing music, he\n   is borne away as with a flood, he is the fool of ideas, and leads a\n   heavenly life. But if his eye is set on the things to be done, and not\n   on the truth that is still-taught, and for the sake of which the things\n   are to be done, then the voice grows faint, and at last is but a\n   humming in his ears.\"[24]\n\nWe have thus seen in the Bible an ancient and noble literature, the\nliterature of a noble race, the literature supremely influencing and\nenriching Christian civilization; demanding, therefore, our rational\nreverence, as constituting a truly Sacred Book.\n\nWe have seen in the Old Testament the literature of the people of\nreligion, commissioned with its normal evolution; writings charged with\ndeep religiousness; the records of the various moods and tenses through\nwhich religion grew continuously and insistently toward perfection, in an\norganic process watched and directed by a Higher Power than man. We have\nseen in the New Testament the record of the realization of this\nlong-sought aim of the people of religion; the story of the Divine Man,\nwho breathed religion out into perfection, and the writings that depict\nthe bodying around Him of the Universal Church, the Church in whose truth\nand life is growing the religion of the future, \"the Christ that is to\nbe.\"\n\nThe fuller knowledge of our age, in evanishing the unreal Bible restores\nthe real Bible. It is the record of the visioning and embodiment of the\nHuman Ideal, the Divine Image--The Christ. It is the Providentially\nprepared Hand Book of religion in whose rich and varied phases of ethical\nand spiritual thought all men may find the nourishment they need. It is\nthe spiritual reality our fathers rightly felt, but wrongly expressed,\nwhen they called it as a whole The Word of God. It holds the words\nproceeding from out of the mouth of God on which man liveth. It bodies in\n\"letters\" The Word of God, embodied in the flesh in Jesus Christ the Lord.\nIt records a real revelation. This revelation, however, denies no other\nrevelation. It affirms the fact of the withdrawal of a veil in each new\nknowledge won; the fact that man has felt in calling the new knowledge a\ndiscovery; and it interprets this unveiling as Tennyson has learned of it\nto do:\n\n    \"And out of darkness come the hands\n    That reach through nature, moulding man.\"\n\nThese books are the products of a real inspiration. This inspiration,\nhowever, denies no other inspiration. It interprets the sense of a higher\nthan human influence in the noblest searchers after truth, throughout the\nworld, in every action of the intellect. It affirms the validity of that\nconsciousness.[25]\n\nThe revelation in the Bible is the Light of God which streams through it,\nmaking it a \"lamp unto our feet.\" The inspiration in the Bible is the life\nof God breathing through it into man, \"and he becomes a living soul.\" The\nbook which, above all others, reveals God to man, he must call the supreme\nrevelation of God. The book which, above all others, inspires the life of\nGod in man, he must call the most inspired of God.\n\nIf, then, any one asks me how he may know that there is a revelation in\nthe Bible, I tell him to walk in its light, and see what it reveals. If\nany one asks me how I know that the Bible is inspired I answer him in Mr.\nMoody's words:\n\n    \"I know that the Bible is inspired, because it 'inspires me.'\"\n\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe wrong use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   \"God, then, is quite simple and true, both in word and deed; neither is\n   He changed Himself, nor does He deceive others--neither by visions, nor\n   discourses, nor the pomp of signs. * * * * When any one alleges such\n   things as these about the gods, we must show disapproval, and not grant\n   them the privilege of a chorus; neither should we suffer teachers to\n   employ them in the training of youth--if, at least, our guardians are\n   to be pious and divine men.\"\n\n   Plato: The Republic; Book II.\n\n\n   \"This, it seems, is the modern method of coming to inquire of the\n   oracles of God; by this process they become a light to our feet, a lamp\n   to our path! Accept the book as a whole, and then treat all the\n   portions of it just as you like. Confess all its words to be the words\n   of the Lord, and then you may yourself be lords over them, and may\n   perform moral miracles by turning the bread of life into stones for\n   casting at your enemies.\"\n\n   Maurice: What is Revelation, p. 475.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe wrong use of the Bible\n\n\n\n\n   Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for\n   reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness.--2 Timothy,\n   III, 16.\n\n\nThe Unreal Bible is fading upon the vision of our age. You have probably\nall perceived this more or less clearly. I have uttered the conviction\nwhich many of you have held in secret with misgivings and self-reproaches,\nand have shown you some of the many reasons why, as it seems to me, this\nview can no longer be held by men of open minds. The Real Bible is as yet\nvaguely seen, and, therefore, its power is feebly felt. According to their\nnatures men are indulging in flippant flings at a vanished superstition,\nor grieving silently over the disappearance of the ancient light which\nruled the night of earth. I have sought to clear your vision of the new\nmoon rising upon us, the same holy light God set in the heavens of old,\nthough changed in the altered atmosphere of earth.\n\nI propose now to translate the generalities of the previous sermons into\nsome practical applications. I want to-day to make more distinct certain\nwrong uses of the Bible which grow out of the old view of it; wrong uses\nfrom which great mischiefs have come to the cause of true religion, and\ngreat trouble to individual souls; abuses which fall away in the light of\na more reasonable understanding of the Bible. The Bible viewed as a book\nlet down from heaven, whose real \"author\" is God, as the Westminster\nCatechism affirmed; a book dictated to chosen penman and written out by\ntheir amanuenses under a direction which secured them against error on\nevery subject of which they treated; a book thus given to the world to be\nan authoratitive and infallible oracle for human information on all the\ngreat problems of life--naturally calls for uses which, apart from this\ntheory, are gross and superstitious abuses.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to set it in its entirety before all\nclasses and all ages._\n\n\n\nOn the old view of the Bible no man might dare to omit portions of it in\npublic reading or home instruction. The horrible atrocities and brutal\nlusts of the early Hebrews, and the coarsenesses of their later days, as\nunbearable by modern ears as the rough talk of Shakespeare's ladies, had\nall to be read to mixed assemblies of young men and maidens; and be read\nwith blushing face by the pure mother to the purer children at her knees.\nFor us, who see the Bible in its true light, there is no necessity for a\nminister to offend against the taste of a refined age, or for a mother to\nintroduce the unsoiled soul of her child to evil, by reading straight\nthrough the successive chapters of the Bible. It has been left for\nProtestant piety to excel Romanists and Jews in superstition. The Church\nof Rome, as you know, discourages the use of the Bible by her laity,\nerring in the other extreme. The Jewish rabbis had a saying that no one\nshould read the Canticles before he was thirty years of age. If you follow\nthe public readings of the Bible in this church from your own Bibles, you\nmust often appreciate the relief this liberty of omission brings. Use the\nBible in this way with your children at home. Who would think of an\nindiscriminate use of the original Shakespeare? Stage managers cut him so\nfreely for rendering before grown up folk as to have made another\nShakespeare. He who cares for his children's innocence will set before\nthem an expurgated edition like that of Rolfe. So we should use at home\nsuch an expurgated edition of the Scriptures as \"The Child's Bible,\"\npublished by Cassel, Petter & Galpin, of London. No timid soul need fear\nthat imprecation in the last chapter of the Revelation:\n\n   If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy\n   God shall take away his part out of the book of life.\n\nThat sounds like the ruling passion, strong in death, of the Son of\nThunder; who in youth asked if he should call down fire from heaven upon a\nhamlet which did not welcome Jesus, and was well rebuked for his zeal by\nthe gracious Master. It is part of the human weakness through which the\nvoice of God speaks, taking its tone from the defects of the instrument.\nThis imprecation had reference, in all probability, solely to the\ncopyists, against whose carelessness the author sought to guard himself by\nan awful threat. It certainly had reference to this book alone. Not until\nlong afterwards did the Church determine what books were to enter the\ncanon of the New Testament, and in what order they were to stand. That\norder placed the Revelation as the last book in the canon, and thus made\nthis threat appear to cover the whole Bible.[26]\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to accept its utterances indiscriminately\nas the words of God, to quote every saying of every speaker in its pages,\nor every deed of every actor in its histories as expressing to us the mind\nof God._\n\n\n\nSuch use of the Bible is thoughtlessly common. Some time ago before going\ninto a church in whose service I was asked to participate, I ventured to\nshow some slight hesitancy in using certain Psalms which were set down in\nthe Psalter for the day. When asked, why, I mildly answered that I could\nnot request a Christian congregation to join with me in singing, after the\nembittered Jews in Babylon:\n\n   Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem. How\n   they said, \"Down with It! down with it! even to the ground.\" Oh,\n   daughter of Babylon, who art to be wasted, Happy shall he be that\n   rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that taketh\n   thy little ones and throweth them against the stones.\n\nNor could I ask the people to unite in praying:\n\n   Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb; yea, all their princes as Zeba\n   and Salmana.\n\nI had in mind the fate of Oreb and Zeeb and of Zeba and Salmana,\nsplendidly brave fellows even in their death, as told in the seventh and\neighth chapters of Judges, where you can learn what sort of prayer was\nthis of those savage Jews. Naturally, as I thought, I objected to voicing\nsuch heathen imprecations in the nineteenth century of the era of the\nPrince of Peace. My good friend, with a look of amazement, replied, \"Why,\nthese Psalms are in the Bible.\" That ended the question for him.\n\nThis incident is typical of a vast quantity of wrong uses of the Bible.\nThus our American slaveholder read that 'precious' word of the ancient\ntradition, \"Cursed be Ham,\" and smoothed his troubled conscience. He had\nthe sanction of the Bible for the curse plainly upon Africa. He was\nfulfilling the Divine will in breeding black cattle for the auction block.\nPiety and profit were one, and godliness had great gain, and some\ncontentment also. Thus the extermination of the Canaanites, for which the\nHebrews pleaded long after the Divine order, and for which they had\nsubstantial warrant in Destiny's determination to rid the land of these\ncorrupting tribes and make room for the noble life Israel was to develop,\nhas been the stock argument of kings and soldiers for their bloody trade.\nThus poor human consciences have been sorely hurt and troubled as men have\nread, in stories such as those of Jael and Sisera and Jacob and Esau, of\nacts which their better nature instinctively condemned. They have felt\nthemselves arraigning the Bible and suspecting God.\n\nIf indeed the Bible is a book let down from the skies, of which God can be\ncalled the 'author,' then all such uses of it may be correct enough, and\nin those dark and savage words and deeds I may be obliged to find the\nwords of God and the deeds He holds up to our admiration and imitation;\nthough I do not see that such a use is a necessity, even on this theory.\nFancy a man quoting Shylock when he pleads for his bond, or Iago's\ndevilish innuendos against Desdemona's purity, as showing what Shakespeare\nliked or what he would have us imitate! \"These are the words of\nShakespeare!\" Yes, but of Shakespeare's Shylock, Shakespeare's Iago.\n\nIf, however, the Old Testament is the national library of the Jews, I\nmust expect to find all sorts of early Jewish notions, in ethics and\nreligion, bodied in the words of the speakers they introduce, and the\ndeeds of the men of whom they tell the tales.\n\nIf the Bible is the record of a real revelation which came in the spirits\nof ancient men, through the historic growth of conscience and reason; and\nif these books are the literature embalming that growth of a people out of\nignorance and superstition into the light of pure ethics and spiritual\nreligion; then I must look to find all sorts of crudities and crassnesses\nin the representation of God, and all phases of unmoral and immoral life,\nas parts of the error and imperfection out of which they were educated.\nThese deeds and words are the milestones in the path of progress by which\nJudaism reached Christianity. If the individual is to reproduce the story\nof the race, as our wise men tell us, then these words and deeds are in\nthe Bible to carry us through the same course of education; to exercise\nour consciences in discriminating right from wrong, and to lead us to grow\nout of such conceptions and desires toward the spirit of Christ. In a\ncruise last summer we dropped anchor in a lovely little out-of-the-way\nharbor of Buzzard's Bay, which proved to be near Pocasset; where, not long\nago, a pious man, reading the Hebrew tradition of Abraham and Isaac, as a\nreal command of the Most High, and having this word of the Lord borne in\non his mind, as spoken to himself, murdered his child in sacrifice to\nGod--no angel interfering to stay his knife. He simply made a _reductio ad\nabsurdum_ of this use of the Bible.[27]\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to accept everything recorded therein as\nnecessarily true._\n\n\n\nIf the historians were simply the amanuenses of the Infinite Spirit, then\nof course they could not have erred in anything they recorded. If they\nwere ordinary writers, trying to tell the story of their peoples' growth;\nsearching court archives, state annals, old parchments of forgotten\nwriters, consulting the traditions of town and village, using their\nmaterial in the best way their abilities enabled them to do; using all to\nteach virtue and religion, for which alone they were specially qualified\nof God; then all questions of historical accuracy are beside the mark.\nNothing in their inspiration guarantees their historical accuracy; their\nphilological learning in using ancient poetic language, or their critical\njudgment in detecting exaggerations. Are we to wait anxiously upon the\nlatest Assyrian tablets or the freshest Egyptian mummy to confirm our\nfaith that God has spoken to the spirit of man? Are we to quake in our\nshoes when a few ciphers are cut off from the roll of Israel's impossible\narmies? If much that we read as literal history turns out legend and myth,\nare we to find a painful alternative between a blind credulity and as\nblind a skepticism? We follow this same re-reading of Roman and Grecian\nstory untroubled, and see the heroes of our childhood turn into races and\nsun-myths without calling the Muse of History a fraud.\n\nHas it been such comfort to us to read the doings of Samson as actual\nhistory, slaying a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, tying\nfire-brands to the tails of three hundred foxes, etc., that we should\nresent the translation of this impossible hero into the Semitic Hercules,\na solar myth? Or if, perchance, the historian accepted from remote\nantiquity the accounts of great deeds and striking events, as they were\ntold at the camp fires of the Hebrew nomads, or in the merry makings of\nthe Palestinian villages, with an ever growing nimbus of the marvelous\ngathering around them; and if thus impossible marvels are reported to us\nsoberly, are we to be compelled to accept them uncritically or reject the\nBible altogether? The Bible itself points us to the interpretation of such\nlegends We have some histories written by the actors in the scenes\nnarrated. Nehemiah and Ezra, leaders in the most important movement of\nHebrew history after the migration led by Moses, left accounts of their\nwork from their own pens. In such a crucial epoch as that of the\nrestoration of the Jews to their native land, after the dispersion in\nBabylonia, we might expect to find miraculous interpositions on behalf of\nthe chosen people, if they are to be found anywhere. But no tale of\nmiracle adorns their simple pages. No other old Testament history, written\nby the actors in its scenes, tells of miracles. Such stories are found in\nthe traditions written down long after the events narrated, by men who\nknew nothing of the facts at first hand. Exceptions to this rule occur\nalone in such startling events as the mysterious calamity that befell\nSennacherib; which strongly impressed the imagination of the people and\nnaturally gave rise to exaggerations that we can no longer resolve.\n\nPerhaps Elisha's iron axe head did swim upon the water. I am prepared to\nbelieve almost anything after our spiritualistic mediums, and their\nexposers. Whether it did or did not concerns me no whit. I shrug my\nshoulders and read on. I cannot make out the historical fact which was at\nthe basis of the Red Sea deliverance; nor do I care much to make out this\nor any other Old Testament miracle. If I felt obliged to accept literally\nthese stories, or to lose my faith in the voice of God which speaks\nthrough the men of the Bible I should care greatly. In the true view of\nthe Bible I am delivered from solicitude about these traditions, and am\nunder no constraint of credulity. Those who can believe the story of\nElisha and the bears, or of Elijah's ascension into heaven, may; those who\ncannot, need not; and both alike should reverently read their Bibles, not\nfor these tales of wonder, but for the still small voice of the eternal\nspirit sounding through holy lives and holier aspirations, until He came\nwhose life was the Word of God, the Wonderful.[28]\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to consult it as a heathen oracle for the\ndetermining of our judgments and the decision of our actions._\n\n\n\nThe pagans, even such grand old pagans as the Romans, before undertaking\nany important action would solemnly consult the auspices. Men with reason\ngiven them of God would stand anxiously around the steaming entrails of a\nbird, to find out whether the fates were propitious to their undertaking.\nGreat generals would open or delay a campaign according to the intestinal\nrevelations of a goose. Intelligent people use the Bible in some such way.\nWhen at a loss how to proceed, instead of calmly consulting their own\njudgments and the judgments of their wisest friends, and then acting like\nreasonable beings, men and women will open their Bibles at random, let\nthen-eyes rest on the first verse which arrests their attention, and\naccept any possible bearing on the question in hand as the voice of God.\nThe journals of John Wesley and other eminent men contain examples of this\nabuse of the Bible. I call it an abuse, for such action degrades the Bible\nto the level of a heathen oracle. Isaiah, like all the great prophets,\nhabitually contrasted the true and the false communications of of the\nDivine will by the test of the reasonableness of their manifestations. The\nreal prophet heard the voice of God, not so much in dreams and visions, in\nthe \"peepings and chirpings\" of the oracles, as in the calm and sober\nworking of his mind, illumined from on high. The oracle was the antithesis\nof the prophet. The oracle represented unintelligent, unreasonable magical\nmeans of getting at a desired knowledge. The prophet represented the\nintelligent, reasoning, natural means of getting at that knowledge; the\nlighting of that candle of the Lord which is the spirit of man. In the\nprofound double significance of the original, the _Logos_ is the Word or\nthe Reason. The Word of God which comes to man is the Divine Reason, of\nwhich each human reason is a ray. To train and use that reason in all our\nexigencies, humbly looking up to the Eternal Reason to let the light in us\nbe pure and clear, is the way to hear the Word of God.\n\nTo consult the reason of the holy men of old on themes whereon they were\nqualified to speak is rational and right. To make of their writings a new\noracle whose mysterious meanings we are to guess, as the ancient Greeks\npuzzled over the messages of the Delphic shrine, is to revive Paganism in\nChristianity. \"No prophecy is of any private interpretation.\" No passage\nin the Bible was written, centuries ago, with reference to your private\naffairs. All that is there written concerned men and affairs of distant\ndays. The principles there applied will help you now, if you will take the\ntrouble to search for them, since principles do not change with the\nfashions.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to go to it, as the heathen went to their\noracles, for divination of the future._\n\n\n\nThe pagan oracles were the shrines of a Power sought for the forecasting\nof events. The inspiration of an oracle was proven by the success of its\npredictions. In the same way men have turned to the Bible as a sort of\nsacred weather bureau, a book which, if we could only interpret its mystic\nutterances, would tell us what things were going to happen upon the earth.\nI remember an eloquent Irish divine who came to this country on a great\nmission a number of years ago. His first sermon was on Ezekiel's vision by\nthe Chebar. He said that this was the age of science, and that such a\nmarvel as science could not have escaped the vision of the prophets. This\nmystic creature which the prophet saw, with wheels, whose appearance was\nlike burning coals of fire, which turned not as it went, and so on,\nwas--the locomotive! This folly was only more undisguised than the mass of\nthe lucubrations called Prophetic Studies.\n\nLet any political crisis occur, and some sage will write a book showing\nhow Daniel had foretold this issue of diplomacy. I have not forgotten the\nlearned tracts and essays called forth by the fascination Louis Napoleon\nexercised upon the imaginations of half-educated people; all proving\nbeyond a doubt that he was the mystic man of sin, the Anti-Christ in whom\nhistory was to culminate.\n\nAmerica, the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, and the Church of Rome\nespecially inspire, at present, these crazy conjectures. They ought all to\nissue from Bedlam.\n\nThis mad and maddening use of what, rightly read, are noble and\ninstructive books, grows out of a misunderstanding of what were the\nfunctions of Hebrew prophecy.\n\nProphecy has been taken as a synonyme for prediction. There is not much\nverbal difference between foretelling and forthtelling, but there is a\nvast difference for the purposes of religion. Taking prophecy as the\nsynonyme of foretelling, the essential function of the prophets became\npredicting. They were supposed to have been busy in forecasting the things\nwhich should come to pass in the far future. The success of these\nlong-range predictions was the demonstration of their being charged with\nmiraculous powers. The prophecies constituted the chief evidence for the\nsupernatural character of the Bible. Of course, with this theory in the\nmind of the church, a predictive character would be read into everything\ncapable of bearing it; and the history of the Hebrews, the eloquent\norations of their great statesmen, the pious longings of their hymn\nwriters, became mystic anticipations of everything in the heavens above\nand the earth beneath.\n\nBut Hebrew prophecy never was the synonyme for prediction. It meant\nforth-telling. The prophets were \"men of the spirit,\" whose pure nature\nmirrored the supreme laws of earth, the moral laws; whose intuitions made\napplication of those laws to the policies of statecraft, and enabled them\nto divine the issues of the stirring events amid which they lived. Their\nglory is that they saw above the brute force of great empires the might of\nright, and dared to vision its triumph, and that history has verified\ntheir moral insight. But they chiefly spake, as the author of The\nRevelation declares of his prophecy, \"of things which must shortly come to\npass\" upon the earth. Their horizon bounded a very nigh future the\napproach of Syrian, Assyrian, Egyptian invaders the overthrow of\nJerusalem, etc.\n\nIn these predictions they were often mistaken; nearly as often in error as\nin the right. We seldom hear of these unfulfilled prophecies, but they are\nin your Bibles. They should teach you, that which the prophets tried so\nhard to teach their own cotemporaries, that the essential distinction of\nthe true prophet was not that he predicted the future, for this they\nscornfully left to the false prophets the oracles of the pagan Jews, but\nthat they forthtold the inner mind and will of God, read the 'laws mighty\nand brazen' which constitute the essential nature of the Most High and\nhold the supreme felicity of man. I believe I know of no one passage of\nthe prophets which can be certainly said to point to any event beyond the\nnear future of the writer. Only in so far as they spoke of the ideal\nforces, of ethical victories, did they launch out upon the far future.\n\nBut you say, Do not the Old Testament prophets surely point on to Christ?\nI answer both No, and Yes. Of any mere literal prediction of the events of\nHis life I know none. The many passages that have been made to read like\npredictions of His miraculous birth, His sale for thirty pieces of silver,\nand so on, refer to personages and experiences in the time of the writers.\nIsaiah expressly says this about the Virgin--that is, the young bride--who\nwas to conceive and bear a son. Before he should be able to distinguish\nright from wrong the relief of Jehovah to Israel would appear. The\npassages which seem to our eyes, looking through orthodox spectacles, to\nhave this predictive character, lose it in a more exact translation.\n\nIt is doubtless true that the Gospels make many such applications of Old\nTestament words, adding to their record of minute incidents--\"That it\nmight be fulfilled which was spoken by ... saying.\" But the Gospels, as we\nnow possess them, have been slowly fashioned by the labor of many hands,\nworking over the tradition which gradually shaped itself out of the\nreminiscences of multitudes of men and women. Pious Jews, trained in this\nRabbinical use of their Sacred Scriptures, delighting to make application\nof ancient mystic sayings to the life of their adorable Messiah, read into\nthe Gospel narrative these fulfillments of prediction.\n\nThis use of the Old Testament has been pushed to absurdity in learned\nbooks over which I have patiently toiled. \"The Gospel of Leviticus,\" gave\nme the Hebrew civic and ecclesiastic legislation mystified into 'sound\nevangelical' symbols. \"Christ in the Psalms\" twisted every heathenish\nimprecation of the Hebrew hymns into language which could be put upon the\nlips of the dear Lord, and turned the bitterest curses into sweet and\ngracious benedictions.\n\nThe culmination of this moon-struck exegesis, as far as my knowledge\nreaches, is in the ancient and fantastic reading of the tradition of the\nescape of the spies from Jericho, which gave a young and eloquent Bishop\nof our church a favorite sermon; wherein he showed conclusively that the\nscarlet cord by which Rahab let down her visitors over the city wall was a\ntype of the atoning blood of Christ!\n\nThis Chinese puzzle-book of predictions exists nowhere save in the\nimagination of its readers.\n\nThere was, however, a most real and substantial typifying of Christ\nthrough the Old Testament; but it was natural, organic, ethical and\nspiritual; in those books as first in the lives of the people. The growth\nof the nation onward toward the true Image of God, the true Human Ideal;\nthe travail of the nation with the Divine-Human Character which at the\nlast came to the birth in Jesus the Christ; this was a mystery of natural,\norganic evolution, which 'must give us pause' in every shallow denial of\na supernatural involution in human history. This makes true rationalism\nreverent before 'that Holy Thing' born not alone of Mary but of Mary's\nrace, begotten plainly of the overshadowings of some Holy Ghost, of whom\nour best judgment is, now as of old,--\"He shall be called the Son of the\nHighest.\"\n\nThe whole history of Israel is a growth of The Christ, and that is the\nabiding wonder of it.\n\nIn such a mystic evolution it may well be, in history as in nature, that\nthe organic processes type the oncoming form of life; but to trace these\nrightly there is needed a finer criticism than that which has given us the\northodox typology.[29]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLet us pause here for to-day. And let us take home, as the heart-thought\nof the morning, an assurance which may comfort us as we stand under the\nshadow of Christmas. If the dear Christ's throne stood on any such flimsy\nbasis of prophecy as men have built up beneath it, then, when the\nunderpinnings came tumbling out, as to-day they are doing, we might fear\nthat His authority was dropping in with them; that no longer we were to\ncall Him Master and King; that criticism had pronounced His _decheance_.\nBut His throne really rests on a nation's growth of the human Ideal and\nDivine Image. And, since this nation's growth was on the same general\nlines as the religious and ethical progress of other races, His throne\nrests on no less secure a foundation than humanity's evolution of the\nhuman Ideal and Divine Image. Man's best and noblest life aspires after an\nideal which is the Christly character. Man's best and noblest thoughts of\nGod fashion a vision which is the God revealed in Christ. He is Humanity's\n\"Master of Life.\"\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nThe wrong use of the Bible\n\n\n\n\n   \"The Scriptures will be more studied than they have been, and in a\n   different manner--not as a magazine of propositions and mere dialectic\n   entities, but as inspirations and poetic forms of life; requiring,\n   also, divine inbreathings and exaltations in us, that we may ascend\n   into their meaning. No false _precision,_ which the nature and\n   conditions of spiritual truth forbid, will, by cutting up the body of\n   truth into definite and dead morsels, throw us into states of excision\n   and division, equally manifold. We shall receive the truth of God in a\n   more organic and organific manner, as being itself an essentially vital\n   power.\"\n\n   Horace Bushnell. God in Christ; p. 93.\n\n\n   \"But, further, the zealots for the Bible _as it is_, just because it\n   _is_, forget that, in their outcry in behalf of every existing book,\n   and paragraph, and sentence, and word in the present edition of it, as\n   'God's Word written,' they are simply begging the question, What _is_\n   'God's Word written'? What _is_, without any doubt, a genuine portion\n   of those writings which contain the message from God? The question is,\n   in no case, 'Will you part with any utterance of God's voice, whether\n   through apostle or evangelist?' but only, 'Is this particular word, or\n   sentence, or passage, truly such an utterance? Have we good grounds for\n   accepting it as such? Nay, have we not overwhelming grounds for\n   doubting it to be such?' We do right to hold fast 'the faith once\n   delivered to the saints,' but the more we are determined to be faithful\n   to this faith, just the more sedulous and more searching must be our\n   inquiry, Have we here this faith in its integrity?\"\n\n   Thomas Griffith, late Prebendary of St. Paul's, London: The Gospel of\n   the Divine Life, p. 418.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nThe wrong use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n   \"Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for\n   reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man\n   of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.\"--2\n   Tim. iii; 16-17.\n\n\n\"Use the world as not abusing it\" was a great principle of the Apostle,\nwhich has many special applications. One of these comes again before us\nto-day: Use the Bible as not abusing it.\n\nI proceed to point out some further wrong uses of the Bible:\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to go to it as an authority in any sphere\nsave the spheres of theology and of religion._\n\n\n\nIn the traditional view it was an infallible authority upon every subject\nof which it treated.\n\nThe Divine Being had prepared a book which answered off-hand the questions\nman's mind naturally starts concerning the problems of existence; a book\nwhich taught officially how the earth came into its present form, how life\narose upon it, how man was made, how sin entered, how the world was\npeopled, how mankind was to fare upon the earth, how the present order was\nto come to an end, and many things beside. To answer authoritatively these\nquestions was the _raison d'\u00eatre_ of the Bible. It laid a solid foundation\nfor a science of life. With the passing away of the unreal Bible all\nreference to it for such information should cease. These books, as actual\nhuman writings, the studies of men of long past centuries, of men having\nno guarantees of infallibility, cannot be expected to have anticipated the\nsolution of the great problems of knowledge, towards which the human\nintellect has been laboriously working through the generations since they\nwere written; towards which it is still toilsomely striving, content, even\nnow, with the cold, grey light as of the dawning day.\n\nOur truer idea of revelation--the evolution of nature and the historic\ngrowth of man--forbids such a notion of any book. It has plainly pleased\nthe Most High that knowledge of these mysteries should come to man through\nhis patient, persevering effort after truth. Such continued endeavour wins\ngradually better knowledge, and with it better life. This process of human\ndiscovery is yet more truly a process of the Divine self-revealing. In\neach and every real knowledge man is learning to know--God. Each truth of\nscience is a manifestation of somewhat in the Infinite Power in whom we\nlive and move and have our being. Had it pleased God to have given,\ncenturies ago, a super-natural answer to these problems of earth, He would\nsimply have dismissed His children from school, with-held from them that\nnoble education which lies in the discipline of study, and, while giving\nthem truth, have robbed them of that keenest joy of life, that benediction\nricher even than the possession of truth--the search for it.\n\nHow indeed, even in the resources of omnipotence, could an answer to the\nearth-problems have been framed, which, while coming down to the plane of\nthe age of Moses, should have kept level with the rise of human knowledge\nthrough the climbing centuries? No, the Bible was not prepared as an\nEncyclopedia of Knowledge for the successive generations of men. Its\nwriters may anticipate the thought of ages by profound intuitions,\npregnant imaginations, visions of the seer, as Plato does. Genius often\noutstrips the plodding feet of generations. But genius must not put on the\nairs of omniscience. It must submit its claims to trial by jury. They are\nto stand, if stand they shall, not because they are in Genesis or the\nRepublic, but because they prove true.\n\nWhen (_e.g._) the Biblical writers speak of the Creation, the Garden of\nEden, the Fall of Man, etc., they give us their thoughts, the thoughts of\ntheir age, the thoughts of earlier ages, of greatly gifted minds in many\nages gathering into an imposing tradition; which, as we now see, came down\nthrough successive generations of Hebrews, from a remote antiquity in\nwhich this race had not been thrown off from the common Semitic stock. On\nthe baked clay tablets of Babylonia we read to-day the same stories. The\nHebrews worked them over, under the plastic power of their religious\ngenius, into the lofty ethical and theistic forms in which they stand in\nGenesis; forms which, rightly read, are parables fresh and inspiring now,\nas when, twenty-five hundred years ago, Jewish children listened to them\nwith awe beneath the willows by the water courses of Babylonia. That most\nexquisite story of our weird Hawthorne, the Marble Faun, is a version of\nthe legend of the Garden of Eden. Commingled with these lofty truths we\nfind crude notions of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology How\ncould it be otherwise, since these sciences were embryotic then, or even\nunborn? We hearken, reverently, thankfully, to the philosophy and poetry\nof Hebrew, Chaldean and Accadian sages and seers, in these profound and\nsubtle parables of the mysteries which still fascinate us. We dismiss the\nknowledge of nature set forth in these legends and myths as the\nchild-sciences of Israel and Chaldea and Accadia.\n\nWe go to our savans for knowledge of physical nature. We make no attempt\nto reconcile Genesis with the Origin of Species. Genesis is no authority\nin science, and The Origin of Species is no authority in philosophy,\npoetry, theology or religion.\n\nThe accounts of man in the dim distance of pre-historic times, given in\nGenesis, belong to the departments of the antiquarian, and the\nphilologist; and we trust their story, no matter how it collides with the\nHebrew traditions. So through every sphere of knowledge upon which the\nBiblical writers enter, outside of their own special spheres, we follow\nthem as venerable guides, but as entirely fallible authorities, expressing\nthe knowledge of their age and race.\n\nThus, to take one example from later times, St. Paul, in the first epistle\nto the Corinthians, condemns woman's participation in the exercises of\nworship and instruction in the Christian assemblies of Corinth. This\njudgment is accepted, by those who hold to the unreal Bible, as forclosing\nthe case of woman versus man in the vocation of the ministry, in this land\nand age as in all lands and ages. We saw lately the action of this theory\nover in Brooklyn. Though she had the gifts and graces of a Lucretia Mott,\nthough her preaching were blessed as that of a Miss Smiley, though woman's\ntemperament seems peculiarly fitted for the inspirational influences of\nthe pulpit, yet Nature's ordination must be disowned because Saul of\nTarsus thought it unseemly for a woman to speak in meeting! He thought it\nunseemly also, as he tells us in the same letter, that woman should appear\nunveiled in public assemblies; in which you do not seem to consider him an\nauthority. Why should you defer to him in the one opinion and disregard\nhim in the other? Both opinions formed part of his education as a Jew of\nthe first century of our era; as which he frankly confessed that he\nregarded woman as inferior to man. We do not consider the Jewish\nphysiology and psychology of that age binding on us; and St. Paul's\nopinion on such a matter falls to the ground with it.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible, for the purposes of theology or religion,\nto give its language any other meaning than that which similar language\nwould have under similar circumstances._\n\n\n\nPeople of sound minds do not read poetic language in other books as though\nit were prose. They do not take words thrown off at white heat; crowd\nthem, all molten with feeling, into the mould of a Gradgrind\nunderstanding; force them to take the form of such matter-of-fact minds;\nand then, when the emotion is cooled down, and the fluent fancies are\nreduced to stiff, hard prose, say--\"there, that is the exact meaning of\nthis language!\" Fancy Shakespeare's impetuous, tumultuous riotous imagery\ntreated by such 'criticism!'\n\nYet that is the sort of treatment which many learned pedants call\n'expounding the Bible!' It is with the greatest difficulty that the\nWestern mind can rightly read the Eastern's language. We miss the rich\naroma of their nectared speech, and find only the grounds left. And we\ntake these grounds for the true original beverage of the gods! Out of such\nresiduum of poetry, when the poesy has exhaled, we make our spiritual\nfood! Poetry petrified into prose--is the real explanation to be offered\nof many an absurdity of Bible-reading.\n\nA visitor to one of the Shaker communities describes the men and women as\nengaging in the most preposterous play of making-believe; performing upon\nimaginary instruments as they marched in procession; going through the\nmotions of washing their faces and hands as they surrounded an imaginary\nfountain; and, finally, plunging bodily into this spiritual fountain, by\nrolling over on the grass! To an exclamation of surprise at such childish\ndoings, answer was made that thus they were becoming as little children,\nin order to enter the kingdom of heaven![30]\n\nLuther sat disputing with Zwinglius the doctrine of trans-substantiation,\nand to every argument of his rational opponent answered by laying his\nsturdy finger on the words, \"This _is_ my body.\" The most powerful Church\nof Christendom bases itself upon this prosaic reading of a poetic saying.\n\nMany a mysterious dogma would simplify itself at once by remembering that,\nin the language of the imagination, \"the letter killeth, but the spirit\ngiveth it life.\"[31]\n\nWe are not to rush from this extreme into the opposite error and turn into\nmystical and marvellous meanings the plain sense of the Biblical writers.\nImagine the result of putting all sorts of mystic glosses on the\nstraight-forward accounts of men and things in ordinary writings. Such is\nin reality the folly of turning the sober statements of Biblical prose\nwriters into allegories, parables, symbols, types; and of finding\nunderneath the plainest meanings a double, triple and quadruple sense.\n\nIn the hour of Christ's approaching arrest he warns his disciples, in His\nusual figurative manner, that they must now learn to provide for\nthemselves; since he would shortly be taken from them. \"He that hath a\npurse let him take it; and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment\nand buy one.\" And his disciples, being very unimaginative folk, or being\nperhaps stupefied with wonder and anxiety by His strange words and actions\non that night of sad surprises said--\"Lord, behold here are two swords.\"\nThe Master answered, with a weariness of their obtuseness that we can feel\nin the curt reply, \"It is enough.\" And the wisdom of the Roman Church sees\nherein a type of the temporal and spiritual power of the Papacy!\n\nI am solemnly warned against such learned puerilities every time I turn to\nmy shelves and encounter Swedenborg's \"Arcana Coelestia.\" In ten goodly\nvolumes he interprets Scripture history after this fashion:\n\n   \"'And Rebecca arose'--hereby is signified an elevation of the affection\n   of truth: 'And her damsels'--hereby are signified subservient\n   affections: 'And they rode upon camels'--hereby is signified the\n   intellectual principle elevated above natural scientifics.\"!\n\nOf all this pious sort of folly we may say with the Master--\"Enough.\"\n\nIt is the common mistake which gathers a nimbus of mystic sense around\nevery book excessively revered. Thus the Greeks fancied an inner and\nmystical sense in Homer; and thus Italian professors expound the esoteric\nsignificance of Dante.\n\nThe fantastic dream of mysterious meanings in the Bible must take wings\nafter its kindred fancies of Greeks and Italians, at the touch of a\nripening literary judgment. One rule holds of all human letters. Where\nthere is legend, myth, metaphor, or other clear form of poetic fancy,\nlanguage is to be read imaginatively. Otherwise, in the Bible, as out of\nit, the ordinary meaning of words must be followed.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to construct a theology out of it, by the\nmechanical system of proof texts in vogue in the churches._\n\n\n\nWith a preconceived system of thought in their minds, drawn from the most\nhighly evolved speculations of the New Testament, men have gone through\nboth Testaments; and whenever they have lighted upon a sentence which\nseemed to coincide with this system, it has been torn bleeding from its\nplace in a living texture of thought, impaled on some one of the \"Five\nPoints,\" and set up in the Theological Cabinet, duly labelled \"Proof-Text\nof Original Sin,\" or \"Proof Text of Future Punishment.\"\n\nWhat a monstrosity an ordinary Sunday School Scripture Catechism is, with\nits statements of received doctrines, to which are appended proof-texts\ndrawn from Genesis and Isaiah and Paul; _i.e._, from some pre-historic\ntradition, from a Hebrew states, man's oration and from a Christian\napostle's letter. It makes no difference what the character of the writing\nfrom which the sentence is taken. Everything is grist for this mill. A\n\"judgment\" or \"doom\" of the nomadic Hebrews, a burning metaphor from a\nlate poet and a metaphysical proposition from an Alexandrian philosopher\nare jumbled together side by side, as co-equal proofs of the most awful\ndoctrines.\n\nAn ancient historian, gathering up the traditions of his primitive\nfore-fathers, records the legend of the Flood, in which it is told that\n\n    \"God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,\n    And that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart\n    Was only evil continually.\"\n\nThe poet who wrote, out of the deep of some experience of shameful sin,\nthe pathetic penitential hymn, known as the Fifty-first Psalm, said, in\nthe course of his self-condemnings:--\n\n    \"Behold I was shapen in wickedness,\n    And in sin hath my mother conceived me.\"\n\nThe poet who wrote his unrivaled prophecies amid the humiliation of the\nnational exile in Babylonia, cried out in one place:--\n\n    \"We are all as an unclean thing,\n    And all our righteousness are as filthy rags.\"\n\nAnd these mythic and poetic words, true to man's abiding sense of evil in\nhis deepest hours, stand to-day in the arsenal of theology as proof-texts\nof the doctrines of original sin and total depravity!\n\nEven this folly has been surpassed. Among the proverbial sayings of the\nJews was one to this effect;\n\n    \"If the tree fall towards the South, or towards the North,\n    In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.\"\n\nThe meaning of such a proverb is surely plain enough. Death's action is\nirrevocable. As it meets a man it leaves him. His plans and schemes lie as\nincapable of development as the fallen tree is incapable of new\nsproutings. At the time the book of Ecclesiastes was written, the belief\nin any life after death was little known in Israel. This book was the work\nof a thorough pessimist, whose constant refrain was--Vanity of Vanities,\nall is Vanity. It gives no hint of a second life; and in the absence of\nthis faith the present life is to the writer an insoluble problem. This\nsaying really expressed the popular belief that death ended everything. A\nman falls like a tree, and, like a prostrate tree, as he falls he lies.\n\nAnd lo! this Jewish proverb is the first proof-text generally quoted for\nthe dread doctrine that after death there is another life, but that its\ncharacter is fixed forever by the state of the man at death; the dogma of\neverlasting conscious suffering in Hell!\n\nWhat Midsummer Night's Dream reasoning, turning common-sense topsy-turvy,\nand treating the words of God in the very reverse way from that in which\nall sane people agree to treat the words of man!\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to disregard the chronological order of\nits parts in constructing our theology._\n\n\n\nWe are not to read the Biblical writers as though they were all\ncotemporaries. They are separated by vast tracts of time. The later\nwriters stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors and see further and\nclearer. We are not to view the institutions or doctrines of the Bible as\nthough, no matter in what period of the development of the Hebrew Nation\nor of the Christian Church they are found, they were equally authoritative\nupon us. That would be to say that green apples are as good food for us as\nripe ones. The time-perspective is essential to set any Biblical\ninstitution or dogma in the true light.\n\nRomanists and our own Ritualists entrench their sacerdotalism behind the\npriestly system of the Jews. As though, because that was once needful and\nserviceable to an ignorant, half heathen people, it was still\nindispensible to us. As though what providence once ordained, providence\nperpetually imposed on humanity. Such a rule would keep us with our\nprimers always in our hands. Progress is marked by the debris of discarded\ninstitutions, wholesome and necessary once, but incumbrances after a time.\nThe whole _rationale_ of sacerdotalism is exploded by this simple common\nsense principle; and we see in its light the significance of Paul's\nimpatient sweeping away of the Law; of the entire ignoring of the\nsacrifice and the priesthood in the life and teaching of Jesus himself.\n\n    \"The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain,\n    Nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. God is spirit;\n    And they that worship must worship him in spirit and in truth.\"\n\nDogmas also must be seen in historical perspective. Thus, for example, the\ndoctrine of the Second Advent, which still exercises the Christian mind,\nis wholly cleared up as looked at through the time-vista.\n\nWe see the progress of the Messianic expectation through the centuries\nimmediately prior to the age of Christ, in our old Testament books and in\nthe Apocryphal writings. In these latter works we see it gradually\ngathering round itself visions of the winding up of the present aeon, the\nrenovation of the earth, the judgment of the nations, the resurrection of\nthe pious dead, and the opening of a millenial era in which the Messiah\nshould rule the world from Jerusalem. It would appear to have even\ndeveloped the notion that the Messiah, after his appearance on earth,\nwould depart into the spirit-world, to consummate his preparation; and\nwould return thence to assume full power. This had became the popular\nexpectation by the Christian era.\n\nWhen then the early Christians became satisfied that Jesus was the\nMessiah, it followed of necessity that they should after his death, say to\nthemselves--\"He has gone into the heavens to receive his institution into\nthe office he has won by his sinless life and suffering death. He will\ncome again in the clouds with power; the conquering Messiah.\"\n\nThis belief seems to have taken shape first in Paul's fervid mind. His\nearlier epistles were full of it. His converts became unsettled by it, and\nin their excited expectation of the return of the Messiah they neglected\ntheir earthly duties; and Paul had to caution them against this impatience\nand cool their heated minds.\n\nThis and other experiences sobered Paul's own mind. He found that as year\nafter year came round the Messiah did not return. In the rapid ripening of\nthought which went on in the tropical climate of his soul, he grew into a\nmore spiritual apprehension of Christ. If you read his undoubted letters\nin the order of their writing; First Thessalonians, First and Second\nCorinthians, Galatians, Romans, etc., you will note a steady decrease of\nreference to this topic, until it fades away into a vague vision of the\ndawning day of God; the absolute assurance that Christ would conquer and\nrule the earth, though it might be in the spirit and not in the flesh; the\ncertain conviction of a good time coming though beyond his ken. The later\nlight of the apostle corrected his earlier misapprehensions; and would\ncorrect our crude and carnal notions of the second coming of Christ, if we\nwould only study Paul, as we study Turner or Shakespeare, in his ripening\n'periods.'\n\nWere this one principle followed, our popular theology would soon\nreconstruct itself.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to cite its authors as of equal authority,\neven in the spheres of theology and religion._\n\n\n\nThe teachings of any human writing come clothed with such authority as the\nauthor's name lends to it or its intrinsic force wins for it.\n\nIf in the work of an obscure economic writer, of no perceptible ability,\nyou come upon the theory that the land of a people belongs to the people;\nthat its passing into the absolute ownership of private persons is the\nbasic evil of our civilization; that the nation must resume the\ninalienable rights of the people at large, in the resources of all wealth,\nand regulate the individual usufruct of land in the interests of the\nentire body politic--you will probably toss the book contemptuously from\nyou as the crazy lucubration of a fool.\n\nIf in reading John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy you come\nupon this theory, cautiously broached, you are constrained to treat it\nwith the consideration due an acknowledged master in this science. If\nagain in the first elaborate work of a new author, Progress and Poverty,\nyou meet this same theory, boldly laid down as the central theme of the\nbook, and contended for as the real solution of the persistent problem of\npauperism, you are disposed to pass it by unheeded. The author's name\ncarries to your mind no prestige of tradition. He speaks from no\ntime-honored university chair. No array of imposing titles hang upon the\nplain 'Henry George,' of the title page. But you become interested in\nthese brilliant pages of genius and follow the author, with growing\nsympathy, to the end.\n\nYou lay the book down, feeling as though a spell had been upon you, in\nwhich you could form no sound judgment. You lay it by accordingly, to take\nit up after some weeks, work over its positions, and find your first\nimpressions confirmed; to realize that here is a work of real, rare power;\nan epoch-making book, which, if it does not carry your conviction,\ncommands your careful consideration.\n\nPrecisely so we are to be affected by the Biblical authors. There are\nwritings in the Bible by utterly unknown writers. A letter of an obscure\nauthor cannot come with the weight of a letter from St. Paul. There are\nwritings of widely different mental force. Biblical authors varied in\npersonal power as much as other authors. Inspiration cannot do away with\nthe limitations of the human individuality. It must be modified by its\ninstrumentality. The saints are of various orders. Even the diamond books\nwhich reflect the light of God so brilliantly may not be all of first\nwater. We must allow for the hues in the less perfect prisms. Were the\ngreatest musical genius in the world to sit before the key-boards he could\nnot draw from a harmonium the notes of a Lucerne organ. The impact of a\nwriting on our souls must be proportionate to the spiritual and ethical\nforce with which it is charged. Everyone recognizes this practically. None\nof us, however orthodox, professes to be as much inspired by Esther as by\nJob; by Chronicles as by Kings; by Daniel as by Isaiah; by Jude as by\nPaul. That simply means that there is not as much inspiration in some\nBiblical authors as in others. No author is always at his best. His work\ndiffers. The second epistle to the Thessalonians is not level with the\nepistle to the Romans. The third epistle of John, if it be of John, is\nsurely not as highly inspired as the first epistle of John. Inspiration is\nplainly a matter of degrees.\n\nThe recognition of this common-sense principle, theoretically, would\nremand the darker doctrines of Christianity to such authority as the lower\norder of Biblical writings possess. The terrifying and torturing teachings\nof the New Testament are from obscure authors, or from the masters in\ntheir lower moods. The representations of a wrathful God, of an avenging\nChrist, of a hell of horrors, are found in such epistles as Second\nThessalonians, whose authorship is uncertain; as Jude or Second Peter,\nabout whose authorship and date we have only the probability that no\napostle wrote them, and that they were written after the first, fresh\ninspiration had passed from the church. Rabbinical speculations and Greek\nsuperstitions show themselves at work in the Christian Church.[32] The\nunquestioned letters of Paul are sunny and sweet. In them we see the\nfather of Christian Restorationism. If he knows anything of a dark side to\nthe resurrection, as he shows elsewhere that he does, he leaves it in its\nown shadows; and in the height of this great argument of Corinthians\nbrings to the front only the resurrection to life and joy. \"Knowing the\nfear of the Lord we--persuade men.\"\n\nThe first epistle of John is true to its favorite symbol of the light.\nThere are no clouds in it. The God revealed in the greatest writings of\nthe greatest authors of the New Testament is Love. The Christ they picture\nis _Christus Consolator_. The full breath of inspiration opens only the\nupper register of notes. The voices of the soul are buoyant, joyous,\nhopeful.\n\nIf you are willing to follow the most inspired writers, in their most\ninspired moods, up into the heights whither the divine afflatus bore them,\nyou will mount above the cloud-level, and leave to those who lag after\nfeebler guides on the lower ranges of truth, the chill mists that eat into\nthe soul, while you rejoice in the light.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n_It is a wrong use of the Bible to manufacture cut of it any one uniform,\nsystem, of theology, as the fixed and final form of thought in which\nreligion is to live._\n\n\n\nLet me define these contrasting terms, so commonly confounded. Religion\nis man's perception of the Power in whom we live and move and have our\nbeing, and his emotion towards this power. Theology is man's conception of\nthis Power, and his thought defined and formulated.\n\nReligion is man's feeling after God; theology is man's grasp of God. The\ntwo are necessarily connected. They are different forms of one and the\nsame force; the heat and the light which stream from God; but the heat and\nthe light are not always equal. A worthy thought of God ought to sustain\nany worthy feeling towards Him. It generally does so. A heightened thought\nof God may often be found back of a rising flow of feeling after Him. More\noften the emotion precedes the conception; the vague, awed sense of God\ntravails till a new thought is born among men. This has been the order of\ndevelopment in history. Men felt the Divine Power and Presence ages before\nthey had learned so much of theology as to say--God. The feeling of\nGod--religion--always keeps, in healthy natures, far ahead of\ntheology--the thought about Him. The deepest religion finds no word for\nthe mystery before which it bows. Its only thought may be that no thought\nis sufficient.\n\n   \"In that high hour thought was not.\"\n\nTheology, then, as man's thought about God, is necessarily conditioned by\nman's mind. It is under the general limitations of the human intellect,\nand the special limitations of thought in each race and age and\nindividuality. It cannot escape these limitations, expand as they may. A\nflooding of the mind from on high may overflow these embankments but they\nstill stand, shaping the flow of the fullest tides. The individuality of a\ngreat writer asserts itself most strongly in his greatest works. His\ndeepest inspiration brings out most plainly his mental form, just as the\ndrawing of a full breath shows the real shape of a man. No possible theory\nof inspiration should lead us to look for the submergences of the dykes of\nthought cast up by race and age and individuality.\n\nAs a matter of fact, we find no uniformity in the theologies of the New\nTestament writers. Men have tried hard to make it appear that there was\nsuch a unity of thought. Never was more ingenious joiner-work done than in\nthe \"harmonies\" of the New Testament writers. But facts are stubborn\nthings, and in this case have resisted even the omnipotence of human\ningenuity; as open minds have seen, despite the doctors.\n\nSt. Paul's Epistles reveal a theology by no means as precise and fixed as\nis popularly imagined, undergoing rapid changes, growing with his growth,\nalways suffused from the soul with emotions which struggled against the\nprison bars of thought and speech. His intensely speculative mind had\nfurnished a system of thought into which he built such ideas as these: The\npre-existence of Christ, as, in some mystic, undefined way, the Head of\nHumanity; the sacrificial nature of His death; the justification of the\nsinner through faith; the life of Christ within the soul, as the Human\nIdeal; the speedy return of Christ in person to reign on earth (at least\nin the early part of his career); the resurrection of the pious dead; the\ntranslation of living believers; the final victory of goodness over evil;\nand the ending of the mediatorship of Christ, God then becoming all in\nall.\n\nThis was the form which the mystery of God's relationship to man took in\nthe mind of this great genius, and around which the fiery passion of his\nhunger after righteousness shaped itself.\n\nIn the Epistle of St. James, assuming the traditional authorship, how much\nof this theology can you find? The incarnation is nowhere clearly stated.\nThe name of Christ occurs but twice. His atonement is scarcely mentioned.\nThe prophets are held up as examples of patience, under suffering without\nany reference to Christ. Paul's especial doctrine of justification by\nfaith is explicitly denied. Of his fellowship with the Gentiles and his\nbroad human sympathies, there is nothing whatever. All is intensely\nJewish. If Paul's theology is orthodoxy, James is dreadfully unsound.[33]\n\"The fundamentals\" are all lacking.\n\nBoth Paul and James differ very decidedly from the mystic soul who wrote\nthe First Epistle of John; and all three differ again, quite as much, from\nthe philosopher who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. How little have\neither the Apocalypse or Jude in common with Paul! We can no more make a\nuniform theology out of the New Testament writers than we can out of\nCalvinism, Arminianism Catholicism, and Unitarianism.\n\nThese various theologies can be traced to the elements making up the\nindividualities of the different writers. The idiosyncracies of Paul are\nclearly marked. He was a man of strong speculative mind, of mystic piety,\nof lofty enthusiasm for great ideals, a-hungered after righteousness. A\nJew and yet a Roman citizen, his education developed the two-fold\nsympathies of an Israelite of the dispersion. At the feet of the liberal\nrabbi, Gamaliel, he learned the curious and mystical lore of the rabbins,\nwhile drinking in from his Master the spirit of freedom. Thrown from a\nchild in constant contact with the Gentiles of his native city, Tarsus,\nrace prejudices had been sapped unconsciously; while in youth or manhood\nthe wisdom and beauty of the Greek genius had apparently been opened to\nhim.\n\nPaul's personality, fusing the materials of his education, and out of them\nbuilding a body of thought around The Christ, explains his theology. He\nreproduces the conceptions of the rabbis, of the popular Jewish belief, of\nGamaliel, of Tarsus, of Athens; transfigured on the heights of thought to\nwhich he climbed, in his intense musings over the problem of Jesus of\nNazareth, while buried away in Arabia.\n\nThe small amount of theology in the practical Epistle of James is quite as\nplainly Jewish, of the school of the Sages, with a touch of Essenism. The\ntheology of the Epistle to the Hebrews shows throughout the influences of\nthe philosophy of Alexandria. The theology of the introduction to the\nGospel according to St. John is just as unquestionably this same\nAlexandrian philosophy, still further developed.\n\nThese variant schools of Christian theology, so plainly revealing the\nsources of their variations, deny the existence of any one uniform system\nof thought in the New Testament writers, and pronounce the different\nsystems transient and not final forms.\n\nWhatever the Church may offer us, the New Testament offers us no fixed and\nfinal body of thought. In the Bible, Christian theology is still a soft\nvase, plastic to the touch of each worker upon it. Had Paul's fine hand\nplayed around it even another decade, how different the shape it might\nhave taken.\n\nWith the incoming of a more rational, ethical, and spiritual age, we may\nsurely expect a finer fashioning of the forms of thought blocked out in\nthe New Testament, under the first, fresh inspiration of the age of Jesus;\ninto whose larger patterns shall be taken up all the truths revealed\nthrough the various sciences of these rich later ages; while all shall\nstill take on the shape of Him who is the image of the invisible God.\n\n   \"The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word.\"\n\nThe true Biblical theology is--Christ himself. His thought of God, and not\neven Paul's thoughts about Christ, are to mould our thinking. The Supreme\nSon of Man must have had the truest thought of God. Two words formulate\nhis theology as bodied not in a creed, but in a prayer--\"Our Father.\" The\nearliest, simplest, deepest cry of the human after God, now by Him who\nlived its spirit perfectly, the trusting, loving, holy Child of the\nFather, made no longer a sigh, a dream, a vision, but a life. \"The life\nwas the light of men.\"\n\nThat light is the sufficient clue to the dark labyrinth in which we wander\nwearily.\n\nI cannot always make out the face of a Father on the stern, harsh Power\nin whom we live and move and have our being. Then I turn to my Divine\nBrother, who, of all the children of men, saw deepest into the mystery,\nand in his far-mirroring eyes I read the vision which satisfies me.\n\nWith poor dying Joe, I whisper to myself:\n\n   \"'Our Father:' yes, that's werry good.\"\n\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nThe Right Critical Use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   \"I am convinced that the Bible becomes even more beautiful the more one\n   understands it; that is, the more one gets insight to see that every\n   word, which we take generally and make special application of to our\n   own wants, has had, in connection with certain circumstances, with\n   certain relations of time and place, a particular, directly individual\n   reference of its own.\"\n\n   Goethe: quoted by M. Arnold in \"The Great Prophecy of Israel's\n   Restoration.\"\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nThe Right Critical Use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   \"God, who at many times and in many manners spake in time past to the\n   fathers, by the prophets.\"--Hebrews, i. 1.\n\n\nThe right use of the Bible grows out of the true view of the Bible.\n\nThe Old Testament is the literature of the people of religion, in whom\nethical and spiritual religion grew, through all moods and tenses, toward\nperfection. The New Testament is the literature of the movement which grew\nout of Israel, the literature of the Universal Church bodying around the\nSon of Man, in whom religion came to perfect flower and fruit. The real\nBible is the record of this real revelation coming through real ethical\nand spiritual inspirations; a revelation advancing with men's deepening\ninspirations toward the Light which rose in the Life of Jesus Christ our\nLord.\n\n   God, who at many times and in many manners spake in time past to the\n   fathers by the prophets, hath at the last of these days spoken unto us\n   by a Son.\n\nThese speakings of the Divine Spirit in the souls of men, at many times\nand in many manners, were articulated, as best was possible, in the\nwritings of many ages and of many forms. The Bible is the collection of\nthese writings. They require a critical study, as _bona fide_ \"letters,\"\nbefore we can know the degree of their inspiration, and their place in the\nprogressive historic revelation; before we can thus deduce aright the\nthoughts about God out of which we are to construct our theology.\nConcerning this right critical use of the Bible, I propose now to offer\nsome practical suggestions. Next Sunday I purpose giving you a bird's-eye\nview of the general course of the historic revelation which led up to the\nChrist, the Word of God. After which I shall pass on to consider with you\nthe pre-eminently right use of the Bible, in which our souls humbly\nhearken for its words proceeding from out the mouth of God, on which man\nliveth; and on them feeding, grow toward a perfect manhood in Christ\nJesus.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n_Every aid of outward form should be used to make these books appear as\nliving \"letters\" to us._\n\n\n\nThe traditional form in which the Bible has been given to the people would\nseem to have been devised with a design of robbing its writings of every\nnatural charm, as the best means of making men feel its supernatural\npower. The fresh sense of \"letters\" disappears in this conventional form.\nThese many books of many ages have been bound up together, with the most\nimperfect classification either as to period or character. A verse-making\nmachine has been driven through them all alike, chopping them up into\nshort, arbitrary, artificial sentences, formally numbered in the body of\nthe text. The larger divisions into chapters have been made in an equally\nmechanical manner. By this twofold system an admirable provision has been\nmade for checking the flow of the writer's thought, and for effectually\npreventing any easy grasp of the natural movement of the book. Poetry has\nbeen printed as prose; thereby marring its rhythm, concealing its\nstructure, and blinding the reader to the dramatic character of immortal\nworks of genius. Through the whole mass of writings a system of\nchapter-headings has been introduced that ingeniously insinuates into the\nbody of these sacred books, as seemingly an integral part thereof, a\nscheme of interpretation which possesses now no pepsine power for\nresolving their contents into spiritual nutriment, but rather positively\nhinders our assimilation of many of these books.\n\nProbably the greatest obstacle to the use of the Bible is the senseless\nform in which custom persists in publishing it. I know few stronger\nevidences of the intrinsic power of these books than their continued\ninfluence, under conditions that would have remanded other books to the\ntopmost shelves of the most unused alcoves in our libraries.\n\nWe ought to have the different books, or groups of books, bound\nseparately; arranged paragraphically like other writings, with the present\nverse divisions indicated, if need be, in the margin; and the poetic\nstructure properly indicated. These books should have brief, simple, lucid\nnotes; drawing from our best critics the needful information as to their\nage, authorship, integrity, form, scope, obsolete words and idioms, local\ncustoms historical allusions, etc.; with other readings throwing light\nupon obscure passages. Each book should be thus provided with such a\npopular critical apparatus as accompanies good editions of other classics,\nand as Matthew Arnold has prepared for one book, in his primer entitled\n\"The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration;\" which is the second section\nof Isaiah, arranged as a \"Bible-reading for schools.\"\n\nThis series of Bible-books should then be chronologically arranged, as far\nas the conclusions of the higher criticism will allow; and should be bound\nin uniform style and set in a Bible case, preserving thus the unity of the\nwhole. Such an edition of the Bible would stimulate a renewed resort to\nit, in which men would re-discover a lost literature.\n\nUntil you can procure such an edition, provide yourselves with a paragraph\nBible, following the natural divisions of the writings and maintaining\ntheir poetic form; and seek the information you may desire in some of the\nmanuals embodying the results of the higher criticism.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n_Each writing having an intrinsic unity should, by such aids, be studied\nas a whole._\n\n\n\nEvery intelligent Christian ought to have a clear conception of the\ngeneral scope of thought in each great Bible-book. Whatever fragmentary\nuse of these books for direct devotional purposes may be made, he who\nwould count himself as one of \"the men of the Bible,\" ought to know as\nmuch about them as he knows about his favorite authors.\n\nWho that pretends to be a lover of Shakespeare is content with a scrappy\nreading of his immortal plays? To enjoy them fully, even in fragmentary\nreadings, he seeks to have a foundation of critical knowledge, such as\nShakespearian scholars place within the easy mastery of any one. After\nsuch a study of a play he can pick it up in leisure hours and see new\nbeauties every time he reads it. How many Bible Christians know their\nBible thus?\n\nWhat a revelation such a study makes! It is an alchemist's touch, turning\nmany a leaden book into finest gold.\n\nThe oldest book, as a whole, in the Bible, is the Song of Songs.\nAttributed by later ages to Solomon, it was probably written by some\nunknown author, anywhere from the tenth to the eighth century before\nChrist.[34] The poem is dramatic in form, though imperfectly constructed\naccording to our canons. Its scenes shift, and its speakers change with\ntrue dramatic movement. It is the closest approach to the drama preserved\nto us in Hebrew literature, whose genius never favored this highly organic\nform. There is needed but the usual indication of the _dramatis person\u00e6_\nto clear the movement of the plot, and to reveal the force and beauty of\nthe poem.\n\nA maiden, her royal admirer, ladies of the court, the girl's brother and\nher shepherd lover, appear and disappear in animated conversation. The\ncountry maiden is wooed away from her shepherd lad by the allurements of a\nroyal admirer, who employs all the resources of fervid flattery and\npassionate persuasion to win her as a new attraction for his harem. He is\nfoiled, however, by her simple, steadfast loyalty to her absent lover, to\nwhom she at length returns, triumphant in her virtue. In a corrected\nversion, the sensuousness of our English translation disappears in the\nordinary richness of Eastern imagery, and the poem becomes a pure picture\nof loyal love. It reveals thus the healthy moral tone of Jewish society in\nthat early age. This sound domestic virtue of the people, which looked\nwith abhorrence on the licentiousness of the court, becomes all the more\nstriking in contrast with the polygamous customs of the surrounding\nnations. We see the social foundation on which Israel builded such a noble\nstructure of ethical religion. The people whose literature opens with such\na laud of loyal love might well rise into the pure splendors of a Second\nIsaiah.\n\nSuch a poem fitly introduces the canon of Scripture; since, into whatever\nheights Religion aspires to lift the fabric of civilization, she must lay\nits corner-stone in the marriage bond, and rear the church and the state\nupon the family.\n\nPerhaps we may also find in this Hebrew Song of Songs that mystic meaning,\nnot uncommon in Eastern love-songs, at least in later readings of them,\nwhich Edwin Arnold has so vividly brought out in the Hindoo Song of Songs;\nand may understand how the Church came to take it as a parable of the love\nof the soul for its Heavenly Ideal, seen in the Christ.\n\nJob, thus read, becomes a semi-dramatic poem, in which the problem of the\ndisconnection of goodness and good-fortune, the lack of any just ordering\nof individual life, is discussed in the persons of an upright and sorely\nafflicted patriarch and his three friends, who come to condole and counsel\nwith him. Through their interchanging colloquies, that bring up one after\nanother the stock theories of the age of the author, the argument moves\nalong without really getting on. No solution is found for the perplexing\npuzzle, in which man's moral instincts beat vainly against the hard facts\nof life. Once, for a moment, the thought of a future life flashes up, as\nthe true solution of the injustice of earth, in that thrilling cry of the\ntortured soul:\n\n    I know that my Redeemer liveth,\n    And that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:\n    And though, after my skin, worms destroy this body,\n    Yet out of my flesh shall I see God;\n    Whom I shall see for myself,\n    And mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.\n\nBut the vision fades upon an atmosphere unready for it, and the poet does\nnot return to follow this clue out into the sunshine.\n\nAll the light that he can discern is in Nature's manifestations of power\nand order and wisdom. From a wide range of knowledge, the poet draws\ntogether upon the stage the wonders of creation, which, with daring\nfreedom, he introduces God himself as describing; until at length Job\nhumbles himself in an awe not uncheered by trust:\n\n    Therefore have I uttered that I understood not.\n    Things too wonderful for me which I knew not.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;\n    But now mine eye seeth Thee.\n    Wherefore I abhor myself,\n    And repent in dust and ashes.\n\nBy dropping out the episode of Elihu, as an insertion of some later hand,\nthe movement of the poem becomes sustained and progressive. The arguments\nof the Jewish theology are cleverly presented, while the swift, sure sense\nof justice in the sufferer pierces all sophisms, and riddles all pious\nconventionalities. The descriptions of Nature are graphic and eloquent.\nThe _motif_ of the drama is one that voices the thought and feeling of our\nfar-off age, in which many men again vainly thresh the old arguments of\nconventional theology, in trying to solve the \"godless look of earth,\" and\ntake refuge anew in the manifestations of power and law in nature; not\nwithout the ancient lesson, let us trust, of an awe which silences and\npurifies, and leaves them in the light as of a mystery of meaning on the\nsphynx's face, breaking into the dawning of a day which \"uttereth speech.\"\nScientific agnosticism, in so far as it is an humble confession of human\nignorance, has its worship scored in this noble poem, ringing the changes\non the strain, at once plaint and praise:\n\n    Canst thou by searching find out God?\n    Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?\n    It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?\n    Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?\n\nCuriously enough, as showing the power of conventionalism, the author\nwinds up with a prose epilogue of the genuine story-book fashion, in which\nall things are set right by Job's restoration to his lost wealth, in\nmultiplied possessions. Pathetic persuasion of the poor human heart that\nall things must come right in the end!\n\nWhat the Epistle to the Romans, that affrighting _vade mecum_ of\ntheological disputants, becomes when read thus reasonably as a whole, with\ncritical discernment of its real aim, I will not try to tell you; but will\ncontent myself with sending you where you may see it beautifully told,\nwith Paul's own upspringing inspiration of righteousness in Matthew\nArnold's \"St. Paul and Protestantism.\"\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n_Each great book should, as a whole, be read in its proper place in Hebrew\nand Christian history._\n\n\n\nThe historical method is the true clue to the interpretation of a book. To\nknow it aright we must know the age in which it was produced. This is the\nmethod by which such surprising light has been shed on many great works.\nWho that has read Taine's graphic portraiture of the Elizabethan age can\nfail ever thereafter to see Shakespeare stand forth vividly? What can we\nmake of Dante without some knowledge of Italy in the thirteenth century?\nWhat new life is given to Milton's Samson after we have seen the blind old\npoet of the fallen Protectorate in his dreary home! How can we rightly\nestimate Rousseau's writings unless we know somewhat of the artificial and\nluxurious age to which they came as a call back to nature? Taken out of\ntheir true surroundings these writings lose their force and meaning.\n\nIn the same way we need to find the historical place of a Biblical\nwriting, and to read it in the light of its relation to the period.\n\nThe traditional view of Deuteronomy made it the last of the writings of\nMoses, a Farewell Address of the Father of his Country; reciting to the\nnation he had founded the story of its deliverance, repeating the laws\nestablished for its welfare, and warning it against the dangers awaiting\nit in the future. Such a view was attended with many difficulties, not\ninsuperable, however, to the critical knowledge of earlier generations.\nIts real place in the history of Israel appears to have been found of\nlate.\n\nThe Prophetic Reformation of Religion, begun in the eighth century before\nChrist, by the group of noble men of whom Isaiah was the most conspicuous\nhad, by the latter part of the seventh century before Christ, become ripe\nfor an organization of the institutions of religion. Jeremiah was the\ncentral figure in this second period of the prophetic movement. Upon the\nthrone of Judah at that time was the good young king, Josiah--the Edward\nthe Sixth of Israel--in whom the hopes of the reformers centred. About the\nyear 625 B.C. occurred an event that decided the future of religion in\nJudah; described in the twenty-second chapter of the second book of\nKings. The high-priest sent to the young king, saying:\n\n   I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.\n\nThis book of the law of Moses, according to tradition, had been lost; had\nbeen lost so long that its provisions had dropped into disuse, into\noblivion; an oblivion so complete that the nation's religion ignored and\nviolated the whole system of that law; had been lost so long and so\nthoroughly that the very existence of such a law had passed from the\nmemory of man.\n\nThis was the book that Hilkiah claimed to have re-discovered in the temple\narchives. It was at once read to the excited king. It made a profound\nimpression upon him by its revelation of the apostasy in which the nation\nwas living, and by its solemn threatenings upon such apostasy.\n\n   It came to pass that when the king had heard the words of the book of\n   the law, that he rent his clothes.\n\nFor, said he:\n\n   Great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our\n   fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according\n   unto all that which is written concerning us.\n\nThe devout young king threw himself into a thorough reformation of the\nprevailing religion. All local altars were swept away, all idolatries were\ncleared from the Jerusalem temple, the priesthood was centred in the\ncapital and more thoroughly organized; in short, as our fathers read the\nstory, Mosaism was re-established, after some seven centuries of partial\nor total disuse.\n\nThrough processes which we cannot now follow, our later critics have, I\nthink, fairly established the proposition, that this book of The Law was\nnone other than the substance of our book of Deuteronomy, then for the\nfirst time written. The plans of the prophetic reformers had contemplated\nthe sweeping changes described above, in the interests of an ethical and\nspiritual religion. They felt that they were but carrying out the\nprinciples of the nation's great Founder. Of his original conception of\nreligion, bodied in The Ten Words, their aspirations were the legitimate\nhistorical development; as the leaf and bud are the growth of the far back\nroots. This programme of the prophetic reformers, presented in its true\nlight as a development of the ideas of Moses, was, by the priest Hilkiah,\nsent to the king as the law of the nation's Founder, with the results\nsketched above.\n\nRead in this light, the book takes on a fresh and fascinating interest. It\nmarks the organization of the movement toward a higher religion which had\nbeen started by the great prophets of the preceding century. It becomes\nthe Augsburg Confession of the Jewish Reformation, from which dates the\ngradual possession of the institutions of the nation by ethical and\nspiritual religion.\n\nThe lofty character of this book, the \"St. John of the Old Testament,\" as\nEwald called it, is thus rendered intelligible; as it stands for the\naspirations of the noblest movement in ancient Jewish history. It is the\nissue of a long travail of soul to whose words we hearken in such a truth\nas this:\n\n   Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the\n   Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all\n   thy might.\n\nPlaced in this position, the book of Deuteronomy becomes the key to\nIsrael's history, by which criticism is reconstructing that story, on the\nlines of the great laws of all life, with most significant consequences to\nthe cause of religion. The ideas and institutions known to us as The\nMosaic Law come forth now as the crown and culmination of a long historic\ndevelopment. Israel's story is that of a slow and gradual education under\nthe divine hand; not a relapse, but a progress, not an apostasy but an\nevolution. Israel takes its place in the general order of humanity's\nmovement. With it religion sweeps at once into the pathway of progress\nwhich science has shown to be the order of nature; and the historic\nrevelation is seen to be, like the revelation in nature, a gradual,\nprogressive manifestation of Him \"whose goings forth are as the\nmorning\"--its orbit the sweep of the ascending sun.\n\nWith such mighty secrets does this little book grow luminous when placed\nin the light of its real belongings.\n\nThe Book of Ezekiel, whose historic position was never disputed, becomes\nof new value in the light of a fuller knowledge of its period. It presents\nto the science of Biblical criticism the missing link in its theory of\nIsrael's development. It shows the process of transformation, out of which\nissued during the exile the elaborate, hierarchical system known to us as\nMosaism. The new criticism seems to me to have reasonably established the\ntheorem, that the priestly cultus embodied in the legislation of the\nPentateuch was first systematized into the form it there presents during\nthe exile, and was first set up as the national system on the return to\nJudea. It is not claimed that it was a new manufacture of that period. As\nsuch it would be inconceivable.[35] It is simply claimed that it was a\nthorough codification, for the first time, of the scattered and\nconflicting codes of conduct and systems of worship of the various local\npriesthoods of Israel, as handed down by tradition and in records from\nancient times; a codification animated by the centralizing and\nhierarchical tendencies working in the nation; which tendencies were\nthemselves the result largely of the prophetic spirit, and its\naspirations for a nobler religion.[36] It is not difficult to account for\nthis remarkable priestly movement.\n\nThe institutional organization of religion that began under Josiah had\ncontinued, with various fortunes, the aim of the higher spirits of the\nnation down to the exile. The movement of life was in the direction of\nuniformity and order. There was much in the circumstances of the exile to\nstimulate this movement. The priests were left without their temple\nworship, and, in the absence of outward interests, must have turned their\nthought in upon their system itself, studying it as they had not done in\nthe midst of its actual operation. Like all wrongly lost possessions, it\nbecame doubly dear. The Jews were placed in the midst of an ancient and\nhighly organized priestly system in Babylonia, whose benefits to culture\nand religion they must have noted and pondered. In the national\nhumiliation and the personal sorrows of such a wholesale carrying away of\na people from their native land, a wide-spread awakening of the inner life\nwas experienced, a genuine revival of religion. A new wave of prophetic\nenthusiasm rose in the strange land, lifting the soul of the nation to\nheights of spiritual and ethical religion never reached before.\n\nThis revival was stamped with the impress of the intellectual influences\nwhich were working upon the Jews in Babylonia. Some of the extant writings\nof this period, alike in literary style, in moral tone and in religious\nthought, mark a new era. Israel's genius flowered in this dark night--true\nto the mystic character of the race. This highest effort of prophetic\nthought and feeling appears to have quickly exhausted itself. In reality,\nit followed the usual order of religious movements, and turned into a\npriestly organization. The group of prophets around the first Isaiah\nprepared the way for the priestly movement that followed a century later.\nThe group of prophets around the second Isaiah prepared the way for the\npriestly movement that followed close in their steps. First comes always,\nin religion, an epoch of inspiration, and then comes a period of\norganization. The organization never bodies fully the spirit of the\ninspiration. The ideal is not realizable in institutions. Institutional\nreligion is always a compromise, a mediation between the lofty conceptions\nand impatient aspirations of the few who inspire the new life, and the low\nnotions and contented conventionalisms of the many whom they seek to\ninspire. The compromise is necessarily of the nature of a reaction; but\nthe interplay of action and re-action is the law of ethical as of chemical\nforces.\n\nIsrael really needed the conserving work of a great organization. The\nprophetic religion was far in advance of the popular level. The high\nthoughts and lofty ideas of the prophets needed to be wrought into a\ncultus, which, while not breaking abruptly with the popular religion,\nshould imbue the conventional forms with deeper ethical and spiritual\nmeanings; should, through them, systematically train the people in ethical\nhabits and spiritual conceptions; and should thus gradually educate men\nout of these forms themselves.\n\nIn the providence of God, and under the influences of His patient Spirit,\nthis needful system was developed in the exile: a system whose symbolism\nwas so charged with ethical and spiritual senses that it led on to Christ;\nas the Epistle to the Hebrews rightly shows and as Paul distinctly\ndeclares. As the first priestly period, following the first prophetic\nepoch, bodied that double movement in a book--Deuteronomy; so the second\npriestly period, following the second prophetic epoch, bodied this double\nmovement in a book, or group of books--the present form of the Pentateuch.\nThe traditions and histories and legislations of the past were worked over\ninto a connected series of writings, through which was woven the new\npriestly system, in a historical form. On the restoration to Judea, this\ninstitutional reorganization was set up as the law of the land, and\ncontinued thenceforward in force--the providential instrumentality for the\n_ad interim_ work of four centuries. Such a remarkable process of\ndevelopment, so deepening in us a sense of the guiding hand of God, ought\nto show some sign of its working, in the literature of the period. However\nclear, from our general knowledge, the tendencies which were at work in\nthat period, we could not feel assured of our correct interpretation of\nthis most important epoch, in the absence of some such sign, in a writing\nof that date.\n\nThe Book of Ezekiel supplies the missing link. The writer was a\nprophet-priest, who went into the exile, and wrote in Babylonia. In the\nearlier part of his life-work, recorded in the earlier portion of his\nbook, he was thoroughly prophetic, intensely ethical and spiritual,\nbreathing the very spirit of his great master, Jeremiah. In the latter\npart of his career he was visited with dreams, such as are plainly\nindicated to us in the remarkable vision occupying the concluding section\nof his book. The fortieth chapter opens thus:\n\n   In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me\n   upon a very high mountain, upon which was as the frame of a city on the\n   south.\n\nThen follows, through eighteen chapters, a sketch of the temple system in\nthe expected restoration. It is a thoroughly ideal sketch, a vision\ndestined to take on much simpler and humbler proportions in its\nrealization; a picture probably not intended for copying in actual\nconstruction, but, like all ideal work, a powerful stimulus to the\naspirations it expressed.\n\nIt is a free sketch of the New Priestly System, on the easel, awaiting\ncorrection and completion at the hands of Ezra and others. It reveals to\nus the visions that were occupying the minds of the best men in the latter\npart of the exile, and the work they were essaying. Thus we are prepared\nfor the final issue.\n\nThe Book of Daniel has been wrongly placed, traditionally, with most\nserious consequences to the character of the book, and, through this\nmisconception to Christianity. Dated from the early part of the sixth\ncentury before Christ, its story of Daniel's experiences read as literal\nhistory, and its visions appear as actual predictions of long subsequent\nevents.\n\nA high authority has declared--\n\n   There can be no doubt that it exercised a greater influence upon the\n   early Christian Church than any other writing of the Old Testament.[37]\n\nThat influence, owing to this misconception, is chiefly to be traced in\nthe growth of an apocalyptic literature, and in the fantastical and\nmaterial expectations of the Messianic Kingdom which they encouraged. It\nhas continued down to our own day turning heads as wise as Sir Isaac\nNewton's, setting religion at conjuring with visions of monstrous beasts\nand juggling with mystic figures until the name of Prophecy has become a\nby-word.\n\nThis book appears to take its proper place, at least in its present form,\nabout a century and a half before Christ. That was a period of deep\ndepression for Israel. Under Antiochus Epiphanes the nation had been\nsorely oppressed, its temple denied, and its religion well nigh crushed\nout. Men's hearts were failing them for fear, and for looking for those\nthings that were coming to pass upon the earth. Pious souls turned back to\nthe ancient time of bitter humiliation, when Israel had been scattered in\na strange land, and recalled the bold word of faith spoken by Jeremiah,\nwhich had stayed the spirits of their forefathers. The great prophet\npromised that after seventy years the nation should be restored to its\nnative land, and should renew its prosperity gloriously. It had won back\nits home, but in the old homestead it had grown poorer and feebler,\ngeneration after generation. Had the ancient promise of prophecy failed?\nGood men could not think so. To some devout soul came the suggestion that\nthe seventy years had meant seventy Sabbatical years, each of which\nconsisted of seven years; that is, four hundred and ninety years. One can\nstill feel the thrill that must have gone through him, as he saw that this\ncomputation would place the defiling of the temple--that sign of God's\nhaving forsaken his people--in the middle of the last week of years. It\nwas then only about three years to the destined end of the weary period\nthat Jeremiah had included in the term of Israel's humbling, after which\nwould come Jehovah's help. Fired with this thought, he set himself to\ninspire his people with fresh hope and courage.\n\nAround a traditional Daniel, famed for his wisdom and piety, and possibly\nupon an earlier document containing some tales of this sage and saint, he\nwove a story which should interpret Jeremiah's prophecy and Jehovah's\npurpose. With charming grace he tells the tale of Daniel's constancy and\ntrust under the sorest trials, and of the divine deliverance that always\ncame to him. Into his mouth he placed predictions of what had already come\nto pass in history, that thus his reputation as a prophet might be\nestablished. Then he caused him to present a striking series of symbolical\nvisions, the clue to which was furnished for the writer's contemporaries\nby certain clear allusions. These visions foretold deliverance as about to\ncome at the approaching end of the four hundred and ninety years of\nJeremiah. Other visions sketched the ushering in of the Messiah-Kingdom,\nin glowing pictures of lofty religious tone.\n\nIn that dark night over Israel this book was as the morning star. It was\ntruly, as Dean Stanley called it, \"the Gospel of the age.\" Its story\nspread, and with it spread renewed patience and hope. It doubtless fed the\nforces of that glorious revolt that shortly thereafter burst forth under\nthe heroic Maccabees. Thus it kept alive the vital spark in the nation,\nthrough a crucial hour, that else might have gone out before it had given\nbirth to Christianity. Noble as the book of Daniel is in many ways,\nespecially as the real father of \"the philosophy of history,\" it has a\nstill deeper interest to us Christians for its timely service to the\nsinking nation through which came at last our Blessed Master.\n\nThe Acts of the Apostles, when studied in the light of the tendencies\nknown to have been working in the apostolic church, becomes of similar\nimportance in New Testament history to Deuteronomy in Old Testament\nhistory.\n\nThe primitive Church was, as we well know, agitated by contending\nfactions. Two leading parties dominated all minor schools of thought; the\nJewish Christians, who naturally wanted to keep within the old religion,\nand who would have made a reformed Judaism, and the Gentile Christians who\nas naturally objected to being herded within Judaism, and who wanted to\nmake a new and universal society. The first party rallied under the name\nof Peter, and the second used the name of Paul. There was imminent danger\nthat the new society would break apart, with fatal consequences to\nposterity. Real and deep as were the differences between Peter and Paul,\nthey did not, in all probability, sunder these great natures as widely as\ntheir followers imagined. There must have been meeting points between such\nsouls, in love with the one Master. To find these convergences and\nconstruct out of them a peace-platform on which both wings of the new\nsociety might stand, was the aim of The Acts. It embodied genuine journals\nof a traveling companion of St. Paul, notes of his addresses in various\ncities, traditions lost to us outside of this book, of Peter's\nconciliatory attitude and utterances; and groups these historic fragments\ninto a sketch, in which the two apostles are shown as dividing equally the\nlabors of founding the Christian Church, as preaching the same views, and\nacting in cordial harmony. This book is a sign of the disposition to draw\ntogether which was gaining ground among the primitive churches, a\ndisposition fostered largely by this writing; out of which process of\ncomprehension and conciliation arose the Catholic Church, naming its great\ncathedrals after St. Peter and St. Paul.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n_The books which are of a composite character should be read in their\nseveral parts, and traced to their proper places in history._\n\n\n\nThus, for example, in reading Isaiah uncritically we pass from the\nfragment of history that forms our thirty-ninth chapter, to the\nmagnificent strain of impassioned imagination which opens with the\nfortieth chapter, as though there were no hiatus; and we proceed straight\nthrough this latter section of the book, taking it all as written in the\nreign of Hezekiah, that is, in the latter part of the eighth century\nbefore Christ. We thus view this second section of Isaiah from a wrong\nstandpoint. The panorama of its visions becomes blurred. We cannot focus\nthe glass upon the objects in its field. The real significance and beauty\nof this noblest reach of prophetic imagination evanishes from our vision.\n\nTo see this second section of Isaiah aright, we must push it down the\nstream of time nearly two hundred years. It is the work of a prophet, or\ngroup of prophets, in the latter part of the exile, about the middle of\nthe sixth century before Christ. Watching the signs of the times, the\ngifted and gracious spirit who led this chorus of hope saw tokens, as of\nthe dawning of day after the long, dark night. Rumors of the all\nconquering Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king, made Babylon tremble with fear,\nand Israel thrill with excited expectation. In the ethical and spiritual\nreligion of the advancing Persians, the Jews might look for a bond of\nsympathy. It would be the policy of Cyrus to make friends of the foes of\nBabylon, and to place the captive people in their own land on the borders\nof his empire, as his grateful feudatories. The seer saw thus, in the\nconquering hero, the Servant of God, raised up to restore the chosen\npeople to their native country. Prophecy kindled anew for its final flame,\nand burst forth in the immortal strain of hope for the long-tried Israel:\n\n    Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,\n    Saith your God.\n    Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her,\n    That her warfare is accomplished,\n    That her iniquity is pardoned.\n\nI never read this sublime chapter without a fresh thrill, as I hear the\nvoice of a crushed race, lifting amid its misery a cry of unconquerable\nconfidence in the Just and Holy One, who was ordering alike the embattled\narmies of earth and the starry hosts of the skies, and through history, as\nin nature, was sweeping on resistlessly to fulfill the good pleasure of\nHis Will. No wonder the matchless oratorio of the Messiah opens with this\naria, abruptly as the original words are spoken in Isaiah. They sound the\nkey-note of the good tidings of great joy which, growing as a hope in\nmen's souls through the centuries, became a faith, an assured conviction,\nin the life of the Christus Consolator; in whom God is seen as \"Our Father\nwhich art in heaven.\"\n\nEvery gem of this second section of Isaiah takes on a new lustre in this\nsetting. It is the cry of the lost sheep in the wilderness, catching\nsight of the Shepherd who they thought had forgotten them, that we hear in\nthe gracious strain:\n\n    He shall feed his flock like a Shepherd,\n    He shall gather the lambs with his arm,\n    And carry them in his bosom,\n    And shall gently lead those that are with young.\n\nThe vision of the Suffering, Righteous Servant of God grows clear and\npathetic in the true historic light. The chastened nation feels itself\ncalled to a higher mission than that of political power. It is to teach\nthe other nations of the earth the knowledge of God. That knowledge it is\nitself to learn in the school of sorrow. It is to save humanity through\nthe sacrifice of itself. Thus the secret of suffering is spelled out, not\nfor ancient Israel alone, but for all mankind; the secret which is\nshrined, for ever sacred to us, in the story of our Lord Christ; from whom\nyou and I this day, through a simple symbol, are to learn anew that if we\nsorrow it is that we may be made perfect through suffering, and thus be\nfitted to lead our fellows up into the light and love of God.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n_These writings should be read critically, until we can decipher the\nsuccessive hands working upon them, and interpret them accordingly._\n\n\n\nFew, if any, of the books of the Bible stand now as they came from their\noriginal authors. Nearly all have been re-edited; most of them many\ntimes. Some of them have been worked over by so many hands, and have\nundergone such numerous and serious changes, that the original writer\nwould scarcely identify his work. The historical writings of the Old\nTestament take up into them all sorts of materials, from all sorts of\nsources. If the annals of the Venerable Bede, the father of English\nhistory had been re-written again and again through the subsequent\ncenturies; abridged, enlarged, interpreted by each editor; the\naccumulating knowledge and growing experience of the nation read into his\nsimple chronicles; we should appreciate the critical care needful in\nstudying our edition of Bede if we would know the real original. Very much\nsuch care is necessary if we are to use the Old Testament histories aright\nfor information. It is as though there were several surfaces to the\nparchment on which the histories were written, on each successive film of\nwhich, in finest tracery, an older record was inscribed.\n\nGenesis, for example, presents us, at every step of what seems a\nconsecutive story, with successive layers of tradition, through which we\nmust work our way most carefully if we would really understand the book.\nWe readily observe a twofold tradition of the Creation in the opening\nchapters of Genesis, differing very materially: a sign to us, if we need\nit, that there was no one authoritative account of the Creation current in\nIsrael. Little attention is required to note a double version of the\nstory of the flood, whose artless piecing together is the cause of the\nconfusions and contradictions that puzzle many readers. The deciphering of\nthis double tradition of the flood first started criticism upon the true\ntrack of Biblical study. The frequently recurring phrase, \"These are the\ngenerations,\" or beginnings, indicates the insertion of fragments of a\nwork giving an account of the origin of the world, of the races of earth,\nof language, of the Jewish people, etc.; a work called by the critics \"The\nBook of Origins.\" In the fourteenth chapter there is what seems to be a\nvery ancient non-Jewish fragment of history, torn possibly from some\nSyrian writing, which gives a tale of Abraham's prowess in war.\n\nAnd even in one and the same tale of tradition, we apparently find strata\nof thought laid down by successive ages. There are extant to-day\nparchments in which, for lack of other material, a writer has scratched\npartially away an earlier manuscript, and written over it another book.\nSuch a palimpsest is Genesis. \"A legend of civilization is written over a\nsolar-myth, and a tribal legend over the legend of civilization, and a\ntheocratic legend over the tribal.\"[38]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen such a mastery of the Bible-books is won, they are to be used in the\ncustomary methods of critical study, with reference to their contents and\nthe significances thereof, under the same general laws of interpretation\nthat hold over other literature.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI think I hear some one saying--Is this the right use of the Bible, for\nwhich I am asked to give up the dear, old, simple way of reading for my\nsoul's inspiration? Not at all, my friend. That blessed use of the Bible,\nlearned at your mother's knees, is still, and must always remain, the best\nuse possible to any one. Of this I shall speak hereafter. I am now\nspeaking, not of the right devotional use of the Bible, but of the right\ncritical use of it. It has been used critically in building our\ntheologies, but, to a large extent, amiss. Out of this wrong use of it has\ncome the misconceptions in theology which to-day perplex our minds and bar\nthe progress of religion. If we must use the Bible critically, let us by\nall means try to employ a true and thorough criticism. Let us not think to\nclose every controversy by the phrase--The Bible says so. We shall be more\nmodest and less disputatious when we appreciate the study necessary before\nany one can properly answer the question--What saith the Scriptures?\n\nAgain I hear a voice from the pews--Who then save a scholar is competent\nfor such a use of the Bible? I answer--No one, except a pupil of the\nscholars. The scholars have placed within our reach the results of such a\ncritical study of the Bible. You can find the rational guidance you may\ndesire in the manuals which set forth the conclusions of these critical\nprocesses; though you must painfully feel, as I do, the lack of the\nreligious tone in some of them. A crying need of our day is a Hand Book to\nthe Bible in which the new critical knowledge shall blend, as it may\nblend, with the old spiritual reverence.\n\nOne should not rise from such a study of the Bible as we have made to-day,\nin its merely literary aspects, without a new, strange sense of awe before\nthis mystic Book. It is the handiwork of no one man, of no group of men,\nof no period. It is an organic product, the growth of a whole people the\ncoralline structure builded by a nation. Hands innumerable have toiled\nover these pages. Voices indistinguishable now, in blended chorus from the\ndawn of history, have joined in the cry of the human after God which\nwhispers upon us from this sacred phonograph.\n\nSuccessive generations of men, struggling with sin, striving for purity,\nsearching after God, have exhaled their spirits into the essence of\nreligion, which is treasured in this costly vase. The moral forces of\ncenturies, devoted to righteousness, are stored in this exhaustless\nreservoir of ethical energy. At such cost, my brothers, has Humanity\nissued this sacred book. From such patience of preparation has\nProvidence laid this priceless gift before you. In such labor of\narticulation--spelling out the syllables of the message from on high,\nthrough multitudinous lives of men dutifully and devoutly walking with\ntheir God--does the Spirit speak to you, O, soul of man. Say thou--\n\n   Speak Lord; thy servant heareth!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n   It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated the\n   only question is; Is it true in and for itself?\n\n   Hegel: \"Philosophy of History,\" Part III.: Sec. III.: Ch. II.\n\n\n   With reference to things in the Bible, the question whether they are\n   genuine or spurious is odd enough. What is genuine but that which is\n   truly excellent, which stands in harmony with the purest nature and\n   reason, and which even now ministers to our highest development? What\n   is spurious but the absurd and the hollow, which brings no fruit--at\n   least, no good fruit.\n\n   Goethe: \"Conversations,\" March 11,1832.\n\n\n   No article of faith is injured by allowing that there is no such\n   positive proof, when or by whom these and some other books of holy\n   Scripture were written, as to exclude all possibility of doubt and\n   cavil.\n\n   Watson's \"Apology for the Bible,\" Letter IV.\n\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nThe Right Historical Use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   The principle of development involves also the existence of a latent\n   germ of being--a capacity or potentiality striving to realize\n   itself.... What Spirit really strives for is the realization of its\n   Ideal being.....\n\n   The profoundest thought is connected with the personality of\n   Christ--with the historical and external; and it is the very grandeur\n   of the Christian religion that, with all this profundity, it is easy of\n   comprehension by our consciousness in its outward aspect, while, at the\n   same time, it summons us to penetrate deeper.\n\n   Hegel: \"Philosophy of History,\" pp. 57, 344. [Bohn.]\n\n\n   Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on\n   gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it\n   will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity as\n   it glistens and shines forth in the gospel!\n\n   Goethe: \"Conversations,\" March, 11,1832.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nThe Right Historical Use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   \"When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His\n   Son.\"--Galatians, iv. 4.\n\n\nSt. Paul condensed the philosophy of Hebrew history into a metaphor.\nIsrael travailed in birth with Christianity. In the mind of the nation was\nbegotten, of the Most High, a conception of ethical religion, whose\ngestation was a process of centuries. The period of parturition came, and\na universal religion was born into the world; bodied, as religion needs\nmust be, in a man, Jesus, the Christ.\n\n   \"When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His Son.\"\n\nThe sacred literature of Israel is the record and embodiment of this\norganic growth of her religion, through its various moods and tenses,\ntoward its ideal in the Christ. The sacred literature of the Christian\nChurch is the picture of this flower of the soul of Israel, and of the new\ngrowth springing up from its seeding down of humanity. The whole Bible\npresents us with the growth of the religion of the Christ, below ground\nand above ground; its rootings and its flowerings. The right historical\nuse of the Bible is, through a critical knowledge of the sacred literature\nof Israel, to reproduce before our minds this process of the growth of the\nChrist in Israel and of His new growth in humanity; with a view to our\nintelligent perception of His true place in history, and of the\nsignificance thereof. The heart of the Bible is Christ. That which our\nfathers saw we need to see, that in Him all things stand together, as the\narch is holden by the key-stone. Rightly to read the secret of His life is\nto find the secret of earth's problems. Therefore our fathers insisted so\nstrenuously on the Old Testament preparation for Christ. A tree's rootings\nare proportionate to its size. In the gradual prefiguring of Christ\nthrough Israel's story, they read the historic attestation of His\nrevelation. The picture of Israel's history that yielded them their vision\nis dissolving before our eyes, at the touch of the new criticism, and men\nare fearing that the secret of the Bible is escaping from our age. I\ndesire to-day to draw for you, in outline, the story of Israel's\ndevelopment, as traced by our new masters; that you may see the old vision\nre-emergent in truer, nobler forms. The re-construction of Hebrew history\nmakes real and certain an organic, natural development of the religion of\nthe Christ; a travail of the nation with the Son it bore to God.\n\nThe best method of studying any history is in its great epochs and\nperiods. The eras of Hebrew history group themselves clearly, in orderly\nprogression.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n_The Epoch of Moses:_ B.C. 1300(?)\n\n\n\nHebrew history properly begins with this era. The tribes of Israel when\nfirst resolved by the glass of history, appear upon the Arabian border of\nEgypt, as occupants of the rich pasture lands of Goshen. They were a\nbranch of a large Semitic family, which included Moab, Edom, Ammon and\nother familiar tribes. Of the social, intellectual and religious status of\nthe Hebrews at this period we have little definite information. They would\nseem to have been on the usual plane of races which have entered the\nsemi-nomadic stage, and which are gradually substituting agricultural\npursuits for a roving shepherd life. Oppressed by Egypt they revolt, and\nbegin a migration backward toward the north and east.\n\nThe soul of this movement was Moses; a real historic figure, worthy, as we\ncan see through the mists around him, of the imposing form which Michael\nAngelo has given him. A great man is nearly always to be found at the core\nof a great social growth, charging the latent tendencies of a race with\nenergy, and shaping their action upon the form of his mind. \"An\ninstitution is the lengthened shadow of a man,\" writes Emerson. Judaism\nis the lengthened shadow of Moses. Whatever else Moses may have done, he\nproved himself the architect of Israel, by laying the foundation that\ndetermined the form and size of the later structure. He taught his simple\npeople to recognize Jehovah as their tribal God. What this name meant in\nthe conception of the people before his time is by no means clear to us\nnow. It appears to have stood for the personification of some one of the\nforms of nature's forces, that arrest upon themselves the nomad's vague\nsense of the Infinite and Divine in the world about him. Around the Power\nfelt in Saturn or the Sun, Moses threw the spell of an awe which is deeper\nfar than that awakened by the starry heavens above man--the awe aroused by\nthe moral law within man. He gave his rude children a noble moral code,\nthe original form of the Decalogue. These Ten Words were issued as the law\nof Jehovah. Jehovah then was the source and authority of the laws which\nthe conscience owned. The moral law was his body of statutes. To keep this\nlaw was the way to please Him. His commands reached through rites and\nordinances to conduct and character. His demands were not for sacrifices,\nbut for good lives. His worship was aspiration and endeavor after\ngoodness.\n\nAnd this Power enjoining morality was none other than the Power which in\nnature seemed so often unmoral and even immoral. Jehovah of the skies was\nthe God of the Ten Words.\n\nThis was a seminal thought, bodied in an institution. In begetting this\nconception in the soul of Israel, Moses fathered the life which grew\nthrough embryonic forms, during the slow gestation of the centuries,\nshaping toward the ideal of religion. Whatever was vital and progressive\nin the nation's thought and feeling sucked up its juices from the seed\ndeep-rooted in this basic institution. Rightly did legislators and\nhistorians, through the after ages, look back and ascribe all their work\nin the development of the national life to Moses. Even thus the rose, were\nit conscious, might turn its crimson face upon the ground and whisper to\nthe seed at its roots--I am thy work. Even thus the son, in the pride and\npower of manhood goes back to the old homestead, and looking into his\nfather's face confesses--All that I am you have made me.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n_The heroic age:_ B.C. 1300-1100.\n\n\n\nAfter Moses there follows a period of at least two hundred years, of which\nwe have very imperfect accounts, and those plainly traditional and\ncommingled with legend. The Hebrew tribes appear to have gradually\ngravitated upon Canaan; slowly settling into agricultural pursuits, and\nwinning from its previous occupants the land they coveted, inch by inch,\nin bloody strife. They camped upon their hard-won fields for several\ngenerations, maintaining their claims at the point of the sword, with\nvarying success; now mastering their foes, and again almost crushed by\nthem. The inter-relations of the several tribes during this period would\nseem to have been of a very loose character. Each appears to have acted\nfor itself, except at critical moments, when common danger drew them\ntogether in concerted action under leaders of commanding ability.\nTradition has preserved charming tales of some of these redoubtable\nchampions of the Hebrews, of whom we would gladly know much more. This was\nthe heroic age of Israel. Rude, rough times of constant alarm brought\nforth little that was memorable save feats of courage. We have few\nglimpses into the state of religion in this simple society, and upon what\nis brought out into light the hues of later ages are reflected. Quite\nclearly we may discern that the religion of the people in those days was\nby no means that which we know as Mosaism. How could such a sublime\nconception as that of Moses have ripened in a people at this stage of\ntheir development? Like all founders of religion, he was far in advance of\nhis age. If a few higher natures, here and there, recognized and\nappreciated the significance of the Ten Words of Jehovah, the mass of the\npeople could not have done so. And movement is determined toward the mass\nin ethics as in physics. All that Moses could have hoped to do was to body\nhis seminal truth in an institution, that should keep it alive in the\nnation until the proper conditions were found for its quickening and\ngrowth. This he achieved in binding the tribes to the worship of Jehovah,\nwhose law was owned in the moral standards of the people. To this loyalty\nto Jehovah, as _the_ God of Israel, Moses did securely bind the tribes.\nThey never wholly forswore Jehovah, and thus never lost the germ begotten\nin the soul of the race, which held the promise and potency of the future.\n\nBut around Jehovah, as the supreme God of the race, the people still\ncontinued to group their ancient divinities, and to worship them in the\nold-time manner. The religion of a people in any stage of its history is\nalways a composite; a succession of layers that correspond to the\nintellectual and moral classifications of society. But the proportion of\nthe true religion rises with a progressive civilization. In these\nsemi-civilized tribes the religion of the bulk of the people, in all\nprobability, corresponded with the ideas and forms of worship of other\npeoples in the same stage of development In the lowest stratum fetichism\nlingered on, the worship of any unusual thing that excited the wonder of a\nsimple people. Great trees of immemorial age, huge boulders standing\nstrangely in fertile valleys, continued the objects of superstitious awe.\nJehovahism took up these remnants of fetichism into its higher life, when\nit found that they could not be dispossessed, just as Christianity did\nlong afterward with pagan customs, and gave them a higher significance in\nconnection with the worship of Jehovah.[39]\n\nHigher strata of the people worshipped the various powers of nature, the\nsun, the moon, the stars, after much the same fashion in vogue among their\nkindred Semites.[40] Even the revolting rites of the surrounding\nnature-worships were not lacking in Israel. While the gentle and gracious\nwarmth of the spring sun called forth the happy adoration of the people,\nthe scorching and consuming heat of the midsummer sun roused the fears of\nthe sufferers for their crops, their cattle, and their very lives. They\nsought to propitiate this fierce Power, which was evidently hostile to\nman, with offerings of the life it devoured so pitilessly. The choicest\nlives--the first-born son, the fairest maiden of the village--were\nsacrificed to glut its greed of death. Into the fiery arms of Moloch\nparents laid the children of their love. Human sacrifices were\nunquestionably a recognized form of worship during this period, at least\nin times of deep distress.[41] The libertine longings of nature, the free\nfecundities of mother-earth, imaged to the grosser people the Power\nworking round about them and within their very bodies; and men and women\ngave free rein to their appetites and passions, in honor of divinities\nlike Ashera, the Syrian Venus.[42] The various tribes probably had\ndifferent rites.\n\nThe general picture we must fashion in our minds of this period is of a\npolytheistic, idolatrous people, slightly distinguishable from the\nsurrounding Semites, save as they held, in their recognition of Jehovah\nand his Ten Words, the germ of a higher thought and life.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n_The period of the monarchy, down to the epoch of the great prophets:_ B.\nC. 1100-800.\n\n\n\nThe story of the making of England may interpret to us the development\nthat ensued in this third period of Israel's history. We know how the\npetty realms of the Angles-land, under pressure from a common foe, learned\nto act momentarily together, came for a summer under some commanding\nleader, drew thus into closer affiliations grouped gradually around the\nmore powerful realms, and at length crystallized into England. In some\nsuch way the Hebrew tribes were slowly knit together by the necessity of\nwar, until to organize a lasting victory they were forced into\nconsolidation and out of the loose confederation of tribes arose a nation,\nIsrael. Social tendencies generally throw a leader to the front. The man\nis not wanting for the hour. The king-maker of Israel was Samuel. A man\ncombining in that simple state of society several functions--priest and\njudge and leader--he had the prescience to divine the need of the age, and\nthe wisdom to point out the man to meet it. Saul was chosen King, in free\ngathering of the hardy yeomanry, and proved his human election a divine\nselection by rousing the nation to new efforts, which his genius led to\nvictory. Saul was followed by a brief period of national unity under David\nand Solomon, in which the rapid and brilliant progress made in the spread\nof the kingdom, in wealth and civilization, revealed the latent powers of\nthis gifted race.\n\nThe progress of political and commercial greatness was stayed by the\nrending of the kingdom after Solomon. No great advances were possible amid\nthe chronic jealousies and frequent strife of the sister kingdoms, which\nwere unable to come together again in a unity that would have restored\ntheir prestige, and were unable, apart, to achieve any signal success in\ndiplomacy or war.\n\nThe social state of the people underwent the changes usual in this stage\nof a people's history. With peace came wealth, with wealth came luxury,\nwith luxury new social vices, fed from the court which grew around the\nmonarchy. But that the heart of the people continued sound amid these\norganic changes we may see from several hints preserved by tradition.\n\nThe institution, or revival, of the Order of the Nazarites was a\nreligio-moral movement. It was a protest against the vice of drunkenness\nthat was increasing in the land, as, relieved from war's alarms and waxing\nfat upon their fertile fields, the people gave themselves to pleasure. The\nfirst Prohibition Society, of which we have record, was this Order of the\nNazarites. This Order appears also to have had a still deeper moral aim,\nlittle noticed of old. It was a reaction from the social changes that were\ngoing on in Israel, a protest against the new-fashioned ways of wealth,\nan earnest effort to hold to the simplicities of earlier days, to the good\nold plain living and high thinking. It was a counter-movement of Old\nIsrael, essaying to stem the mad rush for riches. A still more convincing\ntoken of the healthy moral tone of the nation is to be found in the\nearliest considerable work of literature preserved to us, the Song of\nSongs. It holds up to scorn the licentiousness that Solomon had made\nfashionable, and of which, in a just retribution, he had become the\nabhorred type. The great king fails to corrupt the virtue of a simple\ncountry maiden, despite of all his blandishments. Ewald assigns this poem\nto the northern kingdom, which had separated itself from Judah chiefly in\nreaction from the Solomonic innovations. It leads us into the homes of the\nsturdy peasantry of the hill country, where burned the fires on the altars\nof pure wedded love.\n\nFrom a people thus sound at heart, amid the mellowing richness of\ncivilization, we may well expect great things in religion. Whatever the\noutward forms of religion, its roots ran deep down into the moral law, and\nmust needs have borne in due time a noble fruitage. There was in fact a\nstriking development of religion in this period. It was coincident with\nthe secular development of the nation. This indeed is the general rule of\nreligious revival. Religion advances with the advancing life of man, each\nnew and true step forward opening a higher possibility of thought and\nfeeling concerning God. As Moses the Emancipator was the father of true\nreligion in Israel, so Samuel the king-maker was its early master. We\ncannot now trace clearly his work, but we can see that he was a fresh\nethical and spiritual force, shaping religious life anew.\n\nProphets there had doubtless been before him, in Israel as out of it, but\nthey were unethical and unspiritual influences in religion; the frenzied\ndervishes, the oracular seers, the wizards and necromancers who long\nafterward claimed this name, and were denounced by the higher prophets.\nSamuel's masterful work was to turn this semi-religious force into a\nhigher channel, and to direct it toward a moral aim. He was the creator of\nthe type which drew after him \"the goodly fellowship of the prophets.\" The\ntraditions of Israel present him in the _r\u00f4le_ of fearless censor and\ntruthful mentor to the infant State; the _r\u00f4le_ which the great prophets\nlater on assumed toward the maturer nation. He criticized the King, guided\nthe people, and held the nation loyal to Jehovah. However little\nperception the mass of the people had of the spiritual significance of the\nState religion, however many gross forms of popular religion existed\naround and within the tolerant institutions of Jehovahism, it was a vital\nmatter to preserve that State religion, and keep it well ahead of the\npeople's growth. Thus we can perceive the historic significance of the\nwork of the next great prophet after Samuel, Elijah; through the legendary\nnimbus that gathered round his striking personality and dramatic action In\na critical hour, when the Jehovah-worship had well nigh disappeared, he\nstood alone against the powers of the realm, and rallied the people once\nmore beneath the name of the god of their father. He plucked a victory\nfrom defeat which decided the course of history. What if Jehovah was but a\nname to the mass of the people? What if they continued to worship much as\nbefore, only no longer at the altars of Baal? There are long periods in\nthe history of man when the future depends upon allegiance to an\ninstitution little understood by those who shout most lustily for it. The\nfuture may lie seeded down in a name which stores within it the forces of\na new and higher unfolding when the times come ripe. Thus it proved\nthrough the crawling centuries in which Israel held hard by a name of God\nwhich then meant little to it, but which ultimately evolved its ethical\nsignificance and manifested unto men, The Eternal who loveth\nrighteousness. Thus may it prove with the child of Judaism. Liberals, who\nare in such haste to drop the name of Christ, should pause long enough to\nask themselves the question whether, since it roots religion in a life of\nsuch perfect goodness that it became to men the manifestation of God,\nthis sacred name may not in its turn hold the secret of our progress;\nwhether, from the treasured forces of the past that it gathers into\nitself, when the spring time now setting in shall have fully come, it may\nnot blossom into the religion of the future? A civilization should not be\ncut off from the historic seed which lies at the roots of its religion, if\nit is to grow unto the harvest.\n\nThat in this fidelity to the tradition of their race the religion of the\npeople of Israel was in the vital processes of growth, through this long\nperiod, we know assuredly from one conclusive fact. Out of this tedious\nwinter came, suddenly as it seems to us, a rich and beautiful spring. The\nepoch of the great prophets, with a new life of thought and aspiration,\nbreaks in abruptly on this commingling of all sorts of religion within the\nprecincts of Jehovahism. Even in February the sap is softening and warming\nin the veins which show no greening on the tips of the patient trees.\nIsrael was swelling toward the day that was sure to come, when, lo! the\nspring!\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n_The era of the great prophets, before the exile:_ B.C. 800-586.\n\n\n\nIn the southern Pacific, where coral islands are slowly forming beneath\nthe surface of the sea, he who is curious to study the process of the\nmaking of an island must send the divers down to bring up broken bits of\ncoral, snatched from the dark depths in a painful labor. After the ocean\nmountain thrusts its top above the surface of the sea the work of\nexploration is easy enough, and we may walk over hard ground as we study\nthe new formation in the sunlight. Hitherto, in our desire to learn the\nsecrets of the growth of Israel, we have been like men peering over the\nsides of their tiny boats into the depths of a sea that covers fascinating\nmysteries; watching the labors of the adepts who ever and anon bring up to\nthe light some fresh fragments of a buried world. In the epoch that we\nhave now reached Israel's growing life lifts itself above the level of\ntradition, and stands forth as solid history, on whose firm ground we can\nstudy for ourselves the making of a nation's religion.\n\nIsrael's literary period opens for us with the prophets. Literary\nfragments float up to us from earlier days, but now, for the first time,\nwe have whole books about whose date and authorship we are reasonably\ncertain. The prophets introduced the literary craft. They wrote out, in\ntheir later years, the substance of the messages which they had borne the\npeople. These brilliant pages teem with graphic descriptions of the actual\nusages, social and religious, of their age, so that there is no difficulty\nin reproducing with fair accuracy the salient features of the period.\n\nThe popular religion was that composite of heathenisms already sketched\nin considering the previous period. The people continued to worship the\nPower which all felt and owned, under the manifold forms which this Power\nassumes in nature's processes. Sun and moon and stars still arrested the\nawe which through them groped after God, and drew upon themselves the\nworship of the imagination. The worship of Jehovah had a special honor as\nthe State religion, but it stood contentedly amid other forms of religion.\nIn the service of Jehovah local shrines developed special usages. The\n\"Uses\" of Israel were as varied as the \"Uses\" of England before the\nReformation. No act of Uniformity was in operation in the realm. Idolatry\nwas not the exception but the rule. The most popular symbol of Jehovah was\nan image of a bull. To the higher minds this bull was doubtless merely a\nsymbol, expressive of a striking phase of the sun's force, but to the mass\nof men it was probably the actual object of their adorations. The\nsymbolism of the Jerusalem Temple was thoroughly idolatrous; as, for\nexample, the twelve oxen upholding the laver, and the horns of the altar,\nsymbols drawn from the prevalent bull-worship; the two columns in the\ncourt, and the cherubs, or cloud-dragons in the most holy place; the\n_chamanim_, or sun-images representing the rays of the sun in the shape of\na cone, and the chariots and horses of the sun, a very ancient symbol\nfamiliar to us in Guido's Aurora.[43]\n\nNor did the allegiance to Jehovah bar private usages of an idolatrous\nnature. The home of the average Israelite had its _teraphim_ and other\ndomestic divinities. The darker aspects of the popular religion still held\ntheir ground against the growing light. Beneath the shadow of the Jehovah\nof the Ten Words, stood, unmolested, the images fashioned by the appetites\nand passions; and men and women surrendered themselves to drunken orgies\nand sensual debauches, in honor of the deities of desire. As late as the\ntime of Jeremiah, after nearly two centuries of prophetic teaching, there\nwere in the sacred precincts of the temple the _asheras_, or tree-poles,\nby which the priestesses of passion, as part of their religious offices,\nsold themselves to the frequenters of Jehovah's house.[44] Below the holy\ncity, King Manasseh reared the image of Moloch, and human sacrifices were\noffered to placate the wrath of the Power which they ignorantly\nworshipped.\n\nWhere religion was so largely a worship of the physical powers of nature,\nthe life of the people would of necessity show an undeveloped ethical\nstate. Drunkenness and debauchery continued common, the marriage bond was\nvery elastic in the polite society of the capital, and selfishness\nhaughtily overrode all considerations of _meum_ and _tuum_ in the mad\nchase of wealth.\n\nUnsatisfactory as the morals of the influential classes of society were,\nthere is, however, no indication of any such \"ooze and thaw of wrong\" as\nindicated a moribund condition in the nation.\n\nWe must not make the mistake, so common concerning reformers, and regard\nthe evils that were justly lashed by the prophets as prevailing throughout\nsociety. Had this been the case, where would the ethical forces of a new\nand higher life have risen? Single preachers of social righteousness might\nhave arisen, like Savonarola in Florence, under such conditions, but no\ngeneral reform could have developed. The steady growth of the movement\ninitiated by the great prophets shows that it sprang from no individuals,\nbut from society; that they merely led the reserve forces of virtue in the\nnation. The heart of the nation was doubtless sound, and growing more\nvigorously virtuous. Professor Thorold Rogers reminds us that the period\nwhen a great outcry is heard against any social evil, is not that wherein\nthe evil is at its height, for then there would probably be no power of\nprotest, but rather that in which the recuperative forces of society are\nrallying to throw off the disorder from the body politic. Morality was in\nadvance of religion at this time in Israel, and this interprets the\nmovement which ensued to place religion in its proper position at the head\nof the march of progress.\n\nIt was amid such a state of affairs that the great prophets appeared upon\nthe stage of action, calling the nation to a higher religion. They were\nnot so much philosophers, reasoning out a lofty intellectual conception of\nGod, as preachers of righteousness, vitalizing from the moral nature the\nsense of the purity and justice of the Power in whom men lived and moved\nand had their being They turned the light of the inward law upon God, and\nrevealed Him as its author. They led Virtue into the Temple, touched her\nlips with a live coal from off the altar, and from a tongue of fire men\nheard, \"Thus saith the Lord.\" They revived the true Mosaic priesthood,\nwhich set apart conscience as the mediator between God and man. The seed\nthat Moses planted budded and swelled toward its bloom. The prophetic\nwritings show us men a-hungered after righteousness breathing out the\nworship of Jehovah into the worship of the Eternal, who loveth\nrighteousness.\n\nIsaiah carries this message from God:\n\n    To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?\n    I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts.\n    And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.\n    When ye come to appear before me,\n    Who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?\n    Bring no more vain oblations;\n    Incense is an abomination unto me;\n    The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure;\n    It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.\n    Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth;\n    They are a trouble unto me;\n    I am weary to bear them.\n    And when ye spread forth your hands,\n    I will hide mine eyes from you:\n    Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear:\n    Your hands are full of blood.\n    Wash you, make you clean;\n    Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes:\n    Cease to do evil; learn to do well:\n    Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,\n    Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.[45]\n\nMicah voices the questions that men raised in his day, answering them with\nthe new thought:\n\n    Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord,\n    And bow myself before the high God?\n    Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,\n    With calves of a year old?\n    Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,\n    Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?\n    Shall I give my first born for my transgression,\n    The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?\n    He hath showed thee, O man, what is good,\n    And what doth the Lord require of thee,\n    But to do justly, and to love mercy,\n    And to walk humbly with thy God?[46]\n\nTwo features of the work of the prophets bring out clearly their ethical\ninspiration. Israel was at this period being drawn, for the first time,\ninto the currents created by the strife of the mammoth empires of Assyria\nand Egypt, in whose maelstrom she at length went down. Public affairs were\nbecoming matters of international relationship. The prophets threw\nthemselves heartily into the national politics, standing between the party\nof Assyria and the party of Egypt, as independents concerned with the\ninterests of neither faction, but seeking to lift both sides above the\nshifting sands of policy upon the firm ground of principle. They sought to\nlead the nation to turn aside from its dazzling dream of a brilliant\nforeign policy to the humbler tasks of internal reform; to induce the\nState to busy itself with the labor of redressing civic disorders and of\nbuilding a community of sober, pure, and just citizens, cultivating peace\nand equity with other peoples, and fearing God. They were preachers to the\ncorporate conscience of Israel, and dealt with subjects which the modern\npulpit effeminately shuns. In strains of pure and passionate patriotism,\nthey delighted to vision before the people the ideal State and its ideal\nKing; thus to lead the aspirations of the nation to a higher ambition\nthan martial prowess and diplomatic craft.\n\n    The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,\n    The spirit of wisdom and understanding,\n    The spirit of counsel and might,\n    The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord,\n    And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord:\n    And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes,\n    Neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:\n    But with righteousness shall he judge the poor,\n    And reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.\n    And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth,\n    And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.\n    And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,\n    And faithfulness the girdle of his reins.[47]\n\nThese Hebrew prophets made the right administration of public affairs the\nessentially religious service which their devout student Gladstone\ndeclares them now to be. Because of this inspiration of civic life with\nreligiousness, their books have become, as Coleridge called them, the\nStatesman's Manual.\n\nAt this period in Israel's history the social revolution attending the\nprogress of all peoples from a simple to a complex organization was\nentailing its usual excesses, and alarming symptoms were showing\nthemselves in the commonwealth. In earlier days Israel's tenure of land\nhad been, like that of all peoples, communistic. Proprietorship of the\nland was vested in the family, and then in the village community. There\nwere no private fortunes and no private poverty. Life was simple and\ncontented, and dull. Under the action of the usual social forces, this\nsystem had been gradually breaking up, through many generations. Property\nhad mainly passed into personal possession Society had recrystallized\naround the individual. Individualism had developed its customary\ntendencies to inequality. The ancient equality of the free farmers of\nIsrael was already disappearing. Fortunes, undreamed of a couple of\ncenturies earlier, were becoming common. Greed was pushing men beyond\nlegitimate acquisition into respectable robbery. The old-time rights of\ncommonalty were disappearing in pasture, and farming land, and forest. The\nvillage commons were being \"enclosed\" by local potentates. Monopolies of\nthe natural resources of all wealth, the inalienable dower of the people\nat large, were working their inevitable consequences. Below the wealthy\nclass, which was rising to the top of society, there was forming at the\nbottom a new and unheard-of social stratum, the settlings of the struggle\nfor existence; a deposit of the feebleness and ignorance and innocence of\nthe people. In the loss of the old sense of a commonwealth, the nation was\nbreaking up into classes, alienated, unsympathetic, hostile. Selfishness\nwas threatening ruin to the State.\n\nIn the midst of these dangerous social tendencies the prophets came\nforward as \"men of the people.\" Like brave Latimer at Paul's Cross, these\nfearless preachers stood in the marketplaces to denounce monopoly and the\ntyranny of capital. They were not affrighted by the hue and cry that, if\nhuman nature was the same then as now, was raised against them, in the\nname of the sacred rights of property. They were not beguiled by the\nsophisms of those who doubtless proved conclusively that the best\ninterests of the people were being furthered by the fullest freedom of the\nable and crafty to enrich themselves _ad libitum_. They could not have\nstood an examination in political economy, but they knew the heart of the\nwhole matter, in a world whose core is the moral law. They saw, more or\nless clearly, that there could be no lasting wealth in a society which was\nnot based upon a wide, deep common-wealth. They felt that the one clue to\nfollow in every social problem was held by conscience. So they struck\nboldly at existing wrongs in the name of the Eternal Righteous One.\n\n    Woe unto them that join house to house,\n    That lay field to field\n    Till there be no place,\n    That they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    The Lord will enter into judgment\n    With the ancients of his people and the princes thereof:\n    For ye have eaten up the vineyard;\n    The spoil of the poor is in your houses.\n    What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces,\n    And grind the faces of the poor?\n    Saith the Lord God of hosts.[48]\n\nOne word, constantly recurring through the prophets, reveals the secret of\ntheir enthusiasm. They lifted above the people the august and holy form of\nJustice, and called on men to follow her. They appealed to a force in men\nmightier than selfishness. They kindled the passion which had been always\nlatent in Israel, since the day when Moses led forth the slaves of Egypt\nto found a nation of freemen. A new and lofty ideal mastered the minds of\nthe better natures among the people. Over against the darkness of their\nage there rose a vision of a good time coming, when Justice should be\nthroned on law, and selfishness be exorcised from the hearts of men who\nhad learned the secret\n\n    Of joy in widest commonalty spread.\n\nAnd this they did in the name of Jehovah. From Him they came with these\nmessages concerning social obligations. The Eternal One who loved\nrighteousness could be served in no other way than in furthering justice.\nReligion became social reform, aflame with the enthusiasm of holy ideals;\nof ideals seen to be eternal realities, as the shadows cast by The Living\nGod, moving on to accomplish the good pleasure of His will.\n\n\nTo conserve the new spirit of brotherhood which they awakened, they\nembodied in the book of the Law, that constituted the Magna Charta of the\nReformation, a development of a gracious usage of the people. From\nimmemorial antiquity there had been a recognized right of the populace to\nthe natural yield of the soil in every seventh year. This common law they\nformally re-enacted, in the name of Jehovah, and added to it a provision\nfor the release of debtors in the sabbatical year.[49]\n\nWe shall see in the nest period the fruitage of this new religion of\nsocial righteousness, in the remarkable legislation of the Restoration.\n\nIn these serious, strenuous secularities--so often neglected by the\nreligious, or even opposed as irreligious--which now were consecrated to\nthe service of Jehovah, religion found its true sphere, and developed its\nlatent forces. A new era opened. The abominations of religion in former\ntimes became the exceptions rather than the rule, and gradually\ndisappeared from society. After Jeremiah we hear no more of impurities\nhiding under the altar, or of savage superstition seeking to please\nJehovah by outraging the holiest instincts of human nature. Jehovah became\nthe name for a conception of Deity so spiritual, so holy, that henceforth\nthe student of Israel's history should substitute--God.\n\nIt is a most interesting study to place these great prophets in their\nchronological order, and trace the development of this ethical religion.\nAs one after another they come upon the stage of action they take up the\ngreat words of their masters and repeat them in their own way; take up the\ngreat tasks of their predecessors and carry them on toward completion;\nleading religion into an ever deepening spirituality. The prophets of the\neighth century group around Isaiah, under whose influence Hezekiah\nattempted a partial reformation of the popular religion. The prophets of\nthe seventh century group around Jeremiah, the master-spirit in the more\nthorough reformation carried out under Josiah. This second reformation\nachieved an institutional organization of ethical religion, that came just\nin time to create a body capable of holding the people together in loyalty\nto the true God, amid the break up of the nation.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n_The Epoch of the Exile:_ B.C. 586-536.\n\n\n\nThe conquest of the two sister kingdoms, with the carrying away of the\ninfluential portion of the people into exile, was a blessing in disguise.\nIsrael was taken out of its petty provincialisms, its race insularity, and\nplaced amid one of the most highly cultivated civilizations of the\nancient world. The fertile plain of Mesopotamia had been from immemorial\nantiquity the seat of great enterprises. Civilization had developed there\nwhen surrounding peoples had not emerged from semi-barbarism. Like the\nTroy beneath Troy in the Ilium ruins, we find here successive\ncivilizations resting each upon the debris of an earlier order. The\ndescriptions of ancient historians, together with the explorations of late\nyears, make very vivid the scenes amid which the captive Israelites\nwalked.\n\nBabylon was a city which might well astonish and captivate strangers. It\nwas of immense size, being surrounded by a wall forty, or possibly sixty,\nmiles in circumference. This wall was nearly three hundred feet high, and\nwas broad enough to allow a chariot with four horses to turn easily upon\nit. The streets were wide and straight, crossing each other at right\nangles, and were lined with houses several stories in height, painted in\nall the colors of the rainbow. Trees and gardens were so plentiful as to\ngive the whole city the appearance of a park. The grounds of the imperial\npalace covered an area of seven miles round, in the centre of the city.\nThe largest temple the world has ever seen rose in pyramidal form six\nhundred feet in air. The broad and shaded streets were resplendent with\nthe pomp and pageantry of the court of a mighty empire, and were alive\nwith the bustle of the traffic of the known world.\n\nLibraries and museums garnered the treasures of art and literature, of\nscience and philosophy, accumulated through centuries. On every hand were\nthe tokens of a refined and cultivated civilization, venerable with age.\nIn the temples a rich ritual celebrated an elaborate worship, while\nlearned priests waited to explain the profound philosophic and poetic\ntruths of the sacred symbols.\n\nTransported to such surroundings, Israel received the mental shock which\nan American of a generation past experienced on first visiting Europe. The\ninfluence of this surprise was very marked. Israel's genius flowered in\nthis strange soil. Her literary life centres in Babylonia. The second\nIsaiah wrote there his immortal pages. The unknown authors of the noble\nhistories, whose charm never stales, fashioned there the traditions and\nrecords of the past into their present shape. There the great legal\ncodification was carried out, and the institutional system of Israel\nperfected. A new circle of ideas show themselves at work in the mind of\nthe people while in exile. From Chaldean scholars the Israelites probably\nlearned the ancient legends of the Beginnings, which they worked over in\ntheir profounder religious consciousness into the simple and spiritual\nforms in which they stand in Genesis. From Persia they either received\nbodily the system of angelology that thenceforth appears in their\nwritings, or they received the quickening influence of a kindred religion\nupon the thoughts latent in their beliefs.[50]\n\nThese intellectual influences wrought directly upon the development of\nIsrael's religion. In the revelation of the prosperous life of these alien\npeoples the chosen race saw herself but one member of the great world\nfamily. Persia's ethical and spiritual religion discovered to the nobler\nnatures of Israel the very ideals which they and their fathers had long\nbeen strenuously seeking. These heathen were worshipping the same source\nand standard of goodness before which they themselves had been doing\nhomage. A new sense of human brotherhood stirred within the exclusive\nrace, and with it the perception that there is one Father of all men.\nReligion threw off all lingering polytheistic notions and soared to the\nvision of One God. Monotheism dates as a clear consciousness from this\nera.[51] It was saved from becoming an abstract, philosophic conception,\nmerging good and evil in a common source, by the stern ethical dualism of\nthe Persians. Though there be but one God, who is ultimately to triumph\nover all evil, yet, said these Persians, evil is a present power in\ncreation, organized and active, waging constant warfare with the powers of\ngoodness. Earth is the scene of the battle between light and darkness, in\nwhich each man must play his part, for weal or for woe.\n\nThese high ethical and religious conceptions were nourished from the deeps\nof sorrow out of which the people cried bitterly to God. Their nation was\ncrushed, their homes were broken up, and they themselves were captives in\na strange land. Israel might have said,\n\n    A deep distress hath humanized my soul.\n\nAll tender and gracious and holy humanities sprang forth from the hard\nHebrew nature under this deep distress. The national ideal changed wholly.\nThe old dream of a puissant king passed from the minds of the better men,\nand we hear little of it thenceforth in the writings of the nation. In the\nplace of it arose the vision of the Righteous, Suffering, Servant of\nGod--the Nation trained in the school of sorrow for a sacrificial mission,\nand charged to lead the peoples of the earth into the knowledge of the\nEternal, who loveth righteousness.\n\nAs the crown and consummation of religion, the holy hope of life beyond\nthe grave dawned in this night of suffering, gleaming toward the day of\nHim who brought life and immortality to light.[52]\n\nAround this deepening and enriching life the remarkable body of the\nprophetic-priestly system was fashioned, as the law of the new nation when\nit should gain once more the old home. It looked to the formation of a\nholy people; through its minute direction of the daily life, its\nsacrificial symbolism charged with spiritual significances, its sacred\nbooks for the instruction of the people, its order of scribes devoted to\nthis new study, its synagogues or meeting-houses for oral teaching and for\nprayer--now for the first time elevated into an act of public worship\nco-ordinate in dignity with sacrifice.\n\nTrue to its old instinct, Israel's religion, first seeking to build up\nindividual holiness, turned then to build up social righteousness. The\nideals of the great prophets, which had been long working in the minds and\nhearts of the leaders of the people, were now embodied in the priestly\nlegislation. The traditional communal system of land-holding was\nestablished as the legal basis for the new nation. The land of Israel was\nnationalized, and its title vested in God, from whom individuals received\nthe right of limited usufruct. It could not be sold outright. No man could\ngain a fee-simple proprietorship. The seventh year was continued as a year\nof fallow when the poor were to have the right of pasturage and of such\ngrowth as the land spontaneously brought forth. At the end of seven\nsabbatical periods, in round numbers every fifty years, all purchases of\nland were to lapse, and the soil return to the original possessors. At the\nsame time all debtors were to pass through a general act of bankruptcy and\ngo forth free men. Interest was not to be allowed on loans made between\nbrother Israelites. By these provisions both villeinage or land-serfdom\nand the slavery of debtor classes to capital were to be prevented in the\nnew nation. This legislation of the restoration was \"to the end that there\nbe no poor among you.\"[53]\n\nTo such impracticable ideals, for that age, did this exilic movement of\nthe new religion look, with sober, strenuous, systematic effort for their\nrealization; and therein may we see its intensity of moral life.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n_The period of the Restoration, from_ B.C. 536.\n\n\n\nThe common notion is that this period of Israel's history was practically\na vacuum, and that through five centuries the nation experienced no\nfurther development. In reality, it was an exceedingly active period,\ncharacterized by most important developments. Politically it was a period\nof constantly changing influences. Israel was scarcely ever really\nindependent during these centuries. Her changes were the changes from one\nmaster to another. But this very subjection aided her intellectual\ndevelopment, as she was thus brought under the direct action of foreign\nideas. Her rapid growth of population forced upon her a system of\nemigration, that drew off her youth to the great centres of the world and\nestablished large colonies in every leading city. Israel was never left to\nsettle down again into provincialism, but was stirred by the currents of\nthe great world of thought that poured in upon her from Greece and Egypt,\nfrom Rome and the far East. \"A cross-fertilization of ideas\" was thus\ncarried on by Providence. The result of grafting the richest varieties of\nthought upon such a sturdy stock could not fail of proving something rare\nand rich. As was natural from such conditions, the thought of the nation\ntook on new forms. Calm study of nature and man, and rational speculation\non the great problems of life displaced impassioned and imaginative\nthought. Prophecy gave way to philosophy. The sages became the teachers of\nmen. The third class of books in the Old Testament Canon, known by the\nJews as the Writings, belong to this period; Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,\nEsther, Jonah, Daniel, etc. To this period also belongs the Apocrypha,\nwhich contains some noble books. These varied writings show, when\ncritically studied, a direct bearing on the problems that we know were\noccupying the mind of the nation during this period, and illustrate the\ntendencies working among the people. We thus see, plainly, the growth of\nthe seeds of noble thought which were sown in the national consciousness\nduring the exile, and the growth of the rich germs wafted into Judea from\nGreece and Egypt.\n\nWe can trace the development of the circle of ideas which, later on,\ncrystallized, under the ethical and spiritual force of Jesus into the\ntheology of Christianity. We watch the embryonic stages of this\nthought-body, which at length awaited only the breathing within it of an\ninforming spirit to issue in a new and noble religion.\n\nNor was this period of the Restoration merely one of intellectual\ndevelopment, else there would have been no such issue as came at length.\nIt was a period of quiet ethical and spiritual development. No prophet\narose, indeed, to quicken Israel, but the ancient prophets still spake\nfrom the institutions into which they had breathed somewhat of their\nspirit, and from the holy books which were read in every synagogue, and\nlearned in every home. The temple worship of this period retained the old\nforms of sacrifice; but charged them with spiritual significances which\nare difficult for us to associate with such bloody rites, did we not know\nhow easily the religious spirit adapts itself to any outward ceremonies,\nand transforms them into its own life. The soul spurns the symbols to\nwhich it yet will cling, and soars beyond the poor height to which the\nlaboring wings of ordinance and ritual can carry it. The profound\nspiritual life which was awakened in the exile flooded these low forms\nwith supernal light. They spoke to men of better sacrifices than the\nblood of bulls and lambs--of sins slaughtered and fleshly powers consumed,\nof lives of men offered up in purity to God. They whispered to the soul of\nthe holiness of God, and of His forgiveness as well; and, in their\npowerlessness to satisfy the spiritual needs suggested by them, they kept\nmen's eyes upon the future, looking for the Prophet greater than Moses,\nwho would surely come from behind the veil with a new word from God. Out\nof such thoughts and feelings the temple worship drew upon itself a noble\nservice of song, of whose ethical and spiritual beauty we can judge from\nthe temple hymnal. You and I to-day have sung some of the very hymns which\nthose Jews chanted around their brazen altar. Through these psalms of many\nages, gathered into a hymnal of unrivalled nobleness, the worship of\nIsrael ascended in the aspirations of the people after purity and\nrighteousness. If the choirs sang of the Shepherd of Israel, it was not\nmerely in the praises of the providential care felt over the chosen\npeople, but in the thankfulness of souls, because of the assurance of His\nspiritual guidance:\n\n    He shall convert my soul,\n    And bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.\n\nIf they chanted the glories of the House of God, it was because thither\nthe tribes came up, with this desire in the hearts of the worshippers:\n\n    Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks,\n    So longeth my soul after thee, O God.\n    My soul is athirst for God. Yea, even for the living God:\n    When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    O send out thy light and thy truth:\n    Let them lead me;\n    Let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.\n    Then will I go up unto the altar of God,\n    Unto God, the gladness of my joy:\n    Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee,\n    O God, my God.\n\nThe temple, however, was but a part, and practically a small part, of the\ninstitutionalism of religion in this period. This was the era of the\nscribe rather than of the priest. Ezra came back to Jerusalem with a new\ntreasure, \"The Law.\" Around this sacred book, which soon added to itself\nthe writings of the Prophets, the religious life of the nation really\ncrystallized. To read and expound it, now that \"no vision came to the\nprophets from The Eternal,\" became the highest office of religion, an\noffice purely ethical and spiritual. In every town of the land the\nMeeting-house arose, opening its doors upon the Sabbath and on market\ndays, to the villagers, who gathered for a simple service of instruction\nand devotion. The service began with a short prayer, which was followed by\nthe recitation of some portions of \"The Law,\" setting forth the great\nbeliefs and duties of the Jewish religion--a confession of faith, in\nother words. After this came the long prayer, which, in later times,\nbecame liturgical; and then the reading of the lesson for the day from\n\"The Law,\" with its interpretation, when Hebrew had become a dead\nlanguage. Then followed a reading from the Prophecies, and a homily or\nsermon based upon the passage read. In their synagogues the Jews\nworshipped much as we are doing in this church to-day.\n\nThrough such a quiet deepening of the life of the people was the nation\npreparing for its final development of religion.\n\nTrue it is that in the latter part of this period the nation showed\nunmistakable signs of being overtrained. The hedge made about the Law had\nfenced men off from one thing after another until, to men who were anxious\nnot to offend, life became a weary burden. There was scarcely an action\nthat might not involve sin. The natural effect of externalizing the\ncommands of conscience followed; and the ethical aims which had been\nsought were well nigh lost in the routine of form and ceremony, and in the\nfine-spun distinctions of belief and conduct. A great-souled Jew found,\nlater on, as hosts of his fellow-countrymen had found before him, that by\nthe works of the Thorah (law or teaching) could no flesh be justified. The\nvery Book which had fed so deep a life had come to stand between the soul\nand God, a barrier to the fresh, free inspirations from on high. Religion\nhad run out upon the surface, and was dying. But it was as the tassels\nwither and whiten when the corn is ripe within the husk and ready to seed\ndown a new season.\n\nPlainly, by every sign, Israel's long gestation of Religion was nearing\nits appointed term. All the elements had been developed, one after\nanother, for a Universal Religion, and there was nothing more to be done\nbut to await the coming to the birth. As plainly, by every sign, the\nworld-conditions were at length found for a safe issue of the \"holy thing\"\nwhich Israel so long had carried within her bosom. There was needed a man\nto body these scattered elements, to fuse the forces of the nation into a\npersonality, to live the dreams which a race had visioned. Religion is\nnever a code nor a theory, it is always a life. The ideal religion awaited\nthe ideal man. He came! As the nation held the holy child Jesus in her\narms, joying that a MAN was born into the world, she might have been\noverheard singing:\n\n    Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,\n    According to thy word:\n    For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,\n    Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;\n    A light to lighten the Gentiles,\n    And the glory of thy people Israel.\n\nThe historical reality of Jesus is unquestionable. The essential features\nof his life and thought are distinctly outlined through the mist of time,\nand above the clouds of legend that hang low upon the horizon where he\ndisappeared. The threefold tradition preserves a clear-cut image of the\nSon of Man. We see One in whom the ideals of Israel found a perfect\nrealization. He brought to the flower the conception of religion whose\ngerm lay seeded down in the Ten Words of Moses. In him worship and\naspiration were one. He lived the ethical and spiritual religion after\nwhich the nation had patiently striven, through prophet and priest and\nsage, through psalmist and through scribe. He _lived_ the vision of human\ngoodness which holy men of old had never succeeded in bringing down into\nthe flesh, beyond a blurred blocking in of the heavenly ideal. He _lived_\nman's dream of goodness so gloriously that he became a more than man, in\nwhom was felt the coming nigh of the Eternal Holy One. The human form\ndivine, to which mankind aspired, took on its true and awful splendor, as\nthe image of the God whom the conscience worshipped. Every passing \"I\nwould be,\" of the saints of old looked forth, transfigured from the face\nof One who said \"I AM.\"\n\nTrue to Israel's ancient dream, around this righteous suffering servant of\nthe Eternal, the nations gathered, to be taught of God. The souls to whom\nHe gave power to become the sons of God became the family of the Heavenly\nFather, in which there was \"neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor\nuncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ was all\nand in all.\" In this holy brotherhood of the children of the All-Father,\nwe moderns take our places round our elder brother; feeling sure that we\nhave found the spiritual band or religion wherein society is to be held\ntogether, through each man's holding hard by the God who is the perfection\nof His own highest dreams.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSuch then being the fact of Israel's historic travail and such her issue,\nour fathers' sense of the supreme significance of Christ in human history\ntakes on a new light in our new knowledge.\n\nThe problem of religion is to find such a knowledge of the Being in whom\nwe live and move and have our being, as shall lead men's awe before this\nmysterious Power up into an awe of a Power whom we may rightly worship,\ntrust and love. To find the key to this problem is to hold the secret of\nall the puzzles of our weary world. Before the Power \"manifest in the\nflesh\" in Jesus Christ, our souls hush, in an awe which breathes within us\nworship, trust and love. And if this Power be the very Power felt in\nhistory and in nature, whose ways therein are so often baffling to the\nmoral sense, then all is well. But, if this be so, the holy Power who is\nshrined in Christ must show the features of the Mind which tabernacles in\nnature. There can be no contradiction. Unquestionably an essential\ncharacteristic of the Mind in nature is the method of its action. There\nis a reign of Law. The highest generalization of the methods of this law\nwhich man has reached reveals this Power as acting, through every sphere,\nin continuous progressive development. One word embodies this supreme\ngeneralization--evolution. Christianity must fit into this universal\norder. Otherwise it either denies that order, which denial cannot be\nreceived; or it is denied by that order, which denial is very certain to\nbe increasingly received. God \"cannot deny Himself!\" \"I change not.\"\n\nHere is where Christianity's hold of the human mind hinges in our age. The\nold reading of the history of the preparation for Christ separated \"those\nwhom God hath joined together.\" The new reading of that preparation\nrestores the needful unity.\n\nChristianity is no exception amid the general order of nature. It follows\nthat providential plan. It grows from seed to flower. Its beginnings were\nin a simple conception of ethical religion begotten in a heathen people\nthrough Moses. In the womb of the nation it lay dormant till the time for\nquickening came. Thenceforward it slowly assimilated the vital forces and\nnutritive elements of the organic life within which it grew, until the\nhour arrived when it burst the maternal womb, a perfect birth.\nChristianity is a genuine historic evolution.\n\nWhen we have said this, have we accounted for it? To none save those who,\nin mastering the methods of a process of evolution, fancy that they have\nmastered its sources. To none save those who, familiarizing themselves\nwith the order of life, think that they have resolved its nature. The\nwiser portion of mankind do not find in How a synonym for Whence. We still\nask whence? When we see the issue of a long and complicated plan, we\npostulate a planning mind. When we trace, through the sketches and studies\nin a studio, the gradual embodiment of a vision of loveliness, which at\nlength looks down upon us in its perfect grace from the canvas on the\nwall, we cannot be persuaded out of our conviction that some artist has\nlived and labored in this studio, patiently evolving his great dream. When\nwe see a new-born child we do not think that we have learned its parentage\nin being told about its mother. We want to know who fathered it into\nbeing.\n\nWhat mind planned this process of a nation's growth into a universal\nreligion? What artist dreamed this ethical and spiritual ideal? Who begat\nthis \"holy thing\" conceived in Israel and born of her at length in\nglorious beauty? If Moses was the human parent of this marvellous child,\nwho fathered the \"essential Christ\" in Moses? Who is the real father of\nJesus Christ?\n\nOur only answer must be that given of old:\n\n   When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His son.... The\n   true Light, which lighteth every man, was coming on into the world....\n   And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory,\n   the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and\n   truth.\n\nIf this then be the true interpretation of the evolution of the Christ, we\nhold, in the doctrine of the Incarnation, the secret of all evolution. We\nmust read the story of every development in the light of the highest life\nof man, himself the highest life of nature. Nature is in travail with an\nideal which rose not in the molten suns, though perchance it did rise\nthrough them.\n\n   The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.\n   For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the\n   manifestation of the sons of God.\n\nMan is in travail with an ideal which rose not in the anthropoid apes,\nthough it may have risen through them. A finer, larger, nobler man is\ngrowing within the man that is.\n\n   The Universal Man is now coming to be a real being in the individual\n   mind.\n\nMankind, which is one physically and mentally, is one morally and\nspiritually. All varieties of man are built upon one ethical type. The\nvirtues are cosmopolitan. One human ideal looms above and before all\nraces, though refracted differently in the changing atmospheres of earth.\nWithin the saints one dream of goodness forms.\n\nOver the seers and sages one vision of the source of human goodness\nrises. Through the clouds of earth one Infinite and Eternal Form shapes\nitself to the wise. As men rise they meet. The race-souls are strangely\nalike. Socrates and Buddha are brothers. Humanity is in travail with one\nHuman Ideal and one Divine Image, and these twain are one. The great\nMother sings to herself:\n\n    But he, the man-child glorious,\n      Where tarries he the while?\n    The rainbow shines his harbinger,\n      The sunset gleams his smile.\n\n    My boreal lights leap upward,\n      Forth right my planets roll,\n    And still the man-child is not born,\n      The summit of the Whole.\n\n    I travail in pain for him,\n      My creatures travail and wait;\n    His couriers come by squadrons,\n      He comes not to the gate.\n\nWill Humanity come to the birth with her beloved son? Who that reads the\nstory of the coming of the Hebrew Christ can doubt it? What miscarriage\ncan befall her who is nursed by Nature and tended by Providence? What will\nthe Coming Man be like? We have seen his face break through the flesh for\na moment. On the shoulders of the race will rest the head of Christ. What\nshall be said when the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of\nGod shout for joy that MAN is born upon the earth?\n\n   The Holy Ghost hath come upon thee, Humanity, and the power of the\n   Highest hath overshadowed thee; therefore also, that holy thing which\n   is born of thee, shall be called the SON OF GOD.\n\nThis, at least, is my reading of nature and of history in the light of the\ncompleted evolution of the Christ. The normal growth through history of\nthe Ideal Man, is the incarnation of the Divine Man. The mischievous\nantithesis between the realms of the natural and the supernatural, that\nkept the world's thought from crystallizing around the world's soul,\ndisappears in an Order which is at once natural in all its processes, and\nsupernatural in its source and plan and energy.\n\nWe hold the key to all earth's problems in the vision of God which,\ngleaming through nature and through man, dawns in the face of Jesus\nChrist. Over Him--in whom the Human Ideal becomes the Divine Image, and\nthe most perfect dream of human goodness is the revelation of earth's\nGod--the Eternal One breaks silence, whispering to our souls:\n\n   This is my Beloved Son: Hear Him!\n\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nThe Right Ethical and Spiritual Use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   It is impossible to forget the noble enthusiasm with which this\n   dangerous heretic, as he was regarded in England, grasped the small\n   Greek Testament which he had in his hand as we entered and said: \"In\n   this little book is contained all the wisdom of the world.\"\n\n   Stanley: \"History of the Jewish Church,\" III. x. [Reminiscence of a\n   visit to Ewald.]\n\n\n   Truth, not eloquence, is to be sought for in Holy Scripture. We should\n   rather search after our profit in the Scriptures, than subtilty of\n   speech..... Search not who spoke this or that, but mark what is spoken.\n\n   \u00c0 Kempis: \"Imitation of Christ,\" Ch. V.\n\n\n   Do not hear for any other end but to become better in your life, and to\n   be instructed in every good work, and to increase in the love and\n   service of God.\n\n   Jeremy Taylor: \"Holy Living,\" Ch. IV. Sect. iv.\n\n    We search the world for truth: we cull\n    The good, the pure, the beautiful\n    From graven stone and written scroll,\n    From all old flower-fields of the soul;\n    And, weary seekers of the best,\n    We come back laden from our quest,\n    To find that all the sages said,\n    Is in the Book our mothers read.\n\n    Whittier: \"Miriam.\"\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nThe Right Ethical and Spiritual Use of the Bible.\n\n\n\n\n   \"From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to\n   make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ\n   Jesus.\"--2 Timothy, iii. 15.\n\n\nThe right use of the Bible is admirably stated by St. Paul. These books do\nnot make one learned in any knowledge--they make one wise in life. The\nJewish tradition concerning Solomon's choice expressed a deep truth.\nWisdom is the supreme benediction to be sought in life. Invaluable as is\nknowledge, it is as a means to an end. Knowledge provides for man the\nmaterial out of which Wisdom, using \"the best means to attain the best\nends,\" builds a noble life. To have the mind clear, the judgment just, the\nconscience true, the will strong, so that we may sight the goal of life,\nmay learn the laws by which it is to be won, and may firmly seek it,\nsteadfast amid all seductions--this is wisdom.\n\n   Would that for one single day, we may have lived in this world as we\n   ought.\n\nThus prays the author of the Imitation of Christ; and in so praying he is\nsighing after wisdom.\n\nThis culture of wisdom is the aim of the books which together form the\nBible. They reveal to our vision the best ends in life, and point us to\nthe best means of winning those high aims. They clear the atmosphere of\nmists, disclose to us our bearings, and fill our souls with the afflatus\nwhich wafts us toward \"the haven where we would be.\" These books are\nrightly called by Paul, the \"Holy Scriptures,\" the scriptures of holiness,\nthe writings whose genius is goodness. Their charm is \"the beauty of\nholiness,\" the graciousness of Goodness as she unveils herself therein.\nAnd this genius of gracious Goodness which irradiates the inner court of\nthis temple, lays such a spell upon the souls of men inasmuch as she is\nseen to be the very daughter of God; according to the soliloquy overheard\nby mortal ears, wherein Wisdom sings:\n\n    The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way,\n    Before His work of old.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him,\n    And I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.\n\nReligion becomes the worship of the God who is the source and standard of\ngoodness, the love of the Eternal who loveth righteousness, the child's\ncrying out into the dark--O righteous Father.\n\n    The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.\n\nThe Bible is the choicest extant literature of the people of religion,\nthe record and embodiment of the evolution of ethical worship, through its\nvaried moods and tenses, into its perfect type in Jesus Christ our Lord.\nThe Bible-books form, therefore, the classics of the soul, in which we are\nto study the nature and secret of goodness; the manual which every earnest\nman and woman, intent on building character, should use habitually for\nethical culture, and for the ethical worship which is its inspiration.\nThis is the truest use of the Bible.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe intellectual use of the Bible, in critical and historical studies, is\nlegitimate and needful. Reason should lay the bases for faith. Knowledge\nmust rear the altar on which worship is to be lighted. Theology shapes\nreligion. It is all important, therefore, that the books which the\nintellect chiefly uses to found and form its thoughts of God should be\nrightly used, so as to give man right conceptions of the Divine Being, and\nto waken right feelings toward Him. This intellectual use of the Bible is\nnot for scholars alone. There is no longer any isolated class of scholars.\nAll educated people are now taken into the confidence of the learned, in\nevery sphere of knowledge. The average man will reason about the great\nmysteries quite as much as the scholar; perhaps more than the true\nscholar, and with more insistent dogmatism. To the issue of that simpler,\nnobler Religion of Christ which is struggling to the birth within the\nwomb of Christianity, in the travail throes that are upon our age, it is\nof vital moment that all intelligent people should learn to use their\nBibles intelligently in a knowledge of the nature of its writings, and in\nreasonable reasonings therefrom. Therefore I have spoken concerning the\ncritical and the historical uses of these sacred writings.\n\nBut, when this knowledge is won and duly employed in our theologizings,\nthe truest use of the Bible remains for us to make, to our highest\npleasure and profit. It is the book of religion, not of theology; save as\nit records the one authoritative Epistle of Theology, the Word of God, the\nChrist. It is not a body of divinity, it is the soul of divinity. To use\nthe Bible critically and historically for our theologizings, is, after\nall, to use it, however rightly, for its secondary and not its primary\npurpose. Religion--as the awed sense of the Eternal Power and Order\nrevealed in nature, the Infinite Goodness and Righteousness revealed in\nman--is the art of the soul; its finest feelings, its loftiest\nimaginations, its noblest enthusiasms its profoundest tragedies thrown out\ninto the cry of the human after God.\n\nThere is a science in the sculptor's art. It is doubtless needful that\nthis art should be studied for the sake of its science. Artists, however,\nmay be glad that Winckelmann has analyzed the Apollo Belvedere, and has\ngiven them the laws of proportion deduced from this human form divine;\nleaving them free to feast upon its beauty. For in the scientific study of\nart, art itself may be lost. Some great figure-painters have been\nunwilling that their pupils should study anatomy; fearing that the bones\nwould stick through the flesh in their paintings.\n\nThis danger shows itself plainly in all critical and historical uses of\nthe Bible, in the old-fashioned as in the new-fashioned study of the\nBible.\n\nThe international series of Sunday-school lessons burden the brief hours\nof the Lord's Day with a mass of matter, which may or may not be true\nknowledge about the Bible, but which certainly is not the true religion of\nthe Bible. A child may learn the tables of the Israelitish Kings, the\ngeography of the Holy Land, and the architect's plans of the temple of\nJerusalem, and may be learning nothing whatever of the real religion which\nis shrined within the Bible. That is very simple:\n\n   Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy\n   mind, and with all thy strength: And thy neighbor as thyself.\n\nThe time spent on these more or less interesting matters may rob the child\nof his one weekly opportunity of learning to use the Holy Scriptures so as\nto become wise unto salvation. To use their words of wise men, and their\ntales of holy men, to inspire the love of goodness as the love of God,\nthis and this alone is to teach religion from the Bible. Bread that\nconsists of two-thirds bran and one-third white flour is eminently\nlaxative; but it is generally supposed that this age is lax enough in its\nhold of truth. A little more wheat and a little less bran, ye good\ndoctors, might strengthen the constitutions of our children.\n\nThe new study of the Bible is perhaps even more in danger of missing its\nreal secret. An interest in the literature and history of Israel may\ndivert the mind from that which is, after all, the heart of these\n\"letters,\" and the core of this history.\n\n   Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.\n\nOf this danger I think that I see signs, in some of the great masters to\nwhom we owe our new criticism, in some of the manuals which are\npopularizing it, and in some of the gifted preachers who are\nreconstructing theology around it. The science of religion is absorbing\ntoo much of the life that should go into the art of religion; and we have\nfine forms of thought, mantled with flabby flesh of feeling, in which no\nred blood of holy passion pulses.\n\nTo read Homer with a view of understanding the fables of superstition, and\nof interpreting the mythology of the ancients, may have been needful for\nthe later Greeks, who would preserve religion from the death that was\nstealing over it, in the divorce of the educated and the popular thought\nof the Grecian Bible. Such a use of Homer, however, must have missed the\nessential charm of Homer--the immortal poetry of these heroic legends; the\nbreath of fresh, simple, wholesome human life which animates them, and\nwhich through them inspired men to brave and noble being. Socrates saw\nthis in his day.\n\n   \"I beseech you to tell me, Socrates,\" said Phaedrus, \"do you believe\n   this tale?\" \"The wise are doubtful,\" answered Socrates, \"and I should\n   not be singular if, like them, I also doubted. I might have a rational\n   explanation.... Now I have certainly not time for such inquiries; shall\n   I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription\n   says. To be curious about that which is not my business while I am\n   still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.\"[54]\n\nWisely speaks the finest Biblical critic of England in our day:\n\n   No one knows the truth about the Bible who does not know how to enjoy\n   the Bible; and he who takes legend for history, and who imagines Moses,\n   or Isaiah, or David, or Paul, or Peter, or John, to have written\n   Bible-books which they did not write, but who knows how to enjoy the\n   Bible deeply, is nearer the truth about the Bible than the man who can\n   pick it all to pieces but who cannot enjoy it.... His work is to learn\n   to enjoy and turn to his benefit the Bible, as the Word of the\n   Eternal,[55]\n\nThe right use of the Bible is to feed religion.\n\nColeridge said:\n\n   Religion, in its widest sense, signifies the act and the habits of\n   reverencing the invisible, as the highest both in ours Ives and in\n   nature.[56]\n\nThe use of the Bible then is to ennoble our ideals, to quicken our\naspirations, to clear the illusions of the senses, to dissipate the glamor\nof the world, to purify our passions, to bring our powers well in hand to\na firm will; and, through the mystic laws of nature and of conscience\nwhich we thus endeavor to obey, to breathe within our souls a sacred sense\nof the Presence of a Power, infinite and eternal and loving\nrighteousness--whom to know \"is life eternal.\"\n\nDe Quincey classified all writings as belonging either to the literature\nof knowledge, or the literature of power. There are books to which we go\nfor information. They give us facts and ideas. They constitute the\nliterature of knowledge. They teach us. There are books to which we go for\ninspiration; to which we turn for joy and pleasure, for strength and\ncourage, for patience and endurance, for purity and peace. They constitute\nthe literature of power. They move us. Herbert Spencer's books belong to\nthe literature of knowledge The \"Imitation of Christ\" belongs to the\nliterature of power.\n\nThe literature of knowledge needs to be reissued every century or\ngeneration or decade, corrected up to date. The literature of power is\nimmortal; fresh to-day though born milleniums ago. The problems of\ncharacter and conduct face us much as they faced the Romans and Greeks,\nthe Egyptians and Hindus. The invisible in nature and in man touches us\nwith the same feelings that it stirred in Persians, Chaldeans and\nAkkadians Even though the Spirit's voice spake once in a language of the\nintellect which has now become obsolete, its utterances are not therefore\nobsolete. How archaic is much of the thought of the \"Imitation of Christ;\"\nshot through and through as it is with the tissue of medi\u00e6val Catholicism!\nBut we forget these archaisms in the spell of a holy soul, in love with\nwisdom, \"intoxicated with God.\" No archaisms in Biblical thought destroy\nits spiritual power over us. Nay, rather do they strengthen that power: as\nin our devotions we naturally seek old and quaint forms, buildings unlike\nother structures, music which sounds from out the past, words that are\nmellow with the rich hues of age; as the archaisms of the language of our\nEnglish Bible hold a power that is lost in the raw correctness of the\nrevised version.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the literature of power the Bible ranks first. Whatever in Christian\nliterature has most searching ethical and spiritual energy radiates the\nreflected light of the Bible. Augustine's Confessions, The Imitation of\nChrist, Fenelon's Spiritual Letters, The Saints' Rest, The Pilgrim's\nProgress, in their most appealing tones echo the voices of the Bible. The\nhymns that feed the inner life are aromatic with the rich thoughts and\nfeelings of this holy book. Our poets betray, in the passages which are\nthe favorites of earnest minds, the influence of these Scriptures. From\nParadise Lost to In Memoriam, from The Temple to the Christian Year, the\npoems which the devout delight in are either Biblical paraphrases or\nBiblical distillations. Our masters of fiction could not have written the\nscenes which most rouse our moral nature, could not have conceived the\ncharacters which most inspire our devotional nature, without the Bible.\nTake the Bible out of Adam Bede and Dinah Morris, out of Robert Falconer\nand M. Myriel the blessed Bishop of D., and what would be left of them?\nThe vibratory quality which most thrills our souls in the strains of\nChristian literature is due to the Bible material in it. The Bible holds\nstored the ethical electricity on which Christendom has drawn, through\ncenturies, exhaustless energy.\n\nOutside of Christendom, while there are many books which we can thankfully\nand reverently place by the side of the Bible, as ethical and spiritual\nmotors, there are none which any of us would think of substituting for it.\nThe Discourses and the Manual of Epictetus, the Thoughts of Marcus\nAurelius, the Dialogues of Plato, and the kindred words of wisdom of the\nancients, are indeed full of inspiration to earnest natures. To dip into\nthese writings for a few minutes, amid the duties of the day, is a soul\nbath, most cleansing and invigorating. The Sacred Books of the East may\nwell be sacred to us Westerns. A sense of grateful awe steals over me as,\nlooking on these volumes, I think of the generations which they have fed\nwith spiritual sustenance and have guided in the way of life. The light\nwhich lighteth every man that cometh into the world shines through these\npages. The All-Father has drawn nigh to the souls of His children, through\nthe holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. It is an\ninestimable privilege to have these Bibles of Humanity ranged along our\nshelves, and to have their choicest words at hand upon our tables, in some\napt anthology. It would be well if their great sayings could be read in\nour churches, in connection with our Old Testament lessons, as the voices\nof the ethnic prophets of the Son of Man. But if we have allowed the\nthought that any of these sacred books might become a substitute for our\nfathers' Bible, we may correct our crude enthusiasms by the authority of\nthe greatest living master in Comparative Religion. In the preface to the\nedition of the Sacred Books of the East that noble monument of our\ngeneration's scholarship Max M\u00fcller, writes:\n\n   Readers who have been led to believe that the Vedas of the ancient\n   Brahmans, the Avesta of the Zoroastrians, the Tripitaka of the\n   Buddhists, the Kings of Confucius, or the Koran of Mohammed are books\n   full of primeval wisdom and religious enthusiasm or at least of sound\n   and simple moral teaching, will be disappointed on consulting these\n   volumes.... I cannot help calling attention to the real mischief that\n   has been done, and is still being done, by the enthusiasm of those\n   pioneers who have opened the first avenues through the bewildering\n   forest of the sacred literature of the East. They have raised\n   expectations that cannot be fulfilled, fears also that, as will be\n   easily seen, are unfounded.... I confess it has been for many years a\n   problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the Sacred\n   Books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh,\n   natural, simple, beautiful and true, contain so much that is not only\n   unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous and repellant.[57]\n\nOur own Bible, as I have frankly owned, holds the truth as the gold is\nheld in the ore. Truth nowhere exists \"native\" in human writings; but the\nproportions of the \"mineralizer\" are vastly greater in all other Bibles\nthan in our own. There is no book known that can take its place on the\nlecterns in our churches, or on the tables by which, in quiet hours, we\nseat ourselves, a-hungered for the bread of life.\n\nThe pre-eminent excellence of Israel's writings in the literature of\npower, is natural and necessary. Israel had little originality in any\nscience or art save the science and art of the soul, the knowledge and the\nlove of God. Nature is economic in her dowries. She does not shower all\nthe gifts of the fairies on any one race. She dowered Israel with the\nhighest of human powers, conscience, in an unequalled measure. Providence\nnurtured and trained this faculty. This little nation became as\npre-eminently the people of ethical and spiritual religion as the states\nof Greece became the people of art. Because of the natural aptitudes of\nIsrael, and of her providential education, we should turn to her\nliterature for our highest inspirations in ethical culture and religion.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\n\nWherein lies this commanding rank of the Bible in the literature of\nethical and spiritual power?\n\nSpeaking generally, I should say that the superiority of the Bible lies in\nthe fact that it is at once a literature of ethical power and a literature\nof spiritual power. We have books of high ethical power that are weak\nreligiously. We have books of high religious power that are weak ethically\nThe Bible is strong in both directions. Hence its power. Either ethical or\nspiritual power alone is defective. Morality without spirituality is\nprinciple without passion. Spirituality without morality is passion\nwithout principle. Union supplements the defectiveness of each alone, and\ndevelops its full forcefulness. The Bible marries morality and\nspirituality, and these twain become one. The secularities become sacred,\nand the sanctities become sound.\n\nAccording to the Bible, he who keeps the Ten Words obeys God. The \"merely\nmoral\" man is a worshipper of God, though the worship may be silent. In\nKant's great saying, They are always in the service of God whose actions\nare moral. Virtue becomes consciously religious, as she learns to\nrecognize what she is in love with in loving goodness. As the love of\ngoodness rises into a passion for the ideal forms of Justice, Purity and\nTruth, it takes on a real religiousness. It may think to stop short in an\nethical culture, but it cannot. To feed its own aspirations it must\nworship the Ideal Righteousness as a reality. Its desires become prayers,\nits hopes become praises. Even though in mute longings, it pleads\n\n   O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.\n\nReversing the identification of religion with morality that is wrought by\nthe Bible, its influence is equally impressive. Religion is not the\nemotion of man in the presence of the invisible in nature, unless that\ninvisible is felt to be essentially moral. Religion is not the finest of\nfeelings before the invisible in man, unless that unseen is also felt to\nbe ethical. The Natural Religion, however nobly stated, which accepts any\nform of poetic ideals as religion, is very imperfect and not at all\nBiblical. Shelley's feelings for the spirit of Beauty are exquisitely\nfine, but under the light of the Bible they are seen to be only latently\nreligious. A more penetrating-vision will see in the Ideal Beauty a Moral\nForm, and then \u00e6sthetics will translate itself into ethics. The unmoral\nsentiment of a Shelley for Beauty may issue in another generation in the\nimmoral sentiment of a Swinburne. Even thus the vision of the Aphrodite\nsank into the dream of a Venus. An Oscar Wilde's maunderings over an art\nwhich has no reference to morality may possibly be poetry, but they\ncertainly are not religion according to the Bible, for all his blasphemous\napostrophes to Christ between his praises of licentious love. Hard as the\ngranitic core of earth is the core of religion in the Bible.\n\nThe \"stern law-giver\" of Israel was Duty. Her supreme authority, which\nenjoined with absolute command the most unpleasant action, was--\"I ought.\"\nShe saw that \"laws mighty and brazen\" bind man to a right, which he may\ndistort or deny, but cannot destroy--his Saviour or his Judge. Mystic in\nits sacredness, Conscience sat shrined within the soul of the holy men who\nspake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost; her voice the very voice of\nGod. The Power in whom we live and move and have our being is revealed in\nthese books as the Eternal Righteousness. The moral law is seen to be the\nthrone of the Most High.\n\nIn Emerson's phrase:\n\n   Virtue is the adopting of this dictate of the Universal Mind by the\n   individual will.\n\n\"What do I love when I love Thee?\" sighed Augustine. Israel might have\nanswered that question in Augustine's own words:\n\n   Not the beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the\n   brightness of the light so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of\n   varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and\n   spices, not manna and honey. None of these do I love when I love my\n   God; and yet I love a kind of light, a kind of melody, a kind of\n   fragrance, a kind of food, when I love my God,--the light, the melody,\n   the fragrance, the food of the inner man. This it is which I love when\n   I love my God.[58]\n\nBut the Bible answer would be much more simple and pungent:\n\n   O ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate the thing which is evil....\n   If a man say I love God and hateth His brother he is a liar.\n\nThis is the fundamental secret of the power of the Bible. The love of\ngoodness and the love of God are one. Aspiration is unconscious worship,\nand worship is aspiration conscious of its object.\n\n   Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.\n\nBut this noble conception of the unity of ethical and spiritual life has\nmany aspects in the Bible. The Bible turns upon us every phase in which\nWisdom reveals herself to the sons of men, so that no ray of her light is\nlost, and that every one, however he may stand related to her, receives\nher heavenly beams.\n\n\n\n1. _We have here the simple, homely, prudential aspects of virtue, which\nhave always been particularly powerful on certain ages and classes._\n\n\nThe maxims of a Poor Richard are anticipated here, as quaint, as terse,\nand as sagacious in the ancient Jew as in the modern American. Our\nscientific teachers would replace eloquent declamation concerning vices,\nsuch as drunkenness and debauchery, by illustrated lectures upon the\nphysiological effects of violations of nature's laws. They would teach men\nthat the laws of health are found in the laws of temperance and purity.\nThe Hebrew sages had this vision of Wisdom. Their proverbial sayings\nabound with graphic pen-pictures of the folly of vice. No illustration of\nthe physical consequences of debauchery could be more impressive than the\nvivid sketch of the foolish young man, going after the strange woman as an\n\"ox goeth to the slaughter,\" knowing not that\n\n    Her house is the way to hell,\n    Going down to the chambers of death.\n\nThe favorite name for sin in these proverbs is Folly. Wisdom crieth to the\nsons of men, in that noblest writing of the sages:\n\n    Blessed is the man that heareth me,\n    Watching daily at my gates,\n    Waiting at the posts of my doors.\n    For whoso findeth me findeth life,\n    And shall obtain favor of the Lord.\n    But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul.\n    All they that hate me love death.\n\n\n\n2. _These laws of life that work for our health and wealth loom, however,\ninto mystic and sacred forms, as of the laws heavenly and eternal, whose\n\"seat is the bosom of God.\"_\n\n\nWhen Crito urges his beloved master to escape from the death that had been\nunjustly decreed for him, Socrates replies in a noble personification of\nthe Laws, as rebuking him for the thought of such an attempt to evade\nthem; and he must be dim-sighted, indeed, who does not see in the forms of\nthe State Laws, the shadows of the Eternal Laws, august and awful, whose\nconstraint was round about his will. That is the vision which we catch\nthrough every form of law, sanitary, social, or ecclesiastical, in the\nBible. In the earliest code of the Hebrew statutes known to us, a\ncollection of tribal \"Judgments\" or \"dooms,\" this high and mystic sense of\nobligation steals over us. Amid the quaint enactments recorded in the Book\nof Covenants, whose language carries us back to times of extreme\nsimplicity, we hear the words\n\n    Ye shall be holy men unto me.[59]\n\nOur new critics may tell you that the late poet, who wrote that long-drawn\nsigh of desire for the Law which is bodied in the One hundred and\nnineteenth Psalm, was thinking of the \"Thorah\"--the ritual law of the\ntemple and the counsels of the priests. They are doubtless right, if so be\nthat they do not lead you to infer that this devout soul was thinking\n_only_ of the ecclesiastical law. Through it, there was rising upon his\nspirit the vision of the Law Eternal and Heavenly, the norm and pattern of\nthe law that on earth binds men to purity and righteousness.\n\n    Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way,\n    Who walk in the law of the Lord.\n    Make me to understand the way of thy commandments;\n    And so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.\n    Thy statutes have been my songs\n    In the house of my pilgrimage.\n    The earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy:\n    O teach me thy statutes!\n    Thy hands have made me and fashioned me:\n    O give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments.\n    Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.\n    They continue this day, according to thy ordinances.\n    Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness,\n    And thy law is the truth.\n    Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant,\n    And teach me thy statutes.\n\nThis is none other than that law of which a far later ecclesiastic,\nwriting also of ecclesiastical law, discoursed in this wise:\n\n   There can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of\n   God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth\n   do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as\n   not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what\n   condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all,\n   with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and\n   joy.[60]\n\nThis law is none other than that holy form which a modern poet thus\napostrophizes:\n\n      Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear\n      The godhead's most benignant grace;\n      Nor know we anything so fair\n      As is the smile upon thy face.\n      Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,\n      And fragrance in thy footing treads;\n    Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;\n    And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.\n\n\n\n3. _The Law thus mystic and sacred is seen to be both the law of nature\nand the law of the human soul._\n\n\nThe Bible recognizes no duality of natural law and revealed law. All\ndivine law is natural, and, as such, is a revelation. Physical and moral\nlaws are but different forms of one and the same order. The same Power is\nworking in the world around man and in the world within man. The lower\nforms of Its action are to be interpreted by Its higher forms. Nature is\nto be resolved by Man. The Ten Words were given as the statutes of Jehovah\nhimself the personification of some form of nature's force. Out of this\nsimple germ grew, the noble thought which anticipated the knowledge of\nour _savans_ and the intuitions of our seers; who unite in showing us one\norder in the starry heavens and in the mysteries of mind. Thus it is that\nthe Bible feeds so richly, when read aright, that awe which steals upon us\nas we face nature and see ourselves mirrored there in shadowy outline; and\nrealize the One in all things--God.\n\nThere is a beautiful illustration of this in a noble poem that our later\ncritics have handled with a strange lack of perceptiveness. The Nineteenth\nPsalm opens with a lofty apostrophe to Nature, commencing:\n\n    The heavens declare the glory of God,\n    And the firmament sheweth His handywork.\n\nAt the seventh verse the Psalm abruptly passes to a eulogy of \"The\nLaw\"--the moral law shrined in the priestly Thorah:\n\n    The law of the Lord is an undefiled law,\n    Converting the soul;\n    The testimony of the Lord is sure,\n    And giveth wisdom unto the simple.\n\nHere we have, say our learned critics, two psalms welded into one, a song\nof nature and a song of the soul. As though nature and man did not form\none divine poem in two cantos! As though the system of the world around us\ndid not type the world within us! As though it were not always the most\ninstinctive action to pass from the sense of an Order in the starry\nheavens, and the awe thus awakened, to the sense of an Order in the soul\nof man, and the deeper awe thus roused!\n\nWe know that the Hindus and Egyptians made use, each, of one word to\nexpress the law of nature and the law of conscience. The physical order\ninterpreted the sense of a moral order.\n\n   The Egyptian _maat_, derived like the Sanskrit _rita_, from merely\n   sensuous impressions, became the name for moral order and\n   righteousness.[61]\n\nThe Nineteenth Psalm is only the expression among the Hebrews of this\nwide-spread instinct; an instinct which learned critics may lack, but\nwhich the poet still inherits; as the Sphynx whispers to him of the double\nlife of nature and of man, that yet are\n\n    By one music enchanted,\n    One Deity stirred.\n\n\n\n4. _The Bible leads us on to that sense of sin, in the presence of this\n\"Law,\" which no lower thought of law can quicken._\n\n\nViolations of physiological law Nature stamps as folly. Offences against\nsocial laws the State brands as crime. Transgressions of Ideal and Eternal\nLaw become sin. It is not only foolish or disgraceful to break the moral\nlaw, it is wrong. This is the sense of guilt in disobedience that is\nroused in each of us by the Bible, as by no other book; that has been\nquickened in Europe, historically, by these sacred Scriptures, as by no\nother writings. The Bible has given to humanity a new and intense ethical\nperception of evil.\n\nThe strenuous moral earnestness of the Puritan and the Methodist is\nvitalized from these books. The very type of saintship in Christendom is\nunique. It is no mere ceremonial correctness for which the priestly\nEzekiel pleads with tender pathos:\n\n   Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions whereby ye\n   have transgressed, and make you a clean heart and a new spirit; for why\n   will ye die, O house of Israel?\n\nIt is this intense sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin which\noppressed the great-hearted Paul, and wrung from him the bitter cry:\n\n   O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this\n   death.\n\nHow vividly this sense of sin expresses itself in the Fifty-first Psalm!\nThere is here a plaint infinitely deeper than the chagrin and remorse of\nthe man who has committed an \"indiscretion,\" or become entangled in an\n\"intrigue;\" there is the cry of a soul that has betrayed its highest,\nholiest fidelities, and lies low in the dust before the Heavenly purity:\n\n    Wash me throughly from my wickedness,\n    And cleanse me from my sin.\n    Cast me not away from Thy presence,\n    And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.\n\nTo enter into the spirit of this sigh of penitence is a new knowledge of\nthe human heart. The Bible thus leads men to live as in the presence of an\nawful Power of Holiness, which is searching through and through our\nbeings. We cannot understand the Biblical \"salvation\" unless we have\nfathomed, at least, the shoaler experiences of these saintly souls of old,\nand know some little of the depths of sin.\n\n\n\n5. _The Bible wakens in the breast of man an ethical passion for the ideal\nand eternal law, which, apart from early Buddhism, has no parallel in\nhistory._\n\n\nThe prophets are aflame with the ardors of this sacred enthusiasm. The\nordinary passions of mankind are rivaled in intensity by the mystic\npassion of their souls for the Heavenly Wisdom. They stand amid the wild\nwhirl of selfish strife in the society of their day, and lift on high the\nholy forms of Justice and Brotherhood, as though expecting their\ncommonplace cotemporaries to turn aside from practical affairs, and seek\nfor them; and, so subtle and searching are the appeals of these heavenly\nvisions, men do actually turn from mammon to worship these impoverishing\ndivinities; and a great movement arises, looking to the bringing down of\nthese ideals upon the earth, as the ruling powers in the court and the\nexchange. The regenerating force of Christendom has lain in the coming of\nthese prophets, generation after generation, to the children of men, to\nlead them upon the mount where they should clearly see those lofty shapes,\ncommanding instant loyalty from honest souls. The ominous travail-throes\nof society to-day await one stimulus to free the new order that is\nstruggling to the birth--the passion for ethical and social ideals, which\nthe Bible, rightly administered, would inspire.\n\nThe prophetic spirit is the vital force of the Bible. Its insistent power\nreappears in Paul; a man consuming in the fires of this holy passion, and\nkindling its ardors in the souls of untold myriads. His great letter to\nthe Romans, so strangely misread as a mere dogmatic treatise, breathes and\nburns with this lofty enthusiasm. Its central thought, its threading\n_motif_, heard anew in every critical movement of the argument,\nis--Righteousness. The Master in whom the Bible centres, enriches earth\nwith a new benediction:\n\n   Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.\n\nThis highest passion of mankind is wakened by the Bible as by no other\nbook. Through it, the mystic Forerunners reveal themselves to the human\nsoul most alluringly; enthralling it with their pure charms, dispelling\nthe illusions of the senses and the glamor of the world, in the light of\ntheir holy loveliness. The Eternal Wisdom calls from out these pages to\nthe sons of men:\n\n   Hearken unto me ye that follow after righteousness.\n\n\n\n6. _The Bible reveals these ethical ideals as no mere alluring visions,\nbut as the substantial realities of being._\n\n\nMen say to those who speak of these high conceptions--\"They are the dreams\nof sentimentalists, the will-'o-the-wisp lights that beguile men away from\nthe _terra firma_; to be trusted and followed by no practical man.\"\n\"Idealist\" is a term of reproach. And justly, from any other point of view\nthan that which the Bible, true to the most penetrating discernment of\nhumanity, opens to us. These ideal forms are not the empty conceits of\nman's brain, bred from the fumes of his boundless egotism. They are not\nthe clouds that gather and form and break into airy unreality in the\natmosphere of earth. They are the shadows falling upon the soul of man\nfrom the unseen Realities, which alone have substantial and abiding being.\nThe laws of nature are surely not the baseless fabric of a dream. These\nideals are simply those laws, transfigured into their spiritual\nsubstances. Whatever in our blindness we may persuade ourselves\nelsewhere, over the Bible we recognize the true character of the visions\nwhich so strangely stir us. This is the power of the Bible. Christian\nseemed to Mr. Worldly Wiseman a fool. But he saw the heavenly city, and\ntrudged along, sure that time would prove him in the right. Christian\ncarried in his hand this Book. With this Book in our hands, we, too, are\nsure that the visions of Purity and Justice, which we dimly see afar, are\nsubstantial and real, and that man will win at the last to the land where\nthey are the light thereof.\n\n   Whereupon I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.\n\n\n\n7. _The Bible thus inspires a buoyancy and exhilaration which feed the\nfresh forces of all noble life._\n\n\nNo poet is needed to tell us that\n\n   Virtue kindles at the touch of joy.\n\nWe know it in our own experience. We notice it in every great revival of\nreligion. We trace it through the history of Christianity. The story of\nthe early days of Jesus is, as Renan called it, \"a delightful pastoral.\"\nIn the person of humanity's greatest idealist, the highest joy of the soul\nwas set in the framing of one of nature's brightest scenes. Even from the\nshadows of the garden of Gethsemane, He bequeaths to his little flock the\nlegacy of his free spirit: My joy I leave with you. The Christian Society\nentered into that bequest, and in its first exhilaration overflowed the\nhard coast lines of property, and realized a happy brotherhood.\n\n   And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and\n   sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as any man\n   had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and\n   breaking bread at home did take their food with gladness.\n\nThe prophets were filled with a buoyancy of spirit that scarce would let\nthem keep down to the plodding steps of social progress; that constantly\nrapt them away into the future, whence their voices echo back the gladness\nof their visions. The good time is coming on the earth. The longings of\nman's soul are to be realized. Crushed by no disappointments, wearied out\nby no delays, the prophets maintain an indomitable hopefulness; their\nvoices the carollings of the birds that greet the dawn of day:\n\n    Sing, O Heavens; and be joyful, O earth;\n    And break forth into singing, O mountains.\n    For the Lord hath comforted his people;\n    And will have mercy upon his afflicted.\n\nOne treads here the upper zones, where the air is rare and every draught\nan inspiration; where the Laws are seen majestically sweeping every force\ninto the measured movement which is making all things work together for\ngood to them that love God.\n\nWith a tact truer than any theory, our canon of scripture has been closed\nin the Book of the Revelation; whose visions look beyond the break-up of\nJerusalem and shadow on the far horizon, where earth and heaven melt in\none, the fair form of the City of God, coming down from out the skies upon\nthe new world wherein dwelleth righteousness.\n\nIn these days, when \"joy is withered from the sons of men,\" it is like\ndrinking from the Castalian springs to draw within our souls from the\nBible the sense of that kingdom of God which is joy in the Holy Ghost;\ninto which men are to come\n\n    With everlasting joy upon their heads:\n    They shall obtain joy and gladness\n    And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.\n\nYou learn the power of the Bible as you find how the joy of the Lord is\nyour strength.\n\n\n\n8. _The Bible leads this sense of Law into that awful vision wherein\n\"Conscious Law is King of kings.\"_\n\n\nThe Laws appear substantial and real inasmuch as they are seen to be but\nphases of the Infinite and Eternal Being, the Righteous Lord who loveth\nrighteousness. It is a conscious, intelligent, holy Being, whom Israel\nworships through these ideal forms of goodness. However He transcended\ntheir poor personalities, as transcend them they knew He must, God was yet\nbest expressed in the form of the human, conscious personality. Man, the\nhighest creature, must be, they said, most nearly in the form of God. As\nman takes up the noblest characteristics of the life below him, so his own\nnoblest characteristics must be taken up into the Lord of Life. God cannot\nbe less than personal, however much more than personal He may be. He is to\nbe thought of by us, in lack of nobler imagination, as personal. Israel\nthus grew into the conception of the Infinite Power, manifest in the order\nof nature and in the order of conscience as conscious Power; One in whose\nimage man was made, the Father of the mystic \"I\"; whose nature is the law\nof creation, whose purpose is its plan, whose will is its exhaustless\nenergy.\n\nThis is the secret which has kept the religions inspired by the Bible from\nlapsing, as other religions have done, into lifelessness.\n\nEgypt was the land of a religion which had won a high conception of the\nDivine unity; a religion which was scientific in its forms of thought, and\nearnestly moral in its spirit; but which failed to keep distinct in mind\nthe order of nature from the Being on whom it reposes, and thus sank into\nthe dreamy pantheism of its cultured classes, and the poetic polytheisms\nof its people. Of this lapse, Renouf writes:\n\n   All gods were in fact but names of the One who resided in them all. But\n   this God is no other than Nature. Both individuals and entire nations\n   may long continue to hold this view, without drawing the inevitable\n   conclusion, that if there is no other God than this, the world is\n   really without a God. But the fate of a religion which involves such a\n   conclusion, and with that conclusion the loss of faith in immortality,\n   and even in the distinction of Right and Wrong, except so far as they\n   are connected with ritual prescriptions, is inevitably sealed.[62]\n\nNeither Judaism, nor Mohammedanism, nor Christianity, the religions fed\ndirectly or indirectly from the Bible, have run, or can well run into this\nfatal error. The Divine Being who is mirrored in the Bible is the\nConscious Intelligence to whom alone of right belongs that ineffable\nname--GOD. This is the thought and this is the word which hold the spell\nof the Bible power over the human soul. Nowhere else is the sense of God\nso alive, nowhere else does it so thrill the whole being of man. It was\nthis living God whom these holy men of old were seeking; not simply the\naugust ideals of the soul, but the Eternal Being who casts them as his\nshadows upon man:\n\n    Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes,\n    O Thou that dwellest in the heavens.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    My soul truly waiteth still upon God,\n    For of Him cometh my salvation.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks,\n    So longeth my soul after Thee, O God.\n    My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the Living God;\n    When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?\n\nIt is God whom these holy men find. The Ineffable Presence rejoices their\nsouls, and as we keep company with them rejoices our souls also:\n\n    Lord, Thou hast been our home\n    From one generation to another.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Whoso dwelleth in the secret-place of the Most High\n    Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    O Lord, Thou hast searched me out and known me.\n    Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising;\n    Thou understandest my thoughts afar off.\n    Thou art about my path and about my bed,\n    And spiest out all my ways.\n    For lo, there is not a word in my tongue\n    But Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether.\n\nThe inspirations which we feel from the Bible-words are the breathings of\nthe Eternal Spirit. The Divine whispers, which are too often inarticulate\nin nature and even in our souls, are articulate in the great\nBible-words--the words proceeding from out of the mouth of God, on which\nman liveth. The power of the Bible is that the deafest souls can therein\nhear--GOD.\n\n\n\n9. _God speaks in A MAN._\n\n\nThe Bible centres in the story of a life which was so filled with the Holy\nGhost that this Man became the symbol of the Most High, the sacrament of\nHis Being and Presence, the sacred shrine of Deity. As when the long-drawn\ntravail of instrumentation labors through the opening movements of the\nninth symphony, with a strain too fine for any voicing save by man, there\nbursts at length upon the tumultuous storm of sound the clear, high, song\nof joy from human lips; so from the mounting efforts of a nation's\ninsufficient utterance there rises at last a voice, which takes up every\ngroaning of the Spirit in humanity into the perfect beauty of a human life\ndivine.\n\n    And so the Word hath breath, and wrought\n      With human hands the creed of creeds,\n      In loveliness of perfect deeds,\n    More strong than all poetic thought.\n\nThe light of the Son of Man is the life of men; the light for our minds\nand the warmth for our hearts. In the Power in whom we live and move and\nhave our being, we see \"Our Father who art in Heaven.\" In the laws of life\nwe read the methods of His schooling of our souls. In the sorrows of life\nwe receive His disciplinings. In the sins that cling so hard upon us we\nfeel the evils of our imperfection, from which He is seeking to deliver us\nthrough His training of our spirits. In the shame of sin we are conscious\nof the guilt that His free forgiveness wipes away, when we turn saying,\nFather, I have sinned. In death we face the door-way to some other room of\nthe Father's house, where, it may be, just beyond the threshold our dear\nones wait for us! In Christ himself we own our heaven-sent Teacher,\nMaster, Saviour, Friend; our elder Brother, who in our sinful flesh lives\nour holy aspirations, and, smiling, beckons us to follow Him, whispering\nin our ears--To them that receive me I give \"power to become the sons of\nGod.\"\n\nThe power of the Bible is--CHRIST.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n\nWhen Sir Walter Scott lay in his last illness, he asked Lockhart one day\nto read to him. \"From what book shall I read?\" said Lockhart. \"There is\nbut one book,\" was Scott's answer. Those who have sought the \"power to\nbecome the sons of God\" will understand this hyperbole of the most healthy\nhuman mind in modern English literature. Tested by experience there is\nindeed, in the wide range of the literature of power, no book to be\nmentioned with the Bible for feeding the life of God in man. Our fathers\nfound this true, and their children cannot correct their judgment. The\nsubstitute for the Bible, as an ethical and spiritual instructor, is not\nout.\n\nI speak to those who are in earnest in the building of a man. You need\nthis book, my brothers. Luther's higher life dated from his discovery of\nthe Bible. Have you discovered the Bible? Within the body of human\n\"letters\" have you found out the divine soul of the Bible? Through the\nchorus of human voices have you heard the voice of the Eternal Power? If\nnot, life holds one more rich \"find\" for you--a treasure hidden in the\nfield over which you have so lightly strayed.\n\nBuy a Bible, my brothers! The current coin of the land, in the shops of\nour best booksellers, may have failed to buy for you a real Bible. No\nnoble book is ever to be made your own in this easy fashion. Ruskin tells\nus that the great picture will not give itself to us unless we give\nourselves to it. The Bible must have its price. The best comes dearest. If\nyou will not pay you cannot buy. Pay for the real Bible your costliest\noffering of mind and heart. Spend upon it, day by day, your careful,\nreverent study, until beneath your love the Book warms into life; and,\nhaving proven well your loyalty, this teacher of the soul opens its soul\nto you and whispers--Henceforth I call you not servant but friend. Wait in\nthese courts until the Eternal Wisdom, who walks within this temple, turns\nher face upon you, \"mystic, wonderful;\" and the common places grow\nrefulgent with a new and heavenly beauty, and you humbly say--This is none\nother but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHow shall we thus rightly read the Bible, for ethical and spiritual\nupbuilding? Let me offer some plain and practical suggestions to this end.\n\n\n(1.) _Read it daily._\n\nYour soul needs its daily bread. Do not starve your soul. Do not try to\nfatten it on chaff. Get the best soul-food, the long tried manna that\nforms upon these pages day by day, for him who will be at pains to gather\nit. He must be busy, indeed, who cannot find time to keep himself alive.\n\n\n(2.) _Read it in the choicest moments of the day._\n\nThe best picture should have the best setting. Our fathers' symbol of the\nopening of a new day was the opening of the Bible. Their symbol of the\nclosing of another day's duties was the closing of the Bible. Can we\nimprove upon their ritual? John Quincy Adams noted in his journal his\ncustom of reading in the Bible each morning, of which he well observed:\n\n   It seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day.\n\nPitch the day aright with this tuning-fork, and hush the babel-voices of\nthe world to its tones of peace at night.\n\n\n(3.) _Read the Bible whenever you need some special influence of strength\nor cheer, amid the temptations and trials of the day._\n\nIt holds the unfailing corrective for the manifold disorders of our busy\nlives. To think its thoughts and breathe its desires, even for a few\nmoments, is to have the horizon of the senses open, the heavy atmosphere\nof earth clear, the illusions of the world evanish, the fever of business\ncool and calm, the tempting appetites and passions slink down shamed into\ntheir kennels. It is to have the dark look of life lighten, the sting of\ndisappointment lose its venom, the weariness of sickness forget itself,\nand the sorrow of the stricken heart sob itself asleep within the\neverlasting arms of One who, like a mother, comforteth his children, and\nwho with his own hand wipes away the tears from our eyes.\n\nA few days after one of the battles before Richmond a Southern soldier was\nfound unburied. His right hand still clasped a Bible, and his stiff\nfingers pressed upon the words of the Twenty-third Psalm:\n\n    I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me;\n    Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.\n\n\n(4.) _In the choice of these daily readings, follow the guidance of the\nsoul's sure instinct._\n\nYou need no critical knowledge to teach you what parts of the Bible are\nthe most highly inspired. The spiritual sense will appraise these books\naright. As the beasts are led instinctively to the herbs that hold healing\nfor their ailments so you shall find the tonic and the balm that you\nneed. You will naturally pasture for the most part in the Prophets, the\nPsalms, the Gospels, the great Epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of\nJohn, and kindred writings. You may, dip into these books as the bees dip\ninto the flowers, now burying themselves in the luscious honey-suckle and\nnow lingering on the rich rose, if so be that you only suck sweetness into\nyour soul.\n\n\n(5.) _Wheresoever you read, read in the spirit._\n\n\"I was in the spirit on the Lord's day,\" wrote the seer. If he had been in\nthe understanding merely, he would not have had many visions. The Spirit\nmust interpret the Spirit's words. The Bible requires, as Bushnell wrote:\n\n   Divine inbreathings and exaltations in us, that we may asscend into\n   their meanings.[63]\n\nIn his last sickness Archbishop Usher was observed one day, sitting in his\nwheel-chair, with a Bible in his lap, and moving his position as the sun\nstole round to the westward, so as to let the light fall on the sacred\npage. That is a symbol of the right use of the Bible.\n\nI picked up lately the choice Bible which I selected for myself as a boy,\nand on the fly-leaf, in my boyish hand, I read the words:\n\n   Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.\n\nI still find that the best commentator, for the ethical and spiritual use\nof the Bible, is one Master Praying Always.\n\nAs the bard with the Muse, so the critic in the presence of Wisdom, must\nforget his skill; \"must be, with good intent, no more his, but hers:\"\n\n    Must throw away his pen and paint,\n      Kneel with worshipers.\n\n    Then, perchance, a sunny ray,\n      From the heaven of fire,\n    His lost tools may overpay,\n      And better his desire.\n\nThus buying Bibles for yourselves, my friends, see that your children buy\nthemselves the Bible in the same good coin.\n\n\n(a.) _Read with them the tales of its noble men._\n\nDo not hesitate to read with them these stories of the ancients, because\nthere may be the commingling of legend with history, of myth with fact.\nYou do not hesitate to read them the story of William Tell, although there\nare woven into it the elements of a very old and wide-spread sun-myth.\nThese mythic elements have been woven around some real historic hero, and\nthe spirit of his heroism breathes through every fold of the drapery. How\ncharmingly Kingsley tells the tales of the Grecian heroes! Through his\ncrystalline language we seem to inhale the crisp, clear air of the\nmorning of Greece, in which the simple souls of child-men thus shaped\ntheir dreams of duty around their older dreams of nature. Conscience\nfashioned these primitive fancies upon its form, and pulses through them\nits quickening life; the touch of which makes our children buoyant with\naspiration, so that they mount on high, like Perseus of the winged feet.\n\nThus read the matchless stories of the Hebrews, mindless of legend or of\nmyth. The Spirit of Holiness breathing through these tales will inspire\nthe souls of the children, without restraint from the questions that the\nreason may raise. Tell them no lies if they ask you questions. Read these\nancient stories _as_ stories, of good and noble men; stories written down\nlong ago, and told from father to son through longer ages before they were\nthus written out. Leave the children to detect the legendary elements. I\nfind them quick enough at that work without parental help. The bright\nchild feels the unreal in the tales that he most loves; but he loves them\nnone the less, perhaps all the more, because of the spell upon his\nimagination that he would not break; while through them, upon his open\nsoul, streams in the holy power of these sacred stories. Do you concern\nyourselves with impressing the moral of these God-breathed tales.\n\nRead with your children the stories of the dear Master, and make His life\ngrow real to them, till He shall draw them after Him, in the steps of His\nmost holy life.\n\n\n(b.) _Form in the children the habit of daily reading in the Bible._\n\nSay to each of them, in your own way, that which Sir Matthew Hale wrote to\nhis child:\n\n   Every morning read seriously and reverently a portion of the Holy\n   Scriptures. It is a book full of light and wisdom, and will make you\n   wise to eternal life.\n\n\n(c.) _Cultivate in them a genuine interest in the Bible._\n\nThe aids to an intelligent interest in the Bible-books are now so\nplentiful, and the human charm of them is so great, that it ought to be an\neasy thing for a parent to awaken a real fondness for these immortal\nwritings. The best safeguard against bad taste in literature or life is\nthe formation of a good taste. These are books, to learn to love which is\nthe making of a man. Our children may not grow into the genius, but they\nwill grow into somewhat of the goodness of the illustrious and saintly\nJohn Henry Newman, if, in after years, they can write the first lines of\ntheir autobiographies in the words which open the biographical part of the\n_Apologia Pro Vita Sua_:\n\n   I was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading the\n   Bible.\n\n\n(d.) _Train the children to commit to memory the choicest passages of the\nBible._\n\nJohn Ruskin doubtless, at the time, rebelled against the strict rule of\nhis good aunt, which kept him busy on the Sundays memorizing the\nScriptures; but he is thankful now, as he has owned, for the discipline\nwhich stored his mind with their creative words. What a treasury of holy\nthoughts and influences does he carry within him who has written on his\nmind such passages as the nineteenth, twenty-third, ninety-first, one\nhundred and third, and one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalms; the third and\neighth chapters of Proverbs; the fortieth chapter of Isaiah; the sermon on\nthe mount, the parable of the prodigal son, and the thirteenth chapter of\nfirst Corinthians. Happy he who, like the palm tree in the desert, can\nstrike his roots below the arid surface of the world into fresh and living\nwaters, and thus keep life green amid the droughts of earth. The parable\nof the temptation of Christ should teach us how to arm our children\nagainst the wiles of the Evil One, whom they must surely meet: \"And he\nsaid, It is written.\" In the stress and strain of conflict, when the air\nis dimmed with the dust of the contending forces and the vision grows\nconfused, it is a saving sound to hear the ringing call of Duty, from the\nhills where One watcheth over the battlefield. When sore pressed by the\nfoe, it may prove our victory to fall back against the strong stone wall\nof an external authority, that can hold our lines unbroken. It is no\nwonder that the tempting sailors could do nothing with the cabin-boy who\nwas \"chock full of the Bible.\"\n\n\n(e.) _Teach your children, as you teach yourselves, to hearken through\nthese voices of the human writers to the voice of God._\n\nBother then with no theories of inspiration. Never deny nor conceal the\ntrue human voices of these men who spake of old, but never fail to affirm\nthe true Divine breath in these men who spake as they were moved by the\nHoly Ghost. And, since this is the power of the Bible, emphasize the\nDivine speaking; make every God-breathed word sound to the children's\nsouls as the very voice of God; until, in simple faith and reverent\ndocility, they shall each answer--Speak, Lord: Thy servant heareth!\n\n    Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,\n    And a light unto my path.\n\nSuch is the holy office of the Bible: such be its blessed service to our\nsouls, and to the souls of our dear children! May we walk in its light\nthrough life; that in the valley of the shadow of death that light may\nstill fall upon us.\n\nIt is not many months since I was called to the house where, in a ripe\nand honored age, lay a warden of this church, stricken suddenly by death.\nOn the table in his room, as he had left it open after reading in it that\nmorning, I saw a Bible.\n\nI can ask for my funeral no better symbol of the aim and effort of my poor\nerring life, if so be it shame me not too much, than that which told the\nstory of an humble servant of the Lord. Upon his coffin, with the\nbook-mark between the pages where he last had read, was--his Bible!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBlessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our\nlearning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and\ninwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy Holy Word, we\nmay embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which\nThou has given us in our Saviour, Jesus Christ. _Amen._\n\n\n\n\nThe End.\n\n\n\n\nFootnotes\n\n\n[1] The Second Sunday in Advent.\n\n[2] 1 Cor. vii. 10.\n\n[3] 1 Cor. vii. 12.\n\n[4] 1 Cor. vii. 40.\n\n[5] 1 Cor. vii. 25.\n\n[6] Hebrews i. 1.\n\n[7] 2 Peter i. 21.\n\n[8] 1 Peter i. 10, 11.\n\n[9] 2 Timothy iii. 16.\n\n[10] Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. xiii.\n\n[11] 2 Maccabees, ii. 13.\n\n[12] \"The Jews and the priests have found it good that Simon shall be their\nleader and high priest forever until there shall arise a trustworthy\nprophet.\"--1 Macc. xiv. 41.\n\n[13] Introduction to the New Testament. Samuel Davidson, I.:279.\n\n[14] Introduction to the New Testament. Samuel Davidson, I.:384.\n\n[15] The contrast between the fifteenth and sixteenth century Confessions\nof Faith reveals this process, and explains the prevalent Protestant\ntheory.\n\n[16] About 600 A.D.\n\n[17] 2 Maccabees ii. 13.\n\n[18] The Dial: October, 1840.\n\n[19] Ewald: History of Israel, i. 4.\n\n[20] Esther is the most notable apparent exception, but this it only\napparent.\n\n[21] In speaking of the book of Esther, Dean Stanley observes that \"it\nnever names the name of God from first to last,\" and remarks \"It is\nnecessary for us that in the rest of the sacred volume the name of God\nshould constantly be brought before us, to show that He is all in all to\nour moral perfection. But it is expedient for us no less that there should\nbe one book which omits it altogether, to prevent us from attaching to the\nmere name a reverence which belongs only to the reality.... The name of\nGod is _not_ there, but the work of God _is_.... When Esther nerved\nherself to enter, at the risk of her life, the presence of Ahasuerus--'I\nwill go in unto the king, and if I perish I perish'--when her patriotic\nfeeling vented itself in that noble cry, 'How can I endure to see the evil\nthat shall come unto my people? or can I endure to see the destruction of\nmy kindred?'--she expressed, although she never named the name of God, a\nreligious devotion as acceptable to Him as that of Moses and David, who,\nno less sincerely, had the sacred name always on their lips.\"--_History of\nthe Jewish Church_, iii. 301.\n\n[22] Ewald: History of Israel, i. 4.\n\n[23] The Old Testament is a record of the growth of human intelligence in\nrelation to the Deity--of the revelation made by Spirit to spirit. When\ntherefore God is described as _speaking_ to man, he does so in the only\nway in which He who is a Spirit can speak to one encompassed with flesh\nand blood; not to the outward organs of sensation, but to that\nintelligence which is kindred to Himself the great Fountain of\nknowledge.--Davidson: _Introduction to the Old Testament_, i. 233.\n\n[24] Emerson: Miscellanies, p. 200.\n\n[25] \"To hear people speak,\" said Goethe, \"one would almost believe that\nthey were of opinion that God had withdrawn into silence since those old\ntimes, and that man was now placed quite upon his own feet, and had to see\nhow he could get on without God and his daily invisible\nbreath.\"--Conversations, _March 11, 1832_.\n\n[26] Our advancing knowledge of the early portions of the Bible is\nclearing its offensive portions of the grossness which characterized them\nas literal histories, by resolving them into nature-myths, or into social\ntraditions, symbolical stories of casuistry, \"token-tales,\" whose original\nmeaning had been lost by the time they were committed to writing.\n\nEvery school-boy knows how the worst stories of the Greek gods and\ngoddesses lose their immorality as seen to be parables of nature's\nprocesses, myths, whose poetry had exhaled in the course of time.\nGoldziher's \"Mythology Among the Hebrews,\" shows the mythic character of\nmany of these revolting Jewish stories, though his theory carries him off\nhis feet. Fenton's \"Early Hebrew Life,\" brings out the social and\ncasuistical origin of many of these traditions as decisions, \"Judgments,\"\nof the village elders and priests upon cases of conduct, thrown into the\nform of imaginary stories to make them realistic and ensure their\npreservation. \"In this way, various dubious points of primitive morality\nand politics were governed; and the stories which enshrine them stand to\nprimitive life in much the same relation as do collections of precedents\nto modern lawyers, and dictionaries of cases of conscience to father\nconfessors.\" (p. 81)\n\nBut, as these aspects of such traditions as Lot and his daughters, Judah\nand Tamar, &c., cannot be divined without interpretation, they should be\nomitted from our children's Bibles.\n\nMy suggestion of an expurgated Bible, on which so many hard criticisms\nhave been passed, seemed to me innocent enough, since most sensible people\nhave been in the habit of expurgating the Bible for themselves in home\nreadings and in the readings in the churches. This is what Plato thought\nof such stories in the sacred book of the Grecians:\n\n\"Whatever beautiful fable they may invent, we should select, and what is\nnot so, we should reject: and we are to prevail on nurses and mothers to\nrepeat to the children such fables as are selected, and fashion their\nminds by fables * * * For though these things were true, yet I think they\nshould not be so readily told to the unwise and the young, but rather\nconcealed from them. As little ought we to describe in fables, the battles\nof the giants and other many and various feuds, both of gods and heroes,\nwith their own kindred and relatives; but if we would persuade them that\nnever at all should one citizen hate another, and that it is not holy,\nsuch things as these are rather to be told them in early childhood; and\nthe poets should be obliged to compose consistently with these views * * *\nYoung persons are not able to judge what is allegory and what is not, but\nwhatever opinions they receive at such an age are wont to be obliterated\nwith difficulty, and immovable. Hence one would think, we should of all\nthings endeavor, that what they should first hear be composed in the best\nmanner for exciting them to virtue.\"\n\n\"Republic,\" Book II.\n\n[27] How then are we to know what words and deeds express the mind of God,\nare words of the Lord, examples He presents for our imitation? By the mind\nof God manifest in 'the express image of His person?' All morality and\nreligion is to be tried by 'the mind which was in Christ,' 'the spirit of\nChrist which dwelleth in us.'\n\n[28] In what is said above there la no positive denial intended of the Old\nTestament miracles. We are in no position to deny them. The point is\nsimply that they are not bounden on us in any reasonable and reverent\nrecognition of a real historical revelation in the Old Testament, and need\ntrouble no one who cannot receive them. The miracles of Christ, when\nreduced to the wonders reported by the conjoint testimony of the\nsynoptics,--_i.e._, to the common tradition of the early church, stand apart\nfrom all other Scripture miracles; having a reasonable and natural\ncharacter as the powers of such a personality, and coming within the ken\nof our visions of possibility. They are imaged In the well attested powers\nof rare men. They appear as in no wise violations of law, but as the\nmanifestations of nature's laws and forces worked by the normal man,\nhaving 'dominion' over the earth. \"The wise soul expels disease.\"\n\n[29] So judicious a commentator as Dean Alford, in his introduction to the\nSecond Epistle to the Thessalonians, discussing the vexed question of the\nDaniel-like section in the third chapter, so wholly unlike Paul observes:\n\n\"If we have\" (in any sense, God speaking in the Bible) \"then, of all\npassages, it is in these, which treat so confidently of futurity, that we\nmust recognize His voice; if we have it not in these passages, _then,\nwhere are we to listen for it at all_?\"--Greek Testament III:64.\n\n[30] \"History of American Socialisms,\"--Noyes.--p. 608.\n\n[31] \"To understand that the language of the Bible is fluid, passing and\nliterary, not rigid, fixed and scientific, is the first step towards a\nright understanding of the Bible.\"--_Literature and Dogma_.--p. xii.\n\n[32] The revised version calls the attention of English readers to this\nlatter influence, in the marginal rendering of \"_Tartarus_\" for \"Hell\" in 2\nPeter, 11: 4.\n\n[33] Luther's strong sense detected his unevangelicalness.\n\n[34] Ewald says the tenth century, and Kuenen the eighth century.\n\n[35] Ask at Abel and at Dan whether the genuine old statutes of Israel\nhave lost their force?--2 Samuel, xx. 18. Restored by Ewald from the LXX.\n\n[36] Such a late codification is no more inconceivable than Justinian's\ncodification of Roman law.\n\n[37] Brook Foss Westcott. Smith's Bible Dictionary: article on Daniel.\n\n[38] \"The Bible of To-day,\" Chadwick, p. 50.\n\n[39] Of this process we see hints in the various references to the\nconsecration of great trees and stones to Jehovah.\n\n[40] The indications of this nature-worship lie scattered on the surface\nof the Old Testament so plainly that no one can fail to notice them.\n\n[41] \"Among the Edomites, Ishmaelites, Ammonites and Moabites--the tribes\nwith which Israel felt itself most nearly related--the service of the\nrigorous and destroying god was most prominent The very names for God\nwhich are most common among them--Baal, El, Molech, Milcom, Chemosh--are\nenough to show this. These names denote the mighty, violent, death-dealing\nGod.\" \"The Religion of Israel,\" Knappert, p. 29. These names constantly\nrecur in the early history of Israel. Jephthah's vow is a familiar\ninstance of this abhorrent rite. Circumcision is supposed to mark a\nmerciful compromise with this blood-gift; in addition to its sanitary\ncharacter.\n\n[42] We know from general history how among other people the homage paid\nto the productive powers of nature led to systematized prostitution, in\nthe name of the personification of this force of nature. Tradition records\nhow early in this period the Midianites seduced Israel temporarily from\nJehovah, by the licentious pleasures of their worship of Baal-Peor. Later\non in history we find that it is these impure rites that especially\nprovoke the anger of the prophets.\n\n[43] The sun symbols may not have been permanent features of the\nTemple-worship at this period, though, from the probable identification of\nthe early Jehovah with the sun, it seems likely that their presence there\nwas no casual fact.\n\n[44] 2 Kings, xxiii. 6, 7.\n\n[45] Isaiah, i. 11-17.\n\n[46] Micah, vi. 6-8.\n\n[47] Isaiah, xi. 2-5.\n\n[48] Isaiah, v. 8; iii. 14, 15.\n\n[49] Cf. Exodus, xxiii, 10, 11 (the earliest code) with Deuteronomy, xv.\n1-18.\n\n[50] The latter seems the probable influence of Persia. At all events,\nfrom this time Hebrew literature shows the gradual development of an\nangelic hierarchy.\n\n[51] The comparison of the earlier prophetic writings with the exilic\nprophecies, and with the later writings, such as Jonah, Ecclesiastes, &c.,\nwill illustrate this change.\n\n[52] Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones is the earliest\nappearance of this thought in any writing of whose date we are certain.\n\n[53] And thou shalt-number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times\nseven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto\nthee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the\njubilee to sound on the tenth _day_ of the seventh month, in the day of\natonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye\nshall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout _all_ the\nland unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and\nye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every\nman unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye\nshall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather\n_the grapes_ in it of the vine undressed. For it _is_ the jubilee; it\nshall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the\nfield. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his\npossession. And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbor, or buyest _ought_ of\nthy neighbor's hand, ye shall not oppress one another: According to the\nnumber of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, _and_\naccording unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee:\nAccording to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof,\nand according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it:\nfor _according_ to the number _of the years_ of the fruits doth he sell\nunto thee. Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear\nthy God: for I _am_ the Lord your God.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe land shall not be sold for ever: for the land _is_ mine; for ye _are_\nstrangers and sojourners with me. And in all the land of your possession\nye shall grant a redemption for the land.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou\nshalt relieve him: _yea, though he be_ a stranger, or a sojourner; that he\nmay live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy\nGod; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy\nmoney upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. I _am_ the Lord\nyour God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you\nthe land of Canaan, _and_ to be your God. And if thy brother _that\ndwelleth_ by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not\ncompel him to serve as a bondservant: _But_ as an hired servant, _and_ as\na sojourner, he shall be with thee, _and_ shall serve thee unto the year\nof jubilee: And _then_ shall he depart from thee, _both_ he and his\nchildren with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the\npossession of his fathers shall he return. For they _are_ my servants,\nwhich I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as\nbondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor; but shalt fear thy\nGod.--Leviticus xxv. 8 _et seq._\n\nFenton, \"Early Hebrew Life,\" has, I think, given the clue through the\ndifficulties of the jubilee-year legislation. He traces the early communal\ncharacter of Hebrew society, its gradual break-up under the encroachments\nof manorial lords, and the natural efforts of the people to regain their\ncommunal rights. \"But how remedy the evil? How restore to the communities\ntheir old rights and privileges, without unduly trenching upon rights and\npossessions that had since been acquired? The year of Jubilee is the\nHebrew solution of the problem,\" (p 71). It was a compromise; the old\nseventh year communal right adjourned to seven times seven years, and\nenlarged. Fenton quotes a curious survival, in the borough of\nNewtown-upon-Ayr, of this very compromise between the old and the new\nsocial systems--a Scottish Jubilee.\n\nIt is a queer sign of the disproportionate development of individual\nreligion in our current Christianity, that this social and economic\nlegislation should have been so spiritualized away as to leave no\nconsciousness of its original character in the minds of those who sing in\nour prayer-meetings that \"The year of Jubilee is come.\"\n\n[54] The Dialogues of Plato: Jowett's edition, II. 106.\n\n[55] Matthew Arnold in _Contemporary Review_, xxiv. 800; xxv. 508.\n\n[56] The Friend: Essay x.\n\n[57] Sacred Books of the East: I. ix. _et seq._\n\n[58] Confessions of Augustine: Book X. \u00a7 vi.\n\n[59] Exodus, xx. 31.\n\n[60] Richard Hooker: Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I., ch. xvi. \u00a7 8.\n\n[61] Le Page Renouf: Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 250.\n\n[62] Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 279.\n\n[63] God in Christ, p. 93.","title":"The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":59105}