The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible Part 6

The scene of this evolution is not the heart of the East, as in Buddhism, but the meeting point of East and West. Palestine is the race centre of the earth. Camels unload in Jerusalem the goods laden upon them in the seats of the most ancient empires; and on her pebbly beaches the Mediterranean rolls, bearing the commerce of Europe. Behind Judea lies the past, before it opens the future. Its Race-Man came at the epoch when, first in history, the East and West were brought together under one empire and opened to the free interchange of thought. And when we a.n.a.lyze the religion of the Christ, grown in this central land and coming to the birth in this central period, we find that it holds, alone on earth, the elements of each race-religion in well proportioned combination.

No eastern religion, Buddhism not excepted, appears to contain conceptions that satisfy the western mind. The religion of the Christ, however can be shown to hold whatever ideas and ideals make vital the great race-religions of the East. It is as many sided as humanity, and presents a family face to every people. It takes up the ideas and ideals of other religions, disengages and deposits whatever in them is temporal and circ.u.mstantial, preserves whatever is essential and eternal in them, combines these vital elements with the polar truths needful to their wholesomeness, and crystallizes ethical and spiritual religion into perfect forms, forms capable of translation into the idioms of every race of earth. This religion of the Christ is the one religion which to-day holds the promise and potency of further evolution, in the progressive civilization of mankind on which it is enthroned.

9. _Of the literature of the people through whom came this organic evolution of the keystoning religion of earth what can we say but that it records a real revelation coming through genuine personal inspirations from on high!_

Revelation is the opposite aspect of the mystery which we call discovery; the uncovering of that which was hidden; the unveiling of that which was not known; the coming on of truth into the light wherein man can see it.

"Discovery" expresses the human effort by which truth is thus uncovered and found out. "Revelation" expresses the divine effort which lies back of all human aspirations and endeavors; as the Spirit within man stirs him up to seek for Truth, flashes in upon his mind strange hints of where and how she is to be found, allures him onward with the mystic whispers of her voice, until at length he stands upon the mount of vision whence her holy form is seen, and cries--"I have found her!"

To him who believes in a Spirit of Truth, guiding men into all truth, the growth of ethical and spiritual religion into perfect form in Jesus Christ is a real revelation. It is the oncoming of the Light which lighteth every man that is in the world; the dawning of the day of earth on the hills of Judea, over which has risen the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings.

This revelation came not to the mystic "man writ large" we call society, direct from heaven in abstract form. It came to individual men, struggling for larger light and n.o.bler life, and breathing their higher spirit on their fellows. Religion is always _life_, the experience of _souls_. We can name the individuals through whom each important advance was made. The greater souls who led the wors.h.i.+p of the host welcoming the rising Light, thrilled with the vibrations of a voice deeper and holier than the voice of man. The lesser souls who formed the chorus of this anthem of The Dawn thrilled each alike with this mystic sense of G.o.d. That which we must aver of every truth discovered or revealed, of every knowledge needful to man and won by man; that which we must affirm as the only rational interpretation of the mysterious suggestions rising below the conscious thoughts of man, and prompting to n.o.blest benedictions on the race; that we must, with deepened awe, say of the holiest truths shown to the human soul,--Inspired!

With sincere and reverent confession we must say then in the words of Holy Writ:

"Holy men of G.o.d spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." "Every Scripture profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness is G.o.d-inspired."[23]

The consciousness and experience of Israel could not have found fitter expression than in the words of our great seer:

"I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, and unable to turn his head and see the speaker. In all the millions who have heard the voice, none ever saw the face. That well-known voice speaks in all languages, governs all men; and none ever caught a glimpse of its form.

If the man will exactly obey it, it will adopt him, so that he shall not any longer separate it from himself in his thought; he shall seem to be it, he shall be it. If he listen with insatiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is taught him, the sound swells to a ravis.h.i.+ng music, he is borne away as with a flood, he is the fool of ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if his eye is set on the things to be done, and not on the truth that is still-taught, and for the sake of which the things are to be done, then the voice grows faint, and at last is but a humming in his ears."[24]

We have thus seen in the Bible an ancient and n.o.ble literature, the literature of a n.o.ble race, the literature supremely influencing and enriching Christian civilization; demanding, therefore, our rational reverence, as const.i.tuting a truly Sacred Book.

We have seen in the Old Testament the literature of the people of religion, commissioned with its normal evolution; writings charged with deep religiousness; the records of the various moods and tenses through which religion grew continuously and insistently toward perfection, in an organic process watched and directed by a Higher Power than man. We have seen in the New Testament the record of the realization of this long-sought aim of the people of religion; the story of the Divine Man, who breathed religion out into perfection, and the writings that depict the bodying around Him of the Universal Church, the Church in whose truth and life is growing the religion of the future, "the Christ that is to be."

The fuller knowledge of our age, in evanis.h.i.+ng the unreal Bible restores the real Bible. It is the record of the visioning and embodiment of the Human Ideal, the Divine Image--The Christ. It is the Providentially prepared Hand Book of religion in whose rich and varied phases of ethical and spiritual thought all men may find the nourishment they need. It is the spiritual reality our fathers rightly felt, but wrongly expressed, when they called it as a whole The Word of G.o.d. It holds the words proceeding from out of the mouth of G.o.d on which man liveth. It bodies in "letters" The Word of G.o.d, embodied in the flesh in Jesus Christ the Lord.

It records a real revelation. This revelation, however, denies no other revelation. It affirms the fact of the withdrawal of a veil in each new knowledge won; the fact that man has felt in calling the new knowledge a discovery; and it interprets this unveiling as Tennyson has learned of it to do:

"And out of darkness come the hands That reach through nature, moulding man."

These books are the products of a real inspiration. This inspiration, however, denies no other inspiration. It interprets the sense of a higher than human influence in the n.o.blest searchers after truth, throughout the world, in every action of the intellect. It affirms the validity of that consciousness.[25]

The revelation in the Bible is the Light of G.o.d which streams through it, making it a "lamp unto our feet." The inspiration in the Bible is the life of G.o.d breathing through it into man, "and he becomes a living soul." The book which, above all others, reveals G.o.d to man, he must call the supreme revelation of G.o.d. The book which, above all others, inspires the life of G.o.d in man, he must call the most inspired of G.o.d.

If, then, any one asks me how he may know that there is a revelation in the Bible, I tell him to walk in its light, and see what it reveals. If any one asks me how I know that the Bible is inspired I answer him in Mr.

Moody's words:

"I know that the Bible is inspired, because it 'inspires me.'"

III.

The wrong use of the Bible.

"G.o.d, then, is quite simple and true, both in word and deed; neither is He changed Himself, nor does He deceive others--neither by visions, nor discourses, nor the pomp of signs. * * * * When any one alleges such things as these about the G.o.ds, we must show disapproval, and not grant them the privilege of a chorus; neither should we suffer teachers to employ them in the training of youth--if, at least, our guardians are to be pious and divine men."

Plato: The Republic; Book II.

"This, it seems, is the modern method of coming to inquire of the oracles of G.o.d; by this process they become a light to our feet, a lamp to our path! Accept the book as a whole, and then treat all the portions of it just as you like. Confess all its words to be the words of the Lord, and then you may yourself be lords over them, and may perform moral miracles by turning the bread of life into stones for casting at your enemies."

Maurice: What is Revelation, p. 475.

III.

The wrong use of the Bible

Every Scripture inspired of G.o.d is also profitable for teaching, for reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness.--2 Timothy, III, 16.

The Unreal Bible is fading upon the vision of our age. You have probably all perceived this more or less clearly. I have uttered the conviction which many of you have held in secret with misgivings and self-reproaches, and have shown you some of the many reasons why, as it seems to me, this view can no longer be held by men of open minds. The Real Bible is as yet vaguely seen, and, therefore, its power is feebly felt. According to their natures men are indulging in flippant flings at a vanished superst.i.tion, or grieving silently over the disappearance of the ancient light which ruled the night of earth. I have sought to clear your vision of the new moon rising upon us, the same holy light G.o.d set in the heavens of old, though changed in the altered atmosphere of earth.

I propose now to translate the generalities of the previous sermons into some practical applications. I want to-day to make more distinct certain wrong uses of the Bible which grow out of the old view of it; wrong uses from which great mischiefs have come to the cause of true religion, and great trouble to individual souls; abuses which fall away in the light of a more reasonable understanding of the Bible. The Bible viewed as a book let down from heaven, whose real "author" is G.o.d, as the Westminster Catechism affirmed; a book dictated to chosen penman and written out by their amanuenses under a direction which secured them against error on every subject of which they treated; a book thus given to the world to be an authorat.i.tive and infallible oracle for human information on all the great problems of life--naturally calls for uses which, apart from this theory, are gross and superst.i.tious abuses.

I.

_It is a wrong use of the Bible to set it in its entirety before all cla.s.ses and all ages._

On the old view of the Bible no man might dare to omit portions of it in public reading or home instruction. The horrible atrocities and brutal l.u.s.ts of the early Hebrews, and the coa.r.s.enesses of their later days, as unbearable by modern ears as the rough talk of Shakespeare's ladies, had all to be read to mixed a.s.semblies of young men and maidens; and be read with blus.h.i.+ng face by the pure mother to the purer children at her knees.

For us, who see the Bible in its true light, there is no necessity for a minister to offend against the taste of a refined age, or for a mother to introduce the unsoiled soul of her child to evil, by reading straight through the successive chapters of the Bible. It has been left for Protestant piety to excel Romanists and Jews in superst.i.tion. The Church of Rome, as you know, discourages the use of the Bible by her laity, erring in the other extreme. The Jewish rabbis had a saying that no one should read the Canticles before he was thirty years of age. If you follow the public readings of the Bible in this church from your own Bibles, you must often appreciate the relief this liberty of omission brings. Use the Bible in this way with your children at home. Who would think of an indiscriminate use of the original Shakespeare? Stage managers cut him so freely for rendering before grown up folk as to have made another Shakespeare. He who cares for his children's innocence will set before them an expurgated edition like that of Rolfe. So we should use at home such an expurgated edition of the Scriptures as "The Child's Bible,"

published by Ca.s.sel, Petter & Galpin, of London. No timid soul need fear that imprecation in the last chapter of the Revelation:

If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy G.o.d shall take away his part out of the book of life.

That sounds like the ruling pa.s.sion, strong in death, of the Son of Thunder; who in youth asked if he should call down fire from heaven upon a hamlet which did not welcome Jesus, and was well rebuked for his zeal by the gracious Master. It is part of the human weakness through which the voice of G.o.d speaks, taking its tone from the defects of the instrument.

This imprecation had reference, in all probability, solely to the copyists, against whose carelessness the author sought to guard himself by an awful threat. It certainly had reference to this book alone. Not until long afterwards did the Church determine what books were to enter the canon of the New Testament, and in what order they were to stand. That order placed the Revelation as the last book in the canon, and thus made this threat appear to cover the whole Bible.[26]