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+Project Gutenberg's Understanding the Scriptures, by Francis McConnell
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+Title: Understanding the Scriptures
+
+Author: Francis McConnell
+
+Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9492]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 5, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Bob McKillip
+and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE MENDENHALL LECTURES, THIRD SERIES
+DELIVERED AT DEPAUW UNIVERSITY
+
+
+UNDERSTANDING
+THE SCRIPTURES
+
+BY
+
+FRANCIS J. McCONNELL
+
+Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     FORWARD
+  I. PRELIMINARY
+ II. THE BOOK OF LIFE
+III. THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
+ IV. THE BOOK OF GOD
+  V. THE BOOK OF CHRIST
+ VI. THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+The Mendenhall Lectures, founded by Rev. Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D.,
+of the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, are
+delivered annually in De Pauw University to the public without any
+charge for admission. The object of the donor was "to found a perpetual
+lectureship on the evidences of the Divine Origin of Christianity and
+the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures. The lecturers must
+be persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who
+firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian faith. The
+selection of lecturers may be made from the world of Christian
+scholarship, without regard to denominational divisions. Each course of
+lectures is to be published in book form by an eminent publishing house
+and sold at cost to the faculty and students of the University."
+
+Lectures previously published: 1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt
+Hughes; 1914, The Literary Primacy of the Bible, George Peck Eckman.
+
+GEORGE R. GROSE,
+
+President De Pauw University.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+The problem as to the understanding of the Scriptures is with some no
+problem at all. All we have to do is to take the narratives at their
+face meaning. The Book is written in plain English, and all that is
+necessary for its comprehension is a knowledge of what the words mean.
+If we have any doubts, we can consult the dictionary. The plain man
+ought to have no difficulty in understanding the Bible.
+
+Nobody can deny the clearness of the English of the Scriptures.
+Nevertheless, the plain man does have trouble. How far would the
+ordinary intelligence have to read from the first chapter of Genesis
+before finding itself in difficulties? There are accounts of events
+utterly unlike anything which we see happening in the life around us,
+events which seem to us to contradict the course of nature's procedure.
+There are points of view foreign to our way of looking at things. More
+than that, there seem to be actual contradictions between various
+portions of the books. And, above all, the way of life marked out in the
+Book seems to lead off toward mystery. To save our lives we have to lose
+them. All the precepts of common sense seem set at defiance by some
+passages of the Book. How can we explain the hold of such a book on the
+world's life?
+
+When once the problem of the understanding of the Scriptures is raised,
+various solutions are offered, all of which contribute a measure of
+help, but most of which do not greatly get us ahead. For example, we are
+told that the Book is translated literature, and that if we could get
+back to the original narratives in the original languages, we would find
+our perplexities vanishing. There is no question that a knowledge of
+Greek and Hebrew does aid us in an understanding of the Scriptures, but
+this aid commonly extends only to the meaning of particular words. One
+who knows enough of Greek or Hebrew to enter sympathetically into the
+life of which those languages were the expression is prepared to sense
+the scriptural atmosphere better than one who has not such equipment.
+Very few Scripture readers, however, are thus qualified to understand
+Greek and Hebrew. Very few ministers of the gospel are so trained as to
+be able to pass upon shades of meaning of Greek or Hebrew words against
+the judgment of those who teach these languages in the schools. With
+graduation from theological school most ministers put Hebrew to one
+side; and many pay no further attention to Greek. Even a trained
+biblical student is very careful not to question the authority of the
+professional linguistic experts. Apart from sidelights upon the meaning
+of this or that passage, there is very little that the biblical student
+can get from Greek or Hebrew which is not available in important
+translations. We cannot solve the greater difficulties in biblical study
+by carrying our investigations back to the study of the original
+languages as such. The fact is that emphasis upon the importance of
+mastery of Greek and Hebrew for an insight into scriptural meanings
+rests largely upon a theory of literal inspiration of the biblical
+narratives. It requires only a cursory reading to see that the
+narratives in English cannot claim to be strictly inerrant, so that the
+upholder of inerrancy is driven to the position that the inerrancy is in
+the documents as originally written. No doctrine of inerrancy, however,
+can explain away the puzzles which confront us, for example, in the
+accounts of the creation as given us in the early chapters of Genesis,
+or throw light upon the possibility of a soul's passing from moral death
+to life.
+
+Great help is promised us by those who maintain that the modern methods
+of critical biblical study give us the key to scriptural meanings. There
+is no doubt that many doors have been opened by critical methods. Now
+that the flurries of misunderstanding which attended the first
+application of such methods to biblical study have passed on, we see
+that some solid results have been gained. In so far as our difficulties
+arise from questions of authorship and date of writing, the critical
+methods have brought much relief. Even very orthodox biblicists no
+longer insist that it is necessary to oppose the teaching that the first
+five books of the Bible were written at different times and by different
+men. In fact, there is no reason to quarrel with the theory that many
+parts of these books are not merely anonymous, but are documents
+produced by the united effort of narrators and correlators reaching
+through generations--the narratives often being transmitted orally from
+fathers to sons. There is no reason for longer arguing against the claim
+that the book of Isaiah as it stands in our Scriptures is composed of
+documents written at widely separated periods. It is permissible even
+from the standpoint of orthodoxy to assign a late date to the book of
+Daniel. No harm is wrought when we insist that the book of Mark must
+have priority in date among the Gospels, and that Matthew and Luke are
+built in part from Mark as a foundation. It is not dangerous to face the
+facts which cause the prolonged debate over the authorship of the fourth
+Gospel. It is not heresy to teach that the dates of the epistles must be
+rearranged through the findings of modern scholarship. There is not only
+no danger in a hospitable attitude toward modern scholarship, but many
+difficulties disappear through adjusting ourselves to present-day
+methods. If contradictions appear in a document hitherto considered a
+unit, the contradictions are at least measurably done away with when the
+document is seen to be a composite report from the points of view of
+different authors. The critical method has been of immense value in
+enforcing upon us that the scriptural books were written each with a
+distinctive intention, apart from the purpose to represent the facts in
+the method of a newspaper reporter or of a scientific investigator. In a
+sense many of the more important scriptural documents were of the nature
+of pamphlets or tracts for the times in which they were written. The
+author was combating a heresy, or supplementing a previous statement
+which seemed to him to be inadequate, or seeking to adjust a religious
+conception to enlarging demands. The biblical writers are commentators
+on or interpreters of the truth which they conceive to be essential.
+
+Making most generous allowances, however, for the advantages of the
+critical methods, we must use them with considerable care. Results like
+those suggested above seem to be well established, but there is always
+possibility of the critic's becoming a mere specialist with the purely
+technical point of view. Suppose the critic holds so to the passion for
+analysis that for him analysis becomes everything. We may then have a
+single verse cut into three or four pieces, each assigned to a different
+author, the authors separated by long periods. Even if the older
+narratives are composite, the process of welding or compression was so
+thorough that detailed analyses are now out of the question. Apart from
+its broader contentions, the method of the critical school must be used
+tentatively and without dogmatism. Moreover, we must always remember
+that the critical student comes to his task with assumptions which are
+oftentimes more potent with him from his very blindness to their
+existence. Assumption in scientific investigation is inevitable. Suppose
+a critic to be markedly under the influence of some evolutionary
+hypothesis. Suppose him to believe that the formula which makes progress
+a movement from the simple to the complex can be traced in detail in the
+advance of society. He is prepared to believe that in practically every
+case the simple has preceded the complex. He will forthwith untangle the
+biblical narrative to get at the ideal evolutionary arrangement,
+ignoring the truth that except in the most general fashion progress
+cannot thus be traced. In the actual life of societies the progress,
+especially of ideas, is often from the complex to the simple. Many
+evolutionists maintain that movement is now forward, now backward, now
+diagonal, and now by a "short cut"; but if the evolutionary critic
+sticks closely to his preconceived formula about progress as always from
+the simple to the complex, he can lead us astray. Again, almost all
+great prophetic announcements are ahead of their time. They seem out of
+place at the date of their first utterance--interruptions,
+interjections hard to fit into an orderly historic scheme. Or suppose
+the critic to be a student of the scientific school which will not allow
+for the play of any forces excepting as they openly reveal themselves,
+the school that will not allow for backgrounds of thought or for
+atmospheres which surround conceptions. Such a student is very apt to
+maintain, for example, that Paul knew only so much of the life of Jesus
+as he mentions in the epistles. Such a student cannot assume that Paul
+ever took anything for granted. We can see at once that a method so
+professedly exact as this may be dangerously out of touch with the human
+processes of the life of individuals and of societies. Or suppose still
+further that the biblical student holds a set of scientific assumptions
+which are extremely naturalistic; that is to say, suppose that he
+assumes that nothing has ever happened which in any way departs from the
+natural order. We have only to remind ourselves that the natural order
+of a particular time is the order as that time conceives it; but it is
+manifestly hazardous to limit events in the world of matter to the
+scientific conceptions of any one day. To take a single illustration,
+the radical student of the life of Jesus of a generation ago cast out
+forthwith from the Gospel accounts everything which suggested the
+miraculous. The conceptions of the order of nature which obtained a
+generation ago did not allow even for works of healing of the sort
+recorded in the Gospels. At the present time radical biblical criticism
+makes considerable allowance for such works. Discovery of the power of
+mental suggestion and of the influence of mind over body has opened the
+door to the return of some of the wonders wrought by Jesus to a place
+among historic facts. This does not mean that the radical student is any
+more friendly to miracles than before. We are not here raising the
+question of miracles as such, but we do insist that an assumption as to
+what the natural order may or may not allow can be fraught with peril in
+the hands of critical students of the Scriptures. We say again that
+while, in general, the larger contentions of the biblical school can be
+looked upon as established beyond reasonable doubt; and while, in
+general, the methods of the school are productive of good, yet, because
+of the part that assumption plays in the fashioning of all critical
+tools, the assumptions must be scrutinized with all possible care. A
+good practical rule is to read widely from the critics, to accept what
+they generally agree upon, to hold very loosely anything that seems
+"striking" or "brilliant." This is a field in which originality must be
+discounted. There is so little check upon the imagination.
+
+It is but a step from the consideration of the critical methods in
+biblical study to that of the historical methods in the broader sense.
+Many students who are out of patience with the more narrowly critical
+processes maintain that the broader historical methods are of vast value
+in biblical discussion. Here, again, we must admit the large measure of
+justice in the claim. We can see at once that the same reservations must
+be made as in the case of the critical methods. The assumptions play a
+determining part. If we are on our guard against any tricks that
+assumptions may play, we can eagerly expect the historical methods to
+aid us greatly.
+
+We have come to see that any revelation to be really a revelation must
+speak in the language of a particular time. But speaking in the language
+of a particular time implies at the outset very decided limitations. The
+prophets who arise to proclaim any kind of truth must clothe their ideas
+in the thought terms of a particular day and can accomplish their aims
+only as they succeed in leading the spiritual life of their day onward
+and upward. Such a prophet will accommodate himself to the mental and
+moral and religious limitations of the time in which he speaks. Only
+thus can he get a start. It is inevitable, then, that along with the
+higher truth of his message there will appear the marks of the
+limitations of the mold in which the message is cast. The prophet must
+take what materials he finds at hand, and with these materials direct
+the people to something higher and better. Furthermore, in the
+successive stages through which the idea grows we must expect to find it
+affected by all the important factors which in any degree determine its
+unfolding. The first stage in understanding the Scriptures is to learn
+what a writer intended to say, what he meant for the people of his day.
+To do this we must rely upon the methods which we use in any historical
+investigation. The Christian student of the Scriptures believes that the
+Bible contains eternal truths for all time, truths which are above time
+in their spiritual values. Even so, however, the truth must first be
+written for a particular time and that time the period in which the
+prophet lived. When the Christian speaks of the Scriptures as containing
+a revelation for all time, he refers to their essential spiritual value.
+The best way to make that essential spiritual value effective for the
+after times is to sink it deep into the consciousness of a particular
+time. This gives it leverage, or focus for the outworking of its forces.
+No matter how limited the conceptions in which the spiritual richness
+first took form, those conceptions can be understood by the students who
+look back through the ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out
+with perennial freshness. Paradoxical as it may sound, the truths which
+are of most value for all time are those which first get themselves most
+thoroughly into the thought and feeling of some one particular time. Let
+us look at the opening chapters of Genesis for illustration. The
+historical student points out to us that the science of the first
+chapters of Genesis is not peculiar to the Hebrew people, that
+substantially similar views of the stages through which creation moved
+are to be found in the literatures of surrounding peoples. A well-known
+type of student would therefore seek at one stroke to bring the first
+chapters of Genesis down to the level of the scriptures of the neighbors
+of the Hebrews. He would then discount all these narratives alike by
+reference to modern astronomy, geology, and biology. But the difference
+between the Hebrew account and the other accounts lies in this, that in
+the Hebrew statement the science of a particular time is made the
+vehicle of eternally superb moral and spiritual conceptions concerning
+man and concerning man's relation to the Power that brought him into
+being. The worth of these conceptions even in that early statement few
+of us would be inclined to question. Assuming that any man or set of men
+became in the old days alive to the value of such religious ideas, how
+could they speak them forth except in the language of their own day?
+They had to speak in their own tongue, and speaking in that tongue they
+had to use the thought terms expressed by that tongue. They accepted the
+science of their day as true, and they utilized that science for the
+sake of bodying forth the moral and spiritual insights to which they had
+attained. The inadequacy of early Hebrew science and its likeness to
+Babylonian and Chaldean science do not invalidate the worth of the
+spiritual conceptions of Genesis. This ought to be apparent even to the
+proverbial wayfaring man. The loftiest spiritual utterances are often
+clad in the poorest scientific draperies. Who would dare deny the worth
+of the great moral insights of Dante? And who, on the other hand, would
+insist upon the lasting value of the science in which his deep
+penetrations are uttered? And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has shown
+the nature of the material universe as pictured in Milton's "Paradise
+Lost." In passing from heaven to hell one would descend from an upper to
+a lower region of a sphere, passing through openings at the centers of
+other concentric spheres on the way down. Nothing more foreign to modern
+science can be imagined; yet we do not cast aside "Paradise Lost"
+because of the crudity of its view of the physical system.
+
+Assuming that the biblical prophets were to have any effect whatever, in
+what language could they speak except that of their own time? Their
+position was very similar to that of the modern preacher who uses
+present-day ideas of the physical universe as instruments to proclaim
+moral and spiritual values. Nobody can claim that modern scientific
+theories are ultimate, and nobody can deny, on the other hand, that vast
+good is done in the utilization of these conceptions for high religious
+purposes.
+
+A minister once sought in a sermon on the marvels of man's constitution
+to enforce his conceptions by speaking of the instantaneousness with
+which a message flashed to the brain through the nervous system is
+heeded and acted upon. He said that the touch of red-hot iron upon a
+finger-tip makes a disturbance which is instantly reported to the brain
+for action. A scientific hearer was infinitely disgusted. He said that
+all such disturbances are acted upon in the spinal cord. He could see no
+value, therefore, even in the main point of the minister's sermon
+because of the minister's mistaken conception of nervous processes. I
+suppose very few of us know whether this scientific objection was well
+taken or not. Very few of us, however, would reject the entire sermon
+because of an erroneous illustration; and yet sometimes all the
+essentials of the Scriptures are discounted because of flaws no more
+consequential than that suggested in this illustration. The Scriptures
+aim to declare a certain idea of God, a certain idea of man, and a
+certain idea of the relations between God and man. Those ideas are
+clothed in the garments of successive ages. The change in the fashions
+and adequacy of the garments does not make worthless the living truth
+which the garments clothe. Jesus himself lived deeply in his own time
+and spoke his own language and worked through the thought terms which
+were part of the life of his time. Some biblical readers have been
+greatly disturbed in recent years by the discovery of the part which
+so-called apocalyptic thought-forms play in the teaching of Jesus. The
+fact is that these conceptions were the commonest element in all later
+Jewish thinking. Jesus could not have lived when he did without making
+apocalyptic terms the vehicle for his doctrines. We have come to see
+that the manner of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus is not so
+important as the character of that kingdom.
+
+Not only must a prophet speak in the language of a definite time, but he
+must speak to men as he finds them. This being so, we must expect that
+revelations will in a sense be accommodated to the apprehension of the
+day of their utterance. The minds of men are in constant movement. If
+the prophet were to have before him minds altogether at a standstill, he
+might well despair of accomplishing great results by his message. He
+would be forced to think of the intelligence of this day as a sort of
+vessel which he could fill with so much and no more. But whether the
+prophets have through the ages had any theoretic understanding of human
+intelligence as an organism or not, they have acted upon the assumption
+that they were dealing with such organisms. So they have conceived of
+their truth as a seed cast into the ground, passing through successive
+stages. Jesus himself spoke of the kingdom of God as moving out of the
+stage of the blade into that of the ear and finally into that of the
+full corn in the ear. This illustration is our warrant for insisting
+that in the enforcing of truth all manner of factors come into play and
+that the truth passes through successive epochs, some of which may seem
+to later believers very unpromising and unworthy. The test of the worth
+of an idea is not so much any opinion as to the unseemliness of the
+stages through which it has passed as it is the value of the idea when
+once it has come to ripeness. The test of the grain is its final value
+for food. The scriptural truths are to be judged by no other test than
+that of their worth for life.
+
+In the light of the teaching of Jesus himself there is no reason why we
+should shrink from stating that the revelation of biblical truth is
+influenced by even the moral limitations of men. Jesus said that an
+important revelation to man was halted at an imperfect stage because of
+the hardness of men's hearts. The Mosaic law of divorce was looked upon
+by Jesus as inadequate. The law represented the best that could be done
+with hardened hearts. The author of the Practice of Christianity, a book
+published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how the
+hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual
+revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the
+openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the
+"tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was
+merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different
+order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into
+tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness and unresponsiveness
+which the prophet must meet, we can see how such an element would
+condition and limit the prophet.
+
+Again, Jesus said to his disciples that he had many things to say to
+them, but that they could not bear them at the time at which he spoke.
+Some revelations must wait for moral strength on the part of the people
+to whom they are to come. Suppose, for example, in this year of our Lord
+1917, some scientist should discover a method of touching off explosives
+from a great distance by wireless telegraphy without the need of a
+specially prepared receiver at the end where the explosion is desired.
+Suppose it were possible for him simply to press a button and blow up
+all the ships of the British Navy, or all the stores of munitions in
+Germany. What would be the first duty of such an inventor? Very likely
+it would be his immediate duty to keep the secret closely locked in his
+own mind. If such a discovery were made known to European combatants in
+their present temper, it is a question what would he left on earth at
+the end of the next twenty-four hours. With European minds in their
+present moral and spiritual plight it would not be safe to trust them
+with any such revelation. And this illustration has significance for
+more than the physical order of revelation. There are principles for
+individual and social conduct that may well be put into effect one
+hundred years from now. Men are not now morally fit to receive some
+revelations. All of which means that any revealing movement is a
+progressive movement in that it depends upon not merely the utterances
+of the revealing mind, but upon the response of the receiving mind. In
+the play back and forth between giver and receiver all sorts of factors
+come into power. The study of the interplay of these factors is entirely
+worthy as an object of Christian research. We may well be thankful for
+any advance thus far made in such study and we may look for greater
+advances in the future. For example, the historic students thus far have
+put in most of their effort laying stress upon similarities between the
+biblical conceptions and the conceptions of the peoples outside the
+current of biblical revelation. The work has been of great value.
+Nevertheless it would seem to be about time for larger emphasis on the
+differences between the biblical revelations and the conceptions
+outside.
+
+Still when all is said the mastery of historical methods of study is but
+preliminary to the real understanding of the Scriptures. If we come
+close to the revealing movement itself, we find that before we get far
+into the stream there must be sympathetic responsiveness to biblical
+teaching. The difficulties in understanding the Scriptures are, as of
+old, not so much of the intellect as they are of conscience and will--
+the difficulties, in a word, that arise from the hardness of men's
+hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BOOK OF LIFE
+
+The approaches to an understanding of the Scriptures which we suggested
+in the first chapter are those which have to do merely with intellectual
+investigation. Any student with normal intelligence can appreciate the
+methods and results of the critical scrutiny of the biblical documents,
+but will require something more for an adequate mastery of the
+scriptural revelations. There is need of sympathetic realization that
+the Book itself did not in any large degree come out of the exercise of
+the merely intellectual faculties. In the scriptural revelation we are
+dealing with a current of life which flowed for centuries through the
+minds of masses of people. To be sure of insight into the meanings of
+this revelation there must be an approach to the Bible as a Book of Life
+in the sense that its teachings came out of life and that they were
+perennially used to play back into life. Its hold on life to-day can be
+explained only by the fact that it was thus born out of life, and has
+its chief significance for the experiences of actual life.
+
+Even the most superficial perusal of the Scriptures shows that they came
+of practical contact with men and things. There is comparatively little
+in the entire content of our Sacred Book to suggest the speculations of
+abstract philosophy. The writers deal with the concrete. They tell of
+men and of peoples who had to face facts and who achieved comprehensions
+and convictions through grappling with facts. There is about the
+Scriptures what some one has called a sort of "out-of-doors-ness." There
+is very little hint of withdrawal from the push and pressure of daily
+living. If the prophets ever withdrew to solitude, they did not retire
+to closets, but rather to deserts or to mountains. We must not allow our
+modern familiarity with bookmaking as an affair of library research and
+tranquil meditation in seclusion to mislead us into thinking that the
+Christian Bible was wrought out in similar fashion. The Book is full of
+the tingle and even the roar of the life out of which it was born. Jesus
+gathered up in a single sentence the process by which the scriptural
+revelation can be apprehended by man when he said, "He that doeth the
+will shall know of the truth." The entire scriptural unfolding is one
+vast commentary on this utterance of Jesus.
+
+It is impossible for us in this series of studies to attempt any
+detailed survey of the revealing movement of which our Scriptures are
+the outcome. It is important, however, that we should see clearly that
+the revelation came to those who opened themselves to the light in an
+obedient spirit. While it is not in accord with our modern knowledge of
+psychology to assort and divide human activities too sharply, it is
+nevertheless permissible to insist that the biblical revelation was in a
+sense primarily to the will. As Frederick W. Robertson used to say,
+obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge. The first men to whom
+illuminations came evidently received these gifts out of some purity of
+intention and moral excellence. These early leaders gathered others
+around them and set them on the path of determined striving toward a
+definite goal. As the idea of the seer or the prophet found general
+acceptance it gradually hardened into law, law meant for scrupulous
+observance. If a singer felt stirred to write a psalm, he voiced his
+experiences or his aspirations in the midst of a throbbing world. If a
+statesman drew a wide survey of God's dealings with the nations of the
+earth, he did so at some mighty crisis in Israel's relations to Egypt or
+Assyria or Babylon. When we reach New Testament times we find that even
+the Gospels seem to have been books struck out of immediate practical
+urgencies rather than composed tranquilly with a scholar's interest
+merely in doing a fine piece of professional work. The early Christians
+were anxious to hold the believers to the strait and narrow way. To do
+this they repeated often the words of the Lord Jesus. When, however, the
+older members of the first circles began to fall away, the words were
+written down, not because some scholar felt moved thus to improve his
+leisure, but because it was absolutely necessary to preserve the words.
+Moreover, conflicts were arising between the growing church and the
+forces of the world round about. Some scriptures were written to supply
+instruments with which to carry on the warfare. Always the fundamental
+aim was to keep the people acting according to the teachings which lay
+at the heart of the Christian system. The object of the biblical
+revelation was from the beginning just what it is to-day in the hands of
+Christian believers--the object of using the Scriptures as an instrument
+for practicing the Christian spirit into all the phases of life.
+
+We would by no means deny that there are imposing philosophies or,
+rather, hints toward such philosophies, in the Scriptures, but we insist
+that these did not come out of a purely philosophizing temper. They came
+as men tried to put into some form or order the understandings at which
+they had arrived as they wrestled with the tough facts of a world which
+they were trying to subject to the rule of their religion. As we have
+said in the previous chapter, the Scriptures bear scars of all such
+conflicts. The revelation was knocked into its shape in the rough-and-
+tumble of an attempt to convert the world. And this is not to claim for
+the Bible any difference in method of creation from that which obtains
+in the shaping of any vitally effective piece of literature. The world-
+shaking conceptions have always been won in profound experience. This
+chapter is not written with the principles of the modern school of
+pragmatism as a guide, and yet pragmatism can be so stated as to phrase
+an essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual ideas result from
+spiritual practices and are of worth as they prove themselves aids in
+further experience. Take some of the expressions of Paul. The
+fundamental fact in Paul's experience was his vision on the Damascus
+road and his determination to be obedient to that vision. To make his
+own view of the Christian religion attractive to those whom he was
+trying to win, it became necessary for him to speak in terms of the
+Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not have spoken in any other
+terms, though some of his reasonings seem to us to be remote from actual
+life. But when he left argument and came back to experience he was most
+effective. His terribly compelling utterances are those which were born
+of driving necessity. The theology started with the vision and unfolded
+in obedience to the vision, "What wilt thou have me to do?" Everywhere
+upon Paul's epistles there are the marks of practical compulsion. A
+letter was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews in Galatia or to
+persuade questioning Gentiles in Rome. Some of the profoundest phrasings
+of Pauline belief were uttered first as appeals for generous collections
+to starving saints.
+
+The example of Paul as a receiver and giver of spiritual light is very
+significant. Even if we should make the largest allowances to the
+biblical critics who would cut down the number of epistles known to be
+genuinely Pauline, we would have enough left to make on our minds the
+impression of enormous personal activity. One passage does, indeed, tell
+us of a period of months of withdrawal for reflection in Arabia. For the
+most part, however, Paul's life was spent in ceaselessly going to and
+fro throughout the Roman empire; even in the days of imprisonment he
+seems to have been burdened with the administration of churches. It was
+out of such multifarious activities that the theology of Paul was born,
+and therein lies its value. No interpretation is likely to bring the
+separate deliverances into anything like formal, logical consistency.
+Very likely Paul was of a markedly logical frame of mind, but he did not
+attempt to rid his message of contradictions in detail. The unity and
+consistency are found in the fundamental life purpose to get men to
+accept Jesus Christ as the Chosen of God. If Paul had ever heard that
+much of his theology might be out-dated with the passage of the years,
+he would probably have responded that he was perfectly willing that the
+instrument should be cast aside if it had served its spiritual purpose
+of bringing men to obedience to the law of God.
+
+It is not intended to make this a book of sermons or exhortations. We
+must say, however, that in a series of studies on how to understand the
+Scriptures stress must be laid upon the maxim that the Scriptures can be
+understood only by those who seek to recognize and obey the spirit of
+life breathing from the Scriptures. Nothing could be more hopeless than
+to attempt to get to the heart of Christian truth without attempting to
+build that truth into life. The formal reasonings of the theologian are
+no doubt of value, but they throw little light upon the essentials of
+Christianity except as they deal with data which have been supplied by
+Christian experience. It would, indeed, be well for any study of the
+Bible to begin with a recognition of the part played by distinctly
+scholarly research. We cannot go far, however, until we recognize that
+sympathy with Christian truth is necessary before we can come upon vital
+knowledge. And this, after all, is but the way we learn to understand
+any piece of life-literature. A vast amount of material is at hand in
+the form of commentaries upon the work of Shakespeare. We know much
+about the circumstances under which the plays of Shakespeare were
+written; we know somewhat of the sources from which Shakespeare drew his
+historical materials; we are familiar with the chronology of the plays;
+but all this is knowledge about Shakespeare. To know Shakespeare there
+must be something of a deliberate attempt to surrender sympathetically
+to the Shakespearean point of view. We get "inside of" any classic work
+of literature only by this spirit of surrender. The aim of Shakespeare
+is simply to picture life as he sees it, but even to appreciate the
+picture men must enter into sympathy with the painter. The Scriptures
+aim not merely to paint life, but to quicken and reproduce life. How
+much more, then, is needed a surrender of the will before there can be
+adequate appreciation of the Scriptures? If the Scriptures are the
+results primarily of will-activities, how can they finally be mastered
+except by minds quickened by doing the will revealed in the Scriptures?
+The book of Christianity must be interpreted by the disciples of
+Christianity. Judged merely by bookish standards, there is no
+satisfactory explanation of the power of the Bible. But lift the whole
+problem out of the realm of books as such! The glimpses into any high
+truth that are worth while--how do they come? They come out of
+experience. Even when they are repeated from one mind to another they
+become the property of that second mind only as they reproduce
+themselves in experience. Otherwise the whole transaction is of words,
+words, words. The Scriptures have to do with deeds, not words.
+
+All this is offensive to the dogmatic reasoner. For him the intellect as
+such is the organ of religious truth. He insists on speaking of the
+Scriptures in formally theological terms. That the Scripture writers
+employed theological terms there can be no doubt, but they did not speak
+as systematic theologians. And always they brought their theology to the
+test of actual life. The writer of these lines once knew a student who
+had read enough of psychology to enable him to reason himself into a
+belief that he was the only person in existence; that is to say, he
+declared that he himself was the only one of whose existence he was
+infallibly certain. Does not all knowledge of an external world come as
+a report through a sensation aroused by stimulus? If the appropriate
+stimulus could be kept up an external world might fall away and I would
+still think it was there. The bell might ring at the door and might be
+nobody there. And so on and on, through steps familiar enough to the
+student of philosophy. When a friend made a quick appeal to life with
+the question: "If you are the only one alive, why do you bring your
+troubles to me?" the amateur philosopher came to earth with a sense of
+jar. But the jar is no greater than that when we pass from the plane of
+dogmatic theology to that of reading the Scriptures for their own sake.
+The old scholastics said that in God there are three substances, one
+essence, and two processions. How does this sound as compared with the
+statement of Jesus that he and his Father are one, and that he would
+send the Comforter? This is not to decry theology; but is nevertheless
+to discriminate between theology and scripture.
+
+Some one will object, however, that the scriptural truths take their
+start in large part from the visions of mystics--of men who brood long
+and patiently until they behold realities not otherwise discernible.
+Some students will urge upon us that such mystic revelations are granted
+peculiarly to the mystic temperament as such, and they often come
+regardless of the quality of life that the seers themselves may be
+living.
+
+There have, indeed, been in all ages of the world temperaments of
+supernormal or abnormal responsiveness to influences which seem to make
+little or no impression upon the ordinary mind. In all periods natures
+of this type have been looked upon as organs of religious revelation. So
+valuable have abnormal experiences seemed that all manner of expedients
+have been utilized to beget unusual mental states. A certain tribe of
+Indians, for example, in the southwest of our country are accustomed at
+set times to send their religious leaders into the desert to find and
+partake of a peculiar plant which has an opiate or narcotic effect. In
+the belief of the Indians this plant opens the door to visions. The
+visions, as reported by those who have recovered from the influence of
+the narcotic, are not of any considerable value. Similar attempts have
+been made by hypnotic experimenters among other peoples, the hypnosis
+sometimes being self-induced. From some Old Testament passages
+especially we may well believe that this sort of extraordinary mental
+condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the prophets in the
+olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the Scriptures,
+however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience
+as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures were the expression of
+a people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism
+always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences.
+Granting all allowances for mental states induced by eating an opiate,
+or by whirling like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu, the fact
+remains that in the main, the visions of the writers of our Scriptures
+came out of attempts to realize in conduct the moral will of God. When
+we think of the surroundings even of the early church; when we reflect
+upon the force of suggestion for uncritical minds; when we consider the
+sway of superstition at all periods during the Hebrew revealing
+movement, the wonder is that the Scriptures lay such stress as they do
+upon the type of vision which arises from faithfulness in doing the
+revealed will.
+
+If we may characterize scriptural mysticism, it seems very much akin to
+mental abilities which we meet frequently in our ordinary intercourse.
+Take, for example, the prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing is
+more inadequate than the rules for success laid down by many a man who
+has himself succeeded in business. Mastery of his rules will not help
+another to win business success. The reason is that there comes out of
+prolonged business practice a keen sense of what is likely to happen in
+the industrial or financial world. The sharpened wits foresee without
+being able to assign reasons or grounds for the prophecies. So it is
+with intellects trained to any superior skill. The Duke of Wellington
+once remarked that he had spent all his life wondering what was on the
+other side of the hills in front of him, yet the Duke himself came to
+marvelous skill in guessing what was on the other side. There is also a
+variety of scientific mysticism, if such an expression may be permitted.
+The man long trained to the reading of scientific processes develops a
+quick insight which runs far ahead of reason or proof. The transcendent
+scientific discoveries have been glimpsed or, rather, sensed before they
+so reported themselves that they could be seized by formal proof. Now it
+is a far cry from business men, generals, and scientists to the
+mysticism of the Scriptures, but when we see the emphasis which the
+Scriptures place upon constancy in keeping the law and in acting
+according to divine commandments, we cannot help feeling that biblical
+mysticism was and is an awareness developed as the life becomes
+practiced to the doing of religious duty. Think too of the emphasis
+placed in the Scriptures upon the consecration of the whole life to the
+truth as cleansing the heart from evil. All this makes for a power to
+seize truth beyond that possible to formal and systematic reason.
+Mysticism of this sort is the very height of spiritual power. The
+Master's word: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,"
+does not refer to merely negative virtue. It means also the power of
+soul accumulated in the positive doing of good. It means entrance into
+the life of quick spiritual awareness through the adjustment of the
+whole nature to the single moral purpose.
+
+In all promise of revelation the Scriptures insist upon the importance
+of keeping upon the basis of solid obedience. The finer the instrument
+is to be, the more massive must be the foundation. Professor Hocking, of
+Harvard University, has used a remarkable illustration to enforce this
+very conception. The scientific instrument, he says, which must be kept
+freest from distracting influences so that it may make the finest
+registries must rest upon a foundation broad and deep. So the soul that
+is to catch the finest stirrings of the divine must rest upon the
+solidest stones of hard work for the moral purposes of the scriptural
+Kingdom.
+
+Still some one will insist that the Bible is a book built around great
+crises in human experience; that it is a record of these crises; that
+the people in whose history the crises occurred were a peculiar people,
+apparently arbitrarily chosen as a medium for religious world-
+instruction; that the crises cast sudden bursts of intense light upon
+the meaning of human life, but that they themselves are far apart from
+ordinary experience. Here, again, we must insist that the scriptural
+stress is always upon obedience to what is conceived of as revealed
+truth. We have already said that Jesus regarded revelation as organic.
+In everything organic we find instances of quick crisis following long
+and slow periods of growth. The crisis or the climax of the sudden
+flowering-out would never be possible were it not for the antecedent
+growth. The Hebrew nation, developed through workaday righteousness,
+manifested wonderful power in sudden crises. The inner forces of moral
+purpose which at times seemed hidden or dead because of the riot of
+wickedness suddenly blossomed forth in mighty bursts of prophecy; but
+the all-essential was the long-continued practice of righteousness which
+made possible the sudden crisis; and this is in keeping with the
+teachings of most commonplace human experience. The daily struggle
+prepares for the sharp, quick strain or for the swift unfolding of a new
+moral purpose. There is nothing more arbitrary in the crises in the
+scriptural movement than in the ordinary ongoings of our lives. The
+student who has long been wrestling with a problem finds the solution
+instantaneously bursting upon him in the midst of untoward
+circumstances. The most insignificant trifle may finally turn the lock
+which opens to the glorious revelation after prolonged brooding. The
+daily practice may make men ready for the shock which leaps upon them
+altogether unexpected.
+
+We summarize by saying that the essentials of biblical truth came in
+progressive revelations to men who were putting forth their energies to
+live up to the largest ideals they could reach; and that they sought
+these larger ideals for use in their lives. It must be understood in all
+that we have said about acting the revelation out into life that we do
+not mean merely the more matter-of-fact activities. It should be noticed
+that whenever men speak of will-activities they are apt to give the
+impression that they mean some putting forth of bodily energy. The will
+to do scriptural righteousness did not manifest itself merely in outside
+actions. It manifested itself just as thoroughly in bearings and
+attitudes of the inner spirit; and the appeal was always to the will to
+hold itself fast in the direction of the highest life, whatever the form
+of the activity.
+
+After this emphasis upon obedience as the organ of spiritual knowledge
+some one may ask what provision we are making for infallibility and for
+inspiration. We can only say that we are dealing with a Book which has
+come out of concrete life, and that in concrete life not much
+consideration is given to abstract infallibility. In daily experience
+the righteous soul becomes increasingly sure of itself. To return for
+the moment to Paul, we may think of the certainty with which he grasped
+the thought of the reward which would be his. The time of his
+departure, or, of his unmooring, was at hand. He was perfectly confident
+that he was to go on longer voyages of spiritual discovery and
+exploration. Can we say that this splendid outburst came from devotion
+to an abstract formula? Did it not, rather, spring from the sources of
+life within him-sources opened and developed by the experiences through
+which he passed? The biblical heroes wrought and suffered through living
+confidence in the forces which were bearing them on and up. They would
+have answered questions about abstract infallibility with emphatic
+avowals as to the firmness of their own belief. In other words, they
+could have relied upon their life itself as its own best witness to
+itself. They felt alive and ready to go whithersoever life might lead.
+
+And so with inspiration. It is the merest commonplace to repeat that the
+inspiration of the Scriptures must show itself in their power to inspire
+those who partake of their life. Does a fresh moral and spiritual air
+blow through them? Is there in them anything that men can breathe?
+Anything upon which men can build themselves into moral strength? This
+is the final test of inspiration. Physical breathing is in itself a
+mystery, but we know when the air invigorates us. Abstract doctrine of
+inspiration apart from life and experience is a very stifling affair
+compared with inspiration conceived of as a breath of life. The
+scriptural doctrine is that the man who does the will finds himself able
+to breathe more deeply of the truth of God; and that the very breath
+itself will satisfy him, and by satisfying him convince him that it is
+the breath of life.
+
+There is an old story of a student who decided to learn the meaning of a
+strange religion which was taught and practiced by priests in a far-away
+corner of India. The student thought to disguise himself, to go close to
+the doors of the temple and to listen there for what he might overhear
+of the principles taught by the priests. One day he was detected and
+captured by the priests and made their slave. He was set to work
+performing to the utmost the duties for which the temple called. His
+response was at first rebellious. In the long years that followed the
+spell of the strange religion was cast upon him. He began to learn not
+as an outsider, not as one merely studying writings and rituals, but as
+one enthralled by the system itself. In this old story, inadequate as it
+is, we have a suggestion of the way in which the biblical revelation
+lays its spell upon man. The outside study is, indeed, worth much, but
+the true understanding comes inside the temple to him who carries
+forward the work of the temple.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
+
+We have seen that the understanding of the Scriptures presupposes at
+least a sympathy with the rule of life contained in the Scriptures, and
+implies for its largest results a practical surrender to that rule of
+life. He that doeth the will revealed in the Scriptures cometh to a
+knowledge of the truth revealed in the Scriptures. We must next note
+that an understanding of the Bible cannot advance far until it realizes
+the emphasis on the human values set before us in the scriptural books.
+We are to approach the distinctively religious teachings of the Bible
+somewhat later. It is now in order to call attention to the truth that
+the biblical movement is throughout the ages in the direction of
+increasing regard for the distinctively human. The human ideal is not so
+much absolutely stated as imposed in laws, in prophecies, in the
+policies of statesmen, in the types of ideal erected on high before the
+chosen people as worthy of supreme regard. And the place of the human
+ideal in the Bible helps determine the place of the Bible in human life.
+Mankind makes much of the Book because the Book makes much of mankind.
+
+There is much obscurity about the beginnings of the laws of the Hebrews.
+One characteristic of those laws, however, is evident from a very early
+date--the regard for human life as such and the aim to make human
+existence increasingly worth while. It is a common quality of primitive
+religions that they are apt to lay stress on merely ceremonial
+cleansings, for example. The ceremony is gone through for the sake of
+pleasing a deity. There are abundant indications of this same purpose in
+the ceremonies of the early Hebrews, but there is even more abundant
+indication that the ceremonies were aimed at a good result for the
+worshiper himself. It is impossible to read through the Mosaic
+requirements concerning bodily cleanliness, the sanitary arrangements of
+the camps, the regulations for cooking the food, and the instructions
+for dealing with disease without feeling that there is a wide difference
+between such requirements and merely formal ceremonials. The Mosaic
+sanitary law aimed at the good of the people. It sought to make men
+clean and decent and human. So it was also in many of the rules
+governing the daily work, the regulations as to the use of land, the
+prohibitions of usury, the relations of servants and masters--all these
+had back of them the driving force of an enlarging human ideal. The
+trend was away from everything unhuman and inhuman. It is not necessary
+for us to remark upon the outbursts of the prophets against those who
+would put property interests above human interests. It is a matter of
+commonplace that the call of the prophets was for larger devotion to a
+genuinely human ideal: that the fires of their wrath burned most
+fiercely against old-time monopolists who joined land to land till there
+was "no place," and against old-time corrupters of the law who sold the
+needy for a pair of shoes.
+
+Not only did the emphasis on the human ideal show in laws, but in the
+training up of types of life which should in themselves embody and
+illustrate the conceptions of the biblical leaders. At the heart of the
+Christian religion is incarnation, or divine revelation through the
+human organism. We are told that this incarnation came in the fullness
+of time. The passage seems to refer not merely to the rounding out of
+historic periods, but also to the fashioning of an ideal of human
+character, and at least a partial realization of that ideal in Hebrew
+heroes. If the final ideal was to stand incarnate before men, there must
+be approximations to that ideal before the crowning incarnation could be
+appreciated. We look upon the character of Jesus as the complete
+embodiment of human excellencies. Such a revelation, however, would have
+been futile if there had not previously been glimpses of and
+anticipations of the ideal in the lives of those who were forerunners of
+Jesus. The Scriptures teach, or at least imply, that the life of a good
+man is in itself a transcendent value.
+
+And yet it is perfectly clear that while the Scriptures exalt the
+individual, they do not mean to wall individuals off in impenetrable
+circles by themselves. It is true that the individual is the end toward
+which the scriptural redemption and glorification aims, but individuals
+find their own best selves not in isolation but in union with their
+fellows--a union of mutual cooperation and service, a union so close
+that the persons thus related come to be looked upon as a veritable Body
+of Christ, making together by their impact upon the world the same sort
+of revelation that the living Christ made in the days of his early life.
+The ideals as to the supremacy of human values are realized, according
+to the Scriptures, not in any separateness of individual existence, but
+in a closeness of social interdependence. So true is this that it is
+hardly possible to see how one can make much of the scriptural movement
+without immersing himself in the stream of human life with highest
+regard for the values of that life.
+
+It has been insisted from the beginning that the Christian consciousness
+is the only adequate interpretation of the Scriptures. By Christian
+consciousness is meant not the consciousness of the body of believers
+who are together trying to serve Christ. The interpretation of the
+individual becomes final only as it is accepted by the mass of the
+believers. Something of worth-while thought is conceived of as going out
+from the life of every believer. The utterance of the seer is not
+conceived of as complete until even he who sits in the seat of the
+unlearned has said "Amen." The pronouncements which do not evoke this
+wide human response fall by the wayside. For example, how was the canon
+of the New Testament shaped? Was there a determination on the part of
+individual leaders that such and such books should be included in the
+volume of Scriptures? Very likely there was at the last such deliberate
+selection, but before the final decision there must have been the
+practice of the congregations which amounted in the end to the choice or
+rejection of sacred books. Very likely the New Testament Scriptures were
+collected by a process of trying out the reading of Epistles and Gospels
+and exhortations before the congregations. As passages met or failed to
+meet the human needs, there was call for the repeated reading of some
+works and no call for the rereading of others. In use some documents
+proved their sacredness and other documents fell aside into disuse.
+Before the concluding deliberate choice was this selection in use by the
+believers themselves; and the selection turned round the question as to
+whether or not the documents helped people. If each member of the body
+of believers is entitled to interpret biblical literature,
+interpretation becomes a composite and diversified activity. There is
+little warrant in the Scriptures for the notion that the biblical
+revelation is to level men to any sort of sameness. There are
+diversities of endowments and varieties of expression; but the united
+judgment of the body of believers is the supreme authority in
+interpreting the scriptural revelation. This is what we mean by saying
+that the church is to interpret the Scriptures. We mean that no matter
+how brilliant or interesting the utterances of any individual may be,
+they are not of great value until they have received in some fashion the
+sanction of the main mass of believers. It is the function of the
+spokesmen of the church to gather up into distinct expression what may
+have been vaguely, but nevertheless really, in the thought or half-
+thought of the people. Gladstone once said that it is the business of
+the orator to send back upon his audience in showers what comes up to
+him from the audience in mist or clouds; so it is with the voice of a
+biblical truth through any medium of interpretation. The spokesman
+compresses or condenses into speech what has been dimly in the
+consciousness of the people. Even in days less democratic than ours this
+was abundantly true. It is the fashion to denounce some of the councils
+of the old church which shaped the creeds. It is often said that these
+creedal councils were moved by considerations of low-grade expediency.
+The councils, however, knew what the people were thinking of, and
+managed to get the popular thought into expression measurably
+satisfactory to the people themselves.
+
+In this doctrine of the church as interpreter of scriptural truth we can
+be sure that the emphasis will remain on the elements which make for
+enlarging human life if the church keeps true to the spirit of the Bible
+itself. The aspirations of humanity, the longings of masses of men, find
+utterance in the great popular spiritual demands all the more
+effectively because such demands override and nullify the insistence of
+an individualistic point of view which might easily become selfish. We
+have said that this democratic interpretation is final so long as it
+keeps itself in line with the biblical purpose. There are some dangers,
+however, against which we must be on our guard. First is the danger of
+identifying the church with those who actually belong to an
+organization. When we think of the church we have in mind not merely
+formal organizations, but all men who are really working in the spirit
+of the biblical ideals. There are many persons who really act according
+to the biblical revelation without technically uniting with a church. It
+may be that such persons do not accept the intellectual puttings of
+biblical doctrine, but that they nevertheless live in the spirit of that
+doctrine. It might be conceivably possible that a church organization
+would stand for an interpretation of truth which would be rejected by
+the general good sense of a larger community. In such a case the larger
+community would be the interpreter. Another danger in an interpreting
+body is that of traditionalism. The native conservatism of many minds
+stands against innovation. If, however, the innovation is in the
+direction of enlarging human life, it will in the end win its way. A
+third danger is that of institutionalism, where the organization as such
+becomes an end in itself without regard to the human interests involved.
+The Master's fiercest condemnations were for those who put any
+institution before the fulfillment of the human ideals. In the parable
+of the good Samaritan it is noteworthy that it was the priest and the
+Levite who passed by on the other side. It is hard to resist the feeling
+that the Master implied that the priest and Levite had been
+institutionalized into a lack of humanity. Making allowance now for all
+these dangers against which believers must guard, the chances are that
+interpretation of a book so human as the Scriptures is not final until
+it has received the real, though not necessarily formal, sanction of the
+body of believers.
+
+So thoroughly does the biblical revelation turn around the supremacy of
+the distinctively human values that we must insist that anything which
+would run counter to these values is alien to the spirit of the
+revelation, and, therefore, to comprehension of that revelation. We do
+not wish to be extreme, but it is hard to see how, in our day, for
+example, any who fail to put human rights in the first place can really
+master the scriptural revelation. We have spoken of the Master's rebukes
+of any form of institutionalism which stands in the way of human rights.
+Institutions at best are instruments; they exist merely for the purpose
+of bringing men to larger life; but these institutions sometimes get
+petrified into custom and become glorified by long practice, and even
+made sacred by adherents who look upon them as ends in themselves. Then
+there is no recourse except to break the institutions in the name of
+larger human life. If we could put ourselves back in the times of Jesus
+and feel something of the sacredness with which the Jews regarded the
+Sabbath, we would know the tremendous force of the Master's daring when
+he declared that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the
+Sabbath. The Master was also insistent upon the priority of human rights
+as over against property rights. It is perfectly true that Jesus did not
+encourage any propaganda for social reform. It is a mistake to try to
+read any form of modern Socialism into his teaching. Socialism is the
+theory of a particular time. Many of its outstanding features will no
+doubt one day be adopted; and the world will then move forward toward
+something else. Very likely three centuries from the present date the
+well-advanced communities of the world will be living under systems
+which will make Socialism itself look like the most hopeless and
+reactionary conservatism. The scriptural revelation, however, has not to
+do with the details of any particular scheme. It aims, rather, at the
+setting on high of the human ideal, an ideal which will, if given a
+chance, work itself out into the concrete forms best suited to each age,
+and which will not have exhausted its vitality when all that is good in
+the programs of our particular day shall have been incorporated into
+social practice.
+
+But let us linger for a moment around the blighting effect of placing
+property rights in front of human rights. If anyone at this juncture
+becomes nervous and insists that we are likely to introduce the new-
+fangled notions of the present day into a discussion where they are out
+of place, let us remind such a one that the danger of putting the
+material before the spiritual has always been the chief stumbling stone
+in the path of the biblical revelation. It may be too much to say with
+the old version that the love of money is the root of all evil, but the
+Scriptures place the sin of greed in the forefront among the evils that
+block the revealing process. Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go
+through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
+kingdom of God." With God a morally miraculous redemption is entirely
+possible; but Jesus declares that there is no need of our trying to
+minimize the power of the present world to blind us to visions of the
+spiritual world. For many forms of wrongdoing the Master had a
+willingness to make allowances; for the sin of placing material desires
+above human welfare he had unsparing condemnation. In the day of Jesus
+the world had an opportunity such as it never had before confronted to
+learn spiritual truth. What manner of opposition was it which prevented
+that truth from running its full course? Largely the opposition of money
+interests. The Pharisees had need to keep alliance with the temporal
+powers. It is not without significance that Jesus was betrayed for
+money. It is not without significance too that Jesus's picture of the
+Judgment Scene concerns itself largely with the rewards for those who
+discharge the tasks of simple human kindness. It means much to find
+Jesus hinting at an unpardonable sin on the part of those who call deeds
+of human relief works of Beelzebub. It is certainly food for reflection
+that the fiercest condemnations in his parables are for those who miss
+the human duties in their regard for the possessions of this world. We
+repeat that we would not be extreme, but when we see the disregard of
+human life in modern industrialism; when we behold the attempts of
+property interests to get control of all channels for the shaping of
+public opinion; when we see rent, interest, and dividends more highly
+rated than men, women, and children, we cannot help feeling that the
+deeper penetration into the Scriptures cannot arrive except through an
+emphasis upon fundamental human rights so mighty that all institutional
+creations of industrialism or ecclesiasticism shall be put into the
+secondary place and strictly kept there. This is not railing against
+wealth. It is simply calling attention to the fact that the man who
+possesses the wealth-tool cannot be allowed to use it or even to
+brandish it in such fashion as to endanger the unfolding of human
+ideals. It is only through the enforcing of these ideals that the
+Scriptures can be adequately apprehended. Until a social kingdom of God
+comes on earth the light of revelation cannot shine in its full
+brightness. Any social preacher of larger human rights is working for
+the dawn of a new day of biblical understanding.
+
+Some one will ask, however, why we single out one type of evil as
+especially thwarting the understanding of a biblical revelation. Why not
+speak of the evils of appetite and of envy and jealousy? The answer is
+that such evils, devastating as they are toward the spiritual faculties,
+are so definitely personalized in individuals that their nature is
+quickly recognized. The difference is that under present organization
+the evils of materialism are preeminently social. There is everywhere
+the heartiest condemnation for the man who personally is conspicuously
+greedy. A social evil can manifest itself in outstanding startlingness
+in a single person, but the plain fact is that under modern industrial
+organization we are all caught in the same snare. We are all tarred with
+the same stick. Great as is the improvement of our present system over
+anything that has preceded it, nevertheless the distribution of this
+world's goods is so unequal that we walk in the presence of injustice on
+every hand. The poor man often does not receive the product of his own
+work. Large material prizes go to men who toil not. Now no one in
+particular is to blame for this social plight. Nobody has yet arisen to
+show us the way out. We cannot act except as we all act together; and it
+is doubtful even if one nation could act alone. If, however, we should
+all recognize the evils of the present system, if we should condemn the
+wrongs of that system instead of trying to justify them, we would be on
+much better spiritual ground, for the attempts to justify the system
+lead to uneasy consciences, and to the searing of those consciences, and
+to the softening down of harsh truths, and finally to an inability to
+see things as they are. Though we have come far along the path toward
+industrial justice, there is still very much in the system under which
+we live that makes for an inability to understand some of the most
+elementary phrasings of Christian truth. The only way out is to see the
+system as it is and to take such steps forward as can be taken now. Only
+thus can we keep our souls saved, and only thus also can we follow the
+flashes from above.
+
+Jesus preached the highest ideal for individual righteousness. Men are
+to strive to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect. But the
+perfection is to show itself in social impartiality in the use of
+material opportunities. God sendeth the rain to fall and the sun to
+shine on the evil and the good. How many Christians of the present day
+could be safely intrusted with the distribution of rainfall and
+sunshine? Those of us who dwell in lands that must be irrigated know
+that the type of Christianity that can be trusted to deal fairly with
+our irrigation system is somewhat unusual.
+
+We take the injustices of the present social order too much as a matter
+of course. We ought to see them as making against humanity, and
+therefore against the scriptural revelation. When these injustices
+culminate in a war like the present, the only safety is thought that
+deals honestly with the inhumanity of the war. Granted that war in self-
+defense is justifiable, we keep ourselves open to divine revelations
+only as we refuse to glorify the inhuman. Only that nation can succeed
+in war and remain open to revelation from above which recognizes the
+inhumanity of war and refuses to glorify it.
+
+Closely related to the blight of the spirit of this present world is the
+failure to perceive the need of missionary spirit for a full grasp of
+scriptural truth. Though the Bible was given to a peculiar people, self-
+centered and exclusive, it nevertheless abounds in suggestions that its
+content can be appreciated the full only by those whose sympathies run
+out to men at the very ends of the earth. In the eyes of the Scriptures
+a human being is a human being anywhere. The differences between men are
+as nothing compared to the likenesses. Every revelation must begin
+somewhere and must attack its problems in proper sequence, one after the
+other; but mere priority of approach does not mean that one problem is
+inherently more important than another. Leaders among the Jews early
+tried to impress this upon the Jewish mind. Considered in its historical
+setting, the book of Jonah is one of the most spiritually daring books
+ever written. Jonah stands as a type of Jew who would not admit anything
+of worth in human beings outside of Judaism. Rather than carry the word
+of the Lord to Nineveh he would leave his country and go to Tarshish;
+rather than turn back and resume the journey to Nineveh, he would
+consent to be cast overboard in a storm. Forced at last to deliver his
+message, he announced it with the grim satisfaction of expecting to see
+Nineveh destroyed. And the final text of the book is that Jonah must
+learn not merely to proclaim his message to the Ninevites, but to
+proclaim his message with sympathy and genuine human interest. The Jews
+were a long time learning the lesson, but not longer than other peoples
+have been. Just because of the human interest involved, the missionary
+impulse is necessary to a spiritual seizure of the biblical revelation.
+
+It is important that we keep the missionary motive on the right basis.
+It is true that the Scriptures will never be adequately appropriated
+until all kindreds and peoples and tongues bring their contributions.
+Some phases of the truth the Oriental mind must seize before the
+Occidental mind can be brought to appreciate them. When the final
+revelation comes it will be adapted to the understanding of any kindred
+under heaven. It is worth while to spread the Christian revelation for
+the sake of the return which the Christianized peoples will one day
+bring to our studies of the truth. But the better motive is deeper than
+this--the passion for human beings as human beings. Any human being is
+entitled to any truth which another human being can reveal to him.
+
+The approach must be the human approach. We must speedily get away from
+the Jonah-like conceptions of the biblical revelation as intended
+particularly for any one nation. One great danger from the present war
+is the loss by the religious nations involved of the ordinary New
+Testament point of view. Many of the fighting nations have lapsed back
+into the pre-Jonah era. But the present war aside, the thought of
+supreme truth as intended chiefly for a particular race or nation, leads
+to a patronizing, condescending bearing toward other peoples which
+thwarts the finer spiritual achievements. The contacts between the
+so-called higher and so-called lower nations in military, diplomatic,
+and commercial relations have thus far for the most part been
+abominable. Too often missionary effort itself has based itself on these
+same assumptions of racial superiority. A people may indeed receive
+blessings from the Scriptures in whatever spirit they are bestowed, but
+damage is wrought in the souls of the bestowers by the attitude of
+superiority. The only genuinely biblical approach is one of respect--
+respect for the peoples as peoples, respect which will have regard for
+their growing independence in spiritual development, respect which will
+not force upon them particularistic interpretations of the universal
+Scriptures.
+
+Now, all of this may seem like a long distance from a treatment of
+understanding of the Scriptures in the ordinary sense. It would not have
+been worth while, however, to discuss this problem merely from the point
+of view of exegesis or professional commentary. The essentials about the
+Scriptures are their relations to life, their views of human beings and
+teachings concerning the forces of the spiritual kingdom. We shall
+proceed in the other chapters to speak of God, of the revelation of God
+in Christ, and of the spirit of Christ as revealed in his cross. Before
+we enter upon that study we must again remind ourselves that only life
+in harmony with the point of view of the Scriptures and only an interest
+in the same human problems that engross the attention of spiritual
+writers can avail us for vital interpretation of the teachings
+concerning the Divine, or make intelligible to us the hold of the
+Scriptures on the life of the world. The Bible is conceived in a spirit
+of respect for men. Only those who enter into that same spirit can hope
+to make much of the biblical revelation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BOOK OF GOD
+
+We have remarked upon some points of view from which the student must
+start in order to reach a sound understanding of the Scriptures. It is
+time for us to ask ourselves, however, as to the dominant notes of the
+Scriptures which make the Book so dynamic. The purpose of this chapter
+is to show that the essentials of the Book are, after all, its teachings
+about God. The Bible is the Book of God. Due chiefly to the ideas about
+God are its uniqueness and its force.
+
+Before advancing to the consideration of the Bible as a book about God
+it will be well for us to glance for a moment at other grounds on which
+supremacy for the Scriptures is sometimes claimed. There are those who
+maintain that the value of the Bible lies in the wealth of information
+which it gives us concerning the first days of the world's life. The
+Bible helps us to regard sympathetically the view of the universe by the
+ancient Hebrews. It is a repository of knowledge as to early science and
+philosophy. Now, all this is true, but relatively unimportant. Had it
+not been for the religious teachings of which the old-time view of the
+world was the vehicle, that vehicle itself would long since have been
+forgotten. Only archaeologists are to-day greatly interested in ancient
+theories of the world as such.
+
+There are, again, those who avow that the Bible deserves all praise
+because of the literary excellence of its style. There are, indeed,
+sublime passages to be forever cherished as entitled by their very
+sublimity of expression to permanent place in the world's literature.
+All this we most gladly admit. Oratory like that of the book of Isaiah,
+some of the sentences of the patriarchs, passages from the Psalms or
+from the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the thirteenth chapter of
+Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, are sure of permanency in
+literature no matter what may be anyone's opinion of their religious
+content. Nobility of conception is very apt to tend toward nobility of
+phrase. The expression may be admired for its own apart from the
+substance; but to say that the Bible holds its throne as the Book of
+books simply because of the superiority of its artistic form is woefully
+aside from the mark. Lamentable as it may be, masses of men do not rank
+artistic literary skill as highly as they ought. While a lofty idea is
+not likely to make its full impression until wrought into lofty beauty
+by a master of style, the worth must nevertheless inhere in the
+substance rather than in the form if the statement is to make lasting
+effect upon the passing generations. Moreover, it is very easy to
+overemphasize the literary excellence of the Scriptures. There are
+scores of passages which, as we say, "go through one," but this
+marvelous effectiveness is quite as likely to belodged in the idea
+itself and in the associations which that idea arouses as in the form of
+the passage. In some instances the literary mold in the Authorized
+Version is such as to hinder rather than to help; so that the prophet
+who seeks to add to the force of the idea breaks the mold for literary
+recasting.
+
+Still another may declare that the Scriptures are valuable because they
+abound in hints which make for practical success--shrewd moral maxims
+which aid all classes of men in avoiding pitfalls, axioms for daily
+conduct which ought to be accepted by everybody, even by those who care
+not for the religion of the Bible. All this, again, is true, but hardly
+sufficient to explain the grip of the Bible on mankind. So far as the
+more conventional morality goes, men are likely to be ruled by the
+sentiment of the community in which they move. They adapt themselves to
+the demands of the situation at a particular time rather than to a set
+of precepts.
+
+Still others maintain that the human ideal itself which we sketched in a
+previous chapter is the determining factor in giving the Bible power.
+The greatest study of mankind is man. The erection of such an ideal as
+that of the Scriptures for man cannot fail to secure for the Book mighty
+power through all the ages. And yet it must be replied that if we take
+the Bible merely as portraying a human ideal without reference to the
+idea of God involved in the same process of revelation, we cut asunder
+two things which properly belong together. We must not forget that in
+the history of Israel the prophets grasped at every new insight
+concerning human character as at the same time a new insight concerning
+the character of God. Attributing a profoundly moral trait to God made
+it of more consequence forthwith for man, and thus the conceptions of
+man and God went along together reenforcing each the other. To separate
+the ideal of God from the ideal of man leaves everything at loose ends
+for the human ideal. It is true that there are individuals here and
+there of intense intelligence and of immense wealth of moral endowment
+who do not seem to require any ideal of God to sustain and strengthen
+their ideal of man; but for the most of us the ideal of man cannot grow
+to any considerable size without growth of our notion as to the
+character of God. What man is now depends somewhat on our thought of
+where man came from, and what his place in the universe essentially is.
+One of our deepest yearnings is to know whether our exalted belief about
+man has any validity before the larger ranges of the activity of the
+universe itself. It is very common, for example, for those who go forth
+to social tasks with a passion for humanity to lose that passion if they
+do not keep alive a passion for God. Disappointment with some phases of
+human nature itself and despair over the failures of men are apt to be
+so trying that the passion for humanity dies down unless familiarity
+with actual human life is reenforced by communion with an ideal which
+reaches up toward the Divine. We would ourselves insist that the
+loftiest human ideal in all literature is that of the Scriptures, but we
+must insist also that this ideal lacks driving force if it does not keep
+back of it the biblical doctrine of God.
+
+From the very outset the Hebrew Scriptures deal with God. "In the
+beginning God," at the end God, and God at every step of the journey
+from the beginning to the end. There are other scriptures besides the
+Hebrew Scriptures that deal with God, but the kind of God set before us
+in the Hebrew revelation gives the Bible its supreme merit.
+
+Since we often hear that there are other sources for the idea of God
+than the Scriptures, it may be well for us to appraise the contributions
+from some of those sources before we look at the kind of God drawn for
+us in the biblical writings. After allowing as high excellence as is
+possible to the theologies obtained outside the Scriptures, the moral
+and spiritual superiority of the scriptural ideal shines forth
+unmistakably.
+
+Many a scientist tells us that we do not further need the biblical idea
+of God in view of the vast suggestions concerning the Divine which
+science places before us. The world in which we live has broadened
+immeasurably since the days of the Hebrew prophets and seers. The idea
+of God, broadening to correspond, has to expand so overwhelmingly that
+we ought no longer pay heed to the imaginations of the biblical writers.
+Large numbers of scientists to-day avow themselves devout theists.
+Materialism is decidedly out of fashion, and agnosticism is less in
+vogue than a decade or two ago. The reverent scientist affirms that he
+believes in a God whose omniscience keeps track of every particle of
+matter in a universe whose spaces are measured by billions of miles, a
+God whose omnipresence implies the interlacing of forces whose sweep and
+fineness seen through the telescope and microscope astonish us.
+Moreover, the modern doctrine of evolution shows us that the entire
+material system is moving on and up from lower to higher forms. "It doth
+not yet appear what we shall be," but we shall clearly be something
+great and glorious.
+
+Now, far be it from us to belittle the splendor of this scientific
+vision. Modern scientific searchers are, indeed, finding innumerable
+illustrations of the greatness of God. There is every reason why the
+scientific investigator should rejoice in a calling which enables him to
+think God's thoughts after him; but when a scientist will have it that
+his belief in God arises only from his technical investigations, we must
+declare our suspicion that he is employing his findings to confirm a
+faith already held, though that faith may be part of his unconscious
+spiritual possessions. Many times the scientist is determined that the
+scientific discoveries shall look in theistic directions just to satisfy
+the imperious though unconscious demands of his own soul. Some
+scientists are theists just because they are bound to be so, for the
+close contemplation of the entire situation in the material realm does
+not make for any adequate theistic verdict. It is hard indeed to believe
+that the nice adjustments of matter and force occur without the
+governance of a supervising intelligence. There are too many facts which
+suggest skill to make it easy to believe that the natural world is just
+the outcome of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Science itself very
+likely establishes a presumption in favor of a governing mind, _but
+the deeper question is as to the character of that mind_. Is it a
+moral mind? At this point the hopeful evolutionist will break out that
+the progress is so definitely from lower to higher that no one ought to
+doubt the benevolence of the Power moving upward through all things.
+Evolution is, indeed, full of promises to one who already trusts in the
+goodness of God; but the progress from lower to higher is not always
+unmistakable. Often the survival of the fittest is just a survival of
+those fittest to survive, and not the survival of those who ought to
+survive. There are too many things which survive which ought to be
+killed off. Simple good can give way to complex evil without at all
+violating the requirements of the evolutionistic formula. But even if we
+concede all that the scientist claims for his conception of God; if we
+grant that terms like "omnipresence" and "omniscience" and "progress"
+clothe themselves with new force in the Copernican and Newtonian and
+Darwinian terminology, we must nevertheless insist that none of this
+rises to the moral height of the biblical teaching. Nor are we willing
+to admit that the biblical doctrine is to be discounted because it grew
+up amid small theories of the material universe. The old Hebrew views of
+the physical system, outdated as they are now, are nevertheless full of
+sublimity on their own account. But even if they were infinitesimal as
+compared with the vast stretches of modern scientific measurements, the
+moral grandeur of the idea of God of which they were the framework
+stands forth unmistakably. We must not permit the quantitative bigness
+of modern scientific notions to obscure the qualitative fineness of the
+biblical ideal of God. Modern philosophy comes also and announces that
+it has a better God than that of the Scriptures. The most imposing
+modern philosophical systems are those which proclaim some form of
+idealism. The gist of the idealistic argument always is that the world
+itself is nothing apart from thought; that thought-relationships rule in
+and through all things; that there are no things-in-themselves; that
+there can be no hard-and-fast stuff standing apart from God. Things must
+come within the range of thought or go out of existence. There is no
+alternative. Now, thought implies a thinker, and this implication
+carries us at once to God. Here, again, we have no desire to question
+the cogency of the argument. We are ready to admit that this is the
+strongest theistic argument that has thus far been built. To be sure,
+there are some questions that inevitably suggest themselves: What is the
+thinker? Is it impersonal thought, as some have maintained? Is it just
+the sum of all forms of consciousness--our consciousnesses being organs
+or phases of the Supreme Consciousness? Or is the thinker strictly
+personal, carrying on a thought-world by the power of his will and
+calling into existence finite thinkers in his own image? Assuming that
+the world is the expression of the thought of a Personal Thinker who
+acts in the forces of nature and creates men in his own image, the
+further question arises as to the character of that Thinker. While
+returning the heartiest thanks to the idealist for his argument--full as
+it is of aid for the Christian system--we have to protest that the
+argument does not lift us to the full height of the ideal of God
+inculcated in the Scriptures. And if this is true of the majestic
+systems of idealism, how much more is it true of the other and less
+convincing systems which are just now having their day! We have already
+spoken of pragmatism as possessing validity as a method, but pragmatism
+can hardly cherish pretension of being itself a system of religious
+philosophy.
+
+Some very strenuous searchers after divine treasures have professed to
+discover value in various non-Christian religions. They have patiently
+studied the great Indian world-views, for example, which are admittedly
+the most important religious creations outside of Christianity. These
+students come back to us with fragments of doctrines, gems of ethical
+wisdom, traces of sublimity from the Indian sacred books. It would be
+foolhardy not to receive any genuine treasures, no matter what the mine
+from which they have been quarried. We are all eager to admit the
+immeasurable possibilities of the Oriental type of thinking for the
+development of Christianity, but Oriental systems thus far have been
+chiefly significant as indicating what stupendous religious powers can
+do when they are off the track. The Indian systems of religion have run
+loose in India. As a result, nowhere in the world has religion been
+taken more seriously and more sincerely than by the Indian peoples. It
+is simply impossible to bring the charge against the Indian races that
+they have not made the most of their religion. The final indictment to
+be passed upon the Indian systems is that while the Indian peoples have
+made the most of those systems, the systems have made least of the
+Indian peoples; and this because of the defects in the conception of the
+Divine itself. It is doubtful whether the Indian could call his highest
+gods personal. If he declares them personal, he can hardly make them
+moral in the full sense; that is to say, in the sense of exerting their
+force on the world in favor of justice and righteousness and love.
+
+Now, it is just in the quality of moral force that the God of the
+Scriptures shows his superiority. The entire revealing process can be
+looked upon as one long story of the moralization of the idea of God.
+Let it be granted that the biblical idea was at the beginning marked by
+the naive and the crude. Personally, we have never been able to see the
+pertinency of the reasonings which make the Hebrew Jehovah as imperfect
+as some students would have us believe. Nevertheless, for the sake of
+the argument we will admit limitations in the early Hebrew conception of
+God. Even with such concession, however, the outstanding characteristics
+of that God were from the beginning moral. Suppose that Jehovah was at
+the beginning just a tribal Deity. The difference between Jehovah and
+other tribal deities was that the commandments which were conceived of
+as coming from him looked in the direction of increasing moral life for
+the people, and these moral demands upon the chosen people were
+conceived of as arising out of the nature of Jehovah himself. To be
+sure, the early narratives employ expressions like "the jealousy of
+God," but even a slightly sympathetic reading of the Scriptures
+indicates that the jealousy was directed against whatever would harm
+human life. In the mighty pictures of the patriarchs the heroes speak to
+their God as if the same moral obligations rested upon God as upon
+themselves. There is nothing finer in the Old Testament than Abraham's
+challenge, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
+
+We are not specially interested in the growth of the ideas as to the
+power of God, though we repeat that it is difficult for us to believe
+that the early Hebrews thought of their Deity as so narrowly limited in
+power as some modern students seek to prove. The conception of the might
+of Jehovah grew through the centuries and followed upon the extension of
+the knowledge of the Hebrews about the world in which they lived. If
+tomorrow morning some revolutionary astronomical discovery should
+convince us that the solar system is much vaster than we have ever
+imagined, the theist would, of course, extend the thought of the sway of
+God to all that solar system. If there were some method of becoming
+aware that the bodies of the entire astronomical system are millions of
+times more numerous than scientists ever have dreamed, the theist would,
+of course, maintain that the righteous purpose of his God reaches to all
+of these bodies. The growth of the Hebrew idea was somewhat parallel to
+this. Even when the Hebrew thought of the outside peoples as having gods
+of their own; he believed that as soon as his God came into conflict
+with the other gods, he would shatter them with his might. By the time
+the first chapters of Genesis were written the Hebrew conceived of God
+as creator of all things, and thereafter the growth of the belief in the
+power of God kept pace with the enlarging view of the world.
+
+We repeat that we are not much concerned with the growth of the idea of
+the power of God. We are, however, interested in the manifest teaching
+or direct implication of the Scriptures that from the beginning the
+Hebrews thought of God as under obligation to use his power for moral
+ends. What the moral ends were depended upon the growth of the moral
+ideal. At the very beginning it was believed that since God had chosen
+the people of Israel to be his people, he must fight their battles for
+them. It is from this point of view that we must deal with the early
+idea of God as a God of battles. God was wielding his force for a moral
+purpose. Moreover, if God had chosen a people to be the channel through
+which he was to reveal himself to the world, he must be very patient
+with that people. How sublime is the Old Testament belief in the
+patience of God toward Israel! To use the phrase of our later days, God
+accommodated himself to the progress which the people could make. When
+the prophets called upon the people to walk with God, they implied a
+willingness on God's part to walk with the people. If they must lengthen
+their stride, he must shorten his; he must bear with them in their
+inadequate notions; he must judge their efforts by the direction in
+which they were tending rather than by any achievement in itself.
+
+It is from the point of view of their growing apprehension of God as
+moral that we can best understand the ferocity of the Israelite toward
+the so-called heathen peoples. The boasting of the Israelites over the
+slaughter of outsiders must be understood from the faith in the moral
+destiny which the prophets conceived the God of Israel to hold in store
+for his people. The reason assigned for cruelties and warfares upon
+heathen peoples was the abominations practiced by those peoples. Of
+course it is possible for a student obsessed with the modern doctrine of
+the economic determinism of history to say that we have in the story of
+the Hebrew development just the play of economic forces with moral aims
+assigned as their formal justification. Assuming that the narratives of
+the conquest of Canaan are true, what the Hebrews desired--these
+economists tell us--was the milk and the honey. They made their
+so-called advance in obedience to God an excuse for taking possession of
+the milk and the honey. Now, he would be blind indeed who would deny
+that economic values do play their part in wars of conquest; he would be
+foolish who would deny that wars always do justify themselves by
+appealing to lofty religious motives, but nevertheless the impact of the
+Hebrew history upon the life of the world has been a moral impact, due
+to the belief of the Hebrews that they were instruments in the hands of a
+moral God. If we could behold the abominations in heathenism upon which
+the old prophets looked, we would sympathize quite readily with an
+impulse which might seem to call for outright destruction. A friend of
+mine, a man of the most sensitive Christian feeling, once stood on the
+banks of the Ganges and watched people by the hundreds and thousands
+going through religious ceremonials, some of which were defiling and
+others silly. In the midst of the reeking vileness of one scene in
+particular he said that he felt for the moment an impulse like that of
+the old prophets to cry out for the destruction of the entire mass. The
+situation seemed so dreadful and so hopeless! All this passed in an
+instant to the loftier feeling of compassion, but the stirring of the
+more primitive impulse was really moral in its foundation. In any case,
+the old Hebrew notion was of a God who would put a growing moral ideal
+in the first place.
+
+It is not necessary for us to attempt to trace the steps of the growth
+of the moral ideal for God. As we have said, that ideal kept pace with
+the growth of the ideal for man. We must call attention, however, to the
+fact that the growth of the ideal was in the direction of increasing
+emphasis upon the responsibilities that go with power. The Hebrew may
+not have definitely phrased the responsibility, but he nevertheless
+shows his increasing realization of the obligations resting upon God.
+When we reach the later prophets we discern that his moral obligation
+upon God himself becomes more and more a determining factor. There
+appear glimpses of belief that God must not only fight for his people,
+but that he must suffer in their sufferings. It is of little consequence
+for our present purpose whether the suffering servant of Jehovah of the
+later Israelitish Scriptures is a group of persons or an individual. The
+implication is that the suffering is a revelation of Jehovah himself.
+Moreover, there appears a widening stream of emphasis on the tenderness
+of God's care for his people. The Hebrew writers comparatively early
+broke away from the thought of God as merely philanthropically inclined
+toward Israel. They did not think of him as bestowing gifts which were
+without cost to himself. They show him as deeply involved in the life of
+the nation and as caring for his people with an infinite compassion.
+This enlarging revelation was made clear to the people through the
+utterances of prophets, the decrees of lawgivers, the songs of
+psalmists, the interpretations of historians, and the warnings of
+statesmen. Slowly and surely, moreover, the people attained grasp on the
+doctrine that the greatest revelation of God is the revelation in human
+character itself. They began to look forward to the coming of one who
+would in himself embody the noblest and best in the divine life, who
+would gather up in himself all the ideals and purposes toward which the
+law and the prophets had looked. New Testament revelation as such we
+leave to the later chapters, but we have come far enough, we think, to
+warrant us in saying that only he can understand the Scriptures who sees
+that the chief fact about the Scriptures is the emphasis on the moral
+nature of God. Other Scriptures besides that of the Hebrews--we might
+say scientific, philosophical, extra-Christian Scriptures--have stood
+for the existence of God; but none have stood for the existence of such
+a God as the God of the Bible. The salient feature of the Bible is its
+thought of God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BOOK OF CHRIST
+
+It is of course the merest commonplace to say that the revelation of God
+in the Scriptures comes to its climax in Christ. The revelation in
+Christ gathers up all that is loftiest in the utterances of the Old
+Testament and gives it embodiment in a human life. It is legitimate to
+declare that there is little either in the teaching of Christ or in his
+character that is not at least foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The
+uniqueness of the Christ revelation consists in the manner in which the
+separate streams of truth of the law and the prophets and the seers and
+the poets are merged together in the Christ teaching, and in the fine
+balance with which the ideal characteristics seen from afar by the
+saints of the older day were realized in the living Christ. We might
+justly say that a devout reader of the Old Testament could find rich
+elements of the Christ revelation even if he should never see a page of
+the New Testament. The virtue of the New Testament, however, is that all
+the elements revealed throughout the course of the historic periods of
+Israel's career are bound together in the life and character of Christ.
+It is no mere epigram to say that if the greatest fact about the
+Scriptures is God, the greatest fact about God is Christ. Any thorough
+study of the Scriptures must revolve around Christ as its center. If the
+Scriptures mean anything, they mean that in Christ we see God. Of course
+it is open to the skeptic to reply that in all this the Scriptures are
+completely mistaken; but he cannot maintain that this is not what the
+Scriptures mean. The Book comes to its climax with an honest conviction
+that Christ is the consummate revelation of God. The day when men could
+charge any sort of manipulation of the material by Scripture writers for
+unworthy doctrinal purposes is past. We have in another connection said
+that each of the New Testament books was, indeed, written with a
+definite aim, but this does not mean that facts and teachings were
+twisted out of their legitimate significance. That Christ is the supreme
+gift of God to men is so thoroughly built into the biblical revelation
+that there is no digging that idea out without wrecking the entire
+revelation itself. To maintain anything else would be to do violence to
+the entire scriptural teaching. The burden of the entire New Testament
+is that God is like Christ.
+
+This may seem to some to be a reversal of present-day approach to the
+study of the Christ. We may appear to be attacking the problem from the
+divine angle rather than from the human. Why not ask what Christ was
+rather than what God is? It is indeed far from our purpose to minimize
+the rich significance of the humanity of Jesus, but we are trying now to
+get the scriptural focus. We do not believe that we can secure that
+focus by looking upon the character of Christ as a merely human ideal.
+The might of the scriptural emphasis is that Christ is the revelation of
+God. We are well aware that ordinary theological debate has centered on
+the question as to the extent to which Christ is like God. The Bible is
+colored with the belief that God is like Christ. This may seem at first
+glimpse to be a very fine discrimination, but the importance of that
+discrimination appears when we reflect that mankind is more eager to
+learn the character of God than to learn how far a man can climb toward
+divinity. In all such discussions as this we proceed at peril of being
+misunderstood, but we must repeatedly affirm that important as is the
+problem as to the human ideal set forth in Christ, the divine ideal set
+forth in him is more significant as explaining the hold of the Bible on
+men. Is it not sufficient for us to behold a lofty human ideal in the
+portrait of Christ without such emphasis on this ideal as also a
+revelation of the divine character? The answer depends upon what we are
+most interested in. If we care most for a perfect and symmetrical human
+life, we reply that we find that perfection and symmetry in Christ. In
+our second chapter we laid such stress upon the importance of the
+enlarging human ideal that we have committed ourselves to the importance
+of the Christ ideal as a revelation of the possibilities of human life.
+But if we take that ideal in itself without any reference to the
+character of God, how much enlargement does it bring us? As members of
+the human race we can indeed be proud that a human being has climbed to
+such moral stature as did Jesus, but what promise does that give that
+any other human being can attain to his stature? As a member of the
+human race I can be profoundly thankful for a philosopher like Kant. I
+can, indeed, dedicate myself to the study of the Kantian philosophy with
+some hope of mastering it. I can seek to reproduce in my life all the
+conditions that surrounded the life of the great metaphysician, but I
+cannot hope to make myself a Kant. Strive as I may, such transformation
+is out of the question. I may attain great merit by my struggle, but I
+cannot make myself a Kant. The more intensely I might struggle, the more
+convinced I would become of the futility of my quest, and the genius of
+the philosopher might tower up at the end as itself a grim mockery of my
+ambition. So it is with the Christ if he is not a revelation of the God
+life at the same time that he is an idealization of the human life.
+Viewed as a revelation of God's character the Christ life is the hope of
+all the ages. Viewed only as a masterpiece of human life it might well
+be the despair of mankind.
+
+Of course there are those who believe that it is impossible for Christ
+to be a revelation of the human without also being a revelation of the
+Divine. We have no desire to quarrel with this position, though we find
+it more optimistic than convincing. Incredible as it may seem at first
+thought, the universe might theoretically be regarded as a system ruled
+over by a Deity who had brought forth a character like that of Christ
+just for the sake of seeing what he could achieve in the way of a
+masterpiece, without being himself fundamentally involved in self-
+revelation. Christ might conceivably be a sort of poetic dream of the
+Almighty rather than a laying bare of the Almighty's own life. We find
+that human authors by an effort of great imagination fashion creations
+in a sense completely different from themselves. It might be
+theoretically urged that the character of Christ is different from the
+character of God. If this seems very far-fetched, let us remind
+ourselves then that there are those in the present world who conceive of
+Christ as the very highest peak of human existence and yet deny that he
+has any sort of significance as a revelation of the forces back of the
+world. Such thinkers maintain that Christ is the best the race has to
+show, and yet affirm that the race is but an insignificant item in the
+total massiveness of the universe. The Bible establishes the faith of
+men against skepticism like this by making the Christ-ideal for God
+himself so attractive and appealing.
+
+There are those who proclaim that we do not need any revelations of God
+to make then human ideal fully significant--the human ideal stands by
+itself. Some such thinkers go consistently the full length of saying
+that they are willing to keep their eyes open to the hopelessness of the
+universe. They can see nothing beyond this life but total oblivion.
+Nevertheless, with their eyes open they will fight on manfully to the
+end and take the final leap into the dark without flinching. They are
+very apt to add that their philosophy is the only unselfish one; that
+the desire of men for any sort of help from conceptions about the Divine
+is selfishness where it is not sentimentalism. It is fair to say that
+such doctrines seldom meet large response. The reason is not that men
+selfishly seek out a God for the sake of material reward that may come
+to them, but that they seek him for the sake of finding a resting place
+for their minds and souls, for the sake of cherishing an end which seems
+in itself worth while, for the sake of laying hold on a universe in
+which they can feel at home. If this is selfishness, then the activities
+of the human soul in its highest ranges are selfish. If it is selfish to
+long for a universe in which the heart can trust, it is selfish also to
+enjoy the self-satisfaction with which some of these thinkers profess to
+be ready to take their leap into the night. As we scan the history of
+Christianity since the day of the Founder we are impressed that
+religious organizations as such which arise within Christianity tend to
+survive in proportion as they make central the significance of Christ as
+the revealer of the character of God. We would not for a moment
+underestimate the importance of those groups of Christians who take
+Christ merely as a prophet who lived the noblest life and exalted his
+truth by the noblest death. Many such believers manifest the very purest
+devotion to Christ. They are his disciples. But the historic fact is
+that organizations founded on such doctrines alone do not win sweeping
+triumphs. On their own statement the most they hope to do is to spread
+the leaven of their doctrine into the thinking of other groups of
+Christians. Their service in this respect is not to be disparaged, for
+at all times the more orthodox opinion of Christ, so called, needs the
+leavening of emphasis on the humanity of Christ. But after all these
+allowances it is just to affirm that theology which sees only the human
+in Christ does not come to vast power, and that clearly because the
+world is chiefly interested in the question with which the entire
+biblical revealing movement deals, namely, what is the nature of God?
+With that question answered we can best understand the nature of man and
+the possibility of communion between man and God.
+
+We may be permitted to pick up the thread of the argument in the last
+chapter and ask again what moral purposes rule the forces of this world.
+It must indeed be an odd type of mind that does not at least
+occasionally ask what this world is for, and what all this cosmic
+commotion is about. It is well for all of us to do the best we can
+without asking too many hard questions, but the queries will at times
+come up and with the normal human being they are not likely easily to
+down. We are in the midst of powers which defy our intellects. We do not
+go far in the attempt to read the secrets of nature around us without
+discovering that all we can hope to spell out is the stages by which
+things come to pass, and the mechanisms by which they fit themselves
+together. Why they come to pass is beyond us, except in a most limited
+sense. The purposes for which events occur in this world are not self-
+evidently clear. Explanations of purposes only make matters worse; and
+at any moment this problem of the mystery of the universe may take
+personal significance in the form of a blow upon the individual which
+seems to mock all hope of anything worth while in human life. There is
+nothing more futile than the attempts even of ministers to divine the
+meanings of afflictions or of those inequalities of lot which attend the
+natural order. The preachers can encourage us to make the most of a bad
+lot, but their guesses as to why these things are ordinarily add to our
+burdens. No, the mind of itself just by contemplation of the things as
+they are cannot find much light. This enigma has always been before the
+philosophers in the form of the question as to physical suffering. A
+number of plausible answers have been made as to the reasons for pain in
+the present order. Leibnitz said that even the Almighty creating the
+finite world had to adjust himself to some limitations for the good of
+the whole; that if some forces are to run in one direction, there must
+be mutual concession and compromise in the adjustment of manifold other
+activities; and that all this involves at least apparent stress and
+injustice at particular points. This sounds well enough, but why the
+afflictions of the individual who happens to be one of the particular
+points should be just what they are is a mystery. The upshot is that the
+ordinary man--the plain man, as we call him--must either give up the
+whole problem by seeking to forget it, or must rebel against it, or he
+must find relief in a God whom he can trust without being able to fathom
+his plans.
+
+The tragedy of physical affliction is light as compared to the tragedies
+which arise in any conscience which seeks to take moral duties
+seriously. To be sure, we live at present in a rather complacent age so
+far as the struggles of conscience are concerned. The advice of the
+world is to do the best we can and let the rest go. We are not to take
+ourselves too seriously. But the long moral advances of the race have
+come through those who have taken the voices of conscience seriously.
+Now, what can a sensitive conscience make of moral duty? Assume that we
+have before us the exalted Christ ideal, and accept this as the guide of
+our lives--assume that we even have hope of some day attaining to that
+ideal--the distracting question is bound to jump at us: Are we doing
+enough? Have we sacrificed enough for those in worse plight than
+ourselves? And what about our past mistakes? Shall we go back and try to
+undo these? At the very best that might be like unraveling through the
+night what we have spun through the day. It will not do to dismiss this
+as unhealthiness or morbidness of mind. William James has shown pretty
+conclusively that the so-called normal or healthy-minded moral life is
+apt to be shallow. The great moral tragedy of the race is the distance
+between the ideal and any possible attainment. We can console ourselves
+by saying that noble discontent is the glory of man; but that does not
+get us far. There is only one way out, and that is to trust that we are
+dealing with a Christlike God, that his attitude toward us is the
+attitude of Jesus toward men. It is impossible to feel that in
+discipleship with Jesus men were complacent about their own moral
+perfections on the one hand, or harassed with self-reproaches on the
+other. They were advancing toward the realization of an ideal in
+companionship with One who not only in himself realized the human ideal,
+but who taught them that all the forces of the world would work together
+with them in their climb toward perfection, and that God would be
+patient with their blunders.
+
+The question as to the character of God becomes more vital the longer we
+reflect. The growing conscience of our time demands that two conceptions
+be kept together--that of power and that of moral responsibility. We
+cannot hold a person responsible unless he has power; we cannot give a
+person power unless he is willing to act under responsibility. This
+realization is fast modifying all our relations to politics, to finance,
+to industry, even to private duties. We are swiftly moving toward the
+day when society will insist that any measure of power which has an
+outreach beyond the circle of the holder's personal affairs shall be
+acquiesced in by society only on condition that the holder of that power
+be willing definitely to assume responsibility to society. What we
+demand of men we demand also of God, and we have the scriptural warrant
+for believing that these human demands are themselves hints concerning
+the nature of God. Now, no one doubts the power of God. All scientific
+and philosophic trends are toward the centralization of power in some
+unitary source. All our study of nature and of society convinces us that
+there is a unity of power somewhere. If this be true, there must be
+raised with increasing persistence the question as to whether the World-
+Power is acting under a sense of moral responsibility. There were days
+when this problem was not raised as it is now. Men assumed for centuries
+that the king could do no wrong; that he could order his people about in
+the most arbitrary fashion. In our own time we have seen advocacy of the
+doctrine that the man of wealth is a law unto himself in the handling of
+the power that comes with wealth. Such mistakes never were really a part
+of the biblical idea. In shaping the threefold notion of priest and
+prophet and king to make the people familiar with the functions of
+God-sent leadership the strokes of emphasis always fell on the
+responsibility of the prophet to proclaim his message at whatever cost
+to himself, of the priest to keep in mind the sacredness of his office,
+and of the king to rule in righteousness. These demands were inevitably
+carried up to God: and in Christ the supreme effort is made to convince
+us that we can trust in the God of Christ, though we may not be able to
+understand him. This is not the place for an attempt at determining the
+essentials of the Christ career. Some features of that life, however, as
+illustrating responsibility in the use of power can be hinted at here.
+Take the story of the temptation. We are not concerned now with the
+historic form in which the temptation occurred. After the historians
+have made all the changes in the drapery of the story they choose, the
+fact remains that the temptation narrative deals with the essential
+problems of any leader confronted with a task like that of Christ. The
+Messianic consciousness was a consciousness of power. How should the
+power be used? Should it be used to minister to human needs like those
+of hunger? That would promise a quick solution of a sort. The peoples
+would eagerly rally around the new deliverer. Should there be an attempt
+to utilize the political machinery of the time? There could be no doubt
+of the effectiveness of this plan. Should the exalted lofty spiritual
+state of the Master be relied upon to carry him through spectacular
+displays of extraordinary might that would capture the popular mind?
+Each of these suggestions presented its advantages. Each might have been
+rightfully followed by some one with less power than Jesus had; but for
+him any one of them would have involved a misuse of power, and hence he
+cast them all aside.
+
+The miracles reported of Christ have this for their peculiarity, that
+they show a power conceived of as divine used for a righteous purpose.
+It is significant that practically all the miracles described are those
+of healing or of relief. The kind of miracle that an irresponsible
+leader would have wrought is suggested by the advice of James and John
+to Jesus to call down fire on an inhospitable Samaritan village. The
+reported reply of Jesus, "Ye know not what spirit you are of," is the
+final comment on such use of power. Now, after we have made the most of
+the miracles recorded of Jesus, after we have made them seem just as
+extraordinary in themselves as possible, their most extraordinary
+feature is this use to which the power was put; and on the other hand,
+if we strip the miracles of everything that suggests breach of natural
+law and make them just revelations of super-normal control over nature
+through laws like those whose existence and significance we are
+beginning to glimpse to-day, still we cannot empty these narratives of
+their significance as revealing a morally responsible use of force. Let
+us be just as orthodox as we can, the purpose of the use of the forces
+is the supreme miracle; let us be just as destructively radical as we
+please, we cannot eliminate from the Scriptures this impression of
+Christ as one who used power with a sense of responsibility. This
+revelation is one which the ages have always desired.
+
+We must be careful to keep in mind the connection of the Christ life
+with what came before it and what has proceeded from it. Here we have
+the advantage which comes of regarding the Bible as the result of a
+process running through the centuries. If the Bible were not a library,
+but only a single book, written at a particular time, we might well be
+attracted by the nobility of its teachings, but might despair of ever
+making the teachings effective. There is no proving in syllogistic
+fashion that Jesus was what he claimed to be, or that he was what his
+disciples thought of him as being; but when we see a massive revealing
+movement centering on the idea of God as revealed in Christ, when we see
+the acceptance of the spirit of Christ opening the path to communion
+with the Divine, and when we find increasing hosts of persons finding
+larger life in that approach to the Divine, we begin to discern the vast
+significance of the scriptural doctrine that in Christ we have the
+revelation of the Christlike God.
+
+In this discussion we have been careful to avoid the terms of formal and
+creedal orthodoxy. This is not because the present writer is out of
+sympathy with these terms, but because he is trying to keep to the main
+impression produced by the New Testament. The fundamental scriptural
+fact is that in Jesus the early believers saw God; they came to rest in
+God as revealed in Christ. This is true of the picture of Christ in the
+earliest New Testament writings. Modern scholarship has not been able to
+find any documents of a time when the disciples did not think of Jesus
+as the revealer of God. If the disciples had not thought of Jesus thus,
+they would have found little reason to write of him. Now the scriptural
+authors employ various terms to declare the unique intimacy of Christ
+with God. In these expositions Jewish and Greek and even Roman thought
+terms play their part. Passages like the opening sentences of the fourth
+Gospel, or like the great chapter in the Philippians, are always
+profoundly satisfying and suggestive in their interpretation of the
+fundamental fact, but that fundamental fact itself is the all-essential
+--that in Christ the New Testament writers thought of themselves as
+having seen God, and as having gazed into the very depths of the spirit
+of the Father in heaven. Believing as we do, moreover, in the
+helpfulness of the creedal statements of the church, we must
+nevertheless avow that such statements are secondary to the impression
+made upon the biblical writers by actual contact with the Christ. We
+must not lose sight of the primacy of that impression as we study our
+Scriptures. We must not limit the glory of the impression itself by the
+limitations of some of the explanations which we undertake. Much harm
+has been done the understanding the Scriptures by speaking as if some of
+our creedal statements concerning Christ are themselves Scriptures! The
+scriptural Christ is greater than any creedal characterization of Christ
+thus far undertaken.
+
+Of recent years an attempt has been made to prove that no such person as
+Jesus ever existed. The attempt has proved futile, but it has had a
+significance altogether different from what the propounders of the
+theory intended. The original aim was to show the contradictions of the
+testimony concerning Jesus and the inadequacies of the testimony to his
+existence as an historical Person. The result has been to show that the
+real significance of the Christ life is not to be found in any
+particular utterance, or in any specific deed, but in the total impact
+that he made upon the consciousness of man as suggesting the immediate
+presence of the Divine. The quality of the Christ life satisfies us in
+the inner depths as bearing witness to the quality of the God life. We
+have no sympathy with the views of the critics just mentioned; but we
+must say that no matter how the thought of God in Christ got abroad, no
+matter how mistaken our thought of the historical facts at the beginning
+of the Christian era, the belief in the Christlike God nevertheless did
+get abroad. There is no effacing that conception from the New Testament.
+No matter what detailed changes in the narrative itself radical
+criticism may think itself capable of making, the door was opened wide
+enough in the Christ for the divine light to stream through. We said in
+the last chapter that the most important feature of the biblical
+revelation is God himself. We must now say that the supreme fact about
+God is Christ.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
+
+If the central feature of the Scriptures is their idea of God, and if
+the climax of the biblical revelation is Christ, the greatest fact about
+Christ from the point of view of the Bible is his cross. We say
+_fact_ advisedly, for we are not dealing with the theories that
+have sprung up to interpret the meaning of the cross. We are trying to
+deal solely with the direct impressions which seem to have been made
+upon the scriptural writers as to the place of the cross in the
+revealing movement.
+
+We said in the last chapter that the Scriptures reach their climax in
+the doctrine that God is in Christ. The cross of Christ carries to most
+effective revelation the Christlike character of God. While we are not
+treating now the various creedal dogmas as to the person of Christ, we
+must not forget that those dogmas have essayed as part of their task the
+bringing of God close to men. The truth embodied in the text that the
+Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world is essential to knowing
+the Scriptures. We have seen that even as a warrior Jehovah was thought
+of as willing to bear his part of the burdens of the chosen people. We
+have seen growing the idea that Jehovah was under moral obligation to
+carry through the uplifting work which he had begun. We have seen
+prophets attain to glimpses of the meaning of suffering for the divine
+life, and we have beheld the culmination in the suffering of Christ. In
+those perplexing phrases of the creeds like, "Very God of very God," the
+aim of the church has been perfectly clear--to guard the scriptural idea
+that God was so truly in Christ that the sufferings of Christ were the
+sufferings of God. Even when least intelligible the pain of men becomes
+more easily borne if men can believe that in some real sense their pain
+is also the pain of God. That God is Christlike in capacity to suffer is
+in itself a revelation of no small consequence.
+
+In the cross of Christ we see exalted with surpassing power the belief
+that God acts out of righteousness in his relation to the universe and
+to men. It must needs be that Christ suffer. The writers seem unable to
+escape the conviction that they are beholding the working of divinely
+inevitable moral necessities. These moral obligations are not to be
+conceived of as external to God or imposed on him from outside of
+himself. In the Scriptures they seem, rather, to be expressions of his
+own nature. When the writers of theories about the cross lay stress on
+those profound obligations of God toward moral law which must be
+discharged in the work of redemption, the Scriptural basis underneath
+such theories is the implication that God, by the very fact of what he
+is, must act righteously. His power is not his own in such sense that he
+can act from arbitrary or self-centered motives. The Judge of all the
+earth must do right, at whatever cost to himself. The Scriptures keep
+close to the thought of God as a supremely powerful Being under supreme
+responsibility in the use of his power. If we can believe the Scripture
+that in Christ we see God, and that the bearing, of Christ during his
+suffering reveals really and uniquely the bearing of God himself, we
+have a revelation of the grasp with which moral responsibility holds the
+Almighty against even any momentary slip into arbitrariness. Sometimes
+we hear the sufferings of Christ preached as a pattern of nonresistance
+for men. It is permissible thus to interpret the cross within
+limitations; but this is not the essential aspect of the cross, as
+explaining its hold on men. The all-important doctrine as to the use of
+power is hinted at in the Master's word that he had but to call for
+legions of angels if he so chose. Under most extreme provocation the
+forces of the Almighty held to their appointed task. If the Almighty had
+been conceived of as a Despot or an Egotist, he would have been expected
+to resort at once to revengeful violence in the presence of such insults
+as those of the persecutors of the Son of God. The Source of all
+activity can hardly be conceived of as passive; but the passivity of the
+Christ of the cross suggests that no outrage by men can divert the
+almighty power from its moral purpose. This is really a gathering
+together and lifting on high of the doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount,
+that God maketh the sun to shine upon the just and the unjust, and
+causeth his rain to fall on the evil and the good. That is to say, while
+the Bible thinks of the cross as laying bare the Almighty's reaction
+against evil, it also thinks of that cross as showing a God who will not
+be disturbed by any merely "personal" considerations. We behold the
+Almighty's use of power for the advance of a moral kingdom. The Almighty
+is set before us as exerting all his power for the relief of men. The
+cross makes the profoundest revelation of the moral fixedness and self-
+control of God so long as we hold to the scriptural representation. It
+is to be regretted that many theological theories break away from the
+Scripture basis and build upon assumptions which are artificial, not to
+say unmoral: or, rather, in their striving after system they get away
+from the atmosphere of moral suggestiveness with which the Gospels and
+Epistles surround the cross. That God will do his part in the redemption
+of men is set before us in the cross. That part can be nothing short of
+making men yearn to be like Christ and of aiding them in their struggle
+for the Christlike character. It will be remembered that in the last
+chapter we called attention to the hopelessness of the Christian ideal
+viewed as an ideal in itself without a dynamic to help men to realize
+the ideal. If Christ is only to reveal to us the character toward which
+men are to strive, we are in despair. That one man has reached such
+perfection is in itself no promise that other men may reach that
+perfection. Moreover, the excellence of Christ is not only a moral
+excellence; or if it is moral excellence, that excellence involves a
+balance of intellectual attributes which is for us practically out of
+reach. Now, Christ is the ideal, but the ideal is one toward which we
+not only labor in our own strength, but one whose attainment by us is an
+object of solicitude for God himself. And so we see in the cross a
+patience which will bear with men to the utmost, and which will
+reenforce them as they press toward the goal. The glory of Christianity
+is largely hi the paradox that it sets before men an unattainable ideal
+and then commands them to attain the ideal. If the cross is nothing but
+a revelation of an ideal for men, this paradox is insoluble and
+intolerable. In the scriptural light of the cross, however, we catch the
+glory not of an abstract ideal, but of a Father's love for his children
+--not of the commands of conscience in the abstract, but of the desires
+of a personal Friend who will lift men as they stumble and fall. The
+ground for this patience seems as we read to be in the very nature of
+God himself. God has brought men into this world without consulting
+them, he has dowered them with the terrific boon of freedom, he has set
+them in hard places; but he has done this out of a moral and loving
+purpose. He therefore makes more allowances for men than exacting men
+ever can make for themselves. He puts at the service of men so much of
+his power as they can appropriate by their moral effort. The Christ of
+the cross is taught as the truth about God--the God who is at once the
+supremely real and the supremely ideal places his powers at the service
+of men who would make their Christ-ideal progressively real in
+themselves.
+
+The power of the Bible over men centers around the teaching that the
+cross not only reveals God as morally bound to redeem men, but that it
+also shows us the divine aim in redemption. Men are to be redeemed by
+seeking for forgiveness in the name of the moral life set on high by the
+cross, but the repentant soul is to show its sincerity by devotion to
+the task and spirit of cross-bearing. The aim of the cross is to bring
+men together into a fellowship of the cross, in a fellowship of
+suffering for the sake of the moral triumph to be won at the end. We are
+accustomed to think of suffering as implying the possibility of joy. The
+man who can feel keen sorrow can feel keen joy; they who have the power
+to weep have also the power to laugh. In the final kingdom the weeping
+shall be turned into joy. But, according to the Scriptures, it is not
+necessary for the disciples to wait until the consummation before
+entering into the joy of their Lord. There is an entrance to the divine
+mind through bearing the cross. Those who desired to learn of Christ as
+true disciples were expected to take up the cross and carry it daily.
+The Master also declared that the disciples were to think of themselves
+as blessed when they endured persecution for righteousness' sake, for
+men had persecuted the prophets in all ages. The implication is that
+knowledge of and sympathy with the prophets came out of cross-bearing
+like that of the prophets. To use a simple illustration: a student of
+the careers of the leaders of any reform might gather a mass of
+information about the reformers in an outside kind of fashion, as by the
+study of books, or by visits to the scenes of their struggles. Such a
+student, however, could not master the inner spirit of a reformer's life
+until he himself had battled for some cause at risk to himself. So the
+man who seeks to bear the cross of Christ is on the path to sympathetic
+inner knowledge of the spirit of Christ. In our second chapter we called
+attention to the truth that approach to knowledge of God is through the
+doing of the will of God. Doing of the will, according to Jesus, means
+much more than just a round of good deeds. It means carrying the burdens
+which are inevitable in cross-bearing. There is good reason for
+believing that the very highest step in spiritual learning is taken only
+through the willingness to bear the cross. In our modern educational
+systems we lay varying degrees of stress upon the importance of
+different methods of acquiring knowledge. There is at the bottom of the
+scale the method of mastering the instruction of the teacher by
+attention and reflection. There is, next, the method of learning through
+one's own experiment--through using microscope or telescope or textbook
+for oneself. There are, further, the social aids to the quickening of
+the mind as groups of students study and discuss together. But the
+deepest knowledge comes as the student feels his sympathy and feeling
+involved. If he must pay himself out for the acquisition of the truth,
+or if he must defend his conclusions at great cost to himself, this
+experience which involves the feeling involves also the sharpening of
+the intellect. The eyes of the soul are opened to the subtler
+intuitions. Thus it is in the revelations of the divine purpose in the
+Scriptures. It is hard to make out how anybody can hope to master a
+revelation of a cross-bearing God without himself being a cross-bearer.
+In the New Testament narratives of Passion Week the Master is reported
+as winning his surest convictions of the presence of God and of the
+victory of his truth at the very instant when he entered into the
+extreme depths of suffering. In the after days it was when the saints
+faced stoning that they saw the heavens opening; it was the apostle who
+had suffered hardships almost too numerous to mention who got the most
+positive conviction of the reward which awaited him. In the school of
+Christ the very heaviest stress must fall upon the indispensability of
+cross-bearing as a means to understanding.
+
+Not only does the biblical revelation see in the cross of Christ the
+culminating manifestation of the character of God, and of the purpose of
+God in redemption, but it also shows to us the divine method in helping
+men. We have spoken of those who dwell upon the Master's nonresistance
+as a model of passivity in the presence of evil. The example of Christ
+when thus treated is in danger of being misinterpreted. The Christ of
+the cross was passive so far as physical force was concerned; but he was
+never more intensely active in the higher ranges of his faculties--in
+self-control and in alertness to the finer whisperings of the spirit.
+The Christ's non-resistance to the physical might of evil is not to be
+interpreted as acquiescence on the part of the Divine toward the ravages
+of evil, but, rather, as the divine method of thwarting evil by allowing
+it to reveal itself. No amount of preaching about the nature of evil can
+equal in eloquence the self-revelations of that nature as it works
+itself out into expression. While in a degree the self-revelation of
+evil put forth against Christ was unique, yet we must remember that the
+sins which put Christ to death are just those commonest in all time.
+Judas was disappointed. He carried spite no more tenaciously than the
+ordinary heart is capable of treasuring it. Caiaphas desired simply to
+hold his own position and preserve the peace of his nation. Very likely
+the type of opinion in the midst of which Caiaphas moved would have
+pronounced that he rendered a disagreeable, but nevertheless necessary
+patriotic service in his condemnation of Christ. Pilate too meant well,
+but was afraid of the crowd. His friends may have commended his
+administrative wisdom in allowing the people to have their own way. It
+was the play of just such ordinary forces of sin against an
+extraordinary holiness that made it impossible for the mightiest
+revelation ever vouchsafed to man to work through the earthly activity
+of Jesus for more than a few months. The Scripture does not have much to
+do with abstract sins; with concrete sins of men as we actually find
+them, it has much to do.
+
+The Scriptures make it very clear that there is something which
+satisfies God himself in the work of redemption. God acts out of moral
+obligation, out of self-respect, out of love. But he acts always in
+respect for men as free moral beings. The cross appeals to the free
+spirit of men to behold the nature of evil, and to flee from that evil
+toward their redeeming God. If the redemption is to be a moral
+redemption, the last detail of the method must be moral. The power of
+the Almighty must not be used to break down freedom of men. It would be
+theoretically possible for an almighty power to bring to bear such
+pressures upon human wills as to crush them, but the strongest
+representation of the power of God in the New Testament does not go to
+the length of hinting at interference with the freedom of men. Men are
+to be saved as free men or not at all. We might conceivably imagine the
+Almighty as granting such indubitable vision of the material rewards of
+righteousness and the material loss of unrighteousness as would
+irresistibly draw masses of a certain grade of men into the Kingdom
+without a morally free consent to righteousness. Or we might conceive of
+the Almighty as so weighing this or that factor of environment as to
+diminish almost to the vanishing point the free choice of men. This kind
+of compulsion would not be moral. The only compulsions of the cross are
+those of a moral God splendidly attractive on his own account.
+
+It will have occurred to some readers by this time that we have said
+very little about the love of God in our discussion of the Scriptures,
+whereas that love is the outstanding feature of the biblical revelation.
+Our reply is that we have been trying to be true to the impression made
+by the Scriptures as to the kind of love which we must think of as
+expressing the deepest fact in God's life. We would not in the least
+minimize the truth that love is the last word of the scriptural
+revelation; but in our modern life we are apt to get away from the
+quality of the love revealed in the Bible. The love of the cross is
+built upon the righteousness which runs through the Sacred Book from the
+beginning to the end. A god of indifferent moral quality might love. The
+old Greek gods had favorites upon whom they lavished their affections. A
+god might be conceived of as an amiable and well-wishing father,
+foolishly indulgent toward his children. The love of the New Testament,
+however, is the love of a Father who dares to appeal to the children to
+make heroic response; and who shows his own love for them in the lengths
+to which he will go for them. Moral love will go the full length of
+heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot help believing that it is the quality
+of God's love, rather than the mere fact of that love, which is the
+explanation of the power of the biblical teaching.
+
+A friend of mine many years ago wrote a book which he called The Hero
+God. The publishers objected to the title because they saw in it a touch
+of sensationalism. No title, however, could have more adequately set
+forth the biblical God. God is the hero of the Bible. His heroism
+appears in growing revelation from the beginning. It shows itself
+superbly in his willingness to bear the burdens of mankind and in the
+appeals which he makes for response from men. The picture is of a God
+who dares to believe in men and who dares to call on them for the
+extremes of self-sacrificing devotion, not to himself as an arbitrary
+Person, but to himself as the center of the moral life which is above
+all other life worth while. It is open to anyone to object that this
+biblical picture does not necessarily hold good for God; but it is
+hardly possible to object that the picture is not biblical. The picture
+stands in its own right and makes its own appeal. The only way to test
+it in life is to yield to its appeal.
+
+If we are asked to account for the power of the Bible, we are at a loss
+for any one single statement. The most compendious reply is the
+magnetism of the love of God as revealed in Christ. This is so broad,
+however, that it may not make a direct and vivid impression. We may say,
+then, that one element of the magnetism of the biblical revelation is
+the magnetism of the appeal to the heroic. Whatever else the Bible may
+or may not be, it is not a book of soft and easy things. Breaths of the
+most rigorous life blow across every page. It is made for man in that it
+calls men to the service of the highest and best. The religious systems
+which make the fewest and least demands upon their followers most
+speedily fall away; those that call for the utmost are most likely to
+meet the enthusiastic response. There is a frank honesty about the
+biblical appeal which holds a charm for all men in whom there are any
+sparks of real manhood. The severities of the Christian life are nowhere
+disguised. Men are never lured on by false pretenses. The path is the
+path of cross-bearing, and the reward is the comradeship between God and
+man as they together work toward the highest goal, a comradeship which
+of itself brings relief to men burdened with the mystery of the universe
+and agonized by remorse over sin.  This essay is quite as significant
+for what it has not said as for what it has said. In our omissions we
+have tried to keep clear the main outlines of scriptural revelation. We
+have sought to hold fast to principles rather than to discuss details.
+We have done this because we have believed that there is more value for
+religious understanding in pointing out the loftier biblical peaks which
+give the direction of the whole range than in tracing out pathways
+through detailed passages. Moreover, we have been afraid to employ many
+theoretical terms lest we blur the quick moral impressions made by the
+Scripture phrasings. For example, it may be objected that our treatment
+of the character of God is altogether inadequate. We have not thus far
+said a word about the Trinity, for example, or about atonement. The
+reason is that we believe that any theories about God must base
+themselves upon the moral suggestions of the Scriptures; and our
+business is with these rather than with the theories. The received
+revelation concerning God would warrant us in fashioning any theory as
+to the richness of his inner constitution which might even measurably
+satisfy our minds. The scriptural atmosphere as to the moral life in God
+must, however, be kept in the chief place in all of our theological
+theories. Atonement must be interpreted chiefly in terms of ethical
+steadiness if it is to build on a biblical foundation. But the instant
+we use formal terms like "Trinity" and "atonement" we have taken at
+least one step away from the Scriptures. Again, we have said nothing
+about Divine Providence. The Bible is full of instances of providences,
+but here also we have preferred to let the fundamental moral character
+of the biblical God speak for itself. We may have our own belief that
+there is no scriptural warrant for that separation which obtains in much
+theology between the processes of God and the processes of nature. We
+may admit that the Hebrew had no very systematically framed theory of
+the processes of nature, but he deemed God to be in such close touch
+with nature as easily to control its forces for a good end. In two
+accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites we have an
+apparent contradiction which is at bottom not a contradiction. In one
+account God seems to cause the waters to wall up on both sides of the
+Israelites in defiance of the laws of nature. In another God
+accomplishes the drying of the path through the blowing of a strong east
+wind. The Hebrew would not have troubled himself much with the apparent
+contradiction, for he would have conceived of God as the chief factor in
+either event, and of his purpose as having the right of way. There is
+thus no great value in discussing specific instances as long as the care
+of God for his children is the animating purpose of the entire biblical
+content. So with answers to prayer--the God who is willing to go for men
+to the lengths revealed in the cross will surely answer any prayer worth
+answering. The essential is to lift prayer up into harmony with the
+entire revealing and redeeming movement, and to conceive of it as a
+fitting of the whole life into the purposes of a moral God. Certain
+general requirements would always have to be met. Prayer would have
+really to deal with what is best for the individual, best for those
+around him, and most in harmony with the character of God himself. So,
+again, with the progress of the kingdom of God on earth--the God of
+whose nature the cross is the final revelation can be trusted to do the
+best possible for the Kingdom here and now. Much debate about the second
+coming of Christ misses the great moral principles which are the heart
+of the Christian revelation and loses itself in the incidental forms in
+which those principles were declared. The best preparation for the
+coming of the kingdom of Christ is absorption in the principles of
+Christ and in the spirit of Christ. To get away from these in our search
+for external and material conditions which are the mere vehicle of the
+biblical thought is not only to pursue a will-o'-the-wisp, but to injure
+true spiritual progress. Jesus has given us the spiritual principles
+which must control the destiny of any society here and now. In the light
+of the Christ-faith revealed in the cross we must not despair of the
+redemption of men by the city-full and by the nation-full, for the
+greatest confidence ever placed in men is the implied trust of the cross
+of Christ. The Almighty at the beginning paid an immense tribute to the
+human race when he flung it out into the gale of this existence. In the
+light of the cross we cannot believe that He expected the race to sink.
+In the cross the Christ who revealed God's own mind showed the length he
+was willing to go in confidence that men would finally turn to him with
+all the powers of their lives. To throw up our hands and say that the
+world is getting worse and we can do nothing without a speedy physical
+return of the Christ is to overlook the spiritual forces of the cross.
+
+We have said nothing about immortality. What the Scriptures themselves
+say is largely incidental. The Master did not allow himself to be drawn
+into any extended conversation about the details of a future life, but
+he did give us the God of the cross. In the presence of that cross we
+can profess the utmost confidence in the eternal life of the sons of
+God, while at the same time acknowledging the utmost ignorance as to any
+of the material conditions of the future life. It is commonly assumed
+that the resurrection of Christ proves that we shall likewise rise, but
+the rising of Christ does not of itself prove that others shall rise.
+The cross, however--showing the extent to which the Divine is willing to
+go for men--is the ground of our hope. God will not leave his loved ones
+to see corruption. In a word, the cross of Christ gathers up all the
+biblical truth. It is a revelation of God's own character, of his hope
+for men, of the methods by which he seeks to win men, and of the ground
+of our faith in a right outcome for men and for society.
+
+We may be permitted to summarize by saying that scientific and
+historical biblical study is a preparation for the knowledge of the
+Scriptures; that it is exceedingly important that the student approach
+with the correct preliminary point of view. The revelation of the inner
+significance, however, does not dawn until there is recognition of the
+need of obedience to the principles laid down in the Scriptures. And
+this obedience must be broad enough to include zeal for the uplift of
+our fellow men in all phases of their lives. Out of righteous living the
+devoted life, we believe, will see that the greatest fact of the Bible
+is God; that the greatest fact of God is Christ; that the greatest fact
+of Christ is the cross.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Understanding the Scriptures, by Francis McConnell
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+Project Gutenberg's Understanding the Scriptures, by Francis McConnell
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+Title: Understanding the Scriptures
+
+Author: Francis McConnell
+
+Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9492]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 5, 2003]
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Bob McKillip
+and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE MENDENHALL LECTURES, THIRD SERIES
+DELIVERED AT DEPAUW UNIVERSITY
+
+
+UNDERSTANDING
+THE SCRIPTURES
+
+BY
+
+FRANCIS J. McCONNELL
+
+Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     FORWARD
+  I. PRELIMINARY
+ II. THE BOOK OF LIFE
+III. THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
+ IV. THE BOOK OF GOD
+  V. THE BOOK OF CHRIST
+ VI. THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+The Mendenhall Lectures, founded by Rev. Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D.,
+of the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, are
+delivered annually in De Pauw University to the public without any
+charge for admission. The object of the donor was "to found a perpetual
+lectureship on the evidences of the Divine Origin of Christianity and
+the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures. The lecturers must
+be persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who
+firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian faith. The
+selection of lecturers may be made from the world of Christian
+scholarship, without regard to denominational divisions. Each course of
+lectures is to be published in book form by an eminent publishing house
+and sold at cost to the faculty and students of the University."
+
+Lectures previously published: 1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt
+Hughes; 1914, The Literary Primacy of the Bible, George Peck Eckman.
+
+GEORGE R. GROSE,
+
+President De Pauw University.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PRELIMINARY
+
+The problem as to the understanding of the Scriptures is with some no
+problem at all. All we have to do is to take the narratives at their
+face meaning. The Book is written in plain English, and all that is
+necessary for its comprehension is a knowledge of what the words mean.
+If we have any doubts, we can consult the dictionary. The plain man
+ought to have no difficulty in understanding the Bible.
+
+Nobody can deny the clearness of the English of the Scriptures.
+Nevertheless, the plain man does have trouble. How far would the
+ordinary intelligence have to read from the first chapter of Genesis
+before finding itself in difficulties? There are accounts of events
+utterly unlike anything which we see happening in the life around us,
+events which seem to us to contradict the course of nature's procedure.
+There are points of view foreign to our way of looking at things. More
+than that, there seem to be actual contradictions between various
+portions of the books. And, above all, the way of life marked out in the
+Book seems to lead off toward mystery. To save our lives we have to lose
+them. All the precepts of common sense seem set at defiance by some
+passages of the Book. How can we explain the hold of such a book on the
+world's life?
+
+When once the problem of the understanding of the Scriptures is raised,
+various solutions are offered, all of which contribute a measure of
+help, but most of which do not greatly get us ahead. For example, we are
+told that the Book is translated literature, and that if we could get
+back to the original narratives in the original languages, we would find
+our perplexities vanishing. There is no question that a knowledge of
+Greek and Hebrew does aid us in an understanding of the Scriptures, but
+this aid commonly extends only to the meaning of particular words. One
+who knows enough of Greek or Hebrew to enter sympathetically into the
+life of which those languages were the expression is prepared to sense
+the scriptural atmosphere better than one who has not such equipment.
+Very few Scripture readers, however, are thus qualified to understand
+Greek and Hebrew. Very few ministers of the gospel are so trained as to
+be able to pass upon shades of meaning of Greek or Hebrew words against
+the judgment of those who teach these languages in the schools. With
+graduation from theological school most ministers put Hebrew to one
+side; and many pay no further attention to Greek. Even a trained
+biblical student is very careful not to question the authority of the
+professional linguistic experts. Apart from sidelights upon the meaning
+of this or that passage, there is very little that the biblical student
+can get from Greek or Hebrew which is not available in important
+translations. We cannot solve the greater difficulties in biblical study
+by carrying our investigations back to the study of the original
+languages as such. The fact is that emphasis upon the importance of
+mastery of Greek and Hebrew for an insight into scriptural meanings
+rests largely upon a theory of literal inspiration of the biblical
+narratives. It requires only a cursory reading to see that the
+narratives in English cannot claim to be strictly inerrant, so that the
+upholder of inerrancy is driven to the position that the inerrancy is in
+the documents as originally written. No doctrine of inerrancy, however,
+can explain away the puzzles which confront us, for example, in the
+accounts of the creation as given us in the early chapters of Genesis,
+or throw light upon the possibility of a soul's passing from moral death
+to life.
+
+Great help is promised us by those who maintain that the modern methods
+of critical biblical study give us the key to scriptural meanings. There
+is no doubt that many doors have been opened by critical methods. Now
+that the flurries of misunderstanding which attended the first
+application of such methods to biblical study have passed on, we see
+that some solid results have been gained. In so far as our difficulties
+arise from questions of authorship and date of writing, the critical
+methods have brought much relief. Even very orthodox biblicists no
+longer insist that it is necessary to oppose the teaching that the first
+five books of the Bible were written at different times and by different
+men. In fact, there is no reason to quarrel with the theory that many
+parts of these books are not merely anonymous, but are documents
+produced by the united effort of narrators and correlators reaching
+through generations--the narratives often being transmitted orally from
+fathers to sons. There is no reason for longer arguing against the claim
+that the book of Isaiah as it stands in our Scriptures is composed of
+documents written at widely separated periods. It is permissible even
+from the standpoint of orthodoxy to assign a late date to the book of
+Daniel. No harm is wrought when we insist that the book of Mark must
+have priority in date among the Gospels, and that Matthew and Luke are
+built in part from Mark as a foundation. It is not dangerous to face the
+facts which cause the prolonged debate over the authorship of the fourth
+Gospel. It is not heresy to teach that the dates of the epistles must be
+rearranged through the findings of modern scholarship. There is not only
+no danger in a hospitable attitude toward modern scholarship, but many
+difficulties disappear through adjusting ourselves to present-day
+methods. If contradictions appear in a document hitherto considered a
+unit, the contradictions are at least measurably done away with when the
+document is seen to be a composite report from the points of view of
+different authors. The critical method has been of immense value in
+enforcing upon us that the scriptural books were written each with a
+distinctive intention, apart from the purpose to represent the facts in
+the method of a newspaper reporter or of a scientific investigator. In a
+sense many of the more important scriptural documents were of the nature
+of pamphlets or tracts for the times in which they were written. The
+author was combating a heresy, or supplementing a previous statement
+which seemed to him to be inadequate, or seeking to adjust a religious
+conception to enlarging demands. The biblical writers are commentators
+on or interpreters of the truth which they conceive to be essential.
+
+Making most generous allowances, however, for the advantages of the
+critical methods, we must use them with considerable care. Results like
+those suggested above seem to be well established, but there is always
+possibility of the critic's becoming a mere specialist with the purely
+technical point of view. Suppose the critic holds so to the passion for
+analysis that for him analysis becomes everything. We may then have a
+single verse cut into three or four pieces, each assigned to a different
+author, the authors separated by long periods. Even if the older
+narratives are composite, the process of welding or compression was so
+thorough that detailed analyses are now out of the question. Apart from
+its broader contentions, the method of the critical school must be used
+tentatively and without dogmatism. Moreover, we must always remember
+that the critical student comes to his task with assumptions which are
+oftentimes more potent with him from his very blindness to their
+existence. Assumption in scientific investigation is inevitable. Suppose
+a critic to be markedly under the influence of some evolutionary
+hypothesis. Suppose him to believe that the formula which makes progress
+a movement from the simple to the complex can be traced in detail in the
+advance of society. He is prepared to believe that in practically every
+case the simple has preceded the complex. He will forthwith untangle the
+biblical narrative to get at the ideal evolutionary arrangement,
+ignoring the truth that except in the most general fashion progress
+cannot thus be traced. In the actual life of societies the progress,
+especially of ideas, is often from the complex to the simple. Many
+evolutionists maintain that movement is now forward, now backward, now
+diagonal, and now by a "short cut"; but if the evolutionary critic
+sticks closely to his preconceived formula about progress as always from
+the simple to the complex, he can lead us astray. Again, almost all
+great prophetic announcements are ahead of their time. They seem out of
+place at the date of their first utterance--interruptions,
+interjections hard to fit into an orderly historic scheme. Or suppose
+the critic to be a student of the scientific school which will not allow
+for the play of any forces excepting as they openly reveal themselves,
+the school that will not allow for backgrounds of thought or for
+atmospheres which surround conceptions. Such a student is very apt to
+maintain, for example, that Paul knew only so much of the life of Jesus
+as he mentions in the epistles. Such a student cannot assume that Paul
+ever took anything for granted. We can see at once that a method so
+professedly exact as this may be dangerously out of touch with the human
+processes of the life of individuals and of societies. Or suppose still
+further that the biblical student holds a set of scientific assumptions
+which are extremely naturalistic; that is to say, suppose that he
+assumes that nothing has ever happened which in any way departs from the
+natural order. We have only to remind ourselves that the natural order
+of a particular time is the order as that time conceives it; but it is
+manifestly hazardous to limit events in the world of matter to the
+scientific conceptions of any one day. To take a single illustration,
+the radical student of the life of Jesus of a generation ago cast out
+forthwith from the Gospel accounts everything which suggested the
+miraculous. The conceptions of the order of nature which obtained a
+generation ago did not allow even for works of healing of the sort
+recorded in the Gospels. At the present time radical biblical criticism
+makes considerable allowance for such works. Discovery of the power of
+mental suggestion and of the influence of mind over body has opened the
+door to the return of some of the wonders wrought by Jesus to a place
+among historic facts. This does not mean that the radical student is any
+more friendly to miracles than before. We are not here raising the
+question of miracles as such, but we do insist that an assumption as to
+what the natural order may or may not allow can be fraught with peril in
+the hands of critical students of the Scriptures. We say again that
+while, in general, the larger contentions of the biblical school can be
+looked upon as established beyond reasonable doubt; and while, in
+general, the methods of the school are productive of good, yet, because
+of the part that assumption plays in the fashioning of all critical
+tools, the assumptions must be scrutinized with all possible care. A
+good practical rule is to read widely from the critics, to accept what
+they generally agree upon, to hold very loosely anything that seems
+"striking" or "brilliant." This is a field in which originality must be
+discounted. There is so little check upon the imagination.
+
+It is but a step from the consideration of the critical methods in
+biblical study to that of the historical methods in the broader sense.
+Many students who are out of patience with the more narrowly critical
+processes maintain that the broader historical methods are of vast value
+in biblical discussion. Here, again, we must admit the large measure of
+justice in the claim. We can see at once that the same reservations must
+be made as in the case of the critical methods. The assumptions play a
+determining part. If we are on our guard against any tricks that
+assumptions may play, we can eagerly expect the historical methods to
+aid us greatly.
+
+We have come to see that any revelation to be really a revelation must
+speak in the language of a particular time. But speaking in the language
+of a particular time implies at the outset very decided limitations. The
+prophets who arise to proclaim any kind of truth must clothe their ideas
+in the thought terms of a particular day and can accomplish their aims
+only as they succeed in leading the spiritual life of their day onward
+and upward. Such a prophet will accommodate himself to the mental and
+moral and religious limitations of the time in which he speaks. Only
+thus can he get a start. It is inevitable, then, that along with the
+higher truth of his message there will appear the marks of the
+limitations of the mold in which the message is cast. The prophet must
+take what materials he finds at hand, and with these materials direct
+the people to something higher and better. Furthermore, in the
+successive stages through which the idea grows we must expect to find it
+affected by all the important factors which in any degree determine its
+unfolding. The first stage in understanding the Scriptures is to learn
+what a writer intended to say, what he meant for the people of his day.
+To do this we must rely upon the methods which we use in any historical
+investigation. The Christian student of the Scriptures believes that the
+Bible contains eternal truths for all time, truths which are above time
+in their spiritual values. Even so, however, the truth must first be
+written for a particular time and that time the period in which the
+prophet lived. When the Christian speaks of the Scriptures as containing
+a revelation for all time, he refers to their essential spiritual value.
+The best way to make that essential spiritual value effective for the
+after times is to sink it deep into the consciousness of a particular
+time. This gives it leverage, or focus for the outworking of its forces.
+No matter how limited the conceptions in which the spiritual richness
+first took form, those conceptions can be understood by the students who
+look back through the ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out
+with perennial freshness. Paradoxical as it may sound, the truths which
+are of most value for all time are those which first get themselves most
+thoroughly into the thought and feeling of some one particular time. Let
+us look at the opening chapters of Genesis for illustration. The
+historical student points out to us that the science of the first
+chapters of Genesis is not peculiar to the Hebrew people, that
+substantially similar views of the stages through which creation moved
+are to be found in the literatures of surrounding peoples. A well-known
+type of student would therefore seek at one stroke to bring the first
+chapters of Genesis down to the level of the scriptures of the neighbors
+of the Hebrews. He would then discount all these narratives alike by
+reference to modern astronomy, geology, and biology. But the difference
+between the Hebrew account and the other accounts lies in this, that in
+the Hebrew statement the science of a particular time is made the
+vehicle of eternally superb moral and spiritual conceptions concerning
+man and concerning man's relation to the Power that brought him into
+being. The worth of these conceptions even in that early statement few
+of us would be inclined to question. Assuming that any man or set of men
+became in the old days alive to the value of such religious ideas, how
+could they speak them forth except in the language of their own day?
+They had to speak in their own tongue, and speaking in that tongue they
+had to use the thought terms expressed by that tongue. They accepted the
+science of their day as true, and they utilized that science for the
+sake of bodying forth the moral and spiritual insights to which they had
+attained. The inadequacy of early Hebrew science and its likeness to
+Babylonian and Chaldean science do not invalidate the worth of the
+spiritual conceptions of Genesis. This ought to be apparent even to the
+proverbial wayfaring man. The loftiest spiritual utterances are often
+clad in the poorest scientific draperies. Who would dare deny the worth
+of the great moral insights of Dante? And who, on the other hand, would
+insist upon the lasting value of the science in which his deep
+penetrations are uttered? And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has shown
+the nature of the material universe as pictured in Milton's "Paradise
+Lost." In passing from heaven to hell one would descend from an upper to
+a lower region of a sphere, passing through openings at the centers of
+other concentric spheres on the way down. Nothing more foreign to modern
+science can be imagined; yet we do not cast aside "Paradise Lost"
+because of the crudity of its view of the physical system.
+
+Assuming that the biblical prophets were to have any effect whatever, in
+what language could they speak except that of their own time? Their
+position was very similar to that of the modern preacher who uses
+present-day ideas of the physical universe as instruments to proclaim
+moral and spiritual values. Nobody can claim that modern scientific
+theories are ultimate, and nobody can deny, on the other hand, that vast
+good is done in the utilization of these conceptions for high religious
+purposes.
+
+A minister once sought in a sermon on the marvels of man's constitution
+to enforce his conceptions by speaking of the instantaneousness with
+which a message flashed to the brain through the nervous system is
+heeded and acted upon. He said that the touch of red-hot iron upon a
+finger-tip makes a disturbance which is instantly reported to the brain
+for action. A scientific hearer was infinitely disgusted. He said that
+all such disturbances are acted upon in the spinal cord. He could see no
+value, therefore, even in the main point of the minister's sermon
+because of the minister's mistaken conception of nervous processes. I
+suppose very few of us know whether this scientific objection was well
+taken or not. Very few of us, however, would reject the entire sermon
+because of an erroneous illustration; and yet sometimes all the
+essentials of the Scriptures are discounted because of flaws no more
+consequential than that suggested in this illustration. The Scriptures
+aim to declare a certain idea of God, a certain idea of man, and a
+certain idea of the relations between God and man. Those ideas are
+clothed in the garments of successive ages. The change in the fashions
+and adequacy of the garments does not make worthless the living truth
+which the garments clothe. Jesus himself lived deeply in his own time
+and spoke his own language and worked through the thought terms which
+were part of the life of his time. Some biblical readers have been
+greatly disturbed in recent years by the discovery of the part which
+so-called apocalyptic thought-forms play in the teaching of Jesus. The
+fact is that these conceptions were the commonest element in all later
+Jewish thinking. Jesus could not have lived when he did without making
+apocalyptic terms the vehicle for his doctrines. We have come to see
+that the manner of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus is not so
+important as the character of that kingdom.
+
+Not only must a prophet speak in the language of a definite time, but he
+must speak to men as he finds them. This being so, we must expect that
+revelations will in a sense be accommodated to the apprehension of the
+day of their utterance. The minds of men are in constant movement. If
+the prophet were to have before him minds altogether at a standstill, he
+might well despair of accomplishing great results by his message. He
+would be forced to think of the intelligence of this day as a sort of
+vessel which he could fill with so much and no more. But whether the
+prophets have through the ages had any theoretic understanding of human
+intelligence as an organism or not, they have acted upon the assumption
+that they were dealing with such organisms. So they have conceived of
+their truth as a seed cast into the ground, passing through successive
+stages. Jesus himself spoke of the kingdom of God as moving out of the
+stage of the blade into that of the ear and finally into that of the
+full corn in the ear. This illustration is our warrant for insisting
+that in the enforcing of truth all manner of factors come into play and
+that the truth passes through successive epochs, some of which may seem
+to later believers very unpromising and unworthy. The test of the worth
+of an idea is not so much any opinion as to the unseemliness of the
+stages through which it has passed as it is the value of the idea when
+once it has come to ripeness. The test of the grain is its final value
+for food. The scriptural truths are to be judged by no other test than
+that of their worth for life.
+
+In the light of the teaching of Jesus himself there is no reason why we
+should shrink from stating that the revelation of biblical truth is
+influenced by even the moral limitations of men. Jesus said that an
+important revelation to man was halted at an imperfect stage because of
+the hardness of men's hearts. The Mosaic law of divorce was looked upon
+by Jesus as inadequate. The law represented the best that could be done
+with hardened hearts. The author of the Practice of Christianity, a book
+published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how the
+hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual
+revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the
+openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the
+"tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was
+merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different
+order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into
+tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness and unresponsiveness
+which the prophet must meet, we can see how such an element would
+condition and limit the prophet.
+
+Again, Jesus said to his disciples that he had many things to say to
+them, but that they could not bear them at the time at which he spoke.
+Some revelations must wait for moral strength on the part of the people
+to whom they are to come. Suppose, for example, in this year of our Lord
+1917, some scientist should discover a method of touching off explosives
+from a great distance by wireless telegraphy without the need of a
+specially prepared receiver at the end where the explosion is desired.
+Suppose it were possible for him simply to press a button and blow up
+all the ships of the British Navy, or all the stores of munitions in
+Germany. What would be the first duty of such an inventor? Very likely
+it would be his immediate duty to keep the secret closely locked in his
+own mind. If such a discovery were made known to European combatants in
+their present temper, it is a question what would he left on earth at
+the end of the next twenty-four hours. With European minds in their
+present moral and spiritual plight it would not be safe to trust them
+with any such revelation. And this illustration has significance for
+more than the physical order of revelation. There are principles for
+individual and social conduct that may well be put into effect one
+hundred years from now. Men are not now morally fit to receive some
+revelations. All of which means that any revealing movement is a
+progressive movement in that it depends upon not merely the utterances
+of the revealing mind, but upon the response of the receiving mind. In
+the play back and forth between giver and receiver all sorts of factors
+come into power. The study of the interplay of these factors is entirely
+worthy as an object of Christian research. We may well be thankful for
+any advance thus far made in such study and we may look for greater
+advances in the future. For example, the historic students thus far have
+put in most of their effort laying stress upon similarities between the
+biblical conceptions and the conceptions of the peoples outside the
+current of biblical revelation. The work has been of great value.
+Nevertheless it would seem to be about time for larger emphasis on the
+differences between the biblical revelations and the conceptions
+outside.
+
+Still when all is said the mastery of historical methods of study is but
+preliminary to the real understanding of the Scriptures. If we come
+close to the revealing movement itself, we find that before we get far
+into the stream there must be sympathetic responsiveness to biblical
+teaching. The difficulties in understanding the Scriptures are, as of
+old, not so much of the intellect as they are of conscience and will--
+the difficulties, in a word, that arise from the hardness of men's
+hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BOOK OF LIFE
+
+The approaches to an understanding of the Scriptures which we suggested
+in the first chapter are those which have to do merely with intellectual
+investigation. Any student with normal intelligence can appreciate the
+methods and results of the critical scrutiny of the biblical documents,
+but will require something more for an adequate mastery of the
+scriptural revelations. There is need of sympathetic realization that
+the Book itself did not in any large degree come out of the exercise of
+the merely intellectual faculties. In the scriptural revelation we are
+dealing with a current of life which flowed for centuries through the
+minds of masses of people. To be sure of insight into the meanings of
+this revelation there must be an approach to the Bible as a Book of Life
+in the sense that its teachings came out of life and that they were
+perennially used to play back into life. Its hold on life to-day can be
+explained only by the fact that it was thus born out of life, and has
+its chief significance for the experiences of actual life.
+
+Even the most superficial perusal of the Scriptures shows that they came
+of practical contact with men and things. There is comparatively little
+in the entire content of our Sacred Book to suggest the speculations of
+abstract philosophy. The writers deal with the concrete. They tell of
+men and of peoples who had to face facts and who achieved comprehensions
+and convictions through grappling with facts. There is about the
+Scriptures what some one has called a sort of "out-of-doors-ness." There
+is very little hint of withdrawal from the push and pressure of daily
+living. If the prophets ever withdrew to solitude, they did not retire
+to closets, but rather to deserts or to mountains. We must not allow our
+modern familiarity with bookmaking as an affair of library research and
+tranquil meditation in seclusion to mislead us into thinking that the
+Christian Bible was wrought out in similar fashion. The Book is full of
+the tingle and even the roar of the life out of which it was born. Jesus
+gathered up in a single sentence the process by which the scriptural
+revelation can be apprehended by man when he said, "He that doeth the
+will shall know of the truth." The entire scriptural unfolding is one
+vast commentary on this utterance of Jesus.
+
+It is impossible for us in this series of studies to attempt any
+detailed survey of the revealing movement of which our Scriptures are
+the outcome. It is important, however, that we should see clearly that
+the revelation came to those who opened themselves to the light in an
+obedient spirit. While it is not in accord with our modern knowledge of
+psychology to assort and divide human activities too sharply, it is
+nevertheless permissible to insist that the biblical revelation was in a
+sense primarily to the will. As Frederick W. Robertson used to say,
+obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge. The first men to whom
+illuminations came evidently received these gifts out of some purity of
+intention and moral excellence. These early leaders gathered others
+around them and set them on the path of determined striving toward a
+definite goal. As the idea of the seer or the prophet found general
+acceptance it gradually hardened into law, law meant for scrupulous
+observance. If a singer felt stirred to write a psalm, he voiced his
+experiences or his aspirations in the midst of a throbbing world. If a
+statesman drew a wide survey of God's dealings with the nations of the
+earth, he did so at some mighty crisis in Israel's relations to Egypt or
+Assyria or Babylon. When we reach New Testament times we find that even
+the Gospels seem to have been books struck out of immediate practical
+urgencies rather than composed tranquilly with a scholar's interest
+merely in doing a fine piece of professional work. The early Christians
+were anxious to hold the believers to the strait and narrow way. To do
+this they repeated often the words of the Lord Jesus. When, however, the
+older members of the first circles began to fall away, the words were
+written down, not because some scholar felt moved thus to improve his
+leisure, but because it was absolutely necessary to preserve the words.
+Moreover, conflicts were arising between the growing church and the
+forces of the world round about. Some scriptures were written to supply
+instruments with which to carry on the warfare. Always the fundamental
+aim was to keep the people acting according to the teachings which lay
+at the heart of the Christian system. The object of the biblical
+revelation was from the beginning just what it is to-day in the hands of
+Christian believers--the object of using the Scriptures as an instrument
+for practicing the Christian spirit into all the phases of life.
+
+We would by no means deny that there are imposing philosophies or,
+rather, hints toward such philosophies, in the Scriptures, but we insist
+that these did not come out of a purely philosophizing temper. They came
+as men tried to put into some form or order the understandings at which
+they had arrived as they wrestled with the tough facts of a world which
+they were trying to subject to the rule of their religion. As we have
+said in the previous chapter, the Scriptures bear scars of all such
+conflicts. The revelation was knocked into its shape in the rough-and-
+tumble of an attempt to convert the world. And this is not to claim for
+the Bible any difference in method of creation from that which obtains
+in the shaping of any vitally effective piece of literature. The world-
+shaking conceptions have always been won in profound experience. This
+chapter is not written with the principles of the modern school of
+pragmatism as a guide, and yet pragmatism can be so stated as to phrase
+an essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual ideas result from
+spiritual practices and are of worth as they prove themselves aids in
+further experience. Take some of the expressions of Paul. The
+fundamental fact in Paul's experience was his vision on the Damascus
+road and his determination to be obedient to that vision. To make his
+own view of the Christian religion attractive to those whom he was
+trying to win, it became necessary for him to speak in terms of the
+Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not have spoken in any other
+terms, though some of his reasonings seem to us to be remote from actual
+life. But when he left argument and came back to experience he was most
+effective. His terribly compelling utterances are those which were born
+of driving necessity. The theology started with the vision and unfolded
+in obedience to the vision, "What wilt thou have me to do?" Everywhere
+upon Paul's epistles there are the marks of practical compulsion. A
+letter was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews in Galatia or to
+persuade questioning Gentiles in Rome. Some of the profoundest phrasings
+of Pauline belief were uttered first as appeals for generous collections
+to starving saints.
+
+The example of Paul as a receiver and giver of spiritual light is very
+significant. Even if we should make the largest allowances to the
+biblical critics who would cut down the number of epistles known to be
+genuinely Pauline, we would have enough left to make on our minds the
+impression of enormous personal activity. One passage does, indeed, tell
+us of a period of months of withdrawal for reflection in Arabia. For the
+most part, however, Paul's life was spent in ceaselessly going to and
+fro throughout the Roman empire; even in the days of imprisonment he
+seems to have been burdened with the administration of churches. It was
+out of such multifarious activities that the theology of Paul was born,
+and therein lies its value. No interpretation is likely to bring the
+separate deliverances into anything like formal, logical consistency.
+Very likely Paul was of a markedly logical frame of mind, but he did not
+attempt to rid his message of contradictions in detail. The unity and
+consistency are found in the fundamental life purpose to get men to
+accept Jesus Christ as the Chosen of God. If Paul had ever heard that
+much of his theology might be out-dated with the passage of the years,
+he would probably have responded that he was perfectly willing that the
+instrument should be cast aside if it had served its spiritual purpose
+of bringing men to obedience to the law of God.
+
+It is not intended to make this a book of sermons or exhortations. We
+must say, however, that in a series of studies on how to understand the
+Scriptures stress must be laid upon the maxim that the Scriptures can be
+understood only by those who seek to recognize and obey the spirit of
+life breathing from the Scriptures. Nothing could be more hopeless than
+to attempt to get to the heart of Christian truth without attempting to
+build that truth into life. The formal reasonings of the theologian are
+no doubt of value, but they throw little light upon the essentials of
+Christianity except as they deal with data which have been supplied by
+Christian experience. It would, indeed, be well for any study of the
+Bible to begin with a recognition of the part played by distinctly
+scholarly research. We cannot go far, however, until we recognize that
+sympathy with Christian truth is necessary before we can come upon vital
+knowledge. And this, after all, is but the way we learn to understand
+any piece of life-literature. A vast amount of material is at hand in
+the form of commentaries upon the work of Shakespeare. We know much
+about the circumstances under which the plays of Shakespeare were
+written; we know somewhat of the sources from which Shakespeare drew his
+historical materials; we are familiar with the chronology of the plays;
+but all this is knowledge about Shakespeare. To know Shakespeare there
+must be something of a deliberate attempt to surrender sympathetically
+to the Shakespearean point of view. We get "inside of" any classic work
+of literature only by this spirit of surrender. The aim of Shakespeare
+is simply to picture life as he sees it, but even to appreciate the
+picture men must enter into sympathy with the painter. The Scriptures
+aim not merely to paint life, but to quicken and reproduce life. How
+much more, then, is needed a surrender of the will before there can be
+adequate appreciation of the Scriptures? If the Scriptures are the
+results primarily of will-activities, how can they finally be mastered
+except by minds quickened by doing the will revealed in the Scriptures?
+The book of Christianity must be interpreted by the disciples of
+Christianity. Judged merely by bookish standards, there is no
+satisfactory explanation of the power of the Bible. But lift the whole
+problem out of the realm of books as such! The glimpses into any high
+truth that are worth while--how do they come? They come out of
+experience. Even when they are repeated from one mind to another they
+become the property of that second mind only as they reproduce
+themselves in experience. Otherwise the whole transaction is of words,
+words, words. The Scriptures have to do with deeds, not words.
+
+All this is offensive to the dogmatic reasoner. For him the intellect as
+such is the organ of religious truth. He insists on speaking of the
+Scriptures in formally theological terms. That the Scripture writers
+employed theological terms there can be no doubt, but they did not speak
+as systematic theologians. And always they brought their theology to the
+test of actual life. The writer of these lines once knew a student who
+had read enough of psychology to enable him to reason himself into a
+belief that he was the only person in existence; that is to say, he
+declared that he himself was the only one of whose existence he was
+infallibly certain. Does not all knowledge of an external world come as
+a report through a sensation aroused by stimulus? If the appropriate
+stimulus could be kept up an external world might fall away and I would
+still think it was there. The bell might ring at the door and might be
+nobody there. And so on and on, through steps familiar enough to the
+student of philosophy. When a friend made a quick appeal to life with
+the question: "If you are the only one alive, why do you bring your
+troubles to me?" the amateur philosopher came to earth with a sense of
+jar. But the jar is no greater than that when we pass from the plane of
+dogmatic theology to that of reading the Scriptures for their own sake.
+The old scholastics said that in God there are three substances, one
+essence, and two processions. How does this sound as compared with the
+statement of Jesus that he and his Father are one, and that he would
+send the Comforter? This is not to decry theology; but is nevertheless
+to discriminate between theology and scripture.
+
+Some one will object, however, that the scriptural truths take their
+start in large part from the visions of mystics--of men who brood long
+and patiently until they behold realities not otherwise discernible.
+Some students will urge upon us that such mystic revelations are granted
+peculiarly to the mystic temperament as such, and they often come
+regardless of the quality of life that the seers themselves may be
+living.
+
+There have, indeed, been in all ages of the world temperaments of
+supernormal or abnormal responsiveness to influences which seem to make
+little or no impression upon the ordinary mind. In all periods natures
+of this type have been looked upon as organs of religious revelation. So
+valuable have abnormal experiences seemed that all manner of expedients
+have been utilized to beget unusual mental states. A certain tribe of
+Indians, for example, in the southwest of our country are accustomed at
+set times to send their religious leaders into the desert to find and
+partake of a peculiar plant which has an opiate or narcotic effect. In
+the belief of the Indians this plant opens the door to visions. The
+visions, as reported by those who have recovered from the influence of
+the narcotic, are not of any considerable value. Similar attempts have
+been made by hypnotic experimenters among other peoples, the hypnosis
+sometimes being self-induced. From some Old Testament passages
+especially we may well believe that this sort of extraordinary mental
+condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the prophets in the
+olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the Scriptures,
+however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience
+as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures were the expression of
+a people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism
+always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences.
+Granting all allowances for mental states induced by eating an opiate,
+or by whirling like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu, the fact
+remains that in the main, the visions of the writers of our Scriptures
+came out of attempts to realize in conduct the moral will of God. When
+we think of the surroundings even of the early church; when we reflect
+upon the force of suggestion for uncritical minds; when we consider the
+sway of superstition at all periods during the Hebrew revealing
+movement, the wonder is that the Scriptures lay such stress as they do
+upon the type of vision which arises from faithfulness in doing the
+revealed will.
+
+If we may characterize scriptural mysticism, it seems very much akin to
+mental abilities which we meet frequently in our ordinary intercourse.
+Take, for example, the prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing is
+more inadequate than the rules for success laid down by many a man who
+has himself succeeded in business. Mastery of his rules will not help
+another to win business success. The reason is that there comes out of
+prolonged business practice a keen sense of what is likely to happen in
+the industrial or financial world. The sharpened wits foresee without
+being able to assign reasons or grounds for the prophecies. So it is
+with intellects trained to any superior skill. The Duke of Wellington
+once remarked that he had spent all his life wondering what was on the
+other side of the hills in front of him, yet the Duke himself came to
+marvelous skill in guessing what was on the other side. There is also a
+variety of scientific mysticism, if such an expression may be permitted.
+The man long trained to the reading of scientific processes develops a
+quick insight which runs far ahead of reason or proof. The transcendent
+scientific discoveries have been glimpsed or, rather, sensed before they
+so reported themselves that they could be seized by formal proof. Now it
+is a far cry from business men, generals, and scientists to the
+mysticism of the Scriptures, but when we see the emphasis which the
+Scriptures place upon constancy in keeping the law and in acting
+according to divine commandments, we cannot help feeling that biblical
+mysticism was and is an awareness developed as the life becomes
+practiced to the doing of religious duty. Think too of the emphasis
+placed in the Scriptures upon the consecration of the whole life to the
+truth as cleansing the heart from evil. All this makes for a power to
+seize truth beyond that possible to formal and systematic reason.
+Mysticism of this sort is the very height of spiritual power. The
+Master's word: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,"
+does not refer to merely negative virtue. It means also the power of
+soul accumulated in the positive doing of good. It means entrance into
+the life of quick spiritual awareness through the adjustment of the
+whole nature to the single moral purpose.
+
+In all promise of revelation the Scriptures insist upon the importance
+of keeping upon the basis of solid obedience. The finer the instrument
+is to be, the more massive must be the foundation. Professor Hocking, of
+Harvard University, has used a remarkable illustration to enforce this
+very conception. The scientific instrument, he says, which must be kept
+freest from distracting influences so that it may make the finest
+registries must rest upon a foundation broad and deep. So the soul that
+is to catch the finest stirrings of the divine must rest upon the
+solidest stones of hard work for the moral purposes of the scriptural
+Kingdom.
+
+Still some one will insist that the Bible is a book built around great
+crises in human experience; that it is a record of these crises; that
+the people in whose history the crises occurred were a peculiar people,
+apparently arbitrarily chosen as a medium for religious world-
+instruction; that the crises cast sudden bursts of intense light upon
+the meaning of human life, but that they themselves are far apart from
+ordinary experience. Here, again, we must insist that the scriptural
+stress is always upon obedience to what is conceived of as revealed
+truth. We have already said that Jesus regarded revelation as organic.
+In everything organic we find instances of quick crisis following long
+and slow periods of growth. The crisis or the climax of the sudden
+flowering-out would never be possible were it not for the antecedent
+growth. The Hebrew nation, developed through workaday righteousness,
+manifested wonderful power in sudden crises. The inner forces of moral
+purpose which at times seemed hidden or dead because of the riot of
+wickedness suddenly blossomed forth in mighty bursts of prophecy; but
+the all-essential was the long-continued practice of righteousness which
+made possible the sudden crisis; and this is in keeping with the
+teachings of most commonplace human experience. The daily struggle
+prepares for the sharp, quick strain or for the swift unfolding of a new
+moral purpose. There is nothing more arbitrary in the crises in the
+scriptural movement than in the ordinary ongoings of our lives. The
+student who has long been wrestling with a problem finds the solution
+instantaneously bursting upon him in the midst of untoward
+circumstances. The most insignificant trifle may finally turn the lock
+which opens to the glorious revelation after prolonged brooding. The
+daily practice may make men ready for the shock which leaps upon them
+altogether unexpected.
+
+We summarize by saying that the essentials of biblical truth came in
+progressive revelations to men who were putting forth their energies to
+live up to the largest ideals they could reach; and that they sought
+these larger ideals for use in their lives. It must be understood in all
+that we have said about acting the revelation out into life that we do
+not mean merely the more matter-of-fact activities. It should be noticed
+that whenever men speak of will-activities they are apt to give the
+impression that they mean some putting forth of bodily energy. The will
+to do scriptural righteousness did not manifest itself merely in outside
+actions. It manifested itself just as thoroughly in bearings and
+attitudes of the inner spirit; and the appeal was always to the will to
+hold itself fast in the direction of the highest life, whatever the form
+of the activity.
+
+After this emphasis upon obedience as the organ of spiritual knowledge
+some one may ask what provision we are making for infallibility and for
+inspiration. We can only say that we are dealing with a Book which has
+come out of concrete life, and that in concrete life not much
+consideration is given to abstract infallibility. In daily experience
+the righteous soul becomes increasingly sure of itself. To return for
+the moment to Paul, we may think of the certainty with which he grasped
+the thought of the reward which would be his. The time of his
+departure, or, of his unmooring, was at hand. He was perfectly confident
+that he was to go on longer voyages of spiritual discovery and
+exploration. Can we say that this splendid outburst came from devotion
+to an abstract formula? Did it not, rather, spring from the sources of
+life within him-sources opened and developed by the experiences through
+which he passed? The biblical heroes wrought and suffered through living
+confidence in the forces which were bearing them on and up. They would
+have answered questions about abstract infallibility with emphatic
+avowals as to the firmness of their own belief. In other words, they
+could have relied upon their life itself as its own best witness to
+itself. They felt alive and ready to go whithersoever life might lead.
+
+And so with inspiration. It is the merest commonplace to repeat that the
+inspiration of the Scriptures must show itself in their power to inspire
+those who partake of their life. Does a fresh moral and spiritual air
+blow through them? Is there in them anything that men can breathe?
+Anything upon which men can build themselves into moral strength? This
+is the final test of inspiration. Physical breathing is in itself a
+mystery, but we know when the air invigorates us. Abstract doctrine of
+inspiration apart from life and experience is a very stifling affair
+compared with inspiration conceived of as a breath of life. The
+scriptural doctrine is that the man who does the will finds himself able
+to breathe more deeply of the truth of God; and that the very breath
+itself will satisfy him, and by satisfying him convince him that it is
+the breath of life.
+
+There is an old story of a student who decided to learn the meaning of a
+strange religion which was taught and practiced by priests in a far-away
+corner of India. The student thought to disguise himself, to go close to
+the doors of the temple and to listen there for what he might overhear
+of the principles taught by the priests. One day he was detected and
+captured by the priests and made their slave. He was set to work
+performing to the utmost the duties for which the temple called. His
+response was at first rebellious. In the long years that followed the
+spell of the strange religion was cast upon him. He began to learn not
+as an outsider, not as one merely studying writings and rituals, but as
+one enthralled by the system itself. In this old story, inadequate as it
+is, we have a suggestion of the way in which the biblical revelation
+lays its spell upon man. The outside study is, indeed, worth much, but
+the true understanding comes inside the temple to him who carries
+forward the work of the temple.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
+
+We have seen that the understanding of the Scriptures presupposes at
+least a sympathy with the rule of life contained in the Scriptures, and
+implies for its largest results a practical surrender to that rule of
+life. He that doeth the will revealed in the Scriptures cometh to a
+knowledge of the truth revealed in the Scriptures. We must next note
+that an understanding of the Bible cannot advance far until it realizes
+the emphasis on the human values set before us in the scriptural books.
+We are to approach the distinctively religious teachings of the Bible
+somewhat later. It is now in order to call attention to the truth that
+the biblical movement is throughout the ages in the direction of
+increasing regard for the distinctively human. The human ideal is not so
+much absolutely stated as imposed in laws, in prophecies, in the
+policies of statesmen, in the types of ideal erected on high before the
+chosen people as worthy of supreme regard. And the place of the human
+ideal in the Bible helps determine the place of the Bible in human life.
+Mankind makes much of the Book because the Book makes much of mankind.
+
+There is much obscurity about the beginnings of the laws of the Hebrews.
+One characteristic of those laws, however, is evident from a very early
+date--the regard for human life as such and the aim to make human
+existence increasingly worth while. It is a common quality of primitive
+religions that they are apt to lay stress on merely ceremonial
+cleansings, for example. The ceremony is gone through for the sake of
+pleasing a deity. There are abundant indications of this same purpose in
+the ceremonies of the early Hebrews, but there is even more abundant
+indication that the ceremonies were aimed at a good result for the
+worshiper himself. It is impossible to read through the Mosaic
+requirements concerning bodily cleanliness, the sanitary arrangements of
+the camps, the regulations for cooking the food, and the instructions
+for dealing with disease without feeling that there is a wide difference
+between such requirements and merely formal ceremonials. The Mosaic
+sanitary law aimed at the good of the people. It sought to make men
+clean and decent and human. So it was also in many of the rules
+governing the daily work, the regulations as to the use of land, the
+prohibitions of usury, the relations of servants and masters--all these
+had back of them the driving force of an enlarging human ideal. The
+trend was away from everything unhuman and inhuman. It is not necessary
+for us to remark upon the outbursts of the prophets against those who
+would put property interests above human interests. It is a matter of
+commonplace that the call of the prophets was for larger devotion to a
+genuinely human ideal: that the fires of their wrath burned most
+fiercely against old-time monopolists who joined land to land till there
+was "no place," and against old-time corrupters of the law who sold the
+needy for a pair of shoes.
+
+Not only did the emphasis on the human ideal show in laws, but in the
+training up of types of life which should in themselves embody and
+illustrate the conceptions of the biblical leaders. At the heart of the
+Christian religion is incarnation, or divine revelation through the
+human organism. We are told that this incarnation came in the fullness
+of time. The passage seems to refer not merely to the rounding out of
+historic periods, but also to the fashioning of an ideal of human
+character, and at least a partial realization of that ideal in Hebrew
+heroes. If the final ideal was to stand incarnate before men, there must
+be approximations to that ideal before the crowning incarnation could be
+appreciated. We look upon the character of Jesus as the complete
+embodiment of human excellencies. Such a revelation, however, would have
+been futile if there had not previously been glimpses of and
+anticipations of the ideal in the lives of those who were forerunners of
+Jesus. The Scriptures teach, or at least imply, that the life of a good
+man is in itself a transcendent value.
+
+And yet it is perfectly clear that while the Scriptures exalt the
+individual, they do not mean to wall individuals off in impenetrable
+circles by themselves. It is true that the individual is the end toward
+which the scriptural redemption and glorification aims, but individuals
+find their own best selves not in isolation but in union with their
+fellows--a union of mutual cooperation and service, a union so close
+that the persons thus related come to be looked upon as a veritable Body
+of Christ, making together by their impact upon the world the same sort
+of revelation that the living Christ made in the days of his early life.
+The ideals as to the supremacy of human values are realized, according
+to the Scriptures, not in any separateness of individual existence, but
+in a closeness of social interdependence. So true is this that it is
+hardly possible to see how one can make much of the scriptural movement
+without immersing himself in the stream of human life with highest
+regard for the values of that life.
+
+It has been insisted from the beginning that the Christian consciousness
+is the only adequate interpretation of the Scriptures. By Christian
+consciousness is meant not the consciousness of the body of believers
+who are together trying to serve Christ. The interpretation of the
+individual becomes final only as it is accepted by the mass of the
+believers. Something of worth-while thought is conceived of as going out
+from the life of every believer. The utterance of the seer is not
+conceived of as complete until even he who sits in the seat of the
+unlearned has said "Amen." The pronouncements which do not evoke this
+wide human response fall by the wayside. For example, how was the canon
+of the New Testament shaped? Was there a determination on the part of
+individual leaders that such and such books should be included in the
+volume of Scriptures? Very likely there was at the last such deliberate
+selection, but before the final decision there must have been the
+practice of the congregations which amounted in the end to the choice or
+rejection of sacred books. Very likely the New Testament Scriptures were
+collected by a process of trying out the reading of Epistles and Gospels
+and exhortations before the congregations. As passages met or failed to
+meet the human needs, there was call for the repeated reading of some
+works and no call for the rereading of others. In use some documents
+proved their sacredness and other documents fell aside into disuse.
+Before the concluding deliberate choice was this selection in use by the
+believers themselves; and the selection turned round the question as to
+whether or not the documents helped people. If each member of the body
+of believers is entitled to interpret biblical literature,
+interpretation becomes a composite and diversified activity. There is
+little warrant in the Scriptures for the notion that the biblical
+revelation is to level men to any sort of sameness. There are
+diversities of endowments and varieties of expression; but the united
+judgment of the body of believers is the supreme authority in
+interpreting the scriptural revelation. This is what we mean by saying
+that the church is to interpret the Scriptures. We mean that no matter
+how brilliant or interesting the utterances of any individual may be,
+they are not of great value until they have received in some fashion the
+sanction of the main mass of believers. It is the function of the
+spokesmen of the church to gather up into distinct expression what may
+have been vaguely, but nevertheless really, in the thought or half-
+thought of the people. Gladstone once said that it is the business of
+the orator to send back upon his audience in showers what comes up to
+him from the audience in mist or clouds; so it is with the voice of a
+biblical truth through any medium of interpretation. The spokesman
+compresses or condenses into speech what has been dimly in the
+consciousness of the people. Even in days less democratic than ours this
+was abundantly true. It is the fashion to denounce some of the councils
+of the old church which shaped the creeds. It is often said that these
+creedal councils were moved by considerations of low-grade expediency.
+The councils, however, knew what the people were thinking of, and
+managed to get the popular thought into expression measurably
+satisfactory to the people themselves.
+
+In this doctrine of the church as interpreter of scriptural truth we can
+be sure that the emphasis will remain on the elements which make for
+enlarging human life if the church keeps true to the spirit of the Bible
+itself. The aspirations of humanity, the longings of masses of men, find
+utterance in the great popular spiritual demands all the more
+effectively because such demands override and nullify the insistence of
+an individualistic point of view which might easily become selfish. We
+have said that this democratic interpretation is final so long as it
+keeps itself in line with the biblical purpose. There are some dangers,
+however, against which we must be on our guard. First is the danger of
+identifying the church with those who actually belong to an
+organization. When we think of the church we have in mind not merely
+formal organizations, but all men who are really working in the spirit
+of the biblical ideals. There are many persons who really act according
+to the biblical revelation without technically uniting with a church. It
+may be that such persons do not accept the intellectual puttings of
+biblical doctrine, but that they nevertheless live in the spirit of that
+doctrine. It might be conceivably possible that a church organization
+would stand for an interpretation of truth which would be rejected by
+the general good sense of a larger community. In such a case the larger
+community would be the interpreter. Another danger in an interpreting
+body is that of traditionalism. The native conservatism of many minds
+stands against innovation. If, however, the innovation is in the
+direction of enlarging human life, it will in the end win its way. A
+third danger is that of institutionalism, where the organization as such
+becomes an end in itself without regard to the human interests involved.
+The Master's fiercest condemnations were for those who put any
+institution before the fulfillment of the human ideals. In the parable
+of the good Samaritan it is noteworthy that it was the priest and the
+Levite who passed by on the other side. It is hard to resist the feeling
+that the Master implied that the priest and Levite had been
+institutionalized into a lack of humanity. Making allowance now for all
+these dangers against which believers must guard, the chances are that
+interpretation of a book so human as the Scriptures is not final until
+it has received the real, though not necessarily formal, sanction of the
+body of believers.
+
+So thoroughly does the biblical revelation turn around the supremacy of
+the distinctively human values that we must insist that anything which
+would run counter to these values is alien to the spirit of the
+revelation, and, therefore, to comprehension of that revelation. We do
+not wish to be extreme, but it is hard to see how, in our day, for
+example, any who fail to put human rights in the first place can really
+master the scriptural revelation. We have spoken of the Master's rebukes
+of any form of institutionalism which stands in the way of human rights.
+Institutions at best are instruments; they exist merely for the purpose
+of bringing men to larger life; but these institutions sometimes get
+petrified into custom and become glorified by long practice, and even
+made sacred by adherents who look upon them as ends in themselves. Then
+there is no recourse except to break the institutions in the name of
+larger human life. If we could put ourselves back in the times of Jesus
+and feel something of the sacredness with which the Jews regarded the
+Sabbath, we would know the tremendous force of the Master's daring when
+he declared that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the
+Sabbath. The Master was also insistent upon the priority of human rights
+as over against property rights. It is perfectly true that Jesus did not
+encourage any propaganda for social reform. It is a mistake to try to
+read any form of modern Socialism into his teaching. Socialism is the
+theory of a particular time. Many of its outstanding features will no
+doubt one day be adopted; and the world will then move forward toward
+something else. Very likely three centuries from the present date the
+well-advanced communities of the world will be living under systems
+which will make Socialism itself look like the most hopeless and
+reactionary conservatism. The scriptural revelation, however, has not to
+do with the details of any particular scheme. It aims, rather, at the
+setting on high of the human ideal, an ideal which will, if given a
+chance, work itself out into the concrete forms best suited to each age,
+and which will not have exhausted its vitality when all that is good in
+the programs of our particular day shall have been incorporated into
+social practice.
+
+But let us linger for a moment around the blighting effect of placing
+property rights in front of human rights. If anyone at this juncture
+becomes nervous and insists that we are likely to introduce the new-
+fangled notions of the present day into a discussion where they are out
+of place, let us remind such a one that the danger of putting the
+material before the spiritual has always been the chief stumbling stone
+in the path of the biblical revelation. It may be too much to say with
+the old version that the love of money is the root of all evil, but the
+Scriptures place the sin of greed in the forefront among the evils that
+block the revealing process. Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go
+through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
+kingdom of God." With God a morally miraculous redemption is entirely
+possible; but Jesus declares that there is no need of our trying to
+minimize the power of the present world to blind us to visions of the
+spiritual world. For many forms of wrongdoing the Master had a
+willingness to make allowances; for the sin of placing material desires
+above human welfare he had unsparing condemnation. In the day of Jesus
+the world had an opportunity such as it never had before confronted to
+learn spiritual truth. What manner of opposition was it which prevented
+that truth from running its full course? Largely the opposition of money
+interests. The Pharisees had need to keep alliance with the temporal
+powers. It is not without significance that Jesus was betrayed for
+money. It is not without significance too that Jesus's picture of the
+Judgment Scene concerns itself largely with the rewards for those who
+discharge the tasks of simple human kindness. It means much to find
+Jesus hinting at an unpardonable sin on the part of those who call deeds
+of human relief works of Beelzebub. It is certainly food for reflection
+that the fiercest condemnations in his parables are for those who miss
+the human duties in their regard for the possessions of this world. We
+repeat that we would not be extreme, but when we see the disregard of
+human life in modern industrialism; when we behold the attempts of
+property interests to get control of all channels for the shaping of
+public opinion; when we see rent, interest, and dividends more highly
+rated than men, women, and children, we cannot help feeling that the
+deeper penetration into the Scriptures cannot arrive except through an
+emphasis upon fundamental human rights so mighty that all institutional
+creations of industrialism or ecclesiasticism shall be put into the
+secondary place and strictly kept there. This is not railing against
+wealth. It is simply calling attention to the fact that the man who
+possesses the wealth-tool cannot be allowed to use it or even to
+brandish it in such fashion as to endanger the unfolding of human
+ideals. It is only through the enforcing of these ideals that the
+Scriptures can be adequately apprehended. Until a social kingdom of God
+comes on earth the light of revelation cannot shine in its full
+brightness. Any social preacher of larger human rights is working for
+the dawn of a new day of biblical understanding.
+
+Some one will ask, however, why we single out one type of evil as
+especially thwarting the understanding of a biblical revelation. Why not
+speak of the evils of appetite and of envy and jealousy? The answer is
+that such evils, devastating as they are toward the spiritual faculties,
+are so definitely personalized in individuals that their nature is
+quickly recognized. The difference is that under present organization
+the evils of materialism are preeminently social. There is everywhere
+the heartiest condemnation for the man who personally is conspicuously
+greedy. A social evil can manifest itself in outstanding startlingness
+in a single person, but the plain fact is that under modern industrial
+organization we are all caught in the same snare. We are all tarred with
+the same stick. Great as is the improvement of our present system over
+anything that has preceded it, nevertheless the distribution of this
+world's goods is so unequal that we walk in the presence of injustice on
+every hand. The poor man often does not receive the product of his own
+work. Large material prizes go to men who toil not. Now no one in
+particular is to blame for this social plight. Nobody has yet arisen to
+show us the way out. We cannot act except as we all act together; and it
+is doubtful even if one nation could act alone. If, however, we should
+all recognize the evils of the present system, if we should condemn the
+wrongs of that system instead of trying to justify them, we would be on
+much better spiritual ground, for the attempts to justify the system
+lead to uneasy consciences, and to the searing of those consciences, and
+to the softening down of harsh truths, and finally to an inability to
+see things as they are. Though we have come far along the path toward
+industrial justice, there is still very much in the system under which
+we live that makes for an inability to understand some of the most
+elementary phrasings of Christian truth. The only way out is to see the
+system as it is and to take such steps forward as can be taken now. Only
+thus can we keep our souls saved, and only thus also can we follow the
+flashes from above.
+
+Jesus preached the highest ideal for individual righteousness. Men are
+to strive to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect. But the
+perfection is to show itself in social impartiality in the use of
+material opportunities. God sendeth the rain to fall and the sun to
+shine on the evil and the good. How many Christians of the present day
+could be safely intrusted with the distribution of rainfall and
+sunshine? Those of us who dwell in lands that must be irrigated know
+that the type of Christianity that can be trusted to deal fairly with
+our irrigation system is somewhat unusual.
+
+We take the injustices of the present social order too much as a matter
+of course. We ought to see them as making against humanity, and
+therefore against the scriptural revelation. When these injustices
+culminate in a war like the present, the only safety is thought that
+deals honestly with the inhumanity of the war. Granted that war in self-
+defense is justifiable, we keep ourselves open to divine revelations
+only as we refuse to glorify the inhuman. Only that nation can succeed
+in war and remain open to revelation from above which recognizes the
+inhumanity of war and refuses to glorify it.
+
+Closely related to the blight of the spirit of this present world is the
+failure to perceive the need of missionary spirit for a full grasp of
+scriptural truth. Though the Bible was given to a peculiar people, self-
+centered and exclusive, it nevertheless abounds in suggestions that its
+content can be appreciated the full only by those whose sympathies run
+out to men at the very ends of the earth. In the eyes of the Scriptures
+a human being is a human being anywhere. The differences between men are
+as nothing compared to the likenesses. Every revelation must begin
+somewhere and must attack its problems in proper sequence, one after the
+other; but mere priority of approach does not mean that one problem is
+inherently more important than another. Leaders among the Jews early
+tried to impress this upon the Jewish mind. Considered in its historical
+setting, the book of Jonah is one of the most spiritually daring books
+ever written. Jonah stands as a type of Jew who would not admit anything
+of worth in human beings outside of Judaism. Rather than carry the word
+of the Lord to Nineveh he would leave his country and go to Tarshish;
+rather than turn back and resume the journey to Nineveh, he would
+consent to be cast overboard in a storm. Forced at last to deliver his
+message, he announced it with the grim satisfaction of expecting to see
+Nineveh destroyed. And the final text of the book is that Jonah must
+learn not merely to proclaim his message to the Ninevites, but to
+proclaim his message with sympathy and genuine human interest. The Jews
+were a long time learning the lesson, but not longer than other peoples
+have been. Just because of the human interest involved, the missionary
+impulse is necessary to a spiritual seizure of the biblical revelation.
+
+It is important that we keep the missionary motive on the right basis.
+It is true that the Scriptures will never be adequately appropriated
+until all kindreds and peoples and tongues bring their contributions.
+Some phases of the truth the Oriental mind must seize before the
+Occidental mind can be brought to appreciate them. When the final
+revelation comes it will be adapted to the understanding of any kindred
+under heaven. It is worth while to spread the Christian revelation for
+the sake of the return which the Christianized peoples will one day
+bring to our studies of the truth. But the better motive is deeper than
+this--the passion for human beings as human beings. Any human being is
+entitled to any truth which another human being can reveal to him.
+
+The approach must be the human approach. We must speedily get away from
+the Jonah-like conceptions of the biblical revelation as intended
+particularly for any one nation. One great danger from the present war
+is the loss by the religious nations involved of the ordinary New
+Testament point of view. Many of the fighting nations have lapsed back
+into the pre-Jonah era. But the present war aside, the thought of
+supreme truth as intended chiefly for a particular race or nation, leads
+to a patronizing, condescending bearing toward other peoples which
+thwarts the finer spiritual achievements. The contacts between the
+so-called higher and so-called lower nations in military, diplomatic,
+and commercial relations have thus far for the most part been
+abominable. Too often missionary effort itself has based itself on these
+same assumptions of racial superiority. A people may indeed receive
+blessings from the Scriptures in whatever spirit they are bestowed, but
+damage is wrought in the souls of the bestowers by the attitude of
+superiority. The only genuinely biblical approach is one of respect--
+respect for the peoples as peoples, respect which will have regard for
+their growing independence in spiritual development, respect which will
+not force upon them particularistic interpretations of the universal
+Scriptures.
+
+Now, all of this may seem like a long distance from a treatment of
+understanding of the Scriptures in the ordinary sense. It would not have
+been worth while, however, to discuss this problem merely from the point
+of view of exegesis or professional commentary. The essentials about the
+Scriptures are their relations to life, their views of human beings and
+teachings concerning the forces of the spiritual kingdom. We shall
+proceed in the other chapters to speak of God, of the revelation of God
+in Christ, and of the spirit of Christ as revealed in his cross. Before
+we enter upon that study we must again remind ourselves that only life
+in harmony with the point of view of the Scriptures and only an interest
+in the same human problems that engross the attention of spiritual
+writers can avail us for vital interpretation of the teachings
+concerning the Divine, or make intelligible to us the hold of the
+Scriptures on the life of the world. The Bible is conceived in a spirit
+of respect for men. Only those who enter into that same spirit can hope
+to make much of the biblical revelation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE BOOK OF GOD
+
+We have remarked upon some points of view from which the student must
+start in order to reach a sound understanding of the Scriptures. It is
+time for us to ask ourselves, however, as to the dominant notes of the
+Scriptures which make the Book so dynamic. The purpose of this chapter
+is to show that the essentials of the Book are, after all, its teachings
+about God. The Bible is the Book of God. Due chiefly to the ideas about
+God are its uniqueness and its force.
+
+Before advancing to the consideration of the Bible as a book about God
+it will be well for us to glance for a moment at other grounds on which
+supremacy for the Scriptures is sometimes claimed. There are those who
+maintain that the value of the Bible lies in the wealth of information
+which it gives us concerning the first days of the world's life. The
+Bible helps us to regard sympathetically the view of the universe by the
+ancient Hebrews. It is a repository of knowledge as to early science and
+philosophy. Now, all this is true, but relatively unimportant. Had it
+not been for the religious teachings of which the old-time view of the
+world was the vehicle, that vehicle itself would long since have been
+forgotten. Only archaeologists are to-day greatly interested in ancient
+theories of the world as such.
+
+There are, again, those who avow that the Bible deserves all praise
+because of the literary excellence of its style. There are, indeed,
+sublime passages to be forever cherished as entitled by their very
+sublimity of expression to permanent place in the world's literature.
+All this we most gladly admit. Oratory like that of the book of Isaiah,
+some of the sentences of the patriarchs, passages from the Psalms or
+from the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the thirteenth chapter of
+Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, are sure of permanency in
+literature no matter what may be anyone's opinion of their religious
+content. Nobility of conception is very apt to tend toward nobility of
+phrase. The expression may be admired for its own apart from the
+substance; but to say that the Bible holds its throne as the Book of
+books simply because of the superiority of its artistic form is woefully
+aside from the mark. Lamentable as it may be, masses of men do not rank
+artistic literary skill as highly as they ought. While a lofty idea is
+not likely to make its full impression until wrought into lofty beauty
+by a master of style, the worth must nevertheless inhere in the
+substance rather than in the form if the statement is to make lasting
+effect upon the passing generations. Moreover, it is very easy to
+overemphasize the literary excellence of the Scriptures. There are
+scores of passages which, as we say, "go through one," but this
+marvelous effectiveness is quite as likely to belodged in the idea
+itself and in the associations which that idea arouses as in the form of
+the passage. In some instances the literary mold in the Authorized
+Version is such as to hinder rather than to help; so that the prophet
+who seeks to add to the force of the idea breaks the mold for literary
+recasting.
+
+Still another may declare that the Scriptures are valuable because they
+abound in hints which make for practical success--shrewd moral maxims
+which aid all classes of men in avoiding pitfalls, axioms for daily
+conduct which ought to be accepted by everybody, even by those who care
+not for the religion of the Bible. All this, again, is true, but hardly
+sufficient to explain the grip of the Bible on mankind. So far as the
+more conventional morality goes, men are likely to be ruled by the
+sentiment of the community in which they move. They adapt themselves to
+the demands of the situation at a particular time rather than to a set
+of precepts.
+
+Still others maintain that the human ideal itself which we sketched in a
+previous chapter is the determining factor in giving the Bible power.
+The greatest study of mankind is man. The erection of such an ideal as
+that of the Scriptures for man cannot fail to secure for the Book mighty
+power through all the ages. And yet it must be replied that if we take
+the Bible merely as portraying a human ideal without reference to the
+idea of God involved in the same process of revelation, we cut asunder
+two things which properly belong together. We must not forget that in
+the history of Israel the prophets grasped at every new insight
+concerning human character as at the same time a new insight concerning
+the character of God. Attributing a profoundly moral trait to God made
+it of more consequence forthwith for man, and thus the conceptions of
+man and God went along together reenforcing each the other. To separate
+the ideal of God from the ideal of man leaves everything at loose ends
+for the human ideal. It is true that there are individuals here and
+there of intense intelligence and of immense wealth of moral endowment
+who do not seem to require any ideal of God to sustain and strengthen
+their ideal of man; but for the most of us the ideal of man cannot grow
+to any considerable size without growth of our notion as to the
+character of God. What man is now depends somewhat on our thought of
+where man came from, and what his place in the universe essentially is.
+One of our deepest yearnings is to know whether our exalted belief about
+man has any validity before the larger ranges of the activity of the
+universe itself. It is very common, for example, for those who go forth
+to social tasks with a passion for humanity to lose that passion if they
+do not keep alive a passion for God. Disappointment with some phases of
+human nature itself and despair over the failures of men are apt to be
+so trying that the passion for humanity dies down unless familiarity
+with actual human life is reenforced by communion with an ideal which
+reaches up toward the Divine. We would ourselves insist that the
+loftiest human ideal in all literature is that of the Scriptures, but we
+must insist also that this ideal lacks driving force if it does not keep
+back of it the biblical doctrine of God.
+
+From the very outset the Hebrew Scriptures deal with God. "In the
+beginning God," at the end God, and God at every step of the journey
+from the beginning to the end. There are other scriptures besides the
+Hebrew Scriptures that deal with God, but the kind of God set before us
+in the Hebrew revelation gives the Bible its supreme merit.
+
+Since we often hear that there are other sources for the idea of God
+than the Scriptures, it may be well for us to appraise the contributions
+from some of those sources before we look at the kind of God drawn for
+us in the biblical writings. After allowing as high excellence as is
+possible to the theologies obtained outside the Scriptures, the moral
+and spiritual superiority of the scriptural ideal shines forth
+unmistakably.
+
+Many a scientist tells us that we do not further need the biblical idea
+of God in view of the vast suggestions concerning the Divine which
+science places before us. The world in which we live has broadened
+immeasurably since the days of the Hebrew prophets and seers. The idea
+of God, broadening to correspond, has to expand so overwhelmingly that
+we ought no longer pay heed to the imaginations of the biblical writers.
+Large numbers of scientists to-day avow themselves devout theists.
+Materialism is decidedly out of fashion, and agnosticism is less in
+vogue than a decade or two ago. The reverent scientist affirms that he
+believes in a God whose omniscience keeps track of every particle of
+matter in a universe whose spaces are measured by billions of miles, a
+God whose omnipresence implies the interlacing of forces whose sweep and
+fineness seen through the telescope and microscope astonish us.
+Moreover, the modern doctrine of evolution shows us that the entire
+material system is moving on and up from lower to higher forms. "It doth
+not yet appear what we shall be," but we shall clearly be something
+great and glorious.
+
+Now, far be it from us to belittle the splendor of this scientific
+vision. Modern scientific searchers are, indeed, finding innumerable
+illustrations of the greatness of God. There is every reason why the
+scientific investigator should rejoice in a calling which enables him to
+think God's thoughts after him; but when a scientist will have it that
+his belief in God arises only from his technical investigations, we must
+declare our suspicion that he is employing his findings to confirm a
+faith already held, though that faith may be part of his unconscious
+spiritual possessions. Many times the scientist is determined that the
+scientific discoveries shall look in theistic directions just to satisfy
+the imperious though unconscious demands of his own soul. Some
+scientists are theists just because they are bound to be so, for the
+close contemplation of the entire situation in the material realm does
+not make for any adequate theistic verdict. It is hard indeed to believe
+that the nice adjustments of matter and force occur without the
+governance of a supervising intelligence. There are too many facts which
+suggest skill to make it easy to believe that the natural world is just
+the outcome of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Science itself very
+likely establishes a presumption in favor of a governing mind, _but
+the deeper question is as to the character of that mind_. Is it a
+moral mind? At this point the hopeful evolutionist will break out that
+the progress is so definitely from lower to higher that no one ought to
+doubt the benevolence of the Power moving upward through all things.
+Evolution is, indeed, full of promises to one who already trusts in the
+goodness of God; but the progress from lower to higher is not always
+unmistakable. Often the survival of the fittest is just a survival of
+those fittest to survive, and not the survival of those who ought to
+survive. There are too many things which survive which ought to be
+killed off. Simple good can give way to complex evil without at all
+violating the requirements of the evolutionistic formula. But even if we
+concede all that the scientist claims for his conception of God; if we
+grant that terms like "omnipresence" and "omniscience" and "progress"
+clothe themselves with new force in the Copernican and Newtonian and
+Darwinian terminology, we must nevertheless insist that none of this
+rises to the moral height of the biblical teaching. Nor are we willing
+to admit that the biblical doctrine is to be discounted because it grew
+up amid small theories of the material universe. The old Hebrew views of
+the physical system, outdated as they are now, are nevertheless full of
+sublimity on their own account. But even if they were infinitesimal as
+compared with the vast stretches of modern scientific measurements, the
+moral grandeur of the idea of God of which they were the framework
+stands forth unmistakably. We must not permit the quantitative bigness
+of modern scientific notions to obscure the qualitative fineness of the
+biblical ideal of God. Modern philosophy comes also and announces that
+it has a better God than that of the Scriptures. The most imposing
+modern philosophical systems are those which proclaim some form of
+idealism. The gist of the idealistic argument always is that the world
+itself is nothing apart from thought; that thought-relationships rule in
+and through all things; that there are no things-in-themselves; that
+there can be no hard-and-fast stuff standing apart from God. Things must
+come within the range of thought or go out of existence. There is no
+alternative. Now, thought implies a thinker, and this implication
+carries us at once to God. Here, again, we have no desire to question
+the cogency of the argument. We are ready to admit that this is the
+strongest theistic argument that has thus far been built. To be sure,
+there are some questions that inevitably suggest themselves: What is the
+thinker? Is it impersonal thought, as some have maintained? Is it just
+the sum of all forms of consciousness--our consciousnesses being organs
+or phases of the Supreme Consciousness? Or is the thinker strictly
+personal, carrying on a thought-world by the power of his will and
+calling into existence finite thinkers in his own image? Assuming that
+the world is the expression of the thought of a Personal Thinker who
+acts in the forces of nature and creates men in his own image, the
+further question arises as to the character of that Thinker. While
+returning the heartiest thanks to the idealist for his argument--full as
+it is of aid for the Christian system--we have to protest that the
+argument does not lift us to the full height of the ideal of God
+inculcated in the Scriptures. And if this is true of the majestic
+systems of idealism, how much more is it true of the other and less
+convincing systems which are just now having their day! We have already
+spoken of pragmatism as possessing validity as a method, but pragmatism
+can hardly cherish pretension of being itself a system of religious
+philosophy.
+
+Some very strenuous searchers after divine treasures have professed to
+discover value in various non-Christian religions. They have patiently
+studied the great Indian world-views, for example, which are admittedly
+the most important religious creations outside of Christianity. These
+students come back to us with fragments of doctrines, gems of ethical
+wisdom, traces of sublimity from the Indian sacred books. It would be
+foolhardy not to receive any genuine treasures, no matter what the mine
+from which they have been quarried. We are all eager to admit the
+immeasurable possibilities of the Oriental type of thinking for the
+development of Christianity, but Oriental systems thus far have been
+chiefly significant as indicating what stupendous religious powers can
+do when they are off the track. The Indian systems of religion have run
+loose in India. As a result, nowhere in the world has religion been
+taken more seriously and more sincerely than by the Indian peoples. It
+is simply impossible to bring the charge against the Indian races that
+they have not made the most of their religion. The final indictment to
+be passed upon the Indian systems is that while the Indian peoples have
+made the most of those systems, the systems have made least of the
+Indian peoples; and this because of the defects in the conception of the
+Divine itself. It is doubtful whether the Indian could call his highest
+gods personal. If he declares them personal, he can hardly make them
+moral in the full sense; that is to say, in the sense of exerting their
+force on the world in favor of justice and righteousness and love.
+
+Now, it is just in the quality of moral force that the God of the
+Scriptures shows his superiority. The entire revealing process can be
+looked upon as one long story of the moralization of the idea of God.
+Let it be granted that the biblical idea was at the beginning marked by
+the naïve and the crude. Personally, we have never been able to see the
+pertinency of the reasonings which make the Hebrew Jehovah as imperfect
+as some students would have us believe. Nevertheless, for the sake of
+the argument we will admit limitations in the early Hebrew conception of
+God. Even with such concession, however, the outstanding characteristics
+of that God were from the beginning moral. Suppose that Jehovah was at
+the beginning just a tribal Deity. The difference between Jehovah and
+other tribal deities was that the commandments which were conceived of
+as coming from him looked in the direction of increasing moral life for
+the people, and these moral demands upon the chosen people were
+conceived of as arising out of the nature of Jehovah himself. To be
+sure, the early narratives employ expressions like "the jealousy of
+God," but even a slightly sympathetic reading of the Scriptures
+indicates that the jealousy was directed against whatever would harm
+human life. In the mighty pictures of the patriarchs the heroes speak to
+their God as if the same moral obligations rested upon God as upon
+themselves. There is nothing finer in the Old Testament than Abraham's
+challenge, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
+
+We are not specially interested in the growth of the ideas as to the
+power of God, though we repeat that it is difficult for us to believe
+that the early Hebrews thought of their Deity as so narrowly limited in
+power as some modern students seek to prove. The conception of the might
+of Jehovah grew through the centuries and followed upon the extension of
+the knowledge of the Hebrews about the world in which they lived. If
+tomorrow morning some revolutionary astronomical discovery should
+convince us that the solar system is much vaster than we have ever
+imagined, the theist would, of course, extend the thought of the sway of
+God to all that solar system. If there were some method of becoming
+aware that the bodies of the entire astronomical system are millions of
+times more numerous than scientists ever have dreamed, the theist would,
+of course, maintain that the righteous purpose of his God reaches to all
+of these bodies. The growth of the Hebrew idea was somewhat parallel to
+this. Even when the Hebrew thought of the outside peoples as having gods
+of their own; he believed that as soon as his God came into conflict
+with the other gods, he would shatter them with his might. By the time
+the first chapters of Genesis were written the Hebrew conceived of God
+as creator of all things, and thereafter the growth of the belief in the
+power of God kept pace with the enlarging view of the world.
+
+We repeat that we are not much concerned with the growth of the idea of
+the power of God. We are, however, interested in the manifest teaching
+or direct implication of the Scriptures that from the beginning the
+Hebrews thought of God as under obligation to use his power for moral
+ends. What the moral ends were depended upon the growth of the moral
+ideal. At the very beginning it was believed that since God had chosen
+the people of Israel to be his people, he must fight their battles for
+them. It is from this point of view that we must deal with the early
+idea of God as a God of battles. God was wielding his force for a moral
+purpose. Moreover, if God had chosen a people to be the channel through
+which he was to reveal himself to the world, he must be very patient
+with that people. How sublime is the Old Testament belief in the
+patience of God toward Israel! To use the phrase of our later days, God
+accommodated himself to the progress which the people could make. When
+the prophets called upon the people to walk with God, they implied a
+willingness on God's part to walk with the people. If they must lengthen
+their stride, he must shorten his; he must bear with them in their
+inadequate notions; he must judge their efforts by the direction in
+which they were tending rather than by any achievement in itself.
+
+It is from the point of view of their growing apprehension of God as
+moral that we can best understand the ferocity of the Israelite toward
+the so-called heathen peoples. The boasting of the Israelites over the
+slaughter of outsiders must be understood from the faith in the moral
+destiny which the prophets conceived the God of Israel to hold in store
+for his people. The reason assigned for cruelties and warfares upon
+heathen peoples was the abominations practiced by those peoples. Of
+course it is possible for a student obsessed with the modern doctrine of
+the economic determinism of history to say that we have in the story of
+the Hebrew development just the play of economic forces with moral aims
+assigned as their formal justification. Assuming that the narratives of
+the conquest of Canaan are true, what the Hebrews desired--these
+economists tell us--was the milk and the honey. They made their
+so-called advance in obedience to God an excuse for taking possession of
+the milk and the honey. Now, he would be blind indeed who would deny
+that economic values do play their part in wars of conquest; he would be
+foolish who would deny that wars always do justify themselves by
+appealing to lofty religious motives, but nevertheless the impact of the
+Hebrew history upon the life of the world has been a moral impact, due
+to the belief of the Hebrews that they were instruments in the hands of a
+moral God. If we could behold the abominations in heathenism upon which
+the old prophets looked, we would sympathize quite readily with an
+impulse which might seem to call for outright destruction. A friend of
+mine, a man of the most sensitive Christian feeling, once stood on the
+banks of the Ganges and watched people by the hundreds and thousands
+going through religious ceremonials, some of which were defiling and
+others silly. In the midst of the reeking vileness of one scene in
+particular he said that he felt for the moment an impulse like that of
+the old prophets to cry out for the destruction of the entire mass. The
+situation seemed so dreadful and so hopeless! All this passed in an
+instant to the loftier feeling of compassion, but the stirring of the
+more primitive impulse was really moral in its foundation. In any case,
+the old Hebrew notion was of a God who would put a growing moral ideal
+in the first place.
+
+It is not necessary for us to attempt to trace the steps of the growth
+of the moral ideal for God. As we have said, that ideal kept pace with
+the growth of the ideal for man. We must call attention, however, to the
+fact that the growth of the ideal was in the direction of increasing
+emphasis upon the responsibilities that go with power. The Hebrew may
+not have definitely phrased the responsibility, but he nevertheless
+shows his increasing realization of the obligations resting upon God.
+When we reach the later prophets we discern that his moral obligation
+upon God himself becomes more and more a determining factor. There
+appear glimpses of belief that God must not only fight for his people,
+but that he must suffer in their sufferings. It is of little consequence
+for our present purpose whether the suffering servant of Jehovah of the
+later Israelitish Scriptures is a group of persons or an individual. The
+implication is that the suffering is a revelation of Jehovah himself.
+Moreover, there appears a widening stream of emphasis on the tenderness
+of God's care for his people. The Hebrew writers comparatively early
+broke away from the thought of God as merely philanthropically inclined
+toward Israel. They did not think of him as bestowing gifts which were
+without cost to himself. They show him as deeply involved in the life of
+the nation and as caring for his people with an infinite compassion.
+This enlarging revelation was made clear to the people through the
+utterances of prophets, the decrees of lawgivers, the songs of
+psalmists, the interpretations of historians, and the warnings of
+statesmen. Slowly and surely, moreover, the people attained grasp on the
+doctrine that the greatest revelation of God is the revelation in human
+character itself. They began to look forward to the coming of one who
+would in himself embody the noblest and best in the divine life, who
+would gather up in himself all the ideals and purposes toward which the
+law and the prophets had looked. New Testament revelation as such we
+leave to the later chapters, but we have come far enough, we think, to
+warrant us in saying that only he can understand the Scriptures who sees
+that the chief fact about the Scriptures is the emphasis on the moral
+nature of God. Other Scriptures besides that of the Hebrews--we might
+say scientific, philosophical, extra-Christian Scriptures--have stood
+for the existence of God; but none have stood for the existence of such
+a God as the God of the Bible. The salient feature of the Bible is its
+thought of God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BOOK OF CHRIST
+
+It is of course the merest commonplace to say that the revelation of God
+in the Scriptures comes to its climax in Christ. The revelation in
+Christ gathers up all that is loftiest in the utterances of the Old
+Testament and gives it embodiment in a human life. It is legitimate to
+declare that there is little either in the teaching of Christ or in his
+character that is not at least foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The
+uniqueness of the Christ revelation consists in the manner in which the
+separate streams of truth of the law and the prophets and the seers and
+the poets are merged together in the Christ teaching, and in the fine
+balance with which the ideal characteristics seen from afar by the
+saints of the older day were realized in the living Christ. We might
+justly say that a devout reader of the Old Testament could find rich
+elements of the Christ revelation even if he should never see a page of
+the New Testament. The virtue of the New Testament, however, is that all
+the elements revealed throughout the course of the historic periods of
+Israel's career are bound together in the life and character of Christ.
+It is no mere epigram to say that if the greatest fact about the
+Scriptures is God, the greatest fact about God is Christ. Any thorough
+study of the Scriptures must revolve around Christ as its center. If the
+Scriptures mean anything, they mean that in Christ we see God. Of course
+it is open to the skeptic to reply that in all this the Scriptures are
+completely mistaken; but he cannot maintain that this is not what the
+Scriptures mean. The Book comes to its climax with an honest conviction
+that Christ is the consummate revelation of God. The day when men could
+charge any sort of manipulation of the material by Scripture writers for
+unworthy doctrinal purposes is past. We have in another connection said
+that each of the New Testament books was, indeed, written with a
+definite aim, but this does not mean that facts and teachings were
+twisted out of their legitimate significance. That Christ is the supreme
+gift of God to men is so thoroughly built into the biblical revelation
+that there is no digging that idea out without wrecking the entire
+revelation itself. To maintain anything else would be to do violence to
+the entire scriptural teaching. The burden of the entire New Testament
+is that God is like Christ.
+
+This may seem to some to be a reversal of present-day approach to the
+study of the Christ. We may appear to be attacking the problem from the
+divine angle rather than from the human. Why not ask what Christ was
+rather than what God is? It is indeed far from our purpose to minimize
+the rich significance of the humanity of Jesus, but we are trying now to
+get the scriptural focus. We do not believe that we can secure that
+focus by looking upon the character of Christ as a merely human ideal.
+The might of the scriptural emphasis is that Christ is the revelation of
+God. We are well aware that ordinary theological debate has centered on
+the question as to the extent to which Christ is like God. The Bible is
+colored with the belief that God is like Christ. This may seem at first
+glimpse to be a very fine discrimination, but the importance of that
+discrimination appears when we reflect that mankind is more eager to
+learn the character of God than to learn how far a man can climb toward
+divinity. In all such discussions as this we proceed at peril of being
+misunderstood, but we must repeatedly affirm that important as is the
+problem as to the human ideal set forth in Christ, the divine ideal set
+forth in him is more significant as explaining the hold of the Bible on
+men. Is it not sufficient for us to behold a lofty human ideal in the
+portrait of Christ without such emphasis on this ideal as also a
+revelation of the divine character? The answer depends upon what we are
+most interested in. If we care most for a perfect and symmetrical human
+life, we reply that we find that perfection and symmetry in Christ. In
+our second chapter we laid such stress upon the importance of the
+enlarging human ideal that we have committed ourselves to the importance
+of the Christ ideal as a revelation of the possibilities of human life.
+But if we take that ideal in itself without any reference to the
+character of God, how much enlargement does it bring us? As members of
+the human race we can indeed be proud that a human being has climbed to
+such moral stature as did Jesus, but what promise does that give that
+any other human being can attain to his stature? As a member of the
+human race I can be profoundly thankful for a philosopher like Kant. I
+can, indeed, dedicate myself to the study of the Kantian philosophy with
+some hope of mastering it. I can seek to reproduce in my life all the
+conditions that surrounded the life of the great metaphysician, but I
+cannot hope to make myself a Kant. Strive as I may, such transformation
+is out of the question. I may attain great merit by my struggle, but I
+cannot make myself a Kant. The more intensely I might struggle, the more
+convinced I would become of the futility of my quest, and the genius of
+the philosopher might tower up at the end as itself a grim mockery of my
+ambition. So it is with the Christ if he is not a revelation of the God
+life at the same time that he is an idealization of the human life.
+Viewed as a revelation of God's character the Christ life is the hope of
+all the ages. Viewed only as a masterpiece of human life it might well
+be the despair of mankind.
+
+Of course there are those who believe that it is impossible for Christ
+to be a revelation of the human without also being a revelation of the
+Divine. We have no desire to quarrel with this position, though we find
+it more optimistic than convincing. Incredible as it may seem at first
+thought, the universe might theoretically be regarded as a system ruled
+over by a Deity who had brought forth a character like that of Christ
+just for the sake of seeing what he could achieve in the way of a
+masterpiece, without being himself fundamentally involved in self-
+revelation. Christ might conceivably be a sort of poetic dream of the
+Almighty rather than a laying bare of the Almighty's own life. We find
+that human authors by an effort of great imagination fashion creations
+in a sense completely different from themselves. It might be
+theoretically urged that the character of Christ is different from the
+character of God. If this seems very far-fetched, let us remind
+ourselves then that there are those in the present world who conceive of
+Christ as the very highest peak of human existence and yet deny that he
+has any sort of significance as a revelation of the forces back of the
+world. Such thinkers maintain that Christ is the best the race has to
+show, and yet affirm that the race is but an insignificant item in the
+total massiveness of the universe. The Bible establishes the faith of
+men against skepticism like this by making the Christ-ideal for God
+himself so attractive and appealing.
+
+There are those who proclaim that we do not need any revelations of God
+to make then human ideal fully significant--the human ideal stands by
+itself. Some such thinkers go consistently the full length of saying
+that they are willing to keep their eyes open to the hopelessness of the
+universe. They can see nothing beyond this life but total oblivion.
+Nevertheless, with their eyes open they will fight on manfully to the
+end and take the final leap into the dark without flinching. They are
+very apt to add that their philosophy is the only unselfish one; that
+the desire of men for any sort of help from conceptions about the Divine
+is selfishness where it is not sentimentalism. It is fair to say that
+such doctrines seldom meet large response. The reason is not that men
+selfishly seek out a God for the sake of material reward that may come
+to them, but that they seek him for the sake of finding a resting place
+for their minds and souls, for the sake of cherishing an end which seems
+in itself worth while, for the sake of laying hold on a universe in
+which they can feel at home. If this is selfishness, then the activities
+of the human soul in its highest ranges are selfish. If it is selfish to
+long for a universe in which the heart can trust, it is selfish also to
+enjoy the self-satisfaction with which some of these thinkers profess to
+be ready to take their leap into the night. As we scan the history of
+Christianity since the day of the Founder we are impressed that
+religious organizations as such which arise within Christianity tend to
+survive in proportion as they make central the significance of Christ as
+the revealer of the character of God. We would not for a moment
+underestimate the importance of those groups of Christians who take
+Christ merely as a prophet who lived the noblest life and exalted his
+truth by the noblest death. Many such believers manifest the very purest
+devotion to Christ. They are his disciples. But the historic fact is
+that organizations founded on such doctrines alone do not win sweeping
+triumphs. On their own statement the most they hope to do is to spread
+the leaven of their doctrine into the thinking of other groups of
+Christians. Their service in this respect is not to be disparaged, for
+at all times the more orthodox opinion of Christ, so called, needs the
+leavening of emphasis on the humanity of Christ. But after all these
+allowances it is just to affirm that theology which sees only the human
+in Christ does not come to vast power, and that clearly because the
+world is chiefly interested in the question with which the entire
+biblical revealing movement deals, namely, what is the nature of God?
+With that question answered we can best understand the nature of man and
+the possibility of communion between man and God.
+
+We may be permitted to pick up the thread of the argument in the last
+chapter and ask again what moral purposes rule the forces of this world.
+It must indeed be an odd type of mind that does not at least
+occasionally ask what this world is for, and what all this cosmic
+commotion is about. It is well for all of us to do the best we can
+without asking too many hard questions, but the queries will at times
+come up and with the normal human being they are not likely easily to
+down. We are in the midst of powers which defy our intellects. We do not
+go far in the attempt to read the secrets of nature around us without
+discovering that all we can hope to spell out is the stages by which
+things come to pass, and the mechanisms by which they fit themselves
+together. Why they come to pass is beyond us, except in a most limited
+sense. The purposes for which events occur in this world are not self-
+evidently clear. Explanations of purposes only make matters worse; and
+at any moment this problem of the mystery of the universe may take
+personal significance in the form of a blow upon the individual which
+seems to mock all hope of anything worth while in human life. There is
+nothing more futile than the attempts even of ministers to divine the
+meanings of afflictions or of those inequalities of lot which attend the
+natural order. The preachers can encourage us to make the most of a bad
+lot, but their guesses as to why these things are ordinarily add to our
+burdens. No, the mind of itself just by contemplation of the things as
+they are cannot find much light. This enigma has always been before the
+philosophers in the form of the question as to physical suffering. A
+number of plausible answers have been made as to the reasons for pain in
+the present order. Leibnitz said that even the Almighty creating the
+finite world had to adjust himself to some limitations for the good of
+the whole; that if some forces are to run in one direction, there must
+be mutual concession and compromise in the adjustment of manifold other
+activities; and that all this involves at least apparent stress and
+injustice at particular points. This sounds well enough, but why the
+afflictions of the individual who happens to be one of the particular
+points should be just what they are is a mystery. The upshot is that the
+ordinary man--the plain man, as we call him--must either give up the
+whole problem by seeking to forget it, or must rebel against it, or he
+must find relief in a God whom he can trust without being able to fathom
+his plans.
+
+The tragedy of physical affliction is light as compared to the tragedies
+which arise in any conscience which seeks to take moral duties
+seriously. To be sure, we live at present in a rather complacent age so
+far as the struggles of conscience are concerned. The advice of the
+world is to do the best we can and let the rest go. We are not to take
+ourselves too seriously. But the long moral advances of the race have
+come through those who have taken the voices of conscience seriously.
+Now, what can a sensitive conscience make of moral duty? Assume that we
+have before us the exalted Christ ideal, and accept this as the guide of
+our lives--assume that we even have hope of some day attaining to that
+ideal--the distracting question is bound to jump at us: Are we doing
+enough? Have we sacrificed enough for those in worse plight than
+ourselves? And what about our past mistakes? Shall we go back and try to
+undo these? At the very best that might be like unraveling through the
+night what we have spun through the day. It will not do to dismiss this
+as unhealthiness or morbidness of mind. William James has shown pretty
+conclusively that the so-called normal or healthy-minded moral life is
+apt to be shallow. The great moral tragedy of the race is the distance
+between the ideal and any possible attainment. We can console ourselves
+by saying that noble discontent is the glory of man; but that does not
+get us far. There is only one way out, and that is to trust that we are
+dealing with a Christlike God, that his attitude toward us is the
+attitude of Jesus toward men. It is impossible to feel that in
+discipleship with Jesus men were complacent about their own moral
+perfections on the one hand, or harassed with self-reproaches on the
+other. They were advancing toward the realization of an ideal in
+companionship with One who not only in himself realized the human ideal,
+but who taught them that all the forces of the world would work together
+with them in their climb toward perfection, and that God would be
+patient with their blunders.
+
+The question as to the character of God becomes more vital the longer we
+reflect. The growing conscience of our time demands that two conceptions
+be kept together--that of power and that of moral responsibility. We
+cannot hold a person responsible unless he has power; we cannot give a
+person power unless he is willing to act under responsibility. This
+realization is fast modifying all our relations to politics, to finance,
+to industry, even to private duties. We are swiftly moving toward the
+day when society will insist that any measure of power which has an
+outreach beyond the circle of the holder's personal affairs shall be
+acquiesced in by society only on condition that the holder of that power
+be willing definitely to assume responsibility to society. What we
+demand of men we demand also of God, and we have the scriptural warrant
+for believing that these human demands are themselves hints concerning
+the nature of God. Now, no one doubts the power of God. All scientific
+and philosophic trends are toward the centralization of power in some
+unitary source. All our study of nature and of society convinces us that
+there is a unity of power somewhere. If this be true, there must be
+raised with increasing persistence the question as to whether the World-
+Power is acting under a sense of moral responsibility. There were days
+when this problem was not raised as it is now. Men assumed for centuries
+that the king could do no wrong; that he could order his people about in
+the most arbitrary fashion. In our own time we have seen advocacy of the
+doctrine that the man of wealth is a law unto himself in the handling of
+the power that comes with wealth. Such mistakes never were really a part
+of the biblical idea. In shaping the threefold notion of priest and
+prophet and king to make the people familiar with the functions of
+God-sent leadership the strokes of emphasis always fell on the
+responsibility of the prophet to proclaim his message at whatever cost
+to himself, of the priest to keep in mind the sacredness of his office,
+and of the king to rule in righteousness. These demands were inevitably
+carried up to God: and in Christ the supreme effort is made to convince
+us that we can trust in the God of Christ, though we may not be able to
+understand him. This is not the place for an attempt at determining the
+essentials of the Christ career. Some features of that life, however, as
+illustrating responsibility in the use of power can be hinted at here.
+Take the story of the temptation. We are not concerned now with the
+historic form in which the temptation occurred. After the historians
+have made all the changes in the drapery of the story they choose, the
+fact remains that the temptation narrative deals with the essential
+problems of any leader confronted with a task like that of Christ. The
+Messianic consciousness was a consciousness of power. How should the
+power be used? Should it be used to minister to human needs like those
+of hunger? That would promise a quick solution of a sort. The peoples
+would eagerly rally around the new deliverer. Should there be an attempt
+to utilize the political machinery of the time? There could be no doubt
+of the effectiveness of this plan. Should the exalted lofty spiritual
+state of the Master be relied upon to carry him through spectacular
+displays of extraordinary might that would capture the popular mind?
+Each of these suggestions presented its advantages. Each might have been
+rightfully followed by some one with less power than Jesus had; but for
+him any one of them would have involved a misuse of power, and hence he
+cast them all aside.
+
+The miracles reported of Christ have this for their peculiarity, that
+they show a power conceived of as divine used for a righteous purpose.
+It is significant that practically all the miracles described are those
+of healing or of relief. The kind of miracle that an irresponsible
+leader would have wrought is suggested by the advice of James and John
+to Jesus to call down fire on an inhospitable Samaritan village. The
+reported reply of Jesus, "Ye know not what spirit you are of," is the
+final comment on such use of power. Now, after we have made the most of
+the miracles recorded of Jesus, after we have made them seem just as
+extraordinary in themselves as possible, their most extraordinary
+feature is this use to which the power was put; and on the other hand,
+if we strip the miracles of everything that suggests breach of natural
+law and make them just revelations of super-normal control over nature
+through laws like those whose existence and significance we are
+beginning to glimpse to-day, still we cannot empty these narratives of
+their significance as revealing a morally responsible use of force. Let
+us be just as orthodox as we can, the purpose of the use of the forces
+is the supreme miracle; let us be just as destructively radical as we
+please, we cannot eliminate from the Scriptures this impression of
+Christ as one who used power with a sense of responsibility. This
+revelation is one which the ages have always desired.
+
+We must be careful to keep in mind the connection of the Christ life
+with what came before it and what has proceeded from it. Here we have
+the advantage which comes of regarding the Bible as the result of a
+process running through the centuries. If the Bible were not a library,
+but only a single book, written at a particular time, we might well be
+attracted by the nobility of its teachings, but might despair of ever
+making the teachings effective. There is no proving in syllogistic
+fashion that Jesus was what he claimed to be, or that he was what his
+disciples thought of him as being; but when we see a massive revealing
+movement centering on the idea of God as revealed in Christ, when we see
+the acceptance of the spirit of Christ opening the path to communion
+with the Divine, and when we find increasing hosts of persons finding
+larger life in that approach to the Divine, we begin to discern the vast
+significance of the scriptural doctrine that in Christ we have the
+revelation of the Christlike God.
+
+In this discussion we have been careful to avoid the terms of formal and
+creedal orthodoxy. This is not because the present writer is out of
+sympathy with these terms, but because he is trying to keep to the main
+impression produced by the New Testament. The fundamental scriptural
+fact is that in Jesus the early believers saw God; they came to rest in
+God as revealed in Christ. This is true of the picture of Christ in the
+earliest New Testament writings. Modern scholarship has not been able to
+find any documents of a time when the disciples did not think of Jesus
+as the revealer of God. If the disciples had not thought of Jesus thus,
+they would have found little reason to write of him. Now the scriptural
+authors employ various terms to declare the unique intimacy of Christ
+with God. In these expositions Jewish and Greek and even Roman thought
+terms play their part. Passages like the opening sentences of the fourth
+Gospel, or like the great chapter in the Philippians, are always
+profoundly satisfying and suggestive in their interpretation of the
+fundamental fact, but that fundamental fact itself is the all-essential
+--that in Christ the New Testament writers thought of themselves as
+having seen God, and as having gazed into the very depths of the spirit
+of the Father in heaven. Believing as we do, moreover, in the
+helpfulness of the creedal statements of the church, we must
+nevertheless avow that such statements are secondary to the impression
+made upon the biblical writers by actual contact with the Christ. We
+must not lose sight of the primacy of that impression as we study our
+Scriptures. We must not limit the glory of the impression itself by the
+limitations of some of the explanations which we undertake. Much harm
+has been done the understanding the Scriptures by speaking as if some of
+our creedal statements concerning Christ are themselves Scriptures! The
+scriptural Christ is greater than any creedal characterization of Christ
+thus far undertaken.
+
+Of recent years an attempt has been made to prove that no such person as
+Jesus ever existed. The attempt has proved futile, but it has had a
+significance altogether different from what the propounders of the
+theory intended. The original aim was to show the contradictions of the
+testimony concerning Jesus and the inadequacies of the testimony to his
+existence as an historical Person. The result has been to show that the
+real significance of the Christ life is not to be found in any
+particular utterance, or in any specific deed, but in the total impact
+that he made upon the consciousness of man as suggesting the immediate
+presence of the Divine. The quality of the Christ life satisfies us in
+the inner depths as bearing witness to the quality of the God life. We
+have no sympathy with the views of the critics just mentioned; but we
+must say that no matter how the thought of God in Christ got abroad, no
+matter how mistaken our thought of the historical facts at the beginning
+of the Christian era, the belief in the Christlike God nevertheless did
+get abroad. There is no effacing that conception from the New Testament.
+No matter what detailed changes in the narrative itself radical
+criticism may think itself capable of making, the door was opened wide
+enough in the Christ for the divine light to stream through. We said in
+the last chapter that the most important feature of the biblical
+revelation is God himself. We must now say that the supreme fact about
+God is Christ.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
+
+If the central feature of the Scriptures is their idea of God, and if
+the climax of the biblical revelation is Christ, the greatest fact about
+Christ from the point of view of the Bible is his cross. We say
+_fact_ advisedly, for we are not dealing with the theories that
+have sprung up to interpret the meaning of the cross. We are trying to
+deal solely with the direct impressions which seem to have been made
+upon the scriptural writers as to the place of the cross in the
+revealing movement.
+
+We said in the last chapter that the Scriptures reach their climax in
+the doctrine that God is in Christ. The cross of Christ carries to most
+effective revelation the Christlike character of God. While we are not
+treating now the various creedal dogmas as to the person of Christ, we
+must not forget that those dogmas have essayed as part of their task the
+bringing of God close to men. The truth embodied in the text that the
+Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world is essential to knowing
+the Scriptures. We have seen that even as a warrior Jehovah was thought
+of as willing to bear his part of the burdens of the chosen people. We
+have seen growing the idea that Jehovah was under moral obligation to
+carry through the uplifting work which he had begun. We have seen
+prophets attain to glimpses of the meaning of suffering for the divine
+life, and we have beheld the culmination in the suffering of Christ. In
+those perplexing phrases of the creeds like, "Very God of very God," the
+aim of the church has been perfectly clear--to guard the scriptural idea
+that God was so truly in Christ that the sufferings of Christ were the
+sufferings of God. Even when least intelligible the pain of men becomes
+more easily borne if men can believe that in some real sense their pain
+is also the pain of God. That God is Christlike in capacity to suffer is
+in itself a revelation of no small consequence.
+
+In the cross of Christ we see exalted with surpassing power the belief
+that God acts out of righteousness in his relation to the universe and
+to men. It must needs be that Christ suffer. The writers seem unable to
+escape the conviction that they are beholding the working of divinely
+inevitable moral necessities. These moral obligations are not to be
+conceived of as external to God or imposed on him from outside of
+himself. In the Scriptures they seem, rather, to be expressions of his
+own nature. When the writers of theories about the cross lay stress on
+those profound obligations of God toward moral law which must be
+discharged in the work of redemption, the Scriptural basis underneath
+such theories is the implication that God, by the very fact of what he
+is, must act righteously. His power is not his own in such sense that he
+can act from arbitrary or self-centered motives. The Judge of all the
+earth must do right, at whatever cost to himself. The Scriptures keep
+close to the thought of God as a supremely powerful Being under supreme
+responsibility in the use of his power. If we can believe the Scripture
+that in Christ we see God, and that the bearing, of Christ during his
+suffering reveals really and uniquely the bearing of God himself, we
+have a revelation of the grasp with which moral responsibility holds the
+Almighty against even any momentary slip into arbitrariness. Sometimes
+we hear the sufferings of Christ preached as a pattern of nonresistance
+for men. It is permissible thus to interpret the cross within
+limitations; but this is not the essential aspect of the cross, as
+explaining its hold on men. The all-important doctrine as to the use of
+power is hinted at in the Master's word that he had but to call for
+legions of angels if he so chose. Under most extreme provocation the
+forces of the Almighty held to their appointed task. If the Almighty had
+been conceived of as a Despot or an Egotist, he would have been expected
+to resort at once to revengeful violence in the presence of such insults
+as those of the persecutors of the Son of God. The Source of all
+activity can hardly be conceived of as passive; but the passivity of the
+Christ of the cross suggests that no outrage by men can divert the
+almighty power from its moral purpose. This is really a gathering
+together and lifting on high of the doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount,
+that God maketh the sun to shine upon the just and the unjust, and
+causeth his rain to fall on the evil and the good. That is to say, while
+the Bible thinks of the cross as laying bare the Almighty's reaction
+against evil, it also thinks of that cross as showing a God who will not
+be disturbed by any merely "personal" considerations. We behold the
+Almighty's use of power for the advance of a moral kingdom. The Almighty
+is set before us as exerting all his power for the relief of men. The
+cross makes the profoundest revelation of the moral fixedness and self-
+control of God so long as we hold to the scriptural representation. It
+is to be regretted that many theological theories break away from the
+Scripture basis and build upon assumptions which are artificial, not to
+say unmoral: or, rather, in their striving after system they get away
+from the atmosphere of moral suggestiveness with which the Gospels and
+Epistles surround the cross. That God will do his part in the redemption
+of men is set before us in the cross. That part can be nothing short of
+making men yearn to be like Christ and of aiding them in their struggle
+for the Christlike character. It will be remembered that in the last
+chapter we called attention to the hopelessness of the Christian ideal
+viewed as an ideal in itself without a dynamic to help men to realize
+the ideal. If Christ is only to reveal to us the character toward which
+men are to strive, we are in despair. That one man has reached such
+perfection is in itself no promise that other men may reach that
+perfection. Moreover, the excellence of Christ is not only a moral
+excellence; or if it is moral excellence, that excellence involves a
+balance of intellectual attributes which is for us practically out of
+reach. Now, Christ is the ideal, but the ideal is one toward which we
+not only labor in our own strength, but one whose attainment by us is an
+object of solicitude for God himself. And so we see in the cross a
+patience which will bear with men to the utmost, and which will
+reenforce them as they press toward the goal. The glory of Christianity
+is largely hi the paradox that it sets before men an unattainable ideal
+and then commands them to attain the ideal. If the cross is nothing but
+a revelation of an ideal for men, this paradox is insoluble and
+intolerable. In the scriptural light of the cross, however, we catch the
+glory not of an abstract ideal, but of a Father's love for his children
+--not of the commands of conscience in the abstract, but of the desires
+of a personal Friend who will lift men as they stumble and fall. The
+ground for this patience seems as we read to be in the very nature of
+God himself. God has brought men into this world without consulting
+them, he has dowered them with the terrific boon of freedom, he has set
+them in hard places; but he has done this out of a moral and loving
+purpose. He therefore makes more allowances for men than exacting men
+ever can make for themselves. He puts at the service of men so much of
+his power as they can appropriate by their moral effort. The Christ of
+the cross is taught as the truth about God--the God who is at once the
+supremely real and the supremely ideal places his powers at the service
+of men who would make their Christ-ideal progressively real in
+themselves.
+
+The power of the Bible over men centers around the teaching that the
+cross not only reveals God as morally bound to redeem men, but that it
+also shows us the divine aim in redemption. Men are to be redeemed by
+seeking for forgiveness in the name of the moral life set on high by the
+cross, but the repentant soul is to show its sincerity by devotion to
+the task and spirit of cross-bearing. The aim of the cross is to bring
+men together into a fellowship of the cross, in a fellowship of
+suffering for the sake of the moral triumph to be won at the end. We are
+accustomed to think of suffering as implying the possibility of joy. The
+man who can feel keen sorrow can feel keen joy; they who have the power
+to weep have also the power to laugh. In the final kingdom the weeping
+shall be turned into joy. But, according to the Scriptures, it is not
+necessary for the disciples to wait until the consummation before
+entering into the joy of their Lord. There is an entrance to the divine
+mind through bearing the cross. Those who desired to learn of Christ as
+true disciples were expected to take up the cross and carry it daily.
+The Master also declared that the disciples were to think of themselves
+as blessed when they endured persecution for righteousness' sake, for
+men had persecuted the prophets in all ages. The implication is that
+knowledge of and sympathy with the prophets came out of cross-bearing
+like that of the prophets. To use a simple illustration: a student of
+the careers of the leaders of any reform might gather a mass of
+information about the reformers in an outside kind of fashion, as by the
+study of books, or by visits to the scenes of their struggles. Such a
+student, however, could not master the inner spirit of a reformer's life
+until he himself had battled for some cause at risk to himself. So the
+man who seeks to bear the cross of Christ is on the path to sympathetic
+inner knowledge of the spirit of Christ. In our second chapter we called
+attention to the truth that approach to knowledge of God is through the
+doing of the will of God. Doing of the will, according to Jesus, means
+much more than just a round of good deeds. It means carrying the burdens
+which are inevitable in cross-bearing. There is good reason for
+believing that the very highest step in spiritual learning is taken only
+through the willingness to bear the cross. In our modern educational
+systems we lay varying degrees of stress upon the importance of
+different methods of acquiring knowledge. There is at the bottom of the
+scale the method of mastering the instruction of the teacher by
+attention and reflection. There is, next, the method of learning through
+one's own experiment--through using microscope or telescope or textbook
+for oneself. There are, further, the social aids to the quickening of
+the mind as groups of students study and discuss together. But the
+deepest knowledge comes as the student feels his sympathy and feeling
+involved. If he must pay himself out for the acquisition of the truth,
+or if he must defend his conclusions at great cost to himself, this
+experience which involves the feeling involves also the sharpening of
+the intellect. The eyes of the soul are opened to the subtler
+intuitions. Thus it is in the revelations of the divine purpose in the
+Scriptures. It is hard to make out how anybody can hope to master a
+revelation of a cross-bearing God without himself being a cross-bearer.
+In the New Testament narratives of Passion Week the Master is reported
+as winning his surest convictions of the presence of God and of the
+victory of his truth at the very instant when he entered into the
+extreme depths of suffering. In the after days it was when the saints
+faced stoning that they saw the heavens opening; it was the apostle who
+had suffered hardships almost too numerous to mention who got the most
+positive conviction of the reward which awaited him. In the school of
+Christ the very heaviest stress must fall upon the indispensability of
+cross-bearing as a means to understanding.
+
+Not only does the biblical revelation see in the cross of Christ the
+culminating manifestation of the character of God, and of the purpose of
+God in redemption, but it also shows to us the divine method in helping
+men. We have spoken of those who dwell upon the Master's nonresistance
+as a model of passivity in the presence of evil. The example of Christ
+when thus treated is in danger of being misinterpreted. The Christ of
+the cross was passive so far as physical force was concerned; but he was
+never more intensely active in the higher ranges of his faculties--in
+self-control and in alertness to the finer whisperings of the spirit.
+The Christ's non-resistance to the physical might of evil is not to be
+interpreted as acquiescence on the part of the Divine toward the ravages
+of evil, but, rather, as the divine method of thwarting evil by allowing
+it to reveal itself. No amount of preaching about the nature of evil can
+equal in eloquence the self-revelations of that nature as it works
+itself out into expression. While in a degree the self-revelation of
+evil put forth against Christ was unique, yet we must remember that the
+sins which put Christ to death are just those commonest in all time.
+Judas was disappointed. He carried spite no more tenaciously than the
+ordinary heart is capable of treasuring it. Caiaphas desired simply to
+hold his own position and preserve the peace of his nation. Very likely
+the type of opinion in the midst of which Caiaphas moved would have
+pronounced that he rendered a disagreeable, but nevertheless necessary
+patriotic service in his condemnation of Christ. Pilate too meant well,
+but was afraid of the crowd. His friends may have commended his
+administrative wisdom in allowing the people to have their own way. It
+was the play of just such ordinary forces of sin against an
+extraordinary holiness that made it impossible for the mightiest
+revelation ever vouchsafed to man to work through the earthly activity
+of Jesus for more than a few months. The Scripture does not have much to
+do with abstract sins; with concrete sins of men as we actually find
+them, it has much to do.
+
+The Scriptures make it very clear that there is something which
+satisfies God himself in the work of redemption. God acts out of moral
+obligation, out of self-respect, out of love. But he acts always in
+respect for men as free moral beings. The cross appeals to the free
+spirit of men to behold the nature of evil, and to flee from that evil
+toward their redeeming God. If the redemption is to be a moral
+redemption, the last detail of the method must be moral. The power of
+the Almighty must not be used to break down freedom of men. It would be
+theoretically possible for an almighty power to bring to bear such
+pressures upon human wills as to crush them, but the strongest
+representation of the power of God in the New Testament does not go to
+the length of hinting at interference with the freedom of men. Men are
+to be saved as free men or not at all. We might conceivably imagine the
+Almighty as granting such indubitable vision of the material rewards of
+righteousness and the material loss of unrighteousness as would
+irresistibly draw masses of a certain grade of men into the Kingdom
+without a morally free consent to righteousness. Or we might conceive of
+the Almighty as so weighing this or that factor of environment as to
+diminish almost to the vanishing point the free choice of men. This kind
+of compulsion would not be moral. The only compulsions of the cross are
+those of a moral God splendidly attractive on his own account.
+
+It will have occurred to some readers by this time that we have said
+very little about the love of God in our discussion of the Scriptures,
+whereas that love is the outstanding feature of the biblical revelation.
+Our reply is that we have been trying to be true to the impression made
+by the Scriptures as to the kind of love which we must think of as
+expressing the deepest fact in God's life. We would not in the least
+minimize the truth that love is the last word of the scriptural
+revelation; but in our modern life we are apt to get away from the
+quality of the love revealed in the Bible. The love of the cross is
+built upon the righteousness which runs through the Sacred Book from the
+beginning to the end. A god of indifferent moral quality might love. The
+old Greek gods had favorites upon whom they lavished their affections. A
+god might be conceived of as an amiable and well-wishing father,
+foolishly indulgent toward his children. The love of the New Testament,
+however, is the love of a Father who dares to appeal to the children to
+make heroic response; and who shows his own love for them in the lengths
+to which he will go for them. Moral love will go the full length of
+heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot help believing that it is the quality
+of God's love, rather than the mere fact of that love, which is the
+explanation of the power of the biblical teaching.
+
+A friend of mine many years ago wrote a book which he called The Hero
+God. The publishers objected to the title because they saw in it a touch
+of sensationalism. No title, however, could have more adequately set
+forth the biblical God. God is the hero of the Bible. His heroism
+appears in growing revelation from the beginning. It shows itself
+superbly in his willingness to bear the burdens of mankind and in the
+appeals which he makes for response from men. The picture is of a God
+who dares to believe in men and who dares to call on them for the
+extremes of self-sacrificing devotion, not to himself as an arbitrary
+Person, but to himself as the center of the moral life which is above
+all other life worth while. It is open to anyone to object that this
+biblical picture does not necessarily hold good for God; but it is
+hardly possible to object that the picture is not biblical. The picture
+stands in its own right and makes its own appeal. The only way to test
+it in life is to yield to its appeal.
+
+If we are asked to account for the power of the Bible, we are at a loss
+for any one single statement. The most compendious reply is the
+magnetism of the love of God as revealed in Christ. This is so broad,
+however, that it may not make a direct and vivid impression. We may say,
+then, that one element of the magnetism of the biblical revelation is
+the magnetism of the appeal to the heroic. Whatever else the Bible may
+or may not be, it is not a book of soft and easy things. Breaths of the
+most rigorous life blow across every page. It is made for man in that it
+calls men to the service of the highest and best. The religious systems
+which make the fewest and least demands upon their followers most
+speedily fall away; those that call for the utmost are most likely to
+meet the enthusiastic response. There is a frank honesty about the
+biblical appeal which holds a charm for all men in whom there are any
+sparks of real manhood. The severities of the Christian life are nowhere
+disguised. Men are never lured on by false pretenses. The path is the
+path of cross-bearing, and the reward is the comradeship between God and
+man as they together work toward the highest goal, a comradeship which
+of itself brings relief to men burdened with the mystery of the universe
+and agonized by remorse over sin.  This essay is quite as significant
+for what it has not said as for what it has said. In our omissions we
+have tried to keep clear the main outlines of scriptural revelation. We
+have sought to hold fast to principles rather than to discuss details.
+We have done this because we have believed that there is more value for
+religious understanding in pointing out the loftier biblical peaks which
+give the direction of the whole range than in tracing out pathways
+through detailed passages. Moreover, we have been afraid to employ many
+theoretical terms lest we blur the quick moral impressions made by the
+Scripture phrasings. For example, it may be objected that our treatment
+of the character of God is altogether inadequate. We have not thus far
+said a word about the Trinity, for example, or about atonement. The
+reason is that we believe that any theories about God must base
+themselves upon the moral suggestions of the Scriptures; and our
+business is with these rather than with the theories. The received
+revelation concerning God would warrant us in fashioning any theory as
+to the richness of his inner constitution which might even measurably
+satisfy our minds. The scriptural atmosphere as to the moral life in God
+must, however, be kept in the chief place in all of our theological
+theories. Atonement must be interpreted chiefly in terms of ethical
+steadiness if it is to build on a biblical foundation. But the instant
+we use formal terms like "Trinity" and "atonement" we have taken at
+least one step away from the Scriptures. Again, we have said nothing
+about Divine Providence. The Bible is full of instances of providences,
+but here also we have preferred to let the fundamental moral character
+of the biblical God speak for itself. We may have our own belief that
+there is no scriptural warrant for that separation which obtains in much
+theology between the processes of God and the processes of nature. We
+may admit that the Hebrew had no very systematically framed theory of
+the processes of nature, but he deemed God to be in such close touch
+with nature as easily to control its forces for a good end. In two
+accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites we have an
+apparent contradiction which is at bottom not a contradiction. In one
+account God seems to cause the waters to wall up on both sides of the
+Israelites in defiance of the laws of nature. In another God
+accomplishes the drying of the path through the blowing of a strong east
+wind. The Hebrew would not have troubled himself much with the apparent
+contradiction, for he would have conceived of God as the chief factor in
+either event, and of his purpose as having the right of way. There is
+thus no great value in discussing specific instances as long as the care
+of God for his children is the animating purpose of the entire biblical
+content. So with answers to prayer--the God who is willing to go for men
+to the lengths revealed in the cross will surely answer any prayer worth
+answering. The essential is to lift prayer up into harmony with the
+entire revealing and redeeming movement, and to conceive of it as a
+fitting of the whole life into the purposes of a moral God. Certain
+general requirements would always have to be met. Prayer would have
+really to deal with what is best for the individual, best for those
+around him, and most in harmony with the character of God himself. So,
+again, with the progress of the kingdom of God on earth--the God of
+whose nature the cross is the final revelation can be trusted to do the
+best possible for the Kingdom here and now. Much debate about the second
+coming of Christ misses the great moral principles which are the heart
+of the Christian revelation and loses itself in the incidental forms in
+which those principles were declared. The best preparation for the
+coming of the kingdom of Christ is absorption in the principles of
+Christ and in the spirit of Christ. To get away from these in our search
+for external and material conditions which are the mere vehicle of the
+biblical thought is not only to pursue a will-o'-the-wisp, but to injure
+true spiritual progress. Jesus has given us the spiritual principles
+which must control the destiny of any society here and now. In the light
+of the Christ-faith revealed in the cross we must not despair of the
+redemption of men by the city-full and by the nation-full, for the
+greatest confidence ever placed in men is the implied trust of the cross
+of Christ. The Almighty at the beginning paid an immense tribute to the
+human race when he flung it out into the gale of this existence. In the
+light of the cross we cannot believe that He expected the race to sink.
+In the cross the Christ who revealed God's own mind showed the length he
+was willing to go in confidence that men would finally turn to him with
+all the powers of their lives. To throw up our hands and say that the
+world is getting worse and we can do nothing without a speedy physical
+return of the Christ is to overlook the spiritual forces of the cross.
+
+We have said nothing about immortality. What the Scriptures themselves
+say is largely incidental. The Master did not allow himself to be drawn
+into any extended conversation about the details of a future life, but
+he did give us the God of the cross. In the presence of that cross we
+can profess the utmost confidence in the eternal life of the sons of
+God, while at the same time acknowledging the utmost ignorance as to any
+of the material conditions of the future life. It is commonly assumed
+that the resurrection of Christ proves that we shall likewise rise, but
+the rising of Christ does not of itself prove that others shall rise.
+The cross, however--showing the extent to which the Divine is willing to
+go for men--is the ground of our hope. God will not leave his loved ones
+to see corruption. In a word, the cross of Christ gathers up all the
+biblical truth. It is a revelation of God's own character, of his hope
+for men, of the methods by which he seeks to win men, and of the ground
+of our faith in a right outcome for men and for society.
+
+We may be permitted to summarize by saying that scientific and
+historical biblical study is a preparation for the knowledge of the
+Scriptures; that it is exceedingly important that the student approach
+with the correct preliminary point of view. The revelation of the inner
+significance, however, does not dawn until there is recognition of the
+need of obedience to the principles laid down in the Scriptures. And
+this obedience must be broad enough to include zeal for the uplift of
+our fellow men in all phases of their lives. Out of righteous living the
+devoted life, we believe, will see that the greatest fact of the Bible
+is God; that the greatest fact of God is Christ; that the greatest fact
+of Christ is the cross.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Understanding the Scriptures, by Francis McConnell
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