The Bible and God's Ethics

A lofty mountain-peak commands a whole horizon, but the human vision can take in but a part of that horizon circle, at one view. Hence, a new outlook and in a new direction is possible from the same commanding point of prospect. Again we recur to that leading utterance in the Prophecy of Isaiah:

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” saith the Lord. “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts. For as the rain Cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and retumeth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; so shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void; but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” And in the last verse:

“Instead of the thorn, shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it (that is, this transformation of the soil of society and of the human heart) shall be to the Lord for a name (that is, a ‘fame’ or ‘reputation’) for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut oif.”

We have already seen, how, from the intellectual side, the Bible reveals God’s thoughts, as infinitely above man’s conceptions, and His ways of working contrary to as well as superior to man’s methods.

In the moral aspect of the Bible, also, God’s conceptions are infinitely above man’s ethics, and His moral and spiritual ways of working are utterly beyond man’s philosophy. The Bible has proved also the great moral dynamic, the one divinely potent force for the regeneration of human beings and the transformation of human society.

This Scripture afiirms, what is very striking, a

complete moral revolution through God’s Word.

“Thorn and thistles” were the original marks of

the curse: “Thorns and thistles shall the earth

bring forth unto thee,” was the sign of man’s fall,

which was to be seen and shown in the very ground

on which he trod. There is an obvious reference

to this here. Instead of these signs of the curse,

there shall be tokens of blessings. Instead of

thorns and thistles, which are vexatious, harmful,

228 noxious, shall come up the fir tree — an evergreen — the myrtle, graceful and fragrant — a refreshing shade tree and a beautiful ornament to the garden. That is to say, what is hurtful, offensive, destructive, shall be displaced by what is beautiful, fruitful, helpful. This moral miracle is to stand in all history for the establishment of God’s reputation as a God that doeth wonders; and, whatever other signs may not continue, this shall be His everlasting sign. The deaf may no longer hear, the blind no longer see, the lepers no longer be cleansed, and the dead be no longer raised up, as in the time of Christ. These miracles may have had some special mission in the authenticating of Christ’s claims, at the beginning; but, whatever other miracles are not continuous and continual, this moral miracle, God says, shall not be cut off. As long as the Word of God is preached, these moral and spiritual transformations shall attend and follow to the end of time.

We look first at some of the moral features of the Oracles of God; and, then, ascending to the higher level, consider some of its spiritual features, which belong to a more exalted realm.

That which most closely touches morality, is

Law, and we, therefore, glance first at God’s system

of legislation as laid down in the Book, brevity

229 compelling only a hint here and there, skirting the borders of the subject.

The Ten Words, known as the Decalogue, summarize God’s moral law: “God spake all these words.” There is singular completeness in the moral law: Two tables, four commandments being assigned to the first, six commandments to the second. And the order as well as the completeness is very noticeable.

(i.) Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’* No other deity to be tolerated in the presence of Jehovah, Who is to stand absolutely alone, — no competitor or rival, no division of interest or worship.

(2.) “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” God is not to be worshipped by the aid of visible representations, whether furnished by the art of the painter or of the sculptor and graver. The Bible is firmly set against all visible impersonations or representations of Deity, and we ought to understand that fact, for this command is violated even in thousands of Christian homes, and so-called Christian Churches. These pictures and images of God are all contrary to the second commandment, because, whenever He is represented thus, the tendency is for the imagination to stop with the

image, so that, instead of worshipping the Living

God, man pays homage to a material human representation. There is a further danger, — for this leads directly to grosser forms of idolatry. The worship of the golden calf was not meant as idolatry; the calf was set up as a representation of Jehovah.* The gods afterward brought in from Tyre and Sidon and Phoenicia, — Baal and Astarte, were foreign deities — idols proper. But the former prepared the way for the latter, and it is always so.

(3.) “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” — even the name of God to be held in holy reverence, and not spoken needlessly, vainly, carelessly, for His name represents His nature — Himself.

(4.) “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy” — Setting a fence of restriction around sacred time, that man may have a chance to look away from objects near by to the far horizons, from what is temporal to what is eternal, and from things human to things divine. Some would try to make it appear that the Sabbath was a Mosaic institution and has no longer any obligation; but the weekly day of rest is one of two things that were ordained in, and have come down from, a sinless Eden. The Sabbath was before Moses, before Adam; and the only other relic of the

* Exodus XXXII: 5-8. 231 primitive Paradise is marriage — ideal marriage. As well make marriage a matter of Mosaic legislation as the Sabbath law, since both of them were thus instituted and ordained for man in Eden, before the fall.

The second great table of the Law enjoins six duties:

($.) “Honour thy father and thy mother...” There is a period in human life when the only God the child knows is the father and mother: not being able yet to grasp the idea of Deity, the parent stands between the child and the conception of God, and, if the child learns to honour and obey the father and mother, afterward, when the conception of Deity dawns on the understanding, it is comparatively easy to transfer filial obedience and love from the human parent to the divine, from the father on earth to the Father in Heaven. One reason why there is so little piety, even in co-called Christian families, is because parental discipline and childlike obedience are so rare. Children are not only outgrowing all obedience to parental authority, but many of them never knew what it was, and could not outgrow it. A most shameful state of things is this; and it saps the foundations of all human wellbeing. If there is no obedience

in the family, there will be no true obedience in the

State or Church. Lawlessness in all human society naturally follows lawlessness in the household.

The commandments of the second table follow a descending series from the most necessary and important to those of subordinate character; or from the general to the specific.

(6.) “Thou shalt not kill.” Life is the first interest to be guarded, because, if life is not protected, nothing else can be.

(7.) “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Next to life is family purity, else how shall the child know even who is his own father? ‘’Ipso facto’’ the marriage relation is dissolved by marital infidelity, and such infidelity is just as ruinous, and just as desecrating on the part of the man as on the part of the woman. Away with these lax notions that wink at sin in the man, and condemn it in the woman!

(8.) “Thou shalt not steal.” Next to the guards put about life and marital purity are those about property.

(9.) “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” His reputation is also to be guarded as one of his most sacred possessions. Shakespeare sagaciously inveighs against robbing one of his “good name.”

(lo.) “Thou Shalt not covet,” or “Thou shalt not lust.” Lust covers all irregular, all abnormal desires. At the end of the commandments, at last we get down to that which constitutes the root of all crime — unholy, inordinate desire.

What a moral compendium of duty, and all the ten, reducible to two! The first of all commandments is ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Upon these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” is our Lord’s own commentary; and even the two are further reducible to one. “Love worketh no ill” to God or man, and therefore, “love is the fulfilling of the law.” There is no other moral code like that. Individual hints may be found similar to it, but the morality of the Bible is an indigenous plant, in its own soil — not an exotic, out of its native atmosphere and surroundings.

The moral law implies moral administration, and so the Word of God teaches the doctrine of God’s Providence, which is set forth, once for all, in the Book of Esther. All the great principles of God’s Providence are laid down in this book, such as these:

(i.) There is a hand behind human affairs that shapes and moulds them.

(2.) That hand forbears for the time being, so that adversity sometimes comes to the good, and prosperity to the wicked.

(3.) That hand distributes the ultimate awards of virtue and righteousness in happiness, and the ultimate awards of wickedness and vice in misery.

(4.) That hand weaves the smallest incidental matters into the fabric of Divine Purpose, — such as the sleeplessness of the king, and the unwillingness of Mordecai to pay homage to Haman.

(5.) That hand administers poetic retribution, so associated with and correspondent with sin, that there is no mistaking the hand of the God of Recompenses — witness Haman’s death on the very scaffold he had prepared for Mordecai.

(6.) God’s hand does not compel human action. Providence is not fatali m. God ordains, but He does not violate human freedom, which is among the things decreed. When Esther went into the presence of Ahasuerus, it was by her own choice and on her own responsibility; she went praying, and with the support of her own maidens. It was her own act, yet according to God’s decree.

(7.) Last of all, the hand that guides affairs is a hidden hand — does not appear visibly, manifestly;

235 the effects are seen, but not the cause. Hence, while the name of God is not found in Esther, the workings of Almighty God are there, not only seen by faith, but may be found even by the ungodly. No other teaching on Providence is necessary after this one book is mastered, for no new additional principle in the divine philosophy of administration is introduced afterward.

The Bible teaches also a Final Judgment — an ultimate adjudication of affairs of government. The adjustment of sin and penalty is not always complete in this world, for the scales of divine judgment do not hang evenly, this side of the veil; only beyond are they seen to be in perfect equilibrium.

It is a sublime conception of judgment which the Bible contains:

He is a God of —

(i.) Infinite knowledge, so that nothing can be hid from His eye.

(2.) Infinite power, so that nothing can escape His pursuit.

(3.) Omnipresence, so that there is no part of the universe where His knowledge and power do not penetrate.

(4.) Infinite justice, so that He cannot be bribed, or blinded; nor can any influence pervert or prevent His judgments.

($.) Yet, after all, His wrath is as holy as all else about Him. Many do not like to talk about God’s wrath; they avoid it as though it were a kind of blotch on the divine character. The wrath of God is just as much a perfection as His love, for there is nothing that is not perfect in Him. Wrath in God is not man’s passion elevated to a divine sphere and level. This is a total misconception. Wrath in God is not a passion at all; it is rather a principle. It is not variable, capricious, changeable; it is eternal, and immutable, like everything else in Him.

When a magnetic needle is set on its pivot it swings toward the pole. If approached at one end with another magnet, it attracts; approached at the other, it repels; by the same law it attracts at one end and repels at the other. So the same attribute of divine benevolence attracts holiness at one pole, and repels wickedness at the other — the same perfection in both cases, with two opposite manifestations. This is the God of the Bible — an infinitely perfect God.

God’s method of reformation is totally different from man’s. Man, whenever he sees an evil, strikes at it; but when God sees an evil, He does not always strike at that particular form of wrongdoing: He puts a lever underneath the whole character, and elevates its whole level, because to suppress one form of evil is to give a chance for another to break out in some other form elsewhere. Social evils abounded in the time of Jesus Christ — polygamy, unchastity, infanticide, capricious divorce, bloody and brutal games; wars, rapacious and cruel; death and punishment by torture, caste and slavery. Our Lord mentions and deals specifically with but one of these, and that was capricious divorce. Yet His teaching puts beneath all things evil that pertain to society, a lever greater than that of which Archimedes dreamed, and overturns them all.

Again, human reformers begin with the outside, and try to work toward the inside, but do not often succeed. God begins with the inside, and lets the outside take care of itself, beginning not with the reformation of external character, but the regeneration of the heart. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,” and out of the heart ‘’flow the issues of life.” Hence, God’s method of reformation.

Notice also God’s idea of character. There is a

kind of moral spectrum, similar to the solar

spectrum with its colours. There are seven virtues inculcated in the Bible, which, together, comprise this whole spectrum of moral character.

First of all, truth, because truth is the basis of all the rest. There can be no high, noble character if there be no truth. Sincerity is at the bottom of all pure and true development.

Faith, hope, love — the peculiar trinity of graces referred to in I Cor. xiii.

Humility, the unconscious grace. They who think themselves htmible, never are. This takes the form of reverence, also, which is the very soul of worship.

Patience, the enduring grace, which gives permanence to all the rest.

Mercy, like unto God in the peculiar scope and nobility of its forgiveness. How complete this category!

Truth leads all the rest. The Bible is in eternal antagonism to anything of the nature of pretension and hypocrisy. It knows nothing of “policy,” and gives no countenance whatever to compromise. What is right, is to be done; what is wrong, to be let alone.

In “Jane Eyre,” Charlotte Bronte gives a very fine touch of satire. She makes Mr. Brocklehurst to say: “I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart; and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh, the the verse of a Psalm.’ ‘Angels sing Psalms,’ says he; ‘I wish to be a little angel here below;’ He then gets two nuts in recompense of his infant piety.” This boy found Psalm liking better policy than cake liking, for appetite got but one gingerbread nut, and piety got two. Thus the author ran her stiletto through the fair exterior of thousands of lives that are regulated by nothing but policy, and are very pious, not on principle, but for the sake of the gingerbread nuts. But the Bible knows no such ethical farce. It is the most transparent book in its moral teaching that was ever given to the human race, and it teaches men to be transparent. That Greek word for “sincerity” means what can bear the searching exposure of the sun’s rays, what can stand being held up to view, disclosing its innermost self.

What is the Bible idea of humility, for which the Greek language offered no proper word? the only one available, expressing fawning servility, as of one who, in bondage to a tyrannical master, gets down and licks his feet. Many people confound humility with humiliation, which is different.

Humiliation is conscious; humility, unconscious.* Love is the crowning grace. When faith is lost in sight, and hope in fruition, love will be the reigning spirit about the throne of God — the ethical force of gravitation in God’s moral universe. What is love? It is the divine principle of life, the royal law, of preferring somebody else to one’s self, self-giving for the sake of others. Love, therefore, surrenders self to God with supreme preference for Him; and surrenders self to man — yielding one’s own interests in order to promote that of others. Love is, therefore, the law of life that gives self to God, first of all, and, secondarily, to man.

Such a law of love allows no room for a trace of resentment. A story is told of General Robert E. Lee, that when at West Point there was a rival for honours, who hated Lee because he was his superior in scholarship. Years after, when both were in political life, Lee was asked his opinion of his former rival as a candidate for a certain post. He said: “He is a man of fine qualities and large acquisitions; I think he will adorn the position.” ^’Evidently you do not know what he has been

* One of Dr. Lyman Beecher’s sons, entering the ministry, preached for his father. He tried to make a splurge and succeeded. On his way home he said: “That was a very poor effort; I am much humbled, father.” “Fudge,”* he said, “you are only humiliated.”

241 saying against you,” was the rejoinder. He

quietly answered: “I was asked, not what is his opmion of me, but what is my opinion of him.” Such

magnanimity is seldom known except by those

who have been touched with the transforming

power of the divine Spirit of love. Love that

worketh no ill to one’s neighbor, harbours no ill will

even to one’s enemy.

The Bible furnishes a divinely perfect ethical

standard. It is common to say, in apology for the

lax doctrine and notions of biblical inspiration,

now permeating even the churches, that the Bible

is not needed as an infallible guide, because man

has reason and conscience. But there is the more

reason why we need the Bible as a final arbiter in

ethics. A watch may keep good time, but needs

to be corrected by the chronometer, and even the

chronometer by the Pole star, for “underneath the

stars nothing goes exactly right.” Conscience and

reason are like watches, and even the communis

consensus of believers is at best only like the

chronometer; but he who would be absolutely

certain must look up higher, to God’s Polar Star.

God gives us in his Word an infallible standard,

correct, accurate, trustworthy; to give up its

infallibility is, in a sense, to surrender the Bible

altogether as an ultimate standard; and no celestial pole star is left us to correct the variations of the moral magnetic needle!

Spiritual things belong to even a higher plane than the moral. The Bible conception of the holiness of God may be taken as an example. “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” (Habakkuk 1:13). What a conception of a character, absolutely immaculate, impeccable. “God cannot be tempted with evil,” (James 1:13). The word used here is a striking word. It means that, as touching evil, God is “simple,” as we say of an innocent little child — too simple to do evil. He has no experimental conception of evil, which perhaps was impossible to the divine nature, practically, before the incarnation, but we know little about such mysteries as these.

We have already referred to love as a law and its general meaning; but love, as it is found in perfection in God, is beyond man’s conception. Ruskin writes of pools, outside of manufacturing towns, where muddy water, sand, clay and soot are all mixed together. Let the sun have time and what will it do? It will take out the clay and make of it a sapphire; it will turn the sand into an opal; the soot into a diamond; and the water into crystal

snowflakes. God’s love shines on the filthy pool of the human heart, and, if it responds to His shining, that love will change the pool into a paradise — transforming the very nature of the man. This love of God is the moral miracle, the wonder of the ages. This is the dynamic force that transforms character and conduct into His own likeness. What manner of man it makes! Men that have holiness like unto God, a new and divine nature by a new birth from above. God coming down and taking up man into Himself; somewhat as in nature, the upper kingdoms reach down and take up what belongs to the lower into themselves — as the vegetable takes up the mineral, and the animal, the vegetable. So God’s love reaches down from heaven to take man up into Himself, and give him His own new nature, with its new affinities.

Rev. J. H. Jowett says, “Whenever man tries to make a social classification, it is perpendicular — lower, middle, and upper strata, with half a dozen intermediate layers. When God makes a classification, it is horizontal, right and left: ‘He that is not with Me, is against Me.’” It is either yea or nay; good or bad; and differences in the degrees of unholiness and sinfulness look to God, at His distance, and with His perfection, more insignificant than the differences in elevation on the surface of

the earth would look at the distance of the sun.

God’s classification is into sinners and saints; wicked or righteous; friends of God, or foes of God; and there is no intermediate ground. No man can ‘stand on the fence’ in his relation to Him: he is with the devil or with Jesus Christ. It is a delusive idea that there is any negative or neutral ground, in the universe, as to moral and spiritual questions and issues.

A new relation is disclosed in the Bible between obedience, faith and knowledge. In the scientific sphere, and in the natural world, men believe what they know and understand; in the spiritual world, men know and understand what they believe. In the scientific and natural world, men obey no further than they understand; in the spiritual world, men understand no further than they obey: “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” God as a teacher follows His own unique methods. The pupils in his school are never sure of a second lesson till they have learned and practiced the first. Men may go through a college, and come out, knowing scarce more than when they went in; but on God’s ladder it is only by stepping on one rung that one is able to ascend to the next, and so, by putting into practice each lesson taught, rise higher in the knowledge and revelation of God. ’ * His ways are not men ’s ways.” tjod*s Living Oracles

The gi*and sevenfold consummation of all the Redemption plan is given in the twenty-second chapter of Revelation:

“And there shall be no more curse.” — Perfect sinlessness.

“And the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.” — Perfect authority.

“And His servants shall serve Him.” — Perfect obedience.

“And they shall see His face.” — Perfect communion.

“And His name shall be in their foreheads.” — Perfect consecration.

“And there shall be no night there.” — Perfect blessedness.

“And they shall reign forever and ever.” — Perfect glory.

What visions of such sevenfold perfection are found any where outside of the Oracles of God!

This is a favorable point for indicating some practical thoughts and final conclusions.

(i.) Ruskin finely hints in his “Open Sesame,” that it is the privilege of a reader to enter into the inmost thought of an author. Hence the democracy of the printed page. If one would get access to the great and notable of earth, he will find a thousand difficulties and obstacles between him and them, — distance, seclusion, locked doors, other engagements — hindrances, purposely put in the way; but whosoever wants to hold communion with God, finds in his Word an open door. He may enter into the secret chambers of God if he searches His Word: “The meek will He guide in judgment; and the meek will He teach His way;” “He will show them the secrets of His covenant.” This Book opens the door into the very presence chamber of God and secures audience with Him; and those who reverently approach, and who are willing to bow low enough to enter the low doorway, will find themselves in the palace of the King.

(2.) The greatest sign of the quality of any book is the residuum it leaves behind, as it flows through the mind. As in streams where sulphur aboimds, the green deposit is on the stones; and where iron abounds, the red hue is in the bed; and where gold is found, its lustre is on the very sand; so when a book flows through the mind, the supreme testimony to its quality is what it leaves behind. Is it vice or virtue; is it magnanimity, or pusilanimity; is it carnality or spirituality? The greatest proof, perhaps, that the Bible is the Book of God is that it leaves as residuum the gold of heaven, where it

flows.

Here is a challenge to all infidels. One of the greatest mysteries in this world is this Book, like which there is nothing else. How did that Book come to be? The wisest cannot possibly account for it. There is nothing else like it on the earth; it is evidently a foreign product. No philosophy has ever accounted for it except by its own account of itself. But it is a fact, which, if human philosophy cannot account for it, even human philosophy must admit to be a fact — and the great dynamic force of the moral universe.

When the mutineers of the Bounty landed on Pitcaim Island they had only two books in their possession, one a prayer book and the other a Bibte; and there was not a converted man or woman among them. Adams, the leader, read that Bible, foimd Christ in it, became a transformed man, and, with that as the entire statute book of his little colony, that community became likewise transformed.

When Johnson went down to Sierra Leone in 1816, he found a promiscuous lot of savages, taken out of the holds of slave ships, and put there as on a sort of dumping ground for thieves and robbers and social refuse. Within seven years, the native converts had put up a stone church that would hold a thousand; their children were in Christian schools; they themselves were gathered in Christian congregations, and not a relic of the former orgies and revels of their licentious heathen life remained.

A most godly man recently died in London, of a most painful disease. The surgeon that waited upon him was an infidel when he first went into his bedroom. A little while before the death of this patient a friend said to him: “I wish you had the faith of that man in your heart!” Said he, “I have. I was an infidel once, but I could not remain an infidel in the presence of that deathbed.’*

A well-known English clergyman had a daughter of sixteen, gay, giddy, thoughtless. She was brought to Jesus Christ, and from that moment the Word of God became the food of her heart, and she could not be restrained from Bible study. One day she said: “Father, won’t you read with me?” They turned to the Bible, the one book she wanted, and opened at the twenty-second chapter of Revelation. They read alternately, till they came to the verse, “And they shall see His face,” and she suddenly departed to see His face.

The Bible is thus perpetually proving itself the

great dynamic. There is no other like it, and when

infidels will show us any other book that compares

with it in moral and spiritual conceptions, and

249 dynamic power, it will be time enough to swerve from allegiance to it, and consider whether it is worth while to give it up; but, till then, let us stand by The Oracles of God.

(3.) The conclusion forces itself upon us that this is the first among all books, viewed from whatever side, whether as to the inspiring thoughts it contains, its lessons on morality and piety, or its incentives to duty and self-sacrifice. No where else will such heroic unselfishness be found, both taught in the loftiest forms and exemplified in the most perfect life. Men have drawn from this book for centuries inspiration for personal living and public teaching, and it is still the one deep inexhaustible well of salvation and instruction. The greatest of modern Englishmen modeled his style upon it; the most distinguished of modern orators drew from it his inspiration; the 1 ate laureate poet of Britain learned in its school the art of poesy; the foremost of theologians discovered in it the materials for their systems; and, above all, God-like character — the noblest cathedral structure ever reared among men — finds both its living stones in its quarry and its pattern in its mount of vision. By it human lives have been transfigured, and even worldly society unconsciously and unwillingly revolutionized. While other books inform, and some few reform, this one Book transforms.

(4.) The Bible is not only first but last of all books — Alpha and Omega — in the alphabet of the ages. It outlives all the ancient literature, alone indestructible and imperishable. God is its authority, and its lifetime is Eternity. Immortality is stamped upon it. Burned in a thousand fires of persecution, every effort has been made not only to destroy it as a book, but to exterminate it as a moral force among men, to blot out its record even from their memories. But it not only survives, but, like the Incarnate Word, has the keys of death and hades; it multiplies as its enemies seek to annihilate it. To-day, after eighteen centuries of antagonism, it is the widest spread and read of all books, the best known, translated into over four hundred tongues, and found wherever man opens the door to a new civilization.

The Bible is like the banyan tree; its very branches bend down and take root. It spreads over whole continents, and could not be eradicated without tearing up the very soil of society. When Sir David Dalyrimple, whose mind and culture fitted him for such a task, undertook to find how far the New Testament had embedded itself in the literature of the first three centuries, he found nearly

251 evry verse. Where there is such pervasiveness, there must be power. To-day it is estimated that one-third of all our current literature treats of it directly, as in commentaries and like books, written to elucidate its contents; and another third indirectly touches it by treating of Church history, Christian biography, mission enterprise and kindred topics. Of the remaining third, it may be safely said that a large part of it in some form is moulded or affected by the Bible, though only written to assault it.

(5.) These are thus God’s Living Oracles. The Word of God is powerful because it is quick — alive — living and life-giving. It “liveth and abideth forever.” It is a mirror, but such a mirror as the retina of the eye with its network of living nerves. It is a seed, but a seed that hides in its heart the vital principle of God’s life, yielding, wherever sown, a harvest of souls into life eternal. It is a sword, but with power to pierce to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is a living counsellor,* wisely answering inquiries and solving practical problems — the only true living oracle, that without resorting to a deceptive ambiguity, solves our perplexities.

* Psalm cxix: 24.
252

A strange, mysterious life pervades this Book, which makes it not only an inexplicable mystery, but an indestructible book. It is also life giving. Its living waters make everything to live, wherever this river of God cometh. The living Spirit of God here speaks to the responsive spirit of man. And so down through the ages this Book continues to go, a mighty miracle worker, forever undying in itself, and carrying to the nations a message and a power which are both divine.

In bringing these chapters to a conclusion, there is one position that affects not only the whole argument, but is intimately linked with all rational conviction, both as to the inspired verities of the Word of God and the deity and atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It must be remembered that to demand mathematical proof upon moral questions is absurd, since mathematical proof concerns the science of quantity, and moral proof admits of no demonstration stronger or more convincing than what is called moral probability. In other words, there are many things that cannot be demonstrated except on the grounds of high probability; yet we have no hesitation in accepting such conclusions, though they are not susceptible of mathematical demonstration.

This fact, however, should never affect the security of our confidence in the certainties of our holy faith. It has long been a settled and admitted canon of philosophy, that, whenever a hypothesis is found which proves adequate to meet all the facts of the case, all the factors of the problem, it is safe to adopt it as the accurate solution of the difficulty. Further than this, if a hypothesis which does not meet and explain all the facts for which explanation is sought, yet serves to unravel the mystery better and more satisfactorily than any other, it is to be held fast as, at least, an approximate solution, until a better and more perfect solution is suggested.

This was the exact method whereby Johann Kepler, one of the greatest astronomers of all ages, in the 16th century solved some of the most difficult problems of astronomy. Up to his day, the character of the planetary orbits, with the kindred questions of their comparative areas and times of revolution, were unsettled and perplexing problems. For years he attentively studied these great questions, and made and applied eighteen successive hypotheses to their solution — as a locksmith would successively apply as many keys to the unlocking of some complicated door. At last, it occurred to him to suppose the planets to move in ellipses rather than in circular orbits, the sun being one of the foci of the ellipse. This hypothesis was found to be perfectly reconcilable with all observed facts and phenomena. His enthusiasm was unbounded, and he exclaimed, “I am thinking, O Almighty God, Thy thoughts after Thee!” He saw that God had waited for thousands of years for an accurate observer to explain these phenomena. He then began to experiment until he discovered a second law, namely, that the radius- vector sweeps over equal areas in equal times. Then he discovered his third law, but only after twenty-two years of vigorou application, namely — that the square of the periodic time is proportional to the cube of the mean distance. Thus, upon the principle of what is called adequate hypothesis, he made these great astronomical discoveries of the laws and principles of planetary and stellar motion, and determined the mean distances of the planets from the sun, and their respective rates of revolution. Upon such questions as these there can be no scientific certainty, but, at most, only a high degree of probability. But, ever since his day, these explanations, known as Kepler’s three great laws, have been accepted as the truth, even by scientific men, without any hesitation or even doubt, because his hypothesis proved adequate to

unlock the doors of the heavens.

There is a great mystery investing the Old Testament prophecies, and the New Testament histories. The greatest of all moral and spiritual phenomena is the person of the Son of God, the Saviour of men. For these great mysteries, there is but one adequate hypothesis, but one key that unlocks the door to this Temple of Truth. That hypothesis supposes the Bible to be a divinely inspired book, in every part, bearing the impress of divine intelligence and wisdom; that holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, as the mouthpiece of God, the only true Speaker — that Omniscience communicated to them an accurate forecast of future events, and that He who came as the fulfilment of all this great body of prophecy was none other than the Son of God as well as the Son of man — identical with man in His humanity, identical with the Father in His character and attributes, history and destiny.

When that hypothesis is accepted and adopted, the mystery of the Old and New Testaments is adequately unravelled and explained; above all, the mystery of the God-Man finds its only satisfactory solution. If that hypothesis be rejected, we are left in inextricable difficulty. When one has lived in the atmosphere of certain conviction,

under the power of a deep persuasion that this book is the Word of God, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of men, amid all the disturbing doubts and perplexities of this age of negation and opposition, he calmly sings, like a lark in the midst of the storm:

“Let all the forms that men devise

Assault my faith with treacherous art,
I’ll call them vanity and lies,

And bind Thy Gospel to my heart.”