Epilogue

If the Bible had not survived so many examinations, assaults, and afflictions, one might despair of its happy issue out of present-day inquiry and so-called dissection. What we want, however, and what we must have at all costs, is the truth. In pursuing this end Christian scholars must be prayerfully and generously supported. We may have to build other churches and other colleges, because as honest men we cannot accept a livelihood by betraying a trust; yet I believe we shall account the sacrifice a joy if by making it we can get nearer to reality and fact. If the discussion turned upon some particular doctrine contained in the Bible itself, a doctrine known to be open to various interpretations, the ground would be very significantly limited. But in this case the question turns upon the genuineness

Q NONE LIKE IT.

and credibility of the Bible itself, and I, for one, am sorry that our scholars and experts do not feel themselves at liberty to speak more definitely upon that vital subject. Theirs is largely a non-committal attitude upon nearly all the points of expert opinion. They offer us “a. series of tentative suggestions,” they refer us to “a true historical instinct,” they are not able to say this or that “at present,” they give “legitimate weight” to the results or possibilities of “future excavations,” and they assure us that all is right as to spiritual revelation. Adam, as he has been popularly apprehended, was removed from the Bible long ago by the naturalists; there is no Adam; there never was any Adam; there never could have been any Adam; — the account of the Creation is a Poem, but who wrote it no man knows; Adam could not have written it, for there never was an Adam; — Mr. Horton (” Revelation and the Bible,” p. 39) says that it would be a “childish misinterpretation” to treat the first known story in Genesis “as literal act” — the serpent never talked, the Flood never fell; — Abraham was ideal and cumulative, a noun of multitude, rather than a real and historical personality; — we are getting accustomed to hear without special emotion that “Ruth, Daniel, and Esther rest upon a very slender historical basis “; — Moses did not write the Pentateuch, David did not write the Psalms, Solomon had little or nothing to do with the Proverbs; — “the authors of the books which compose the Bible did not dream of making the claim that what they were writing was written by God, or spoken by God” (” Verbum Dei,” p. 105); — yet in spite of all this we are assured that on all spiritual matters the Bible may be trusted. Surely this is imposing a severe strain upon the mind of any one but an expert. But we must not consider that. What we want to get at is fact, rise, or fall what may. The front gates are fired down, the castle guns have been silenced, the moat has been crossed, the roof has been battered in, but the household hearth still remains! Does it? How long will it remain? All along the critical line orthodoxy has had to give in. Even “poor Tom Paine” is now seen to have been something of a hero and a pioneer, and in fact almost a martyr. All this may be right, or it may all be wrong; what I fear is that where criticism has so completely beaten back orthodoxy it may one day drive in the battle upon Calvary itself and seize the cross as a trophy of war. It is easy to deprecate this view, and easy to pity it as sentiment, yet I cannot sufficiently ignore the antecedent facts to treat it with disregard. If ninety-nine of a hundred points have been carried, I cannot feel quite secure about the hundredth. But some of the men who have made the bulk of these concessions are Christian men? Truly. They are, too, men who do more for mankind than it lies within my inferior capacity to do. I know that I am not dealing with aliens and enemies. That is my supreme difficulty. I feel that if such men are right, I must be wrong. I was preaching in some blundering way before they were born, but they come up with all the new learning, and they take away, or permit to be taken away, Adam and Abraham, and David and Isaiah and Daniel, in the sense in which I have always cherished these illustrious names. They drive Christ out of the Messianic Psalms and prophecies. They tell me that the Bible is wrong in history, wrong in chronology, wrong in dates, wrong in sequence, and that (Horton, “Revelation and the Bible,” p. 13) “as a treatise on ethics, or a Vade Mecum of practical conduct, the book does not profess to serve.” But they assure me that the whole purpose of the book is to bring men to Christ. Whose Christ? Baur’s? Strauss’? Renan’s? Presently may they take away my Lord himself without telling me where they have laid him?

In substance I retain the Bible exactly as my mother gave it, for she, too, was an expert. She thought the Lord made the heavens and the earth in six days, and that he rested on the seventh day and blessed it. She told me the story of Joseph just as if it had been all true, and she told me about Abraham and Isaac and the angel seizing the uplifted knife as if it were a fact. And about the Flood she told me, and never for a moment doubted the great rain, but was quite sure that the flood was ‘forty days upon the earth, and that the waters prevailed upon the earth, and that all the high hills that were under the whole heavens were covered. She went over all the Bible lovingly, and never said a word to me about “tentative suggestions,” clay tablets, and “future excavations.” And many a time after reading the Bible to me we fell on our knees, and the dear old soul talked to God as if he were a real living being and quite close to her. Yet she knew nothing about God but what she had read in the Bible! Of course all this cuts a mean figure in the eyes of formal logic and in the view of the new learning. Yet I am going to cling to it. My reason for referring to it now is to remind the critics that there is a Bible dear to the common people — they were made by it, converted by it, comforted by it, and they live upon it, and I do not want the critics to take it away until they have something better to give than “a series of tentative suggestions “and the hope of finding some help in “future excavations.” We must not ignore the work which the Bible has done amongst the people. Experts should limit the circulation of their books amongst themselves. They should prey and feed and starve upon each other’s partial learning, and flatter each other’s critical instinct by inventing still longer polysyllables and playing the middleman to German wordmongers. I would only take away an idolater’s idol because I think I have something better to put in its place. Neither would I take away the Mother’s Adam and Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Isaiah and Daniel, and fill the ghastly vacancy with (f nothing more than a series of tentative suggestions.” But what would the infidel say? I never consult the infidel upon anything. I go to the infidel for infidelity; I never go to him for faith. What, then, is to be done? Go on with the old until the new is ready. Do not let the soul shiver in nakedness whilst the. new tailors are wrangling over the texture and pattern of the new clothes. What about the suggestion that the Bible is the composition and the imposture of the monks of the twelfth century? It is the most self-stultifying theory ever dreamed by insanity, if only for the reason that there is no book in the world of which the monks are so much afraid as the Bible, and no book which they have so strenuously endeavored to keep out of the hands of the people. If they invented it, they were so God-forsaken as to invent an engine for their own destruction. No layman can harbor both the Bible and the monk. Then what of the rationalistic theory which picks and chooses, and blows away the ghostly or supernatural element? A most inadequate and a most irrational theory. Rationalism offends nothing so much as reason. Every man who knows himself knows that there is a point at which reason must terminate its explanations and solutions, and be dissatisfied by a half-illumined universe, or rise into imagination, or find light and rest in faith. The only right which any man has to be a rationalist is the right which he has to starve himself — and has any man the right of self-starvation? I do not hesitate to say that the difference between Unitarian and orthodox conceptions should not be so faint as hardly to be distinguishable; nor should a teacher’s

evangelicalism depend upon an occasional sentence here and there: the distinction should be vital, glaring, palpable, eternal. I, therefore, utterly repudiate the so-called rationalistic conception of Inspiration. What, then, is my personal standpoint, my individual and peace-bringing faith? I will try to make it clear.

At the outset I feel sure that the Bible was written, edited, put together, and otherwise made into a book by somebody. The sun and moon may have made themselves, or may be due to anonymous origin, but it is certain that some man or men wrote the Bible, and some other man or men printed it, published it, and brought it within our reach. It is something to know beyond doubt that the Bible had a personal origin. But it might have a personal origin and be a bad book. Exactly. But we know that it is not a bad book. Even some schools of rationalism admit that the book has moral merits. Certainly it is a most religious book. Its key-word, as we have seen, is GOD. That must be most clearly recognized. When creation is accounted for, where is God put? In the very first sentence. When man is accounted for, where is God put? In the very first sentence. When the Law is given, where is God put? In the very first sentence. When the prophets were called, where is God put? In the very first sentence. When Jesus began to preach, where was God put? In the very first sentence. When Jesus Christ rose from the dead, to whom was he about to ascend? To “my God and my Father.” When Jesus shall end his mediation, who shall reign? “God shall be all in all.” When Jesus shall come again, how will he come? “With the trump of God.” From whom is the new Jerusalem to descend? “I John saw the new Jerusalem coming down from God.” Before whom did the four-and-twenty elders fall down in heaven? They fell down and worshiped God that sat on the throne.

Who promised the seed of the woman? God. Who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son? God. Who shall destroy the last trace of sorrow? “God shall wipe away all tears.” So rolls the thunder-music. God! God! God! I simply note the fact, and I especially note it because it is one of those facts which do not terminate in themselves. Whenever God comes, he comes with thousands of angels and chariots innumerable. When God comes, Creation came, and Providence, and Redemption. Finding as I do so much implied by the introduction of the divine Name — implied, I say, not expressed or claimed in any formal way as in a legal document — I at once, and necessarily, think of the book in vital connection with that all-including Name. In a very clear and intelligible sense, the Name is to me the book, and the book is the Name. I hardly so much as see the human names: they are the names of clerks, scribes, secretaries, or amanuenses; I am interested in them only in a very secondary and remote way. Why? Because the other Name fills all the space and becomes the focal point of all attention. It would not surprise me if the writers themselves were to tell me that they were very slow and laborious penmen, and that often they did not know what they were writing. The prophecy may have been greater than the prophet. Jeremiah himself, not the least of the prophets, may have shrunk into a child when the heavenly charge sought to enter into his soul, and Moses never really knew how much he hesitated and stammered until God called him to service. Then the hesitancy was felt. These high elections magnify our estimate of personal infirmity. We chaffer on equal terms with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, but when the Voice out of the whirlwind thrills us, we abhor ourselves in dust and ashes. It is that Voice which I hear most distinctly in the Bible. That Voice is indeed the Bible. Without that Voice there would be no Bible. I therefore call the Bible the Word of God, and if I called it by any other name I should be as one who was busy here and there and who let the King pass by. It is more than possible to think too much about the scribes and the amanuenses, and to think too little about what is actually written. We have turned the amanuenses into authors and loaded them unjustly with responsibility. Sometimes we should pity them. Surely it was not easy to bear “the burden” of the Lord. I thank the men through whom the message came, but I must not forget that my business is with the message itself. If I were to offer homage to the angel who brings me “the sayings of the prophecy,” he would say, “See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.” If, when I read the wonderful words of Peter, I were to fall down at his feet and worship him, he would take me up and say, “Stand up; I myself also am a man.” If I were to think only or largely of Moses and Ezra and Isaiah, this same Peter would rebuke me, saying, “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” And the prophets themselves would rebuke our criticism and our admiration, saying, “Why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had brought you this message?” They would refer us to the true Source: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.” In the New

Testament as well as the Old the reference is always to God:

“We are laborers together with
God... written not with ink but
with the Spirit of the living God.
... These things saith the Son of
God. ... It is God which worketh
in you. ... I was made a minister
according to the gift of the grace of
God. ... I am made a minister
according to the dispensation of
God; ... in the sight of God
speak we in Christ.”

Thus, not “in a few scattered texts” but uniformly and passionately we are referred to God. Prophets and apostles ask no recognition, they constantly point us to God. The dominant and unchanging tone of the Bible is God. This is my reason for thinking and speaking of the Bible as the Word of God.

This gives me the right point of approach to the Bible and all its contents. All the detail I can now survey from a true elevation. So long as I mistook the telegraph messenger for the telegram itself, I was in great confusion. Who was he? Who were his parents? What was his age? How did he come to be connected with a great electrical system? I made a puzzle of him. Was he old enough to have written a telegram? Had he and another boy concocted the telegram? After all, was the missive a telegram? If it was a telegram, why was it not sent immediately to me without the intervention of a messenger? And if a messenger had to come, why almost insult me by sending a boy — quite a child, in fact? I asked the boy if he had written the telegram, and he said No. I demanded to see the clerk who had penciled down the message, and he turned out to be little more than a boy himself, but he had sufficient sense to suggest that I had better open the envelope and read the message. When I read it, the boy and the clerk became of small consequence to me. The message was full of love. It was the message for which I had been waiting many a weary day. I could have loved even the boy who brought it to me. I had at length looked at the whole action from the right point of view, and now the shadows were dispersed by the full shining of the light. The right point of view is exactly what we want in everything. The theodolite itself may be in perfect condition, yet the triangulation will be bungled if it is not set up on the right spot and at the right height. The mere setting up of the theodolite was, we are told by the surveyors, one of the most difficult operations in carrying out the trigonometrical survey of the country; sometimes a scaffold had to be built up to a great height, the surveyors say that they had sometimes to build a solid foundation for it in the middle of a bog, and sometimes it had to be carried to the very summit of a rocky mountain. So in our looking out upon wider spaces, we must not only have a well-adjusted theodolite, we must find the elevation on which the instrument must stand, even if that elevation has to be built or attained at the greatest cost. Then must follow the three specific adjustments of the instrument, any one of which being wanting or incorrect, triangulation is impossible. It seems to me that the higher critics have not always placed themselves at the right point of view in attempting to survey the almost boundless field of inspiration. They are, in some conspicuous instances, mere word-grubbers who cannot find through grammars and lexicons what can only be found by incessant and sympathetic communion with God.

254 NONE LlKE IT-Expertness may be the fruit of prayer. If I start my survey of the Bible from any other point than God, I am lost in details. The Author, not the Book, in its mechanical form, is the point to begin at. This is markedly so in the New Testament as well as in the Old. We must first know the dominating Personality of the book. That Personality is Jesus Christ. The Worker, not the works, must first be studied. It is beautiful that the New Testament begins with the genealogy of the Man. God had no genealogy, so he plunges at once into the act of revelation by creation. Jesus comes to us by every human genealogy, and all the genealogies vary even up to the point of perplexity and contradiction, yet they are reconciled in the root, forasmuch as they trace the incarnation of the Son of man. Jesus is every man’s ancestor and every man’s descendant. The root is in every twig, and every twig is in the root. Buddha is in the genealogy, and the woman who was a sinner, and the man who murdered his brother, and the saint almost wholly white, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed Innocence with a kiss, forasmuch as this Coming One was the Son of man. “The Son of man!” That is his genealogy in three syllables. It reaches beyond the time-line, for he who is thus the Son of man is of necessity the Son of God, and he who is thus the Son of God is to me, and to unnumbered millions, God the Son! Thus, in surveying the New Testament, I think I place the theodolite on the true base. And thus the miracles fall into their right position and yield their mystery in response to faith. It was only when I approached the miracles from the wrong point that they staggered my inexperience. I talked of nature, and laws of nature, and the order of the universe, and continuity, until I settled into that kind of wonder the lower side of which looks toward unbelief. But all was changed when I approached the miracles from the point of long and deep communion with Christ. The miracles were but the dust of his feet. They ceased to be miracles. They were syllables in one great speech of love. In the first instance I struggled up to them through the weakness and gloom of fear: in the second I descended upon them in the strength and glory of faith. Then I understood how he came to make so little of miracles and so much of holiness, and then there shone upon me the meaning of his promise that the glory of his miracles should be eclipsed by the “greater works” which he would do through his disciples when he worked from the height of the heavens.

From precisely the same point I have approached the aspect of Election which is known as Inspiration. What is inspiration but election operating along one special line? I do not think of individual Jews, a man here or there, as inspired, but upon Jews as a whole or a unit. They were in their corporateness called, elected, predestined, or otherwise set apart and inspired. They were a chosen people. Yet not elected apart from morals. Even the divine election makes self-conceit and self-trust impossible: “If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” Great honor in the King’s name means great obedience. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. Inspiration is committed to obedience. Why God should have chosen the Jew and not the Greek we cannot explain. Even the Greek was not left without election. Why Sinai was chosen, and the prouder heights of Jerbal passed by, no man can tell. There is only One who can carry forward the mystery into light. That One is our Father. I still, therefore, take my stand upon that Father’s sovereignty. I know that the end will be right. Theories and criticisms will come and go. Confidence and panic will alternate in the experience of the Church, but the Truth advances by night and by day. We should determine to see the good that is in each other. Literal criticism is needed, so is spiritual interpretation, so is poetic construction, so is mystic idealization. We do not want uniformity of creed; we want individual conviction sanctified by universal love. Men can surely meet on the ground of common service for Christ’s sake, and find in charity the end of the commandment.

It is important to remember that Inspiration and Revelation are not one and the same thing. Probably there cannot be Revelation without Inspiration, but there may be Inspiration without Revelation. It may be proper to define Revelation as including such truths and facts as are not discoverable by human reason, say, for example, the Personality and the attributes of the Godhead. But Inspiration may guide the mind into all truth; — into a right construetion of history, into a right grouping and coloring of the facts of life, into the right use of the moral sense; in short, into a true knowledge of all things pertaining to the whole culture of the soul. A man may be inspired to carve a statue, or paint a picture, or compose a poem, yet have no Revelation of the living and gracious God. A right conception of this difference might simplify and readjust some theological controversies.

Am I expected, then, to receive from so small a people as the Jews so great a gift as a Book which is regarded by Christendom as the vehicle of a divine revelation? Am I in any prescriptive degree whatever to be bound by that Book? Why not go to the Greek, the Roman, or the Indian mind for my revelation? Is not the word “Jews” itself a stumbling-block? Why not collate all revelations, dreams, visions, and aspirations, and get out of them a common revelation? Surely one might naturally resent the thought of Englishmen, and men of all other nationalities, being driven to Palestine to learn from misbehaving, cruel, lying, selfish Jews who God is, and what he is, and what he wants. Is not this to enter, if entering at all, into the sanctuary of Revelation by some ill-kept postern gate, rather than through the portals of a federal and representative Humanity? I have no difficulty as to my reply. I might argue that the Jew in this relation was more than a Jew; that from beginning to end there is not in the Bible a shadow of suggestion that the Revelation was a message to the Jew alone; and that infinitely beyond all other sacred books the Bible is pervaded and penetrated by what I may call the spirit of universality. When it begins there are no Jews; when it ends there are no Gentiles; for at the end the whole earth is as a rose in the garden of God. But I have a larger answer. I am already committed to the Jews by an infinite obligation. From the Jews I have accepted the Christ. “Salvation is of the Jews.” This acceptance determines everything. I am not ashamed to receive the Writing where I received the Life.

As to some of the biblical books being supposably less inspired than others, such as Esther, Daniel, Ecclesiastes, and Jonah, the case is not proved; but if proved, the issue would be of limited importance. In the matter of gradation, or degree, or other obscure variety, the construction of the Bible is most remarkable. In some cases the personality of the prophet goes for much, as Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel; in others, the prophet is lost in the prophecy. Who knows anything of Obadiah? Or Joel? Who knows precisely when Amos took up his work, except that it was two years before the earthquake? Of Amos and his junior Hosea we know some interesting particulars; but who knows anything of Micah, whose father’s name is unknown, and whose birthplace owes its fame to his own prophecy? Yet Micah spake of justice and mercy and the humble walk with God. The minor prophets had their share* of inspiration. Inspiration is not a mechanical term. The great and the small are the Lord’s. Daniel is not necessarily uninspired because his mysterious pages are apocalyptic rather than prophetic. Jonah represents an inspired conception of life and duty, however much we may be perplexed by its central difficulty. Inspiration touches the highest and lowest grades of faculty.

There is a common inspiration, as well as an inspiration that is unique. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.” The Church is entitled to claim this inspiration in reading the Bible. Some parts of the Bible are personal and local, and in that degree they may have been allowed to fall into desuetude. The site of “the valley of craftsmen” is of no importance to us. We do not deny the existence of a country because some of its mountain heights are inaccessible. Many of us are compelled to do with the Bible as we do with a country: some valleys are fruitful; some rocks are barren. My pastoral advice to inquirers is founded upon the example of Christ. When he was asked great questions he referred the inquirers to the law, the commandments, the prophets. This is what his ministers must do. He never referred to the difficulties of the Old Testament, but to its gospels. The valley of Megiddon may have been blotted out: the garden of Gethsemane is the road to Forgiveness.

The probability is that some practical notice will be taken of action that seems to go directly in the face of the generally understood doctrinal position of various evangelical communions. What turn the action may take it is impossible to foresee. Criticism need not degenerate into persecution. Of persecution, the whole Christian Church has had more than enough. Criticism of the most searching kind we should welcome on every side, but persecution — by which I mean public discredit and forfeiture of position and maintenance, together with nameless petty annoyances — we should regard not only as hateful but as impossible. On the other hand, the higher critics must not encourage the spirit of contempt in reference even to the oldest and slowest orthodoxy. Those who stand by it deserve the love and honor of all the servants of Christ. They have not been ignoble men. God has used them to great ends, and we should magnify God in all their holy devotion and labor. Besides, we must not suppose that all the learning is on the one side and all the ignorance on the other. Some well-instructed men reject many of the conclusions of the higher criticism, and others maintain an attitude of suspicion and reserve. For my own part, I do not hesitate to regret the spirit which has been shown by some young higher critics.

Where it has not been a spirit of direct insolence, it has been a spirit of studious non-appreciation of other men — it has left them unnamed; it has had no gracious word of recognition even for the oldest of them; it has cast upon them the unworthy sneer implied by such epithets as “thoughtless,” “careless,” “unthinking,” “baseless,” and “sleek.” That spirit was surely not “drenched in prayer,” nor was it imbibed in all-night communion with the Saviour. Our elder brethren may have been mistaken, but they certainly were not “thoughtless “; they may have been blinded, but they have been neither “unthinking” nor “sleek.” The higher criticism may be put before the churches in a lowly and tender spirit; then it will be anxiously and even sympathetically considered — or it may be put otherwise, and thus grieve many who may be living and serving in the love of God. The time has not yet come when we can realize the full results of the higher criticism, when unwisely handled, in the life of the churches. At present it is somewhat of a novelty. It has not yet settled down to its work amongst the masses. When it has done so, the result will be disastrous. One higher critic read in the pulpit a portion of

Scripture, and concluded thus: “Of course you know it is not true, but it will serve to illustrate my subject.” Another higher critic announced a course of week-evening addresses upon “Things in the Bible that are not true.” It is not surprising that many Christians are grieved and shocked by such wanton outrage upon decency and justice. It is an infinite wrong, and I, for one, indignantly denounce it. Such men are — so at least it seems to me — in their wrong places in pulpits that are even nominally evangelical. On the other hand, there are ministers who honestly avail themselves of certain results of the higher criticism in a spirit of reserve utterly destitute of blatancy and defiance. Between two such classes of critics the most vital distinction must be drawn. Wisely handled, the higher criticism may greatly help the education of the churches; unwisely handled, it may wreck their very existence.

The forces which are now antagonizing the Bible as it has been heretofore largely regarded, are the strongest that civilization can muster. Within the Church are the higher critics who have challenged the authorships, the dates, the chronologies, and many of the earlier moralities, and have turned not a few of the ancient leaders and examples into “eponymous heroes,” and some of whom have not hesitated to lower the Apostle Paul. Outside the Church are the agnostics, many of them men of the highest intellectual eminence, who attack the higher critics just as severely as the higher critics attack certain portions of the Bible, and “boldly challenge” them to prove the Supernatural and demonstrate the Divine. The greater havoc some of the higher critics make in the structural parts of the Bible the more vehemently they exalt the Supernatural, but their worship of the Supernatural is mocked by the agnostics as an infatuated superstition — and the agnostics have no reason to be ashamed of the intellectual force and dignity ranged on their side. Even agnostics have passed through universities, and, having done so, they smile at the idea of Revelation and Worship. They have won all along the line of the higher criticism; who can say that they will not further push their triumphs until they beat down and quench every shrine and altar and upper light? They have no reason to be disheartened. In documentary religion they have wrought great havoc; why may they not work equal havoc in spiritual religion? To smile at the suggestion is not to answer it. Once men smiled at the attacks made upon the mechanical and verbal Bible, but the attacks are no longer regarded as futile or abortive. The pedants cannot help us, but the People can — they represent the great common heart of the world, and it is to that heart the Christ has always appealed. My hope is in the common heart with all its sin and sorrow, its pain and need, its tragedy and self-despair; in that shattered, grief-stricken heart — in that mean Bethlehem — the Child-Saviour will be born age by age while time endures. The Incarnation stands between the natural and the supernatural and lays its wounded hands upon both. It is the hope of the world. It is the Infinite Salvation. But how can war be waged with success against the ever-gathering and overpowering forces of criticism, agnosticism, unbelief, and moral aversion? Modern culture, narrowly interpreted, has not greatly aided the war; nor has Science as represented by her highest English names; — there is only one hope, and that hope is the Living Christ working amongst the common people. We must get back to Bethlehem, back to Galilee, back to Calvary. We must take Christ’s standpoint in everything: even in relation to Moses and the prophets, and the Psalms, and “all the Scriptures.” Literal errors have no doubt crept into manuscripts, translations, and versions; this has been frankly admitted by the most competent orthodox critics, yet I venture to think that such critics are right when they counsel a policy of caution and patience, as against a policy of Critical Young-Englandism which may occasionally disguise its cruelty under an ambiguous civility, and which may now and then be tempted to mistake its self-complacency as the newest vehicle of inspiration.

Writing solely from a preacher’s standpoint, I have no doubt that the common people do with the Bible as to its structural framework exactly what they do with its most mysterious teaching — they wisely leave it until they are better fitted to grapple with the difficulty. Whoever really enters into the spiritual church enters it by what may be called the gate of Mystery. It must not be imagined that the medianical or strictly literal part of the Bible is either the only difficulty or the greatest difficulty. Probably it is the least, and the least to be accounted of, notwithstanding the excitement of the higher critics. I have never known any one unite livingly and sympathetically with the Christian congregation on the ground that he intellectually comprehended the orthodox conception of the constitution of the Godhead. As a pastor I have thought it wise to encourage the soul to feed upon the Saviour, and to leave all difficulties, literal and metaphysical, for deferred consideration and adjustment. Nor is this an official advice adopted to meet a theological necessity. It is the approved policy of all life and progress — without it, life would come to a dead stop. I do not know how much, if anything, Christ owes to those who come to his cross along the critical, the academic, or the purely intellectual line. I will not judge, lest I wrong a rationalism in which I have no faith. May not literal errors be removed? Certainly; but do not magnify their importance. Is it not desirable to have absolutely accurate history? Certainly; but not nearly so literally important as some persons would make it out to be. The real history may be in the central line, and not in the local placing and shading. We may need a new way of reading history. For my own part, I can read the Bible without being troubled by any consciousness of discrepancy, or any deficiency in the dating and signing of the several books. Perhaps some day a word, one little word, may explain much. I am willing to wait. I have enough for the present. I have all Eternity to work in. But ought not scholars to be encouraged to prosecute their critical studies? Certainly; and they ought to be encouraged to refrain from publication until they have something better to offer than “merely a series of tentative suggestions.” It might be useful for them to issue a one-sentence report to the effect that they were steadily at work, and that, until they had definite conclusions to announce, the Church would do well to keep on reading the Bible. — I believe the Church will do this, whatever bulletins may be issued from the mines of criticism.

Such is my personal testimony. If one ungracious word has escaped me I have done myself grievous i injustice, for I love and honor the brethren whose views I am least able to adopt. They have taken their course and I have taken mine, and in all instances the action has been taken under a solemn sense of responsibility to the adorable Head of the Church. He will judge us all, and in his mercy he will save the weakest, and spare even the bruised reed that he may breathe more music through it. If here or there a word with too keen an edge has found its way into this book, may God forgive it and destroy its unhappy influence, for Christ’s men should be stronger in love than in any other quality. I am not able so to divide the Bible into human and divine, natural and supernatural, as to impair in any degree its absolute authority in doctrine and morals. To me it was not so much the writer who was inspired as the man — Moses or Ezra, Isaiah or Paul. The man’s personality was a greater miracle than his inspiration. Consider when he wrote, what he wrote, and consider the influence which still flows from his writings, and then — account for him! Do not be so modern as to be a critic; be so ancient as to be a contemporary, then — account for him! Do not get at this man through a foreign grammar and an artificial concordance, but through sympathy, assimilation, and spiritual kinship, then — account for him! To understand the building you should commune with the architect. A word from him might fill his cathedral with light. In the Bible we have to deal with inspired manhood as certainly as with inspired literature, with character more than with ability, with holiness rather than with office. The grammarian, as such, will never understand the prophet. The lexicon will never explain the Bible. That Book of books — that Poem which absorbs all poetry — can only be understood in one way, and that is by our daily walking and conscious fellowship with God the Holy Ghost.