Notes and Comments

O Thou living One, tender
and strong beyond all thoughts of
mine, I feel great need of Thee just
now. I am about to differ from
men who serve Thee night and
day, and whose love and zeal put
my poor work to shame. May my
words be well chosen lest they
should wantonly offend those who
love Thee with entireness of heart.
May I mock the argument without
mocking the man. Spirit of the
gentle Christ, make me gentle!
Spirit of truth, make me sincere!

ANY books now in circulation are, perhaps unduly, and certainly without intention, troubling people who have been zealously, and some think ignorantly, holding on to the old form of truth without question and without doubt. I am far from sure

that such people should read the kind of books I M refer to, and quite as far from sure that such books should be offered for public sale. To experts they may be useful: to others they may do much temporary harm. For example, Mr. Morton says in his preface to “Revelation and the Bible “: “This book pretends to be nothing more than a series of tentative suggestions.” Then was it wise to offer it for miscellaneous sale? An author cannot limit his responsibility in this way. His own intention may be perfect, and in a large degree may be defensible, but after publication he is only one party in the case. What does the Church, taken as a whole, young and old, trained and untrained, want with “a series of tentative suggestions”? Is not this an unsatisfactory kind of “reconstruction “? Who can have any sense of safety in living in a house which is “nothing more than a series of tentative suggestions “? Who would care to travel by a time-table that is “nothing more than a series of tentative suggestions”? Such suggestions offered to experts or specialists may be useful; can they do any real good to the rank and file of the Christian Church? The title-page offers “an attempt at reconstruction”: the preface promises “nothing more than a series of tentative Stfggestions.” I cannot accept that estimate of the book. In parts it seems to me to be anything but tentative — it appears, in fact, to be definite, even dogmatic, and here and there to be almost contemptuous in its view of an elder school. After reading Mr. Horton’s book what will the ordinary Christian reader have in place of the old Bible? Mr. Horton himself says he will have “nothing more than a series of tentative suggestions.” Is the exchange worth making? Or does the author mean that the “tentative suggestions” refer only to points of criticism and history? If so, is it not a book for experts only? And if for experts only, was it wise to send it broadcast over the whole Church? The author designates the view which he opposes, with undoubted sincerity and often with most pathetic eloquence, “the unproved assumptions of the orthodox tradition,” and his own view he describes as “nothing more than a series of tentative suggestions.” What is the exact difference between “unproved” and “tentative”? And what is a man profited if he exchange “assumptions” for “suggestions “? If “tentative,” what is the length of the lease? And when the lease is held by two holders, which of them has the sole right

NOTES AND COMMENTS. 6j

to give it up? These inquiries become important when it is considered that the subjects affect spiritual education. We are “reconstructing” the Bible: we are not editing a private letter. On the title-page of “Verbum Dei” Mr. Horton quotes a sentence from Hermann Schultz to the effect that a living religion has prophets, and a dead or unknown religion has only writings or documents. Thus distinguished names are not always associated with very original remarks. When Mr. Horton offers “nothing more than a series of tentative suggestions,” I recall a sentence from a still more distinguished German, even from Goethe himself, who says: “If a man sets out to write a book, let him put down only what he knows — I have guesses enough of my own.”

Some of Mr. Horton’s epithets in “Verbum Dei” were perhaps hastily chosen. They are not like himself in tone. As applied to men who take what is called the old view I cannot commend them. Here are specimens: careless (p. 103), thoughtless (p. 104), loose and careless (p. 106), sleek (p. 106), unthinking (p. 107), baseless (p. 107), inexact and inappropriate (p. 113)- I should have thought that the author would have looked upon “sleek” as ecclesiastical slang and would have avoided it, for no man can be daintier than he in his use of words. The point is principally important as indicating a spirit. The spirit of contempt is not the spirit of scholarship. Nor is it the spirit of reconstructive criticism. Nor is it the spirit of Christ. In his preface Mr. Horton prays “that this little volume may come to his brothers in the ministry with a genuine message from God.” Which brothers? The “careless,” “thoughtless,” “sleek,” “unthinking,” and “inexact”? Then will his circulation be large or small? We must not think men “sleek” because they differ from us. A man may take even Mr. Horton’s view and yet not be “careless.” We should give each other credit for good faith all around.

Mr. Horton states this view:

“If the teacher is ignorant of God’s more recent
utterances the world will
not unnaturally suppose
that his authority on the
more ancient utterances
is open to question.”

But that is exactly what the world says about the Bible! Men say quite freely, If the Bible is wrong in facts, what guarantee have we that it is right in morals? If we answer, The Bible treats of morals and not of facts, the retort is that we are begging the question; we are undertaking to support a post hoc; we are special pleaders. But is Mr. Horton prepared to have his rule, if I may so call it, applied to himself? Let us see. The very first sentence in “Verbum Dei” opens thus:

“When the invitation
came to me to cross the
Atlantic and deliver the
Lyman Abbott Lecture on
Preaching,” etc.

But no such invitation ever came to him, ever could come to him! There is no Lyman Abbott Lecture on Preaching! Here is a man describing other men as <l careless,” “thoughtless,” “unthinking,” and “inexact,” and yet the ‘first sentence in the very book which contains these epithets is itself a misstatement of fact! If we are at liberty to say that a man who cannot state a fact cannot state a doctrine, or that a man who does not know the modern cannot speak authoritatively upon the ancient, what shall we do with a book which begins with a mistake? And not a mistake about some other man, but a mistake about the author himself! He writes the mistake, prints the mistake in italics, dates the mistake, and signs the mistake, and hopes that the book which opens with the mistake will come to his brothers in the ministry with a genuine message from God! The mistake is made the more glaring by the author describing other men and their views as careless, thoughtless, loose, unthinking, baseless, inexact * and inappropriate! The mistake may have been corrected in other editions, but that is not the point. If Mr. Horton had died, as Ezra did, the mistake would never have been corrected by his own hand. We do not allow Ezra to publish a second edition, revised, corrected, amended, and annotated! This instance, probably of a mere slip of the pen or a momentary lapse of memory, must not be brought up against the whole line of a man’s ministry, or what ministry could stand? At the same time it is a striking illustration of the possibility that in the act of stating a simple matter of personal history, meant to be absolutely literal and real, a man may commit an almost incredible mistake. We should be careful how we call other men “inexact.” “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

I knew a minister who made an idol of Accuracy, who had to be drawn out of many a pit even on the Sabbath day.

In “Verbum Dei” (p. 46) the author says:

“... It would be misleading indeed if we were to argue from the conversation between Abraham and the Lord concerning the destruction of Sodom that we to-day may expect to hold a conversation in that form.”

Why? What is to render it impossible? If it ever did occur, why may it not occur again? But why trouble about Abraham when the Higher criticism has proved that there never was such a person? Abraham was a tribe or an ideal; anything but a literal or historical individual. The Higher criticism tells a man that he may as certainly commune with

God as Abraham ever did, and when he accepts the comforting doctrine he is told by the same criticism that no such man as Abraham ever lived! That Abraham was an eponymous hero! Only eighteen pages further on (p. 64) the author says: “The word of the Lord comes to men to-day just as it came to the prophets of Israel.” Then why need the particular “form” be any difficulty in the Lord’s way? Has the Lord discontinued the form of dialogue? Is it all mythical? I claim that there are circumstances under which a myth may be the only possible fact. I further claim that even a myth may be a divine instrument, and a Vision itself may be an Incarnation. We must not think that even if the four Gospels are mythical we have got rid of them. Possibly the literal is only the pedestal on which the ideal must stand. What if men themselves be only masks or myths or visions or shadows, or modes of consciousness, awaiting revelation and the heavenly house? We talk sometimes of the Bible writers as if they were original authors, or as if they had a consciousness apart from their subject. I find no present difficulty in taking a different view of the matter. From my standpoint the man himself —

Abraham or Jeremiah, Ezra or Paul — is a revelation, perhaps he himself is the revelation! We seem to argue, not always by intention, that man is quite an independent actor and that he works out his own will in his own way. Not from my point of view. I believe that God may turn mistakes into channels of revelation. I believe that God may inspire a man to make literary mistakes, that by so doing man may learn his proper place and starve his pride by eating the dust of humiliation. How much does every wiseman owe even to his blunders! How much does civilization owe to the hard soil and blunt tools! I do not expect my meaning to be universally perceived. I am endeavoring to show that man does not always know what he is doing; that God may turn man’s wrath to his own praise and may restrain the remainder; yea, that God may cause our mistakes, our infirmities, our vanities, and our lapses to fall out to the furtherance of the gospel. Never let ereignty be modified. Never let sovereignty slip from the divine grasp. It brings us face to face with appalling mysteries; yet otherwise we should be plunged into despair. I cannot now reconcile much that I see around me with the exercise of divine sovereignty, yet that sovereignty is my one hope of ultimate illumination and harmony.

Mr. Horton says (p. 150), “The Bible begins with a Poem of Creation.” Who told him so? All writers have not taken this view. Which of them, if any, has the right to decide, in a way which quietly ignores all the others, what it is? Even histories, as we all know, may be written in poetry. What if the Bible itself is a Poem from beginning to end? What if the poet alone can understand it? Not the rhymester, but the poet, the man whose heart-eyes are wide open? And what if the men who know all about syntax and Chaldean cosmogony and the clay tablets of Assurbanipal be the only men who can never understand the Bible? It would be quite in harmony with much that we know of Providence if God were to do without them and send meaner men upon his errands. It is wonderful how much good God has done through ignorant men, blundering, ungrammatical, unphilosophical men, and wonderful how he has now and then touched some poor hearts even by “Mesopotamia.” Collecting, as far as I can, the records of great preachers, evangelists, and missionaries, I have been astounded how much good has been done by earnest men who probably never heard of the clay tablets of Assurbanipal; and quite as astounding has it been to me to find so little set down to the credit of the men who discovered the tablets, and deciphered their meaning. Far from having any prejudice against such men, I heartily wish them long life and great joy in Babylon. I am thankful that some men are so constituted that they could not be happy without clay tablets. I think the world owes a good deal to them, yet I am by no means sure that they know anything about Revelation. They may, however, know a good deal about it, but their spiritual knowledge is not the result of their Assyriology.

One of my difficulties with present-day biblical criticism is that in many cases the critics are theoretically on one side and practically on the other. They repudiate the idea that the Bible is the Word of God, and yet in other sentences they are willing that it should be substantial]y- regarded as such. Mr. Horton says (” Verbum Dei,” p. 104): “I say there is no foundation in the Bible itself for the common practice of speaking of it as the Word of God.” But Mr. Horton says in “Revelation and the Bible,” p. 12: “On the whole, it is perhaps safest to cling, at least provisionally, to the idea that all Revelation is really the revealing of God.” Before this, on p. io, he says: “They, too, are not far wrong who speak of the Bible as the Book of God, though of course it is a term foreign to the Bible itself.” And yet in “Inspiration and the Bible” (preface, p. 10) he says: “I hardly know an argument waged at the present day on the Secularist platforms which does not derive all its cogency frrom the false impression which we have ourselves given about the nature and claim of the Bible.” He describes those who say that the Bible is the Word of God as careless, thoughtless, unthinking, loose, and inexact, and then he says they are not far wrong who speak of the Bible as the Book of God. If this title is “foreign to the Bible,” why use it? I do not understand the position. The mischief is that there is great danger of forming some sort of double conscience. I do not say that this danger besets other minds; I only say that in my own case the danger would be extreme. A striking instance of what I mean by the dual method, or the method of apparently being on both sides, is given in u Verb um Dei “:

“The unthinking dogma of orthodoxy that the Bible as such is the Word of God,” etc., p. 107.

“The Bible itself is in
so unique and peculiar a
sense the Word of God,”
etc., p. 155.

The ground would be much clearer if the followers of modern criticism could say: Here is a very old book called the Bible: in every sense it is a most remarkable book: it abounds in narratives, allegories, visions, misstatement, self-contradictory stories, beautiful reflections, brilliant prophecies, and splendid conceptions: who wrote it, when it was written, for what purpose it was written, are points upon which opinion is strongly divided; still it is a wonderful book, and we think it may, if read in the spirit of present-day inspiration, be used with great advantage in the spiritual training of the soul. It seems to me that this is substantially what modern criticism comes to. It is the position of rationalism. That rationalism is certainly neither flippant nor profane, nor is it inconsistent with a reverent theory of present-day inspiration.

Mr. Horton zealously maintains his faith in revelation. Upon that point he is definite and in a manner passionate. Yet every single book in the canon is wrong in some point or feature; in some instances palpably and ridiculously wrong; not a single book as orthodoxy has immemorially accepted it is left without some degree of challenge; dates are wrong; chronology is wrong; genealogies are wrong; authorships are wrong; grammar is wrong: quotation is wrong; and yet the Bible contains a revelation. Mr. Horton’s estimate of the Apostle Paul would once have been accounted scandalous. Even now, in face of all changes, I find it impossible to accept it A few quotations will make my meaning clear:

“To suppose that there
is any Divine revelation in
the command to bring the
cloke, and the book, and
especially the parchments
... is a rednctio ad
absurdum” etc.

I cannot at this moment see any absurdity in the claim. Providence is manifold. There is a revelation of providence as well as of redemption. I want to see God in little things as well as in great. I want God to reveal himself through apostolic necessity and the by-ways and conditions of apostolic life. I really do not see the absurdity, and therefore I cannot join in the somber mirth.

“When we turn from
the mere human elements
in St. Paul’s writings,”

I “boldly challenge” Mr. Horton to point out where the Apostle Paul calls himself “St. Paul.” Where does he “claim” to be St. Paul?

“to his actual mistakes,”
etc.

This is definite. Now we wait for examples, and

Mr. Horton responds:

“No one, for example,
can study carefully the
use which he makes of
the Old Testament without observing the inexactness of his quotations and
the interpretation, often
quite unjustified by the
original context, which he
puts upon the venerable
words.”

I protest against the large and easy assumptions. Paul I know, but some of his critics I do not know. According to this criticism Paul quotes inexactly and interprets unjustifiably. Then at what points is he to be trusted? Mr. Horton would answer: Come to Christ; receive his Spirit and you will know. But have not our old teachers come to Christ? Have they not received the Holy Ghost? Have they been teaching us in darkness? Has the true light been withheld until to-day? Again:

“To quote him (Paul)
as an exegete of the
ancient Scriptures would
be obviously absurd.”

Why obviously? Why prefer Mr. Horton to the Apostle Paul, “an Hebrew of the Hebrews “? I do not say that he is not preferable, I only ask for some reason for establishing the preference. In other qualifications Mr. Horton would decline rivalry; why challenge it on the ground of correctly interpreting the ancient Scriptures? Take another instance:

“But the most striking

of the mistakes into which
the Apostle, owing to the
necessary limitations of
the most inspired teachers,
fell, was the conviction
that the Parousia, or second coming of the Lord,
was to be in that generation.”

And yet some well-instructed men have contended that the Parousia is an accomplished fact! They may be right or they may be wrong, yet that is their contention, and they have supported it with much learning and argument. The expression with which I am chiefly concerned is — “the most striking of the mistakes” of the Apostle; implying that the mistakes are not a few, but that at one point he excels himself in the misinterpretation of providence. The calm and easy manner in which Mr. Horton snubs the whole Bible — regarding it as a literary compend — will not convey to those who do not know him a proper impression of his genuine modesty. Even to those who do know him, and hold him in honor for his works’ sake, it must appear remarkable how he can traverse the whole field of biblical revelation, find fault with every writer, correct every writer’s blunders, misinterpretations, and general stupidity, snub the apostles, and tell the evangelists exactly where they go wrong, and dismiss them all as the very clumsiest clerks that ever dipped a pen, but who, on the whole, had a distinct and sublime revelation from God. Mr. Horton may be right. God has most certainly chosen many strange agents, and it may be only another of the mysteries of his providence that he corrects a ministry of blunders by a ministry of disclaimed infallibility. The issue of such a course is the practical abolition of the Bible. To this it must come. The proof we can only find in the coming and going of years. I do not look upon the Apostle Paul as a man who had a kind of mantle of inspiration which he put on and off as occasion required or suggested. I regard him as an inspired MAN; a man who walked not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; he lived and moved and had his being in God; he was of the very body and spirit of the Lord; he fought one fight, kept one faith, served one cross; his soul was steeped in God; in his speech there were no “mere obiter dicta “; in his correspondence there was no mere, ornament; the man was crucified with Christ; for him to live was Christ; he counted all things loss for Christ — this is hardly the man whom we care to see charged with “inexact” quotation, “unjustifiable” comment, “irrelevant” application, and glaring “mistakes.” I grieve to say that these epithets and terms are applied by Mr. Horton to the Apostle. If it be asked, Are not all Christians inspired men? I answer, Yes, as to character, as to holiness; but as to gifts and trusts and leaderships I answer, No.

In “Faith and Criticism,” p. 9, Professor Bennett, who has won a very high reputation as a professor of Old Testament literature and criticism, and who is intensely evangelical in his love of Christ and his belief in the spiritual uses of the Bible, says: “The early Fathers took over from the Rabbis a collection of baseless theories”; but what is the precise critical difference between “a collection of baseless theories “and “a series of tentative suggestions’1? I cannot exactly appraise the difference. The Professor says (p. 20): “We are getting accustomed to hear without any special emotion that in Ruth, Daniel, and Esther a beautiful and instructive fabric has been reared upon a slender historical basis.” Is this argument? Is the cessation or abatement of emotion a proof? If so, we must not forget that it painfully applies to the hearing of the gospel itself. But it is not proof; it is not intended as an argument, and in many honorable instances it is not a fact. On p. 26 the Professor says: “The books from Genesis to Chronicles are not so much histories as homilies with a profusion of historical illustration.” This would seem to make the matter worse and worse. If the text is false, what can the homily be? If the historical illustration is not reliable, how can any intelligent trust be put in the homily? Suppose a sermon or homily should be preached upon the earthquake which occurred in Italy in 1587; suppose the homily should be rich and pathetic in doctrine and illustration; suppose it should have deeply impressed generations of men in many lands; and suppose that no such earthquake ever occurred in the history of Italy; I fancy that if the preacher offered to preach a homily upon the great Mexican catastrophe which occurred the year after the earthquake in Italy, he would find his “occupation gone.” Men find it as difficult to accept a true sermon from a false text as to discover a straight line in a corkscrew. It will show in part what the Old Testament is coming to if we take another sentence from Professor Bennett’s essay, p. 31: “No doubt much that is most characteristic and valuable in Christian thought is found in germ and suggestion in the Jewish Scriptures.” I must very earnestly protest against this particular form of putting the case if the New Testament is supposed to represent Christian thought. If the New Testament is not included, I do not see why the remark was made; if it was included, I do not see how it could have been made. The Professor bewilders me by the very next sentence in his essay: “Hut, through failing to exercise his imagination, the Christian reader often sees a dense forest where there were actually only a few scattered saplings.” I think the imagination must have been very vigorously exercised if three or four saplings were multiplied into Bashan or Lebanon. If a man told me that he had seen Mount Sinai when he had only seen a grindstone, the word “imagination” would instantly occur to me.

The former difficulty, that of a kind of dual position — I would say see-saw position but for fear of being misunderstood — occurs in the case of Professor Bennett. He says (p. 20) that though we are getting accustomed to hear certain things about Ruth, Daniel, and Esther, it would be a very different thing, in the estimation of the Christian public, if Abraham and the patriarchs were called in question. We may infer, then, that Abraham and the patriarchs are quite secure, at least in the estimation of “the Christian public,” and inferentially in Professor Bennett’s. But on p. 22 the Professor says: “The earliest history of the patriarchs is separated by many centuries from the patriarchs themselves.” That puts one nail in their coffin. Still, Abraham remains. Not a hair of his head must be touched. It is something for the Christian public to have retained Abraham. But have we retained him? On the very same page (22) Mr. Bennett says: “Documents of the early monarchy can only shed a dim and uncertain light on the time of Abraham.” How do we know, then, that we are quite sure of Abraham? Does he suffer from the “dim and uncertain light” which settles on his time? Some critics (p. 23) have set forth Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Twelve Patriarchs as personifications and representatives of Israel in the various phases of its early history; they are accounted, Professor Bennett says, “not as historical persons” but “eponymous heroes.” So far, therefore, as these particular critics are concerned, even Abraham is not made of much account. Presently we may get accustomed even to his disappearance. Professor Bennett says, however (p. 23), “There are weighty arguments to be waged on the other side.” One of these weighty arguments is the assurance of “a distinguished critic” (anonymous) “that when we come to Abraham a true historical instinct tells us that we are dealing with the authentic record of a real historical person.” But what about the “some” who made Abraham eponymous? Was the “true historical instinct” not available to them? And, after all, what is this “true historical instinct “? Who has it? Who keeps it? Who dispenses it? This “historical instinct” operates within some sort of circle. This is how Professor Bennett puts it on p. 24: “The verdict of the historical instinct in favor of Abraham is only conclusive to those whose instincts give the decision.” This is fatal. Abraham is turned over to the “historical instinct.” If you have the instinct you have Abraham, but in the absence of the instinct Abraham is “as good as dead.” I am not sure whether this is Professor Bennett’s own opinion. His words are not quite clear to my mind. At this point he distinctly refers to “the Christian public,” and perhaps he does not, for the nonce, include the critics, regarding them rather in their professional capacity, and especially regarding them as in advance of “the Christian public,” and gradually breaking the surprise with which that public may one day hear that a personal and historical Abraham never existed; that, in fact, he was simply an eponymous hero! Professor Bennett thinks “a general consensus of opinion on the subject, or the agreement of a large majority of historical experts, might enable us to establish the historicity of the narratives on internal evidence alone.” But what is the good of telling us of what would happen if we had what is not in existence? But is it not in existence? I have only Professor Bennett’s authority to rest upon. This is his sentence: “But no such consensus or agreement exists” (p. 24). Then where is Abraham? Then what is the position of the Church in relation to the polemical skeptic on the one hand and the devout inquirer on the other? Professor Bennett’s answer

makes me sad. I give it in his own disheartening words: “The Church must be prepared to find that it cannot at present give an obviously conclusive answer to the polemical skeptic, and even that it cannot always on intellectual ground remove the difficulties felt by devout and earnest inquirers “(p. 24). That is an unhappy position. It is, also, a position which involves a good deal more than is expressed within the limits of its own terms. If neither the polemical skeptic nor the earnest inquirer can be satisfied on this point, how many other points would be included within the same inability? Is Professor Bennett, then, prepared to let the” historicity “of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Twelve Patriarchs go? He is not. He has two sources of encouragement, and I deeply regret that I am unable to avail myself of them. The student has a “sense of the vivid realism of the history of the patriarchs”: that is the first source of encouragement, and the second is the student’s “hopes as to the possibilities of future excavations.” The second is a poor foundation to rest upon. What if the excavations should turn out the other way? Then what will become of the personal Abraham and the patriarchs? But is there any possibility of the excavations playing us false? This is Professor Bennett’s dubious answer: “We are also encouraged to hope for very much from the inscriptions, though the specimens of apologetic evidence already offered from those sources are not encouraging “(p. 23). This would be disquieting enough, but it becomes something like intellectual torment when we read on the very next page,” Critics can scarcely discount for ready money the possibilities of archaeological investigation.” Where, then, is Abraham, about whose security we thought there was no doubt? Professor Bennett says (p. 25): “The Church will not venture to interpose between the sinner and his Saviour the necessity of arriving at a correct conclusion on the existence of Abraham.” Yet Christ made more of Abraham than of any other character in the Old Testament. He names him more frequently and dwells upon him with more appreciation, and appeals persistently to him in contending with the unbelieving Jews. On p. 29 Professor Bennett seems to join the “some” of p. 25 who look upon Abraham and others as representations and ideals rather than historical individuals. I quote the Professor’s own words: “The importance of Abraham and Daniel does not lie in their being unique personages, but in their representing Hebrew ideals, the highest life of Israel.” So Abraham, about whom the Christian public might feel so sure, concerning whom “a distinguished critic “said,” A true historical instinct tells us that we are dealing with the authentic record of a real historical personage,” now becomes an ideal of the highest life of Israel! His very existence is put negatively by Professor Bennett, who says on pp. 23, 24: <( No one will maintain that the existence of Abraham has been disproved, or that the narratives of the patriarchs have no foundation in real history “! Surely Abraham is fast disappearing! Yet Professor Bennett has a singular comfort for us even here; for on p. 29 he says: “If a haze of uncertainty dims the features of Abraham, we see more clearly the simple facts ... of his children.” An ideal man has real children! A non-historical personage has a large historical family! Now read a little in the light of the “Hebrew ideal” theory:

And an eponymous hero was four
score and six years old when Hagar
bare Ishmael to the Hebrew ideal.
And when an eponymous hero was
ninety years old the Lord appeared
to him, and the eponymous hero
fell on his face, and Jehovah talked
with the Hebrew ideal.... The
eponymous hero fell on his face,
and laughed;... and the eponymous hero was circumcised in the
flesh of his foreskin;... and the
Hebrew ideal sat in the tent door
in the heat of the day;... and the
eponymous hero gat up early in the
morning;... and the eponymous
hero said of Sarah his wife, She is
my sister.

For my own part, I cannot follow this reasoning, nor can I believe that it will ever do any spiritual and lasting good. I will go farther and express a wonder whether an ancient document for which no inspiration had been claimed would have been treated in this manner. Are not the critics simply making out a case? Is not their action ex post facto? Are not the critics groping about for some kind of inspiration of which they cannot see any adequate evidence? Why do they not take up a rationalistic position and lecture upon Abraham as they would lecture upon Hector or Ulysses? This painful endeavor to find inspiration, without finding it, would, were the case my own, put my conscience in serious peril. Personally, I should prefer to treat the Old Testament as a very wonderful record which supplied many points of interest upon which a religious mind might profitably meditate. For the present at least I am thankful to be able to take up a very different position. I accept the Old Testament as inspired, notwithstanding any flaws in the human workmanship. ‘To me it is a revelation of God and his Sovereignty, of the Father and his Providence, of the Creator and his Dominion. It is infinitely majestic and solemn. Without God the Holy Ghost it never could have been written. In it I feel the breath and see the very finger of God. I am not dependent in any degree whatever, or for any purpose whatever, upon “tentative suggestions,” or “future excavations.”

I see more and more that earnest spiritual inquirers should not approach the Bible from the standpoint of experts. Men, regarded in the bulk, are not scholars and specialists. The reading of the Bible might in many cases be regulated as other reading is regulated. It might be useful to tell some people exactly where to begin. It may be that the historical books of the Bible should not be read until the very last. Why not begin with the Parables and the Beatitudes, and work backward? Enter the Bible by the Christ-gate. In this way we could in a sense reconstruct the canon without alarming conservative instincts. Let the Bible be put back again into its several parts, and let those parts be given out according to the age and circumstances of the reader. Give out the Parables as a first lesson; then the Christ Stories; then the history of the Crucifixion; then a selection of the Psalms; then some of the principal biographies. This would not only save many premature inquiries, it might prepare the mind to consider critical points and difficulties in a right spirit. It would certainly put these points in their proper place. It is undoubtedly difficult for some minds, inexperienced and untrained, to confront at once the problem of Creation, the history of the

Fall, and the intricacies of ancient and superseded ritual. There is no spiritual need to begin there. The infinite beauty of the gospel is that a beginning can be made at any point. Why not begin at the point nearest Jesus? What if the original text was meant to be read not only from right to left, but from last to first? What if the Origins should be an answer, not a puzzle? In some such way as this, always variable, I have come into the possession of my own steadfast faith in the Bible. I did not come into it by comparing Chaldean and Hebrew Cosmogony, or reading the clay tablets of Nineveh, or settling the parentage of Jotham, or adjusting the discrepancies as to the period between the birth of Arphacsad and the migration of Abram. These are questions for experts. They are to some minds deeply interesting questions. But I did not find them necessary to salvation. It is quite supposable that a man conscience-stricken on account of sin and directed to the Bible for guidance would impatiently put such questions aside, and almost instinctively find out the portions which bear immediately upon his own necessity. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him underig6 NONE LIKE IT.

standing.” My belief in the Divine Sovereignty enables me to recognize guidance even in the selection of passages of Scripture. I see also the possibility of a man so finding Christ, and so accepting the precious gospel of his love, that he would find no difficulty in describing the book to which he owed all his saving knowledge as none other than the Word of God. The title would seem to suit the contents. He would think of those parts of the Book which gave him life and light and pardon and hope. He would rest hard by the cross. He would make his soul glad with the words of Jesus. And if in the end he called the Book none other than the Word of God, I think he might be understood and forgiven.