Part 7 (1/2)
II.
_It is a wrong use of the Bible to accept its utterances indiscriminately as the words of G.o.d, to quote every saying of every speaker in its pages, or every deed of every actor in its histories as expressing to us the mind of G.o.d._
Such use of the Bible is thoughtlessly common. Some time ago before going into a church in whose service I was asked to partic.i.p.ate, I ventured to show some slight hesitancy in using certain Psalms which were set down in the Psalter for the day. When asked, why, I mildly answered that I could not request a Christian congregation to join with me in singing, after the embittered Jews in Babylon:
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem. How they said, ”Down with It! down with it! even to the ground.” Oh, daughter of Babylon, who art to be wasted, Happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that taketh thy little ones and throweth them against the stones.
Nor could I ask the people to unite in praying:
Make their n.o.bles like Oreb and Zeeb; yea, all their princes as Zeba and Salmana.
I had in mind the fate of Oreb and Zeeb and of Zeba and Salmana, splendidly brave fellows even in their death, as told in the seventh and eighth chapters of Judges, where you can learn what sort of prayer was this of those savage Jews. Naturally, as I thought, I objected to voicing such heathen imprecations in the nineteenth century of the era of the Prince of Peace. My good friend, with a look of amazement, replied, ”Why, these Psalms are in the Bible.” That ended the question for him.
This incident is typical of a vast quant.i.ty of wrong uses of the Bible.
Thus our American slaveholder read that 'precious' word of the ancient tradition, ”Cursed be Ham,” and smoothed his troubled conscience. He had the sanction of the Bible for the curse plainly upon Africa. He was fulfilling the Divine will in breeding black cattle for the auction block.
Piety and profit were one, and G.o.dliness had great gain, and some contentment also. Thus the extermination of the Canaanites, for which the Hebrews pleaded long after the Divine order, and for which they had substantial warrant in Destiny's determination to rid the land of these corrupting tribes and make room for the n.o.ble life Israel was to develop, has been the stock argument of kings and soldiers for their b.l.o.o.d.y trade.
Thus poor human consciences have been sorely hurt and troubled as men have read, in stories such as those of Jael and Sisera and Jacob and Esau, of acts which their better nature instinctively condemned. They have felt themselves arraigning the Bible and suspecting G.o.d.
If indeed the Bible is a book let down from the skies, of which G.o.d can be called the 'author,' then all such uses of it may be correct enough, and in those dark and savage words and deeds I may be obliged to find the words of G.o.d and the deeds He holds up to our admiration and imitation; though I do not see that such a use is a necessity, even on this theory.
Fancy a man quoting Shylock when he pleads for his bond, or Iago's devilish innuendos against Desdemona's purity, as showing what Shakespeare liked or what he would have us imitate! ”These are the words of Shakespeare!” Yes, but of Shakespeare's Shylock, Shakespeare's Iago.
If, however, the Old Testament is the national library of the Jews, I must expect to find all sorts of early Jewish notions, in ethics and religion, bodied in the words of the speakers they introduce, and the deeds of the men of whom they tell the tales.
If the Bible is the record of a real revelation which came in the spirits of ancient men, through the historic growth of conscience and reason; and if these books are the literature embalming that growth of a people out of ignorance and superst.i.tion into the light of pure ethics and spiritual religion; then I must look to find all sorts of crudities and cra.s.snesses in the representation of G.o.d, and all phases of unmoral and immoral life, as parts of the error and imperfection out of which they were educated.
These deeds and words are the milestones in the path of progress by which Judaism reached Christianity. If the individual is to reproduce the story of the race, as our wise men tell us, then these words and deeds are in the Bible to carry us through the same course of education; to exercise our consciences in discriminating right from wrong, and to lead us to grow out of such conceptions and desires toward the spirit of Christ. In a cruise last summer we dropped anchor in a lovely little out-of-the-way harbor of Buzzard's Bay, which proved to be near Poca.s.set; where, not long ago, a pious man, reading the Hebrew tradition of Abraham and Isaac, as a real command of the Most High, and having this word of the Lord borne in on his mind, as spoken to himself, murdered his child in sacrifice to G.o.d--no angel interfering to stay his knife. He simply made a _reductio ad absurdum_ of this use of the Bible.[27]
III.
_It is a wrong use of the Bible to accept everything recorded therein as necessarily true._
If the historians were simply the amanuenses of the Infinite Spirit, then of course they could not have erred in anything they recorded. If they were ordinary writers, trying to tell the story of their peoples' growth; searching court archives, state annals, old parchments of forgotten writers, consulting the traditions of town and village, using their material in the best way their abilities enabled them to do; using all to teach virtue and religion, for which alone they were specially qualified of G.o.d; then all questions of historical accuracy are beside the mark.
Nothing in their inspiration guarantees their historical accuracy; their philological learning in using ancient poetic language, or their critical judgment in detecting exaggerations. Are we to wait anxiously upon the latest a.s.syrian tablets or the freshest Egyptian mummy to confirm our faith that G.o.d has spoken to the spirit of man? Are we to quake in our shoes when a few ciphers are cut off from the roll of Israel's impossible armies? If much that we read as literal history turns out legend and myth, are we to find a painful alternative between a blind credulity and as blind a skepticism? We follow this same re-reading of Roman and Grecian story untroubled, and see the heroes of our childhood turn into races and sun-myths without calling the Muse of History a fraud.
Has it been such comfort to us to read the doings of Samson as actual history, slaying a thousand men with the jawbone of an a.s.s, tying fire-brands to the tails of three hundred foxes, etc., that we should resent the translation of this impossible hero into the Semitic Hercules, a solar myth? Or if, perchance, the historian accepted from remote antiquity the accounts of great deeds and striking events, as they were told at the camp fires of the Hebrew nomads, or in the merry makings of the Palestinian villages, with an ever growing nimbus of the marvelous gathering around them; and if thus impossible marvels are reported to us soberly, are we to be compelled to accept them uncritically or reject the Bible altogether? The Bible itself points us to the interpretation of such legends We have some histories written by the actors in the scenes narrated. Nehemiah and Ezra, leaders in the most important movement of Hebrew history after the migration led by Moses, left accounts of their work from their own pens. In such a crucial epoch as that of the restoration of the Jews to their native land, after the dispersion in Babylonia, we might expect to find miraculous interpositions on behalf of the chosen people, if they are to be found anywhere. But no tale of miracle adorns their simple pages. No other old Testament history, written by the actors in its scenes, tells of miracles. Such stories are found in the traditions written down long after the events narrated, by men who knew nothing of the facts at first hand. Exceptions to this rule occur alone in such startling events as the mysterious calamity that befell Sennacherib; which strongly impressed the imagination of the people and naturally gave rise to exaggerations that we can no longer resolve.
Perhaps Elisha's iron axe head did swim upon the water. I am prepared to believe almost anything after our spiritualistic mediums, and their exposers. Whether it did or did not concerns me no whit. I shrug my shoulders and read on. I cannot make out the historical fact which was at the basis of the Red Sea deliverance; nor do I care much to make out this or any other Old Testament miracle. If I felt obliged to accept literally these stories, or to lose my faith in the voice of G.o.d which speaks through the men of the Bible I should care greatly. In the true view of the Bible I am delivered from solicitude about these traditions, and am under no constraint of credulity. Those who can believe the story of Elisha and the bears, or of Elijah's ascension into heaven, may; those who cannot, need not; and both alike should reverently read their Bibles, not for these tales of wonder, but for the still small voice of the eternal spirit sounding through holy lives and holier aspirations, until He came whose life was the Word of G.o.d, the Wonderful.[28]
IV.
_It is a wrong use of the Bible to consult it as a heathen oracle for the determining of our judgments and the decision of our actions._