Part 8 (1/2)

The whole history of Israel is a growth of The Christ, and that is the abiding wonder of it.

In such a mystic evolution it may well be, in history as in nature, that the organic processes type the oncoming form of life; but to trace these rightly there is needed a finer criticism than that which has given us the orthodox typology.[29]

Let us pause here for to-day. And let us take home, as the heart-thought of the morning, an a.s.surance which may comfort us as we stand under the shadow of Christmas. If the dear Christ's throne stood on any such flimsy basis of prophecy as men have built up beneath it, then, when the underpinnings came tumbling out, as to-day they are doing, we might fear that His authority was dropping in with them; that no longer we were to call Him Master and King; that criticism had p.r.o.nounced His _decheance_.

But His throne really rests on a nation's growth of the human Ideal and Divine Image. And, since this nation's growth was on the same general lines as the religious and ethical progress of other races, His throne rests on no less secure a foundation than humanity's evolution of the human Ideal and Divine Image. Man's best and n.o.blest life aspires after an ideal which is the Christly character. Man's best and n.o.blest thoughts of G.o.d fas.h.i.+on a vision which is the G.o.d revealed in Christ. He is Humanity's ”Master of Life.”

IV.

The wrong use of the Bible

”The Scriptures will be more studied than they have been, and in a different manner--not as a magazine of propositions and mere dialectic ent.i.ties, but as inspirations and poetic forms of life; requiring, also, divine inbreathings and exaltations in us, that we may ascend into their meaning. No false _precision,_ which the nature and conditions of spiritual truth forbid, will, by cutting up the body of truth into definite and dead morsels, throw us into states of excision and division, equally manifold. We shall receive the truth of G.o.d in a more organic and organific manner, as being itself an essentially vital power.”

Horace Bushnell. G.o.d in Christ; p. 93.

”But, further, the zealots for the Bible _as it is_, just because it _is_, forget that, in their outcry in behalf of every existing book, and paragraph, and sentence, and word in the present edition of it, as 'G.o.d's Word written,' they are simply begging the question, What _is_ 'G.o.d's Word written'? What _is_, without any doubt, a genuine portion of those writings which contain the message from G.o.d? The question is, in no case, 'Will you part with any utterance of G.o.d's voice, whether through apostle or evangelist?' but only, 'Is this particular word, or sentence, or pa.s.sage, truly such an utterance? Have we good grounds for accepting it as such? Nay, have we not overwhelming grounds for doubting it to be such?' We do right to hold fast 'the faith once delivered to the saints,' but the more we are determined to be faithful to this faith, just the more sedulous and more searching must be our inquiry, Have we here this faith in its integrity?”

Thomas Griffith, late Prebendary of St. Paul's, London: The Gospel of the Divine Life, p. 418.

IV.

The wrong use of the Bible.

”Every Scripture inspired of G.o.d is also profitable for teaching, for reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of G.o.d may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”--2 Tim. iii; 16-17.

”Use the world as not abusing it” was a great principle of the Apostle, which has many special applications. One of these comes again before us to-day: Use the Bible as not abusing it.

I proceed to point out some further wrong uses of the Bible:

I.

_It is a wrong use of the Bible to go to it as an authority in any sphere save the spheres of theology and of religion._

In the traditional view it was an infallible authority upon every subject of which it treated.

The Divine Being had prepared a book which answered off-hand the questions man's mind naturally starts concerning the problems of existence; a book which taught officially how the earth came into its present form, how life arose upon it, how man was made, how sin entered, how the world was peopled, how mankind was to fare upon the earth, how the present order was to come to an end, and many things beside. To answer authoritatively these questions was the _raison d'etre_ of the Bible. It laid a solid foundation for a science of life. With the pa.s.sing away of the unreal Bible all reference to it for such information should cease. These books, as actual human writings, the studies of men of long past centuries, of men having no guarantees of infallibility, cannot be expected to have antic.i.p.ated the solution of the great problems of knowledge, towards which the human intellect has been laboriously working through the generations since they were written; towards which it is still toilsomely striving, content, even now, with the cold, grey light as of the dawning day.

Our truer idea of revelation--the evolution of nature and the historic growth of man--forbids such a notion of any book. It has plainly pleased the Most High that knowledge of these mysteries should come to man through his patient, persevering effort after truth. Such continued endeavour wins gradually better knowledge, and with it better life. This process of human discovery is yet more truly a process of the Divine self-revealing. In each and every real knowledge man is learning to know--G.o.d. Each truth of science is a manifestation of somewhat in the Infinite Power in whom we live and move and have our being. Had it pleased G.o.d to have given, centuries ago, a super-natural answer to these problems of earth, He would simply have dismissed His children from school, with-held from them that n.o.ble education which lies in the discipline of study, and, while giving them truth, have robbed them of that keenest joy of life, that benediction richer even than the possession of truth--the search for it.