Chapter 7

The meaning of such a proverb is surely plain enough. Death's action is irrevocable. As it meets a man it leaves him. His plans and schemes lie as incapable of development as the fallen tree is incapable of new sproutings. At the time the book of Ecclesiastes was written, the belief in any life after death was little known in Israel. This book was the work of a thorough pessimist, whose constant refrain was--Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity. It gives no hint of a second life; and in the absence of this faith the present life is to the writer an insoluble problem. This saying really expressed the popular belief that death ended everything. A man falls like a tree, and, like a prostrate tree, as he falls he lies.

And lo! this Jewish proverb is the first proof-text generally quoted for the dread doctrine that after death there is another life, but that its character is fixed forever by the state of the man at death; the dogma of everlasting conscious suffering in Hell!

What Midsummer Night's Dream reasoning, turning common-sense topsy-turvy, and treating the words of God in the very reverse way from that in which all sane people agree to treat the words of man!

IV.

_It is a wrong use of the Bible to disregard the chronological order of its parts in constructing our theology._

We are not to read the Biblical writers as though they were all cotemporaries. They are separated by vast tracts of time. The later writers stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors and see further and clearer. We are not to view the institutions or doctrines of the Bible as though, no matter in what period of the development of the Hebrew Nation or of the Christian Church they are found, they were equally authoritative upon us. That would be to say that green apples are as good food for us as ripe ones. The time-perspective is essential to set any Biblical institution or dogma in the true light.

Romanists and our own Ritualists entrench their sacerdotalism behind the priestly system of the Jews. As though, because that was once needful and serviceable to an ignorant, half heathen people, it was still indispensible to us. As though what providence once ordained, providence perpetually imposed on humanity. Such a rule would keep us with our primers always in our hands. Progress is marked by the debris of discarded institutions, wholesome and necessary once, but incumbrances after a time. The whole _rationale_ of sacerdotalism is exploded by this simple common sense principle; and we see in its light the significance of Paul's impatient sweeping away of the Law; of the entire ignoring of the sacrifice and the priesthood in the life and teaching of Jesus himself.

"The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, Nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. God is spirit; And they that worship must worship him in spirit and in truth."

Dogmas also must be seen in historical perspective. Thus, for example, the doctrine of the Second Advent, which still exercises the Christian mind, is wholly cleared up as looked at through the time-vista.

We see the progress of the Messianic expectation through the centuries immediately prior to the age of Christ, in our old Testament books and in the Apocryphal writings. In these latter works we see it gradually gathering round itself visions of the winding up of the present aeon, the renovation of the earth, the judgment of the nations, the resurrection of the pious dead, and the opening of a millenial era in which the Messiah should rule the world from Jerusalem. It would appear to have even developed the notion that the Messiah, after his appearance on earth, would depart into the spirit-world, to consummate his preparation; and would return thence to assume full power. This had became the popular expectation by the Christian era.

When then the early Christians became satisfied that Jesus was the Messiah, it followed of necessity that they should after his death, say to themselves--"He has gone into the heavens to receive his institution into the office he has won by his sinless life and suffering death. He will come again in the clouds with power; the conquering Messiah."

This belief seems to have taken shape first in Paul's fervid mind. His earlier epistles were full of it. His converts became unsettled by it, and in their excited expectation of the return of the Messiah they neglected their earthly duties; and Paul had to caution them against this impatience and cool their heated minds.

This and other experiences sobered Paul's own mind. He found that as year after year came round the Messiah did not return. In the rapid ripening of thought which went on in the tropical climate of his soul, he grew into a more spiritual apprehension of Christ. If you read his undoubted letters in the order of their writing; First Thessalonians, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, etc., you will note a steady decrease of reference to this topic, until it fades away into a vague vision of the dawning day of God; the absolute assurance that Christ would conquer and rule the earth, though it might be in the spirit and not in the flesh; the certain conviction of a good time coming though beyond his ken. The later light of the apostle corrected his earlier misapprehensions; and would correct our crude and carnal notions of the second coming of Christ, if we would only study Paul, as we study Turner or Shakespeare, in his ripening 'periods.'

Were this one principle followed, our popular theology would soon reconstruct itself.

V.

_It is a wrong use of the Bible to cite its authors as of equal authority, even in the spheres of theology and religion._

The teachings of any human writing come clothed with such authority as the author's name lends to it or its intrinsic force wins for it.

If in the work of an obscure economic writer, of no perceptible ability, you come upon the theory that the land of a people belongs to the people; that its passing into the absolute ownership of private persons is the basic evil of our civilization; that the nation must resume the inalienable rights of the people at large, in the resources of all wealth, and regulate the individual usufruct of land in the interests of the entire body politic--you will probably toss the book contemptuously from you as the crazy lucubration of a fool.

If in reading John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy you come upon this theory, cautiously broached, you are constrained to treat it with the consideration due an acknowledged master in this science. If again in the first elaborate work of a new author, Progress and Poverty, you meet this same theory, boldly laid down as the central theme of the book, and contended for as the real solution of the persistent problem of pauperism, you are disposed to pass it by unheeded. The author's name carries to your mind no prestige of tradition. He speaks from no time-honored university chair. No array of imposing titles hang upon the plain 'Henry George,' of the title page. But you become interested in these brilliant pages of genius and follow the author, with growing sympathy, to the end.

You lay the book down, feeling as though a spell had been upon you, in which you could form no sound judgment. You lay it by accordingly, to take it up after some weeks, work over its positions, and find your first impressions confirmed; to realize that here is a work of real, rare power; an epoch-making book, which, if it does not carry your conviction, commands your careful consideration.

Precisely so we are to be affected by the Biblical authors. There are writings in the Bible by utterly unknown writers. A letter of an obscure author cannot come with the weight of a letter from St. Paul. There are writings of widely different mental force. Biblical authors varied in personal power as much as other authors. Inspiration cannot do away with the limitations of the human individuality. It must be modified by its instrumentality. The saints are of various orders. Even the diamond books which reflect the light of God so brilliantly may not be all of first water. We must allow for the hues in the less perfect prisms. Were the greatest musical genius in the world to sit before the key-boards he could not draw from a harmonium the notes of a Lucerne organ. The impact of a writing on our souls must be proportionate to the spiritual and ethical force with which it is charged. Everyone recognizes this practically. None of us, however orthodox, professes to be as much inspired by Esther as by Job; by Chronicles as by Kings; by Daniel as by Isaiah; by Jude as by Paul. That simply means that there is not as much inspiration in some Biblical authors as in others. No author is always at his best. His work differs. The second epistle to the Thessalonians is not level with the epistle to the Romans. The third epistle of John, if it be of John, is surely not as highly inspired as the first epistle of John. Inspiration is plainly a matter of degrees.

The recognition of this common-sense principle, theoretically, would remand the darker doctrines of Christianity to such authority as the lower order of Biblical writings possess. The terrifying and torturing teachings of the New Testament are from obscure authors, or from the masters in their lower moods. The representations of a wrathful God, of an avenging Christ, of a hell of horrors, are found in such epistles as Second Thessalonians, whose authorship is uncertain; as Jude or Second Peter, about whose authorship and date we have only the probability that no apostle wrote them, and that they were written after the first, fresh inspiration had passed from the church. Rabbinical speculations and Greek superstitions show themselves at work in the Christian Church.[32] The unquestioned letters of Paul are sunny and sweet. In them we see the father of Christian Restorationism. If he knows anything of a dark side to the resurrection, as he shows elsewhere that he does, he leaves it in its own shadows; and in the height of this great argument of Corinthians brings to the front only the resurrection to life and joy. "Knowing the fear of the Lord we--persuade men."

The first epistle of John is true to its favorite symbol of the light. There are no clouds in it. The God revealed in the greatest writings of the greatest authors of the New Testament is Love. The Christ they picture is _Christus Consolator_. The full breath of inspiration opens only the upper register of notes. The voices of the soul are buoyant, joyous, hopeful.

If you are willing to follow the most inspired writers, in their most inspired moods, up into the heights whither the divine afflatus bore them, you will mount above the cloud-level, and leave to those who lag after feebler guides on the lower ranges of truth, the chill mists that eat into the soul, while you rejoice in the light.

VI.

_It is a wrong use of the Bible to manufacture cut of it any one uniform, system, of theology, as the fixed and final form of thought in which religion is to live._

Let me define these contrasting terms, so commonly confounded. Religion is man's perception of the Power in whom we live and move and have our being, and his emotion towards this power. Theology is man's conception of this Power, and his thought defined and formulated.

Religion is man's feeling after God; theology is man's grasp of God. The two are necessarily connected. They are different forms of one and the same force; the heat and the light which stream from God; but the heat and the light are not always equal. A worthy thought of God ought to sustain any worthy feeling towards Him. It generally does so. A heightened thought of God may often be found back of a rising flow of feeling after Him. More often the emotion precedes the conception; the vague, awed sense of God travails till a new thought is born among men. This has been the order of development in history. Men felt the Divine Power and Presence ages before they had learned so much of theology as to say--God. The feeling of God--religion--always keeps, in healthy natures, far ahead of theology--the thought about Him. The deepest religion finds no word for the mystery before which it bows. Its only thought may be that no thought is sufficient.

"In that high hour thought was not."

Theology, then, as man's thought about God, is necessarily conditioned by man's mind. It is under the general limitations of the human intellect, and the special limitations of thought in each race and age and individuality. It cannot escape these limitations, expand as they may. A flooding of the mind from on high may overflow these embankments but they still stand, shaping the flow of the fullest tides. The individuality of a great writer asserts itself most strongly in his greatest works. His deepest inspiration brings out most plainly his mental form, just as the drawing of a full breath shows the real shape of a man. No possible theory of inspiration should lead us to look for the submergences of the dykes of thought cast up by race and age and individuality.

As a matter of fact, we find no uniformity in the theologies of the New Testament writers. Men have tried hard to make it appear that there was such a unity of thought. Never was more ingenious joiner-work done than in the "harmonies" of the New Testament writers. But facts are stubborn things, and in this case have resisted even the omnipotence of human ingenuity; as open minds have seen, despite the doctors.

St. Paul's Epistles reveal a theology by no means as precise and fixed as is popularly imagined, undergoing rapid changes, growing with his growth, always suffused from the soul with emotions which struggled against the prison bars of thought and speech. His intensely speculative mind had furnished a system of thought into which he built such ideas as these: The pre-existence of Christ, as, in some mystic, undefined way, the Head of Humanity; the sacrificial nature of His death; the justification of the sinner through faith; the life of Christ within the soul, as the Human Ideal; the speedy return of Christ in person to reign on earth (at least in the early part of his career); the resurrection of the pious dead; the translation of living believers; the final victory of goodness over evil; and the ending of the mediatorship of Christ, God then becoming all in all.

This was the form which the mystery of God's relationship to man took in the mind of this great genius, and around which the fiery passion of his hunger after righteousness shaped itself.

In the Epistle of St. James, assuming the traditional authorship, how much of this theology can you find? The incarnation is nowhere clearly stated. The name of Christ occurs but twice. His atonement is scarcely mentioned. The prophets are held up as examples of patience, under suffering without any reference to Christ. Paul's especial doctrine of justification by faith is explicitly denied. Of his fellowship with the Gentiles and his broad human sympathies, there is nothing whatever. All is intensely Jewish. If Paul's theology is orthodoxy, James is dreadfully unsound.[33] "The fundamentals" are all lacking.

Both Paul and James differ very decidedly from the mystic soul who wrote the First Epistle of John; and all three differ again, quite as much, from the philosopher who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. How little have either the Apocalypse or Jude in common with Paul! We can no more make a uniform theology out of the New Testament writers than we can out of Calvinism, Arminianism Catholicism, and Unitarianism.

These various theologies can be traced to the elements making up the individualities of the different writers. The idiosyncracies of Paul are clearly marked. He was a man of strong speculative mind, of mystic piety, of lofty enthusiasm for great ideals, a-hungered after righteousness. A Jew and yet a Roman citizen, his education developed the two-fold sympathies of an Israelite of the dispersion. At the feet of the liberal rabbi, Gamaliel, he learned the curious and mystical lore of the rabbins, while drinking in from his Master the spirit of freedom. Thrown from a child in constant contact with the Gentiles of his native city, Tarsus, race prejudices had been sapped unconsciously; while in youth or manhood the wisdom and beauty of the Greek genius had apparently been opened to him.

Paul's personality, fusing the materials of his education, and out of them building a body of thought around The Christ, explains his theology. He reproduces the conceptions of the rabbis, of the popular Jewish belief, of Gamaliel, of Tarsus, of Athens; transfigured on the heights of thought to which he climbed, in his intense musings over the problem of Jesus of Nazareth, while buried away in Arabia.

The small amount of theology in the practical Epistle of James is quite as plainly Jewish, of the school of the Sages, with a touch of Essenism. The theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews shows throughout the influences of the philosophy of Alexandria. The theology of the introduction to the Gospel according to St. John is just as unquestionably this same Alexandrian philosophy, still further developed.

These variant schools of Christian theology, so plainly revealing the sources of their variations, deny the existence of any one uniform system of thought in the New Testament writers, and pronounce the different systems transient and not final forms.

Whatever the Church may offer us, the New Testament offers us no fixed and final body of thought. In the Bible, Christian theology is still a soft vase, plastic to the touch of each worker upon it. Had Paul's fine hand played around it even another decade, how different the shape it might have taken.

With the incoming of a more rational, ethical, and spiritual age, we may surely expect a finer fashioning of the forms of thought blocked out in the New Testament, under the first, fresh inspiration of the age of Jesus; into whose larger patterns shall be taken up all the truths revealed through the various sciences of these rich later ages; while all shall still take on the shape of Him who is the image of the invisible God.

"The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word."

The true Biblical theology is--Christ himself. His thought of God, and not even Paul's thoughts about Christ, are to mould our thinking. The Supreme Son of Man must have had the truest thought of God. Two words formulate his theology as bodied not in a creed, but in a prayer--"Our Father." The earliest, simplest, deepest cry of the human after God, now by Him who lived its spirit perfectly, the trusting, loving, holy Child of the Father, made no longer a sigh, a dream, a vision, but a life. "The life was the light of men."

That light is the sufficient clue to the dark labyrinth in which we wander wearily.

I cannot always make out the face of a Father on the stern, harsh Power in whom we live and move and have our being. Then I turn to my Divine Brother, who, of all the children of men, saw deepest into the mystery, and in his far-mirroring eyes I read the vision which satisfies me.

With poor dying Joe, I whisper to myself:

"'Our Father:' yes, that's werry good."

V.

The Right Critical Use of the Bible.

"I am convinced that the Bible becomes even more beautiful the more one understands it; that is, the more one gets insight to see that every word, which we take generally and make special application of to our own wants, has had, in connection with certain circumstances, with certain relations of time and place, a particular, directly individual reference of its own."

Goethe: quoted by M. Arnold in "The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration."

V.

The Right Critical Use of the Bible.

"God, who at many times and in many manners spake in time past to the fathers, by the prophets."--Hebrews, i. 1.

The right use of the Bible grows out of the true view of the Bible.

The Old Testament is the literature of the people of religion, in whom ethical and spiritual religion grew, through all moods and tenses, toward perfection. The New Testament is the literature of the movement which grew out of Israel, the literature of the Universal Church bodying around the Son of Man, in whom religion came to perfect flower and fruit. The real Bible is the record of this real revelation coming through real ethical and spiritual inspirations; a revelation advancing with men's deepening inspirations toward the Light which rose in the Life of Jesus Christ our Lord.

God, who at many times and in many manners spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, hath at the last of these days spoken unto us by a Son.

These speakings of the Divine Spirit in the souls of men, at many times and in many manners, were articulated, as best was possible, in the writings of many ages and of many forms. The Bible is the collection of these writings. They require a critical study, as _bona fide_ "letters," before we can know the degree of their inspiration, and their place in the progressive historic revelation; before we can thus deduce aright the thoughts about God out of which we are to construct our theology. Concerning this right critical use of the Bible, I propose now to offer some practical suggestions. Next Sunday I purpose giving you a bird's-eye view of the general course of the historic revelation which led up to the Christ, the Word of God. After which I shall pass on to consider with you the pre-eminently right use of the Bible, in which our souls humbly hearken for its words proceeding from out the mouth of God, on which man liveth; and on them feeding, grow toward a perfect manhood in Christ Jesus.

I.

_Every aid of outward form should be used to make these books appear as living "letters" to us._

The traditional form in which the Bible has been given to the people would seem to have been devised with a design of robbing its writings of every natural charm, as the best means of making men feel its supernatural power. The fresh sense of "letters" disappears in this conventional form. These many books of many ages have been bound up together, with the most imperfect classification either as to period or character. A verse-making machine has been driven through them all alike, chopping them up into short, arbitrary, artificial sentences, formally numbered in the body of the text. The larger divisions into chapters have been made in an equally mechanical manner. By this twofold system an admirable provision has been made for checking the flow of the writer's thought, and for effectually preventing any easy grasp of the natural movement of the book. Poetry has been printed as prose; thereby marring its rhythm, concealing its structure, and blinding the reader to the dramatic character of immortal works of genius. Through the whole mass of writings a system of chapter-headings has been introduced that ingeniously insinuates into the body of these sacred books, as seemingly an integral part thereof, a scheme of interpretation which possesses now no pepsine power for resolving their contents into spiritual nutriment, but rather positively hinders our assimilation of many of these books.

Probably the greatest obstacle to the use of the Bible is the senseless form in which custom persists in publishing it. I know few stronger evidences of the intrinsic power of these books than their continued influence, under conditions that would have remanded other books to the topmost shelves of the most unused alcoves in our libraries.