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EDWIN HOLT HUGHES

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THE BIBLE AND LIFE

EDWIN HOLT HUGHES

Bishop of the Methodist Epipctyal Church

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN

NEW YORK CINCINNATI

First Edition printed February, 1915
Reprinted June, 1915

CHARLES RAISBECK MAGEE

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CONTENTS

CHAFTBR PAGE

Introduction . 9

Foreword

Biographical Note

The Human Outline .

I. The Bible and Life . .

II. The Bible and Man

III. The Bible and Home .

IV. The Bible and Education

102

V. The Bible and Work

125

VI. The Bible and Wealth .

151

VII. The Bible and Sorrow

185

VIII. The Bible and Practice . ,

213

INTEODUCTION

By the courteous invitation of the President,
Faculty, and Trustees of DePauw University,
the writer had the privilege of delivering the
first series of lectures under the foundation
as endowed by his friend, the Kev. Marma-
duke H. Mendenhall. The following com-
ments are the only introductory words that
need be given.

The terms of the lectures were kept strictly
within the radius of real life. The author
does not claim to be a biblical scholar in any
technical sense. Nor did he deem that the
primary need of the students whom he ad-
dressed would be met by a discussion of
theories of inspiration or of dates and author-
ships. College students have a passion for
reality, and the most convincing apologetic
for them is the argument from actual living.

Under the instruction of the founder the
lectures are to be placed in permanent form
for the students of the University and for the
wider public. The lecturer having been re-
warded by the close attention of hundreds of

10 INTRODUCTION

youthful hearers, the writer will have a still
greater reward if those who heard the words
as spoken in Meharry Hall are joined by the
larger company who will listen for the voice
of the Spirit in these pages.

Edwin Holt Hughes.

THE MENDENHALL LECTUKES
FOEEWOKD

The late Reverend Marmaduke H. Menden-
liall, D.D., of the North Indiana Conference
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, donated
to DePauw University the sum of ten thou-
sand dollars, the purpose and conditions of
which gift are set forth in his bequest as
follows :

The object of this gift is "to found a per-
petual lectureship on the evidences of the
Divine Origin of Christianity, to be known as
the Mendenhall Foundation. The income from
this fund shall be used for the support of an
Annual Lectureship, the design of which
shall be the exhibition of the proofs, from all
sources, of the Divine Origin, Inspiration,
and Authority of the Holy Scriptures. The
course of lectures shall be delivered annually
before the University and the public without
any charge for admission.

"The lecturers shall be chosen by an elect-
ing body consisting of the President of the
University, the five senior members of the
Faculty of the College of Liberal Arts, and
the President of the Board of Trustees, sub-

12 FOKEWORD

ject to the approval of the Board of Bishops
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The lec-
turers must be persons of high and wide re-
pute, of broad and varied scholarship, who
firmly adhere to the evangelical system of
Christian faith. The selection of lecturers
may be made from the world of Christian
scholarship without regard to denominational
divisions. Each course of lectures is to be
published in book form by an eminent publish-
ing house and sold at cost to the Faculty and
students of the University."

George R. Grose^
President of DePauw University,

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Inasmuch as future lecturers on the Men-
denhall Foundation may not have had the
privilege of personal acquaintance with the
founder, it is doubtless good that this first
volume may record the outlines of his life
and character. Marmaduke H. Mendenhall
was born at Guilford, North Carolina, May
13, 1836. He died at Union City, Indiana,
October 9, 1905. He was the son of Himelius
and Priscilla Mendenhall, who, when their
son was about one year old, came northward
and settled near Peru, Indiana. Doctor Men-
denhall did not suggest in manner or bear-
ing that he was Southern born. Had one
chosen to judge of his birthplace by the
man himself, one would have said that he
was a typical son of New England. His
deeper self was typified by his personal ap-
pearance. He was tall, stately, dignified,
serious, earnest.

He joined the North Indiana Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856.
Those days were still pioneer, and he entered
gladly into the sacrificial ministry of that

14 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

period. It is a singular coincidence that he
was doubtless the first minister of his faith
to begin work near Union City, where he
closed his earthly labors. It was his privilege,
also, to build the first Methodist Episcopal
church in the city where he died. The history
of his ministry shows that he served all classes
of charges- — country, city, village, county seat.
Several times the record is dotted with the
word "Mission," which would indicate that
he frequently followed the apostolic fashion
of building strictly on his own foundations.
He came to a place of leadership in his own
Conference. To the day of his death he was
an influential factor in all its plans and pro-
grams. Though he had been technically
"superannuated'' for sixteen years prior to his
death, his mind kept its full vigor, and his
word kept its full weight. Twice he was
elected a reserve delegate to the General
Conference, while in 1880 he was chosen as
one of the regular delegates.

From the beginning of his ministry Dr.
Mendenhall showed the signs of a remarkable
mind, and at the end of his ministry he was
still manifesting a keen interest in current
questions and in theological problems. His
library to the last was freshened by the pur-
chase of new books. When he turned his
many volumes over to Gammon Theological

BIOGKAPHIOAL NOTE 15

Seminary that institution did not receive hun-
dreds of antiquated volumes, but rather a
collection brought down to date and selected
by a master judgment. The intellectual,
though suffused at times by a proper and
restrained emotion, was his noticeable char-
acteristic. He was given to thorough analysis.
He was markedly painstaking. Eecords that
he made of the conduct of his public services
indicate that the final details were all re-
garded, and that hymns and Scripture lessons
were chosen with a view to their bearing on
the instruction of the day.

Being a vigorous personality, he held his
views with strength. He was keenly loyal to
his convictions, whether these related to
methods of work or to statements of doctrine.
In his advocacy or in his antagonism he was
always frank and open. His opponent could
see him standing out in plain view, with no
effort to protect himself by secrecy. Men
could never doubt his sincerity, however much
they might question the correctness of his
positions. He knew no sinuous paths. He
was as direct as sunlight, and he traveled in
straight lines.

In all his spheres of work Dr. Mendenhall
made deep and lasting impressions. Highly
intellectual as he was, he was still an excellent
administrator. His business qualifications

16 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

were signal. Every matter committed to Mm
was cared for with scrupulous nicety. He
left no loose ends to any of his work. Although
his salaries were never large, as salaries are
counted to-day, he secured a comfortable
property, and this in spite of the fact that
throughout his lifetime he was a generous
contributor to good causes.

He served as a trustee of De Pauw Univer-
sity longer than other member of his Confer-
ence had served, up to the time of his death.
From 1878 to 1887 he served in this capacity,
while in 1896 he was reelected and was an
active worker on the board up to the end of
his life. He aided in pushing the institution
through its crisis. The files of this writer
disclose a careful and helpful correspondence
upon matters vital to the welfare of the Uni-
versity. In the sessions of the board he was
always urbane and conciliatory. He crowned
the work of his life by leaving to the University
all of his estate. Upon the in .Tease of the
estate to a certain figure, the income was to
be used in founding a lectureship on Revealed
Religion, especially as related to the Holy
Bible.

Although the writer was an i itimate friend
of Dr. Mendenhall, he cannot remember
any statements made to him which would
indicate the founder's views of inspiration

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 17

or of the other questions that have made the
biblical problem of the last two decades. But
his library showed that he was fully aware
of the modern discussions. Perhaps he felt
that a lectureship, broadly founded and prac-
tically directed, would be of special service
to the church in a time of transition. The
writer entertains the conviction that, even
though Dr. Mendenhall might not agree fully
with all that is found in the following pages,
he would still appreciate the effort to bring
the Bible within its divine purpose as a Book
of Life.

The home of the founder revealed him as
a model of courtesy and kindliness. Friends
who saw him by his own fireside noted the
benignity that matched his dignity, the ten-
derness that equaled his seriousness. Those
who came 'into the nearer circle of his life
regarded him most highly. To the wife who
survives him he was in all ways a helper,
gentle in demeanor and loyally careful in the
administration of her interests. As the writer
reviews the drift of these first lectures de-
livered under this foundation, he is persuaded
that the founder's relation to Himself, to his
Home, to his Work, to his Wealth, to his
Pleasure and Sorrow, and particularly to the
cause of Education, is not misrepresented
herein. The Bible was his Book, and its ideals

18 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

were achieved in his living. It is the sincere
wish that these pages may accomplish some-
what the main purpose of the founder's heart
in making the divine Book a brighter lamp
for the guidance of youth.

THE HUMAN OUTLINE

It may be well to give in human form the
outline which will be followed in these pages.
The story is the story of millions of men on
as many days.

A man awoke one morning to the conscious-
ness of himself. Looking about he saw the
familiar sights of his own home, and soon he
heard the voices of his wife and children. Ere
long the little people were on their way to
school. The man proceeded to his work, while
Ms wife took up her domestic duties. He
returned in the evening with the proceeds of
his day's labor added to his stock of goods.
He partook of the evening meal and then
indulged in the pleasure of "the children's
hour." He later called upon a friend who
had met with sorrow and in the trouble of
his friend he found a fresh reminder of his
own affliction. He retired in due season to
his slumber and went forth the next morning
to make the like round of the day.

This is a piece of constant biography. It
could be duplicated by reference to many a
personal journal and diary. If we analyze the

20 THE HUMAN OUTLINE

description, we shall find that the man was
driven to take a relation to Himself, to Home,
to Education, to Work, to Wealth, to Pleasure
and Sorrow.

The aim of this book is to state somewhat
the bearing that the Bible has upon these great
departments of our human living. The apolo-
getic tests the Book under the terms of this
human Outline.

CHAPTER I

The Bible and Life

The Bible is a book of power. The man
who would deny this statement would impugn
his own intelligence. It is to-day the Book
of the strongest nations. If the strongest
nations selected it for their inspiration and
guidance, that fact is significant. If, on the
other hand, the Bible has trained the strongest
nations, that fact is more significant. In
either case power is lodged in the Holy Scrip-
tures. The miracle is this: That a very
ancient Book rules a very modern world.

Various explanations are given. Some men
say that the Bible is powerful because it has
been promoted by a powerful organization.
But this explanation needs explaining. How
did the Bible secure the aid of this organiza-
tion? Why did not the organization take the
Dialogues of Plato and become the evangel of
Socrates' splendid wisdom? Why did it elect
one particular volume? And what would
have been the effect on its own life if it had
chosen some other book? Would the writings
of Marcus Aurelius or of Seneca, with their
.21

22 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

high moral grade and their marked religious
insight, have served the holy purpose as effec-
tively? When we attempt to substitute some
other book in the Bible's place, our hesitancy
quickly passes on to positive refusal. The
Christian Church, with any other volume as
its textbook, is simply inconceivable.

Other men will say that the power of the
Bible has come from its girding by a doctrine
of authority. This explanation must likewise
be explained. Could a Book without inherent
authority be long maintained among intel-
ligent peoples on the basis of artificial author-
ity? Why is the Bible the best seller and the
greatest worker in those lands where it has
been set free to yield its own message? What
is the peculiar quality in the Book that has
saved any theory of its authority from appear-
ing absurd? The Bible showed its power long
before men adopted any theory of its power.
Doubtless the claim of authority has increased
the influence of the Book over certain types
of minds. Still it may be confidently asserted
that the claim of authority has depended far
more on the power of the Bible than the power
of the Bible has depended on the claim of
authority. The effect should not be allowed
to pass itself off as the main cause.

Nor does the power of the Bible depend
upon mere bulk. Shakespeare wrote enough

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 23

to make several Bibles. So did Scott. So did
Dickens. So did Parkman. If the Bible is a
moral and spiritual Encyclopedia, its material
has been strangely condensed. It is a brief
Book, yet out of its small compass men gather
texts for fifty years of preaching and at the
close of their life's task feel that the pages
are still exhaustless. The Bible has inspired
literature far beyond its own bulk. It is a
small library of books gathered from many
authors, but it has filled great libraries with
commentaries and sermons and discussions.
Its brevities have provoked measureless pages
of writing. The world is big, yet it is measur-
ably ruled by a small Book.

It would seem likewise that a Book written
so long ago would fail of the element of time-
liness. That an old volume should keep its
place in a ne^v century is in itself an anomaly.
The last of the Bible was penned hundreds of
years since. Accepting the most radical views
as to dates, its youngest book was produced
quite more than a millennium and a half ago.
Meanwhile the world has been making amaz-
ing progress. We boast of our achievements
in transportation and communication. All
ancient things seem to be outgrown, save only
the Bible. The books that were written as
contemporaries of parts of the great Book
have either slipped into oblivion or are knowji

24 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

to-day only by the intellectually elect. The
classics are studied by a small circle of
scholars. The average man knows nothing of
Virgil, or Cicero, or Homer, by any direct
contact with the works of those authors. But
the Bible, which is out of date by the calendar,
is not out of date by its own meaning. It is
singularly contemporaneous. Its different
portions were called forth by passing events
and the Book itself is clearly touched by its
own times. For all that, eternity appears to
have lodged itself in it^ contemporaneousness.
The twentieth century, eager and thrilling as
it is, accepts a Guide Book from the distant
years. Koman Law and Greek Art are filtered
to the new age through modern channels. The
Bible itself comes to us more simple and more
powerful than any modern interpretations of
its messages. There is a sense in which it
declines to apply to itself its own figure of
speech about the new wine in the old bottles.
The Bible defies geographical distance as
well as calendar distance. For the most part
its record relates to what happened in a small
and remote section of the earth. It reaches
its climax in an obscure province which was
smaller than many a modern county. The
customs of which it tells are mostly gone.
Sandals and tents and camels and parchments
are curiosities in the new lands and new times.

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 25

Much of the setting of biblical events is wholly
unknown to our day, and so must be repro-
duced for our children in pictures and for
our adults in descriptions. An Oriental Book
is the chief literature of an Occidental world.

In spite of its small size, its great age, its
cramped geography, its vivid Orientalism, the
Bible keeps its mastery. What is the explana-
tion?

It must be that the Bible appeals to some-
thing fundamental in life itself. The final
test of inspiration must, of course, be found
in what the Bible does for life. A book that
is not inspiring cannot be proved to be in-
spired. It cannot give what it does not have
and it must surely have received what it gives.
It would be a mistake, however, to confuse
formal truthfulness with inspiring vitality.
The description of a street scene, dealing with
the passing relations of pedestrians, wagons,
trees, birds, houses ; the lengths and widths of
sidewalks and streets; the figures of popula-
tion ; the social status of the various groups —
all this may be told with exact and mathe-
matical truthfulness. It may be correct and
still not be inspired or inspiring. On the
other hand, the parable of the prodigal son
is a story which in its precise detail may
represent something that never occurred. But
it has impressed the world as both inspired

26 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

and inspiring. Its words haunt and pierce
and coax and subdue men. This indicates
that a story given for a spiritual purpose
shows more essential truthfulness than does
a description given for formal exactness. The
reason is that the parable appeals to some-
thing fundamental in life itself. The son and
the father are ever with us. God and his
children are the everlasting facts. The story
is more true than is the description. This
contrast represents the biblical trend. The
Book penetrates through the husk to the
kernel, through superficial facts to deepest
truths, through passing events to eternal
meanings. It is the Book of Life.

What gives the Bible this appeal? Whence
did it secure its vital quality? The only reply
is that the appeal to life must be born of life
itself. Sometimes a bizarre explanation is
given of the source of a religious volume, the
assumption being that a human origin denies
a divine origin. The more men have to do with
its production, the less may we presume that
God has touched the work. A curious illus-
tration of this viewpoint is found in the claim
for the Book of Mormon. The story is as
follows: A heavenly visitant appeared to
Joseph Smith and told him that in a certain
place he would find the miracle book. Smith
obeyed the directions and found in the place

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 27

named a box of stone. In this box was a
volume half a foot in thickness. It was writ-
ten on thin plates of gold, and these plates
were bound together by gold rings. The writ-
ing was in a strange language, but with the
book was found a pair of miraculous eye-
glasses which conferred the ability to read the
pages. In other words the Book of Mormon
was not born of human life under the guidance
of the divine life. It was the product of a
straight miracle, and the power to decipher
its meaning came only by miracle. Such a
theory of the origin is easy to understand,
even though it may be dif&cult to believe. It
represents the extreme form of that faith
which minimizes the partnership of man with
God in the making of all genuine gospels of
life.

The incarnation was Man and God together.
The church is being fashioned by man and
God together; the Spirit and the Bride are
colleagues. Worship is possible only when
man and God are together in fellowship. If
the Bible came by any method other than the
coworking of man and God, its production
would stand for a departure from the usual
divine method. The power of the Bible, how-
ever, grows out of the fact that it is not an
abnormal book, fantastically given to men.
There is a humorous story of an old woman

28 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

who was discoyered in diligent study of the
Hebrew alphabet. Asked why at her age she
was beginning to learn so difficult a tongue,
she made reply that when she died she desired
to address the Almighty in his own language !
There have been theories of the Bible that
are scarcely caricatured by this tale. If there
have been doctrines of the Book that made it
the product of a lonely man, there have like-
wise been doctrines that made it the product
of a lonely God. Neither doctrine is correct.
The Bible grew out of human life that had
been touched and glorified by the divine pres-
ence and power. Because it grew out of life
it makes its appeal to its native element in
life itself. It simply claims its own.

A review of the different parts of the Bible
will show how true this statement is. Practi-
cally every book is localized and personalized.
Something that happened among men called
forth the writing. The names of the books
in the Pentateuch show this fact. Genesis
treats of the origins of the earth and of man,
and is an answer to the inevitable question
that springs in the human mind. Exodus
treats of the going forth of the Hebrew people
from their Egyptian bondage. Leviticus is a
description and discussion of the Levitical
rules. Deuteronomy is a second giving of the
Law and an enlargement of its sphere as well

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 29

as an enforcement of its precepts. The Ten
Commandments make a human document be-
cause their sole aim is to ennoble and protect
human life.

It is so TNT^th the historical books. They are
the records of actual human living. Their
pages are sprinkled with the names of real
men and women. Joshua, the Judges, Kuth,
Samuel, the Kings are all there, eager partic-
ipants in earth's affairs under the sense of
God. These books are not theoretical dis-
sertations on life by a dreamer in his closet;
they are rather the general descriptions of
life itself as it moved along a period of seven
or eight centuries. They give us the salient
and meaningful happenings among God's
chosen people. They tell the story of a crude
race as it is being led forward to the heights.
The pages record limitations and faults simply
because they tell us of actual life. The sins
of the Bible's premier heroes are written down
with entire frankness. The human touch is
everywhere. We shall not read the historical
books long ere we find that they, too, are
human documents. But these human docu-
ments, covered ^dth the names of men and
women, are likewise covered with the ever-
recurring name of Jehovah. In the record
one discovers man and God.

In the prophetical books the like fact is

30 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

apparent. The prophets were men of flesh and
blood. They rushed into the prophetic work
from the ordinary occupations of ancient life.
From the fields they came, and from the vine-
yards. Perhaps one came from a royal palace.
Surely not more than one of them came from
the altar of the priesthood. They were men
who knew the shame and glory of contem-
porary life. They did not hesitate to touch
the politics of their day. They decried kings.
They denounced landlords. They made
frontal attacks on all forms of wickedness.
Their appeal was for reality. They declared
that God hated all pretense. New moons and
feasts and fasts that did not grow out of
devout hearts they declared to be an insult
and an abomination before a righteous God.
They talked from life to life. They came in
response to some human demand in their
times. They were not theorists, discussing
academic problems of conduct. They were
blazing moral realists. We do not need to
detail the list of those forthtellers of the Word
of God. Even the book of Jonah is full of
life. Parable, allegory, history — its descrip-
tions are based in life and its appeal is to life.
In its moral lesson for the individual, and in
its missionary lesson for a narrow race, it
offers enough duty to keep life busy for a
million years. If men would heed its lessons

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 31

for life and cease their petty debates about
the anatomy of whales, the Book would meet
them with vital urgings. The one point now
is that the prophetical writings grew out of
life. They did not come encased in stone
boxes, written on gold leaves, to be read and
understood only by miraculous spectacles.
They came from real living, and they claim
their own wherever real men are living to-day.
We need not follow the same idea into the
later books of the Old Testament. The Prov-
erbs were gathered from the streets of life.
Ecclesiastes is the pronouncement of life
vainly satiated. Even the Psalms, classed as
devotional books, were usually evoked by some
actual happening. The king goes out to war ;
a psalm is penned. The ark is moved from
one place to another; a psalm is written. A
man is jaded and discouraged; a psalm is
written to recover him to a consciousness of
the care of Jehovah. A monarch falls into
grievous sin ; a psalm is written to express his
penitence. A study of any Commentary on
the Psalms will show us that nearly all of
these devotional utterances were prompted by
some human experiences. They are the shout-
ings and sobbings of living men. The book of
Psalms is not the liturgy of academicians. Its
processionals and its recessionals show actual
men and women in the real march of life.

32 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

In the New Testament this same law of
life rules. Jesus comes before the Gospels.
Without the Life there could not have been
the record of the Life. In any worthy Bible
life must always come first. This phase will
be treated later. Now it must be emphasized
that the entire New Testament sprang from
a Life that was lived among men. The Word
must become flesh before it could become
literary record. Grace and truth walked the
earth ere they were traced on pages. Here
again the Bible comes from life in order that
it may return to life again.

The statement concerning the New Testa-
ment will admit of more detail. The Gospels
grew immediately out of the disciples' life
with the Lord. The Acts grew out of the life
of the disciples in their daily contact with
that ancient world. The Epistles all came
from some urgency of life. While there were
minor reasons for writing each of them there
was still a main purpose that dictated the
writing in every case. The Epistles to the
Thessalonians seek to produce a right attitude
toward the doctrine of the Lord's return. The
Epistle to the Komans is a discussion of the
doctrine of justification by faith and the rela-
tions of that doctrine to Judaism. That to the
Galatians is both a personal defense of Paul's
questioned apostleship and a declaration of

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 33

freedom from bondage to the law. The Philip-
pians grew out of an experience of human
kindness, being an expression of gratitude for
help in trouble and sympathy in sorrow. The
Ephesians is a composite of moods — the vic-
tories of grace, the hope of the heavenlies, the
expectation of ascension with the glorified
Christ, the nature and aim of the true church.
Colossians expresses the universal Lordship of
Christ and tears down every theory that denies
the reality of the incarnation and the utter
preeminence of Jesus.

Even those Epistles that are personal in
their character deal with universal life.
Philemon reappeared in the contests concern-
ing slavery both in England and America and
scattered the arguments of Christian democ-
racy. The bondage of men could not well live
with the tender brotherhood that breathes in
the letter which Onesimus carried back with
him to his former master. Titus and Timothy
are the pastoral advices sent by the aged
apostle to his younger sons in the faith, while
one of the Epistles is the hopeful farewell to
earth and a glad trust toward the Eternal
City. Revelation may be filled with strange
imagery and may be shaken by the tremors of
a perilous age; but men who know real life
will say that the Beast and the Lamb are not
merely wild figures of speech. The writer of

34 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

the Apocalypse knew the world, and he knew
the churches in its various cities.

Thus it seems literally true that all the
New Testament was penned for the aid of
life. When life went wrong, warning came.
When life went aright, encouragement came.
When life was mistaken, correction came.
Whether the need was for doctrine, for re-
proof, or for instruction in righteousness, God
met the need by the message that he gave to
his servants. The Book is not a series of in-
fallible abstractions ; it is rather a vital Guide
Book won from the experience of life's ways.
The Bible is not a ready-made product dropped
down from heaven; it is rather a Library
made by men in many ages in partnership
with the God who lives with men in all ages.
In the best and truest fashion it makes record
of the life of God in the souls of responsive
men. Because it came from life it inevitably
seeks life. It was born of God among men.
Therefore, it lives among men with God.

We may carry the relation of life to the
Bible quite beyond this point. The Bible not
only grew from life, but it came back to life
for its testing. Even as there have been
theories of the making of the Book that ignored
the element of human living, so have there
been theories of the canon of Scripture that
ignored the element of human testing. Years

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 35

ago a renowned teacher said to his pnpils,
"Never go deliberately to work to make a
book. The only volumes worth while are those
that grow out of your deepest life." The
advice was good. In a way it suggests the
manner of the Bible's making. There is no
evidence whatsoever that any writer of its
pages ever thought that his work would be-
come part of a Bible. No man ever said, "I
will now write a book of the Holy Scripture."
Nor did any group of men assign departments
to each other, saying, "We will prepare a
divine Book." The Bible came in no such
mechanical way. Written because of life's
needs, as seen in the light of God, it was
tested and collected by life's needs, as seen
in that same light. It was once strikingly
said that the words of Jesus were vascular;
if you cut them they would bleed. One
shrinks from the metaphor. Yet it presents
a truth about the whole Bible. A Book
written by life and selected by life has natu-
rally a message for life.

How did the books of the Bible secure their
place in the canon? The romancer offers his
tradition here again. We find a very fantastic
legend coming down from medieval times to
this effect : In the church at Nicsea one day a
great mass of religious writing lay in an in-
discriminate heap beneath the altar. A

36 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

miracle gave an answer to the question as to
what books should secure permanent places
in the Holy Book. The First Ecumenical Con-
ference was in session. The year was 325 a. d.
While man wondered and questioned, God
settled the issue. Suddenly the genuine
books were lifted from the mass of volumes
and, without visible power, lay on the sacred
table. The writings miraculously declared
uncanonical remained beneath the altar. This
theory of selection corresponds to the theory
of dictation. We have in both cases an active
God and a passive man. While it would be
unfair to say that this medieval legend has
any modern following, it is true that certain
theories of the selection of the canon resemble
it in that they discount the human factor.
Even as God and men worked together in the
writing of the books, so God and men worked
together in the binding of the books into their
volume of fellowship. Life that confessed God
and tried to do his will chose the books and
decreed that they should dwell in unity.

As there has been a tendency to overstate
the miracle feature in the selection of the
canon, so has there been a tendency to over-
state the part played by the authoritative
councils of the church. The assumption has
been that arbitrariness was the chief feature
of the whole process. Certain men met in

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 37

conference, debated the merits of the several
books, and finally settled by vote what par-
ticular writings should have their place in
the Bible of the church. Now while some-
thing of this kind did occur, it is far from
the truth to affirm that the councils lacked a
representative capacity. The vote may have
been recorded by theologians, but the vote had
previously been determined by the Christian
democracy. Abraham Lincoln wrote the
Emancipation Proclamation. His predeces-
sors were the people. In a dignified sense
Lincoln was their clerk, expressing their will
after many years of agitation. The wisdom
of the Great Commoner was shown not only
by the personal conviction that he put into
the document, but also by his keen apprecia-
tion of the will of the multitude. Though the
parchment of liberty was proclaimed by one
man, it is a fact that it was dictated by many
men. Something parallel to this occurred in
the selection of the material of the Bible.
Councils played their part; their part, how-
ever, was the part of agents.

This was true of the Old Testament. Many
persons may still have the vision of Jewish
officials with long robes and sober faces de-
ciding the ancient canon. Indeed, there was
for long a tradition that Ezra founded a kind
of Imperial Synagogue which continued for

38 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

not less than two hundred years and which in
that period finished the collection and author-
ization of the Old Testament. This synagogue
had various presidents, including Nehemiah.
No such organization for the selection of the
Scriptures existed. Accurate ancient history
gives no trace of its work. The work of test-
ing the writings was slow. The arbiter was
life. Life had determined the writing. Life
must now determine the authority.

We can catch an interesting glimpse into
this process by studying for a moment the
story about Josiah, the young king. Hilkiah,
the priest, finds the book of the law. Shaphan
carries the book to the king and reads to him
from the ancient lore. The book quickens
the royal conscience. God and the earthly
ancestors of Josiah speak to him from the
pages. He is made to feel how far he and his
people have gone from the will of Jehovah.
He rends his clothes. He sends for the human
voices of the Most High. Huldah, the
prophetess, is the chief instructor. The
people are called back to their allegiance. The
land is purged. A manuscript has done all
this. It inspired the king and his people until
abominations fled from Israel. The land con-
tinued in obedience until the archers sent
King Josiah to his sepulcher. That portion
of the law that had been read to the king by

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 39

Shaphan and had then been delivered to the
people proved its inspiring quality in its effects
on life. On that day a portion of the Old
Testament canon was selected.

Doubtless this incident is somewhat typical
of a procedure that was more or less constant.
The imperial synagogue was the Jewish people.
The debate that settled issues was the debate
of experience. Life was electing its own books.
Words that touched the conscience into an
impression of God and then worked their way
outward to the blessing of the multitude were
gaining for themselves the popular vote.
Candidates for the canon were rejected.
Other candidates were held in long suspicion.
Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Esther, Solomon's
Song — all these served a long probation ere
they proved themselves worthy of their place.
The ancient world, like the modern world,
was not willing to surrender Proverbs, with
their homely wisdom; Esther, with its lesson
of loyalty to race and kindred; Solomon's
Song, with its refusal to listen to the bland-
ishments of royal lasciviousness luring to the
betrayal of a true and humble lover; or even
Ecclesiastes, with its pessimism uncured until
the writer once more finds God.

After books secured their place in the
authorized list of the Jews, they had still to
contest to keep their place. As late as the

40 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

first century of the Christian era, debate was
frequent. Life was slow to render its decision.
There was no hasty authority. The final
judgment was rendered by the experience of
a race. When Eck reminded Martin Luther
that the church had decided what books
should go into the canon and that Luther
must accept a quotation from Second Mac-
cabees as authoritative, the great Keformer
made reply, "The church cannot give more
authority or force to a book than it has in
itself. A council cannot make that be Scrip-
ture which in its own nature is not Scrip-
ture." So it came to pass that in due season
the freed religious consciousness of the church
took certain apocryphal books from the Old
Testament canon. That consciousness seemed
to feel a difference in spiritual power between
the Apocrypha and the other portions of the
Old Testament. Life was still coming to the
polls in order that it, far more than any stately
council, should elect the true Word of God.

This same process of selection went on in
relation to the New Testament. The early
Christians started with no New Testament
whatsoever. Their Bible was the Old Testa-
ment. We do not find any warrant for saying
that they expected to make additions to the
Bible. Jesus came first. Then the Gospels
and Epistles came as natural consequences.

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 41

The early Christians, as we shall later see,
had received the very purpose and climax of
Revelation, because they had received Christ.
But the Gospels and Epistles which grew up
out of life had in their turn to be tested by life.
Believers began by reading these as if they
were suggestive; after the writings had
wrought their full impression upon the minds
of the believers, they began to consider them
inspired and holy. This decision did not come
abstractly, nor did it come quickly. Gradu-
ally the sense of the value of certain writings
grew upon the early church. Almost two
centuries of the Christian era passed ere the
collection so commended itself to believing
hearts as to be given definite form. As in the
case of the Old Testament, so in the case of
the New, life declined to be hurried into a
decision. The books must prove their author-
ity in the experience of the people. The
Christian republic was engaged in the task of
choosing its Bible from life.

We find, too, that certain books appeared as
claimants for permanent authority that did
not win their case. The ancient manuscripts
were passed from church to church and were
read to the people. The task of sifting went
surely forward. Directly lists of books that
peculiarly commended themselves to the
Christians began to appear. In the first two

42 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

centuries such leaders as Irenseus, Clement,
and Tertullian present their lists which show
some of our present books omitted, some other
books included, and still other books declared
as good but inferior. The Christian con-
sciousness had not yet reached a confident
verdict. But a review of the period shows the
Christian leaders verging toward unanimity.
Slowly some books were eliminated; and
slowly other books asserted their right to be
included. By the beginning of the fifth cen-
tury the canon had been practically deter-
mined. The great Augustine, with his im-
mediate predecessors and his close successors,
reveals the well-nigh unanimous conclusion to
which the church had come. It may well be
noted that the voting booth stood open for
almost four hundred years. The Councils of
Hippo and Carthage were simply the servants
of the people. The books that had sprung
from life had received the testing of life.

It must be allowed that here, as in the case
of the Old Testament canon, some books had
to re-prove their right to the place of authority.
The Council of Trent may have settled the
matter for all Koman Catholics, but it did
not irretrievably close the canon for Prot-
estants. It is well known that Luther himself
wished to remove several books from the list,
and that he called the Epistle of James

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 43

"strawlike.'' Luther's reason was a polemical
one. He felt that the vivid practicalness of
James conflicted with the principle of justi-
fication by faith alone. It is only a stronger
evidence of the demands of life in the selection
of the final canon that even the powerful in-
fluence of Luther could not prevail. The
church well knew that the Epistle of James
would be a good antidote for any lazy mysti-
cism. Life voted against Luther in this
instance, and life won. Zwingli wanted to
exclude the Book of Revelation from the
canon. The Christian republic felt that be-
neath all the weird imagery of the Apocalypse
God was speaking by his servant to the
churches of all time. Life voted against
Zwingli in this instance, and life won. When
life was given its freedom the most influential
voices of authority could not prevail against
its verdicts. This completes the circle. The
Bible was written by life, and the Bible was
selected by life.

Perhaps it is well to note that when any
portion of the Scripture has been taken away
from the purpose of life, it has lost its note
of authority; when it has been brought back
to that purpose of life, it has regained that
note. The Song of Solomon illustrates this
point. It had slight hold on the life of the
world as long as it was used as a complex

44 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

allegory or symbol relating to Christ and the
church. All labored attempts to so construe
the book did the book itself injury. But when
the Song was permitted to recover its own
relation to life, it recovered its own power.
The lesson of the book, rightly used, may save
many young women from selling themselves
to lascivious luxury and may give them
strength against tempting allurements away
from loyal love. However old the world may
become, it will always need that lesson. In
some way the Song came from life; and when
it is tested by life, it regains its relation to
life. Eeleased from the strain of an allegorical
interpretation, it proves itself a servant of
one of life's holiest causes.

We come now to the primary consideration.
The Bible grew from life. The Bible was
tested by life. The Bible climaxes in Life.
Jesus said that the Scriptures testified of him.
It is even so. In the Sargent pictures in the
Boston Public Library the prophets are repre-
sented as pointing forward to him. We may
even more surely represent the writers of the
Gospels and Epistles as pointing backward to
him. The Bible is to be judged by its goal;
and the goal is Christ. Other sacred books,
such as the Koran, were written by one
person; the Bible was written by many per-
sons for one Person. Jesus himself insisted

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 45

on this. He claimed to surpass the old revela-
tions. With all his reverence for the Old
Testament, he still put himself above it by
words like these : "Ye have heard that it hath
been said by them of olden time, But / say
unto you." This is as much as to affirm that
he was the end of a progressive revelation.
A skeptic once said that the whole Bible turns
upon Jesus. The skeptic was right. One of
the Gospels gives a word that may safely be
applied to the whole trend of the Bible,
"These things are written, that ye might be-
lieve that Christ is the Son of God, and that
believing ye might have life through his name."
The very purpose is declared to be that men
may be brought to faith in Christ.

It would be too much to say that all revela-
tion ceased with the closing of the canon.
Lowell's claim that the Bible of the race is
written slowly, that each race adds its texts
of hope and despair, of joy and moan, and
that the prophets still sit at the feet of God,
cannot be denied. But we may confidently
assert that revelation came to its culmination
and crown in Jesus Christ. When once the
essential things concerning him had found
place in a Book, the Bible found its consum-
mation. Thus do we see that the books that
were written by life, and then were tested by
life, came to their climax in Life. The only

46 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

way to secure a book better than the Bible is
to secure a person better than Jesus. The
best men entertain no such vain expectation
because they know that nothing can be more
perfect than Perfection.

We have set forth these three main reasons
for the unique influence that the Bible exer-
cises over life. Some are fond of saying that
the Bible is merely one of many sacred books.
Those who have read the bibles of other races
will not be misled by the statement. Max
Mtiller writes that the Sacred Books of the
East "by the side of much that is fresh,
natural, simple, beautiful, and true, contain
much that is not only unmeaning, artificial,
and silly, but even hideous and repellent."
Of the Brahmanas he affirms that they
"deserve to be studied as the physician
studies the twaddle of idiots and the ravings
of madmen." The Koran sets forth a very
fine morality, but it was written by one man
and really presents a legal religion. More-
over it offers no perfect example. The author
of the Koran himself claimed to receive reve-
lations that opened a path to immorality. One
voice declared the authority of the book, and
an obedient people accepted this verdict. The
Koran was not written by a wide range of
life, expressing God's dealing with many per-
sons under diverse conditions. It was not

THE BIBLE AND LIFE 47

tested for its authority by the free conscience
of a people. Mohammed wrote and adopted
his own canon. The Christian's Bible, written
by life, tested by life, and culminating in Life,
has come back to life with transforming
power.

The insistence of these chapters is that,
when the Holy Scriptures are given a free
opportunity to do their work with life, they
prove their own inspiration. After all, there
can be no other proof. The Bible is what it
is, no matter what theory men may adopt as
to its formation. It creates its own evidences.
The argument for its inspiration is the life
that it inspires. If the Book gives power and
purity to all departments of life, the Book
defends itself against attack and makes its
own conquests. Does the Bible rightly exalt
man? Does it sanctify the home? Does it
promote education? Does it glorify work?
Does it save wealth from greed, pleasure from
excess, sorrow from despair? These questions
reach the center of the problem.

We can go but one step beyond them, and
that step is most significant. Do we find in
the Bible not only a way to be followed, and a
goal of truth to be gained, but a Life that will
help lives along the way toward the goal?
Does the Book really reveal the way, the truth,
and the life? The answer must again be found

48 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

in life. The evidences of dynamic are in the
realms of human experience. More and more
the students of the Holy Scriptures, who seek
the pages with a religious purpose, will find
that all the departments of human living wait
on Jesus for their meaning and come to him
for their power. He is the Saviour. He lifts
men out of their sins, up into a trembling and
glorious idealism, and still up into a passion
for efficient goodness. The supreme apology
for the Bible will ever be found in men who
have been so instructed, reproved, and cor-
rected, that they may be named as perfect
men of God, thoroughly furnished unto every
good work. Given its full right, the Book that
was born of life, tried of life, glorified of Life,
will find its own best witnesses in redeemed
lives.

CHAPTER II

The Bible and Man

The natural outline of a human life which
has suggested the method of these lectures
represents a man as awaking each morning to
the consciousness of himself. Every man lives
perforce in his own company. He walks with
himself on every road of life. He sits with
himself in its resting places. He lies down
with himself in its slumbers. He is his own
friend, and his own enemy. Omar Khayyam
declares that he is his own heaven and his
own hell. There is a story of a farmer who
said that when he climbed to the roof of his
barn and looked about, he always found that
he himself was the center of the world. The
roof of the sky at all points was equally dis-
tant from him; the walls of the world made
by the dipping horizon showed the same
length of radius from himself ! The story has
its serious, as well as its amusing side. Every
man is the personal center of a world which
gets its meaning from his own heart. It is no
wonder that the old Greek motto was "Know

thyself."

50 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Yet the knowledge of self is not easy knowl-
edge. The fact that no man has ever seen his
own face, save by reflection in some mirror,
is a parable. The very eyes that see cannot
see themselves. They are so near that they
are hidden. The moral literature of the race
always emphasizes the difficulty of self-reve-
lation. Its cry is, "Who can understand his
errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults."
It has a yet deeper desire : that it may know
more of its own essential nature. Each man
longs for a revelation of God; and each man
longs for a revelation of himself. The present
emphasis is that the Bible is the medium of
this human revelation.

We do not go far in the reading of its pages
without discovering that the word "thou''
looms large in its spiritual grammar. Those
curious persons who often bring their arith-
metic to the Bible could doubtless tell how
many times "thou" and "thee" and "thy" and
"thine" are found in its chapters. In the Ten
Commandments and in the New Command-
ment "thou" is the recurring word. Personal
address is prominent everywhere. Indeed, the
whole Book is a kind of prophet coming into
the court of each soul and saying, "Thou art
the man." Sometimes the approach is an ac-
cusation, sometimes an approbation; in any
case the note is intensely individual. In the

THE BIBLE AXD MAX 51

Xew Commaiidment the "seLf " is made the
standard bv which the relation to the neighbor
is to be tested. The implication would seem to
be that the man who does not love himself
lacks the law by which his love for other men
may be made efficient, Polonins was not far
from the biblical idea when he said :

To thine own self be tme.
And it mnst follow, as the nighi the day.
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

In daily parlance it is often said. "Pnt your-
self in his place" ; bnt the value of that trans-
fer of self is small if you do not tuow what
the self is after you give it the new place!
The revelation of self is likewise the revela-
tion of other meiL We know our neighbors
only as we know otirselves.

Presuming, therefore, that we send a man
to the Scriptures to find the doctrine of his
own nature, what will be his discovery? The
question is not a new one, and its answer has
sometimes been touched by prejudice. Many
have contended that in its effort to magnify
God, the Bible is guilty of belittling man.
Fragments of Scripture might be presented to
supi)ort this criticism. We must, however,
insist that the biblical teaching is to be de-
termined by its main current rather than by
its eiidies. The Book does present Gk>d as

52 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

high and lifted up, while man lies with his
lips in the dust. It does make God a King,
while it proclaims man a subject. It does
stress divine sovereignty, while insisting on
human obedience and reverence. It does call
for humility on the part of man. We may
well admit that it is possible to overdo the
call to humility. That good mood may easily
pass over into a false mood. Occasionally
men, in an effort to be humble, speak untruth
concerning their own souls. It is just here
that the "worm-of-the-dust" theory gets its
chance. That phrase was a biblical one, used
by a character in his moment of self-abase-
ment. Yet the Concordance will prove that
this lowly estimate of man is by no means the
staple of teaching, as well as that much of
the cheap preaching of human nature is a
radical departure from the doctrine of the
Book. It is always good to keep clear the
distinction between vanity and self-respect, so
that if a man may not have the right to look
down on his neighbors he may still have the
right to look up to himself. Humility must
ever be based on truth, and self-respect can
have no other foundation. The two moods are
not contradictory. The one comes from the
recognition of the nature of God, in the utter
and unspeakable perfection of his attributes;
the other comes from the recognition of the

THE BIBLE AND MAN 53

nature of man as being himself a partaker of
that divine nature. In reality the two moods
grow out of the same truth.

A still deeper objection is sometimes offered
against the scriptural theory of human nature.
It is charged that the doctrine of the Fall,
together with the constant emphasis of man's
"exceeding sinfulness/' deprives man of special
dignity. Without doubt the theory of the Fall
has sometimes been presented in such a man-
ner as to cancel all human claims to great-
ness. Whenever a religious teacher carries
his doctrine of the Fall to unjust lengths, we
must all be tempted to declare that we can
readily prove an alibi! And if he shall em-
ploy that doctrine as a vast slur on humanity,
we shall insist that the length of the fall must
be the length of the possible rise ! In harmony
with this idea a great preacher has given the
w^orld a sermon on "The Dignity of Humanity
as Evidenced by its Ruins." Much of the
glory of the Coliseum at Rome has departed,
but even its ruins are a testimony to its great-
ness. Seeing its gaunt grandeur in the sun-
light, or viewing its impressive shadows in
the moonlight, the tourist gets the shock of
its glory. The simple truth is that a doctrine
of the Fall is possible only when you start
with human greatness. God made one crea-
ture strong enough to resist Himself — one

54 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

creature with sufficient self-determination to
make mutiny in the world. We would not
torture the doctrine of the Fall into a mere
compliment for humanity; but we would in-
sist that the possibility of a Fall implies a
height to fall from, and that responsibility for
a Fall implies a nature great enough and free
enough to make far-reaching choices. The
evidence of the dignity is still found among
the ruins.

We must always supplement any doctrine
of the Fall with a doctrine of human respon-
sibility. The Bible is most explicit in this
insistence. Its pages are crowded with the
moral imperative for man. The thorn and the
brier are on the earth ; but they are not blamed,
because they wait for the era of the good
people. The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth together in pain; but the creation
is not blamed, because it waits for the reveal-
ing of the sons of God. The lion and the lamb
do not lie down together; but they are not
blamed, because they wait for the age of peace
that can issue only from the hearts of men.
The coin rolls into dust and shadow and is
lost; we do not blame the coin. The sheep
wanders into desert and darkness and is lost;
we do not blame the sheep. The son goes off
into the swine field and is lost; and we do
blame the son. The coin and the sheep have

THE BIBLE AND MAN 55

no communings with self, no sense of guilt,
no road of repentant return; but the son has
all these. The Bible does utter its vigorous
charge against man's sin; it is the ever-open
court room into which the human conscience
is summoned for judgment. The Book does
not treat man as a machine whose cogs and
wheels are moved only by outside force; nor
does it treat him as a manikin, jerked hither
and yon by irresponsible sensations ; it rather
dignifies him with personal responsibility. The
Fall does not prevent climbing, if only man
will take advantage of those gracious powers
that are offered for his help. Emerson saw the
meaning of this when he wrote his tribute to
mankind based on its ability to respond to the
moral order :

So nigh is grandeur to our dust.

So near is God to man.
When Duty whispers low, "Thou must,"

The youth replies, "I can!"

Words like "ought" and "should" and "must"
have gone forth from the Bible and have fairly
penetrated the moral consciousness of the
race. No other book so honors human nature
with a sublime call to responsibility.

We now leave these general considerations
and take up the several portions of the Scrip-
tures with a view to ascertaining their con-

56 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

tributions to a doctrine of man. The founda-
tion of that doctrine is seen in the account
of the creation. Whether that account be
poem, parable, allegory, or history, its mean-
ing for this special point is the same. The
climax of the creation is man. God is repre-
sented as changing chaos into cosmos, sepa-
rating waters and land, fixing sun and moon
in their places, bringing verdure to the surface
of the earth, assigning birds and beasts and
fishes to their spheres, and then as giving to
man a wide rulership. "God made man to
have dominion" — that is the biblical word;
and the ages have been telling how true that
word is. The Bible theory and the facts of
life join in a coronation of man.

The account of the creation goes deeper
than this in its estimate of mankind. Its con-
ferring of power on man is explained by its
conferring a nature on man. Man is made in
the divine image. The Word was not content
with one statement of that fact ; it must needs
give it double emphasis. "So God created man
in his own image" — that would seem simple
and strong enough. But the statement is
strengthened by repetition, "In the image of
God created he him." These twice-repeated
words are the real charter of man's greatness.
The atheist must admit that man has the
dominion, but the believer holds that man has

THE BIBLE AND MAN 57

the dominion because lie has the birthright.
Man is not only God's submonarch, he is God's
image.

It is interesting and convincing to note how
soon that primary truth about man's nature
began to work. In the persecution under
Diocletian the precious parchments of the
Bible had been secretly carried from house to
house. The charge that a Christian had given
up the sacred Book in order to save himself
from death was one of the most serious that
could be presented. Many martyrdoms oc-
curred because men preferred the Bible above
their own lives. Though circulated under
such difSculty, and though made into read-
able parchments at such expense of labor and
money, the Bible was slowly impressing^ its
doctrine of man upon the stubborn period. We
are often smitten with horror as we read
stories which show how lightly human life was
regarded by the Komans. Those dreadful
scenes in the arena, where thumbs so often
declined to turn down as a sign of mercy, are
dire mysteries to men who have gotten the
biblical standpoint. We are distant from that
heartless mood because we are near to the
Bible. The Book and the gladiator could not
live together in peace. The Book at once
began to call men from the tiers of bloody
pleasure. With the conversion of Constantine,

58 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

superficial as it may have been, the change
began. The emperor ordered many splendid
copies of the Bible for the churches of his
capital. He himself came under the spell
of its human doctrine. Zealous Christian
teachers may sometimes overstate the influence
which the Bible exercised over later Roman
law. Still there are some undoubted evidences
of that influence. Constantine made a law
forbidding that a criminal should be branded
on the face, and he gave as his reason for the
law that the image of God should not be
marred! This leaves us in no doubt as to
what had inspired the legislation. It was the
simple beginning of a program that has not
yet come to its consummation. The biblical
idea of man routed one form of slavery, and
it will yet rout all other forms. When men
come to believe that man is made in the divine
image all good movements for the betterment
of life are set in the way to victory.

The legal portions of the Bible give us the
like lesson, even though the approach to the
lesson is different. Here we discover that
humanity is worthy enough to call for con-
servation and protection. The legislation
reaches to hygienic and sanitary details of
minute character. The whole effort is to build
a protecting fence about men. The Ten Com-
mandments, studied in this light, become a

THE BIBLE AND MAN 59

very human document. Their harsh and nega-
tive quality is softened into gentleness. They
guard the goods of man — his property, his wife
and children, his body, his good name. It
would be possible to regard the Decalogue as
a series of prohibitions in which the word
"not" occurs with forbidding frequency. In
this case the appropriate accompaniment is
thunder and lightning, and the appropriate
scroll for the writing is stone. This view-
point is one sided and unfair. The Ten Com-
mandments are prohibitions only because they
are protections. They have been through many
ages the kindly sentinels of society. They
have taken the side of God, of his dumb
creatures, and of men and women and little
children. Considered in any just way, the
legal portions of the Bible are a tribute not
merely to divine authority, but to human
worth.

The prophetical books add their lesson, and
from a still different angle. They are filled
with protests against man's conduct, with
wrath against his insincerities, and with pre-
dictions of his coming woe. The mouths of
the prophets were not filled with compliments.
Those stern men were not the flatterers of
their own generations. Their sayings could
be so elected as to make a degrading estimate
of men. But here again we must get the full

60 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

meaning of the message. In their last analysis
the prophecies are a marked tribute to poten-
tial man. Beyond the disturbed present they
see the peaceful future. Beyond the clash of
swords and the swish of spears they see the
mild and productive era of the plowshare and
the pruning hook. Beyond the unreal altars
they see the incense of true worship arising
to God. The prophets were, in the best sense,
optimists, and they were optimists because
they believed that all men would some day
yield to the Lord. They beheld the whole
earth filled with righteousness. They saw the
stone cut loose from the mountain and filling
the wide world. The healing river was to
flow to all peoples. Jerusalem was to be the
universal joy. The day would dawn when it
would be unnecessary to say to any man,
"Know thou the Lord." The most dismal of
the prophets foretold the perfect day. But
all this means that the prophets foretold the
perfect man and the perfect race. To pro-
claim that humanity, under the guidance of
God, is so capable is to dignify human life
beyond measure.

Nor are we lacking among the prophets an
individual example of the power of self-
respect. Nehemiah may not be the premier
among his fellows, but he talks with a royal
self-consciousness. When messengers come,

THE BIBLE AND MAN 61

desiring that he shall go down into the plain
for a parley with Sanballat, he declines by
saying, "I am doing a great work, so that I
cannot come down." Again he is told that the
enemy is coming, and he is counseled to go
into the temple and cling to the altar for
protection. Once more self-respect comes to
the rescue; the reply is, "Should such a man
as I flee? and who is there, that, being as I
am, would go into the temple to save his life?
I will not go in." Here the potential man,
foretold by the prophet, was the actual man.
He had reached such a high doctrine of Ms
own nature that the doctrine itself became the
prevention of triviality and of cowardice. The
rebuilded walls of Jerusalem arose from that
spirit. Those walls were likewise an expres-
sion of the prophet's faith in the future of his
people. The prophetic confidence in man was
second only to the prophetic confidence in
God. This form of tribute to humanity is
preeminent in the books of the prophets.

In the devotional part of the Bible we should
not naturally expect that tribute would turn
manward. The tendency is seen in those sec-
tions of prophecy where the prophet himself
has close dealings with God. When the
greatest of the prophets sees the ineffable One
and hears the awful trisagion of the seraphim,
the prime confession is that his own lips are

62 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

unclean and that he dwells in the midst of a
people of unclean lips. Inasmuch as the
Psalms are in large measure a liturgy of wor-
ship, their emphasis is on the greatness of
Jehovah. Yet sometimes the emphasis turns
toward man. The most striking illustration
occurs in the eighth psalm. The writer there
utters the feeling that we have all shared.
The limitless expanse of the heavens, the
shining of moon and stars in the far heights,
the workmanship of the Lord in the vast uni-
verse— all this makes the psalmist feel that he
is a mere speck in the scheme. Tried by those
celestial measurements, he drops into insig-
nificance. He is rescued from self -contempt
only by a return to the message of Genesis.
His despairing cry issues in a shout of per-
sonal triumph. "When I consider thy
heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and
the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is
man, that thou art mindful of him? and the
son of man, that thou visitest him?" If
materialism should conquer the Bible there is
but one answer. The psalmist is saved by the
Scripture, "Thou hast made him a little lower
than God, and hast crowned him with glory
and honor." It is no marvel that the first
translators lowered the tribute and substituted
"the angels" for God. The reverence that so
often used a sign for the divine name trembled

THE BIBLE AND MAN 63

on the verge of such a human tribute. Still
that tribute was a return to the doctrine that
God had made man in his own image and had
given him dominion over the works of his
hand. In addition to all this, the Psalms are
girded with the consciousness that man can
enter into the august presence of the Lord.
The mutual element in worship is an exalta-
tion of man. The greatness of Jacob is greater
when he meets with the heavenly visitant by
the Jabbok brook. He. becomes a prince. In
the devotional books man claims his princely
heritage. He treads the courts of the infinite
King.

Moving forward into the New Testament,
we find that the doctrine of man gathers more
impressiveness. Jesus never cast any doubt
upon the supreme place of man in the program
of God. He put his harshest blame upon those
who wickedly misled the children of the
Father. He himself was chided because he
sought the lowliest and the worst among men
and women. He ate with the publican and
gave his choicest lesson to the harlot. He was
willing to exchange his social reputation for
the privilege of associating with the humblest
people. For a woman with a dark past he
delocalized worship. From another he ac-
cepted the offering of grateful tears and put
her conduct in contrast with that of the lordly

64 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Pharisee. He was the Prophet for the soul as
such. He was the Priest who mediated gladly
between the least one and the greatest One.
We search his words in vain for anything that
put contempt on man as man.

When he compared men to the rest of crea-
tion it was always to human advantage. He
told of the care of the shepherd for the sheep,
and then he asked, "How much is a man better
than a sheep?" He declared that God noted
the fall of sparrows, though they brought
small price in the market place, and then,
speaking to ordinary men and women, nearly
all of them ignorant and more than half of
them slaves, he said, "Are ye not much better
than they?" Nor were these sayings really
interrogative; they were exclamatory. Jesus
knew that every normal man would feel the
answer in his own soul. The worth of man
was, in the teaching of Jesus, beyond debate.

He moved, also, from inanimate things to
the assertion of man's worth. The lilies and
grasses were in the care of God and waited on
him for their vesture. "Will he not much
more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" He
made the worth of man the warrant of the
care of God. At last he put man on one side
of the scale and the whole world on the other
side, and he affirmed that man outweighed the
world. Men may barter themselves for half

THE BIBLE AND MAN 65

a township; but Jesus declared that it would
be a disastrous bargain, if a man should accept
the world in exchange for himself. "What
shall it profit a man, if he gain the world and
lose himself? Or what will a man give in
exchange for himself?" This is the final
answer to any paltry teaching about the worth
of man.

When choice had to be made between man's
interests and sacred laws and ordinances,
Jesus gave preference to man. The shewbread
was consecrated, but he approved the taking
of it to satisfy human hunger. The Sabbath
day was holy, but the Sabbath was made for
man and not man for the Sabbath; so the
plucked ears of corn were a testimonial to
men.

The attitude of Jesus toward childhood is
tender evidence of his thought of humanity.
The child has not yet won any achievement,
save the loving assertion of its own depend-
ency. The child in the midst represented
humanity in its freshest and most natural
form. It is said that some ancient religion-
ists were accustomed to debate whether or not
a child had a soul. Jesus would have scorned
such a debate. He made the child the model
of the kingdom. Human life unspoiled was
lifted up as an example. To offend a little
one was worse than being sunk by a millstone

66 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

into the sea. A cup of cold water given to a
child would win a special reward. The angels
of the children behold ever the face of the
Father. Thus the child, in all the teaching
of Jesus, was made the creditor of the race.

Jesus carried this doctrine of man on to
the uttermost issue. We have never yet
secured the full meaning of that "inasmuch"
in the account of the final judgment. The
Lord lives beyond the need of man's overt aid.
But human beings are his representatives.
The righteous had so far overlooked this fact,
that they were forgetful of any ministry to
him; and what had been the unconscious
glory of the righteous was the unconscious
tragedy of the wicked. The judgment day
will be filled with human tests. He who has
not acted as if human beings stood for God
cannot meet the final standards. Jesus's pic-
ture of the judgment is a statement of divine
authority ; and it is an appraisement of human
worth.

Thus do we see that from whatever side we
come to the teaching of Christ, we find an
exalted doctrine of man. The incarnation
itself is a contribution to that doctrine. If
we call it "the human life of God'' it was a life
lived for the sake of man. The Word became
flesh and dwelt among men, full of grace and
truth, because men needed the message of that

THE BIBLE AND MAN 67

Word. The whole life of Jesus was lived for
man. He himself said, "For their sakes I
sanctify myself." All those sacrificial phrases
that describe the purpose of his coming add
glory to human life. The joy that was set
before him was the goal of a redeemed
humanity. His living for men was simply
his teaching about men, made over into con-
crete terms. In the Parable of the Good
Shepherd he gives the revelation of his own
attitude toward men. One soul, brought back
into right relations with God, makes joy in
heaven. It is the Eternal One who is repre-
sented as saying, "Kejoice with me." Men
may deny the doctrine of the only begotten
Son, but they can scarcely deny that that
doctrine leads on to a wondrous doctrine of
human worth.

The Cross, viewed in one light, becomes the
very climax of the doctrine of man. Theolo-
gians have often laid their stress upon some
single purpose of the divine sacrifice. One
has said that the Cross appeases the anger of
God; another that the Cross maintains the
majesty of the law; another that the Cross is
a moral influence wooing and winning the
heart of man to God; another that the Cross
is the expression of the Father's sorrow with
the sins and sorrows of his children. But we
may surely take one meaning of the Cross to

68 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

be the divine estimate of man. God's sense
of values must be preserved. He did not
send his Son to die for worms of the dust.
That idea may fit an extreme mood of spiritual
abasement. We may grant all possible con-
descension in the atoning act of God, but we
cannot grant a condescension that dedicates
infinite worth to finite worthlessness. Jesus
died for men just because men were far more
than worms of the dust. If we are to keep
that theory of atonement that has long held
the heart of the church, we are driven to
affirm that the Cross gives us a divine estimate
of mankind. No man ever appreciates the
worth of himself until he gets the appraisal
of Calvary. The dying of Jesus is not out of
harmony with his teaching and his living. The
whole program is like the garment taken from
him on the day of crucifixion; it is woven
throughout without seam. Men may decry a
doctrine of substitution, but they cannot say
that such a doctrine is a slight tribute to
human worth. In such a doctrine thorns and
nails and spears and all the drama of the
Cross are made into tributes to the soul of
man.

This carries us on to the biblical teaching
of man's permanent worth. The doctrine of
immortality makes its incalculable addition
to the doctrine of man. There is a story, for

THE BIBLE AND MAN 69

which the writer cannot vouch, that Thomas
Carlyle in a mood of pessimism one day wrote
this peevish estimate of man:

What is man? A foolish baby!

Vainly strives and fumes and frets!
Demanding all, deserving nothing,

One small grave is all he gets!

Language like this is certainly no contribu-
tion to the literature of self-respect. The story
proceeds to relate that Oarlyle's wife found
this poetic depreciation lying on the table,
and that she wrote the following confession
and correction:

And man? O hate not, nor despise
The fairest, lordliest work of God!

Think not he made thee good and wise
Only to sleep beneath the sod!

Doubtless the tale is apocryphal. In any case
the latter estimate is far nearer to the biblical
conception, and it is altogether worthy of a
woman's moral instinct. If man is to live
forever, as the climax of Revelation insists,
it is quite impossible for him to "think too
much" of himself, unless he indulges in com-
parison of himself with others. An argument
for immortality does not fall within the scope
of this lecture ; but the bearing of immortality,
as declared in the Holy Scriptures, on the
view that men must take of human nature,

70 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

touches our purpose in a radical way. A
deathless person must respect himself. A
deathless person must command the respect
of a world — and of God. The doctrine of im-
mortality adds an infinite measure to the
doctrine of human worth.

Even the biblical representation of heaven
secures a relation to this subject. The abode
for immortal life, as well as immortal life
itself, may be turned into a human estimate.
The book of Revelation declares that the
nations shall bring "their glory and honor"
into the Eternal City. This can only mean
that men shall make some contribution to the
eternal life. What they are and what they
have done shall fill heaven with added value.
The cities of earth shall transport treasures
to the Heavenly City. Here, again, we come
upon a reason based on the divine sense of
values. God will not provide an Eternal Home
that is any better than the Eternal Beings
for whom he makes it ready. The gem is to be
better than the setting. In a certain sense,
therefore, jasper walls and pearl gates and
gold streets, as seen in the descriptions of
heaven, are tributes to human souls. The
Bible tells us that "greater than the house is
he that built it,'' and the Bible would tell
us, also, that the occupant of the house is
greater than the house. God will provide no

THE BIBLE AND MAN 71

everlasting dwelling that is better than the
everlasting dwellers. Heaven is made for
man, and not man for heaven. The many-
mansions are tributes to the people that shall
live in the Father's house. The Scriptures
are reserved in their revealings of the other
land ; but their descriptions of celestial glories
may be united with those other portions of
the Bible that dignify the human spirit and
may be taken as standing for the divine valu-
ation of the essential selves of men.

This review of the teaching of the several
sections of the Bible has confessedly sought
for the words and ideas that exalt the doc-
trine of man. Allowing all possible discounts,
and admitting all possible offsets, the resi-
duum of instruction tending to glorify human
nature is significant. We need not wonder
that some thoughtful men have affirmed that
the chief characteristic of Christianity is the
value that it places on man. If we do not
accept this statement, we can still declare
that the Bible is the supreme Book when
judged by its emphasis on human values.

Nor can there be any doubt of the need of
this emphasis in our own age. As men crowd
more and more into the great centers of popu-
lation, the tendency will be to hold men
cheaply. In former times man was often
highly valued because of his rarity. On the

72 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

far Eastern plains a new face, not being often
seen, was regarded with curious interest. Thus
Abraham stood in the door of his tent in the
heat of the day and welcomed the stranger,
because the stranger was an event. But in the
modern city the stranger is no longer an event ;
he is only an episode, or perhaps an incident.
We pass him on the dense street, and we do
not notice him at all. There are so many of
him that, unless we are heedful, we shall come
to regard him lightly just because he is hidden
by the crowd. When factories grow so huge
that men are known, not by their names, but
by their numbers, only the scriptural emphasis
upon men as such can save human beings from
being deemed "hands" rather than souls. If
the sin of the countryside is an excessive
social interest that makes for gossip, the sin
of the city is a social carelessness that makes
for indifference. The various problems of our
social life wait for their solution upon the
Christian doctrine of man. When that doc-
trine has done its full service, race problems,
labor problems, liquor problems, and all their
dreadful accompaniments will issue into a
righteous and intelligent peace. An immortal
son of God, knowing himself, cannot be unjust
to another immortal son of God, when once
he knows his Brother.

This hints at the personal bearing of the

THE BIBLE AND MAN 73

doctrine. As men grow in moral and spiritual
experience, they find themselves using more
and more the test of self-respect. Knowing that
the reaction of certain behaviors makes them
feel that a fragment of the soul has slipped
away from them, so that they have the sense
of smallness, they guard their natures lest
legitimate pride should be destroyed. Andrews
Norton once wrote to his son, Charles Eliot
Norton, who was about to go abroad for an
important service, telling the young man that
his family and friends recognized that he had
special powers for doing large and worthy
things. Then he added that "this ought not
to make one vain. On the contrary, their true
tendency is to produce that deep sense of
responsibility — of what we owe to God, to our
friends, and to our fellowmen — which is
wholly inconsistent with presumption or
vanity." It was a wise father who wrote thus
to his son. If the Christian doctrine of man
be true, no man can think too much of himself.
There is a type of saving pride. Clough stated
it in his well-known lines :

Then welcome, Pride! and I shall find
In thee a power to lift the mind
This low and groveling joy above —
'Tis but the proud can truly love.

The pride that comes from the consciousness

74 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

of the divine image has power to restrain from
sins and trivialities, and it has power like-
wise to constrain toward holiness of character
and largeness of service. One who has come to
believe that he is made in the divine image,
that he is one of the divinely appointed rnlers
of the world, that the great laws are designed
for his protection, that the alluring prophecies
of the future are declarations of his coming
power, that his worship is the symbol of his
partnership with the Most High, that the in-
carnation is in his interest, that the Infinite
Teacher brought him matchless tributes, that
the Cross of Calvary is an expression of his
own valuation, that immortal life is his des-
tiny, and that a glorious heaven is the fitting
place for his final dwelling — such a one has
gained all the preventions and all the inspira-
tions of the Christian doctrine of self-respect.
Sins and trivialities cannot flourish when one
thinks so much of oneself ; great affections and
lasting consecrations seem natural to one so
highly endowed. The conception that makes
for the dignity of self makes also for the con-
sideration of others. He who entertains this
view begins to

Find man's veritable stature out,
Erect, sublime, the measure of a man,
And that's the measure of an angel,
Says the apostle.

THE BIBLE AND MAN 75

To such a one life becomes solemn and beau-
tiful. He is now the son of God. While he
knows not yet what he shall be, he sees the
vision of the Elder Brother and so purifies
himself even as he is pure. The world needs
the gospel of the Son of God in order that it
may learn the gospel of the sons of God.

CHAPTER III

The Bible and Home

The significance of the home is seen in the
fact that every human being is a son or a
daughter. This ordinary statement at once
insists on becoming extraordinary. It is diffi-
cult to think what life would have been, or
even how it could have been, if children had
been pushed upon the earth from some mys-
terious void and had been nurtured without
the providential agency of fathers and
mothers. So much do we realize the impor-
tance of the home that where it is impossible
to maintain one, owing to the death, or inabil-
ity, or worthlessness of parents, we still make
provision for an institution that shall provide
as many domestic features as can be won for
the orphaned. This we call an Orphans' Home.
It is significant that the sociological tendency
of the period drifts away from even this insti-
tution. The effort now is to bring the child-
less and the parentless together. Goldsmith
said that the nakedness of the indigent world
might be clothed with the trimmings of the
vain. There are those who affirm that, if the

THE BIBLE AND HOME 77

parentless and the childless could be brought
into the company of homes, the Orphan
Asylum would be no longer needed.

Our imaginations may make an easy test.
Let an authoritative edict go forth that after
the approaching midnight the home would be
banished, and that each community must ad-
just itself to some other form of social life.
What would such an edict mean? The homes
from which students have come are no more
responsible for them. They constitute no
longer the bases of supplies on which they can
draw, nor the alluring hearthstones to which
they can return. The workman turns no more
his eager feet toward the lights of his cottage.
The prince finds his palace removed and all
its splendor ceases to invite him. Little chil-
dren are herded into impersonal surroundings
and become public rather than domestic
charges. The scene of disaster could be de-
scribed without merciful stint. These sugges-
tions are enough to show that society could
scarcely escape chaos if the home were to be
destroyed. How much do the words father,
mother, brother, sister, wife, husband, son,
daughter mean? Empty out their closer sig-
nificance, and you vacate much of life's
meaning.

Nor is this the narrow word of an ecclesi-
astic or theologian. Drummond in The

78 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Ascent of Man claims that the evolution of a
father and mother was the final effort of
nature. John Fiske, as scientist and historian,
points out the helplessness of infant life as
binding parents into unity that grows out of
responsibility. Soon after its birth the wee
animal runs and leaps, while the wee bird
does not wait long ere it flies from limb to
limb ; but the human babe in the ancient forest
lies helpless in its log cradle for many months.
Both Drummond and Fiske agree that by this
program the God of nature was introducing
patience, devotion, and sacrifice into the world
and was making ready for the kingdom of
heaven. It is plain that Drummond does not
state it too strongly when he says that "the
goal of the whole plant and animal life seems
to have been the creation of a family which
the very naturalist had to call Mammals," or
Mothers.

This represents somewhat the divine history
of the home. The prophecy of the home like-
wise does some convincing work. The truth is
that the home as an institution plants itself
squarely in the path of some modern social
theories. Some of those theories have begun
by boldly demanding that the home be abol-
ished because it has been made a buttress of
private life and property. Not only has this
suggestion been met with a horror that in

THE BIBLE AND HOME 79

itself expresses the instinctive conviction of
the sacredness of the home, but it has been
met with the insistence that the prophets
should name their substitute for the hearth-
stone. This insistence has received nothing
more than hazy and vague replies. The
prophet stammers out some dark saying about
"something better" or about the home as hav-
ing fulfilled its mission in "the evolution of
society''; and by the very helplessness of his
speech he really becomes an advocate of closer
domestic relations! It is interesting to note
how these reformers seek to find a good path
back from their social desert! They soon de-
clare that the new regime must keep the home
intact, and that only sporadic and irrespon-
sible voices from their camp are lifted against
the home's sanctity! The antihome prophet
always has a hard task. He collides with one
of the granite convictions of humanity. If he
would save the rest of his theory he must save
the home from the proposed destruction. God
has set the solitary in families. Men look in
vain for a better setting for the jewel of life.
From all their seeking they come back in due
season to the truth that, imperfect as the home
may often be, it is still rooted and grounded
in outer life and in inner instinct, and that
it is futile to try to make better what God has
made best.

80 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

All this will serve for emphasizing the im-
portance of the home, though much more might
be added. When the man awakes in the morn-
ing, becomes aware of himself, and then hears
the voices of his wife and children, he is
immediately related to one of the fundamental
institutions of society. If the Bible be, as we
have claimed, preeminently the Book of Life,
it must relate itself vitally to the home. Our
inquiry, therefore, is, What bearing does the
Book have upon the home? The answer must
necessarily be sketchy and incomplete ; but we
can soon gather an answer that will establish
the biblical drift of teaching.

The Bible begins with an impressive lesson
of monogamy. In the Eden life one man and
one woman join hands as partners in joy and
work. Let the account be poetry, allegory,
parable, the lesson is the same. In that inti-
mate communion with God that found him in
the garden in the cool of the day, bigamy and
polygamy are not represented as being at
home. Even the Fall is not described as
quickly dropping man low enough to reach the
dreadful level of promiscuity or of any of the
approaches to so-called free love. It required
time ere that downward journey could be
made. Humanity in its innocence is not
described as starting from the dens of polyg-
amy.

THE BIBLE AND HOME 81

But in season the Bible gives us some dis-
concerting facts. Bigamy and polygamy con-
front us in the lives of some worthies. Let it
be allowed that sometimes the motive is the
perpetuation of the home itself. Provision is
sought against the curse of barrenness. Let
it be allowed, also, that the Bible does not
represent bigamy as working well. It brought
discord into Abraham's tent. The peevish
wife drives her own wretched substitute from
the door, until the desolate Hagar stands in
her loneliness and repeats the comforting
ritual of the seeing God. The son of bigamy
goes off into his wild life, with his hand
against every man and every man's hand
against him. The admirable thing about the
second patriarch is his devotion to one woman.
Neutral and characterless as Isaac seems to
be, he still won a mention in the marriage
service of the ages by his faithfulness to
Rebecca alone. Upon the third patriarch
bigamy was forced by a cruel deception. In
truth a review of the Old Testament will
show that any departure from the unity of
the home made for trouble. It filled the
moving tabernacles of the patriarchs with
quarrels. It led David on to murder. It
drenched Solomon in debauchery. It de-
graded the successive kings until it destroyed
their power and ruined the nation. Its in-

82 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

evitable end was the loss of the land and the
sadness of captivity.

The Old Testament records polygamy, but
it does not applaud polygamy. When once a
polygamist stood in the halls of Congress and
defended his right to a seat by quoting the
examples of the patriarchs, his plea did not
avail. Not only was the conviction of the
nineteenth century against his contention, but
the mood of the very Book from which he
quoted was his enemy. So far as we can judge,
monogamy was the general rule among the
Jewish people. The exemplars of bigamy and
polygamy were mainly those whose position
enabled them to flaunt the public sentiment
of their day. The history of Old Testament
polygamy is so sorrowful that the Hebrew
people have reacted from it into a stanch
defense for the monogamic home. The seduc-
tion of Tamar, the murder of Amnon, the
unfilial licentiousness of Absalom, the sordid
road of impurity trod by the later monarchs
of Israel, and the despair of the Babylonish
captivity, make a piercing case against polyg-
amy. On the other hand, the unwavering
faithfulness of the maid in the Song of Solo-
mon, the patience of Hosea with his prodigal
wife, the idyllic story of Kuth, all these be-
came persuasive pleas for a home wherein one
man and one woman should live together in

THE BIBLE AND HOME 83

loyal love even until death. When Jesus came
to give his message contemporaneous polyg-
amy had all but ceased in Palestine. But
easy divorce, sometimes called "consecutive
polygamy," had become prevalent. The world
was waiting for the voice of authority, and it
heard that voice when Christ began to teach.

The teaching of Jesus in reference to mar-
riage is unmistakable. It may impress many
as severe; it cannot impress any as doubtful.
If we accept him as the Supreme Teacher we
receive a decision given with no equivocal
terms. It is often said that the method of the
Lord was to offer general principles and to
leave his followers to carry out these prin-
ciples in the spirit of loving discipleship.
Thus he declined to give detailed rules for
the observance of the Sabbath, explicit in-
structions for the division of estates, definite
laws for prayer and worship and almsgiving.
Yet when he discussed marriage he gave both
general principles and specific rules. If this
was not the only case where he became sponsor
for a rule it was surely the most emphatic
case. He seemed to feel that concerning mar-
riage and the home he must give a mass of
distinct precepts. It was as if he deemed the
home so sacred and its enemies so subtle and
powerful as to make necessary some particular
instruction.

84 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Perhaps we shall not err in saying that
Jesus found in his time argent reasons for
specific and strong teaching about marriage.
The Jews, who went to a mechanical extreme
in their observance of the Sabbath law, had
gone to an opposite extreme in their attitude
toward the law of the home. In this regard
the period was worse than our own, but it
was not unlike our own. The domestic con-
science of the Jews had been more or less
weakened. Mere trifles were made excuses for
the breaking up of home. Doubtless the in-
fluence of the Eomans was making itself felt
among the Hebrews. Professor Sheldon
quotes Dorner as showing the reckless ease of
divorce among leading Romans. One man
divorced his wife because she went unveiled
on the street; another because she spoke
familiarly to a freedwoman; another because
she went to a play without his knowledge.
Even Cicero, proclaimed a very noble Roman,
divorced his first wife that he might marry a
wealthier woman, and his second wife because
she did not seem to be sufficiently afflicted over
the death of his daughter! "In fine," says
Professor Sheldon, "it was not altogether
hyperbole when Seneca spoke of noble women
as reckoning their years by their successive
husbands rather than by the Consuls" (His-
tory of the Early Church, pages 29, 30).

THE BIBLE AND HOME 85

The records of this same period among the
Romans will rout the claim that easy divorce
tends to purity. Faithlessness to marriage
vows was not seriously regarded, and there
were instances of so-called noble women
registering as public prostitutes in order that
they might thus avoid the penalties of the
laws ! Easy divorce seemed to be accompanied
by easy virtue, as if, indeed, both evils grew
naturally out of the same soil. The Roman
fashions were having their influence on the
Jews. The sacred law was searched and was
explained away with evil subtlety in order
that men might be religiously released from
the marriage bond.

Evidently, then, the times demanded that
Jesus should save the marriage law from
looseness. The ease of divorce was not un-
like that in our own land to-day. If the
teaching of Jesus was needed then it is needed
now in order that marriage may recover its
binding solemnity. On general principles we
must all rejoice that Jesus did not give a
dubious word on this sacred matter. It may
be doubted whether any man who did not have
the cause of his own pleasure to serve and
who was not willing to subordinate a social
law to the superficial joy of his own life, would
be willing to modify the Saviour's teaching.
Certainly that teaching has long been the firm

86 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

bulwark of the married life. Had Jesus spoken
with doubt, or had he given sanction to easy
divorce, what would the results have been?
Our homes would have been builded upon the
sands of freakish impulses and of hasty tem-
pers. But Jesus's word puts rock into the
domestic foundation. When it was given it
was met by all of the objections which it still
evokes. Some said that the teaching was ex-
treme in its severity, quite outdoing the law
of Moses in its demands. Others said that
rather than to submit to a bond so unbreak-
able, it would be better not to marry at all.
Still Jesus did not lower his teaching. God
was the author of marriage; man must not
assume to be its destroyer. God takes two
persons and makes them one flesh; man must
not cut that vital bond.

Plainly, then, Jesus felt that marriage
established a family relationship which was
to resemble other family relationships in its
indissolubleness. How can a man get rid of
his brother, or his sister, or his father or
mother, when God has decreed a relation in
the flesh that cannot be severed? One may
live apart from brother or sister, or father or
mother, as a matter of convenience or peace;
but how can one destroy the relationship? In
spite of angry decrees, is not the brother still
a brother, and do not father and mother re-

THE BIBLE AND HOME 87

main father and mother in defiance of all
unfilial pronouncements of divorce? In
Jesus's view the second family relationship
was as indissoluble as the first. If one were
to argue from a certain standpoint it might
be easy to claim that it must be even more
indissoluble. A man does not choose his first
home. It represents a necessity against which
he may not strive. But he does choose his
second home, and it represents a union for
which he is himself distinctly responsible.
Why should a man be allowed to divorce him-
self from the home which is founded by his
liberty while still being inexorably bound to
the home which was founded without his
choice? Jesus taught that the very constitu-
tion of society, as resting on the word of God,
demanded that the second home be as sacredly
unbreakable as the first. The "one flesh"
must not be severed in either case.

Hence it comes about that, while the law of
Jesus does not allow divorce, unless for the
one reason mentioned later, it does not forbid
separation. The sin does not consist in put-
ting away the mfe when conditions are un-
bearable ; it does consist in marrying another.
He does not insist that the quarrelsome shall
live amid their brawls ; but he does insist that
they shall not go into another experiment that
degrades a sacred covenant. We do not long

88 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

listen to the specious arguments for easy
divorce, with the privilege of remarriage,
without discovering that these arguments
affirm either that personal purity is impos-
sible or that personal convenience and pleasure
are the primary demands of life. Jesus did
not so teach. Dr. Peabody, in his matchless
discussion of Jesus's teaching about the fam-
ily, well says : ^^The family is, to Jesus, not a
temporary arrangement at the mercy of un-
controlled temper or shifting desire; it is or-
dained for that very discipline in forbearance
and restraint which are precisely what many
people would avoid, and the easy rupture of
its union blights these virtues in their bud.
Why should one concern himself in marriage
to be considerate and forgiving, if it is easier
to be divorced than it is to be good?" (Jesus
Christ and the Social Question, p. 159. ) That
these words touch the evil heart of many
modern divorces there can be no doubt. The
emphatic teaching of Jesus was that marriage
should not be regarded as a breakable agree-
ment of convenience, but rather as an indis-
soluble pledge of permanent union.

Whether Jesus allowed any exception to
this law remains a debatable matter among
the scholars. Some contend that the "save
for fornication" clause is an interpolation,
and that the teaching of Jesus admitted no

THE BIBLE AND HOME 89

divorce whatsoever. Others contend that the
gospel writers who omit this clause regarded
the one reason for divorce as so certain that
it was not deemed necessary to mention its
legitimacy. It may be claimed with a show
of reason that the regarding of adultery as
an exceptional sin against the married life
stands for something instinctive in human
nature. Notwithstanding all statements that
desertion and abuse and drunkenness may be
so aggravated as to constitute offenses worse
than fornication, normal men and women con-
tinue to assign a lonely infamy to the sin of
carnal unfaithfulness. If Jesus did use the
exceptional clause there is not wanting evi-
dence that his word is confirmed by an all
but universal feeling. Many races have been
disposed to decree that the sin of adultery is
the one iniquity sharp and incisive enough to
sever the "one flesh." Perhaps it is safe to
affirm that the great majority of good men and
women do not shrink from the exception as
being unworthy of Jesus's teaching. But, the
exception being granted, that teaching is
clear and uncompromising. When that teach-
ing becomes the law of the world divorce
courts will be largely emptied and the mar-
riage vows will be assumed with less haste
and with more solemnity.
The New Testament is thus seen to be the

90 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

headquarters of that conception of marriage
that alone gives a firm foundation to the home.
It is impossible to conceive what would have
been the dismal statistics of divorce, if Jesus
had made the marriage bond of slender
strength. Truly the situation is bad enough
as it is. Often the causes for divorce are
trivial; sometimes they are deliberately ar-
ranged by the separating parties! and occa-
sionally the much-married comedian is hailed
on the stage with a joking tolerance. But
when more than ninety per cent of the mar-
riages of the land stand the tests of time and
are kept in fidelity until the "one flesh" is
severed by death, it is evident that some strong
force still guards the home from desecration.

We need not inquire what that force is; it
is the Word of Christ. Among those who
follow him least, he has made divorce "bad
form''; among those who follow him some-
what, he has made it doubtful morals; while
among those who accept him as Lord and
Master, he has made it sacrilege and blas-
phemy. The devotees of pleasure and con-
venience and lust may well quarrel with the
decree of Christ. The devotees of compromise
may seek to refine and discount his explicit
law. Yet all those who see in the home the
very center and heart of a properly organized
society, as well as the very ordination of the

THE BIBLE AND HOME 91

Lord God Almighty, will not cease to be grate-
ful that Christ spoke so unmistakably con-
cerning its solemn sanction. He fixed forever
the difference between the civil marriage and
the Christian marriage. He filled the mar-
riage service with religious terms. "The sight
of God/' "instituted of God/' "mystical
union/' "holy estate/' "Cana of Galilee/'
"reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of
God," "God's ordinance," "forsaking all
other," "so long as ye both shall live," "for
better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health," "the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost," "God hath joined together," "in holy
love until their lives' end" — all these words
are Christ's words, his Spirit confirmed them
in the service of his church. That service may
well close with the prayer which declares that
his is "the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory/forever."

More and mare careful students of both
sociology and Christianity will see that no
safe conception of marriage can be found save
in the words of the Lord. The civil contract
idea is full of peril. The case of Percy Bysshe
Shelley, the English poet, is in evidence. The
illustration may be extreme, but it will the
better show the sure goal of that theory of
marriage that forgets God. Shelley, for a

92 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

time at least, was an outright atheist. Bow-
ing God out of the universe, he could not
consistently leave God in his theory of mar-
riage. His college thesis was an argument for
atheism. Given sufficient provocation and
motive, Shelley was sure to reach the limit of
a godless idea of marriage. It seems almost
impossible for men with a literary mania to
see social or moral fault in their heroes, and
their tendency often is to absolve writers of
genius from the usual laws. Shelley married
the daughter of a retired innkeeper. In two
years he separated from his wife and two
children. Three years later the wife drowned
herself, meeting voluntarily a fate which
Shelley was to meet involuntarily. An apolo-
gist for Shelley says, "The refinements of
intellectual sympathy which poets desiderate
in their spouses Shelley failed to find in his
wife, but for a time he lived with her not un-
happily; nor to the last had he any fault to
allege against her, except such negative ones
as might be implied in his meeting a woman
he liked better.'' The more we study this
language the more does its superficiality im-
press us. Let it be said that Shelley was
young and heedless when he first married;
let it be said, also, that he was in general
strangely lovable and warmly philanthropic;
and let it be said^ even, that he was in his

THE BIBLE AND HOME 93

lifetime execrated beyond Ms deserts. But it
would not be so easy to palliate his conduct
if one's own daughter had drowned herself to
end her sorrow, or if one's own daughter had
traveled with him, unmarried, over France
and Switzerland! Somehow literary admira-
tion plays tricks on moral natures. Doubtless
the judgment of Shelley on the basis of his
boyish poem "Queen Mab" was unfair, even as
its surreptitious publication without his con-
sent was unfair. None the less one may trace
a connection between his college production
in defense of atheism and his later domestic
conduct. No marriage has a sure foundation
apart from a religious sanction. The more
we consider the possibilities suggested by this
confessedly extreme illustration, the more
will we cling to the strict theory of Jesus
as against the limping logic of any loose
sociologist.

We have thus seen that the foundation of
the home comes to the Bible, and particularly
to the goal of the Bible's revelation in Christ,
for its solidity. Other foundations are
fashioned of yielding sand. The marriage
ceremony might well be modified in some
minor regards; but the word of Christ will
insist that the ceremony shall represent no
flimsy contract. While he rules the pronounce-
ment will be, "God hath joined together";

94 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

and the human response will remain, "till
death us do part."

The relation of Jesus to the home goes
farther than his word about marriage, deep
and far-reaching as that is. His life empha-
sized the sacredness of the family relation.
He went back from the scene in the Temple
to be "subject unto his parents." He wrought
his first miracle on the occasion of a mar-
riage. Many of his miracles of mercy were
performed in answer to a family plea. He
heard the cry of a mother when he healed the
daughter of the Syrophcenician woman, and
again when he raised up the son of the widow
of Nain. He heard the cry of a father when
he cast out the evil spirit and restored a
stricken son, clothed and in his right mind.
He heard the cry of sisters when he stood
weeping at the grave of Lazarus. The domes-
tic plea quickly reached his heart and sum-
moned his aid. It was so even in the personal
sense. In the agony of the crucifixion he did
not fail to commend his mother to the care of
his best-to-do disciple, and to cause the writ-
ing of that simple statement, "From that day
that disciple took her into his own home."

Indeed, through all the life of Jesus he
glorified the family, unless the family stood
in the way of his truth or work. Emerson
said once, "I will hate my father and my

THE BIBLE AND HOME 95

mother when my genius calls me." We all
know where Emerson got those words; they
were not written on his own authority. Jesus
made our human ancestry subject to our
divine ancestry. Above the earthly parents
he saw the heavenly Father. The God who
ordained the home was above the home. But
Jesus would allow no other exception. He
himself lived by that supreme law. He was
homeless in obedience to his own divine mis-
sion. There is a peculiar illustration of this,
hidden somewhat by our awkward distribution
of the Bible into chapters and verses. The
seventh chapter of John ends with the words,
"They went every man to his own house." It
is not difficult for us to reproduce the scene,
even with its Oriental touches. The discus-
sion of the day is over. The hearers did what
men and women have been doing ever since —
they turned to the twinkling lights of their
homes. Soon the crowds had disappeared and
the various persons had joined themselves to
their family groups. The homeless One was
left alone. The first verse of the eighth chap-
ter of John says, "Jesus went unto the mount
of Olives." It was just an instance of his
tragedy, "The foxes have holes, and the birds
of the air have nests ; but the Son of man hath
not where to lay his head." The homelessness
of Jesus was vicarious. Sometimes still he

96 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

calls his own into the same vicariousness. He
separates sons and daughters from their
fathers and mothers and sends them afar to
preach his kingdom. Wherever those home-
less ones may go, the meaning of home takes
on a new and sacred meaning. They carry
with them the Word and Spirit of him who,
being weary, invited the weary ones to come
to him for rest; being thirsty, invited the
thirsty ones to drink of the water of life ; being
poor, invited the poor to come to him for
riches; being dead, invited the dying ones to
look to him for eternal life; and, being home-
less, still commands the world to look to him
for the spirit of home. Even though he him-
self went down into the darkness of the Mount
of Olives, ever since his day the people that
have heard and heeded his word have found
the lights of home more inviting and the mis-
sion of the home more divine.

There is yet another consideration which
must be noted ere we receive the full message
of Jesus about the home. The teaching of
Jesus concerning God was almost wholly
based on a figure of speech derived from the
home. In the Old Testament God is men-
tioned under the title of fatherhood but seven
times. Five times he is spoken of as the father
of the Jewish people; twice he is spoken of
as the father of individual men. Only once

THE BIBLE AND HOME 97

in the sweep of the ancient Scriptures is there
found a prayer addressed to God as Father.
God was the King of kings, and the Lord of
hosts; he was Creator and Lawgiver. But in
the knowledge of the people he was not yet
Father. The world waited long ere men found
an Elder Brother who could break the spell
of their orphanhood and reveal to them a
Father. When Jesus desired to tell men what
God was like he went to their homes and found
therein the form of his teaching. He sprinkled
the New Testament with the domestic name
of God. Two hundred and sixty-five times
God is spoken of under the title of Father-
hood. The sacredness of the home relation
could not receive holier emphasis.

Thus the homes which are founded by the
Lord become revelations of the Lord. Domes-
tic relations are teachers of theology. Well
may we speak of a Family Bible! There is
such a Bible. The illustration of theology is
the family illustration. Some day we shall
recover that theology, and we shall place the
theologies that have superseded it in their
secondary place. Jesus was the final Teacher
of theology, and we must give him the primacy.
Under his teaching every true home is a symbol
of the divine household; every true parent is
a limited representative of God; every true
son is an example of the filial spirit that is

98 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

religion. The path of prayer starts with the
word Father. The doctrine of providential
care is explained by the word Father. The
call to obedience refers to the will of the
Father. The deeper tragedy of sin comes from
the fact that the offense is against the Father.
Conversion is a return to the Father.

Taking, then, the direct teaching of Jesns
with reference to marriage as the founding of
the home, taking his life in its merciful rela-
tion to the home, and taking his teaching
about God as based on the home, we are justi-
fied in saying that Jesus was the Prophet
and Saviour of the Family. The vision that
he gave of the other life took on that form
again. He declared that he was preparing a
place for his own, and he called that place
the "Father's house." He was likewise pre-
paring a home this side of the many mansions.
A Carpenter he was. He has builded many
sanctuaries, some for worship, and some for
the mercy that we show to the sick, and aged,
and destitute. But the Carpenter of Nazareth
is the builder of the true home. His word
lays its foundations, raises its walls, places
its capstone, and furnishes its atmosphere of
peace and love. The home that is placed on
any other word cannot stand the shock of the
tempest. It is based on sand; and when the
winds and rains and storms of passion come,

THE BIBLE AND HOME 99

the home will fall, and great will be the fall
thereof. The world needs to-day the lesson
of Jesus about the home; and it needs, also,
the spirit of Jesus in the home. When men
and women yield to that spirit, extravagance
will be checked, forbearance will be increased,
love will be promoted, peace will be estab-
lished. Husband and wife will not then plead
that Jesus's strict decree concerning marriage
may be annulled. Earthly homes will be like
vestibules of the Father's House.

There remains for brief discussion the rela-
tion of the Epistles of the New Testament to
the home life of the people. The tendency
here has been to give undue emphasis to cer-
tain phases of Paul's teaching. Some re-
formers, especially some radical feminists,
have spoken of the great apostle's teaching
with scant respect. The command to wives
to obey their husbands has been kept apart
from the command to husbands to love their
wives even as Christ loved the church. Christ
loved the church so that he gave his life for
it ; and when husbands love their wives to that
sublime extent, obedience is no longer de-
manded for tyranny. All technical matters
aside, it will be seen that the apostolic treat-
ment of the domestic relations, touching the
relative duties of husbands and wives, parents
and children, and masters and servants, shows

100 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

a marked balance. When each party keeps
his portion of the precepts, and is strictly
minded to fulfill precisely his part of the
apostolic contract, debates about primacy and
authority find their gracious solution in
mutual love. Unless we should wish to make
undue account of Saint PauFs doctrine of the
husband's primacy, we cannot say that his
attitude toward womankind was marked by
anything other than utmost respect. Just
what his own domestic experiences were is
a question of age-long doubt. If we study his
actual references to women we shall find a
series of compliments too deep to serve as the
expression of a superficial gallantry and too
genuine to allow the author to be classed as a
hater of the mothers and sisters and wives of
the race. Near the end of his life Paul caught
the vision of his Master. Beyond his wander-
ings he saw a destination ; above his imprison-
ments he saw a freedom ; after his shipwrecks
he saw a haven ; and the destination and free-
dom and haven were all expressed in the words
"at home." "At home," "at home with the
Lord," this was PauFs conception of the wait-
ing heaven. He, too, exalted the home by
making it the f orefigure of heaven.

We have now presented enough to justify
the statement that the Bible is the stanch
friend of the home. As long as men and

THE BIBLE AND HOME 101

women read and obey the Book, and love and
follow the Lord of the Book, their feet will
turn reverently homeward as to the place of
God's appointing, as to the school of God's
own discipline, as to the place of God's own
joy, and as to the anteroom of God's own
heaven.

CHAPTER IV

The Bible and Education

The man whose program of daily life sug-
gests the outline of these chapters awakes in
the morning to the consciousness of himself.
He is soon aware of the presence of his family
and catches the sense of home. Directly the
children are made ready for school and join
that romping procession that moves each day
at the joint command of parents and teachers.
In the normal Christian community this fact
of school-going is all but universal. In such
a community the illiterate person is so excep-
tional as to be a curiosity; he is marked by
separateness if not by distinction. All of us
have marched to school; all of us have had
teachers.

The fact is still more significant. School-
going is not merely a general experience ; it is
a long experience. It controls about one fourth
of life. Indeed, if we figure the average span
of life, the school claims more than one fourth
of the individual career. Many persons con-
tinue formal school work into the third dec-
ade, while many give a score and a half of

102

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 103

years in making educational preparation for
the remaining twoscore years of the allotment.
Beyond this, the whole educational scheme
involves countless millions of dollars. Our
bookkeeping is scarcely rapid enough to keep
up mth the finances of the system. In our
own country it really seems as if education
had become a primary passion. Our school
buildings yearly become more imposing and
more costly. Our college endowments an-
nually leap to more generous figures. Our
largest philanthropies seek the privilege of
enlarging educational opportunity. It thus
requires no long observation to convince any
thoughtful man that our educational program,
involving every young life in the nation and
ideally every young life on the planet, is of
incalculable meaning. Each morning an army
of many millions, ranging from wee kinder-
gartners up to adult postgraduates, moves to
the schoolroom door. The whole scene is as
impressive as it is human. The question
naturally comes. What started that proces-
sion? What inspiration keeps it moving
through the years? Is there one Book that
leads in some forceful way to the study of
many books? Does the Bible have any sure
relation either to the enthusiasm or to the
efficiency of our educational life? If our
friend of the day's program could discover the

104 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

intricate influences that unite in sending his
children to the school, would he find that any
large credit must be assigned to the Book?

The aim now is not to show the place that
the Bible has had in the curriculum of the
world's education; nor yet is it to show the
direct effect that the Bible has had upon the
world's instruction. The Bible has been the
supreme text-book, even as it has been the
supreme force, in the schools of nearly two
millenniums. These facts have been well set
forth in many treatises. The purpose now is
simpler and more meaningful: to trace to its
main sources the influence which the great
Book has had upon the intellectual life of
the race.

We are met at the outset by the singular
fact that the Bible has .little to say specifically
concerning education. Nowhere in its pages
do we read the command, "Thou shalt found
schools." The literalist who started out to
find a biblical order for education, as such,
would come back from an unrewarded search.
But we have long ago discovered that the
silence of the Bible does not constitute a com-
mandment. There are some things that are
stronger than detailed orders. An outer law
that has fought an inner sanction has usually
fared badly in history. On the other hand,
the inner sanction, unenforced by any objec-

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 105

tive form of obligation, has won some big
victories. An explicit command to act as an
immortal is not so powerful as the implicit
conviction that we are immortal. It is safe
to declare that the implications of Scripture
are often as deep and influential as its expli-
cations. If, then, the flowers of knowledge
bloom not by command in the fields of the
Bible, may we still find there the seeds out
of which such flowers inevitably grow? If the
school building is not definitely prescribed, as
was the Temple of Solomon, does the Book
yield in a deeper sense the wood and stone
and mortar by which the building must surely
rise? Answers to these figurative questions
will go far toward determining the relation
of the Bible to education. The contention now
is that the Bible has been the fountain whence
streams of intellectual life have flowed, and
that, minor influences being freely admitted,
these streams may be traced to the Scripture's
implicit doctrine of human responsibility.

In discussing the bearing of the Bible on
learning much has been made of the example
of the Bible's mightiest characters. This fact
is striking, and it lends itself to popular treat-
ment. The average man takes a truth more
readily when it is offered to him in a human
setting. Hence it may be granted that the
spirit of the Book in its influence on educa-

106 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

tion has been supplemented by its concrete
examples. In the patriarchal era the majestic
figure is that of Abraham. Whatever the
critics may say about the historicity of his
person, they can hardly doubt the historicity
of the intellectual process by which some
^^Father of the Multitude" must have reached
the creed of the divine unity and spirituality.
We could not expect, of course, to find organ-
ized education in the primitive days of reli-
gious history. But, after all, education is
relative. An eminent American graduated
from Harvard in 1836 when he was sixteen
years of age. In this day his sixteen years
and his completed course of study would
barely admit him to the Freshman class. So
Abraham's education must be graded by the
standard of his dim and far day. Tradition
represents him as reaching the central doc-
trine of the Jewish, Mohammedan, and Chris-
tian faith by a method of reasoning. You
may say of his physical journey that he went
out, not knowing whither he went, but you
cannot say that of his intellectual journey.
While his feet pressed an unknown way, his
mind and heart traveled straight toward the
discovered God. If the best educated man of
a period is he who sees most deeply and clearly
into its essential truths and problems, then
the "Father of the Faithful," whoever he was

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 107

and whenever he came, was the supreme
scholar of his generation.

As the life of the chosen people reaches more
definite form, the place of education is more
plainly seen. Doubtless most men would
agree that Moses was the arch figure of the
Old Testament. He is represented, both by
the Scripture and by the tradition given
among the Jewish historians, as having the
best mental furnishing of his day. The book
of the Acts says of him that he "was learned
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." Clemens
Alexandrinus records that Moses had the
finest teachers in Egypt, and that the choicest
scholars were imported from Greece and
Assyria to instruct the adopted prince in the
arts and sciences of their respective countries.
Perhaps we must allow something for the
idealizing habit here ; but it is significant that
both sacred and secular history unite in de-
claring that the Lawgiver was learned.

In the era of Prophecy we find the same
development, only it is more speedy. Elijah
may have been the crude and forceful son of
mountain and rock, but his successor is the
product of one of the numerous "schools of
the prophets." Although intellectual training
might be presumed to have little to do with
the stern function of Old Testament prophesy-
ing, the "school" arrived quickly and began

108 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

the training of the young men. Criticism has
not attacked the view that the book of Isaiah
bears marks of high culture. If that book had
two authors, the ancient world is entitled to
the credit of a second scholar. When the
radical is done with the story of Daniel we
have left at least the schoolroom in which the
youthful prophet gained his superior wisdom.
It would appear that the examples of the
worthies of the Old Testament give slight en-
couragement to the idea that any type of
selection or any mood of afllatus may not be
supplemented by trained intellect in the king-
dom of God.

We need not halt long with the like lesson
from the New Testament. Much has been
made of the fact that the twelve apostles were
uneducated men. Doubtless we often do their
intellectual life scant justice. Desiring to
score in an argument, we give it out as an
evidence of the divinity of the faith that it
conquered in spite of the disciples' lack of
education. The truth is that the New Testa-
ment does not warrant the application to the
apostles of such words as "illiterate.'' Some
of them wrote books that have moved the ages.
But, whatever the fact be here, he would be
wild indeed who would find in ignorance any
explanation of the gospel's victory. Let us
remember, moreover, that, when the "unlet-

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 109

tered'' Twelve were cramping the universal
faith into a local religion, the corrector of
their blunder was the "lettered" Paul. In
his statement of experience he was ever ready
to say that he had sat at the feet of Gamaliel,
the greatest Jewish teacher of the day. After
Christ Paul is the colossal figure of the New
Testament; and there are those who would
confidently declare him the greatest man who
has walked the earth since Calvary. For a
review of his education, let anyone read a
standard Life of the Apostle. We thus gather
the one result from both the Old and the New
Testament. Moses was the mightiest person-
ality of the one, and Paul was the mightiest
human personality of the other ; and both were
highly educated. The signal examples of the
Bible range themselves on the side of educa-
tion.

As in all things else, so in the relation of
the Bible to the intellectual life we reach
the climax only when we come to Christ.
Here, too, we find in the life of Christ that
same element of paradox that we often find
in his words. That saving was losing, giving
was getting, and dying was living were ap-
parently contradictory statements that real
life proved to be true. Where words seemed
to fight each other, the deeper facts were found
to live in peace. So Jesus in his personal

110 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

influence was ever reaching goals of which
the paths did not give promise. This is seen
peculiarly in his relation to the intellectual
life. He left no manuscripts. The only time
he is represented as writing was when he
wrote the sentence of the sinning woman on
the forgetful sands of the earth. Yet he who
wrote no books has filled the world with books.
Something in him quickly evoked Gospels and
Epistles which were forerunners of a mar-
velous literature. Even this moment thou-
sands of pens are being moved by him. He
wrote no books, and still he writes books
evermore.

It was so with his relation to the schools.
Men tell us that the incarnation imposed a
limitation on intellect — that it involved a
kenosis, an emptying of knowledge even as of
power. Be that as it may, our human ex-
planations do not easily reach the mystery of
his influence on the schools of the world. Did
the boy Jesus go to school in Nazareth? Was
his mother his only earthly teacher? Did his
neighbors speak literal truth in the question,
"Whence hath this man wisdom, having never
learned''? The silent years give no answer to
the questions. But this we do know : He who
went to school slightly or not at all has sent
a world to school. He who founded no im-
mediate institution of learning has dotted the

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 111

planet with colleges. His schoolroom was
itinerant and unroofed. It moved quickly
from town to city, from capital to desert, from
mountain to seashore. We have dignified, it
with a great name. The school of Jesus, whose
plant and endowment and faculty all centered
in one life, is named "the College of Apostles."

He said to them, "Go, teach." They went
and they taught. They were not deliberate
founders of schools. But the heart of Jesus
contained schools, and they, having gotten
their hearts from him, carried schools with
them. When the gospel reached England and
Germany, education reached those countries
and began to thrive. The vast majority of
the first one hundred colleges founded in
America were builded by the followers of the
Great Teacher.

Now, this unique relation of Jesus to the
educational life of men is not accidental.
Subtle as are the laws which determine it,
those laws work effectively. They are elusive,
but once in a while we glimpse their ways
and meanings. The New Testament seems to
feel their presence. It calls Christ a Teacher.
Forty-three times it uses his name in connec-
tion Tsdth the word "teach" in its various
forms. The world gets the same impression.
It persists in calling Jesus the Greatest
Teacher. It must note the schoolroom phrases

112 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

with which the account of his life is filled.
The prologue of his wonderful message on
the Mount illustrates this. "And seeing the
multitudes, he went up into a mountain : and
when he was set, his disciples came unto him ;
and he opened his mouth, and taught them."
The posture of Jesus was that of the teacher.
His audience was made up of "disciples," that
is, of pupils. He "taught" them. All this
might be called a superficial play upon mere
words. But we may go further and discover
that the method of Jesus was the method of
the teacher. He put his effort into other lives
in order that these lives might, within their
various limitations, duplicate his own. His
work was largely devoted to the preparation
of a select few. Often he left hundreds and
thousands that he might be alone with Twelve.
He poured himself into his disciples, his
scholars. He thus did what every true teacher
must do : He committed the cause of his life to
those whom he schooled into faith and charac-
ter and power.

Nor did the teaching method halt here. The
good teacher makes the things of the earth
serve as approaches to the highest develop-
ments. This Jesus did supremely. Long
before men made "nature study" an educa-
tional fad, Jesus made it an ethical and
spiritual service. He pressed flowers, mus-

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 113

tard seeds, grapes, wine, thistles, corn, figs,
into the lessons of his roving school. He
made nature study so effective that along a
path of lilies men walked to God. When it
was necessary to individualize in order to come
to this high result, Jesus took up that burden
of teaching. His school, like all other schools
since its day, enrolled "a son of thunder."
It took the love that suffered long to
make John, the son of thunder and light-
ning and vaulting ambition, into the son of
tender love. It took the patience that knows
no failure to change the shifting sand of
Simon's nature into the rock of Peter's char-
acter. All these considerations will convince
us that we may go to Christ with the peda-
gogical, as well as with the religious motive.
We do not wonder that a man should have
crept to him in the darkness and should have
said, "We know that thou art a teacher."

There is yet another side of the subject that
calls for emphasis. The Bible and Jesus give
the ideal of the intellectual life, an omniscient
God. The God who is perfect in character is
often lifted before us. We hear the voice
saying, "Be ye holy; for I the Lord your God
am holy." Yet we interpret the call narrowly.
Christ has come to us with the call to purity.
To the attentive he comes just as truly with
the call to knowledge. He has given us a

114 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

gospel for the body, and that gospel teaches
that drunkards and other defilers of the human
temple of God cannot inherit his kingdom. He
has given us a gospel for the spirit, and that
gospel commands that the inmost realm of life
be given to his sway. He has likewise given
us a gospel of the mind, and that gospel cannot
be omitted from the fullness of the blessing of
Christ. The God revealed in Christ knows all
things. He counts the hairs of our heads. He
marks the petals of the flowers. He notes
the fall of the sparrows. He is all-knowing
and all-wise.

Even though the ideal be a staggering one,
we are still told to be like God. Some day
we shall appreciate more the duty that speaks
to us in Jesus's revelation of an omniscient
God. As yet we hardly dare press to its full
meaning the call implied in that revelation.
We have said that the man who neglects and
stunts and poisons his body is a sinner. We
have said that the man who dwarfs and re-
presses his spirit is a sinner. Are we ready
to say that the man who gives his mind no
chance, the man who fails to move on to the
ideal of an omniscient God, is likewise a
sinner? Is God's perfect spirit a goal for his
children, and is God's perfect mind removed
from our vision of duty? If we are to start
on the endless march that leads to the purity

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 115

of God, are we freed from the obligation of
starting on the endless march that leads to
his knowledge? We may shrink from the con-
clusion that is here involved; and our shrink-
ing may be only an added evidence that we
have omitted one element from the divine
ideal.

Just here we are struck with the conscious-
ness that we shall need some great dynamic,
if we are ever to start toward this unspeak-
able goal. Evidently we have not reached the
last thing in Christ's relation to education.
Confucius was a great teacher, but his system
has not produced schools. Mohammed was a
great teacher, but his system has left his
followers wallowing in ignorance. Though
Mohammedanism has proclaimed an omnis-
cient God, somehow that beacon on the infinite
height has not coaxed the Turk on to its shin-
ing. Mohammedanism has offered the ideal,
but it has lacked the power. On the contrary
the system of Jesus seems to have had a genius
for diffusing education. It has been a vast
normal school. The purer and freer and more
spiritual its form, the mightier has it been as
an educational force. If we list the nations
of the earth in classes with reference to
literacy and illiteracy, we shall find that the
farther the nations are from the Bible, the
more dense is their ignorance. We shall find,

116 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

too, that where the people are the freest in
their relation to the Bible, there the ignorance
is least. Plainly the Bible with its crowning
revelation in Christ does furnish something of
a dynamic toward education. The school has
been the inevitable companion of the church.
This is because the church, in addition to
giving a list of inspiring examples, and in
addition to lifting up the uttermost ideal, has
also emphasized an obligation under the
leadership of the ever-present Spirit. It re-
mains to show the nature of the obligation
which the Spirit has enforced with reference
to knowledge. Perhaps this can be done more
clearly by taking the attitude of the Scrip-
tures toward slavery as illustrating their atti-
tude toward ignorance.

When Jesus faced his audiences he looked
upon men who were in bondage as well as
upon men who were in ignorance. It is fre-
quently said that Christ did not attack slavery.
In the days before the war the biblical literal-
ist, who believed in freedom, had a hard time
with his Bible. He found that the Bible did
not condemn slavery, but that the Bible did
give concerning it certain regulations. The
pro-slavery orators made good use of the letter
to Philemon. The people who believed in
human liberty, and who likewise believed in
a mechanical and verbal theory of biblical in-

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 117

spiration, passed through intellectual agony
in the period of anti-slavery agitation. If
human bondage was the sum of all villainies,
why did not Jesus condemn it with unsparing
invective? Why did not the apostles enter
upon an immediate crusade for its downfall?

The answer is that Christ in the deepest
way did condemn slavery, and that the apostles
in the realest way did begin their crusade.
They gathered no visible army, and they en-
forced no written statute, but Christ stated
and his followers promulgated a conception
of humanity that prophesied the melting of
all chains. Usually the claim is that the
Golden Kule was the primary foe of slavery,
but the Golden Kule is of little force, apart
from that doctrine of human personality that
pervades the New Testament. Give that doc-
trine power, and it would refuse to live in the
same world with slavery. That doctrine,
under a Captain, was a delivering army. That
doctrine, under a King, was an Emancipation
Proclamation. The Golden Rule had been
given in negative form by Confucius, and it
went to sleep in his maxims. That rule had
been uttered negatively by Plato, but it nestled
quietly in his poetry. Hillel approached the
positive statement of the rule, but he does not
get credit for being its author. The glory of
a truth lies with the one who gives it power.

118 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Jesus made the Golden Rule leap to its feet.
He turned it into a most effective traveler.
It praised God on its wide journeys. It began
to work wonders.

That work was slow, but it was both sure
and thorough. The Rule had power behind its
saying. At length the Spirit carried that
gracious weapon over the seas and laid it in
the hearts of Clarkson and Wilberforce. Soon
the English flag floated over freemen every-
where. Again the Spirit carried the doctrine
over other seas and lodged it in the hearts of
Love joy, Phillips, and Garrison. Directly
four million sable faces were glowing with the
light of liberty. Jesus had said, "If the Son
therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed." The word had essentially a spiritual
meaning, but it was worked out, also, in a
splendid literalness. The Son made men free,
not primarily by the force of law, nor yet
primarily by the violence of armies, but rather
by the conquest of disposition. The honor of
the victory is with the Bible theory of human-
ity, made strong with the power of Christ.

Now what the truth of the Bible did in
tearing down slavery, it is continually doing
in routing ignorance. The connection is
subtle, but it is vitally real. The doctrine of
personal responsibility is atmospheric in the
Bible. It is equally comprehensive. Men are

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 119

held responsible for their bodies. Drunken-
ness, adultery, and all forms of sensuality are
condemned. This is at the bottom of life. But
at the top of life firmer stress is j laced. The
spirit of man is made a field of reckoning.
The divine dominion over motive is strongly
asserted. And that comprehensive responsi-
bility claims the mind. The first great com-
mandment of the new dispensation is that we
must "love God mth all the strength, with
all the soul, with all the mind" Men may
differ about the precise meaning of the mind's
love for the Lord, but the Christian sense of
duty has asserted it in strange fashions.
From vast revivals young men and women have
gone forward intellectually and have sought
the higher education. Conversion has set free
their intellects and has made them feel the
duty of intellectual development. The pressure
of the Christian ideal has been on them. They
have answered the call of the God who is
infinitely good, and they must now answer the
call of the God who is infinitely wise. An
elusive intellectual law is written sure and
large in the code of the Great Kingdom. It is
as certainly a commandment of God as if it
had been thundered among the crags and
lightnings of a new Sinai.

The conviction of the church at this point
has not always come to definition; nor has it

120 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

always risen even to consciousness. For all
that, it has risen to practical life and has
struggled always for outward expression.
Feeling t'\. t the empire of God is over all of
life, man must submit his mind to the divine
rule. Hence it follows that the man who is
intellectually lazy, as well as the man who is
intellectually dishonest, is a sinner. This
statement may shock those who have a surplus
of caution, but these may reassure themselves
with the conviction that any theory may be
fearlessly accepted, if it brings us face to face
with God at any point of our total life. The
failure to follow this biblical idea has brought
a penalty always. No denomination that has
fought or slurred education has led a large
and victorious life; on the contrary it has in-
variably become one of the fading and dwin-
dling forces of God's work. The God of wisdom
is evermore against the promoters of igno-
rance. So do we find that, by the examples of
its greatest characters, by the life of its
Greatest Teacher and its ruling Lord, by the
vision of its supreme ideal, by the assertion
of its inclusive theory of consecration, and by
the divine dynamic which it brings to bear
upon the mind, the Bible has become the
steadfast friend of proper education. It has
opened the doors of countless schools and has
bidden the children of men to enter the portals

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 121

of learning with the assurance that all truth
is of God.

The Bible renders education the service of
inspiration, and it renders it the service of
proper restraint. When any one faculty of
human life becomes a monarch it always makes
for trouble. Zeal without knowledge tends to
breakage; knowledge without zeal tends to
waste. The Bible does not make intellect all.
Man has mind, and he must use that. Man
has sensibility, and he must use that. Man
has will, and he must use that. Man must
get the truth out of his integral self rather
than out of his fractional self. The man who
does not use his heart and will in the gaining
of truth is just as faithless as is the man who
will not use his mind. Without attempting to
use psychological terms with exactness, we
may say that Jesus brought in the reign of
the practical intellect, which gets truth from
all there is of man. Even as truth comes not
from the naked will of God, nor yet out of his
cold thought, but rather out of the full nature
of the Infinite, so truth finds man, not at some
one point of his being, but in the glowing
center of his whole life.

We may assert, also, that the Bible saves
education from frigidity. Tennyson speaks of
"the freezing reason's colder part.'' We all
know the meaning of the phrase. Jesus put

122 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

into the search for truth the mood of humility.
The method of learning was obedience. Obedi-
ence is the organ of intellectual vision as well
as of spiritual vision. The method of Jesus
was not merely for the spiritual life, as men
speak in their fragmentary way; it was a
universal method. It takes humility to make
the beginnings of a scholar, and weariness and
shame of ignorance, and faith in an intel-
lectual empire, and a high trust that the mind
is made for truth, and the truth for mind.
Ere we have done, we have a huge creed
wrapped up in our intellectual processes. But
the creed has been saved from its cold pride.
The Bible says in one of its marginal readings,
"Knowledge puffeth up; love buildeth up."
Knowledge alone may be swollen with pride,
and the higher demand of the Bible would
save from that disaster. This gives us the
clue to more than one biblical sentence. There
is a "science falsely so called." There is a
sense in which "not many wise after the flesh
are called." These implied warnings are not
the cries of prejudice. They stand for the
effort to touch learning with humility, which
alone can save it from being distant and icy.

The good Book rescues education from a
selfish inaction. There was a living and serv-
ing element in Jesus's relation to the intel-
lectual life. He did not deal in barren meta-

THE BIBLE AND EDUCATION 123

physics or in helpless abstractions. His truth
went to work. He fastened it to life's burdens,
and they were lifted. He dropped it amid
life's problems, and they were solved. He cast
it against life's temptations, and they were
defeated. He attached it to life's duties, and
they were fulfilled. He sought those truths
with which men had to dwell. He never at-
tempted to set forth the essential mystery of
things. He was no dealer in an intellectual
cure-all. He spoke with authority and yet
with reverent limitation. There was a great
reserve in his explanations. Yet in the realm
where men must live their present lives, Jesus
gave enough truth to keep men busy all their
days. Here again comes in the question of
dynamic. Men sometimes prate about their
"love of truth." The intellectual life, like the
religious life, may be guilty of cant. It takes
more than an open mind to get the truth; it
takes a working mind. Truth does not come
to the passive man by way of transfer. One
teaching of the parable of the virgins is that,
while the coarser goods of life may be trans-
ferred, the finer goods of life must be won by
spiritual effort. It takes dynamic to secure
a real intellect. Perception may see a truth,
but only inward power can use the truth.
Jesus conferred that power. He gave us the
truth in the doctrine about God. He gave us

124 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

the way in the spirit of obedience. He gave
us the life in the willingness to make the truth
the servant of the world for the sake of Christ.
This leads us to the biblical idea of conse-
crated intellect. As we have often failed to
indicate the sin of needless ignorance, so have
we failed to point out the sin of an unconse-
crated mind. All truth can be dedicated to
Christ. His great call to-day is for more men
with the highest culture placed under the
thrall of his grace and under the guiding
power of the Spirit whom he sends — more
Luthers from Wittenberg, more Wesleys from
Oxford, more Pauls from Gamaliel's school;
more men from all our modern seats of learn-
ing who will know that gifts of learning can
be placed at the service of the King and that
all science and philosophy and literature may
be placed at the foot of the Cross. In the
coming day of the Christian intellect

Mind and heart, according well
May make one music as before.
But vaster.

CHAPTER V

The Bible and Work

The frank purpose of the present lecture is
to discuss the relation of the Bible to the moral
and spiritual aspects of work. The aim is not
a study in economics. Without doubt the
Bible stands for justice; and without doubt,
also, the intent of the Bible is to make just
men. But the great Book does not give an
infallible table of wages; neither does it offer
any sure rules v/hereby we can determine the
working value of any particular individual.
It declares that "the laborer is worthy of his
hire," and it leaves the details to be wrought
out by men whom it summons to the spirit of
justice and love. Interested as we may be in
the economic problems of our day, we must
still rejoice that the Bible does not surrender
its work of inspiration in an effort at mechan-
ical guidance. The wage scale must neces-
sarily vary with the conditions of living; and,
therefore, a textbook of money wages would
have made a cumbersome volume with most
of its pages as lifeless as the Book of the
Dead. The very suggestion ends in ridiculous-

125

126 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

ness. The effort of the Bible is not to give
directions for working machines, but to give
motives to working men. It is not a task-
master, but a task-inspirer.

True toil of whatever sort is in need of
inspiration. It must go by system and by
schedule, and the element of monotony makes
itself felt. The man leaves his home six morn-
ings of the week and takes up his accustomed
task. The bell calls him to work at an ap-
pointed hour, and it dismisses him by the
demand of the clock. The husband goes to
the store or office or factory to do the same
things again and ever again, while the wife
goes about the household duties that have en-
grossed her on thousands of previous days.
One of the victories of life is to be a worker
and not to be a drudge. We have all known
people who have not won that victory. Their
work is a grim necessity. It is not acquainted
with poetry or with music. When the idealist
speaks of the man who sings at his toil, they
sneer at his sentimentalism or they doubt his
sincerity. Work is a ceaseless grind; it is a
dreary round; it is a hard compulsion. The
poet who wields a pen may tell the man who
wields a pick that work is joy and refreshment
and liberty, but the sour toiler will regard his
teacher as a condescending comforter. The
complaint of many people is not simply that

THE BIBLE AND WORK 127

they must make bricks without straw, but that
they must make bricks at all. In their vocabu-
lary pleasure contrasts with labor because
labor itself is pain. They are weary in their
work and weary of their work. The only ideal
for this sort of laborer is that he may labor so
successfully as to be able some day to get on
without labor. This man is the drudge.

Oddly enough, he has had his theological
partners. There have been Bible students who
have held that all work is a penalty of the
Fall. They say that when God said to Adam,
"In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat
bread,'' he entered toil among the punish-
ments of life. Undoubtedly sin adds to the
hardship of work, especially if the sin be the
sin of a wrong attitude. Thorns and thistles
do prosper more around the broken gate of
the sluggard. The earnest expectation of a
groaning and travailing creation does wait for
the revealing of the sons of God. Discontent
puts its evil reflex on the muscles. The re-
bellious worker is ever the tired worker. But
even the literal story of Eden does not give the
ideal of worklessness. Adam had been placed
in the garden "to dress it and to keep it."
Wherever God places the man, he places the
task for the man. Any other conception of
life is unworthy and utterly irreligious. A
silly theology that puts a premium on idle-

128 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

ness is not born of the God that "worketh
hitherto." Still the view that work is a curse
persists even after the theory that encouraged
the view has gone to the discard. The sancti-
fied escape the fret of work, but they do not
escape its fact. The Perfect Life, as we shall
later see, was the life of a Worker.

Admitting, as we all must, that work is
sometimes tragic because it lacks its proper
outer reward, we may still contend that often
its deepest tragedy is a wrong attitude of
spirit. Doubtless much of this comes from
maladjustment. Some idealists believe that
if every man were given his own task, every
man would be happy at that task. Kipling so
states it in the "L'Envoi" of "The Seven
Seas." He sees the good time when there
shall be an adjustment between man and his
task. The lower motives for work shall all
be done away, and the one satisfying motive
shall abide.

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master

shall blame,
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall

work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each in his

separate star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it, for the God of things

as they are.

Ideal as this is, it gets a response from us all.

THE BIBLE AND WORK 129

Besides there are some foretokens of this age
of joyful toil. Usually these are seen most
clearly in work that has a relation to beauty.
The woman works cheerfully at her fine em-
broidery, and she works just as cheerfully
over the flowers in her garden. With men
the form of toil that stands for genuine
achievement often becomes not only a pleasure
but a veritable passion. Where a spiritual
motive allures, work frequently becomes the
gladness of life. Agassiz declined to accept
the remunerative call to lecture by saying, "I
am only a teacher. I cannot afford to make
money." Wesley poured back into his work
all the results of his work and died a poor man
whereas he might have become rich. In
America college professors have been known
to save their meager salaries in order that
they might return their slight estates to endow
more fully the institutions for which they
labored. They received from their work so
that they could give back to their work.

The more we study cases of this fine sort,
the more will we be impressed that the workers
labored under the biblical sense of life. The
men just mentioned were all profound be-
lievers in God, and they lived their lives as
under his eye. Hence they saw their portion
of work as a part of the infinite whole that
makes for the kingdom of God. There is a

130 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

story of a workingman who, standing on the
street opposite the Cathedral of Cologne, was
overheard saying, "Didn't we do a fine job
over there?" Turning about, the listener saw
a rough hand pointing at the wonderful
cathedral. "What did you do?'' he asked the
man. The reply was, "I mixed the mortar for
several years." The tale was told by the
thoughtless as being humorous. It is, how-
ever, serious and beautiful. That workman
had gotten the vision of himself as a partner
in a plan that covered centuries of grand toil.
He was a helper of God in the fashioning of
his temple. In reality he had joined the com-
pany of Hiram and of Solomon. Now all
honest work must have a direction that is
both long and high. It reaches down into the
years of men. It reaches upward into the
heart of God. Precisely this idealism is
needed in order that toil may be redeemed
from its drudgery. George Eliot gives us a
striking illustration of it in her tribute to
Stradivari, the maker of violins. This im-
mortal mechanic is said to have had a rever-
ence for his labor. He felt that, whereas God
gave men skill to play, God depended on
Stradivari to furnish the instruments. He
was the partner of the Most High. God had
chosen Stradivari as a helper. Hence he
could say,

THE BIBLE AND WORK 131

Grod be praised,
Antonio Stradivari has an eye
That winces at false work and loves the true,
"With hand and arm that play upon the tool
As willingly as any singing bird
Sets him to sing his morning roundelay.
Because he likes to sing and likes the song.

We may not all have this attitude toward our
work, but we are all idealists enough to wish
that we felt just that way. The singing work-
man is not altogether a figment of the imag-
ination ; neither is his spirit impossible in the
day that now is. The men who regard work
as a blessing, and not as a penalty and a curse,
are found in many trades and professions.
They are the forerunners of the Eden life.
Certainly the main teaching of the Bible, that
labor is designed to aid in the bringing in of
the kingdom of God, must give to the honest
laborers in every realm an exalted joy.

This primary consideration is joined by the
human examples of the Bible. We find in its
pages a procession of workers, and from this
procession God selects many of his chosen
leaders. Moses was tending his flock on the
hillside when the voice of the Lord summoned
him to his manifold leadership. Saul was
seeking his father's cattle when he found the
kingdom of which he was to be king. David
was busy in the sheepfold when the prophet
called him to his work as warrior and mon-

132 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

arch. Ruth was gleaning in the fields, in her
pathetic effort to care for her widowed
mother-in-law and herself, when she found her
way into happiness and into the ancestry of
our Lord. Gideon was beating out wheat in
the wine press when he was drafted for the
campaign that was to break the power of the
Midianites. Elisha was plowing with twelve
yoke of oxen when the mantle of Elijah was
cast over his shoulders. Nehemiah was serv-
ing as cupbearer to the king when he evoked
from Artaxerxes the permission to return and
rebuild the walls of his beloved city. Amos
was among the herdsmen of Tekoa when the
word of God took him captive and sent him to
his prophetic career. These are the instances
in the Old Testament where mention is made
of the form of toil from which God called men
to some spiritual service. Without doubt the
full record would show that other signal
servants received their commissions while they
were faithfully performing their duties on
threshing floors, out in the fields, and within
counting-rooms.

The New Testament is less specific in its
descriptions, but it often gives us the like hint.
Matthew was at the seat of custom when he
was invited into the fellowship of the dis-
ciples that he might tell men of the eternal
exchange. James and John were engaged in

THE BIBLE AND WORK 133

their occupation as fishermen when they
heard the voice on the shore and pulled their
boat over the blue waves that they might be-
come fishers of men. The shepherds were in
faithful watch over their flocks by night when
they heard the evangel of song and were
startled by the message of peace. The illus-
trations make us feel that the favorite meeting
place of God with man is the meeting place of
man with his work. A motto says that "the
best reward of good work is more good work
to do." The providence of God upholds the
motto. The Bible shows a preference for the
workers as against the shirks. It puts the
premium on industry, whether the type of toil
be manual or spiritual.

Here, as in all other themes of real life, we
come to Christ for our highest teaching and
our best example. We have noted elsewhere
that he made the home the illustration of our
relations with God; and we now note that he
made the common work of earth the illustra-
tion of our responsibility for service to God.
This he did so often and so urgently that we
are driven to feel that work was not only the
form of illustration but also the form of
service itself. How many parables did he
gain from the ways of toil? He would say,
"The kingdom of heaven is like unto — ," and
straightway his hearers' minds were sent to

134 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

the places where men wrought for their daily
bread. In most places the blanks can be sup-
plied by some form of employment. "The
kingdom of heaven is like unto — " a merchant
and his pearls ; a sower and his field ; a woman
and her leaven; a fisherman and his net; a
husbandman and his vineyard; a merchant
traveler and the intrusted talents. Where his
words were used as deft and quick illustra-
tions rather than as lengthy and formal para-
bles, he gathered his material from the realms
of toil. The builder and the house; the
shepherd and the sheep; the axman and the
tree; the tailor and the cloth; the housewife
and the coin; the rich man and his steward;
the woman and her grinding ; the man and his
plowing ; the watchman and his vigil ; the hus-
bandman and the vine; all these entered into
his speech as showing what God would expect
of men. Here we have almost a cyclopedia
of labors. Inasmuch as Jesus commended the
qualities shown in these various phases of
service, we are allowed to think that he re-
garded the legitimate occupations of everyday
life as both representing and fulfilling the
kingdom of God. Nor will reverent thought
be satisfied with any less comprehensive view.
There would be a dread of living if we were
made to feel that the work which we must do,
both to meet our own sense of self-respect and

THE BIBLE AND WORK 135

to provide for the needs of ourselves and our
beloved, was either in opposition to the grace
of God or stood for neutral territory between
the realms of good and evil. The teaching of
Jesus saves us from that practical atheism.
He allows every honest man to take the oft-
repeated phrase, "The kingdom of heaven is
like unto — ," and to complete a portion of its
meaning from his own form of labor. If a
man is engaged in any task that makes sacri-
lege and blasphemy when it is used to fill
out the sentence, then let that man look well
to his own heart and life. Every man's work
should serve as a parable of Christ.

But Jesus was not simply the doctrinaire
of toil; he was its exemplar. The emphasis
here is usually placed upon the fact that Christ
was a carpenter. He transformed crude
materials into useful tools. An overdone
stress on this point is itself a confession that
manual toil needs an apologist! The signifi-
cant thing is that such a stress is wholly
absent from the speech and attitude of Jesus.
With him carpentry seems to have been a
natural part of life. He never refers to it as
something that he had outgrown. His back-
ward look toward the occupation of his youth
betrays no condescension, like to that occa-
sionally seen in so-called self-made men!
After he had left the carpenter's bench he

136 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

said, "I work." When he saw the night clos-
ing down about him, the brevity of the working
day became an incentive to more work, and
he said, "I must work." Even in the agony
we can catch the exultation of the cry, "I
have finished the work which thou gavest me
to do." It was his meat to finish his "work."
Jesus did the appointed task for each period
of his life. Then he passed on to the task of
the next period without the least hint that
the varying tasks were not joined in the har-
mony of the divine purpose. The work of
his life was like his garment; it was all of
one piece. From the building of the Nazareth
cottage on to the building of the "many man-
sions," there is no consciousness of contradic-
tion. With Jesus the working life was a
unity.

And at the risk of being mechanical in the
use of bungling divisions we may declare that
Jesus entered into all the large divisions of
toil. The note of universality is seen here as
it is seen elsewhere. We have been told that
the three forms of temptation that Jesus en-
countered on mountain top and temple pin-
nacle exhaust all the types. It has been said,
too, that the thankfulness of Jesus is directed
toward all the channels by which the good of
life can flow in upon us. This same charac-
teristic of universality appears in the work

THE BIBLE AND WORK 137

of Christ. As a carpenter hie worked upon
material things. As a healer he worked upon
the bodies of men. As a teacher he worked
upon the minds of men. As a preacher he
worked upon the souls of men. All the workers
of the world can be brought into one of these
divisions, and so all true workers can enter
into partnership with Jesus. We call him the
Carpenter, the Great Physician, the Greatest
Teacher, the World's Saviour! The manual
toilers claim him. The doctors claim him.
The teachers claim him. The evangelists
claim him. He is at home in the shop, in the
hospital, in the schoolroom, and in the temple.
All the classes of toilers can appeal to the
sanction of his example.

Still we must again assert that these clumsy
divisions were not emphasized by Jesus him-
self. There has been an age-long debate, oft-
times degenerating into a wrangle, as to the
relative hardships of the different forms of
labor. Men who cling to their occupations will
still declare that those occupations have trials
beyond all others. Into this debate Jesus did
not enter. He never set one form of toil
against another by entering into any compari-
sons or contrasts. As he experienced all the
general forms of labor, so did he honor all
forms. In his view they were all good and
all cooperative. On the surface they may seem

138 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

to be rivals, but in the center they are actual
partners in the divine program. Hence Jesus
passed from one realm of work to another
with little sense of transition. Carpenter,
Healer, Teacher, Preacher, he was ever the
servant of the Kingdom. Faithfulness, honor,
industry, efficiency, patience — in short, all the
virtues were possible in any good way of work.
The life of Jesus unites all our types of labor
in a divine purpose and rebukes that quarrel-
some spirit which so often sets the manual
laborers and the mental and moral laborers
in opposition. The hand cannot say to the
head, "I have no need of thee," nor can the
head utter the like speech of egotism and self-
sufficiency. The workers are all one body, and
every one members of another.

So do we find Jesus putting himself with
willing sacrifice into his varying tasks. He
had said to his parents in Jerusalem, "Wist
ye not that I must be amid my Father's mat-
ters?" and then he went into what men call
the silent years. But they were not wholly
silent. The attentive can hear the sound of
the hammer. The point is that in passing
from the Jerusalem temple to the Nazareth
shop Jesus did not depart from his Father's
business. We may all resent the particular
descriptions of the quality of his work as a
carpenter; and we may be quite content in

THE BIBLE AND WOKK 139

our faith that all his work was done faith-
fully and well. Holman Hunt's "Shadow of
the Cross'' relates Jesus's work in the shop
to his sacrificial character. At the end of a
weary day the Nazareth Carpenter extends his
arms to relieve his weariness. The sunshine
coming through the window casts his shadow
on the wall in the form of a Cross. His
mother glancing in through another window
sees the Cross foreshadowed there and gets
her glimpse of the sword that should enter
her own heart. Nor did Jesus escape hard-
ship and exhaustion when he became a healer
and teacher of the people. The crowds
thronged him wherever he went. The hillside
became like an open-air hospital. The multi-
tudes hung upon his words of instruction.
Some have said that one reason why he com-
manded men who were healed or who were
told the deeper secret of his nature that they
"should tell no man," was that he might avoid
the greater press of the throngs. Be that as
it may, we are surely justified in saying that
he gave himself lavishly to the work of each
period. In each section of his life his action
said, "I must work."

It would be easy, however, to overstate
Jesus's relation to work. He did not labor
all the time. Knowing how to toil he knew
likewise how to rest. Men may plead the ex-

140 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

ample of Satan against a vacation season, but
they cannot plead the example of Christ ! He
rested after he had worked and in order that
he might work again. When the crowd became
importunate and the drain upon his power had
become severe, he sought the desert and in
its quiet restored himself for the new labors.
He bade his weary disciples to come apart to
the spot of respite. He was the exemplar of
proper rest even as he was the exemplar of
proper work. Industrious men often need one
lesson even as lazy men need the other. There
are persons who are greedy of toil. They are
as avaricious for it as the miser is for gold.
They are what Carlyle would call "terrible
toilers.'' They die before their time because
they work after their time. Jesus knew this
danger. He wished to guard against it by
keeping the Sabbath for man. He wanted to
save the resting place between the weeks be-
cause he wanted to save man to his best self
and work. He prescribed the working day
and the shop, and he prescribed the resting
day and the desert.

We need not be surprised, then, to find that
the new day puts the emphasis on the sancti-
fication of common work. Professor Peabody
gives the contrast between two well-known
poems as illustrating a change that has come
over the personal side of the social question.

THE BIBLE AND WORK 141

A generation since Lowell gave us his "Vision
of Sir Launfal." The hero of this poem, after
traveling in many lands, finally finds the holy
grail in the cup which he had filled for a way-
side beggar, while the more personal presence
of Jesus is discovered in the beggar himself
to whom the searcher has given alms. The
characteristic of the new day is seen in Van
Dyke's "The Toiling of Felix." The hero of
this later poem, after seeking the direct vision
of his Lord in caves and deserts of idle con-
templation, at last secures the coveted revela-
tion as he enters gladly into a life of toil
and particularly as he flings himself into the
swollen river to rescue a fellow laborer. Felix
finds that there is a holy literalness in the
words which he found on the piece of papyrus
as a recovered gospel of Christ:

Lift the stone, and thou shalt find me;
Cleave the wood, and there am I.

The ranks of labor are "the dusty regiments
of God." The Lord, being a worker, is mind-
ful of his own :

Born within the Bethlehem manger where the cattle

round me stood,
Trained a carpenter of Nazareth, I have toiled and

found it good.

The good work of the world is the work of

142 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Christ. There is really no contrast between
sacred and secular; the actual contrast is
between the sacred and the wicked.

They who tread the path of labor, follow where Christ's

feet have trod,
They who work without complaining, do the holy will

of God.

This is the Gospel of labor — ring it, ye bells of the kirk,
The Lord of Love came down from above to live with
the men who work.

The inevitable drift of this emphasis on the
working experience of Jesus has swept admir-
ation away from the monastic life. The
"religious" are not those who shun the world
of toil in order that they may gain the world
of personal peace and salvation. The modern
saint is not a Simon the Stylite. Saint Francis
of Assisi projects himself into the admiration
of the twentieth century because he was a
worker rather than a recluse. The attitude
toward monasticism among the healthier and
more energetic peoples goes further than this :
there is a feeling that in the last analysis the
religious hermit is spiritually selfish. That is
deemed a poor kind of religion which forsakes
a world in order to save one's soul. The
argument that the recluses may render the
world the service of constant prayer does not
appeal to those who know that work is itself

THE BIBLE AND WORK 143

a form of prayer; and that in Jesus prayer
and work lived together in harmony. A better
understanding of the religion of Christ de-
mands that its followers shall be socially
efficient. If Jesus is to be the world's ex-
ample, more and more men and women will
find in their legitimate toil one of the sacra-
ments of life.

Already we have come to feel that the Bible
doctrine of work, especially as that doctrine
is incarnated in Christ, lays stress upon the
man as well as upon his task. It asks, "What
is the man doing with his work?" It also
asks, "What is the work doing with the man?"
The reflexes of activity often become a topic
of teaching. Paul said that the man reaps the
harvest of his own sowing. Jesus said, "With
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured
to you again." This is much as if he had said
that in the upper realms of living action and
reaction are equal and in opposite directions.
He told his disciples that, if they pronounced
the benediction of peace upon a house unfit or
unwilling to receive it, the benediction should
return to them again. The meaning is that
no work done with the right spirit can really
fail. The poets give this idea currency.
George Herbert declares that a servant with
the proper clause in his creed makes "drudgery
divine" :

144 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Who sweeps a room as to thy law
Makes that and the action fine.

He had already implied that such a servant
made himself fine. Mrs. Browning emphasizes
the need of a serious purpose in work when
she uses her picturesque description:

I would rather dance at fairs on tight rope
Till the babies dropped their gingerbread for joy,
Than shift the types for tolerable verse, intolerable
To men who act and suffer. Better far
Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means
Than a sublime art frivolously.

It is "better far" because our seriousness
comes back to dwell with us; and our frivo-
lousness does the same. Many of the parables
get their meaning from this certainty of re-
action. The good shepherd is good because he
does his work well, and the return of his work
makes him better still. Just as physical work
reacts on the muscles, so that sometimes men
exercise without any outward object in view,
even so does- the moral spirit of work come
back to dwell with the man and to make his
last estate either better or worse. Our bodies
are built into strength by a series of reactions,
and our spirits evermore receive their own
with usury.

This idea, as we have observed in another
connection, has wrought some marked changes

THE BIBLE AND WORK 145

in the social program. It has largely super-
seded almsgiving by workgiving. Scientific
charity seeks to remove the causes of poverty,
knowing that this is the sure way to remove
poverty itself. The conviction is that a day's
w^ork with a day's pay is far better for the
man than a day's pay without the day's work.
In the latter case the man loses both inde-
pendence and self-respect, while in the former
case he keeps both of these and gains in addi-
tion the rebound of faithful labor. The tramp,
or the man with the heart of a tramp, always
fails. Outwitting others, he outwits himself
more truly. He plays tricks on his own soul.
The weakness of his life settles back into his
spirit. He drags with him always his evasions
and neglects. Scamping his toil, he scamps
his own soul. All shoddy material gets built
into his own being. He erects a dishonest
house for another, but Tvi-th it he erects an evil
structure in which he himself must live. So
it is that a man's work may be his blessing,
or it may be his vengeance.

While this idea has its terrible side, it has
also its side of glory and comfort. It provides
amply for the failure of the faithful. Gold-
smith says that "Good counsel rejected re-
turns to enrich the giver's bosom,'' just as
Jesus says the declined benediction of peace
comes back to the true disciple. It follows

146 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

that for the good workman there is no real
failure. The house that he has builded may
go up in smoke and flame, but the industry
and honor that fashioned its walls and fash-
ioned themselves in the making of the walls
cannot be destroyed. The fortune that he has
gathered may take wings and fly away, but
the deeper treasures that have been garnered
by fair-dealing in the marketplace abide in
the deposit of the heart. Jesus said, "Your
hearts shall rejoice, and your joy no man
taketh from you." We see here that there are
possessions that human power cannot remove.
They have been woven into the self. The
treasure house is too deep for the touch of
man. A minor poet tells us :

I've found some wisdom in my quest

That's richly worth retailing;
I've found that when one does his best

There's little harm in failing.

He corrects this mild statement in his con-
cluding verse. He wanted riches, but he was
rich without them; he wanted to sound the
depths with his philosophy, but his ship sailed
on anyhow ; he wanted fame ; but he discovered
the secret of greatness without it; and so he
adds the lines which declare that the failing
of the faithful not only does "little harm," but
even that it furnishes its own enrichment of
the real life :

THE BIBLE AND WORK 147

I may not reach what I pursue,

Yet will I keep pursuing;
Nothing is vain that I can do;

For soul-growth comes from doing.

David "does welF' that it is in Ms heart to
build the Lord's house, even though the honor
be passed on to another. The good purpose
helps to make the good man; and the good
purpose that expresses itself in work is sure
of the inner reward. This conception may be
tT\dsted into a soft gospel for the inefflcient;
but the evident purpose of the Bible is to offer
it as a comforting gospel for the faithful.

It would be easy to follow the guidance of
the Concordance as it notes the word "work''
in the Epistles. All of the conceptions that
have thus far been treated reappear in the
apostolic writings. The symbol of everyday
work is constantly lifted to the highest. We
do not need to see Paul bending over the sail-
cloth and thrusting his needle into the canvas
ere we know that he is a worker. His whole
life was one of toil. He was not slothful in
his apostolic business; and the fervor of his
spirit would have been a good example to the
ancient mechanic or merchant. He saw good
men as his colaborers with God. He saw the
men that he helped to make good as a hus-
bandry that he was cultivating for the Lord,
as a building that he was fashioning for

148 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Christ^s sake. The cure for thieving was
work. He that stole was to steal no more,
but was to work with his hands the thing that
was good; and the benevolent motive was to
impel to work that the former thief might
have something to give to the needy. It was of
the hard toil of servants that Paul said,
^^Whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the
same shall he receive of the Lord." It is the
idea of reaction again ; God suffers no faithful
worker to lose his reward. The apostolic rule
is very thoroughgoing in dealing with laziness.
^^If any will not work, neither shall he eat."
This rule may be an offense to the idle rich,
but it appeals to the sense of justice. Perhaps
some day society will be skillful enough to
starve its tramps and shirks until they flee
to toil as to a refuge.

It is peculiar that the end of the Bible should
have been misconceived, even as the beginning,
in its teaching concerning work. We have
discussed the heresy that declares that work
is a penalty of sin. There is another heresy
which pictures heaven as a place of everlast-
ing idleness. If we select certain of the de-
scriptions of Revelation, it is easy to see how
the error arose. Yet in each of the weird
pictures of the eternal city there is one sen-
tence at least that hints at heavenly service.
For energetic souls no other conception will

THE BIBLE AND WORK 149

be satisfying. Surely inactivity is not the
goal of a redeemed race. Shortly before his
death Mark Twain published in a magazine
a satire on the usual idea of heaven. Intro-
duced in a dream to the city of our hope, he
was told by an attending angel to take his
seat on a cloud and to occupy himself by
wearing a crown and holding a harp. Soon
becoming weary of this do-nothing life, he came
down to the golden streets. He was asked to
keep for a time the crowns and harps of the
passers-by, and he noted that the way was
strewn with these rejected ornaments! Some
good people may have been offended by the
satire; and some whose life has been filled
with weariness will insist that heaven must
offer rest. So indeed it must. One suggestive
passage says concerning the souls of those that
were slain for the testimony of Christ that
they should "rest yet for a little season.''
Those that have come out of great tribulation
are given service as a reward of their tribu-
lation. "Therefore are they before the throne
of God and serve him day and night in his
temple." In the later description the land of
rest is seen as a land of work, and "his serv-
ants shall serve him.'' The race does not look
back to a workless Eden; neither does it look
forward to a workless heaven. Kipling puts
it well for either here or there ;

150 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it,

Lie down for an eon or two,
Till the Master of all good workmen

Shall set us to work anew.

The ideal of the Bible is service, and that
ideal is not rejected when life comes to its
crowning.

One of the great hymns of the church gives
to the worshipers in a sanctuary the Bible's
Gospel of Work :

Yet these are not the only walls
Wherein thou mayst be sought;

On homeliest work thy blessing falls
In truth and patience wrought.

Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart,

The wealth of land and sea;
The worlds of science and of art,

Revealed and ruled by thee.

Then let us prove our heavenly birth

In all we do and know.
And claim the kingdom of the earth

For thee, and not thy foe.

Work shall be prayer, if all be wrought

As thou wouldst have it done;
And prayer, by thee inspired and taught;

Itself with work be one.

The biblical ideal for earth sends men forth
to their daily tasks, while the biblical ideal
for heaven breaks its reserve sufl&ciently to
show us a City wherein the saints at rest are
likewise the saints at work.

CHAPTER VI

The Bible and Wealth

The word "wealth" as used in this discus-
sion does not mean simply great riches; it
rather means those outer and visible means
which have a certain purchasing power and
which gain their value from that fact. The
word is relative at best. A wealthy man of
fifty years ago would by many be deemed a
poor man now; while, in the individual esti-
mate, one man's poverty would be another
man's riches. We have all discovered, too,
that persons may be tested by their attitude
toward little as well as by their attitude to-
ward much. The man who breaks down in
his use of a thousand dollars is not likely to
recover his conscience in his use of a million
dollars. There is high authority for the belief
that he that is faithful in a few things can
be trusted with rulership over many things.
This principle will apply to riches quite as
well as to cities. We must necessarily take
at large discount the vigorous attack that is
made on great wealth by the man who is nar-
row and selfish in his use of moderate wealth.

151

152 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

One ray of light falling into a dark dungeon
will test a man's attitude toward light; and
so the real personal attitude toward one coin
may become the revelation of a human heart.

All of us must live within the realm of
material endeavor. Six days of the week are
given by the average man in an effort to win
worldly goods. If, as is generally supposed,
Jesus went back from the temple scene in
Jerusalem when he was twelve years of age
and worked in the village carpenter shop until
he was thirty, he spent eighteen years in a
remunerative employment ere he entered upon
the three years of public ministry. It is a
mechanical conception again; but it is inter-
esting to observe that the proportion of his
years spent in his trade is the same six
sevenths of the time that most men must spend
in the effort to gain the necessaries or luxuries
of life. One has only to stand on the streets
of the city in the early morning and see the
throngs as they move to their places of work
to appreciate how large a part the wage motive
plays in actual living. Each day many mil-
lions of men and women go down to the
various marts in order that in the evening
time they may come back from the struggle
with increased gains. If the Bible takes an
attitude toward the spirit that dominates
work it must also take an attitude toward the

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 153

spirit that dominates the object of work. It
would be small use to have men made right
toward toil if they were to be twisted in their
relation to the proceeds of toil. We should
expect, then, that the Bible would give some
explicit teaching to individual men concern-
ing the right attitude toward wealth; and
when we turn to the Holy Book this expecta-
tion is fully met.

Beyond this, the social consequences of
wealth are manifold and important. To see
this point clearly exemplified in a wide field,
we have but to study the history of the wars
waged by our own nation. At some point
every one of these great struggles has been
caused by a false relation to wealth. Just
where we locate that false relation will depend
somewhat upon our prejudices; but the di-
lemma in each case is such that we are driven
to locate it somewhere. The French and
Indian War was a military debate as to
whether the English or the French should
gather the furs in the region of the Upper
Ohio and should secure the profits in the
world's markets. In the settlement of that
issue many lives were sacrificed. The War
for Independence was caused by taxes — not,
as many people suppose, by a tax on tea alone,
but by a long series of taxes covering many
years. If the English had a right to levy the

154 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

tax and if the tax was just, then the colonists
were greedy. If, on the other hand, the
Americans refused to pay an unjust tax, in-
spired in their rebellion by a lofty spirit of
liberty, then the English were the greedy
party. The War of 1812 was caused by the
seizure of our vessels on the French coast and
related to freedom of commerce. The dilemma
is the same as before. Some one was at fault
in that commercial war. A wrong attitude
toward property caused the long-drawn-out
struggle.

Our later wars show the same form of con-
test. Historians declare that the war with
Mexico was occasioned by the desire to extend
slavery territory; by the nation's lust for the
enlargement of her borders; and by certain
debts owed to citizens of the United States
by citizens of Mexico. All of these motives
touch somewhere on gold. The Civil War
grew from the same "root of all evil."
Northern men aided in bringing African
slaves to this land in order to turn forced
labor into money, while Southern men con-
tinued African slavery because it was deemed
necessary for the production of cotton. The
cry "Cotton is king'' was not always spoken
above a whisper, but as a slogan it caused
some fierce struggling. Boston merchants
helped to mob Garrison. The sentiment of

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 155

England flowed against the North because it
was thought that the abolishing of slavery
would demoralize the markets of the world.
The hooting crowds that Beecher faced in
England were unconsciously influenced to
their hostile attitude by a commercial argu-
ment. The whole struggle was broadened and
heightened until words like "liberty" and
"unity" put a moral passion into the fray.
But, while the nature of the government and
the question of human rights were to be
settled, the primary occasion of the contest
was commercial.

Nor was the war with Spain any exception
to this rule. If we absolve the United States
from any motive of greed in our claim that
the struggle was purely humanitarian in its
character, we must still grant that the heavy
taxes assessed against her Western colonies
by the Spanish government led to the series
of revolutions that occasioned our interfer-
ence. Thus do we find that somewhere in the
heart of each war there was the lurking
passion for gold. When we make up the
mournful lists of the many thousands whose
lives have gone out in these contests, we can
debit them against the spirit of greed. Milton
in Paradise Lost represents that the rebellion
in heaven was caused by the like lust, and
that Satan's eyes were ever bent in anxious

156 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

desire toward the very gold of the streets!
Milton's imagination concerning heaven
stands for the historical fact about earth. The
demon of greed is usually the demon of war.

The great problems of current national life
all trench upon the same influence. If money
be not the principal in each of them it comes
in as an important confederate. The tariff
problem, the currency problem, the canal tolls
problem, the trust problem — all these are
quickly classified by their names. The cleav-
age between American political parties for the
last fifty years has been made by a wedge of
gold. Tariff, or coinage, or trusts — these have
been the large words of political speech. In
the problems that have a more apparent moral
bearing the same commercial element appears.
The Labor Problem is with us quite as acutely
as it was with the Komans when long ago the
plebeians left the city and camped on the hill-
sides, leaving the patricians to do their own
manual toil. Whether the employer gives too
little or the employee asks too much in any
given struggle, the demon of greed plays his
part again. In the Temperance Problem the
case is even clearer. Distillers and brewers
and saloonists do not enter their trade because
they thereby add either to their social stand-
ing or to their moral peace. We cannot elim-
inate from the problem the factor of the human

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 157

appetite that craves a stimulant; at the same
time we know that the motive for the business
itself comes from the lure of gold. That gleam
invites many men into a path which, as they
themselves know well, cannot lead to any large
political preferment or to any great personal
admirations.

The problem of social purity is, of course,
related to another human passion. But there
has crept into the vocabulary of the people
a suggestive phrase, "commercialized vice."
There is the general feeling that, if the element
of monetary profit could be taken from the
loathsome trade, the problem would be much
nearer its solution. Hence we have our Red
Light Abatement Laws by which we seek to
make it dangerous for men to rent their prop-
erty for the traffic in virtue. On the legal
side the present efforts at the solution of the
problem all strive to fix a set of conditions,
making commercially unprofitable the house
of her whose feet take hold on death. If, as
is earnestly contended by some, low wages
tend to furnish the recruits for the pitiable
ranks of the trade in bodies, we have another
commercial factor in the campaign. Explain
it as we may, it is still true that money makes
the unholy alliances. It is no marvel that
the Bible has sent down to all the centuries its
phrase, "the mammon of unrighteousness."

158 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Of course, many will overstate the case of
American greed. The Almighty Dollar is not
our God. Our passing celebrities may be mere
millionaires, but our permanent heroes were
quite more than traders. If we have seemed
more commercial than other peoples it has
been because a new continent gave such sweep-
ing opportunities for wealth. Some one has
said that it is an evidence of the degeneracy
of our period that the word "worth," which
once had a noble and inner significance, is
now controlled by the market. The fact that
the word has gone downhill is taken to mean
that the people who use it so have gone down-
hill too ! But these verbal arguments are not
reliable. While the word "worth" has dropped
somewhat from its old glory, the word
"talent," which once had merely a monetary
significance, has mounted to a higher meaning.
The one word is just as good a witness as the
other. The truth is that we meet to-day the
world-old problem. The evidence of this lies
in the fact that the Bible dealt with the prob-
lem in emphatic fashion. It lists for us the
victims of greed: Lot, Gehazi, Ananias and
Sapphira, Simon Magus, the young ruler,
Judas. We shall find in its pages some gen-
eral principles by which it seeks to warn
wealth alway from pitfalls and to send it
forth to service.

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 159

The first of these principles is that God is
the only and absolute Owner. Our human
conceit makes for us another theory, and our
legal codes write out that theory in compli-
cated formulas. We have our "clear titles"
and our "quitclaim deeds." Formal records
at a courthouse tell men that we "own" houses
and lands, while formal certificates assert
our right to so many shares of stock or so
much value in bonds. The Bible confronts
our complacency with its plea for the owner-
ship of Another. God has the only clear
titles! God has never put his signature to a
quitclaim deed! The courthouse record is a
temporary convenience; the higher record
gives the eternal fact. "The silver and the
gold" are God's. "The cattle on a thousand
hills" are God's. "The earth is the Lord's,
and the fullness thereof; the world, and they
that dwell therein." There is here not merely
the assertion of a property ownership, but an
assertion of the ownership of the very men who
think that they own the property! The sea
and the land are the possessions of God. So
spiritual a prelude as that to the Gospel of
John claims a divine dominion, while many
words could be quoted from both Testaments
which make God the one august Possessor.
The history of all our materials leads us back
to God alone. He fashioned the wood in the

160 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

forests. He stored the coal and iron in the
hills. He packed the fertility in the soil.
When we look for the source of the medium of
exchange we must go back of men to God
himself. We pursue the gold coin to the bank,
and then to the mint, and then to the mine,
only to hear the silent proclamation of the
gold itself that it is of God. When congrega-
tions sing :

All things come of thee, O God,

And of thine own have we given thee,

it is not an instance of poetic license in rever-
ence; it is sober fact expressed in worship.

The claim of the Bible for the divine owner-
ship is still more comprehensive. All prop-
erty is his; all men are his. There is, too, a
bent of human power which God confers. We
are in the habit of speaking of "gifted" men.
The meaning of the word in its usual connec-
tion must be that God gives certain powers to
men — to one the power of poetry, to another
the power of moving speech, and to another the
power of scientific and inventive insight. Now
there is a suggestive verse in Deuteronomy
which declares that it is the Lord God that
"giveth thee power to get this wealth." The
"thee" is collective and refers to the people;
but the rule applies as well to the individual.
There is no reason for supposing that poetic

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 161

genius or oratorical genius or inventive genius
is a gift, while financial genius is an achieve-
ment. Yet there are probably no men who are
more inclined to call themselves "self-made"
than are the men who pass from poverty into
vast wealth. Their complacency would be di-
minished, and their humility would be in-
creased, if they perceived that all property
belongs to God, that they themselves belong to
God, and that their "power to get this wealth"
comes from God. We find, then, that the first
sweeping principle which the Scriptures give
concerning wealth is that God is its inclusive
and ceaseless owner.

The second principle follows as a matter of
course. God being the absolute owner, man
is a trustee, a lessee, a borrower. When the
man in the New Testament asked, "Is it not
lawful for me to do what I will with mine
own?" he may not have reached a worthy
definition either of "lawful" or of "mine own."
He may have deemed a loan a final gift, a
lease a purchase, a possession a creation, a
stewardship an ownership. It is just this
error that more than any other leads to the
abuse of wealth. We treat it as "personal
property," and the "personal" looks selfward
rather than Godward. This was the blunder
of the foolish rich man. His ground brought
forth plentifully. His crops could not be

162 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

crowded into his granaries. He resolved to
tear down his barns and to bnild greater. He
told his soul to eat, drink, and be merry, for
that it had much goods laid up for many
years. Then came the sentence of eviction.
In a moment the man discovered that he was
a tenant and not an owner. "Whose shall
those things be which thou hast provided?'^
This is the question that every man of means
must ask. Wills are never shrewd enough to
secure the property for the dead. Jesus said
that the man who acted on the idea that wealth
was his own was a "fool." He missed the
primary point of the divine ownership, and
he missed the secondary point of the human
trusteeship. All his work was based on im-
possibilities; and surely this is the supreme
foolishness.

This lesson is impressed upon men when they
return to their former places of residence after
an absence of many years. They recall who
"owned" yonder house, yonder farm, yonder
lot, yonder block. The old "owners" are gone,
and the new "owners" have come. Changes
of apparent ownership have been entered in
the civil records; but these in their turn will
be changed. The procession of trustees moves
down through the millenniums; above the
trusteeships is one changeless Owner. "We
brought nothing into this world, and it is

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 163

certain we can carry nothing out" — this is the
surest of edicts. It is said that one of the
wealthiest of men in our nation called his
wife to his bedside just before he passed away
and asked her to sing to him, "Come, ye sin-
ners, poor and needy." The man knew that
in a few moments he would be stripped of
every earthly possession. It was a pungent
reply made when one man asked another how
much a certain rich man had left — "All he
had !" was the response. Even so. Whenever
any person shall make a stout claim for his
ownership of property, it is a wholesome
lesson if he be asked to postpone the discussion
for a hundred years !

The law of giving is compulsory. We may
defer surrender, but we cannot avoid surren-
der. The hand may grasp for fourscore years,
but its final act will be to "let go" of every
earthly object. The loan must be returned.
The trusteeship must be dissolved. The lease
must be transferred. The account must be
rendered. Directly all that remains of the
gold is the reflex of gold. We may decide
when to give, to what to give, in what spirit
to give; but we may not decide whether we
shall give. There is lasting truth in the much-
quoted epitaph : "What I spent I had. What
I saved I left behind. What I gave away I
took with me." In this respect the whole

164 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

problem of life is the problem of a faithful
stewardship. This is the teaching of what we
may call the commercial parables. We are
responsible for the use of our talents and
pounds to an authority higher than our own.
The trustees pass away. The Owner abideth
forever.

The third biblical principle declares that
this stewardship is attended by grave tempta-
tions. For a hasty reading the New Testa-
ment judgment will seem like a reversal of
the Old Testament judgment. The ancient
record often traces a relation between piety
and prosperity. Jacob's proposal at Bethel
reads like a bargain struck in the market
place. The book of Job was meant to correct
this error and to drive from the world those
needless suspicions that would be directed
against the sick and the poor. In the vigorous
debate with his friends the patriarch declines
to plead guilty to the charge that his bodily
ills and property losses are the results of his
sins. But although the commercial value of
piety may often be found among Old Testa-
ment motives, still there is a constant offset.
The period of plenty is described as accom-
panied by a "leanness of soul." The deeper
insight of the psalmist saw the end of the
man "who made not God his strength, but
trusted in the abundance of his riches." Then

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 165

there stood before Mm the perplexing sight of
prosperous wickedness, the bad man spreading
himself as the green bay tree and having
everything that heart could wish. Slowly the
artificial nexus that had been fashioned be-
tween piety and prosperity and wickedness
and misfortune was broken, and men began to
seek for the different types of reward in their
own fields. More stress was laid upon the
methods by which wealth was gained, and
more upon its charitable uses. The prophets
came to thunder against a false outer pros-
perity and to give their advance hints of the
wealth of the kingdom of God.

In its warnings the New Testament is still
more emphatic. The word "riches" becomes
most often a symbol of the higher wealth of
spirit. It is made over into deeper meaning.
Besides, the early Christian leaders saw the
enticing dangers of wealth. Visits to Ephesus
or Corinth or Rome made them see how multi-
tudes could be caught in the snare of riches,
while examples among the Jews gave them the
same lesson with a personal emphasis. There
were likewise some concrete illustrations of
a most forbidding kind. Judas betrayed Jesus
for thirty pieces of silver. The lust of the
treasury had betrayed him ere he betrayed his
Lord. The first persecution of the Christian
Church was caused by greed. It is written,

166 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

"And when her masters saw that the hope of
their gains was gone, they caught Paul and
Silas, and drew them into the market place
unto the rulers." Soon the two missionaries
are beaten with rods and are taken to the
inner prison. The second persecution of the
church was caused by the same spirit of greed.
Demetrius, the silversmith, makes his appeal
to his fellow-craftsmen: "Sirs, ye know that
by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover
ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus,
but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath
persuaded and turned away much people, say-
ing that they be no gods, which are made with
hands : So that . . . this our craft is in danger
to be set at naught." As is the custom of
men with the commercial heart, he lifted the
issue to a specious height and made his plea
for Diana of the Ephesians!

With the memory of Christ's betrayal and
of the first two persecutions of their brethren
fresh in their memories, it is no marvel that
the New Testament writers began to stress the
perils of greed. The work of Luke as a physi-
cian had doubtless given him an intense
sympathy with the poor, and his Gospel
records eagerly our Lord's warnings to the
rich. James in his Epistle fairly bristles with
indictments against the rich. He asks: "Do
not rich men oppress you, and draw you be-

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 167

fore the judgment seats? Do not they blas-
pheme that worthy name by the which ye
are called?" When he wrote thus did he
have visions of Ephesus and Philippi? Later
he breaks into violence, "Go to now, ye rich
men, weep and howl for your miseries that
shall come upon you. Your riches are cor-
rupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the
rust of them shall be a witness against you,
and shall eat your flesh as it were fire." The
later verses indicate that he saw their injustice
to the poor laborers and heard the cries which
these poor had sent "into the ears of the Lord
of Sabaoth." Severe as the indictment is, we
can see how it was prompted by memory as
well as by scenes of recent greed. Moreover,
we have all known modern cases to which the
language would apply. If the Bible is to be
complete, it must give room to such indignant
words as these.

The records would show that Paul included
among his friends men and women of worldly
means ; still his words of chiding and warning
are not withheld. He writes of a "cloak of
covetousness." He had seen men don that
cloak — by their paltry excuses for withholding
gifts ; by their effort to make an intent for the
future stifle a present cry for help; by a deft
transfer of income to principal which "must

168 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

not be disturbed''; by the plea that luxuries
were necessities ; by a recital of past generosi-
ties ; by setting one good cause against another.
All these modern cloaks Paul doubtless found
in the wardrobes of long ago. He carries the
charge against covetousness on until he identi-
fies it with heathenism. He writes of the
"covetousness which is idolatry," and in yet
another place he speaks of the "covetous man
who is an idolater," as if he wished to make
the charge personal. Idolatry is the worship
of something less than God. When, therefore,
any man bows down to idols of silver and gold
erected in banks rather than by temple altars,
he joins the ranks of the idolatrous. He may
be even worse than those idolaters who strive
to reach beyond their hideous images if haply
they may feel after God and find him. These
words of Paul are urgent warnings that covet-
ousness may destroy personal genuineness and
may defeat spiritual worship. Greed may
shut us away from both man and God.

But the apostle's strongest word is given in
his counsel to Timothy, a young man whose
ideals he would seek to mold. We can imagine
the impression the advice made upon the sus-
ceptible youth when he read Paul's letter in
rich and worldly Ephesus. "They that will
be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and
into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 169

drown men in destruction and perdition. For
the love of money is the root of all evil : which
while some coveted after, they have erred from
the faith, and pierced themselves through
with many sorrow^s." It is a modern account
again. The twentieth century has already
given thousands of illustrations of the same
apostasy. As for the wide statement that
*^the love of money is the root of all evil,"
we have but to review these pages to find the
commentary. Every item in the catalogue of
crimes finds a partner in greed. Intemper-
ance, lust, war, thieving, murder, betrayal,
persecution, untruthfulness — all these grow
from the root of greed. No heedless joking
about the "root" can vacate the language or
permit "the love of money" to declare its
innocence.

In addition to these positive statements
sprinkled throughout the Book, there is a
negative testimony that may well be given a
hearing. If we were to search the pages for
warnings against poverty we would find that
the search was dififtcult and that it met with
slight returns. The prayer of Agur in the
book of Proverbs is, perhaps, the only assured
instance. He pleads: "Give me neither pov-
erty nor riches; feed me with the food that is
needful for me : Lest I be full, and deny thee,
and say. Who is Jehovah? or lest I be poor,

170 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

and steal, and use profanely the name of my
God." There is here a recognition of the
peril of discontent in poverty, as well as of
the peril of dishonesty, and the peril of a
blasphemous indictment against God. We
may take the warning at its full value. Some
people of every age will need its plain speak-
ing. But what shall we say of the biblical
idea of the peril of wealth, when its chapters
yield many scores of warnings as contrasted
with this lonely warning about poverty? It
would seem permissible to paraphrase a Bible
comparison of persons and to say that poverty
has slain its thousands but wealth its tens
of thousands! Even this comparison falls
short, if we measure it by the biblical propor-
tion of teaching. The silence of the Bible
gives us here a significant lesson.

We now approach the supreme authority
in the teaching and example of Jesus. The
elective method here will give a man the result
he most wishes. The boisterous agitator can
make choice of passages that will serve his
harsh purpose, while the defender of his own
unconsecrated surplus may quote us passages
that give him great comfort. The one will
tell us of Jesus's words to the young ruler;
of his command against laying up treasures
on earth; and of a hard-and-fast interpreta-
tion of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. The

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 171

other will tell us of the praise bestowed on
successful traders; of the inclusion of the
wealthy among Christ's friends and disciples ;
and of the law of the larger returns for the
larger powers and larger industry so plainly
enunciated in the parables of the talents and
the pounds. The fragmentary method leads
here to confusion and to the wildest partisan-
ship. The teaching of Jesus must be taken in
its completeness.

That teaching must, also, be judged by the
attitude of Jesus toward men. The well-to-do
were in his band of disciples. The father of
John and James had servants; and when
Jesus died on the Cross John had evidently a
comfortable home to which the mother of
Jesus was taken. Nicodemus was rich. Yet
in his conversation T\4th him Christ is not
represented as making a demand that the
ruler of the Jews should give up his wealth.
The demand was far more comprehensive.
Zaccheus was rich. But in the table conver-
sation with the publican there is no call to
voluntary poverty. Joseph of Arimathea was
rich. Still he appears to have been numbered
with the disciples and to have had the honor
of providing the sepulcher for the body of
Christ. All this would make it certain that
some of our Lord's teaching was directed to-
ward an individual danger and so was not

172 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

meant for a universal application. The fact
that Peter said to Simon Magus, "Thy money
perish with thee/' does not warrant us in
repeating the same words to every man who
possesses some wealth. The rebuke was evoked
by a personal and peculiar attitude. If the
teaching of Jesus, as he dealt with rich men,
varied in a marked degree, it is only reason-
able to suppose that he was fitting his message
to the individual subject. The fallacy of the
universal has not yet departed from our treat-
ment of the words of Christ.

But even when we take the whole of Jesus's
teaching rather than any fraction thereof, and
after we have given full consideration to the
personal element in his method, there is still
a sobering remainder with which we must
deal. The attempt to make the parable of Dives
and Lazarus a straight contrast between
the final fate of a rich man and that of a poor
man cannot succeed. Lazarus was not sent
to heaven because he was poor. He was not
given a place in Abraham's bosom on the
ground of his poverty of circumstances, but
on the ground of his wealth of character. Any
other conclusion is abhorrent to the moral
sense. Should poverty admit to heaven, some
of the most unmitigated rascals are sure to
meet the conditions of entrance. Nor was
Dives sent to hell because he was rich. The

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 173

contrast in earthly conditions of which
Abraham reminds him cannot fairly be taken
to mean that the reward of poverty is heaven
and the penalty of wealth is hell. The mean-
ing is that earthly plenty and earthly want
cannot prevent the rounding out of God's
purposes. Condition will inevitably come to
correspond with real character. Should any
rich man be minded to plead with himself
that his wealth was, in itself, any evidence
that its owner was entitled to special privi-
leges in the next world corresponding to
his special privileges in this world, this
parable would meet him with its needed
corrective.

The command, "Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves break through
and steal," has been taken by many as a literal
command. Usually, however, those who so
take it are ready to substitute a theory which
would ask the community to break the literal
demand by laying up treasures for us. We
must read to the end of the passage. Jesus's
concern is about the heart. He wishes to
establish the direction of the treasure because
he knows that in this way the direction of the
heart will be established. If money is hoarded
with a selfish purpose, the heart goes to selfish-
ness. If money is given for a holy cause, the

174 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

heart goes into the cause. On the other hand,
if money is saved in order that the provident
parent may give his child a better fitness for
life, the parental heart is invested in the child.
If money is not hoarded at all, but is given
for an evil cause, the heart takes that same
evil direction. The emphasis of Jesus is
spiritual again. The money does something
with the heart, and the motive of either saving
or giving determines the "heart action." It
is the law of action and reaction at work in
another realm. Men say that the way to a
man's purse is through his heart; and men
say well. Jesus, while accepting the statement
that there can be no true benevolence that does
not come from the heart, still says that often
the way to a man's heart is through his purse.
It is one of those practical rules whose work-
ing w© have seen many times. We persuade
a man to send his money into a hospital, a
college, a library, and his heart follows his
money. The terrible thing that Jesus saw in
selfish hoarding was just that ; and the glorious
thing that he saw in generous giving was
just that. The good and the evil of earthly
treasure is that it fixes the journeys of the
heart; it makes a spiritual geography.

There is another word of Jesus about "the
deceitfulness of riches.'' The phrase piques us
into a search for its meaning. There is no

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 175

evidence that Christ meant that riches de-
ceived us by flying away. The tricks which
they play upon men are far more subtle than
sudden departure. Jesus meant that riches
remained with men and still carried on the
deceiving work. We have all seen enough of
life to know some of the deceptions. One
friend began his business career with the idea
that he would be content with a hundred
thousand; he is now utterly restless with his
million. Another friend gave to worthy causes
a far larger proportion of his meager income
in the day of struggle than he now gives of
his plethoric income in the day of prosperity.
Still another friend in the old days was simple
and humble in all his attitudes toward life,
while in the new days of wealth he has become
proud in spirit and complex in his living. We
have all seen men whose souls lessened as their
riches gr eaten ed. All these are illustrations
of Jesus's teaching about "the deceitfulness
of riches." The tragic thing is that the men
who are the victims of the deceitfulness are
not aware of the sad inner effects. Men do
not know that they are stingy; they are only
prudent and economical! So runs the miser-
able deceit. It requires a moment of marked
self -revelation to enable these men to classify
themselves with truth. Over the Bank of
England men read the words, "The Earth is

176 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

the Lord's." This describes the source of
wealth. Over many financial institutions it
might be good to put another motto as a re-
minder of a possible effect of wealth, "The
Deceitfulness of Riches.'^

We now face the utterance of Christ with
reference to a double mastery over life. He
asserts that "no man can serve two masters,"
without love for the one and hatred for the
other. When he seeks for the power that is
most likely to contest with God for the al-
legiance of man he selects Mammon. Hence
he states the dilemma without modification,
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." He
did not select Pleasure as the opponent of
God, nor Ambition, nor Impurity, nor Dis-
honesty. He saw clearly that Mammon had
the greatest power to draw men into life-long
"service." Other sins might be occasional
contestants, but the sin of greed was the con-
stant foe seeking to cleave the loyalty of men.
Jesus did not say that we could not serve God
with Mammon. Elsewhere he says the very
opposite of that. But he did say unequivo-
cally, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."
Perhaps these six words, more nearly than
any other, give us the heart of Jesus's teach-
ing about wealth. They state in simple and
direct form the alternatives for many lives.
We can serve God with Mammon. We can

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 177

serve God or Mammon. We cannot serve God
and Mammon. What Christ states as an im-
possibility many men try to accomplish. We
see the vain efforts daily — men putting their
greatest diligence into the market place as an
end, with an occasional tribute to the temple.
This is the most frequent form of the "double
life." It is the poor compromise of a half-
hearted or tenth-hearted service. Jesus said
that God or Mammon must win the whole
man. The God and the god cannot dwell in
the same heart. Jesus here thrusts us back
to the original biblical principle: God is the
Absolute Owner. He will not share his rule.
He will not partition his empire. Mammon
must yield to God. Thus Jesus enters all
markets and counting rooms and banks with
his demand for undivided hearts and undi-
vided lives.

There is another saying of Jesus which is
more frequently quoted, both because it is i
itself so radical and because it is accompanievl
by a vigorous figure of speech. Besides these
two attractions, the words have an appealing
setting in a human life. The young ruler
comes to Jesus with his eager question. He
stands before the Lord as a fine type of promis-
ing manhood — fresh, alert, clean, and even
reverent. He is able to say, without rebuke,
that from his youth up he has kept the com-

178 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

mandments and that his life has moved on a
high grade of morals. The record tells us
that "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him."
But in this instance, instead of meeting the
young man's question with the demand for a
new birth, as Jesus did with Nicodemus, or
with the acceptance of hospitality, as Jesus
did with Zaccheus, Jesus asked that he sell
all his goods and give to the poor, and that
then he should follow the Lord in his home-
less life. Often the comment omits this last
demand. It may be that it is the more im-
portant demand, and that it is the reason for
the minor requirement. Other disciples had
left all in order to follow Jesus ; and this man
was now asked to do likewise. Evidently the
teaching here has the individual quality.
Christ knew that the young man had set his
heart on his riches, and that the only way to
a true discipleship was through utter sur-
render.

We cannot read the story without feeling a
measure of sympathy for the young ruler ; and
we may confess that we ourselves would
scarcely have been equal to the severe test.
The situation, however, can be estimated in
another way — not by our imagination, but by
our admiration. Certain men in Christian
history have done exactly what Jesus asked
this young man to do. John Wesley did it;

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 179

making much money, lie continued to live on
his allowance of twenty-eight pounds a year
and gave the rest to a needy world. When he
was an old man he wrote to the assessor that
his taxable property consisted of two silver
spoons at Bristol! Saint Francis of Assisi
gave up all his earthly possessions. At the
altar of the church he deliberately took
poverty as his bride. The heroes of complete
renunciation have been many ; and the world's
verdict has not been that they were fanatics.
They heard the call of God that they should
surrender all and give to the various kinds of
poor ; they heeded the command, and they won
their fame by their surrender. We can make
a more direct test than this. If this young
man had heeded Christ's word, and had given
all that he had to the poor, and had followed
the Lord — what would have been the result?
Would he have won the world's admiration by
his self-renunciation? Would he now be
known only by the virtually anonymous title
of "a certain ruler"? We can see that he was
offered a wonderful opportunity. He would
have been enrolled among the saints of the
early church, if he had risen to the higher
choice. An English writer has pointed out
that the young man was not angered by the
word of Christ ; he was "saddened.'' He went
away "sorrowful," and his sorrow was for

180 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

himself. He went back to his riches and was
lost to the sight of the world. He is now
known even anonymously only because he had
a brief conversation with One who had not
where to lay his head.

Jesus saw the young man's retreating figure
and then spoke his own "sorrowful'' exclama-
tion, "How hardly shall they that have riches
enter into the kingdom of God !" The account
in the Gospel of Mark indicates that the dis-
ciples were "amazed" by the saying, just as
the men of the world have wondered ever
since. Seeing this amazement, Jesus added,
"Children, how hard is it for them that trust
in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye
of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into
the kingdom of God." It was a startling
figure of speech — an hyperbole, as the later
conversation with the disciples would show,
unless, indeed, the saying refers to a certain
gate of the city through which only the un-
burdened camel could enter. This figure of
speech has held the attention of the world for
centuries. Strangely enough, the nineteenth
century had a peculiar illustration of an
accommodated meaning of the word "needle."
We cannot help wondering what the people
of many generations hence would think if they
were to read in ancient history that in the

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 181

latter part of the nineteenth century a certain
millionaire paid more than one hundred thou-
sand dollars for bringing Cleopatra's "needle"
to America. Superficial as the suggestion is,
it illustrates the manner in which a figure of
speech could easily be pulled off into a path
of false literalism.

But if we take the view that the expression
was either a vivid hyperbole or the description
of a local gate, the warning still abides in
strength. It is hard for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of God. It is sometimes very
hard for him to remain there when his en-
trance into the kingdom preceded his entrance
into wealth. Experienced pastors will tell
us that not many wealthy are called. Yet
Jesus distinctly declared that the rich could
enter into the Kingdom. The disciples, "aston-
ished out of measure," said, "Who, then, can
be saved?" Jesus replied, "With men it is
impossible, but not with God: for with God
all things are possible." It is not right that
the man who clamors against the rich should
omit this assurance from the teaching. Jesus
says that a rich man can be brought into the
Kingdom. He offers this as one of the evi-
dences of the divine omnipotence — that the
power of God can break through the com-
placency, the self-content, the tangle of
materialism, and can win men from the

182 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

idolatry of gold to the love and worship of
God.

This message of Jesus to the young ruler,
and through him to the world, is not always
welcome to the ears of the rich. The religious
teacher may be tempted to discount its mean-
ing and to relieve in some way the severity of
the words. Yet an age of growing wealth
needs this lesson, and needs it with an in-
creased emphasis. The trend of the Bible
serves as a commentary on the same lesson.
If the Bible is to serve as the book of guidance,
then we are justified in saying that the path
of material wealth is the path of spiritual
peril.

If we halted our lesson here, we should be
guilty of a partial use of the Bible. The
fourth principle of the great Book is that the
stewardship of wealth offers glorious oppor-
tunities. It offers the opportunity of aiding
the poor. John wrote, "Whoso hath this
world's good, and seeth his brother have
need, and shutteth up his bowels of compas-
sion from him, how dwelleth the love of God
in him?'' It offers the opportunity of caring
for the unfortunate, as illustrated in the par-
able of the good Samaritan. When Jesus
uttered this parable, he laid the foundations
of many hospitals. It offers the opportunity
of paying personal tributes of affection, as

THE BIBLE AND WEALTH 183

exemplified in the offering to the Lord of the
precious ointment. It offers the opportunity
of furnishing honest employment as a field of
personal fidelity, as taught in the parables of
the talents and the pounds. It offers the
opportunity of projecting our influence to the
ends of the world, as taught by those who
aided Paul on his missionary journeys and by
those who sent gifts whereby the gospel should
be promoted in all the earth. But the Bible
does not give any set of rules for the use of
wealth. It asserts the primacy of God. It
commands the spirit of love. It stresses the
probationary character of possessions. It de-
clares in the word of Christ that any man
makes a disastrous bargain who gains the
whole world and in the transaction loses
himself.

Finally Jesus relates our use of money to
the eternal issues. He does this in a very
simple and direct way, and in the form of an
imperative. In the more skilled translation
of the Revised Version we read, "Make to
yourselves friends by means of the mammon
of unrighteousness, that when it shall fail,
they may receive you into the eternal taber-
nacles." It appears here that worldly posses-
sions may be either "the mammon of un-
righteousness" or the maker of everlasting
friendships. By the right use of gold and

184 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

silver men can people the gates of heaven
with welcomers. "It shall fail," says Christ,
referring to wealth. "They may receive you,"
he says, referring to those human lives that
are our only permanent investments. The
final emphasis of Jesus in giving the very
crown of the Bible teaching concerning wealth,
great or small, is that his followers shall so
use the coin stamped with the image of some
earthly Caesar as to produce in men and
women and children the image of the heavenly
Lord. The lower commerce is to serve the
higher commerce. Faneuil Hall may keep its
market place, but it must be subordinated to
that upper room wherein men learn the les-
sons of truth and liberty and righteousness.
The Age of Gold can help to make the Golden
Age. The problem of wealth will not be solved
until all men hold their riches as willing
trustees of Him who himself was rich and
who for our sakes became poor, that we
through his poverty might be rich.

CHAPTER VII

The Bible and Sorrow

One who is jealous for the reputation of
the Bible as a complete Book of life must
sometimes feel that undue emphasis has been
placed upon its messages for the sorrowing.
If the jealousy does not entertain just this
feeling, it has the resembling fear — that the
biblical message for sorrow has been empha-
sized until it has hidden the message for glad-
ness. As a necessary prelude to a discussion
of the Bible^s relation to the sorrow of the
world, we shall treat its meaning for the
world's gladness. We are willing to use the
word "pleasure" in this connection, though
pleasure is classed as representing a mood
less deep than the mood of joy. Some of us
can recall the surprise we experienced in read-
ing Lubbock's The Pleasures of Life. One
chapter dealt with "The Pleasure of Duty."
This title caused us no wonder. But the
next chapter astonished us with the heading,
"The Duty of Pleasure." We quickly found
ourselves asking whether there was such a
duty. Is it an obligation laid on men and

185

186 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

women to seek for a proportion of pleasure?
Are the light joys of life to be classed with
our duties? Lubbock answered these ques-
tions in the affirmative. What reply does the
Bible give?

Certainly we can say in the beginning that,
if we take a review of its pages, the Bible
does not impress us as being a mournful book.
This is significant when we note the fact that
its pages were all written by mature and
serious persons. Even more, the pages were
written with reference to some of the most
serious and sacred elements and events in life.
Vast solemnities evoked many sections of the
Bible. We should expect that the seriousness
of the authors and the critical importance of
the events would touch the Book and would
dominate its spirit. It is even so. Our
worthier thought would not have it otherwise.
If the Bible had been simply the inspiration
and guide for the world's playgrounds, it
would have lost the most of its soul.

For a volume whose materials were jokes
and whose primary purpose was laughter
might have a legitimate mission, but it would
have difficulty in being rated as redemptive
literature. The real humorist is doubtless
one of God's agents in lifting the troubles of
mankind; but Providence sees to it that
humorists are not so plentiful as to destroy

THE BIBLE AND SORKOW 187

our sense of proportion. Each generation is
granted a small group of men who set the
world aglee and become the distributors of
smiles and laughter. The appreciation of
humor, also, is placed in the nature of each
normal person; but the continual demand for
humor becomes a plague. Men know instinc-
tively that for the greatest things it will not
suffice. There is a story to the effect that one
of the most renowned Americans was not
allowed to write the Declaration of Inde-
pendence because it was feared that he might
work a joke into the historic document. True
or false, the story stands for a fact — that
humor is a secondary form of service and that
the big crises insist that humor shall stay in
its own realm.

None the less the Bible is not a stranger to
the play element. As we march through its
life we see smiles and hear laughter. Children
are there in their careless gladness. Young
men and maidens are there in their innocent
pleasures. Games are there with their de-
light of striving. Parties are there with their
gayety and music. We pass through pages
of darkness only to emerge into pages of sun-
shine. We sit down at Marah and find the
brackish and bitter waters and hear the mur-
muring of the Israelites. But the next day
we come to Elim, with its twelve pure and

188 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

gushing wells and its threescore and ten palm
trees. This transition is what we would
anticipate in a Book of real life, and it is what
fits the Bible to be the guide of total life. A
joyless book could not control a joyful world;
neither could a sorrowless book control a sor-
rowful world. The Bible must have a message
for both types of experience.

There is a theological reason for this two-
fold message. We have been told by our reli-
gious teachers that Christ, being tempted, can
succor those that are tempted. The Man of
Sorrows can save the people of sorrows. The
High Priest is touched with the feeling of
our infirmities. The Captain of our salva-
tion was made perfect through suffering. He
learned obedience through the things he suf-
fered. The world is made acquainted with
the sorrowing Saviour of the sorrowing world.
Still we have been slow to apply our theology
to the other side of life. The forged letter of
Publius Lentulus stated that Jesus had often
been seen to weep, but never to smile! The
mischief of such a misconception is apparent.
It provides for a mutilated theology. It gives
the world a fractional Christ. It leaves the
hour of gladness without its Exemplar. It
gives comfort for a funeral, but no companion-
ship for a feast. In the average life the realm
of joy is larger than the realm of sorrow.

THE BIBLE AND SOEROW 189

Few people would declare that with them sad-
ness had exceeded gladness. The world needs
to-day the Saviour of the joyful, even as it
needs the Saviour of the sorrowful. Joy that
refuses to be curbed needs saving power just
as does sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
We need not enter into any needless com-
parison and try to state which has the more
need. It is sufficient to affirm that a com-
plete Bible must take account of pleasures and
joys, if these are to be counted among the
divinely appointed experiences of life.

We do not long study the Bible without
becoming aware of its law of proportion. It
gives the word in season, and it gives the word
in measure. Hence its aim is to cultivate pro-
portion in human lives. Its ideal is the ideal
of a holy God, that is, of One with a perfect
balance of the infinite nature. Its ideal for
man must, therefore, be that man shall gain
for himself that balance in the human realm
that God has in his divine realm. For this
reason the Bible is a curber of excesses, a
restorer of proportions. It gives here its
largest lesson for pleasure. Recognizing its
legitimacy, it recognizes its limits as well. As
an example from both Testaments we may
give a statement of conduct that receives re-
buke from Moses and from Paul. It is re-
corded in Exodus that, after their riotings

190 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

with the golden calf, the Israelites proceeded
to engage in riotings of pleasure. The ancient
account puts it, "The people sat down to eat
and to drink, and rose up to play.'^ Saint
Paul quotes it in First Corinthians in pre-
cisely its original form. In the early account
the rebuke of the Lord awaits the people. In
the later account the apostle makes the con-
duct the natural accompaniment of idolatry,
as if indeed the worship of an image would
issue into the idolatry of the table and the
playground. Now eating and drinking are
not only good; they are necessary. Play is
not only good; it is necessary. The Bible
declares that food and water are the gifts of
God, and it makes them symbols of God's
deeper benevolence. Nor does the Bible ever
condemn play. On the contrary, it represents
the streets of the Holy City as filled with
playing children. The trouble, then, must
have been in the lack of proportion as well
as in the lack of a good motive. The people
sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up
to play. This is to say that the two con-
stant movements of life were monopolized by
appetite and sport. The Israelites ate to play,
and they played to eat. Two things intended
to be legitimate portions of life became its
illegitimate entirety. Designed to be preludes,
eating and drinking and playing became the

THE BIBLE AND SORROW 191

whole program. Life consisted in the satisfac-
tion of two ranges of desire. The demand of
Moses and Paul was not that eating and drink-
ing and playing should be abolished, but that
they should be pushed back into their just
proportions as worthy departments of living.
The glutton of food and the glutton of play
are both condemned by the Bible.

There are those who say that one of the
crying evils of our own day is that the people
are appetite-mad and pleasure-mad. Probably
some men in every age have brought this
charge against their time; and the charge is
true as applied to some persons in each period.
For such the Bible has its repeated warning.
They who are lovers of pleasure more than of
God fall under condemnation. Mankind has
never long admired the eaters and players of
history. If it remembers Beau Brummel and
Beau Nash at all, it enrolls them in its lists
of ridicule. An epitaph which recorded that
"He ate much of the time and played the
rest of the time," would not serve to enroll a
man among the earth's heroes! The Bible
and humanity are against the unbalanced de-
votees of the table and the parlor and the
field of sports.

But the Bible and humanity unite again in
their estimate of the other extreme. The mere
ascetic secures curiosity rather than admira-

192 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

tion. He has not learned how to follow Him
who often went to feasts and who sat down
with his friends at the supper which they
gave him at Bethany. It is said of him that
"he was anointed with the oil of joy above
his fellows." Jesus entered into the normal
joys of life. He came eating and drinking,
until his enemies seized upon his conduct and
exaggerated it into a charge against him. He
was present at weddings where joy reigned
supreme. In all his teaching and by all his
example he never proved himself an enemy to
the normal pleasures of life. This particular
emphasis is occasionally needed. It may not
have as large a mission as has the warning
against overdone appetite and play ; but it has
its message to that smaller circle of the de-
ceived who would drive joy from the world
in the name of Christ. One of the hymns
declares :

The brightest things below the sky
Yield but a flattering light;

We should suspect some danger nigh
Where we possess delight.

There is something morbid in this conception.
The invitation to the religious life becomes
gruesome. The sister of Pascal cared for him
through a long and serious illness. Pascal
came to love her so much that he feared that
his affection was wicked. In a gloomy hour

THE BIBLE AND SOEROW 193

he wrote in his diary these words, "Lord, for-
give me for loving my dear sister so much!"
Afterward his abnormal conscience worked
again, and Pascal actually erased the word
"dear." For such moods the Bible has a
lesson. God "giveth us richly all things to
enjoy." We would think it small glory for
ourselves if our children should push our gifts
away from their little hands with the idea that
those selected gifts were perilous. God fills
the world with possibilities of pleasure. Food
and drink are not negative and tasteless. The
paths of earth are not flowerless. Voices are
not without music. Companionship is not life-
less. The Bible is the foe of wicked pleasure.
The Bible is the foe of excessive pleasure. The
Bible is the friend of legitimate and propor-
tionate pleasure.

But while pleasure needs to be guarded
and curbed, it is not either a burden to be
lifted or a pain to be endured. Sorrow is
both. Therefore sorrow demands some posi-
tive services from the Bible. We may be im-
patient with those doleful folks who speak of
this world as a vale of tears or as a wilderness
of woe! We may be inclined to quote the
lines :

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's.

On the other hand, it is well to remember

194 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

that the young, especially, see life almost ex-
clusively from the standpoint of hope and
courage. The minister of the gospel begins to
feel, when he reaches the age of forty, that he
has not given enough comfort to his people.
As he identifies himself closely with their lives
he finds that most homes carry some secret
sorrow and that most men and women have
their own personal tragedies. You will recall
the myth about the boatman whose duty it was
to carry over the Styx the souls who departed
from earth. He noticed that these souls
mourned much and took the voyage unwill-
ingly. He thought that it must be a very
beautiful and joyful land that laid such hold
on their hearts. So he secured leave of
absence from his post of duty and made an
excursion into the world. He discovered that
for every birth there must eventually be a
death; that every home that was made must
in due season be broken ; that men and women
were troubled and maimed and sick. On all
sides he saw the evidences of sorrow. He
went back to his ferry greatly wondering why
people should be sad because they left a sad
world. This mythical picture is overdrawn,
but it has its suggestion of truth. Earth does
have its manifold sorrows. If all the burdens
and pains and problems and anguishes of a
single day could focus their influence upon

THE BIBLE AND SOEKOW 195

any single life, the result would be either a
broken heart or an insane mind.

The Bible does not make light of sorrows.
Its heroes have their troubles. Call the roll of
its sons and daughters and you will find that
at some time each one of them was a child of
grief. The Book does not assign burden and
pain and sorrow to the class of unrealities.
Neither does it assign them to the class of
negations. In the Bible sorrow is real and
sorrow is positive. When Kachel weeps for
her children, the scene is real. When David
goes into the room in the tower over the gate
and utters his pitiful lament over Absalom,
the Book does not describe his anguish as an
illusion. Paul's hunger and thirst, and stripes
and shipwrecks, and perils and imprison-
ments were not the vain froth of a mortal
mind. Jesus's cross, and the thorns and the
nails and the spear, and the tauntings of the
passers-by, and the thirst, and the darkened
face of the Father were not swept into the
void by reciting a formula about the All.
Jesus gave a promise to his disciples, "In the
world ye shall have tribulation.'' He kept that
promise. They walked the ways of martyr-
dom. Their spirits won victories over their
flesh. Yet there is no hint that their persecu-
tions and deaths were the fictions of error or
the dreams of a night that did not exist. The

196 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Bible, being real, ministers to sorrow that is
real.

The Book, too, touches on all the phases of
comfort that we may gather from the surface
of life, only it does not make them either a
full gospel of consolation or a large part of
that gospel. Sometimes a word of Scripture
will suggest the method of comparison implied
in the statement, "It might be worse." Paul
does this with one quick word. "Our light
affliction," he puts it. We have lost one hand ;
we might have lost two! We have lost one
eye ; we might have lost both ! We have been
sick one week; it might have been a year!
Sometimes this method carries us off into
rather graceless comparisons of ourselves with
other people as if, indeed, we were divine
favorites. Can a man prove more divine provi-
dence for himself by assuming that there is
less for another person? This road of com-
parison leads to phariseeism unless we watch
carefully against a despicable by-path. Tenny-
son in his "In Memoriam," which is a poem
of comfort, shows much impatience with this
false form of consolation :

One writes, "that other friends remain,"
That loss is common to the race;
And common is the commonplace.

And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

THE BIBLE AND SOKROW 197

That loss is common would not make

My own less bitter, rather more;

Too common! Never morning wore
To evening but some heart did break.

This method of comparison is inadequate.
Whether the word "light" makes our imagina-
tion furnish the details of the worse affiction,
or whether it contrasts our sorrows with the
greater sorrows of others, it does not do
enough for our smitten hearts.

Nor are we fully satisfied with the plea that
sorrow is but "for a moment'' and that we
can be thankful for its brevity. There is
comfort here, to be sure, but it has no final
quality. Paul knew that, and so he gave the
idea an incidental part of a sentence, and then
went on to the deeper consolation. One poet
puts it :

Since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous heart! be comforted;
And like a cheerful traveler, take the road.
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints? At least it may be said,
"Because the way is short, I thank thee, God."

The truth is that there is real comfort in all
this only when pain's brevity contributes
something to the good of the years and even
to eternity. Thus the Bible does not give much

198 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

space to the slight comforts of either compari-
son or brevity. These fiave their function, but
they are the small helpers of the larger
consolations.

The Bible likewise gives as one of the com-
forts of sorrow that sorrow^ prepares us to
console others' sorrows. Saint Paul uses this
in his message to the Corinthians: "Blessed
be Gad, even the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God
of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our
tribulations, that we may be able to comfort
them which are in any trouble, by the comfort
wherewith we ourselves are comforted of
God.'' Here we are pushed back to the
deepest sources of comfort. God comforts the
sorrowful in order that other sorrowful ones
may have comfort. The consolers are dele-
gated by the great Consoler. It requires this
reach clear back to the heart of God to rescue
this suggestion from the superficial. One man
has sorrow. He consoles others who have
sorrow. Then you have two sorrows in your
problem. In this way you would keep playing
off sorrow against sorrow, without any funda-
mental explanation of any sorrow. The ques-
tion is. Why any sorrow at all? If one of the
by-products of sorrow is the power to comfort
the sorrowing, we must still find some main
product that will put the two sorrows to-

THE BIBLE AND SORROW 199

gether in a meaning of good. The God of
comfort must preside over both sorrows ere
either sorrow shall yield its contribution to
the sufferer. Paul saw this, and so he re-
lated our power to comfort others to the fact
that we had gotten our comfort from the
Father of all consolation.

It is thus clear that the Scriptures give
place to all the minor elements in the ministry
of sorrow. Its comparative lightness, its sure
brevity, and its tuition for sympathy have
their part in the Bible curriculum. The
Scriptures also move onward to the vision of
a God who cares. "Like as a father pitieth"
— this is the message even of the Old Testa-
ment. It gives an answer to that piercing cry :

What can it mean? Is it aught to Him
That the nights are long and the sun is dim?
Can he be touched by the griefs I bear
"Which sadden the heart and whiten the hair?
Around his throne are eternal calms,
And glad, strong music of happy psalms,
And bliss unruled by any strife!
How can he care for my little life?

The answer of the Bible is the vision of the
pitying God. Our earthly friends have helped
us in our sorrows by simply caring. They
have come to us in the shadows, and their
words and faces have told us that they cared.
It is a strange feature of human psychology

200 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

that just this gives us comfort. Our friends
do not solve the problem for us. They do not
remove the cause of our pain. But they feel
with us, and this is aid. Every sympathizer
seems to lift a bit of the weight from our own
hearts. When the Bible gives us the revela-
tion of One who pitieth ^^like as a father
pitieth," it brings God into that circle of
helpfulness.

The lesson goes farther and deeper than this.
Though we have not here used the words
technically, the soul's dictionary draws a
distinction between pity and sympathy. The
pitier may never have walked the way that
allows him to understand our grief; the sym-
pathizer comes to us from some experience
that permits him to remember those that are
in bonds as bound with them. We cannot
read the Bible long ere we discover that there
is in God the capability of joy and sorrow.
The passages are abundant that justify this
statement. God can be pleased. God can be
grieved. If men and women have been made
in his image, and if we find in them the capa-
bility of pain and sorrow, we are driven to
the conclusion that something corresponding
thereto must be in the divine nature. The
father in the parable of the prodigal son,
sitting lonely and mournful in his home,
represents God. The father in that same

THE BIBLE AND SORROW 201

parable meeting Ms son in the roadway and
giving Mm glad welcome, and calling to his
neighbors, "Rejoice with me," likewise repre-
sents God. The truth seems to be that the
farther up we go in the grade of being, the
more capability of pain and of pleasure do
we find. The polyp can neither suffer much
nor enjoy much. The oyster can enjoy more
and suffer more. The bird has its note of joy
and its note of pain. Human beings have
exquisite powers of enjoyment and equally
exquisite powers of suffering. We may well
believe that when we reach the perfect being
of God both of these capabilities come to their
highest. This is the meaning of that verse:

Can it be, O Christ Eternal,
That the wisest suffer most?
That the mark of rank in nature
Is capacity for pain?
That the anguish of the singer
Makes the sweetness of the strain?

We are allowed to believe, then, that the pity
of God passes over into sympathy. We are
visited in our sorrows not by a God whose
mood toward us is abstract, but whose own
infinite heart knows grief. "The human life
of God" is a phrase that has been used to
describe the incarnation. That phrase enters
into our problem here. If Jesus shows us
what God is like, then the Christ who wept

202 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

over Jerusalem brings us one revelation of the
divine life. The pitying God becomes the
sympathizing God.

The biblical lesson of comfort does not halt
even here. It is given a closer and more
personal quality. A pitier and sympathizer
may be very distant, and his aid may reach
us over the abysses. If the Bible gives us the
vision of a pitying father, it gives us also the
vision of the God who comforteth even as a
mother comforteth. In the various kinds of
trouble men become aware of reserve forces
in their nature. They endure what they
thought they could not endure. In crisis times
the muscles secure extra strength, the mind
secures extra alertness, and the spirit secures
extra power either to do or to bear. These
reserves must be of God's giving, whether they
lie ready in the nature always, or are special
gifts sent direct to help us in the troublous
hours. There is, however, a still more per-
sonal interpretation that the Bible offers for
these experiences. They are the special visits
of God to the afflicted. If the creed of the
divine sympathy gets its meaning from "the
human life of God" as seen in the incarnation
of Christ, this part of the creed gets its mean-
ing from the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It
is true that the Greek word which is translated
"Comforter" might be given other meanings

THE BIBLE AND SORROW 203

such as Adviser or Helper. But this does not
change the point for the present discussion.
An Adviser in sorrow is a Comforter, and a
Helper in sorrow is a Comforter. It is sig-
nificant that the consciousness of the church
followed the translators eagerly and adopted
the word Comforter as if it met some need of
life and as if it answered to some deep ex-
perience of life. We may not go into a labored
discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. We
may affirm that a humanity that sorrows is
glad for a doctrine of the Godhead that magni-
fies the office of consolation. The comforting
quality in Barnabas led the early disciples to
change his name from Joses to Barnabas be-
cause he was a "son of consolation." They
rejoiced in their human comforter. The
church has ever found satisfaction in the
revelation of a divine Comforter. In this
revelation it sees the pitying God and the
sympathizing God become the Comforting
God.

Related to this is the scriptural idea that
God conquers our sorrow not by removing it
but by making us equal to its burden. The
clearest concrete illustration of this is seen
in Paul's words about his "thorn in the flesh."
His thrice-repeated prayer was that the thorn
might be removed ; his answer was that, while
tbe difficulty would not be taken away, he

204 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

would be given grace sufficient for Ms triaL
Paul's experience has impressed men as being
typical of the inner kind of divine aid. The
sorrow may be of many kinds ; but the powers
of resistance are strengthened by the grace of
God and the sorrows are borne in a brave and
patient spirit. Although the idea be trite, it
claims a place in the discussion, as indeed it
was worthy of a place in the ritual of com-
fort. We are not dealing with any mere law
of reaction. It was not the thorn that was
making Paul strong; it was God who was
making Paul strong to endure the thorn. He
himself describes the transaction as if it had
involved a direct gift of the divine grace, as
it had involved a direct message from the
divine heart.

Yet great as are all these types of biblical
consolation, we all feel that we have not
reached the conclusion of the matter. Com-
parison is not enough. Brevity does not ex-
plain why sorrow should be just brief. Pity
does not tell us why we should need to be
pitied. Direct spiritual reserves do not fully
justify the hard experience that calls for them.
Direct and personal comfort does not solve
the problem since no one would seek trouble
in order to have the "visits of a comforting
friend. The gaining of inner strength comes
nearer to a positive warrant for the sorrows

THE BIBLE AND SOEEOW 205

of life; yet it does not quite reach the satis-
fying conception. All these things are parts
of the program, but they are not its conclu-
sion. The tale of life's sorrow is not all told
by their recital. The full story we cannot
understand now; still we may be able to
glimpse its meaning. In the epic of Job there
are traces of the revelation. The patriarch
gathers a harvest out of his troubles. They
never reach the uttermost extreme. They do
not last forever. They bring him pity, however
crude; sympathy, however bungling; com-
forters, however mistaken; reserve forces,
however tardy; inner strength, however won.
But his sorrows do more than this; they are
represented in the last chapter as having been
made the servant of Job. The richer and
stronger man returns to the richer and
stronger life. The testings have been turned
into gains.

This deeper lesson of comfort is often given
to us in the Bible by means of a very positive
verb. Our afllictions "work" for us. All
things "work" together for us. As men are
sent to the fields, and as the forces of nature
are sent along the wires, so sorrows are sent
to become our servants. This service is not
inevitable; it is conditioned on the attitude
of the sorrowing life; but it is a very real
service when the conditions are met. Our

206 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

afflictions work for us — when we get the
spiritual vision so that we can receive the
things that are eternal. All things work to-
gether for good for us — when we fulfill the
innermost requirement of loving God. The
condition in both cases is located within the
spiritual life. This condition being met, the
promise of the Bible is that sorrow is made
our efficient servant. Paul in his famous
verse of consolation states the case with
marked confidence. The afflictions work for
us until they produce "a far more exceeding
and eternal weight of glory." Language could
scarcely be stronger. Nor were the words
used by one who lolled in the high places of
ease and delight and shouted down his ab-
stract comforts to the strugglers in the vale.
The assurance to the sorrowing comes from
their comrade. His experiences ranged all the
way from the petty hardships of a wandering
life on to the Appian Way and the block of
death. It was the sure faith of the apostle
that all his sorrows had been made to work
for him. He was not their victim; he was
their master and their beneficiary.

The persons who have seen much of the
world's better living will not deny this con-
ception. Le Gallienne in his booklet, If I
Were God, admits that suffering does often
work toward the making of character and be-

THE BIBLE AND SOEEOW 207

comes a real servant. His skepticism does
not lie at this point. His inquiry is whether
a just and good God could not have found
some easier way, some servant for which we
would not have to render such a painful cost.
This, of course, is that old method of debate
that flees for refuge to some imaginary world
and conceives of people who do not exist. Our
task is with the people now on earth, and with
them we must deal in our efforts at consola-
tion. Some of them we have seen driven to
bitterness of spirit by their sorrow. They
themselves made sorrow an evil servant which
filled the garden of life with noxious weeds,
shut the windows of hope in the home of life,
put the poison of despair into the water of
life, and spread the clouds of gloom over all
the sky of life. Others we have seen mellowed
and sweetened by the servantship of sorrow.
All our visits to them showed clearly that
sorrow was doing gracious service. The
"weight of glory" was more and more ap-
parent. The "good" produced by the "all
things" gave increasing evidence that the
"servant" was doing his work. When any
close observer of life writes down his lists of
saints he will always find that he has been
compelled to canonize many who, like their
Master, have been made "perfect through
suffering."

208 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

The quotation of these words about Christ
reminds us that the world turns to him as to
the last resort for the sorrowing. Here, as
in all other studies, we find the climax in him.
As he entered into all forms of work, so did
he enter into all forms of sorrow. Is it home-
lessness? Is it privation? Is it misunder-
standing? Is it anxiety for others? Is it
anticipated suffering? Is it evil accusation?
Is it ridicule? Is it shame? Is it mockery?
Is it torture? Is it utter disgrace? Is it
abandonment? Is it denial? Is it betrayal?
Is it death? All these he knew. If the wisest
and holiest suffer most, he knew all these
sorrows at their deepest. None could really
join with him in chanting the real De Pro-
fundis. He trod the winepress alone, and of
the people there was none with him. The
world that left him alone in his sorrow does
not wish him to leave it alone in its sorrow.
It seeks him then. It hears him as he promises,
not immunity from suffering, but the experi-
ence of overcoming in suffering : "Be of good
cheer: I have overcome the world." He put
a deeply personal quality into his assurance,
"I will not leave you comfortless; I will come
to you." "I am with you always, even unto
the end of the aeons." So runs the promise.
It is no wonder that the troubled flee to him.
The Man of Sorrows draws the men of sor-

THE BIBLE AND SORKOW 209

rows. His benediction of peace is not formal.
With the authority and with the reserves of
comfort at his command, he still says, "Let
not your heart be troubled."

To the usual messages of consolation he now
adds the eternal reason, "In my Father's house
are many mansions : if it were not so, I would
have told you. I go to prepare a place for
you." Well did Carlyle say that if Jesus were
only man, he had no right to utter these words.
But Jesus said much more. He would pre-
pare the place. He would come again. He
would receive them into his company. If some
doubter shall ask about the way, his reply
shall be the same as of old, "I am the way."
Through 'him alone we come to the Father.
Full trust in him removes all bitter tears:
and the remainder of tears he does not rebuke.
He inspires the visions wherein we see those
who have come up out of great tribulation
hungering no more, nor thirsting any more,
nor smitten by the sun or any heat; but fed
by the Lamb and led by him amid fountains
of living waters, while God wipes away all
tears from their eyes.

This doctrine of heaven as a consolation
for sorrow is not born of selfishness, as is
often charged. The rankest of infidels said,
"In the night of death, hope sees a star, and
listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."

210 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

Not "listening selfishness," but "listening
love" ! The love that we bear to our own and
to all mankind seeks this vision and finds it
waiting in the divine plan. Is it selfish to
desire that for ourselves which will injure
none others? Is it selfish to long for that
which will meet the longings of the whole
world? Verily some critics discover strange
dictionaries when they define words in refer-
ence to the holy faith. But all the while the
afflicted seek the face of Christ. Troubles
look unto him and are lightened. The poor
man cries and the Lord still delivers him out
of his troubles. Our Bibles and our Hymnals
personalize the haven for us. He is the Rock
of Ages. His bosom is the Refuge. To him
we go when shadows darkly gather. A present
help is he. The last low whispers of our dead
are burdened with his name. The suffering
world states its comfort in terms of Christ
himself.

For the final sorrow of death he offers the
full consolation. The tragedy of separation
remains. Our indictment against death is
that of Tennyson:

He puts our lives so far apart.
We cannot hear each other speak.

The more worthy of immortality our beloved

THE BIBLE AND SOEROW 211

seems to be, the keener is the pang of parting.
Lowell felt it so "After the Burial" :

Immortal! I feel it and know it.
Who doubts it of such as she?

But that is the pang's very secret —
Immortal away from me.

The Bible has no rebuke for the sorrow of
separation. But it does have the healing hope
of eternal reunion. Jesus said: "I am the
resurrection, and the life: he that believeth
on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live :
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die." These words, fully believed, still
our fear, confirm our hope, and comfort our
final sorrow.

To all the burdened, Jesus says, "Come unto
me, and I will give you rest." To all the
joyless he says, "I will see you again, and your
heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh
from you." To all the lonely and mourning
he comes with the message, "Let not your
heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe
also in me." The world may have difficulty in
securing that belief ; but the world knows well
that this belief alone is the defeat of sorrow.
In their best and most desperate and most
hopeful hours men flee to the Bible as to the
only tent in which their anguish can be
soothed. Within that tabernacle walks the

212 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

form of the Fourth. When they turn from
him, they must return with the question,
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the
words of eternal life." The eternal life that
he gives is the only consolation for our passing
sorrows.

CHAPTER VIII

The Bible and Practice

When men separate the Bible from deyo-
tion and practice they are guilty of the final
heresy in relation to the Book of Life. The
previous pages have shown that the Bible has
a real message for actual living. While the
larger departments have been treated, it is
still true that the message of the Scriptures
for other sections of life is vital and funda-
mental. Whatever we may say about the
message of the Bible in regard to chemistry,
or biology, or geology; whatever we may say
about its inspiration for the literature of the
world; and whatever we may say about its
accuracy in matters of ancient history and
geography — the Book holds a lonely primacy
as the Book of Duty. The scientist may not
get from it a full revelation; the litterateur
may be tempted to omit certain portions from
his "choice selections''; the historian may not
find in it a full or chronological list of events ;
but the man with a moral and spiritual pas-
sion, the man bent on finding his duty that he
may do it faithfully, will discover ample

213

214 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

material in its pages. Indeed, he will have a
sense of surplus. The ideals of the Book will
be so far beyond his performance as to give
him the feeling of a gentle rebuke. As a Book
of moral science, moral literature, moral his-
tory, the Bible has no competitors. As a
revelation of the heart of God, of the heart of
man, and of the way in which the heart of God
and the heart of man are brought into loving
harmony, the Bible is supreme.

The great difficulty in the use of the Bible
has come from wrenching it from this main
purpose. Confusion is sure to arise when-
ever any volume is employed apart from its
primary intent. If one wishes to learn mathe-
matics, and his foolish teacher shall give him
a book of music, the result is not edifying.
The pages of the book may be properly num-
bered, and the scales of music may be denoted
by the correct fractions; but mathematics
represents a thoroughly subordinate purpose,
and the volume does not lead easily on to
Calculus. The result is even more confusing
if the arithmetic be handed to a pupil who
wishes to study versification. The multiplica-
tion table may look like verses when seen at
some distance; still the arithmetic's main in-
tent is not the teaching of poetry. The illus-
trations of possible confusion could be taken
from all fields. The common sense of the race

THE BIBLE AND PRACTICE 215

saves it from the blunder of misapplying the
most of its books. The Bible, however, has
been subjected to misapplication because the
theory of its infallibility has often been made
to cover a wide, not to say a universal, range.
The student who goes to the Bible with a pur-
pose that is mainly historical, or scientific, or
geographical, or genealogical, or mathematical,
or even poetical and literary, may not find all
his wishes gratified. But the student who
seeks its pages under a profound sense of God
and with an equally profound will to do God's
will is certain to find material for all his moral
and spiritual ambitions.

Consequently when the religious attitude
toward the Bible is changed into a profes-
sional or critical or debating attitude, the
Book is deflected from its intent. Doubtless
we must have in the realm of scholarship some
men who give themselves to a technical dis-
cussion of the Bible. These men may be
charged with the duty of recovering portions
of the Book to reality; and they may have an
important, but secondary, relation to its
primary purpose. Nevertheless their attitude
is not the final one. It would be useless to
deny that the last generation has witnessed a
changed attitude toward the Holy Scriptures.
One result has been that two camps have been
formed, and that doughty champions of a view

216 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

have sallied forth from each camp to do war-
fare. The missiles have been verbal. Some-
times they have been abusive. Each champion
has believed himself a David and his opponent
a Goliath. The unprejudiced observer of the
conflict has had difficulty in deciding which
champion has been most guilty of a wrong
spirit. The conservative has called the pro-
gressive various names, infidel, atheist, de-
stroyer, betrayer, a successor of Judas in spirit
and of Celsus in method! The progressive
has responded in kind and has named the
conservative a reactionary, an intellectual
coward, a defender of a discredited theory, a
foe of liberty, and a traitor to the truth. The
conservative has often become a spiritual
Pharisee and has ruled the progressive out of
court on the ground that the progressive
lacked piety, while the progressive has often
become an intellectual Pharisee and has ruled
the conservative out of court on the ground
that the conservative lacked scholarship.
There have, of course, been conspicuous in-
stances of breadth and catholicity on both
sides, but occasionally the spirit of the contest
has not tended to exalt the mood of the con-
testants or to glorify the divine Book.

The results of such a spirit could easily be
predicted: they cannot make for edification.
If we list on one side the radical conservatives

THE BIBLE AND PRACTICE 217

and on the otlier side the radical progressives,
we shall discover an evangelical helplessness
in both lists. In each case a conception of the
Bible supplants the purpose of the Bible. The
champion defends a doctrine more than he
promotes a life. The apologist overcomes the
preacher. The theorist destroys the evangelist.
All this is not a denial that the speculative
emphasis has its place. The defender of the
faith will always have his place. Usually he
must work in the background, in some point
of scholarly retreat. The pastor and preacher
who goes into a community with the idea that
his main mission is to promote a special view
of inspiration is doomed to failure, while he
who goes into a community with the idea that
his main mission is to preach the salvation of
the Bible as it climaxes in Christ cannot fail
utterly. There are conservatives and pro-
gressives whose ministry is pitiably weak, and
there are progressives and conservatives whose
ministry is grandly strong. The difference
comes from the point of emphasis. If a man
is more anxious to prove that Moses was the
sole author of the Pentateuch than he is to
prove that Jesus is the sole author of salvation,
his ministry will answer to his own emphasis.
If a man is more anxious to prove that there
were two Isaiahs than he is to show that there
is one only name given among men whereby

218 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

we may be saved, his ministry will be no more
important than is his contention. The primary
purpose of the Bible is not the revelation of
the single authorship of one of its sections or
the dual authorship of one of its books; its
primary purpose is to declare that One is our
Master, even Christ.

It must be plain that, as the divine revela-
tion of the Bible culminates in a Life, so the
human intent of the Bible can culminate only
in lives. The purpose of the Bible is met in
Practice. If we adopt the military figure of
life, the Bible is a weapon given to men for
moral warfare. Sometimes in its own pages
the Word of God is presented under the figure
of a Sword. The writers could not have had
in mind the Scriptures as we have them now;
but the principle applies to every revelation by
which God seeks to bring men to the under-
standing and doing of his own will. When
Isaiah felt divine messages burning in his
heart he said, "He hath made my mouth like
a sharp sword." The writer of Hebrews took
the same nervous metaphor and wrote, "The
word of God is quick, and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit,
and of the joints and marrow." Paul in his
description of the Christian armor speaks of
"The sword of the Spirit, which is the word

THE BIBLE AND PKACTICE 219

of God." It may not be amiss, then, to take
this highly authorized figure of speech and to
employ it once again — not claiming, of course,
that our particular applications were in the
thought of the first users. The point is that
under the ancient military system the sword
had its main intent, and that it never did its
real work as long as it was divorced from that
intent. There were wrong uses of the sword,
and there were secondary uses of the sword;
and there was but one primary use of the
sword.

We can conceive of an actual sword as being
used in different ways by different people. A
robber seizes it, defends himself against just
arrest, and slashes the representatives of a
righteous law. Evidently the sword was not
made for that purpose. The sportsman takes
the sword, tests its handle, polishes its blade,
tries its resiliency, purchases a manual of
arms, secures the best teacher, drills himself
in its use. On holidays he wears a fiashy
uniform, marches through the streets, waves
the glittering thing over his head, and so
makes it an instrument of personal flourish.
This use is not evil, but it does not stand for
the weapon's first intent. A third man, with
a more serious mien, secures the sword. He
is enlisted in the militia, and the time may
come when it T\dll be necessary for him to go

220 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

into real war. He tests its handle and polishes
its blade; he studies the manual of arms; he
seeks the best masters; he practices its use
through many months. When the time of war
actually comes this man draws the sword from
its scabbard and goes out to do service in his
country's cause. The primary purpose of the
sword is met only in this earnest use.

The three men may represent three classes
in their attitudes toward the Bible. The
Bible is often used for defense in immorali-
ties. It is often used as a means of that cheap
skill that comes near to personal display. It
is often used for spiritual defense and war-
fare. The robber's use is evil. The parader's
use is secondary. The warrior's use is
primary.

Many illustrations of the immoral use of
the Bible could be given. In the story of the
temptation of Jesus the devil is pictured as a
user of the Scriptures, and he has not been
without his followers in an unholy use of a
holy record. The Bible covers a wide range
of thought and experience. It tells of all
manner of sins. It deals with all classes of
characters. It presents the lives of bad men
who were sometimes good, and of good men
who were occasionally bad, and of other men
who were quite steadily bad or good. Thus the
Bible gives us all sorts of examples. The

THE BIBLE AND PKACTICE 221

record, distorted and misapplied, may be made
to justify the baldest of sins. In matters of
questionable morality men are ever ready to
appeal to the divine Book, and even for ac-
tions condemned by all enlightened moral
judgment the Bible is sometimes summoned
as an advocate. There is scarcely a sin which
has not had a passage of Scripture presented
as its excuse. Men have justified rash murder
on the ground that Moses killed the cruel
Egyptian taskmaster. As was shown in a
previous chapter the practices of the patri-
archs have been quoted, even in the halls of
Congress, as a warrant for bigamy and polyg-
amy. Men in the midst of unreasoning anger
have condoned their madness by reciting the
words, "Be ye angry, and sin not." Jesus
himself named to the Jews a sacrilegious mis-
use of a Bible phrase by which heartless chil-
dren excused themselves from filial duties.
Illustrations might be given touching almost
every phase of personal life. Even as in old
days the wicked sometimes fled to a city of
refuge, so now do men caught in an evil mood
hide themselves behind a biblical rampart.

In larger social matters this use of the Bible
has been fully as striking. Human slavery
felt secure within a scriptural fortress. Wil-
berforce and Clarkson in England, and Garri-
son and Phillips in America were compelled

222 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

to reply to biblical arguments. Charles
Sumner, at a meeting in Massachusetts, spent
an entire evening in replying to a proslavery
discussion based on PauFs letter to Philemon,
arriving duly at the conviction that the only
logical and religious result of the apostle's
words to Philemon would be the freeing of
slaves in the name of Christian brotherhood.
So pieces of Mosaic legislation and scraps of
Pauline regulation were used to conceal the
Golden Kule and the law of fraternity. It is
easy to observe here, too, that as men advance
in ethical life this use of the Bible ceases.
Doubtless in twenty years no one has heard
the Bible quoted in behalf of slavery. Yet the
biblical argument would serve quite as well
for reinstating slavery as it did for continu-
ing slavery. The argument dies not only be-
cause the moral consciousness of man lives,
but also because the moral judgment of man
perceives that the general principles of the
Bible are utterly opposed to human slavery.
The man who proposed to bring the bondage
of men back into the social life of the world
by means of the biblical argument would be
deemed as much an anachronism as his
method of debate.

This same evil use of the Bible proceeds to-
day among the opponents of the temperance
reform. Our debate with the saloonist or

THE BIBLE AND PRACTICE 223

brewer or mne maker never goes far ere we
are told of biblical examples of drinking, as
well as that Christ turned water into wine in
his first miracle at Cana of Galilee. Saloon
keepers have framed and have placed upon
the walls of their alluring palaces Paul's
advice to Timothy, "Take a little wine for thy
stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities."
They do not quote the verdict that wine is a
mocker, with a bite like that of a serpent and
a sting like that of an adder — the cause of
woes and sorrows and redness of eyes; nor
the pronouncement that no drunkard can in-
herit the Kingdom ; nor the condemnation laid
upon him that putteth the bottle to his neigh-
bor's lips. Nor do they put forward the in-
evitable drift of Paul's law of charity which
commands men to do naught that will make
their brothers to offend. Nor yet do they heed
the sure drift of the Bible's teaching as it
comes to its crown in Christ himself. The
man who would claim that Jesus would ap-
prove the modern traffic in intoxicating
liquors would convict himself of amazing per-
versity and ignorance. There are increasing
evidences that the Master of life is now finding
an effective use for his whip of cords and that
there is beginning a retreat greater than that
of the ancient thieves and dove sellers. The
time will come when men will marvel that an

224 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

attempt was ever made to use the Bible as a
foundation for the trade in alcoholics.

In Scott's Ivanhoe there is given an example
of this misuse of the Bible, as well as an ex-
ample of its effective rebuke. Rebecca the
Jewess is beautiful in person, as she is in
character. Brian de Bois-Guilbert is a member
of the Order of the Holy Temple. He is a
dashing, handsome, hypocritical crusader,
both a military and a moral adventurer. He
turns his lewd eye toward Rebecca. She
stands by an open window, ready to throw
herself to death upon the rocks far beneath
rather than to submit herself to his wicked-
ness. To justify his black intention Guilbert
mentions the conduct of David and Solomon,
and then says to the tempted one, "The pro-
tectors of Solomon's Temple may claim license
by the example of Solomon." The beautiful
woman makes a worthy retort, one that de-
serves frequent repetition: "If thou readest
the Scriptures and the lives of the saints only
to justify thine own license and profligacy,
thy crime is like that of him who extracts
poison from the most helpful herbs." No
honest person can believe in Guilbert's use of
the Bible; nor can any honest person escape
the truth of Rebecca's reply. The murderer's,
the bigamist's, the slaveholder's, the rum-
seller's, the sensualist's method of employing

THE BIBLE AND PRACTICE 225

the Bible is the final blasphemy against the
Holy Word. The robbers of life simply steal
the sword of the Spirit in order that they may
use it in the service of hell. Wolves in sheep's
clothing and devils clad in the livery of heaven
are apt figures of speech for the description of
this perversity. The Bible itself speaks of
those who wrest the Scriptures to their own
destruction !

The second use of the sword moves into the
realm of the legitimate, but not into the realm
of the final. Expert swordsmanship is no
crime, even as it is not the highest morality.
The Bible has long been one of the favorite
fields of the critical scholar. Very often the
search has been for technical truth rather than
for vital truth. Heated discussions have re-
lated to questions of dates and authorship.
These questions are not to be ruled out as
useless. Sometimes technical truth gives the
vital truth of the Bible a setting that makes
it more forceful and persuasive. It was in-
evitable that both the higher critics and their
opponents would sometimes go to great ex-
tremes— the critics to an idolatry of intellect,
their opponents to an idolatry of literalness.
We must all have been impressed that at times
w^hen the spiritual battle has been intense the
warriors have stepped aside from the main
conflict in order that they might discuss how^

226 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

and when and by whom the Sword and its
parts were fashioned !

We may change the figure of speech for a
moment and modify for the present purpose
a borrowed illustration. A man finds a
casket buried deeply in his yard. The vessel
appears to have been constructed a long time
ago. It bears upon its sides characters that
are difficult of translation. There is even
doubt as to the nature of the metal. The
man summons the other members of the fam-
ily. They open the vessel and discover that
it is filled with gold. At once a warm dis-
pute begins over several questions. Who
made the casket? When was it made? How
many persons took part in its fashioning and
its filling? From what precise mintage did
the coins come? What is the meaning of the
peculiar hieroglyphics found upon its sides?
Are all the coins of equal value? Whose
images are stamped upon them? The debaters
become excited over these mooted matters.
At last one sensible member of the family
suggests that it is apparent that by right of
finding this particular household owns the
casket; that the needs of the members are
many; that the gold, even though the coinage
be ancient, can be turned to modern use; that
the questions which they are debating can be
settled only by metallurgists and historians

THE BIBLE AND PEACTICE 227

and philologists, if they are to be settled at
all; and that, pending the settlement of in-
cidental issues, the wants of the family may
be richly met by appropriating the contents
of the casket ! The illustration scarcely needs
any interpretation. It surely does represent
the attitude which the devout and obedient
heart may take in this period toward the
Holy Book. The ancient casket that we call
the Bible is full of treasures. This much lies
beyond doubt or debate. While the learned
philologists and historians and exegetes sur-
round the casket and try to ascertain the
dates of its parts, the names of its authors,
the meaning of its obscurities, the family of
God may continue to draw on its exhaustless
treasures. Nor are there wanting signs that
more and more our age is adjusting itself to
this reverent and practical use of the Word
of God, and that Professor Dobschtitz rightly
contends in his new volume that the Bible is
again becoming the Book of Devotion.

There is likewise what we might well call
the "lowest'' criticism — the spirit that uses the
Bible as a volume of puzzles rather than as a
volume of directions. Many a man has spent
more time in speculating about where Cain
got his wife than he has in trying to find out
how to make his own wife happy. Many a
man has spent more time in trying to find out

228 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

about the Witch of Endor as an excuse for
his consulting some vulgar fortune-teller of
modern time than he has spent in trying to
learn the will and secure the guidance of the
good and wise God. Many a man has spent
more time in discussing Melchizedek, who had
neither ancestors nor descendants, than he has
spent in trying to learn from the Bible how
he himself may honor his forbears and may
train his own children in righteousness. Many
a man has been so piqued by curiosity about
the exact nature of Saint Paul's "thorn in the
flesh" as to forget the teaching that the grace
of God can make us equal to any burden and
torment of life. The men of this type will
not allow the Bible the use of hyperbole.
When it suits their contentious mood they
become strict literalists. Even though they
themselves may declare that it is "raining
pitchforks" or that the waves are dashing
"mountain high," they will insist that Christ's
words about the two coats and the two cloaks
and the two miles are not the strong urging
of much forbearance and generosity, but the
counsel of literal folly. Meanwhile the cer-
tainties and duties of the Bible outnumber its
riddles and its curiosities many-fold. The im-
portunate call to holy practice ceases not.
From each of a thousand passages of the Good
Book there issues a patient rebuke for the

THE BIBLE AND PKACTICE 229

curiosity monger, "What is that to thee?
Follow thou me."

This leads us to the third use of the sword
as seen in our illustration. The gallant
soldier took the weapon and used it in har-
mony with its intent. So the Bible should
be employed preeminently as a means of
spiritual defense and warfare. The Scriptures
are profitable, not for immoral justification,
not for mere criticism however exact and
searching, not for the solving of superficial
riddles, but "for doctrine, for reproof, for in-
struction in righteousness: that the man of
God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished
unto all good works.'' To go to the Bible with
the motive revealed in these great words is
to recover the Bible to its divine purpose as
the book of human practice. Such a motive
lifts the volume above any mere literary or
historical aspects. There is, for example, the
oft-quoted story about Benjamin Franklin's
experience at the Court of France. He was
passing an evening with a company of cultured
ladies and gentlemen. The conversation
turned to the subject of Oriental life. Frank-
lin read aloud to the company the book of
Ruth. Struck by the beautiful simplicity and
spirit of the narrative, his hearers expressed
their delight and desired to know in what book
the charming pastoral could be found! It is

230 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

safe to say that these men and women needed
the lesson of fidelity in the book of Kuth far
more than they needed the sense of its literary
merit.

We must always return to the idea that the
key to the Bible is the deeply religious in-
stinct and motive. Nothing else will really
open its pages. Nor does the Bible herein
wholly differ from other literature. There
are men and women so thoroughly cultivated
on the so-called practical side of their natures
that it would be punishment for them to read
Whittier, or Longfellow, or Lowell, or Tenny-
son for a full hour. The demands of business
or social life have killed the poetic impulse.
So many persons may crush from their natures
the religious instinct and then wonder why
the Bible does not appeal to them ! The truth
seems to be that a person gets from the Bible
about what he seeks. It takes divinely opened
eyes to see the wondrous things in the law.
The psalmist, therefore, prayed that the
change might come over himself rather than
over the parchment. The way to illumine the
sacred page was to illumine him. The Book
may lie in a great light, but what can the
Book do for a man with closed eyes? Seneca
tells of an idiot child in his home who, be-
coming blind, insisted always that the room
was dark! Herein is another parable.

THE BIBLE AND PKACTICE 231

It is only this disposition of the seeing eye
and the obedient hand that can bring the
Bible to us in its main purpose. Having this
disposition we shall not suffer ourselves to be
lured into interesting byways. We shall have
a lamp for our feet and a light for our path.
Our spiritual purpose will defeat all needless
criticism and all needless dissection. Having
this purpose, we will turn to the early chap-
ters of Genesis. Instead of debating whether
in a literal garden Adam and Eve were
tempted by a literal serpent to the eating of
literal fruit, and were driven through a literal
gate, while a literal angel with a literal flame
running along a literal blade guarded against
reentrance, we shall be moved by the thought
that we have lifted ourselves in puny rebel-
lion against God, and that we have gone forth
from our place of innocence, and that the third
chapter of Genesis recounts the essential his-
tory of our souls. Having this religious pur-
pose, we shall read the story of Job with a view
to securing its spiritual lesson. We shall not
permit any critical arguer to confine us to
the question of the historicity of Job himself.
We shall rather lay hold of the teaching of
that marvelous book, with its colossal debate,
and we shall see that, whether the book be a
history or a parable or an allegory, it drives
crushing suspicion from the world by teaching

232 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

that suffering is not always the result of sin,
and brings cheerful trust into the world by
teaching that afflictions bravely endured must
have their reward. The man who back in that
dim and far age got hold of the teaching of
the book of Job must have somehow caught
the inspiration of God himself. The common
ground in all these mooted portions of Scrip-
ture is really a large and wealthy place; but
only a common spiritual purpose will ever
bring conservatives and progressives together
in the knowledge and peace of God.

One almost hesitates to discuss the book of
Jonah in this connection because petty de-
bates have robbed it of much of its deeper
meaning. The nature of the book doubtless
lies beyond earthly settlement. Whether we
declare that Jonah's journey was as historical
as those of Saint Paul, or that it was as para-
bolic as the journey of the prodigal son, we
can find no sure end of the debate. But all
the while the teaching of the book waits for
our obedience. The individual lesson seems
to be that whenever a man turns his ship from
the Nineveh of duty toward the Tarshish of
pleasure he will directly come to rough and
perilous seas. In other words, the man who
flees from his God-assigned work sooner or
later gets into trouble. The missionary lesson
is just as plain. Back yonder in a time of

THE BIBLE AND PKACTICE 233

racial narrowness, some one caught the in-
spiration from God and declared that the
Lord of all the earth cared for all the people
of the earth. The infinite love traveled be-
yond all our little boundaries. The personal
lesson and the missionary lesson of the book
of Jonah are sufficient to keep individuals and
churches busy for a thousand years to come.
The spirit with which we approach the book
of Jonah will decide whether we shall become
petty debaters, or men and women with dutiful
purpose and missionary zeal.

The conclusion is that when we seek the
Bible with the motive of holy practice we
never meet with disappointment. The reli-
gious purpose saves the Book for us and saves
us by the Book. This purpose will likewise
bring us face to face with the Hero of the
Divine Word. Other sacred literatures may
offer us high moral precepts, and they may
occasionally give us glimpses of spiritual
ideals. But one Book alone gives us Christ.
One Book alone reveals the Redeemer. The
climax of practice to which the Scriptures
call us is the following of Christ. In all our
studies in these chapters we have found that
the supreme lessons centered in his teaching
and in his example. The Man, the Home, the
School, the Workshop, the Market Place, the
Playground, and the Hospital all wait upon

234 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

him for their guidance and their warning.
But Jesus is more than the way and the truth ;
he is the Life. He is more than the Exemplar
of Practice ; he is the Helper in Practice. He
walks the pages of the Bible even as he walked
the ancient paths, and his disciples may still
say, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world.'' Other sacred
books may offer revelations of morality; the
Bible offers the revelation of a Saviour. The
Bible is not its own goal. Jesus is the end of
its revelation. The devout in all ages have
been ready to use the heart of the verse of a
familiar hymn:

Beyond the sacred page,

I seek thee, Lord;
My spirit pants for thee,

Thou living Word.

If men seek the Exemplar who will give them
a goal for their practice, they find such an
Exemplar in the Christ of the Bible. If they
seek the Inspirer who will give them a longing
for the perfect practice, they will find that
Inspirer in the Christ of the Bible. If men
seek the Saviour who will help them on to the
perfect practice, they will find that Helper in
the Christ of the Bible.

Indeed, it may be said to be characteristic
of the Bible that it not only offers the perfect

THE BIBLE AND PKACTICE 235

program, but that it offers the perfect help.
This was true even of the Old Testament.
Jehovah was the strength of life. His power
was as immediate as his presence. He was a
present help in time of trouble. He was a
present Guide in time of perplexity. The
Christian revelation seems to bring that con-
sciousness of divine help nearer to men, and
to make it more real. Hence the Christian
faith goes over all the world seeking to win
men to God and his righteousness. Every-
where it proclaims a redeeming God. An
ideal mthout a Saviour may become a de-
spair— a tormenting impossibility, the lure of
the final falsehood. The Bible gives the ideal
and then it adds, "It is God which worketh in
you both to will and to do of his good
pleasure.'' The Bible warns against tempta-
tion, and then it tells of One who was himself
tempted in all points like as we are, yet with-
out sin, of One who is able to succor them
that are tempted. The religion of the dead
code becomes the religion of the living Person.
The Ideal becomes Example, and both Ideal
and Example are found in a Saviour.

With all this in our purpose, as well as in
our creed, we come to the Bible in full har-
mony with its primary intent. We find now
that for every moral and spiritual emergency
the Book has its message. If it were neces-

236 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

sary we could list these emergencies and show
the word that the Bible has for each of them.
Here is an illustration that serves as well as a
thousand for making the main point. The
Gideons have been placing the Bibles in the
hotels of America. Travelers seldom go to
their rooms without seeing upon the table a
copy of the Book. The organization that has
done this good work often receives accounts,
anonymous or otherwise, of the help given by
the Bibles that its work has supplied. Here
is a letter received from a young woman :

Perhaps a word will help you to realize that the little
"Good Book" on the table in a lonely hotel room helps
some. Last night, after fighting the fight that any
young woman with any appearance fights, I found my-
self in Chicago at this hotel. I had papers, magazines,
books, and other reading matter, but for a joke — yes,
joke — I picked up the Bible. It fell open at the seven-
tieth psalm. Can you imagine the impression it made
on me? I read it again and again. Needless to say,
it helped and I feel better, happier, and not so much
alone.

Picture the full circumstances, and we may
feel that the help went deeper and wrought
more than this letter indicates. If this young
woman was at the beginning of that dreadful
path of death that invites careless travelers,
how much must these ancient words, so
graciously modern, have meant to her? *^Make
haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to

THE BIBLE AND PRACTICE 237

help me, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and
confounded that seek after my soul : let them
be turned backward, and put to confusion, that
desire my hurt. Let them be turned back for
a reward of their shame that say, Aha, Aha.
Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be
glad in thee: and let such as love thy salva-
tion say continually, Let God be magnified.
But I am poor and needy; make haste unto
me, O God : thou art my help and my deliverer ;
O Lord, make no tarrying." Any study of
the authorship or date of this seventieth
psalm, or any theorizing as to the identity of
"The chief musician," or even any discussion
of the particular circumstances under which
the words were originally written would not
have solved the life problem of a young woman
coaxed on toward carelessness. The psalm
was penned to make God real, and his help
real. Doubtless it performed that office long
ago; and surely it performs that office now
whenever a needy heart supplicates the good
God by means of the ancient prayer. "Thy
word have I hid in my heart, that I might not
sin against thee" — this was the psalmist's
statement as to the reason for carrying por-
tions of the ancient revelation with him on
all his journeys. "Wherewithal shall a young
man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto
according to thy word" — this was the use of

238 THE BIBLE AND LIFE

God's Word prescribed for all time. The
writer of the one hundred and nineteenth
psalm did not have our Bible, but when he
wrote these two verses he had within him the
purpose of our Bible. He brought the ancient
law within its primary intent, and he gave
the principle by which all later Scripture
should be employed. The Bible is to be placed
in the heart as a defense against sin. The
Bible is intended to cleanse the ways of life.
The Bible is given to lead us to Him who is
himself the Perfect Life and who offers the
Divine Grace.

All this means that the best apologetic for
the Bible is the earnest and honest use of the
Bible. We may well use the apostle^s fine
phrase and say that those persons who follow
the ideals of the Bible under the inspiration
of the Saviour of the Bible are "living epistles
known and read of all men." They are the
modern evidences for the ancient Book, the
human and divine proofs of the human and
divine Book. The Bible does not fail the soul
that searches its pages for the paths of truth
and righteousness. The prayer of the ritual
is that we may "read, mark, learn, and in-
wardly digest, that by patience and comfort of
thy Holy Word we may embrace and ever hold
fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.'' In
everything that bears on making men worthy

THE BIBLE AND PRACTICE 239

subjects of everlasting life the Bible is the
sure guide. All sincere souls that come to its
chapters with this primary and spiritual in-
tent will find their due reward. They may
stand before the open Book confident that the
voice of God will speak through the written
Word and determined that they themselves
shall ever be in the attitude of eager listeners,
saying, ^^Speak, Lord; for thy servants hear."

M v

-220.

Hughes, Edwin Holt

The Bible and
Concern, 1915.

life. Methodist Book

7173

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

3 9358 01465217 3

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