^Si»rt»' BS 538.7 .W5 1892 Warren, Henry White, 1831 1912. The Bible in the world's education From " McClintock and Strong's Cjxlopft-Jia." — Copyright, ISjl, by Harper & Brothers, JOHN WYCLIFFE. y Wstlifft ftdurts THE BIBLE (* apr2619ii IN THE WORLD'S EDUCATION HENRY WHITE WARREN, S.T.D. One o/ the Bishops of the Ivlethodist Episcopal Churchy Author of ''^ Recreations in Astronomy^' etc. NEW YORK : EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: CURTS & JENNINGS Copyright, 1892, by HUNT & EATON, Nkw York. TO E. I. W., OF ALL LOVERS OF THE WHOLE BIHLE KNOWN TO ME THE DEAREST AND BEST. THE WYCLIFFE FOUNDATION For Teaching the English Bible to the Students of the University of Denver. To the Trustees of the Colorado Seminary and the University of Denver : Ladies and Gentlemen : "W"e are signally honored by being made the custodians and man- agers of the funds and opportunities of an important institution for giving the coming generation the greatest intellectual and moral development. I have felt that our honors and opportunities could not be multiplied without our responsibili- ties being increased. Anxious to meet my own, I have asked how I could best extend the usefulness of the University of Denver. Fortunately there is one book that is the oldest history, the best known classic, the deepest philosophy, an ideal excellence of poetry and rhetoric, the embodiment of our American consti- tutional law, the foundation of good morals, whose words are still spirit and still alive with the 8 The Bible. aiitliority of Him who spake as never man spake^ a blessedness to nations and power of eternal life to individuals. I count myself most happy to be able to begin the endowment of a professorship for teaching all the students of the University, in all the coming years, the varied excellence and perpetual power of the English Bible. I can think of no investment of the money I am able to give more likely to yield abundant increase than the purcliase of lots in University Park. I therefore ask permission to buy of the University, at the regular rates, twenty-two lots, which I will immediately deed to the trustees of the Colorado Seminary, to be a part of the assets and means of usefulness of the Iliff School of Theology, for the purpose, as Mr. Gladstone says, "of bringing the human mind into contact with divine revelation as the only hope of the world." I also ask, as a great privilege, that the money paid for the lots may be used to immediately begin the erection of the Home for Young Women in connection with the rising walls of University Hall at the Park. [Signed.] H. W. Warren. Denver. The Wyoliffe Foundation. 9 This offer was accepted by the adoption of the following resolutions : WhereaSj The University of Denver is the child of the Church ; praying men and women laid its foundation in the name of Christ, and upon this foundation the superstructure is being built; Jesus Christ is the model of teachers and the pattern of students ; the word of God is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. Whereas, Bishop Henry White Warren, D.D., has to-night added to his many and distinguished services to the University by this gift of $6,300 which begins the endowment of the professorship of the English Bible, which will secure instruction in the noblest literature known to mankind ; which will lead to a riper acquaintance with the supreme classic, in poem and parable, in prophecy and in proverb, in history and in law, in morals and philosophy, and will give the study of the divine book its true place in the course of liberal culture ; therefore, Resolved, That we accept this gift with sincere and hearty gratitude to God, who has given his word and inspired the hearts of his children ; and with prof oundest thanks to Bishop Warren for this wise and munificent offering to the cause of Christian education ; and, Resolved, That we agree to fully comply with all the conditions attaching to the Bishop's proposition. PROPYLy^UM. HAVING GOOD, GIVE. In the wilds of Alaska I found a man who had some very valuable specimens of gold ore. The original quartz had been disintegrated away and left the pure gold lying like threads of solidified sunset. Ko poet could ever fitly sing the praises of such golden hair; no painter ever represent by his art its ideal beauty and worth. The price- less mine that yielded these fair treasures could not be found by any other man, and the drunken sloth of the prospector could not be stirred to re- veal his secret. How gladly would you and I stand before such a treasure-cave and utter the taliamanic " Open Sesame " and explore its glittering won- ders. In all parts of the earth we have found gems of thought, pearls of expression, wisdom beyond all price, so valuable that no mention shall be made of coral or of pearls, for the price of such wisdom is above rubies. Men have lield their little frag- ments of it to be dearer than life itself. Has any drunken sloth or savage dog-in-the-mangerism kept The Bible. 11 this treiisure from man ? No, a thousand times no. Men have tried to spread the news, they have died to carry specimens — nay, the whole mine itself — into every land under tlie whole heaven, they have cried, " Come and buy, without money and without price. There is enough for all, enough for each, enoui^rh for evermore." I am here to ask these students of everything historic, everything ideal, everything beautiful, to help me explore this mine. The joy that I have set before me in this work is superb. I take into my heart this noble com- pany of youth for all it is. It is dowered with agile grace, flushed with delicate beauty, alert in every faculty, avaricious of knowledge, keenly perceptive of truth, a perpetual fountain of affec- tion and joy. Blessings on you for the rapture you bring into the world. I also take you for what you are to be, not only for this flowering springtime, but for the sunnner and the harvest of the years, and beyond years to come. The seeds dropped here shall yield a hundredfold. Give me your hands, give me your hearts, and let me go with you to the richest treas- ure our old earth ever knew and help you take your utmost fill. THE ENGLISH BIBLE! FIRST ANNUAL COURSE OF LECTURES ON THE WYCLIFFE FOUNDATION. L THE BIBLE: Why Written: A General p^^. View 15 IL " " Its Ideals .... 47 III. " " Its Highest Ideal Realized 75 IV. '* *' Its Pkophecies and Predic- tions 101 V. " " Miraculous Signs of Great Ideas 125 VI. *' " Criticism, Legitimate and Necessary .... 140 VII. " " Its Verbal Felicities and Intensities . . .177 VIII. " " Its Relation to College Students and Studies . 207 IX. ** *' Its Relation to THE Questions OF To-day and To-MORRO^v 2^:1 X. " " Will Men Outgrow It ? . 2.">n XI. " " Its First Great English Translator — Wycliffe . 287 I. THE BIBLE: WHY WRITTEN: A GENERAL VIEW. SYLLABUS. I. SUBJECT — The Bible: Why Written. Never so Popular as Now : 178,142,758 copies distributed by two societies in eighty-six years. Never so studied as now. It is Self-authenticating : Never before so effective on lives. // is History "with Motives Laid Bare — the Power Behind Thrones Made Evident: Human history In four words : Union, Disunion, Reconstruction, Reunion. It is the Record of God's Education of the Race : Material to be trained : Prime. Tried under one rule : Failed. What is A ttetnpted for Recovery : Revelation of ONE God — Men In his image. Man made for dominion. Abraham called as being susceptible of culture ; trained in faith and obedience. Results not for himself alone, for all families. College Curricula of the Race Continued in the Twelve Patriarchs: Egypt a schoolhouse ; the Law a schoolmaster. Lessons : All power In in God ; holiness ; destructiveness of sin. Law an Imperious necessity. Prophets an Unmuzzled Free Press without Newspapers : Result : Piety that writes a manual of devotion that our poets cannot equal. Psalms Inspired. Daily Life Related to Spiritual Things : Golden Age ahead. But Especially was the Bible written to Outline, Prophesy, and Bring Into this World a Perfect Character, giving Infinite Help to Man. I. THE BIBLE: WHY WRITTEN: A GENERAL VIEW. THIS is tlie book for the elucidation of which this professorship is endowed. It is a very popular book. It is most vitally believed in, or men would not consecrate their property for its teaching and their lives to its dissemination. Some of it is over three thousand years old. Yet it was never so popular as now. The British and Foreign Bible Society distributed in the first seventy-six years of its existence 88,168,419 vol- umes, an average of 8,800,000 for each ten years ; but in the last ten years 35,760,627 volumes, nearly three and a half times as many. The Amer- ican Bible Society in its first sixty-five years distributed 38,882,811, but in the last ten years 15,350,901 ; that is, in each of the last ten years two and a half times as many as were distributed per year in the previous years. It is in the recollection of us all that three million copies of the Revised Yersion of the !N"ew Testament were called for in a few days. These are the most stupendous literary facts in existence. 16 The Bible: Kemember this is the close of the nineteenth cen- tury, and these societies are in the midst of the most cultured people, and also that they represent but a small fraction of the publication of this book. The best minds of the most developed and edu- cated races on earth are most interested in this book. Ten million volumes drop from the press every year in Germany. A majority of them are caused by the Bible. That is, the Bible is more important and productive of more thought than anything else. Yon Moltke, the great embodiment of intellectual plans and executive force, said the Bible had more influence over his mind than any other book. And the venerable premier of England, always and easily premier, whether in office or not, applies his most matured mind to writing a book called The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture, Such testimonies could be multiplied without limit. Benan, by no means a champion of orthodoxy, says : "The whole world — we except India, China, Japan, and tribes alto- gether savage — has adopted the Semitic religion." That religion, which the whole world, including the exceptions mentioned, is hastening to adopt, is contained in the Bible. A layman, professor in Harvard College, has said : " It is not too much to say that the books of the Old and New Testament Why Written : A General Yiew. 17 have exerted more influence, wlietlier for weal or woe, on tlie course of human affairs among civil- ized nations than all other books put together." Stupendous assertion. He whose education omits such a factor in the world's progress is not liber- ally educated. This book was never so studied as now. Com- mentaries, lesson helps, maps, lectures literally pour out from the press by the million a week. Papers and books exclusively for its elucidation have a circulation that no merely literary or scien- tific publication can approximate. Great assemblies gather in all parts of the country for the training of men and women eager to learn for themselves, and gratuitously teach the Bible to others. And millions of young people gather every week to learn its sacred precepts. He who does not know and appreciate these signs of the times is leaving all the plus signs out of his algebra of life. This is not a book of such mean range as to be soon ex- hausted. For an able man to give his whole life to any one other book would bring about a dwin- dling of soul and wasting of powers. But hear one of the most influential men of our age, one who has spoken to more men every year than all scientific and literary lecturers put together, give liis experience of the growing richness of this mine 2 18 The Bible : of thouglit. I refer to Charles H. Spurgeon, just returned to heaven : "After preaching the Gospel for forty years, and after printing the sermons I have preached for more than six and thirty years, reaching now to the number of twenty-two hundred, in weekly succession, I am fairly entitled to speak about the fullness and the richness of the Bible as a preacher's book. Brethren, it is inexhaust- ible. No question about freshness will arise if we keep closely to the text of the sacred vol- ume. There can be no difficulty as to finding themes totally distinct from those we have han* died before ; the variety is as infinite as the full- ness. A long life will only suffice us to skirt the shores of this great continent of light. In the forty years of my own ministry I have only touched the hem of the garment of divine truth ; but what virtue has flowed out of it. The word is, like its Author, infinite, immeasurable, without end. If you were ordained to be a preacher throughout eternity you would have before you a theme equal to everlasting demands." In this single country there are ninety-five thou- sand men of Spurgeon's profession whose sole duty and pleasure in life it is to study, understand, and teach others tlie inexhaustible wealth of this book. Why Written : A General View. 19 And they are powerful as thej cling closely to the word. The preachers who set out with, or acquire afterward, a gorgeousness of rhetoric, a soundness of reasoning, an aurora borealis of fancy, a fire of patriotism, a depth of philosophy, a reality of genius, but who are not irradiated, pervaded, and vivified by the spirit of this word, fail to be the greatest teachers. Their audiences fall off unless constantly renewed with new material, and their own work is a rope of sand that goes to pieces on the shores of time when the storms of life roll in most heavily. Theodore Parker had the greatest advantages ever vouchsafed to man — personal magnetism, eloquence, Boston Music Hall, the great organ, and an age travailing with the great- est birth of time, emancipation ; but he left no oi*- ganization so instinct with life that it could per- petuate his life-work. William R. Alger and Felix Adler were only imitators of a fizzle. But an organization built up on the Bible has a more than granite permanence. Beecher, in the days of his greatest power, was always closest to the Bible. To it, and not to any fallible men, does the organ- ization owe its continued and vigorous life of to-day. On the first page of this book, away back before sun and moon and stars, it says : " In the be* 20 The Bible: ginning God created." On its eleventh hundredth page, awaj beyond the end of this world, it says : " Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." Does it contain all that transpired between? It claims to contain the vitally important things, the real epochs of history. It claims to be drawn from sources of wisdom that are infinite and infallible ; to have foresight that makes a thousand years as one day, and power that taketh up the isles as a little thing, that weighs the hills in scales and the mountains in the balance. It is a book that has a marvelous self-authenti- cating power. It says whosoever shall do his will shall know in himself the doctrines taught. It inaugurates the Baconian way to knowledge, through experiment, sixteen centuries before Ba- con ever thought of it. It authenticates itself in such a clear, tangible, and forceful way that grow- ing millions of people find the doctrines taught dearer than life. They will go singing to the stake or exulting to the lion's den rather than give up the precious doctrines learned. Its doctrines never before spread with anything like the rapidity they have to-day. In this intel- lectual United States, besides one hundred and thirty thousand Church members who died in the Why Written : A General Yiew. . 21 year 1890, drafted out of the Church militant to recruit the Church triumphant, one milHon and ninety thousand accepted in heart and life this book as their supreme guide for this life and all their lives to come. And its mastery over the in- telligent men who accepted it with all the heart is such that they built twenty-eight hundred new houses in the United States last year for reading and teaching the book, and gave millions of dollars to send it to the uttermost parts of the earth. Ko. body will ever build any temple for science unless he is first imbued with the spirit of this book. Turn to the book itself. It is easy to see what it is. It is human history with the flesh off so that we can see motives, hidden powers, souls, and Soul of all things. It is human history in four words — union, disunion, reconstruction, reunion. It is, first, the union designed between man and God, in heredity, companionship, helpfulness, and destiny. Then it is disunion when man broke out into disobedience of law and therefore had all its energies potent to bless necessarily perverted to restraint. Then it is a record of God's efforts through millennia at reconstruction of man's lost powers and unities. It is, finally, reunion per- fected, illustrated in the God-man walking the earth, showing the etiquette of heaven and the 22 The Bible: possibilities of man reunited to God. It v/as Les- sing who first defined the Bible as the record of the divine education of the race. Looked at in this way perplexities vanish, and all becomes clear as liglit itself. We do not take a microscope to study in it statistics, geology, and a hundred other of our ologies all right in themselves, but we come open- eyed and open-hearted to ask, Does it teach salva- tion ? The heavens are the open book of astron- omy, the earth of geology. But the Bible is the open book of salvation from sin. And there is an infallible teaclier of the book. What was the process of this education ? What the ideas imparted ? What the pranks, capers, re- sistances, flunks, smashes, escapades, and truancies of the pupils ? What the utter failures of the good Father to educate some bad boys ? And the only partial results of efforts to educate some good boys ? Let it all be frankly told. Rugby is not to be condemned because Tom Brown stole away to go fishing, nor because he got into fights and had black eyes that were not laid down in the cur- riculum. All that is owing to the material to be educated, not to tlie system of education. You will find all these murders, lies, adulteries, etc., set down in the account of the education of our race ; and while it is far from complimentary to Why Written : A General View. 23 116 it is highly complimentary to the teacher both in plan, patient loving spirit, and result. First, then, what is the material to be educated ? Prime. Good in heredity, children of God, princes, pure, innocent, made in the image and like- ness of the Infinite with dominion over all things waiting for them as soon as they were sufficiently developed to manage it. The Prince of Wales, either in the matter of ancestral stock or extent of dominion never began to have such an auspicious start. But man at the cradle of the race must be trained primarily in character, secondarily in knowledge. How was it attempted? Bj self-restraint giving will-power. For this self-restraint a single rule is made touching his appetites ; a certain kind of fruit is forbidden. Rules are necessary in school, necessary in our life-college, necessary in the university of the next life. Do not touch fire. Do not fall off a precipice. Come in out of the storm. Do not eat poisonous berries. In all things, always, everywhere observe the conditions of best existence. Man's first trial was under a single rule only. He broke that. They do yet sometimes, for the will must be free. Natural results followed, shame, deterioration of character and surroundings. The body, appetite, passion, was regnant. The 24 The Bible: spirit was subject. For the mastery of passions there is nothing like hard work. So let the earth bring forth thistles and thorns, and let man's estate be one of labor. * How can words express, or even thought con- ceive, this dread catastrophe ? Herein are involved not only those fierce violences that would destroy society and must be restrained by human laws of a repressive character, even to the extent of judi- cially killing offenders for the general safety, but also a sundering from God, and a personal degen- eracy that well-nigh takes all light out of the sky and hope out of the heart for long and dolorous ages. But let it be remembered that sin was a foreign element, a deviation from the order of na- ture, a defiance of the conditions of best existence. It is a fall of man immeasurably disastrous. Kow what is attempted for recovery ? First in the Bible is the creation hymn set to such music that it would sing itself in rhythmic numbers in the speech of succeeding ages. What did it teach ? First, that there was a God who was the source of all things. The revelation gave at once and at first the highest truth of all philosophy, namely, that this world of matter did not come of itself, was not a whirl of chance, not an evolution from below upward, but rather that it was from above down- Why Written : A General Yikw. 25 ward. Nature is a projection from previous exist- ence and actuality and laws, and if one may only get at spiritual laws he may easily get the cue for understanding material laws. Anyone who truly looks at material nature will look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. O, had men accepted the first syllable of revela- tion, " In the beginning God — " they would have been saved floundering in limbo for thousands of years. This revelation not only told that there was a God, but fixed the fact that there was only one God. I know nothing that could be more helpful to man. He was fallen, and his contracted mind was too small to rise to such lofty thought. He was sure to worship some fragment of a god. The grand conception of one God has been broken into millions of shining shards by the men belittled by sin. If there be gods many, they must differ, some less powerful and less good than others, and the less good the man is the less good the gods he pre- fers. Hence every pet lust is deified and so adored that even man's worship is his farther ruin. But wherever the majestic syllables of that first creation hymn were sung man is called back to the broadest generalization of mind and the highest conception of thought. One God made and rules the earth. 26 The Bible: Recent science, with eyes wide open from awe, dis- covers broader and broader laws in the world, till it dares the enormous leap that all matter may be one substance and all phenomena referable to a few, if not to one law. Daring all these ages the great divine assertion of one cause lias been wait- ing recognition in the book divine. Secondly, He taught that he made the world for men. How good for the poor wretch who is the recipient only of the slings and arrows of out- rageous fortune, the kicks and cuffs of more out- rageous men, to remember that he was made for dominion of all things, and that his Father's tender care is trying to lead him back to excellence and power. The leading is not very successful at first. It sometimes occurs that the young man and the young race will sow their wild oats, wisdom will not be taken by parental indorsement. The folly must be experienced. Experience teaches a dear school, but some are such fools that they will learn in no other. The human race proved to be a kind of Jukes family, with lust and murder running riot, till in about sixteen hundred years the earth was filled with violence, till all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth, till every imagination of the heart of man was evil continually. The only way to save Why Written : A General Yiew. 27 the fairly good family of Noali was to wash the unclean earth with a deluge and begin again. Young people who have never brought up any children may think they could have done better. But if they could there are millions of heathen on which such excellent ability should be tried at once. Four hundred years after the deluge came the call of Abraham. This seems like a brief state- ment of two thousand years' work. But at no time was the divine solicitude relaxed or the di- vine effort abated. God personally met the first murderer face to face. There was no cool evening of any day that the good Father did not try to meet his wayward cliildren. The system of sacri- lice was inaugurated and perpetuated. The Mes- sianic hope brightened along the darkening path- way of man, and there were kings and priests of the most high God, like Melchizedek, appointed we know not how often. It is at the condensed perspective of six thousand years we are looking. The call of Abraham was the call of the only man found susceptible of tlie peculiar divine cul- ture he received. God would have been glad to have called a thousand such men. By some con- verging lines of excellence, by natural selection since Peleg four generations back, there was born to Terah in the land of Ur of the Chaldees a 28 The Bible: child who had aptitudes and faculties and will to know and obey God. After centuries of ugliness the human aloe had burst into gorgeous flower. God took immediate advantage of it and began an education of Abraham that lasted a hundred years, and in his children for thousands. Let us remember this was not the only effort or success. There was Enoch, who walked so closely with God that death, the penalty of sin, was remitted in his case, and he was not, for God took him. That was a success so great that it has not been achieved in our day at all, Abraham's education was a training in faith in God and obedience to his will. The lessons were very hard, the success sublime. The first lesson was this command : " Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house." It was a sacrifice of every earthly good, means of support, prospective sheikship, and going into exile, a complete surrender to God. It was a question of finding some one who would let God come into his life as guide, friend, and helper, and who would begin a lineage with which God could once more work. He was far from perfect at first. He went where God did not direct him. His old propen- sity of self -guidance got him into trouble w^here he tried to lie his way out, and God had to come to Why Written: A General View. 29 his aid ; but as the century went bj he improved till God could say to him at length : " Kow, Abra ham, walk before me and be thou perfect." Abra- ham's seed was divinely delayed till his fires of youth had burned ont, till the wisdom of age had come, until his divine education was complete. He had come to ability to command his children, not only while he lived, but in the generations after him, before he had any given him. It is to be observed that these favors were not for any individual use and exaltation, but from the first it was declared that these gifts were for all mankind. " In him shall all the families of the earth be blessed." That one sentence is enough to show that it was not any plan of any man, but a plan worthy of the God of all the earth. In every far-off power and help to the Jew was bound up a blessing to the Gentile of to-day. This ex- ceptional education of one family does not prevent every possible good to every other family at the same time. Indeed, that mistaken and uncom- manded flow of Abraham's blood through the bond slave Hagar was taken advantage of in the seed Ishmael to give the world a positive blessing through Mohammedanism, overturning polytheism and establishing monotheism in a vast region of the earth. That God's care of other nations was 30 The Bible: as lofty and unremitting as possible is seen in Mel- chizedek ; in Job ; in annihilating the ancient tribes of Canaan who had exalted the most debasing and destructive vices into virtues, and deified such lusts as brought an ineadicable leprosy into all their blood ; in sending Jonah to Nineveh, Daniel to Babylon, Esther to be queen in Shushan ; in put- ting the Old Testament into Greek in time to affect the highest Greek philosophy, etc. God cared for all nations as far as they would let him, and in all his care of the Jews he was providing for Gentiles as well. Return to the college curriculum for the educa- tion of the race. It is not far from Abraham to the twelve patriarchs going to Egypt, and the compacting of the tribes by oppression and slavery, deliverance and separateness from other nations into a nation so firm that it could never be disintegrated by the successes, disasters, expatriations, and re- turns of more than three thousand years. Having now a nation just brought out of Egypt by a strong and stretched-out arm, what could be done with it ? Spite of every effort to the con- trary the knowledge of the true God, the way of approach to him, and the means whereby he could make human life glorious were dwindling away in every other part of the human race. They did Why Written : A General Yiew. 31 not like to retain God even in their thought, and he had to give them over to work all uncleanness with greediness. But what could he do with this separated peo- ple ? First, he could make clear his existence and omnipotent power. So the lofty pillar of glorious cloud bj day and of wreathing fire by night guides. So the Red Sea divides. So the corpses of the mightiest of armies are rolled by its waves ; there is no fear of further pursuit. So manna is furnished and quail, whereby they are miraculously fed. So they come to know as their clearest conception, the most certain of their knowledge, that the I Am, the one Jehovah, had real and sure existence. And by his mastery over every god of the mighty Egyptians and his mastery over the Red Sea they come to know equally well that he was the al- mighty God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who would never weary. Secondly, he revealed his holiness. Every sin must be atoned for. Only the clean and perfect beasts could be offered in sacrifice, and that only when purified by fire and offered by men espe- cially set apart for the purpose. If any man of- fered strange fire he died on the spot. The smoke of daily offerings wrote upon the skies that God was holy. It was death for man or beast to touch 32 The Bible : Mount Sinai when God came down upon it. All shifting, shuffling, go-as-you-please, don't-care style of life must come to an end. All life worth the name must be under due conditions, and the higher the life the more exact the conditions. To be an astronomer requires more accuracy than to be a shoveler of dirt. And the spirit of a just man made perfect gladly conforms to laws that a mere astronomer cannot understand. A table of laws was given on Sinai for all man- kind, and has been preserved and spread to all parts of the earth. This decalogue was verbally inspired and inerrant. The Mosaic system seems to have had two ob- jects. First, to keep alive in the race the fast fad- ing original idea of one God, and the other the fast fading idea of the heinousness and destructive- ness of sin. Hence its vivid denunciations of idolatry, its cutting off of peoples who had deified the most destructive vices and lusts, and its sudden destruction of men flagrantly guilty of breaking definite commandments. God not only revealed his existence and power, but his wisdom as well. From the first hour of sin he always kept a chain of predictions of future events before the people — to Adam there was a promise of a Redeemer ; to ISToah the prediction Why Written : A General View. 33 of a flood ; to Abraham a prophecy of universal blessing for all nations through him ; to Joseph that he should be delivered from prison ; to Mo- ses a definite statement that Pharaoh should let the people go. There are always plentiful pre- dictions for the future and a plentiful fulfillment in the past. These prophets were a peculiar peo- ple. They were a kind of unmuzzled free press at the time when there were no newspapers. They invaded the privacy of kings' chambers to rebuke them for a presumption or a sin. Gentle David or murderous Ahab were sought with equal readi- ness, and not only sins denounced, but their own future foretold. It takes a lofty kind of man to meet Ahab in his hour of victory and say : " In the place where the dogs licked the blood of 'Na- botli shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine." " And the dogs shall eat Jezebel thy wife by tlie wall of Jezreel." It requires a peculiar kind of man to say to Belsliazzar : " Thou art weighed in the bal* ances and found wanting. Thy kingdom is di- vided and given to the Medes and Persians ; " to cry in the great city : " Yet forty days, and !N"ine- veh shall be overthrown." But God could always find the men. For while the education of the race did not make all good, it made some sublime. (3ut of the general level of the people an occa- 3 34 The Bible: sioiial genius shot up like a California Sequoia Gigantea among manzanita bushes. And this gen- ius was in the direction of the general training, namely, religious. General literary training tends to make an Elizabethan age ; general scientific training tends to make genius flower in that di- rection ; and general religious training gives men a genius for the loftiest range of thinking and living possible to a human soul. In this hedged in and secluded nationality there was opportunity for the cultivation of the loftiest personal piety. It is not claimed that the Jews before or after the call of Abraham were a dis- tinctively moral people surpassing all other nations. The best opportunities do not always give us the best boys. But it is claimed they did keep alive these two ideas of one Almighty God and the ex- ceeding sinfulness of sin, and give special oppor- tunity for the cultivation of personal piety. In this there was a glorious success. There was personal piety enough and lofty enough to indite there in little Judea, in the very beginning of Jewish history, the manual of devotion for all the world for all subsequent ages. "We are profoundly astonished that those who were just out of a most crushing and murderous slavery should voice thought 60 high and broad, love to God so tender Why Wkittejst : A General Yiew. 36 and close, that none of our saints of the nineteenth century, and poets of our latter day culture, can write songs to surpass them. Why are we reading as the most appropriate to our loftiest worship the songs of the early Hebrews? It is not because they had more culture and poetic instinct than we, but because God breathed over tlieir hearts and over their harps words of immortal worth. These psalms were not made for any one race or age, but for all. In defiance of all their pro- vincialism and their being a peculiar people, and that Jehovah was especially the God of the Jews, their temple constantly rang with assertions that he was the great King of all the earth. " O, praise the Lord, all ye heathen, praise him all ye nations." The following sentences never could have been written by an unaided Jew : " Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend np into heaven, thou art there : if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me ; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the dark- ness hideth not from thee ; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both 36 The Bible: alike to thee." Great old rugged John Bright says he would cheerfully rest the whole question of the inspiration of the Bible on the Psalms. And when we find that the utterance of God's uni- versality, power, glory, and of man's praise, trust, love, sight of God in nature, and of his deep, heart-breaking penitence for sin surpass anything we can find in literature since that time, we must all say, God was in the hearts and on the lips of men who wrote these immortal words. It was not merely by laws, prophets, sacrifice, and Sinai that God taught his people. He turned all their daily life into an expression of his abiding presence, of his favor or his wrath. He put them into a good land flowing with milk and honey. But he smote it with blasting and mildew, canker worms and caterpillars ; the heavens were brass over their heads and the earth iron under their feet, and on their broad and burning pages were written God's judgments for their sins. Nay, more, the predicted and specified enemies were brought up against their impenitence, and the cities wasted and the land harried with the direst war and the people driven out into exile and ex- patriation for their sins. But in all their weeping by the rivers of Babylon there was always promise of return if they would repent. There was no top- Why Written : A General View. 37 pling surge of ruin just breaking on the heads of a doomed nation tliat would not turn to a wave of prosperity if men would repent. Jeremiah lays down the regular rule : " At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a king- dom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it ; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it ; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will re- pent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them." And the ransomed of the Lord did return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting Joy upon their heads. So their daily life was pros- perity or adversity, their whole history a pean or a lamentation, according as they served or rebelled against the Lord their King. In one singular fact the Hebrews differed from all other nations. These looked backward for their golden age, the time of innocence and joy. They had traditions of an Eden lost in the past, but not of another attainable in the future. The great fact of downfall and expulsion had made more vivid impression than a dim promise of recovery. Quite otherwise with the Jews. The first promise 38 The Bible: of a Redeemer made in the presence of the first sin was never lost out of sight. Wliat was then a hint of dawning broadened into a clear day of ex- p3ctation. Dean Stanley admirably expresses tliis growing hope : " It was the distinguishing mark of the Jewish people that their golden age was not in the past, but in tlie future ; that their greatest hero (as they deemed him to be) was not their Founder, but their Founder's latest Descendant. Their traditions, their fancies, their glories, gathered round the head, not of a chief or warrior or sage that had been, but of a King, a Deliverer, a Prophet who was to come. Of this singular ex- pectation the prophets were, if not the chief authors, at least the chief exponents. Sometimes he is named, sometimes he is unnamed ; sometimes he is almost identified with some actual prince of the present or coming generation ; sometimes he recedes into the distant ages. But again and again, at least in the late prophetic writings, the vista is closed by this person, his character, his reign. And almost everywhere the prophetic spirit in the delin- eation of his coming remains true to itself. He is to be a king, a conqueror, yet not by the common weapons of earthly warfare, but by those only weap- ons which the prophetic order recognized by jus- tice, mercy, truth, and goodness ; by suffering, by Why Written : A General Yiew, 39 endurance, by identification of himself with the joys, the sufferings of liis nation ; by opening a wider sympathy to the whole human race than had ever been offered before. That this expectation, however explained, existed in a greater or less degree among the prophets is not doubted by any theologians of any school whatever. It is no matter of controversy. It is a simply and universally recognized fact, that, filled with these prophetic images, the whole Jewish nation — nay, at last the whole Eastern world — did look forward with longing expectation to the coming of this future Conqueror. Was this un- paralleled expectation realized ? And here again I speak only of facts which are acknowledged by Germans and Frenchmen not less than by English- men, by critics and skeptics even more than by theologians and ecclesiastics. There did arise out of this nation a Character as unparalleled as the expectation which had preceded him. Jesus of Nazareth was, on the most superficial, no less than the deepest, view of his coming, the greatest name, the most extraordinary power, that has ever crossed the stage of history. And this greatness consisted not in outward power, but precisely in those quali- ties in which from first to last the prophetic order had laid the utmost stress — justice and love, good- ness and truth." 40 The Bible: O, divinest of marvels, O, sweetest of outcomes. We have here reached tlie innermost heart of God's word, nay, of God himself. We go over to old Egypt and Babylon and IN^ineveh with some inter- est in others. We traverse the region of the Ked Sea and the Sinai tic peninsula with adoring won- der that the power that at first made the mountains go up and the seas go down unto the place prepared for them still has power over rivers and seas to divide them, still has power over mountains to make them skip like lambs. But we come near Calvary to see power and love and sacrifice and redemption of man that is worthy of the infinite God. One must be very high to bend so very low. One must be infinite to concentrate such measureless love on enemies and murderers. A marvelous thing now appears most distinctly. When as yet the human family was all in one pair the promise of a Redeemer was made to the race. When Abraham was called and separated it was made known that in him should all the families of the earth be blessed. All through the Psalms, the history of Job and Jonah, the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel, we have seen that Israel was not alone the object of divine care. And now in the full- ness of time comes the promised Redeemer, who says he has overcome the whole world, who even Why Written : A General View, 41 talks of sheep not of the Jewish, perhaps not of this world's fold, prajs for us all who shall ever believe on him through the disciples' word, that the whole world may believe that God sent him. Then he dies for all mankind, commands his dis- ciples to "go into all the earth and preach the Gospel to every creature. And, lo, I am with jou alway, even to the end of the world." In the Pentecost he pours out his Spirit on representatives of nearly a score of nations. He broke in on Pe- ter's exclusiveness and ordered him to go to Cor- nelius, a Roman. He even called his best and chief est apostle from the Gentiles and endowed him with power proportioned to the vastness of his work, and is now penetrating the dark places of the earth with light and the islands of the sea with his salvation. Antony says at the murder of great Caesar : *'0, what a fall was there, my countrymen. There you and I all of us fell down Whilst bloody treason flourished over us." But when the Prince of Life was killed there you and I were made alive, and all of the ends of the earth, to the last man in the last syllable of recorded time, was bought for life, eternal life. I have thus vindicated, as it seems to me, the statement made at the beginning, that the Bible is 42 The Bible. history with the flesh off, with its hidden motives, potencies, and age-long plans made clear. In this book we get the real philosophy of history. Outside of it there are two other conceptions. First, that of idealism as represented by Hegel in his Philos- ophy of History. It is so written that each one of a dozen differing men declares he has caught the master's great idea, while every one of the other eleven is sure he has not. Hegel is so ideal in physics that he calls the demonstrated fact of seven colors in white light "a barbarism over which one cannot express himself too strongly. As though a pure stream of water could originate from seven kinds of earth." One such mistake in the Bible would have filled the world with mock- ing laughter. When this philosophy of idealism comes to the practical infinity of nature and man, and attempts to find an explanation of every phe- nomena in the past and every possibility in the future by its inner light, it shows its infantile per- formance by not being able to do one or the other, and its stupendous presumption by forgetting that there may be thoughts as much above its thoughts as there are certainly powers above its powers. Let its thin bubbles of gas explode in upper air. Not one of earth's strong pillars breaks or bends. We have latterly the other conception : a philos* Why Written : A General View. 43 ophj of statistics for history. It is called sociology, and has Buckle and Spencer for apostles. How little it touches the great deep of human feeling and deF\e. How it takes the kernel out of hu- manity, and leaves the dry husks to be driven by forces that are only the tempests of law. But the philosophy of histoiy as given in this book is that there has been perpetual effort of a power above humanity, full of wisdom, full of love, ever trying to develop man by every pos- sible agency — by the hard bumps of necessary laws ; by hungers, thirsts, and the clamoring needs of the body ; by the schoolmaster that tells what and why law is ; by a teacher who leads on from sim- plest object-lessons fit for a child to lessons no philosopher can yet fathom, not a teacher merely, but an Elder Brother who takes up our life, and shows in himself its possibilities, who brings a di- vine light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, who sends a Comforter that leads into all truth, who finds a way to remedy the deform- ities, palsies, and perversities of our nature by recreating it anew after the divine likeness, with aptitudes for receiving again the outflowings of divine aid, and the whole renewed man thrilled with the full heart-beats of an infinite love that passeth knowledge. May it bless us all forever. II. THE BIBLE : ITS IDEALS. SYLLABUS. II. SUBJECT — The Bible : Its Ideals. As are the Ideals^ so is the Life: What ideals has the Bible about God ? (a) Infinitely strong ; {V) Wise ; (c) Omnipresent ; {d) Spiritual ; {e) Holy. What ideals of man : (a) Made in God's image ; (h) To have dominion over all. After Sin^ its Consequent Weakness and Deaths What? Divine love, care, teaching, leading. What Ideals for Man? (a) Long life ; (i) Full health ; (c) Wisdom ; (d) Various braveries. The New Testament ideals surpass the Old. Its long life is eternal, its wealth everlasting, its communion divine, its life jubilant, its ideal a perfect stature of manhood. The Bible Demands and Creates Breadth 0/ Soul : {a) Gives largest ideas of the material universe ; {b) Establishes true sympathy and union among men ; (c) Offers freedom and power to procure it ; { No ; this Son of God came through the dividing line that he might be seen of men ; that every man might look into his face and say, " My brother, hail." He offers to impart this nature to those who come to him. To them that believe in him he gives the power to become the sons of God. None of these professors can give you power to become a son of Newton in mathematics, a son of Porson in languages, a son of Michael Angelo in art, but Jesus can give you power to become a son of God, a brother to himself ; another perfect man. 7 IV. THE BIBLE: ITS PROPHECIES AND PREDICTIONS. SYLLABUS. IV. SUBJECT — The Bible: Its Prophecies and Predictions. The Predictive Element Strong in all Nature. In disintegrating cliffs, blades, birds' nests, ants, migrations, etc. The painter knows the panorama not yet unrolled ; God, the unrolled future. Some predictions easy to us. Others possible only to God. The most difficult demanded by us, and offered by God as authentica- tion o/ his word. Perfect fulfillment relentlessly demanded. We fulfill our little engage^ ments. God his. Foretelling a small part of Prophecy. It is mostly a making known of God's will in present emergencies. The prophet gave the constitution of the Jewish state, the decalogue stood for morals, etc. The term prophet means " to boil over." God the fire. Four periods of Prophecy. Centuries of silence between. (a) The Patriarchal. (h) Mosaic. (c) The Monarchy. (