UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES

FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

¦.¦l|(i)!"">"">"

n

i!

ii

tif

!i!l

it Itii'!

.t ii.n!

fmi

! ,'ii n

IVi,'lV i''

m'-i

m\

¥

I I

i

il!}! »M

ii'lil,

'|i

m
i'i'-
I 'Ml ¦!¦[
iiiiii
'¦'il!
:iii!-i'
;LO!«'i!;,VI?::._...j;»ci'
i;vi/ia!Z;.,^.;;;uiii.iv.iid>ia£;i:toiiliii-.i
'Y^LU'WIMnVEI^SIIinf'

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
Firof . Half ord K Luccock

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME
AUTHOR

CHRISTIAN FOCUS
THE INCREASE OF FAITH
RELIGIOUS CERTAINTY
CHRISTMAS SERMONS
EDWARD GAYER ANDREWS
THE DIVINER IMMANENCE

12mo. Net, $1.00
12mo. Net, $1.00
12mo. Net, $1.00
12ino. Net, $1.00
Crown 8vo. Net, $1.50

12mo. Net, 75 cents
THE ESSENTLVLS OF METHODISM
16mo. Net, 40 centa

tE'tt identieniiaU %tct\xxti, Ciitrti ^tviti
Beltbereli at ]IBe$antD ^Hntbecsittp
UNDERSTANDING
THE SCRIPTURES

BY
FRANCIS J. McCONNELL
Biihop of the Methodist Epiicopftl Church

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN
NEW YORK CINCINNATI

Copyright, 1917, by
FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

CONTENTS

CHAFTSB FAaE
Foreword  7
I. Preliminary  9
II. The Book op Lipe  32
III. The Book op Humanity  54
IV. The Book op God  77
V. The Book op Christ  99
VI. The Book op the Cross  121

FOREWORD
The Mendenhall Lectures, founded by
Rev. Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D., of
the North Indiana Conference of the Meth
odist Episcopal Church, are delivered an
nually in De Pauw University to the public
without any charge for admission. The ob
ject of the donor was "to found a perpetual
lectureship on the evidences of the Divine
Origin of Christianity and the inspiration
and authority of the Holy Scriptures. The
lecturers must be persons of high and wide
repute, 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 denomina
tional divisions. Each course of lectures is
to be published in book form by an eminent
publishing house and sold at cost to the
faculty and students of the University."
Lectures previously published: 1913, The
Bible and Life, Edwin Holt Hughes; 1914,
The Literary Primacy of the Bible, George
Peck Eckman. ^^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^
President De Pauw University.

CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY
The problem as to the understanding of
the Scriptures is with some no problem at all.
All we have to do is to take the narratives at
their face meaning. The Book is written in
plain English, and all that is necessary for its
comprehension is a knowledge of what the
words mean. If we have any doubts, we can
consult the dictionary. The plain man ought
to have no difficulty in understanding the
Bible. Nobody can deny the clearness of the Eng
lish of the Scriptures. Nevertheless, the
plain man does have trouble. How far
would the ordinary intelligence have to read
from the first chapter of Genesis before find
ing itself in difficulties ? There are accounts
of events utterly unlike anything which we
see happening in the life around us, events
which seem to us to contradict the course of
nature's procedure. There are points of view
9

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
foreign to our way of looking at things.
More than that, there seem to be actual con
tradictions between various portions of the
books. And, above all, the way of life ;
marked out in the Book seems to lead off
toward mystery. To save our lives we have
to lose them. All the precepts of common
sense seem set at defiance by some passages
of the Book. How can we explain the hold
of such a book on the world's life?
When once the problem of the under
standing of the Scriptures is raised, various
solutions are offered, all of which contribute
a measure of help, but most of which do not
greatly get us ahead. For example, we are
told that the Book is translated literature,
and that if we could get back to the original
narratives in the original languages, we
would find our perplexities vanishing.
There is no question that a knowledge of
Greek and Hebrew does aid us in an under
standing of the Scriptures, but this aid
commonly extends only to the meaning
of particular words. One who knows
enough of Greek or Hebrew to enter sym
pathetically into the life of which those lan-
10

PRELIMINARY
guages were the expression is prepared to
sense the scriptural atmosphere better than
one who has not such equipment. Very few
Scripture readers, however, are thus quali
fied to understand Greek and Hebrew.
Very few ministers of the gospel are so
trained as to be able to pass upon shades of
meaning of Greek or Hebrew words against
the judgment of those who teach these lan
guages in the schools. With graduation
from theological school most ministers put
Hebrew to one side; and many pay no
further attention to Greek. Even a trained
biblical student is very careful not to ques
tion the authority of the professional linguis
tic experts. Apart from sidelights upon the
meaning of this or that passage, there is very
little that the biblical student can get from
Greek or Hebrew which is not available in
important translations. We cannot solve >
the greater difficulties in biblical study by
carrying our investigations back to the study ,
of the original languages as such. The fact
is that emphasis upon the importance of
mastery of Greek and Hebrew for an in
sight into scriptural meanings rests largely
11

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
upon a theory of literal inspiration of the bib
lical narratives. It requires only a cursory
reading to see that the narratives in English
cannot claim to be strictly inerrant, so that
the upholder of inerrancy is driven to the
position that the inerrancy is in the docu
ments as originally written. No doctrine of
inerrancy, however, can explain away the
puzzles which confront us, for example, in
the accounts of the creation as given us in the
early chapters of Genesis, or throw light
upon the possibility of a soul's passing from
moral death to life.
Great help is promised us by those who
maintain that the modern methods of critical
biblical study give us the key to scriptural
meanings. There is no doubt that many
doors have been opened by critical methods.
Now that the flurries of misunderstanding
which attended the first application of such
methods to biblical study have passed on, we
see that some solid results have been gained.
In so far as our difficulties arise from ques
tions of authorship and date of writing, the
critical methods have brought much relief.
12

PRELIMINARY
Even very orthodox biblicists no longer in
sist that it is necessary to oppose the teaching
that the first five books of the Bible were
written at different times and by different
men. In fact, there is no reason to quarrel
with the theory that many parts of these
books are not merely anonymous, but are
documents produced by the united effort of
narrators and correlators reaching through
generations — the narratives often being
transmitted orally from fathers to sons.
There is no reason for longer arguing against
the claim that the book of Isaiah as it stands
in our Scriptures is composed of documents
written at widely separated periods. It is
permissible even from the standpoint of
orthodoxy to assign a late date to the book of
Daniel. No harm is wrought when we insist
that the book of Mark must have priority in
date among the Gospels, and that Matthew
and Luke are built in part from Mark as a
foundation. It is not dangerous to face the
facts which cause the prolonged debate over
the authorship of the fourth Gospel. It is
not heresy to teach that the dates of the epis
tles must be rearranged through the findings
13

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
of modem scholarship. There is not only no
danger in a hospitable attitude toward
modern scholarship, but many difficulties
disappear through adjusting ourselves to
present-day methods. If contradictions ap
pear in a document hitherto considered a
unit, the contradictions are at least measur
ably done away with when the document is
seen to be a composite report from the points
of view of different authors. The critical
method has been of immense value in enforc
ing upon us that the scriptural books were
written each with a distinctive intention,
apart from the purpose to represent the facts
in the method of a newspaper reporter or of
a scientific investigator. In a sense many of
the more important scriptural documents
were of the nature of pamphlets or tracts for
the times in which they were written. The
author was combating a heresy, or supple
menting a previous statement which seemed
to him to be inadequate, or seeking to adjust
a religious conception to enlarging demands.
The biblical writers are commentators on or
interpreters of the truth which they conceive
to be essential. 14

PRELIMINARY
Making most generous allowances, how
ever, for the advantages of the critical meth
ods, we must use them with considerable care.
Results like those suggested above seem to be
well established, but there is always possi
bility of the critic's becoming a mere special
ist with the purely technical point of view.
Suppose the critic holds so to the passion for
analysis that for him analysis becomes every
thing. We may then have a single verse cut
into three or four pieces, each assigned to a
different author, the authors separated by
long periods. Even if the older narratives
are composite, the process of welding or com
pression was so thorough that detailed anal
yses are now out of the question. Apart
from its broader contentions, the method of
the critical school must be used tentatively
and without dogmatism. Moreover, we must
always remember that the critical student
comes to his task with assumptions which are
oftentimes more potent with him from his
very blindness to their existence. Assump
tion in scientific investigation is inevitable.
Suppose a critic to be markedly under the
influence of some evolutionary hypothesis.
15

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
Suppose him to believe that the formula
which makes progress a movement from the
simple to the complex can be traced in detail
in the advance of society. He is prepared
to believe that in practically every case the
simple has preceded the complex. He will
forthwith untangle the biblical narrative to
get at the ideal evolutionary arrangement,
ignoring the truth that except in the most
general fashion progress cannot thus be
I traced. In the actual life of societies the
progress, especially of ideas, is often from
the complex to the simple. Many evolution
ists maintain that movement is now forward,
now backward, now diagonal, and now by a
"short cut"; but if the evolutionary critic
sticks closely to his preconceived formula
about progress as always from the simple to
the complex, he can lead us astray. Again,
almost all great prophetic announcements
are ahead of their time. They seem out of
place at the date of their first utterance — in
terruptions, interjections hard to fit into an
orderly historic scheme. Or suppose the
critic to be a student of the scientific school
which will not allow for the play of any
16

PRELIMINARY
forces excepting as they openly reveal them
selves, the school that will not allow for
backgrounds of thought or for atmospheres
which surround conceptions. Such a student
is very apt to maintain, for example, that
Paul knew only so much of the life of Jesus
as he mentions in the epistles. Such a stu
dent cannot assume that Paul ever took any
thing for granted. We can see at once that
a method so professedly exact as this may be
dangerously out of touch with the human
processes of the life of individuals and of
societies. Or suppose still further that the
biblical student holds a set of scientific as
sumptions which are extremely naturalistic;
that is to say, suppose that he assumes that
nothing has ever happened which in any way
departs from the natural order. We have
only to remind ourselves that the natural
order of a particular time is the order as that
time conceives it ; but it is manifestly hazard
ous to limit events in the world of matter to
the scientific conceptions of any one day. To
take a single illustration, the radical student
of the life of Jesus of a generation ago cast
out forthwith from the Gospel accounts
17

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
everything which suggested the miraculous.
The conceptions of the order of nature
which obtained a generation ago did not
allow even for works of healing of the sort
recorded in the Gospels. At the present time
radical biblical criticism makes considerable
allowance for such works. Discovery of the
power of mental suggestion and of the influ
ence of mind over body has opened the door
to the return of some of the wonders wrought
by Jesus to a place among historic facts.
This does not mean that the radical student
is any more friendly to miracles than before.
We are not here raising the question of mir
acles as such, but we do insist that an assump
tion as to what the natural order may or may
not allow can be fraught with peril in the
hands of critical students of the Scriptures.
We say again that while, in general, the
larger contentions of the biblical school can
be looked upon as established beyond reason
able doubt ; and while, in general, the meth
ods of the school are productive of good, yet,
because of the part that assumption plays in
the fashioning of all critical tools, the as
sumptions must be scrutinized with all pos-
18

PRELIMINARY
sible care. A good practical rule is to read
widely from the critics, to accept what they
generally agree upon, to hold very loosely
anything that seems "striking" or "brilliant."
This is a field in which originality must be
discounted. There is so little check upon the
imagination. It is but a step from the consideration of
the critical methods in biblical study to that
of the historical methods in the broader sense.
Many students who are out of patience with
the more narrowly critical processes main
tain that the broader historical methods are
of vast value in biblical discussion. Here,
again, we must admit the large measure of
justice in the claim. We can see at once
that the same reservations must be made as
in the case of the critical methods. The
assumptions play a determining part. If
we are on our guard against any tricks
that assumptions may play, we can
eagerly expect the historical methods to aid
us greatly.
We have come to see that any revelation to (
be really a revelation must speak in the lan
guage of a particular time. But speaking in
19

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
the language of a particular time implies at
the outset very decided limitations. The
prophets who arise to proclaim any kind of
truth must clothe their ideas in the thought
terms of a particular day and can accomplish
their aims only as they succeed in leading
the spiritual life of their day onward and up
ward. Such a prophet will accommodate
himself to the mental and moral and religious
limitations of the time in which he speaks.
Only thus can he get a start. It is inevi
table, then, that along with the higher truth
; of his message there will appear the marks of
the limitations of the mold in which the mes
sage is cast. The prophet must take what
materials he finds at hand, and with these
materials direct the people to something
higher and better. Furthermore, in the
successive stages through which the idea
grows we must expect to find it affected
by all the important factors which in any de
gree determine its unfolding. The first stage
in understanding the Scriptures is to learn
what a writer intended to say, what he meant
for the people of his day. To do this we
must rely upon the methods which we use in
20

PRELIMINARY
any historical investigation. The Christian
student of the Scriptures believes that the
Bible contains eternal truths for all time,
truths which are above time in their spiritual
values. Even so, however, the truth must
first be written for a particular time and
that time the period in which the prophet
lived. When the Christian speaks of the
Scriptures as containing a revelation for
all time, he refers to their essential spiritual
value. The best way to make that essen
tial spiritual value effective for the after
times is to sink it deep into the conscious
ness of a particular time. This gives it lev
erage, or focus for the outworking of its
forces. No matter how limited the concep
tions in which the spiritual richness first took
form, those conceptions can be understood
by the students who look back through the
ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out
with perennial freshness. Paradoxical as it
may sound, the truths which are of most
value for all time are those which first get
themselves most thoroughly into the thought
and feeling of some one particular time.
Let us look at the opening chapters of
21

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
Genesis for illustration. The historical stu
dent points out to us that the science of the
first chapters of Genesis is not peculiar to
the Hebrew people, that substantially sim
ilar views of the stages through which crea
tion moved are to be found in the literatures
of surrounding peoples. A well-known type
of student would therefore seek at one stroke
to bring the first chapters of Genesis down to
the level of the scriptures of the neighbors of
the Hebrews. He would then discount all
these narratives alike by reference to modern
astronomy, geology, and biology. But the
difference between the Hebrew account and
the other accounts lies in this, that in the
Hebrew statement the science of a particular
time is made the vehicle of eternally superb
moral and spiritual conceptions concerning
man and concerning man's relation to the
Power that brought him into being. The
worth of these conceptions even in that early
statement few of us would be inclined to
question. Assuming that any man or set of
men became in the old days alive to the value
of such religious ideas, how could they speak
them forth except in the language of their

PRELIMINARY
own day? They had to speak in their own
tongue, and speaking in that tongue they
had to use the thought terms expressed by
that tongue. They accepted the science of
their day as true, and they utilized that
science for the sake of bodying forth the
moral and spiritual insights to which they
had attained. The inadequacy of early He
brew science and its likeness to Babylonian
and Chaldean science do not invalidate the
worth of the spiritual conceptions of Genesis.
This ought to be apparent even to the pro
verbial wayfaring man. The loftiest spir
itual utterances are of ten clad in the poorest
scientific draperies. Who would dare deny
the worth of the great moral insights of
Dante ? And who, on the other hand, would
insist upon the lasting value of the science in
which his deep penetrations are uttered?
And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has
shown the nature of the material universe as
pictured in Milton's "Paradise Lost." In
passing from heaven to hell one would de
scend from an upper to a lower region of a
sphere, passing through openings at the cen
ters of other concentric spheres on the way

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
down. Nothing more foreign to modem
science can be imagined; yet we do not cast
aside "Paradise Lost" because of the crudity
of its view of the physical system.
Assuming that the biblical prophets were
to have any effect whatever, in what lan
guage could they speak except that of their
own time? Their position was very similar
to that of the modem preacher who uses pres
ent-day ideas of the physical universe as in
struments to proclaim moral and spiritual
values. Nobody can claim that modem
scientific theories are ultimate, and nobody
can deny, on the other hand, that vast good is
done in the utilization of these conceptions
for high religious purposes.
A minister once sought in a sermon on
the marvels of man's constitution to enforce
his conceptions by speaking of the instanta-
neousness with which a message flashed to the
brain through the nervous system is heeded
and acted upon. He said that the touch of
red-hot iron upon a finger tip makes a distur
bance which is instantly reported to the brain
for action. A scientific hearer was infinitely
disgusted. He said that all such distur-
24

PRELIMINARY
bances are acted upon in the spinal cord. He
could see no value, therefore, even in the main
point of the minister's sermon because of the
minister's mistaken conception of nervous
processes. I suppose very few of us know
whether this scientific objection was well
taken or not. Very few of us, however,
would reject the entire sermon because of an
erroneous illustration ; and yet sometimes all
the essentials of the Scriptures are dis
counted because of flaws no more consequen
tial than that suggested in this illustration.
- The Scriptures aim to declare a certain
idea of God, a certain idea of man, and a cer
tain idea of the relations between God and
man. Those ideas are clothed in the gar
ments of successive ages. The change in the
fashions and adequacy of the garments does
not make worthless the living truth which the
garments clothe. Jesus himself lived deeply
in his own time and spoke his own language
and worked through the thought terms which
were part of the life of his time. Some bib
lical readers have been greatly disturbed in
recent years by the discovery of the part
which so-called apocalyptic thought-forms
25

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
play in the teaching of Jesus. The fact is
that these conceptions were the commonest
element in all later Jewish thinking. Jesus
could not have lived when he did without
making apocalyptic terms the vehicle for his
doctrines. We have come to see that the
manner of the coming of the kingdom of
Jesus is not so important as the character of
that kingdom.
Not only must a prophet speak in the lan
guage of a definite time, but he must speak
to men as he finds them. This being so, we
must expect that revelations will in a sense
be accommodated to the apprehension of the
day of their utterance. The minds of men
are in constant movement. If the prophet
were to have before him minds altogether at
a standstill, he might well despair of accom
plishing great results by his message. He
would be forced to think of the intelligence
of this day as a sort of vessel which he could
fill with so much and no more. But whether
the prophets have through the ages had any
theoretic understanding of human intelli
gence as an organism or not, they have acted
upon the assumption that they were dealing
26

PRELIMINARY
with such organisms. So they have conceived
of their truth as a seed cast into the ground,
passing through successive stages. Jesus
himself spoke of the kingdom of God as mov
ing out of the stage of the blade into that of
the ear and finally into that of "the full corn
in the ear. This illustration is our warrant
for insisting that in the enforcing of truth
all manner of factors come into play and that
the truth passes through successive epochs,
some of which may seem to later believers
very unpromising and unworthy. The test
of the worth of an idea is not so much any
opinion as to the unseemliness of the stages
through which it has passed as it is the value
of the idea when once it has come to ripe
ness. The test of the grain is its final value
for food. The scriptural truths are to be
judged by no other test than that of their
worth for life.
In the light of the teaching of Jesus him
self there is no reason why we should shrink
from stating that the revelation of biblical
truth is influenced by even the moral limita
tions of men. Jesus said that an important
revelation to man was halted at an imperfect
27

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
stage because of the hardness of men's hearts.
The Mosaic law of divorce was looked upon
by Jesus as inadequate. The law repre
sented the best that could be done with hard
ened hearts. The author of the Practice of
Christianity, a book published anonymously
some years ago, has shown conclusively how
the hardness of men's hearts limits any sort
of moral and spiritual revelation. It will
be remembered that William James in dis
cussing the openness of minds to truth di
vided men into the "tough-minded" and the
"tender-minded." James was not thinking of
moral distinctions : he was merely emphasiz
ing the fact that tough-minded men require a
different order of intellectual approach than
do the tender-minded. If we put into tough-
mindedness the element of moral hardness
and unresponsiveness which the prophet
must meet, we can see how such an element
would condition and limit the prophet.
Again, Jesus said to his disciples that he
had many things to say to them, but that they
could not bear them at the time at which he
spoke. Some revelations must wait for moral
strength on the part of the people to whom
28

PRELIMINARY
they are to come. Suppose, for example,
in this year of our Lord 1917, some scientist
should discover a method of touching off ex
plosives from a great distance by wireless
telegraphy without the need of a specially
prepared receiver at the end where the explo
sion is desired. Suppose it were possible for
him simply to press a button and blow up all
the ships of the British Navy, or all the stores
of munitions in Germany. What would be
the first duty of such an inventor? Very
likely it would be his immediate duty to keep
the secret closely locked in his own mind. If
such a discovery were made known to Euro
pean combatants in their present temper, it
is a question what would be left on earth at
the end of the next twenty-four hours. With
European minds in their present moral and
spiritual pligTit it would not be safe to trust
them with any such revelation. And this
illustration has significance for more than
^he physical order of revelation. There are
principles for individual and social conduct
that may well be put into effect one hundred
years from now. Men are not now morally
fit to receive some revelations. All of which
29

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
means that any revealing movement is a
progressive movement in that it depends
upon not merely the utterances of the reveal
ing mind, but upon the response of the receiv
ing mind. In the play back and forth be
tween giver and receiver all sorts of factors
come into power. The study of the interplay
of these factors is entirely worthy as an ob
ject of Christian research. We may well
be thankful for any advance thus far made
in such study and we may look for greater
advances in the future. For example, the
historic students thus far have put in most of
their effort laying stress upon similarities be
tween the biblical conceptions and the con
ceptions of the peoples outside the current of
biblical revelation. The work has been of
great value. Nevertheless it would seem to
be about time for larger emphasis on the dif
ferences between the biblical revelations and
the conceptions outside.
Still when all is said the mastery of histor
ical methods of study is but preliminary to
the real understanding of the Scriptures.
If we come close to the revealing movement
itself, we find that before we get far into the
30

PRELIMINARY
stream there must be sympathetic responsive
ness to biblical teaching. The difficulties in
imderstanding the Scriptures are, as of old,
not so much of the intellect as they are of con
science and will — the difficulties, in a word,
that arise from the hardness of men's hearts.

31

CHAPTER II
THE BOOK OF LIFE
The approaches to an imderstanding of
the Scriptures which we suggested in the
first chapter are those which have to do
merely with intellectual investigation. Any
student with normal intelligence can appre
ciate the methods and results of the critical
scrutiny of the biblical documents, but will
require something more for an adequate
mastery of the scriptural revelations. There
is need of sympathetic realization that the
Book itself did not in any large degree come
out of the exercise of the merely intellectual
faculties. In the scriptural revelation we are
dealing with a current of life which flowed
for centuries through the minds of masses of
people. To be sure of insight into the mean
ings of this revelation there must be an ap
proach to the Bible as a Book of Life in the
sense that its teachings came out of life and
that they were perennially used to play back
into life. Its hold on life to-day can be ex-
32

THE BOOK OF LIFE
plained only by the fact that it was thus born
out of life, and has its chief significance for
the experiences of actual life.
Even the most superficial perusal of the
Scriptures shows that they came of practical
contact with men and things. There is com
paratively little in the entire content of our
Sacred Book to suggest the speculations of
abstract philosophy. The writers deal with
the concrete. They tell of men and of peo-
' pies who had to face facts and who achieved
comprehensions and convictions through
grappling with facts. There is about the
Scriptures what some one has called a sort of
d'gut-of-doors-ness." There is very little hint
of withdrawal from the push and pressure of
daily living. If the prophets ever withdrew
to solitude, they did not retire to closets, but
rather to deserts or to mountains. We must
not allow our modem familiarity with book-
making as an affair of library research and
tranquil meditation in seclusion to mislead us
into thinking that the Christian Bible was
wrought out in similar fashion. The Book is
full of the tingle and even the roar of the life
out of which it was born. Jesus gathered up

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
in a single sentence the process by which the
scriptural revelation can be apprehended by
man when he said, "He that doeth the will
shall know of the truth." The entire scrip
tural unfolding is one vast commentary on
this utterance of Jesus.
It is impossible for us in this series of
studies to attempt any detailed survey of the
revealing movement of which our Scriptures
are the outcome. It is important, however,
that we should see clearly that the revelation
came to those who opened themselves to the
fight in an obedient spirit. While it is not in
accord with our modern knowledge of psy
chology to assort and divide human activities
too sharply, it is nevertheless permissible to
insist that the biblical revelation was in a
sense primarily to the will. As Frederick
W. Robertson used to say, obedience is the
organ of spiritual knowledge. The first men
to whom illuminations came evidently re
ceived these gifts out of some purity of inten
tion and moral excellence. These early
leaders gathered others around them and set
them on the path of determined striving
toward a definite goal. As the idea of the
34

THE BOOK OF LIFE
seer or the prophet found general acceptance
it gradually hardened into law, law meant for
scrupulous observance. If a singer felt
stirred to write a psalm, he voiced his expe
riences or his aspirations in the midst of a
throbbing world. If a statesman drew a wide
survey of God's dealings with the nations of
the earth, he did so at some mighty crisis in
Israel's relations to Egypt or Assyria or
Babylon. When we reach New Testament
times we find that even the Gospels seem to
have been books struck out of immediate
practical urgencies rather than composed
tranquilly with a scholar's interest merely in
doing a fine piece of professional work. The
early Christians were anxious to hold the be
lievers to the strait and narrow way. To do
this they repeated often the words of the
Lord Jesus. When, however, the older
members of the first circles began to fall
away, the words were written down, not be
cause some scholar felt moved thus to im
prove his leisure, but because it was abso
lutely necessary to preserve the words.
Moreover, conflicts were arising between the
growing church and the forces of the world
35

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
round about. Some scriptures were written
to supply instruments with which to carry
on the warfare. Always the fundamental
aim was to keep the people acting accord
ing to the teachings which lay at the heart
of the Christian system. The object of the
biblical revelation was from the begiQ-
ning just what it is to-day in the hands of
Christian believers — ^the object of using the
Scriptures as an instrument for practicing
the Christian spirit into all the phases of
life. We would by no means deny that there
are imposing philosophies or, rather, hints
toward such philosophies, in the Scriptures,
but we insist that these did not come out of a
purely philosophizing temper. They came
as men tried to put into some form or order
the understandings at which they had arrived
as they wrestled with the tough facts of a
world which they were trying to subject to
the rule of their religion. As we have said
in the previous chapter, the Scriptures bear
scars of all such conflicts. The revelation
was knocked into its shape in the rough-and-
tumble of an attempt to convert the world.
36

THE BOOK OF LIFE
And this is not to claim for the Bible any dif
ference in method of creation from that
which obtains in the shaping of any vitally
effective piece of literature. The world-
shaking conceptions have always been won
in profound experience. This chapter is not
written with the principles of the modern
school of pragmatism as a guide, and yet
pragmatism can be so stated as to phrase an
essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual
ideas result from spiritual practices and are
of worth as they prove themselves aids in
further experience. Take some of the ex
pressions of Paul. The fundamental fact in
Paul's experience was his vision on the
Damascus road and his determination to be
obedient to that vision. To make his own
view of the Christian religion attractive to
those whom he was trying to win, it became
necessary for him to speak in terms of the
Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not
have spoken in any other terms, though some
of his reasonings seem to us to be remote
from actual life. But when he left argu
ment and came back to experience he was
most effective. His terribly compelfing ut-
37

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
terances are those which were born of driv
ing necessity. The theology started with the
vision and unfolded in obedience to the
vision, "What wilt thou have me to do?"
Everywhere upon Paul's epistles there are
the marks of practical compulsion. A letter
was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews
in Galatia or to persuade questioning Gen
tiles in Rome. Some of the profoundest
phrasings of Pauline belief were uttered first
as appeals for generous collections to starv
ing saints.
The example of Paul as a receiver and
giver of spiritual light is very significant.
Even if we should make the largest allow
ances to the biblical critics who would cut
down the number of epistles known to be
genuinely Pauline, we would have enough
left to make on our minds the impression
of enormous personal activity. One passage
does, indeed, tell us of a period of months of
withdrawal for reflection in Arabia. For the
most part, however, Paul's life was spent in
ceaselessly going to and fro throughout the
Roman empire ; even in the days of imprison
ment he seems to have been burdened with
38

THE BOOK OF LIFE
the administration of churches. It was out
of such multifarious activities that the theol
ogy of Paul was born, and therein lies its
value. No interpretation is likely to bring
the separate deliverances into anything like
formal, logical consistency. Very likely
Paul was of a markedly logical frame of
mind, but he did not attempt to rid his mes
sage of contradictions in detail. The unity
and consistency are found in the funda
mental life purpose to get men to accept
Jesus Christ as the Chosen of God. If Paul
had ever heard that much of his theology
might be out-dated with the passage of the
years, he would probably have responded
that he was perfectly willing that the instru
ment should be cast aside if it had served its
spiritual purpose of bringing men to obe
dience to the law of God.
It is not intended to make this a book of
sermons or exhortations. We must say,
however, that in a series of studies on how to
understand the Scriptures stress must be laid
upon the maxim that the Scriptures can be
understood only by those who seek to recog
nize and obey the spirit of life breathing forth
39

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
from the Scriptures. Nothing could be more
hopeless than to attempt to get to the heart
of Christian truth without attempting to
build that truth into life. The formal reason
ings of the theologian are no doubt of value,
but they throw little light upon the essentials
of Christianity except as they deal with data
which have been supplied by Christian expe
rience. It would, indeed, be well for any
study of the Bible to begin with a recognition
of the part played by distinctly scholarly re
search. We cannot go far, however, until
we recognize that sympathy with Christian
truth is necessary before we can come upon
vital knowledge. And this, after all, is but
the way we learn to understand any piece
of life-literature. A vast amount of ma
terial is at hand in the form of commentaries
upon the work of Shakespeare. We know
much about the circumstances under which
the plays of Shakespeare were written;
we know somewhat of the sources from
which Shakespeare drew his historical mate
rials; we are familiar with the chronology
of the plays ; but all this is knowledge about
Shakespeare. To know Shakespeare there
40

THE BOOK OF LIFE
must be something of a deliberate attempt to
surrender sympathetically to the Shake
spearean point of view. We get "inside of"
any classic work of hterature only by this
spirit of surrender. The aim of Shakespeare
is simply to picture life as he sees it, but
even to appreciate the picture men must
enter into sympathy with the painter. The
Scriptures aim not merely to paint life,
but to quicken and reproduce life. How
much more, then, is needed a surrender of the
will before there can be adequate apprecia
tion of the Scriptures? If the Scriptures are
the results primarily of will-activities, how
can they finally be mastered except by minds
quickened by doing the will revealed in the
Scriptures? The book of Christianity must
be interpreted by the disciples of Christian
ity. Judged merely by bookish standards,
there is no satisfactory explanation of the
power of the Bible. But lift the whole prob
lem out of the realm of books as such! The
glimpses into any high truth that are worth
while — ^how do they come? They come out
of experience. Even when they are repeated
from one mind to another they become the
41

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
property of that second mind only as they
reproduce themselves in experience. Other
wise the whole transaction is of words,
words, words. The Scriptures have to do
with deeds, not words.
All this is offensive to the dogmatic rea-
soner. For him the intellect as such is the
organ of religious truth. He insists on
speaking of the Scriptures in formally theo
logical terms. That the Scripture writers
employed theological terms there can be no
doubt, but they did not speak as systematic
theologians. And always they brought their
theology to the test of actual life. The writer
of these lines once knew a student who had
read enough of psychology to enable him to
reason himself into a belief that he was the
only person in existence; that is to say, he
declared that he himself was the only one of
whose existence he was infalhbly certain.
Does not all knowledge of an external world
come as a report through a sensation aroused
by stimulus? If the appropriate stimulus
could be kept up an external world might
fall away and I would still think it was there.
The bell might ring at the door and there
42

THE BOOK OF LIFE
might be nobody there. And so on and on,
through steps famifiar enough to the student
of philosophy. When a friend made a quick
appeal to life with the question: "If you are
the only one alive, why do you bring your
troubles to me?" the amateur philosopher
came to earth with a sense of jar. But the
jar is no greater than that when we pass from
the plane of dogmatic theology to that of
reading the Scriptures for their own sake.
The old scholastics said that in God there
are three substances, one essence, and two
processions. How does this sound as com
pared with the statement of Jesus that he and
his Father are one, and that he would send
the Comforter? This is not to decry theol
ogy; but is nevertheless to discriminate be
tween theology and scripture.
Some one will object, however, that the
scriptural truths take their start in large part
from the visions of mystics— of men who
brood long and patiently until they behold
realities not otherwise discernible. Some stu
dents will urge upon us that such mystic
revelations are granted peculiarly to the
mystic temperament as such, and that
43

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
they often come regardless of the quality
of life that the seers themselves may be
living. There have, indeed, been in all ages of the
world temperaments of supernormal or ab
normal responsiveness to influences which
seem to make little or no impression upon the
ordinary mind. In all periods natures of
this type have been looked upon as organs of
religious revelation. So valuable have ab
normal experiences seemed that all manner
of expedients have been utilized to beget un
usual mental states. A certain tribe of In
dians, for example, in the southwest of our
country are accustomed at set times to send
their religious leaders into the desert to find
and partake of a peculiar plant which has an
opiate or narcotic effect. In the belief of the
Indians this plant opens the door to visions.
The visions, as reported by those who have
recovered from the influence of the narcotic,
are not of any considerable value. Similar
attempts have been made by hypnotic experi
menters among other peoples, the hypnosis
sometimes being self -induced. From some
Old Testament passages especially we may
44

THE BOOK OF LIFE
well believe that this sort of extraordinary
mental condition was sought for in the so-
called schools of the prophets in the olden
days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity
about the Scriptures, however, is not that
there is so much reliance on this trance expe
rience as that there is so little. The Hebrew
Scriptures were the expression of a people
living in the midst of heathen surroundings ;
and heathenism always has laid stress upon
the virtue of these abnormal experiences.
Granting all allowances for mental states
induced by eating an opiate, or by whirling
like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu,
the fact remains that in the main, the visions
of the writers of our Scriptures came out of
attempts to realize in conduct the moral will
of God. When we think of the surroundings
even of the early church; when we reflect
upon the force of suggestion for uncritical
minds ; when we consider the sway of super
stition at all periods during the Hebrew re
vealing movement, the wonder is that the
Scriptures lay such stress as they do upon
the type of vision which arises from faith
fulness in doing the revealed will.
45

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
If we may characterize scriptural mysti
cism, it seems very much akin to mental abil
ities which we meet frequently in our ordi
nary intercourse. Take, for example, the
prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing
is more inadequate than the rules for suc
cess laid down by many a rflan who has
himself succeeded in business. Mastery of
his rules will not help another to win busi
ness success. The reason is that there comes
out of prolonged business practice a keen
sense of what is likely to happen in the
industrial or financial world. The sharp
ened wits foresee without being able to assign
reasons or grounds for the prophecies. So
it is with intellects trained to any superior
skill. The Duke of Wellington once re
marked that he had spent all his life wonder
ing what was on the other side of the hills in
front of him, yet the Duke himself came to
marvelous skill in guessing what was on the
other side. There is also a variety of scien
tific mysticism, if such an expression may be
permitted. The man long trained to the
reading of scientific processes develops a
quick insight which runs far ahead of reason
46

THE BOOK OF LIFE
or proof. The transcendent scientific dis
coveries have been glimpsed or, rather,
sensed before they so reported themselves
that they could be seized by formal proof.
Now it is a far cry from business men,
generals, and scientists to the mysticism of
the Scriptures, but when we see the em
phasis which the Scriptures place upon con
stancy in keeping the law and in acting
according to divine commandments, we can
not help feeling that biblical mysticism was
and is an awareness developed as the life be
comes practiced to the doing of religious
duty. Think too of the emphasis placed in
the Scriptures upon the consecration of the
whole life to the truth as cleansing the heart
from evil. All this makes for a power to
seize truth beyond that possible to formal and
systematic reason. Mysticism of this sort is
the very height of spiritual power. The
Master's word: "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God," does not refer
to merely negative virtue. It means also the
power of soul accumulated in the positive
doing of good. It means entrance into the
life of quick spiritual awareness through the
47

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
adjustment of the whole nature to the single
moral purpose.
In all promise of revelation the Scriptures
insist upon the importance of keeping upon
the basis of solid obedience. The finer the
instrument is to be, the more massive must
be the foundation. Professor Hocking, of
Harvard University, has used a remarkable
illustration to enforce this very conception.
The scientific . instrument, he says, which
must be kept freest from distracting influ
ences so that it may make the finest registries
must rest upon a f otindation broad and deep.
So the soul that is to catch the finest stir
rings of the divine must rest upon the solid-
est stones of hard work for the moral pur
poses of the scriptural Kingdom.
Still some one will insist that the Bible is
a book built around great crises in human
experience ; that it is a record of these crises ;
that the people in whose history the crises
occurred were a peculiar people, apparently
arbitrarily chosen as a medium for religious
world-instruction; that the crises cast sud
den bursts of intense light upon the meaning
of human life, but that they themselves are
48

THE BOOK OF LIFE
far apart from ordinary experience. Here,
again, we must insist that the scriptural
stress is always upon obedience to what is
conceived of as revealed truth. We have
already said that Jesus regarded revelation
as organic. In everything organic we find
instances of quick crisis following long and
slow periods of growth. The crisis or the
climax of the sudden flowering-out would
never be possible were it not for the antece
dent growth. The Hebrew nation, developed
through workaday righteousness, manifested
wonderful power in sudden crises. The
inner forces of moral purpose which at times
seemed hidden or dead because of the riot of
wickedness suddenly blossomed forth in
mighty bursts of prophecy ; but the all-essen
tial was the long-continued practice of right
eousness which made possible the sudden
crisis ; and this is in keeping with the teach
ings of most commonplace human experi
ence. The daily struggle prepares for the
sharp, quick strain or for the swift unfolding
of a new moral purpose. There is nothing
more arbitrary in the crises in the scriptural
movement than in the ordinary ongoings of
49

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
our lives. The student who has long been
wrestling with a problem finds the solution
instantaneously bursting upon him in the
midst of untoward circumstances. The most
insignificant trifle may finally turn the lock
which opens to the glorious revelation after
prolonged brooding. The daily practice may
make men ready for the shock which leaps
upon them altogether unexpected.
We summarize by saying that the essen
tials of biblical truth came in progressive
revelations to men who were putting forth
their energies to live up to the largest ideals
they could reach ; and that they sought these
larger ideals for use in their lives. It must
be understood in all that we have said about
acting the revelation out into life that we
do not mean merely the more matter-of-
fact activities. It should be noticed that
whenever men speak of will-activities they
are apt to give the impression that they mean
some putting forth of bodily energy. The
will to do scriptural righteousness did not
manifest itself merely in outside actions. It
manifested itself just as thoroughly in bear
ings and attitudes of the inner spirit; and the
50

THE BOOK OF LIFE
appeal was always to the will to hold itself
fast in the direction of the highest life, what
ever the form of the activity.
After this emphasis upon obedience as the
organ of spiritual knowledge some one may
ask what provision we are making for infalli
bility and for inspiration. We can only say
that we are dealing with a Book which has
come out of concrete life, and that in concrete
life not much consideration is given to ab
stract infallibility. In daily experience the
righteous soul becomes increasingly sure of
itself. To return for the moment to Paul,
we may think of the certainty with which he
grasped the thought of the reward which
would be his. The time of his departure,
or, of his unmooring, was at hand. He
was perfectly confident that he was to go
on longer voyages of spiritual discovery and
exploration. Can we say that this splendid
outburst came from devotion to an abstract
formula? Did it not, rather, spring from
the sources of life within him — sources
opened and developed by the experiences
through which he passed? The biblical
heroes wrought and suffered through living
51

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
confidence in the forces which were bearing
them on and up. They would have answered
questions about abstract infallibility with em
phatic avowals as to the firmness of their own
belief. In other words, they could have re
lied upon their life itself as its own best wit
ness to itself. They felt alive and ready to
go whithersoever life might lead.
And so with inspiration. It is the merest
commonplace to repeat that the inspiration
of the Scriptures must show itself in their
power to inspire those who partake of their
life. Does a fresh moral and spiritual air
blow through them? Is there in them any
thing that men can breathe ? Anything upon
which men can build themselves into moral
strength? This is the final test of inspira
tion. Physical breathing is in itself a mys
tery, but we know when the air invigorates
us. Abstract doctrine of inspiration apart
from life and experience is a very stifling
affair compared with inspiration conceived of
as a breath of life. The scriptural doctrine is
that the man who does the will finds himself
able to breathe more deeply of the truth of
God; and that the very breath itself will
52

THE BOOK OF LIFE
satisfy him, and by satisfying him convince
him that it is the breath of life.
There is an old story of a student who de
cided to learn the meaning of a strange reli
gion which was taught and practiced by
priests in a far-away corner of India. The
student thought to disguise himself, to go
close to the doors of the temple and to fisten
there for what hemight overhear of the prin
ciples taught by the priests. One day he was
detected and captured by the priests and
made their slave. He was set to work per
forming to the utmost the duties for which
the temple called. His response was at first
rebellious. In the long years that followed
the spell of the strange religion was cast upon
him. He began to learn not as an outsider,
not as one merely studying writings and rit
uals, but as one enthralled by the system
itself. In this old story, inadequate as it is,
we have a suggestion of the way in which the
biblical revelation lays its spell upon man.
The outside study is, indeed, worth much,
but the true understanding comes inside the
temple to him who carries forward the work
of the temple. 53

CHAPTER III
THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
We have seen that the understanding of
the Scriptures presupposes at least a sym
pathy with the rule of life contained in the
Scriptures, and implies for its largest results
a practical surrender to that rule of life. He
that doeth the will revealed in the Scriptures
Cometh to a knowledge of the truth revealed
in the Scriptures. We must next note that
an understanding of the Bible cannot ad
vance far until it realizes the emphasis on the
human values set before us in the scriptural
books. We are to approach the distinctively
religious teachings of the Bible somewhat
later. It is now in order to call attention to
the truth that the biblical movement is
throughout the ages in the direction of in
creasing regard for the distinctively human.
The human ideal is not so much absolutely
stated as imposed in laws, in prophecies, in
the policies of statesmen, in the types of ideal
erected on high before the chosen people as
54

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
worthy of supreme regard. And the place
of the human ideal in the Bible helps deter
mine the place of the Bible in human life.
Mankind makes much of the Book because
the Book makes much of mankind.
There is much obscurity about the be
ginnings of the laws of the Hebrews. One
characteristic of those laws, however, is evi
dent from a very early date — the regard
for human life as such and the aim to make
human existence increasingly worth while.
It is a common quality of primitive reli
gions that they are apt to lay stress on
merely ceremonial cleansings, for example.
The ceremony is gone through for the sake of
pleasing a deity. There are abundant indica
tions of this same purpose in the ceremonies
of the early Hebrews, but there is even more
abundant indication that the ceremonies were
aimed at a good result for the worshiper him
self. It is impossible to read through the
Mosaic requirements concerning bodily
cleanfiness, the sanitary arrangements of the
camps, the regulations for cooking the food,
and the instructions for deafing with disease
without feeling that there is a wide difference
55

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
between such requirements and merely
formal ceremonials. The Mosaic sanitary
law aimed at the good of the people. It
sought to make men clean and decent and
human. So it was also in many of the rules
governing the daily work, the regulations as
to the use of land, the prohibitions of usury,
the relations of servants and masters — all
these had back of them the driving force of
an enlarging human ideal. The trend was
away from everything unhuman and inhu
man. It is not necessary for us to remark
upon the outbursts of the prophets against
those who would put property interests above
human interests. It is a matter of common
place that the call of the prophets was for
larger devotion to a genuinely human ideal:
that the fires of their wrath burned most
fiercely against old-time monopolists who
joined land to land till there was "no place,"
and against old-time corrupters of the law
who sold the needy for a pair of shoes.
Not only did the emphasis on the human
ideal show in laws, but in the training up of
types of life which should in themselves em
body and illustrate the conceptions of the
56

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
biblical leaders. At the heart of the Chris
tian religion is incarnation, or divine revela
tion through the human organism. We are
told that this incarnation came in the fullness
of time. The passage seems to refer not
merely to the rounding out of historic peri
ods, but also to the fashioning of an ideal of
human character, and at least a partial reali
zation of that ideal in Hebrew heroes. If the
final ideal was to stand incarnate before men,
there must be approximations to that ideal
before the crowning incarnation could be
appreciated. We look upon the character of
Jesus as the complete embodiment of human
excellencies. Such a revelation, however,
would have been futile if there had not pre
viously been glimpses of and anticipations
of the ideal in the fives of those who were
forerunners of Jesus. The Scriptures teach,
or at least imply, that the life of a good man
is in itself a transcendent value.
And yet it is perfectly clear that while the
Scriptures exalt the individual, they do not
mean to wall individuals off in impenetrable
circles by themselves. It is true that the indi
vidual is the end toward which the scriptural
57

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
redemption and glorification aims, but indi
viduals find their own best selves not in isola
tion but in union with their fellows — a union
of mutual cooperation and service, a union so
close that the persons thus related come to be
looked upon as a veritable Body of Christ,
making together by their impact upon the
world the same sort of revelation that the fiv-
ing Christ made in the days of his early life.
The ideals as to the supremacy of human
values are realized, according to the Scrip
tures, not in any separateness of individual
existence, but in a closeness of social interde
pendence. So true is this that it is hardly
possible to see how one can make much of the
scriptural movement without immersing him
self in the stream of human life with highest
regard for the values of that life.
It has been insisted from the beginning
that the Christian consciousness is the only
, adequate interpretation of the Scriptures.
By Christian consciousness is meant not the
consciousness of the body of believers who
are together trying to serve Christ. The in
terpretation of the individual becomes final
only as it is accepted by the mass of the be-
58

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
fievers. Something of worth-while thought
is conceived of as going out from the life of
every believer. The utterance of the seer is
not conceived of as complete until even he
who sits in the seat of the unlearned has said
"Amen." The pronouncements which do not
evoke this wide human response fall by the
wayside. For example, how was the canon
of the New Testament shaped? Was there
a determination on the part of individual
leaders that such and such books should be
included in the volume of Scriptures? Very
likely there was at the last such deliberate
selection, but before the final decision there
must have been the practice of the congrega
tions which amounted in the end to the choice
or rejection of sacred books. Very likely the
New Testament Scriptures were collected
by a process of trying out the reading of
Epistles and Gospels and exhortations be
fore the congregations. As passages met or
failed to meet the human needs, there was
call for the repeated reading of some works
and no call for the rereading of others. In
use some documents proved their sacredness
and other documents fell aside into disuse.
59

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
Before the concluding deliberate choice was
this selection in use by the believers them
selves; and the selection turned round the
question as to whether or not the documents
helped people. If each member of the body
of believers is entitled to interpret biblical
literature, interpretation becomes a com
posite and diversified activity. There is little
warrant in the Scriptures for the notion that
the biblical revelation is to level men to any
sort of sameness. There are diversities of
endowments and varieties of expression ; but
the united judgment of the body of befievers
is the supreme authority in interpreting the
scriptural revelation. This is what we mean
by saying that the church is to interpret the
Scriptures. We mean that no matter how
brilliant or interesting the utterances of any
individual may be, they are not of great value
until they have received in some fashion the
sanction of the main mass of believers. It is
the function of the spokesmen of the church
to gather up into distinct expression what
may have been vaguely, but nevertheless
really, in the thought or half -thought of the
people. Gladstone once said that it is the
60

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
business of the orator to send back upon his
audience in showers what comes up to him
from the audience in mist or clouds; so it is
with the voice of a biblical truth through any
medium of interpretation. The spokesman
compresses or condenses into speech what has
been dimly in the consciousness of the people.
Even in days less democratic than ours this
was abundantly true. It is the fashion to
denounce some of the councils of the old
church which shaped the creeds. It is often
said that these creedal councils were moved
by considerations of low-grade expediency.
The councils, however, knew what the people
were thinking of, and managed to get the
popular thought into expression measurably
satisfactory to the people themselves.
In this doctrine of the church as inter
preter of scriptural truth we can be sure that
the emphasis will remain on the elements
which make for enlarging human life if the
church keeps true to the spirit of the Bible
itself. The aspirations of humanity, the
longings of masses of men, find utterance in
the great popular spiritual demands all the
more effectively because such demands over-
61

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
ride and nullify the insistence of an individ
ualistic point of view which might easily be
come selfish. We have said that this demo
cratic interpretation is final so long as it
keeps itself in line with the biblical pur
pose. There are some dangers, however,
against which we must be on our guard.
First is the danger of identifying the church
with those who actually belong to an organ
ization. When we think of the church we
have in mind not merely formal organiza
tions, but all men who are really working in
the spirit of the biblical ideals. There are
many persons who really act according to the
biblical revelation without technically uniting
with a church. It may be that such persons
do not accept the intellectual puttings of bib
lical doctrine, but that they nevertheless live
in the spirit of that doctrine. It might be
conceivably possible that a church organiza
tion would stand for an interpretation of
truth which would be rejected by the general
good sense of a larger community. In such
a case the larger community would be the
interpreter. Another danger in an interpret
ing body is that of traditionafism. The
62

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
native conservatism of many minds stands
against innovation. If, however, the inno
vation is in the direction of enlarging hu
man life, it will in the end win its way. A
third danger is that of institutionalism,
where the organization as such becomes
an end in itself without regard to the
human interests involved. The Master's
fiercest condemnations were for those who
put any institution before the fulfillment of
the human ideals. In the parable of the good
Samaritan it is noteworthy that it was the
priest and the Levite who passed by on the
other side. It is hard to resist the feeling
that the Master implied that the priest and
Levite had been institutionalized into a lack
of humanity. Making allowance now for all
these dangers against which believers must
guard, the chances are that interpretation
of a book so human as the Scriptures is not
final until it has received the real, though not
necessarily formal, sanction of the body of
believers. So thoroughly does the biblical revelation
turn around the supremacy of the distinc
tively human values that we must insist that
63

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
anything which would run counter to these
values is alien to the spirit of the revelation,
and, therefore, to comprehension of that
revelation. We do not wish to be extreme,
but it is hard to see how, in our day, for ex
ample, any who fail to put human rights in
the first place can really master the scriptural
revelation. We have spoken of the Master's
rebukes of any form of institutionalism which
stands in the way of human rights. Institu
tions at best are instruments; they exist
merely for the purpose of bringing men
to larger life; but these institutions some
times get petrified into custom and be
come glorified by long practice, and even
made sacred by adherents who look upon
them as ends in themselves. Then there is
no recourse except to break the institutions
in the name of larger human life. If we
could put ourselves back in the times of
Jesus and feel something of the sacredness
with which the Jews regarded the Sabbath,
we would know the tremendous force of the
Master's daring when he declared that the
Sabbath was made for man and not man for
the Sabbath. The Master was also insistent
64

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
upon the priority of human rights as over
against property rights. It is perfectly true
that Jesus did not encourage any propa
ganda for social reform. It is a mistake to
try to read any form of modern Socialism
into his teaching. Socialism is the theory
of a particular time. Many of its outstand
ing features will no doubt one day be
adopted; and the world will then move
forward toward something else. Very likely
three centuries from the present date the
well-advanced communities of the world will
be living under systems which will make So
cialism itself look like the most hopeless and
reactionary conservatism. The scriptural
revelation, however, has not to do with the
details of any particular scheme. It aims,
rather, at the setting on high of the human
ideal, an ideal which will, if given a chance,
work itself out into the concrete forms best
suited to each age, and which will not have
exhausted its vitality when all that is good in
the programs of our particular day shall have
been incorporated into social practice.
But let us linger for a moment aroimd the
blighting effect of placing property rights in
65

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
front of human rights. If anyone at this
juncture becomes nervous and insists that we
are likely to introduce the new-fangled no
tions of the present day into a discussion
where they are out of place, let us remind
such a one that the danger of putting the
material before the spiritual has always been
the chief stumbling stone in the path of the
biblical revelation. It may be too much to
say with the old version that the love of
money is the root of all evil, but the Scrip
tures place the sin of greed in the forefront
among the evils that block the revealing proc
ess. Jesus said, "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."
With God a morally miraculous redemption
is entirely possible; but Jesus declares that
there is no need of our trying to minimize the
power of the present world to blind us to
visions of the spiritual world. For many
forms of wrongdoing the Master had a will
ingness to make allowances; for the sin of
placing material desires above human welfare
he had unsparing condemnation. In the day
of Jesus the world had an opportunity such
66

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
as it never had before confronted to learn
spiritual truth. What manner of opposition
was it which prevented that truth from run
ning its full course? Largely the opposition
of money interests. The Pharisees had need
to keep alliance with the temporal powers.
I It is not without significance that Jesus was
betrayed for money. It is not without sig
nificance too that Jesus's picture of the
Judgment Scene concerns itself largely with
the rewards for those who discharge the tasks
of simple human kindness. It means much
to find Jesus hinting at an unpardonable sin
on the part of those who call deeds of human
relief works of Beelzebub. It is certainly
food for reflection that the fiercest condem
nations in his parables are for those who miss
the human duties in their regard for the pos
sessions of this world. We repeat that we
would not be extreme, but when we see the
disregard of human life in modern industrial
ism; when we behold the attempts of prop
erty interests to get control of all channels
for the shaping of public opinion; when we
see rent, interest, and dividends more highly
rated than men, women, and children, we
67

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
cannot help feeling that the deeper penetra
tion into the Scriptures cannot arrive except
through an emphasis upon fundamental hu
man rights so mighty that all institutional
creations of industrialism or ecclesiasticism
shall be put into the secondary place and
strictly kept there. This is not railing
against wealth. It is simply calling attention
to the fact that the man who possesses the
wealth-tool cannot be allowed to use it or
even to brandish it in such fashion as to en
danger the unfolding of human ideals. It is
only through the enforcing of these ideals
that the Scriptures can be adequately appre
hended. Until a social kingdom of God
comes on earth the light of revelation cannot
shine in its full brightness. Any social
preacher of larger human rights is working
for the dawn of a new day of biblical under
standing. Some one will ask, however, why we single
out one type of evil as especially thwarting
the understanding of a biblical revelation.
Why not speak of the evils of appetite and of
envy and jealousy? The answer is that such
evils, devastating as they are toward the spir-
68

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
itual faculties, are so definitely personalized
in individuals that their nature is quickly
recognized. The difference is that under
present organization the evils of material
ism are preeminently social. There is every
where the heartiest condemnation for the
man who personally is conspicuously greedy.
A social evil can manifest itself in outstand
ing startlingness in a single person, but
the plain fact is that under modern indus
trial organization we are all caught in the
same snare. We are all tarred with the
same stick. Great as is the improvement of
our present system over anything that has
preceded it, nevertheless the distribution of
this world's goods is so unequal that we walk
in the presence of injustice on every hand.
The poor man often does not receive the
product of his own work. Large material
prizes go to men who toil not. Now no one in
particular is to blame for this social plight.
Nobody has yet arisen to show us theway out.
We cannot act except as we all act together;
and it is doubtful even if one nation could
act alone. If, however, we should all recog
nize the evils of the present system, if we
69

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
should condemn the wrongs of that system
instead of trying to justify them, we would
be on much better spiritual ground, for the
attempts to justify the system lead to uneasy
consciences, and to the searing of those con
sciences, and to the softening down of harsh
truths, and finally to an inability to see things
as they are. Though we have come far along
the path toward industrial justice, there is
still very much in the system under which we
live that makes for an inability to understand
some of the most elementary phrasings of
Christian truth. The only way out is to see
the system as it is and to take such steps for
ward as can be taken now. Only thus can
we keep our souls saved, and only thus also
can we follow the flashes from above.
Jesus preached the highest ideal for indi
vidual righteousness. Men are to strive to be
perfect even as the Father in heaven is per
fect. But the perfection is to show itself in
social impartiality in the use of material op
portunities. God sendeth the rain to fall and
the sun to shine on the evil and the good.
How many Christians of the present day
could be safely intrusted with the distribu-
70

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
tion of rainfall and sunshine? Those of us
who dwell in lands that must be irrigated
know that the type of Christianity that can
be trusted to deal fairly with our irrigation
system is somewhat unusual.
We take the injustices of the present social
order too much as a matter of course. We
ought to see them as making against hu
manity, and therefore against the scriptural
revelation. When these injustices culmi
nate in a war like the present, the only safety
is thought that deals honestly with the inhu
manity of the war. Granted that war in self-
defense is justifiable, we keep ourselves open
to divine revelations only as we refuse to
glorify the inhuman. Only that nation can
succeed in war and remain open to revelation
from above which recognizes the inhumanity
of war and refuses to glorify it.
Closely related to the blight of the spirit
of this present world is the failure to perceive
the need of missionary spirit for a full grasp
of scriptural truth. Though the Bible was
given to a peculiar people, self -centered and
exclusive, it nevertheless abounds in sugges
tions that its content can be appreciated to
71

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
the full only by those whose sympathies run
out to men at the very ends of the earth. In
the eyes of the Scriptures a human being is
a human being anywhere. The differences
between men are as nothing compared to
the likenesses. Every revelation must begin
somewhere and must attack its problems
in proper sequence, one after the other; but
mere priority of approach does not mean
that one problem is inherently more impor
tant than another. Leaders among the Jews
early tried to impress this upon the Jewish
mind. Considered in its historical setting,
the book of Jonah is one of the most spirit
ually daring books ever written. Jonah
stands as a type of Jew who would not admit
anything of worth in human beings outside
of Judaism. Rather than carry the word of
the Lord to Nineveh he would leave his
country and go to Tarshish ; rather than turn
back and resume the journey to Nineveh, he
would consent to be cast overboard in a
storm. Forced at last to deliver his message,
he announced it with the grim satisfaction of
expecting to see Nineveh destroyed. And
the final text of the book is that Jonah must
72

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
learn not merely to proclaim his message to
the Ninevites, but to proclaim his message
with sympathy and genuine human interest.
The Jews were a long time learning the
lesson, but not longer than other peoples have
been. Just because of the human interest
involved, the missionary impulse is neces
sary to a spiritual seizure of the biblical
revelation. It is important that we keep the mission
ary motive on the right basis. It is true that
the Scriptures will never be adequately ap
propriated until all kindreds and peoples and
tongues bring their contributions. Some
phases of the truth the Oriental mind must
seize before the Occidental mind can be
brought to appreciate them. When the final
revelation comes it will be adapted to the
imderstanding of any kindred under heaven.
It is worth while to spread the Christian
revelation for the sake of the return which
the Christianized peoples will one day bring-
to pur studies of the truth. But the
better motive is deeper than this — the pas
sion for human beings as human beings.
Any human being is entitled to any truth
73

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
which another human being can reveal to
him. The approach must be the human ap
proach. We must speedily get away from
the Jonahlike conceptions of the biblical
revelation as intended particularly for any
one nation. One great danger from the pres
ent war is the loss by the religious nations
involved of the ordinary New Testament
point of view. Many of the fighting nations
have lapsed back into the pre-Jonah era.
But the present war aside, the thought of
supreme truth as intended chiefly for a par
ticular race or nation, leads to a patronizing,
condescending bearing toward other peoples
which thwarts the finer spiritual achieve
ments. The contacts between the so-called
higher and so-called lower nations in mili
tary, diplomatic, and commercial relations
have thus far for the most part been abomi
nable. Too often missionary effort itself has
based itself on these same assumptions of
racial superiority. A people may indeed re
ceive blessings from the Scriptures in what
ever spirit they are bestowed, but damage is
wrought in the souls of the bestowers by the
74

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
attitude of superiority. The only genuinely
biblical approach is one of respect — respect
for the peoples as peoples, respect which will
have regard for their growing independence
in spiritual development, respect which will
not force upon them particularistic interpre
tations of the universal Scriptures.
Now, all of this may seem like a long dis
tance from a treatment of understanding of
the Scriptures in the ordinary sense. It
would not have been worth while, however, to
discuss this problem merely from the point
of view of exegesis or professional commen
tary. The essentials about the Scriptures are
their relations to life, their views of human
beings and teachings concerning the forces
of the spiritual kingdom. We shall proceed
in the other chapters to speak of God, of the
revelation of God in Christ, and of the spirit
of Christ as revealed in his cross. Before we
enter upon that study we must again remind
ourselves that only life in harmony with the
point of view of the Scriptures and only an
interest in the same human problems that en
gross the attention of spiritual writers can
avail us for vital interpretation of the teach-
75-

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
ings concerning the Divine, or make intelli
gible to us the hold of the Scriptures on the
life of the world. The Bible is conceived in
a spirit of respect for men. Only those who
enter into that same spirit can hope to make
much of the biblical revelation.

76

CHAPTER IV
THE BOOK OF GOD
We have remarked upon some points of
view from which the student must start in
order to reach a sound understanding of the
Scriptures. It is time for us to ask ourselves,
however, as to the dominant notes of the
Scriptures which make the Book so dynamic.
The purpose of this chapter is to show that
the essentials of the Book are, after all, its
teachings about God. The Bible is the Book
of God. Due chiefly to the ideas about God
are its uniqueness and its force.
Before advancing to the consideration of
the Bible as a book about God it will be well
for us to glance for a moment at other
grounds on which supremacy for the Scrip
tures is sometimes claimed. There are those
who maintain that the value of the Bible lies
in the wealth of inform'ation which it gives
us concerning the first days of the world's
life. The Bible helps us to regard sym
pathetically the view of the universe held
77

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
by the ancient Hebrews. It is a repository
of knowledge as to early science and phi
losophy. Now, all this is true, but relatively
unimportant. Had it not been for the reli
gious teachings of which the old-time view
of the world was the vehicle, that vehicle
itself would long since have been forgotten.
Only archaeologists are to-day greatly inter
ested in ancient theories of the world as such.
There are, again, those who avow that the
Bible deserves all praise because of the liter
ary excellence of its style. There are, indeed,
sublime passages to be forever cherished as
entitled by their very sublimity of expression
to permanent place in the world's literature.
All this we most gladly admit. Oratory like
that of the book of Isaiah, some of the sen
tences of the patriarchs, passages from the
Psalms or from the Sermon on the Mount,
the parables, the thirteenth chapter of Paul's
First Epistle to the Corinthians, are sure of
permanency in literature no matter what
may be anyone's opinion of their religious
content. Nobility of conception is very apt
to tend toward nobility of phrase. The ex
pression may be admired for its own sake
78

THE BOOK OF GOD
apart from the substance ; but to say that the
Bible holds its throne as the Book of books
simply because of the superiority of its artis
tic form is woefully aside from the mark.
Lamentable as it may be, masses of men do
not rank artistic literary skill as highly as
they ought. While a lofty idea is not likely
to make its full impression until wrought into
lofty beauty by a master of style, the worth
must nevertheless inhere in the substance
rather than in the form if the statement is to
make lasting effect upon the passing genera
tions. Moreover, it is very easy to over
emphasize the literary excellence of the
Scriptures. There are scores of passages
which, as we say, "go through one," but this
marvelous effectiveness is quite as likely to be
lodged in the idea itself and in the associa
tions which that idea arouses as in the form
of the passage. In some instances the liter
ary mold in the Authorized Version is such
as to hinder rather than to help ; so that the
prophet who seeks to add to the force of the
idea breaks the mold for literary recasting.
Still another may declare that the Scrip
tures are valuable because they abound in
79

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
hints which make for practical success —
shrewd moral maxims which aid all classes of
men in avoiding pitfalls, axioms for daily
conduct which ought to be accepted by every
body, even by those who care not for the reli
gion of the Bible. All this, again, is true,
but hardly sufficient to explain the grip of
the Bible on mankind. So far as the more
conventional morality goes, men are likely to
be ruled by the sentiment of the community
in which they move. They adapt themselves
to the demands of the situation at a partic
ular time rather than to a set of precepts.
Still others maintain that the human ideal
itself which we sketched in a previous chapter
is the determining factor in giving the Bible
power. The greatest study of mankind is
m'an. The erection of such an ideal as that of
the Scriptures for man cannot fail to secure
for the Book mighty power through all the
ages. And yet it must be replied that if we
take the Bible merely as portraying a human
ideal without reference to the idea of God
involved in the same process of revelation, we
cut asunder two things which properly be
long together. We must not forget that in
80

THE BOOK OF GOD
the history of Israel the prophets grasped at
every new insight concerning human char
acter as at the same time a new insight con
cerning the character of God. Attributing a
profoundly moral trait to God made it of
more consequence forthwith for man, and
thus the conceptions of man and God went
along together reenforcing each the other.
To separate the ideal of God from the ideal
of man leaves everything at loose ends for
the human ideal. It is true that there are
individuals here and there of intense intelli
gence and of immense wealth of moral en
dowment who do not seem to require any
ideal of God to sustain and strengthen their
ideal of man ; but for the most of us the ideal
of man cannot grow to any considerable size
without growth of our notion as to the char
acter of God. What man is now depends
somewhat on our thought of where man came
from, and what his place in the universe es
sentially is. One of our deepest yearnings is
to know whether our exalted belief about
man has any validity before the larger ranges
of the activity of the universe itself. It is
very common, for example, for those who go
81

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
forth to social tasks with a passion for hu
manity to lose that passion if they do not
keep alive a passion for God. Disappoint
ment with some phases of human nature
itself and despair over the failures of men
are apt to be so trying that the passion
for humanity dies down unless familiarity
with actual human life is reenf orced by com
munion with an ideal which reaches up
toward the Divine. We would ourselves
insist that the loftiest human ideal in all lit
erature is that of the Scriptures, but we must
insist also that this ideal lacks driving force
if it does not keep back of it the biblical doc
trine of God.
From the very outset the Hebrew Scrip
tures deal with God. "In the beginning
God," at the end God, and God at every
step of the journey from the beginning to
the end. There are other scriptures besides
the Hebrew Scriptures that deal with God,
but the kind of God set before us in the He
brew revelation gives the Bible its supreme
merit. Since we often hear that there are other
sources for the idea of God than the Scrip-
82

THE BOOK OF GOD
tures, it may be well for us to appraise the
contributions from some of those sources be
fore we look at the kind of God drawn for
us in the biblical writings. After aUowing
as high excellence as is possible to the theol
ogies obtained outside the Scriptures, the
moral and spiritual superiority of the scrip
tural ideal shines forth unmistakably.
Many a scientist tells us that we do not
further need the biblical idea of God in view
of the vast suggestions concerning the Divine
which science places before us. The world in
which we live has broadened immeasurably
since the days of the Hebrew prophets and
seers. The idea of God, broadening to corre
spond, has to expand so overwhelmingly that
we ought no longer pay heed to the imagina
tions of the biblical writers. Large numbers
of scientists to-day avow themselves devout
theists. Materialism is decidedly out of
fashion, and agnosticism is less in vogue than
a decade or two ago. The reverent scientist
affirms that he believes in a God whose om
niscience keeps track of every particle of
matter in a universe whose spaces are meas
ured by billions of miles, a God whose omni-
83

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
presence implies the interlacing of forces
whose sweep and fineness seen through the
telescope and microscope astonish us. More
over, the modem doctrine of evolution shows
us that the entire material system is moving
on and up from lower to higher forms. "It
doth not yet appear what we shall be," but
we shall clearly be something great and glori
ous. Now, far be it from us to belittle the
splendor of this scientific vision. Modem
scientific searchers are, indeed, finding in
numerable illustrations of the greatness of
God. There is every reason why the scien
tific investigator should rejoice in a calling
which enables him to think God's thoughts
after him; but when a scientist will have it
that his belief in God arises only from his
technical investigations, we must declare our
suspicion that he is employing his findings to
confirm a faith already held, though that
faith may be part of his unconscious spiritual
possessions. Many times the scientist is de
termined that the scientific discoveries shall
look in theistic directions just to satisfy the
imperious though unconscious demands of
84

THE BOOK OF GOD
his own soul. Some scientists are theists just
because they are bound to be so, for the close
contemplation of the entire situation in the
material realm does not make for any ade
quate theistic verdict. It is hard indeed to
believe that the nice adjustments of matter
and force occur without the governance of a
supervising intelligence. There are too
many facts which suggest skill to make it
easy to believe that the natural world is just
the outcome of a fortuitous concourse of
atoms. Science itself very likely establishes
a presumption in favor of a governing
mind, but the deeper question is as to the
character of that mind. Is it a moral
mind? At this point the hopeful evolu
tionist will break out that the progress is so
definitely from lower to higher that no one
ought to doubt the benevolence of the Power
moving upward through all things. Evolu
tion is, indeed, full of promises to one who
alrdady trusts in the goodness of God; but
the progress from lower to higher is not
always unmistakable. Often the survival of
the fittest is just a survival of those fittest
to survive, and not the survival of those
85

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
who ought to survive. There are too many
things which survive which ought to be
killed off. Simple good can give way to
complex evil without at all violating the re
quirements of the evolutionistic formula.
But even if we concede all that the scientist
claims for his conception of God ; if we grant
that terms like "omnipresence" and "omnis
cience" and "progress" clothe themselves
with new force in the Copernican and New
tonian and Darwinian terminology, we must
nevertheless insist that none of this rises to
the moral height of the biblical teaching.
Nor are we willing to admit that the bibfical
doctrine is to be discounted because it grew
up amid small theories of the material uni
verse. The old Hebrew views of the physical
system, outdated as they are now, are never
theless full of sublimity on their own ac
count. But even if they were infinitesimal
as compared with the vast stretches of mod
em scientific measurements, the moral
grandeur of the idea of God of which they
were the framework stands forth unmistak
ably. We must not permit the quantitative
bigness of modem scientific notions to ob-
86

THE BOOK OF GOD
scure the qualitative fineness of the biblical
ideal of God.
Modern philosophy comes also and an
nounces that it has a better God than that of
the Scriptures. The most imposing modern
philosophical systems are those which pro
claim some form of idealism. The gist of the
idealistic argument always is that the world
itself is nothing apart from thought; that
thought-relationships rule in and through all
things; that there are no things-in-them-
selves; that there can be no hard-and-fast
stuff standing apart from God. Things
must come within the range of thought or
go out of existence. There is no alterna
tive. Now, thought implies a thinker, and
this implication carries us at once to God.
Here, again, we have no desire to question
the cogency of the argument. We are
ready to admit that this is the strongest
theistic argument that has thus far been built.
To be sure, there are some questions that
inevitably suggest. themselves: What is the
thinker? Is it impersonal thought, as some
have maintained? Is it just the sum of all
forms of consciousness — our consciousnesses
87

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
being organs or phases of the Supreme Con
sciousness? Or is the thinker strictly per
sonal, carrying on a thought-world by the
power of his will and calling into existence
finite thinkers in his own image? Assum
ing that the world is the expression of the
thought of a Personal Thinker who acts in
the forces of nature and creates men in his
own image, the further question arises as to
the character of that Thinker. While re
turning the heartiest thanks to the idealist
for his argument — full as it is of aid for the
Christian system — we have to protest that
the argument does not lift us to the full height
of the ideal of God inculcated in the Scrip
tures. And if this is true of the majestic
systems of idealism, how much more is it
true of the other and less convincing systems
which are just now having their day! We
have already spoken of pragmatism as pos
sessing validity as a method, but pragmatism
can hardly cherish pretension of being itself
a system of religious philosophy.
Some very strenuous searchers after divine
treasures have professed to discover value in
various non-Christian religions. They have
88

THE BOOK OF GOD
patiently studied the great Indian world-
views, for example, which are admittedly the
most important religious creations outside
of Christianity. These students come back
to us with fragments of doctrines, gems of
ethical wisdom, traces of sublimity from the
Indian sacred books. It would be foolhardy
not to receive any genuine treasures, no
matter what the mine from which they have
been quarried. We are all eager to admit the
immeasurable possibilities of the Oriental
type of thinking for the development of
Christianity, but Oriental systems thus far
have been chiefly significant as indicating
what stupendous religious powers can do
when they are off the track. The Indian sys
tems of religion have run loose in India. As
a result, nowhere in the world has religion
been taken more seriously and more sincerely
than by the Indian peoples. It is simply im
possible to bring the charge against the In
dian races that they have not made the most
of their refigion. The final indictment to be
passed upon the Indian systems is that while
the Indian peoples have made the most of
those systems, the systems have made least of
89

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
the Indian peoples; and this because of the
defects in the conception of the Divine itself.
It is doubtful whether the Indian could call
his highest gods personal. If he declares
them personal, he can hardly make them
moral in the full sense ; that is to say, in the
sense of exerting their force on the world in
favor of justice and righteousness and love.
Now, it is just in the quality of moral force
that the God of the Scriptures shows his
superiority. The entire revealing process
can be looked upon as one long story of the
moralization of the idea of God. Let it be
granted that the biblical idea was at the be
ginning marked by the naive and the crude.
Personally, we have never been able to see
the pertinency of the reasonings which make
the Hebrew Jehovah as imperfect as some
students would have us believe. Neverthe
less, for the sake of the argument we will ad
mit limitations in the early Hebrew concep
tion of God. Even with such concession,
however, the outstanding characteristics of
that God were from the beginning moral.
Suppose that Jehovah was at the beginning
just a tribal Deity. The difference between
90

THE BOOK OF GOD
Jehovah and other tribal deities was that the
commandments which were conceived of as
coming from him looked in the direction of
increasing moral life for the people, and these
moral demands upon the chosen people were
conceived of as arising out of the nature of
Jehovah himself. To be sure, the early nar
ratives employ expressions like "the jealousy
of God," but even a slightly sympathetic
reading of the Scriptures indicates that the
jealousy was directed against whatever
would harm human life. In the mighty pic
tures of the patriarchs the heroes speak to
their God as if the same moral obfigations
rested upon God as upon themselves. There
is nothing finer in the Old Testament than
Abraham's challenge, "Shall not the Judge
of all the earth do right?"
We are not specially interested in the
growth of the ideas as to the power of God,
though we repeat that it is difficult for us to
believe that the early Hebrews thought of
their Deity as so narrowly limited in power
as some modern students seek to prove. The
conception of the might of Jehovah grew
through the centuries and followed upon the
91

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
extension of the knowledge of the Hebrews
about the world in which they lived. If to
morrow morning some revolutionary astro
nomical discovery should convince us that the
solar system is much vaster than we have ever
imagined, the theist would, of course, extend
the thought of the sway of God to all that
solar system. If there were some method of
becoming aware that the bodies of the entire
astronomical system are millions of times
more numerous than scientists ever have
dreamed, the theist would, of course, main
tain that the righteous purpose of his God
reaches to all of these bodies. The growth of
the Hebrew idea was somewhat parallel to
this. Even when the Hebrew thought of the
outside peoples as having gods of their own ;
he believed that as soon as his God came into
conflict with the other gods, he would shatter
them with his might. By the time the first
chapters of Genesis were written the Hebrew
conceived of God as creator of all things, and
thereafter the growth of the belief in the
power of God kept pace with the enlarging
view of the world.
We repeat that we are not much concerned
92

THE BOOK OF GOD
with the growth of the idea of the power
of God. We are, however, interested in the
manifest teaching or direct implication of
the Scriptures that from the beginning the
Hebrews thought of God as under obligation
to use his power for moral ends. What the
moral ends were depended upon the growth
of the moral ideal. At the very beginning
it was believed that since God had chosen
the people of Israel to be his people, he
must fight their battles for them. It is
from this point of view that we must deal
with the early idea of God as a God of
battles. God was wielding his force for a
moral purpose. Moreover, if God had
chosen a people to be the channel through
which he was to reveal himself to the world,
he must be very patient with that people.
How sublime is the Old Testament belief in
the patience of God toward Israel! To use
the phrase of our later days, God accommo
dated himself to the progress which the
people could make. When the prophets
called upon the people to walk with God,
they implied a willingness on God's part to
walk with the people. If they must lengthen
93

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
their stride, he must shorten his; he must
bear with them in their inadequate notions;
he must judge their efforts by the direction
in which they were tending rather than by
any achievement in itself.
It is from the point of view of their grow
ing apprehension of God as moral that we
can best understand the ferocity of the
Israelite toward the so-called heathen peo
ples. The boasting of the Israelites over the
slaughter of outsiders must be understood
from the faith in the moral destiny which the
prophets conceived the God of Israel to hold
in store for his people. The reason assigned
for cruelties and warfares upon heathen peo
ples was the abominations practiced by those
peoples. Of course it is possible for a stu
dent obsessed with the modern doctrine of
the economic determinism of history to say
that we have in the story of the Hebrew de
velopment just the play of economic forces
with moral aims assigned as their formal
justification. Assuming that the narratives
of the conquest of Canaan are true, what the
Hebrews desired — these economists tell us —
was the milk and the honey. They made
94

THE BOOK OF GOD
their so-called advance in obedience to God
an excuse for taking possession of the milk
and the honey. Now, he would be blind in
deed who would deny that economic values
do play their part in wars of conquest; he
would be foolish who would deny that wars
always do justify themselves by appealing
to lofty religious motives, but nevertheless
the impact of the Hebrew history upon the
life of the world has been a moral impact,
due to the belief of the Hebrews that they
were instruments in the hands of a moral
God. If we could behold the abominations
in heathenism upon which the old prophets
looked, we would sympathize quite readily
with an impulse which might seem to call for
outright destruction. A friend of mine, a
man of the most sensitive Christian feeling,
once stood on the banks of the Ganges and
watched people by the hundreds and thou
sands going through religious ceremonials,
some of which were defiling and others silly.
In the midst of the reeking vileness of one
scene in particular he said that he felt for the
moment an impulse like that of the old
prophets to cry out for the destruction of the
95

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
entire mass. The situation seemed so dread
ful and so hopeless! All this passed in an
instant to the loftier feeling of compassion,
but the stirring of the more primitive im
pulse was really moral in its foundation.
In any case, the old Hebrew notion was of a
God who would put a growing moral ideal in
the first place.
It is not necessary for us to attempt to
trace the steps of the growth of the moral
ideal for God. As we have said, that ideal
kept pace with the growth of the ideal for
man. We^ must call attention, however, to
the fact that the growth of the ideal was in
the direction of increasing emphasis upon the
responsibilities that go with power. The He
brew may not have definitely phrased the re
sponsibility, but he nevertheless shows his
increasing realization of the obligations rest
ing upon God. When we reach the later
prophets we discern that his moral obliga
tion upon God himself becomes more and
more a determining factor. There appear
glimpses of belief that God must not only
fight for his people, but that he must suffer in
their sufferings. It is of little consequence
96

THE BOOK OF GOD
for our present purpose whether the suffer
ing servant of Jehovah of the later Israel-
itish Scriptures is a group of persons or an
individual. The implication is that the suf
fering is a revelation of Jehovah himself.
Moreover, there appears a widening stream
of emphasis on the tenderness of God's care
for his people. The Hebrew writers com
paratively early broke away from the
thought of God as merely philanthropically
inclined toward Israel. They did not think
of him as bestowing gifts which were with
out cost to himself. They show him as
deeply involved in the life of the nation and
as caring for his people with an infinite com
passion. This enlarging revelation was made
clear to the people through the utterances of
prophets, the decrees of lawgivers, the songs
of psalmists, the interpretations of historians,
and the warnings of statesmen. Slowly and;
surely, moreover, the people attained grasp
on the doctrine that the greatest revelation of
God is the revelation in human character,'
itself. They began to look forward to the
coming of one who would in himself embody
the noblest and best in the divine life, who
97

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
would gather up in himself all the ideals and
purposes toward which the law and the
prophets had looked. New Testament
revelation as such we leave to the later
chapters, but we have come far enough, we
think, to warrant us in saying that only he
can understand the Scriptures who sees that
the chief fact about the Scriptures is the em
phasis on the moral nature of God. Other
Scriptures besides that of the Hebrews^we
might say scientific, philosophical, extra-
Christian Scriptures- — have stood for the ex
istence of God; but none have stood for the
existence of such a God as the God of the
Bible. The salient feature of the Bible is its
thought of God.

98

CHAPTER V
THE BOOK OF CHRIST
It is of course the merest commonplace
to say that the revelation of God in the Scrip
tures comes to its cfimax in Christ. The
revelation in Christ gathers up all that is
loftiest in the utterances of the Old Testa
ment and gives it embodiment in a human
life. It is legitimate to declare that there is
little either in the teaching of Christ or in
his character that is not at least foreshadowed
in the Old Testament. The uniqueness of
the Christ revelation consists in the manner
in which the separate streams of truth of the
law and the prophets and the seers and the
poets are merged together in the Christ
teaching, and in the fine balance with which
the ideal characteristics seen from afar by
the saints of the older day were realized in
the living Christ. We might justly say that
a devout reader of the Old Testament could
find rich elements of the Christ revelation
even if he should never see a page of the New
99

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
Testament. The virtue of the New Testa
ment, however, is that all the elements re
vealed throughout the course of the historic
periods of Israel's career are bound to
gether in the life and character of Christ. It
is no mere epigram to say that if the greatest
fact about the Scriptures is God, the greatest
fact about God is Christ. Any thorough
study of the Scriptures must revolve around
Christ as its center. If the Scriptures mean
anything, they mean that in Christ we see
God. Of course it is open to the skeptic to
reply that in all this the Scriptures are com
pletely mistaken; but he cannot maintain
that this is not what the Scriptures mean.
The Book comes to its climax with an honest
conviction that Christ is the consummate
revelation of God. The day when men could
charge any sort of manipulation of the mate
rial by Scripture writers for unworthy doc
trinal purposes is past. We have in another
connection said that each of the New Testa
ment books was, indeed, written with a defi
nite aim, but this does not mean that facts and
teachings were twisted out of their legitimate
significance. That Christ is the supreme gift
100

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
of God to men is so thoroughly built into the
bibfical revelation that there is no digging
that idea out without wrecking the entire
revelation itself. To maintain anything else
would be to do violence to the entire scrip
tural teaching. The burden of the entire
New Testament is that God is like Christ.
This may seem to some to be a reversal of
present-day approach to the study of the
Christ. We may appear to be attacking the
problem from the divine angle rather than
from the human. Why not ask what Christ
was rather than what God is? It is indeed
far from our purpose to minimize the rich
significance of the humanity of Jesus, but
we are trying now to get the scriptural focus.
We do not believe that we can secure that
focus by looking upon the character of
Christ as a merely human ideal. The might
of the scriptural emphasis is that Christ is the
revelation of God. We are well aware that
ordinary theological debate has centered on
the question as to the extent to which Christ
is like God. The Bible is colored with the
belief that God is like Christ. This may
seem at first glimpse to be a very fine dis-
101

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
crimination, but the importance of that dis
crimination appears when we reflect that
mankind is more eager to learn the char
acter of God than to learn how far a man
can climb toward divinity. In all such dis
cussions as this we proceed at peril of being
misunderstood, but we must repeatedly af
firm that important as is the problem as to
the human ideal set forth in Christ, the divine
ideal set forth in him is more significant as
explaining the hold of the Bible on men.
Is it not sufficient for us to behold a loftj^
human ideal in the portrait of Christ without
such emphasis on this ideal as also a revela
tion of the divine character? The answer de
pends upon what we are most interested in.
If we care most for a perfect and symmet
rical human life, we reply that we find that
perfection and symmetry in Christ. In our
second chapter we laid such stress upon the
importance of the enlarging human ideal that
we have committed ourselves to the im
portance of the Christ ideal as a revelation
of the possibilities of human life. But if we
take that ideal in itself without any refer
ence to the character of God, how much en-
102

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
largement does it bring us? As members of
the human race we can indeed be proud that
a human being has climbed to such moral stat
ure as did Jesus, but what promise does that
give that any other human being can attain
to his stature? As a member of the human
race I can be profoundly thankful for a phi
losopher like^ Kant. I can, indeed, dedicate
myself to the study of the Kantian philos
ophy with some hope of mastering it. I can
seek to reproduce in my life all the condi
tions that surrounded the life of the great
metaphysician, but I cannot hope to make
myself a Kant. Strive as I may, such trans
formation is out of the question. I may at
tain great merit by my struggle, but I cannot
make myself a Kant. The more intensely I
might struggle, the more convinced I would
become of the futility of my quest, and the
genius of the philosopher might tower up at
the end as itself a grim mockery of my ambi
tion. So it is with the Christ if he is not a
revelation of the God life at the same time
that he is an idealization of the human life.
Viewed as a revelation of God's character the
Christ life is the hope of all the ages. Viewed
103

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
only as a masterpiece of human life it might
well be the despair of mankind.
Of course there are those who believe that
it is impossible for Christ to be a revelation
of the human without also being a revelation
of the Divine. We have no desire to quarrel
with this position, though we find it more op
timistic than convincing. Incredible as it
may seem at first thought, the universe might
theoretically be regarded as a system ruled
over by a Deity who had brought forth a
character like that of Christ just for the sake
of seeing what he could achieve in the way
of a masterpiece, without being himself
fundamentally involved in self-revelation.
Christ might conceivably be a sort of poetic
dream of the Almighty rather than a laying
bare of the Almighty's own fife. We find
that human authors by an effort of great im
agination fashion creations in a sense com
pletely different from themselves. It might
be theoretically urged that the character of
Christ is different from the character of God.
If this seems very far-fetched, let us remind
ourselves then that there are those in the
present world who conceive of Christ as the
104

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
very highest peak of human existence and
yet deny that he has any sort of significance
as a revelation of the forces back of the
world. Such thinkers maintain that Christ
is the best the race has to show, and yet
affirm that the race is but an insignificant
item in the total massiveness of the universe.
The Bible establishes the faith of men against
skepticism like this by making the Christ-
ideal for God himself so attractive and ap
pealing. There are those who proclaim that we do
not need any revelations of God to make the
human ideal fully significant — the human
ideal stands by itself. Some such thinkers
go consistently the full length of saying that
they are willing to keep their eyes open to
the hopelessness of the universe. They can
see nothing beyond this life but total obliv
ion. Nevertheless, with their eyes open they
will fight on manfully to the end and take the
final leap into the dark without flinching.
They are very apt to add that their philos
ophy is the only unselfish one ; that the desire
of men for any sort of help from conceptions
about the Divine is selfishness where it is not
105

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
sentimentalism. It is fair to say that such
doctrines seldom meet large response. The
reason is not that men selfishly seek out a
God for the sake of material reward that may
come to them, but that they seek him for the
sake of finding a resting place for their minds
and souls, for the sake of cherishing an end
which seems in itself worth while, for the sake
of laying hold on a universe in which they
can feel at home. If this is selfishness, then
the activities of the human soul in its highest
ranges are selfish. If it is selfish to long for
a universe in which the heart can trust, it is
selfish also to enjoy the self-satisfaction with
which some of these thinkers profess to be
ready to take their leap into the night.
As we scan the history of Christianity since
the day of the Founder we are impressed that
religious organizations as such which arise
within Christianity tend to survive in propor
tion as they make central the significance of
Christ as the revealer of the character of
God. We would not for a moment under
estimate the importance of those groups of
Christians who take Christ merely as a
prophet who lived the noblest life and ex-
106

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
alted his truth by the noblest death. Many
such believers manifest the very purest devo
tion to Christ. They are his disciples. But
the historic fact is that organizations founded
on such doctrines alone do not win sweeping
triumphs. On their own statement the most
they hope to do is to spread the leaven of
their doctrine into the thinking of other
groups of Christians. Their service in this
respect is not to be disparaged, for at all
times the more orthodox opinion of Christ,
so called, needs the leavening of emphasis on
the humanity of Christ. But after all these
allowances it is just to affirm that theology
which sees only the human in Christ does not
come to vast power, and that clearly because
the world is chiefly interested in the ques
tion with which the entire biblical revealing
movement deals, namely, what is the nature
of God? With that question answered we
can best understand the nature of man and
the possibility of communion between man
and God.
We may be permitted to pick up the
thread of the argument in the last chapter
and ask again what moral purposes rule the
107

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
forces of this world. It must indeed be an
odd type of mind that does not at least occa
sionally ask what this world is for, and what
all this cosmic commotion is about. It is well
for all of us to do the best we can without
asking too many hard questions, but the
queries will at times come up and with the
normal human being they are not likely
easily to down. We are in the midst of
powers which defy our intellects. We do
not go far in the attempt to read the secrets
of nature around us without discovering that
all we can hope to spell out is the stages by
which things come to pass, and the mechan
isms by which they fit themselves together.
Why they come to pass is beyond us, except
in a most limited sense. The purposes for
which events occur in this world are not self-
evidently clear. Explanations of purposes
only make matters worse; and at any mo
ment this problem of the mystery of the uni
verse may take personal significance in the
form of a blow upon the individual which
seems to mock all hope of anything worth
while in human life. There is nothing more
futile than the attempts even of ministers to
108

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
divine the meanings of afflictions or of those
inequalities of lot which attend the natural
order. The preachers can encourage us to
make the most of a bad lot, but their guesses
as to why these things are ordinarily add
to our burdens. No, the mind of itself
just by contemplation of the things as
they are cannot find much light. This enig
ma has always been before the philosophers
in the form of the question as to physical suf
fering. A number of plausible answers
have been made as to the reasons for pain
in the present order. Leibnitz said that
even the Almighty creating the finite world
had to adjust himself to some limitations for
the good of the whole ; that if some forces are
to run in one direction, there must be mutual
concession and compromise in the adjust
ment of manifold other activities; and that
all this involves at least apparent stress and
injustice at particular points. This sounds
well enough, but why the afflictions of the
individual who happens to be one of the par
ticular points should be just what they are is
a mystery. The upshot is that the ordinary
man — the plain man, as we call him— must
109

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
either give up the whole problem by seeking
to forget it, or must rebel against it, or he
must find relief in a God whom he can trust
without being able to fathom his plans.
The tragedy of physical affliction is light
as compared to the tragedies which arise in
any conscience which seeks to take moral
duties seriously. To be sure, we live at pres
ent in a rather complacent age so far as the
struggles of conscience are concerned. The
advice of the world is to do the best we can
and let the rest go. We are not to take our
selves too seriously. But the long moral ad
vances of the race have come through those
who have taken the voices of conscience seri
ously. Now, what can a sensitive conscience
make of moral duty? Assume that we have
before us the exalted Christ ideal, and accept
this as the guide of our lives — -assume that we
even have hope of some day attaining to that
ideal — the distracting question is bound to
jump at us: Are we doing enough? Have
we sacrificed enough for those in worse plight
than ourselves? And what about our past
mistakes? Shall we go back and try to undo
these? At the very best that might be like
110

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
unraveling through the night what we have
spun through the day. It will not do to dis
miss this as unhealthiness or morbidness of
mind. William James has shown pretty con
clusively that the so-called normal or healthy-
minded moral life is apt to be shallow. The
great moral tragedy of the race is the dis
tance between the ideal and any possible at
tainment. We can console ourselves by say
ing that noble discontent is the glory of man ;
but that does not get us far. There is
onljr one way out, and that is to trust that
we are dealing with a Christlike God, that
his attitude toward us is the attitude of
Jesus toward men. It is impossible to feel
that in discipleship with Jesus men were
complacent about their own moral perfec
tions on the one hand, or harassed with
self-reproaches on the other. They were ad
vancing toward the realization of an ideal in
companionship with One who not only in
himself realized the human ideal, but who
taught them that all the forces of the world
would work together with them in their climb
toward perfection, and that God would be
patient with their blunders. Ill

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
The question as to the character of God be
comes more vital the longer we reflect. The
growing conscience of our time demands
that two conceptions be kept together —
that of power and that of moral responsi
bility. We cannot hold a person responsible
unless he has power; we cannot give a person
power unless he is willing to act under re
sponsibility. This realization is fast modify
ing all our relations to politics, to finance, to
industry, even to private duties. We are
swiftly moving toward the day when society
will insist that any measure of power which
has an outreach beyond the circle of the
holder's personal affairs shall be acquiesced
in by society only on condition that the holder
of that power be willing definitely to assume
responsibility to society. What we demand
of men we demand also of God, and we have
the scriptural warrant for believing that
these human demands are themselves hints
concerning the nature of God. Now, no one
doubts the power of God. All scientific and
philosophic trends are toward the centraliza
tion of power in some unitary source. All
our study of nature and of society convinces
112

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
us that there is a unity of power somewhere.
If this be true, there must be raised with in
creasing persistence the question as to
whether the World-Power is acting under a
sense of moral responsibility. There were
days when this problem was not raised as
it is now. Men assumed for centuries that
the king could do no wrong; that he could
order his people about in the most arbitrary
fashion. In our own time we have seen
advocacy of the doctrine that the man of
wealth is a law unto himself in the han
dling of the power that comes with wealth.
Such mistakes never were really a part of the
biblical idea. In shaping the threefold no
tion of priest and prophet and king to make
the people familiar with the functions of
God-sent leadership the strokes of emphasis
always fell on the responsibility of the
prophet to proclaim his message at whatever
cost to himself, of the priest to keep in mind
the sacredness of his office, and of the king
to rule in righteousness. These demands
were inevitably carried up to God: and in
Christ the supreme effort is made to convince
us that we can trust in the God of Christ,
113

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
though we may not be able to understand
him. This is not the place for an attempt at
determining the essentials of the Christ
career. Some features of that life, however,
as illustrating responsibility in the use of
power can be hinted at here. Take the story
of the temptation. We are not concerned
now with the historic form in which the temp
tation occurred. After the historians have
made all the changes in the drapery of the
story they choose, the fact remains that the
temptation narrative deals with the essential
problems of any leader confronted with a
task like that of Christ. The Messianic con
sciousness was a consciousness of power.
How should the power be used? Should it
be used to minister to human needs like those
of hunger? That would promise a quick
solution of a sort. The peoples would ea
gerly rally around the new deliverer. Should
there be an attempt to utilize the political
machinery of the time? There could be no
doubt of the effectiveness of this plan.
Should the exalted lofty spiritual state of the
Master be relied upon to carry him through
spectacular displays of extraordinary might
114

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
that would capture the popular mind ? Each
of these suggestions presented its advan
tages. Each might have been rightfully fol
lowed by some one with less power than Jesus
had; but for him any one of them would have
involved a misuse of power, and hence he cast
them all aside.
The miracles reported of Christ have this
for their peculiarity, that they show a power
conceived of as divine used for a righteous
purpose. It is significant that practically
all the miracles described are those of healing
or of relief. The kind of miracle that an
irresponsible leader would have wrought is
suggested by the advice of James and John
to Jesus to call down fire on an inhospitable
Samaritan village. The reported reply of
Jesus, "Ye know not what spirit you are of,"
is the final comment on such use of power.
Now, after we have made the most of the
miracles recorded of Jesus, after we have
made them seem just as extraordinary in
themselves as possible, their most extraor
dinary feature is this use to which the power
was put; and on the other hand, if we strip
the miracles of everything that suggests
115

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
breach of natural law and make them just
revelations of super-normal control over
nature through laws like those whose exist
ence and significance we are beginning to
glimpse to-day, still we cannot empty these
narratives of their significance as revealing a
morally responsible use of force. Let us be
just as orthodox as we can, the purpose of
the use of the forces is the supreme miracle ;
let us be just as destructively radical as we
please, we cannot eliminate from the Scrip
tures this impression of Christ as one who
used power with a sense of responsibility.
This revelation is one which the ages have al
ways desired.
We must be careful to keep in mind the
connection of the Christ fife with what came
before it and what has proceeded from it.
Here we have the advantage which comes of
regarding the Bible as the result of a process
running through the centuries. If the Bible
were not a library, but only a single book,
written at a particular time, we might well be
attracted by the nobility of its teachings, but
might despair of ever making the teachings
effective. There is no proving in syUogistic
116

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
fashion that Jesus was what he claimed to be,
or that he was what his disciples thought of
him as being; but when we see a massive re
vealing movement centering on the idea of
God as revealed in Christ, when we see the
acceptance of the spirit of Christ opening
the path to communion with the Divine, and
when we find increasing hosts of persons
finding larger life in that approach to the
Divine, we begin to discern the vast signifi
cance of the scriptural doctrine that in Christ
we have the revelation of the Christlike God.
In this discussion we have been careful to
avoid the terms of formal and creedal ortho
doxy. This is not because the present writer
is out of sympathy with these terms, but be
cause he is trying to keep to the main impres
sion produced by the New Testament. The
fundamental scriptural fact is that in Jesus
the early believers saw God; they came to
rest in God as revealed in Christ. This is
true of the picture of Christ in the earliest
New Testament writings. Modern scholar
ship has not been able to find any documents
of a time when the disciples did not think of
Jesus as the revealer of God. If the disciples
117

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
had not thought of Jesus thus, they would
have found little reason to write of him.
Now the scriptural authors employ various
terms to declare the unique intimacy of
Christ with God. In these expositions Jew
ish and Greek and even Roman thought
terms play their part. Passages like the
opening sentences of the fourth Gospel, or
like the great chapter in the Philippians, are
always profoundly satisfying and suggestive
in their interpretation of the fundamental
fact, but that fundamental fact itself is the
all-essential — that in Christ the New Testa
ment writers thought of themselves as having
seen God, and as having gazed into the very
depths of the spirit of the Father in heaven.
Believing as we do, moreover, in the helpful
ness of the creedal statements of the church,
we must nevertheless avow that such state
ments are secondary to the impression made
upon the biblical writers by actual contact
with the Christ. We must not lose sight
of the primacy of that impression as we study
our Scriptures. We must not limit the glory
of the impression itself by the limitations
of some of the explanations which we
118

THE BOOK OF CHRIST
undertake. Much harm has been done the
understanding the Scriptures by speaking
as if some of our creedal statements con
cerning Christ are themselves Scriptures!
The scriptural Christ is greater than any
creedal characterization of Christ thus far
undertaken. Of recent years an attempt has been made
to prove that no such person as Jesus ever
existed. The attempt has proved futile, but
it has had a significance altogether different
from what the propounders of the theory in
tended. The original aim was to show the
contradictions of the testimony concerning
Jesus and the inadequacies of the testimony
to his existence as an historical Person. The
result has been to show that the real signifi
cance of the Christ life is not to be found in
any particular utterance, or in any specific
deed, but in the total impact that he made
upon the consciousness of man as suggesting
the immediate presence of the Divine. The
quality of the Christ life satisfies us in the
inner depths as bearing witness to the quality
of the God life. We have no sympathy with
the views of the critics just mentioned; but
119

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
we must say that no matter how the thought
of God in Christ got abroad, no matter how
mistaken our thought of the historical facts
at the beginning of the Christian era, the be
lief in the Christlike God nevertheless did get
abroad. There is no effacing that conception
from the New Testament. No matter what
detailed changes in the narrative itself radical
criticism may think itself capable of making,
the door was opened wide enough in the
Christ for the divine light to stream through.
We said in the last chapter that the most
important feature of the biblical revelation
is God himself. We must now say that the
supreme fact about God is Christ.

120

CHAPTER VI
THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
If the central feature of the Scriptures is
their idea of God, and if the climax of the
bibfical revelation is Christ, the greatest fact
about Christ from the point of view of the
Bible is his cross. We say fact advisedly, for
we are not dealing with the theories that have
sprung up to interpret the meaning of the
cross. We are trying to deal solely with the
direct impressions which seem to have been
made upon the scriptural writers as to the
place of the cross in the revealing movement.
We said in the last chapter that the Scrip
tures reach their climax in the doctrine that
God is in Christ. The cross of Christ carries
to most effective revelation the Christlike
character of God. While we are not treating
now the various creedal dogmas as to the
person of Christ, we must not forget that
those dogmas have essayed as part of their
task the bringing of God close to men. The
truth embodied in the text that the Lamb
121

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
was slain from the foundation of the world
is essential to knowing the Scriptures. We
have seen that even as a warrior Jehovah was
thought of as willing to bear his part of
the burdens of the chosen people. We have
seen growing the idea that Jehovah was
under moral obligation to carry through the
uplifting work which he had begun. We
have seen prophets attain to glimpses of the
meaning of suffering for the divine life, and
we have beheld the culmination in the suffer
ing of Christ. In those perplexing phrases
of the creeds like, "Very God of very God,"
the aim of the church has been perfectly
clear — to guard the scriptural idea that
God was so truly in Christ that the suf
ferings of Christ were the sufferings of God.
Even when least intelligible the pain of men
becomes more easily borne if men can believe
that in some real sense their pain is also the
pain of God. That God is Christlike in ca
pacity to suffer is in itself a revelation of no
small consequence.
In the cross of Christ we see exalted with
surpassing power the belief that God acts
out of righteousness in his relation to the uni-
122

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
verse and to men. It must needs be that
Christ suffer. The writers seem unable to es
cape the conviction that they are beholding
the working of divinely inevitable moral
necessities. These moral obligations are
not to be conceived of as external to God
or imposed on him from outside of him
self. In the Scriptures they seem, rather,
to be expressions of his own nature. When
the writers of theories about the cross lay
stress on those profound obligations of God
toward moral law which must be discharged
in the work of redemption, the Scriptural
basis underneath such theories is the implica
tion that God, by the very fact of what he is,
must act righteously. His power is not his
own in such sense that he can act from arbi
trary or self -centered motives. The Judge
of all the earth must do right, at whatever
cost to himself. The Scriptures keep close to
the thought of God as a supremely powerful
Being under supreme responsibility in the
use of his power. If we can befieve the
Scripture that in Christ we see God, and
that the bearing of Christ during his suffer
ing reveals really and uniquely the bearing
123

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
of God himself, we have a revelation of the
grasp with which moral responsibility holds
the Almighty against even any momentary
slip into arbitrariness. Sometimes we hear
the sufferings of Christ preached as a pattern
of nonresistance for men. It is permissible
thus to interpret the cross within limitations ;
but this is not the essential aspect of the cross,
as explaining its hold on men. The all-im
portant doctrine as to the use of power is
hinted at in the Master's word that he had
but to call for legions of angels if he so chose.
Under most extreme provocation the forces
of the Almighty held to their appointed task.
If the Almighty had been conceived of as a
Despot or an Egotist, he would have been
expected to resort at once to revengeful vio
lence in the presence of such insults as those
of the persecutors of the Son of God. The
Source of all activity can hardly be conceived
of as passive; but the passivity of the Christ
of the cross suggests that no outrage by men
can divert the almighty power from its moral
purpose. This is really a gathering together
and lifting on high of the doctrine of the
Sermon on the Mount, that God maketh the
124

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
sun to shine upon the just and the unjust,
and causeth his rain to fall on the evil and
the good. That is to say, while the Bible
thinks of the cross as laying bare the Al
mighty's reaction against evil, it also thinks
of that cross as showing a God who will not
be disturbed by any merely "personal" con
siderations. We behold the Almighty's use
of power for the advance of a moral king
dom. The Almighty is set before us as ex
erting all his power for the relief of men.
The cross makes the profoundest revelation
of the moral fixedness and self-control of
God so long as we hold to the scriptural rep
resentation. It is to be regretted that many
theological theories break away from the
Scripture basis and build upon assumptions
which are artificial, not to say unmoral: or,
rather, in their striving after system they get
away from the atmosphere of moral sug-
gestiveness with which the Gospels and Epis
tles surround the cross.
That God will do his part in the redemp
tion of men is set before us in the cross.
That part can be nothing short of making
men yearn to be like Christ and of aiding
125

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
them in their struggle for the Christlike char
acter. It will be remembered that in the last
chapter we called attention to the hopeless
ness of the Christian ideal viewed as an ideal
in itself without a dynamic to help men to
realize the ideal. If Christ is only to reveal
to us the character toward which men are to
strive, we are in despair. That one man has
reached such perfection is in itself no promise
that other men may reach that perfection.
Moreover, the excellence of Christ is not only
a moral excellence ; or if it is moral excellence,
that excellence involves a balance of intellec
tual attributes which is for us practically out
of reach. Now, Christ is the ideal, but the
ideal is one toward which we not only labor
in our own strength, but one whose attain
ment by us is an object of solicitude for God
himself. And so we see in the cross a pa
tience which will bear with men to the ut
most, and which will reenforce them as they
press toward the goal. The glory of Chris
tianity is largely in the paradox that it sets
before men an unattainable ideal and then
commands them to attain the ideal. If the
cross is nothing but a revelation of an ideal
126

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
for men, this paradox is insoluble and intoler
able. In the scriptural light of the cross,
however, we catch the glory not of an ab
stract ideal, but of a Father's love for his
children — ^not of the commands of conscience
in the abstract, but of the desires of a per
sonal Friend who will lift men as they
stumble and faU. The ground for this pa
tience seems as we read to be in the very na
ture of God himself. God has brought men
into this world without consulting them, he
has dowered them with the terrific boon of
freedom, he has set them in hard places ; but
he has done this out of a moral and loving
purpose. He therefore makes more allow
ances for men than exacting men ever can
make for themselves. He puts at the service
of men so much of his power as they can
appropriate by their moral effort. The
Christ of the cross is taught as the truth
about God — the God who is at once the
supremely real and the supremely ideal
places his powers at the service of men who
would make their Christ-ideal progressively
real in themselves.
The power of the Bible over men centers
127

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
around the teaching that the cross not only
reveals God as morally bound to redeem men,
but that it also shows us the divine aim in
redemption. Men are to be redeemed by
seeking for forgiveness in the name of the
moral life set on high by the cross, but
the repentant soul is to show its sincerity
by devotion to the task and spirit of cross-
bearing. The aim of the cross is to bring
men together into a fellowship of the cross,
in a fellowship of suffering for the sake
of the moral triumph to be won at the
end. We are accustomed to think of suffer
ing as implying the possibility of joy. The
man who can feel keen sorrow can feel keen
joy; they who have the power to weep have
also the power to laugh. In the final king
dom the weeping shall be turned into joy.
But, according to the Scriptures, it is not
necessary for the disciples to wait until the
consummation before entering into the joy
of their Lord. There is an entrance to the
divine mind through bearing the cross.
Those who desired to learn of Christ as true
disciples were expected to take up the cross
and carry it daily. The Master also declared
128

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
that the disciples were to think of themselves
as blessed when they endured persecution for
righteousness' sake, for men had persecuted
the prophets in all ages. The implication is
that knowledge of 'and sympathy with the
prophets came out of cross-bearing like that
of the prophets. To use a simple illustra
tion: a student of the careers of the leaders
of any reform might gather a mass of in
formation about the reformers in an outside
kind of fashion, as by the study of books, or
by visits to the scenes of their struggles.
Such a student, however, could not master
the inner spirit of a reformer's fife until he
himself had battled for some cause at risk to
himself. So the man who seeks to bear the
cross of Christ is on the path to sympathetic
inner knowledge of the spirit of Christ. In
oiu" second chapter we called attention to the
truth that approach to knowledge of God is
through the doing of the will of God. Doing
of the wiU, according to Jesus, means much
more than just a roimd of good deeds. It
means carrying the burdens which are inevi
table in cross-bearing. There is good reason
for befieving that the very highest step in
129

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
spiritual learning is taken only through the
willingness to bear the cross. In our modern
educational systems we lay varying degrees
of stress upon the importance of different
methods of acquiring knowledge. There is
at the bottom of the scale the method of
mastering the instruction of the teacher by
attention and reflection. There is, next, the
method of learning through one's own ex
periment — through using microscope or tele
scope or textbook for oneself. There are,
further, the social aids to the quickening of
the mind as groups of students study and dis
cuss together. But the deepest knowledge
comes as the student feels his sympathy and
feeling involved. If he must pay himself out
for the acquisition of the truth, or if he must
defend his conclusions at great cost to him
self, this experience which involves the feel
ing involves also the sharpening of the intel
lect. The eyes of the soul are opened to the
subtler intuitions. Thus it is in the revela
tions of the divine purpose in the Scriptures.
It is hard to make out how anybody can hope
to master a revelation of a cross-bearing
God without himself being a cross-bearer.
130

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
In the New Testament narratives of Pas
sion Week the Master is reported as win
ning his surest convictions of the presence of
God and of the victory of his truth at the
very instant when he entered into the ex
treme depths of suffering. In the after days
it was when the saints faced stoning that they
saw the heavens opening; it was the apostle
who had suffered hardships almost too nu
merous to mention who got the most positive
conviction of the reward which awaited him.
In the school of Christ the very heaviest
stress must fall upon the indispensability of
cross-bearing as a means to understanding.
Not only does the biblical revelation see
in the cross of Christ the culminating mani
festation of the character of God, and of the
purpose of God in redemption, but it also
shows to us the divine method in helping
men. We have spoken of those who dwell
upon the Master's nonresistance as a model
of passivity in the presence of evil. The ex
ample of Christ when thus treated is in
danger of being misinterpreted. The Christ
of the cross was passive so far as physical
force was concerned ; but he was never more
131

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
intensely active in the higher ranges of his
faculties — in self-control and in alertness to
the finer whisperings of the spirit. The
Christ's non-resistance to the physical might
of evil is not to be interpreted as acquiescence
on the part of the Divine toward the ravages
of evil, but, rather, as the divine method of
thwarting evil by allowing it to reveal itself.
No amount of preaching about the nature of
evil can equal in eloquence the self -revela
tions of that nature as it works itself out into
expression. While in a degree the self-
revelation of evil put forth against Christ
was unique, yet we must remember that the
sins which put Christ to death are just those
commonest in all time. Judas was disap
pointed. He carried spite no more tena
ciously than the ordinary heart is capable of
treasuring it. Caiaphas desired simply to
hold his own position and preserve the peace
of his nation. Very likely the type of opin
ion in the midst of which Caiaphas moved
would have pronounced that he rendered a
disagreeable, but nevertheless necessary pa
triotic service in his condemnation of Christ.
Pilate too meant well, but was afraid of the
132

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
crowd. His friends may have commended
his administrative wisdom in allowing the
people to have their own way. It was the
play of just such ordinary forces of sin
against an extraordinary hofiness that made
it impossible for the mightiest revelation ever
vouchsafed to man to work through the
earthly activity of Jesus for more than a few
months. The Scripture does not have much
to do with abstract sins ; with concrete sins of
men as we actually find them, it has much
to do.
The Scriptures make it very clear that
there is something which satisfies God him
self in the work of redemption. God acts out
of moral obligation, out of self-respect, out
of love. But he acts always in respect for
men as free moral beings. The cross appeals
to the free spirit of men to behold the nature
of evil, and to flee from that evil toward their
redeeming God. If the redemption is to be
a moral redemption, the last detail of the
method must be moral. The power of the
Almighty must not be used to break down
freedom of men. It would be theoretically
possible for an almighty power to bring to
133

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
bear such pressures upon human wills as to
crush them, but the strongest representation
of the power of God in the New Testament
does not go to the length of hinting at inter
ference with the freedom of men. Men are
to be saved as free men or not at all. We
might conceivably imagine the Almighty as
granting such indubitable vision of the mate
rial rewards of righteousness and the mate
rial loss of unrighteousness as would irre
sistibly draw masses of a certain grade of
men into the Kingdom without a morally
free consent to righteousness. Or we might
conceive of the Almighty as so weighing this
or that factor of environment as to diminish
almost to the vanishing point the free choice
of men. This kind of compulsion would not
be moral. The only compulsions of the cross
are those of a moral God splendidly attrac
tive on his own account.
It will have occurred to some readers by
this time that we have said very little about
the love of God in our discussion of the
Scriptures, whereas that love is the outstand
ing feature of the biblical revelation. Our
reply is that we have been trying to be true to
134

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
the impression made by the Scriptures as to
the kind of love which we must think of as
expressing the deepest fact in God's life. We
would not in the least minimize the truth that
love is the last word of the scriptural revela
tion ; but in our modern life we are apt to get
away from the quality of the love revealed in
the Bible. The love of the cross is built upon
the righteousness which runs through the
Sacred Book from the beginning to the end.
A god of indifferent moral quality might
love. The old Greek gods had favorites upon
whom they lavished their affections. A god
might be conceived of as an amiable and well-
wishing father, foolishly indulgent toward
his children. The love of the New Testa
ment, however, is the love of a Father who
dares to appeal to the children to make heroic
response; and who shows his own love for
them in the lengths to which he will go for
them. Moral love will go the full length of
heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot help believ
ing that it is the quality of God's love, rather
than the mere fact of that love, which is the
explanation of the power of the bibfical
teaching. 135

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
A friend of mine many years ago wrote a
book which he called The Hero God. The
publishers objected to the title because they
saw in it a touch of sensationalism. No title,
however, could have more adequately set
forth the biblical God. God is the hero of the
Bible. His heroism appears in growing
revelation from the beginning. It shows
itself superbly in his willingness to bear the
burdens of mankind and in the appeals which
he makes for response from men. The pic
ture is of a God who dares to believe in men
and who dares to call on them for the ex
tremes of self-sacrificing devotion, not to
himself as an arbitrary Person, but to him
self as the center of the moral life which is
above all other life worth while. It is open
to anyone to object that this bibfical picture
does not necessarily hold good for God; but
it is hardly possible to object that the picture
is not biblical. The picture stands in its own
right and makes its own appeal. The only
way to test it in life is to yield to its
appeal. If we are asked to account for the power
of the Bible, we are at a loss for any one
136

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
single statement. The most compendious
reply is the magnetism of the love of God
as revealed in Christ. This is so broad,
however, that it may not make a direct
and vivid impression. We may say, then,
that one element of the magnetism of the bib
fical revelation is the magnetism of the
appeal to the heroic. Whatever else the
Bible may or may not be, it is not a book of
soft and easy things. Breaths of the most
rigorous life blow across every page. It is
made for man in that it calls men to the
service of the highest and best. The religious
systems which make the fewest and least de
mands upon their followers most speedily fall
away; those that call for the utmost are most
fikely to meet the enthusiastic response.
There is a frank honesty about the biblical
appeal which holds a charm for all men in
whom there are any sparks of real manhood.
The severities of the Christian life are no
where disguised. Men are never lured on by
false pretenses. The path is the path of cross-
bearing, and the reward is the comradeship
between God and man as they together work
toward the highest goal, a comradeship which
137

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
of itself brings relief to men burdened with
the mystery of the universe and agonized by
remorse over sin.
This essay is quite as significant for what
it has not said as for what it has said. In our
omissions we have tried to keep clear the
main outlines of scriptural revelation. We
have sought to hold fast to principles rather
than to discuss details. We have done this
because we have believed that there is more
value for religious understanding in pointing
out the loftier biblical peaks which give the
direction of the whole range than in tracing-
out pathways through detailed passages.
Moreover, we have been afraid to employ
many theoretical terms lest we blur the quick
moral impressions made by the Scripture
phrasings. For example, it may be objected
that our treatment of the character of God is
altogether inadequate. We have not thus
far said a word about the Trinity, for ex
ample, or about atonement. The reason is
that we believe that any theories about God
must base themselves upon the moral sugges
tions of the Scriptures; and our business is
with these rather than with the theories.
138

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
The received revelation concerning God
would warrant us in fashioning any theory as
to the richness of his inner constitution which
might even measurably satisfy our minds.
The scriptural atmosphere as to the moral
fife in God must, however, be kept in the
chief place in all of our theological theories.
Atonement must be interpreted chiefly in
terms of ethical steadiness if it is to build on
a bibfical foundation. But the instant we use
formal terms like "Trinity" and "atone
ment" we have taken at least one step away
from the Scriptures. Again, we have said
nothing about Divine Providence. The
Bible is full of instances of providences, but
here also we have preferred to let the funda
mental moral character of the biblical God
speak for itself. We may have our own be
lief that there is no scriptural warrant for
that separation which obtains in much theol
ogy between the processes of God and the
processes of nature. We may admit that the
Hebrew had no very systematically framed
theory of the processes of nature, but he
deemed God to be in such close touch with
nature as easily to control its forces for a
139

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
good end. In two accounts of the crossing
of the Red Sea by the Israelites we have an
apparent contradiction which is at bottom
not a contradiction. In one account God
seems to cause the waters to wall up on both
sides of the Israelites in defiance of the laws
of nature. In another God accomplishes the
drying of the path through the blowing of a
strong east wind. The Hebrew would not
have troubled himself much with the appar
ent contradiction, for he would have con
ceived of God as the chief factor in either
event, and of his purpose as having the right
of way. There is thus no great value in dis
cussing specific instances as long as the care
of God for his children is the animating pur
pose of the entire biblical content. So with
answers to prayer — the God who is willing to
go for men to the lengths revealed in the
cross will surely answer any prayer worth
answering. The essential is to lift prayer up
into harmony with the entire revealing and
redeeming movement, and to conceive of it
as a fitting of the whole life into the purposes
of a moral God. Certain general require
ments would always have to be met. Prayer
140

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
would have really to deal with what is best
for the individual, best for those around him,
and most in harmony with the character of
God himself. So, again, with the progress
of the kingdom of God on earth — the God of
whose nature the cross is the final revela
tion can be trusted to do the best possible
for the Kingdom here and now. Much
debate about the second coming of Christ
misses the great moral principles which
are the heart of the Christian revelation
and loses itself in the incidental forms in
which those principles were declared. The
best preparation for the coming of the king
dom of Christ is absorption in the principles
of Christ and in the spirit of Christ. To get
away from these in our search for external
and material conditions which are the mere
vehicle of the biblical thought is not only to
pursue a will-o'-the-wisp, but to injure true
spiritual progress. Jesus has given us the
spiritual principles which must control the
destiny of any society here and now. In the
light of the Christ-faith revealed in the cross
we must not despair of the redemption of
men by the cityfull and by the nationfuU,
141

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
for the greatest confidence ever placed in men
is the implied trust of the cross of Christ.
The Almighty at the beginning paid an im
mense tribute to the human race when he
flung it out into the gale of this existence.
In the light of the cross we cannot believe
that He expected the race to sink. In the
cross the Christ who revealed God's own
mind showed the length he was wiUing to
go in confidence that men would finally turn
to him with all the powers of their lives. To
throw up our hands and say that the world is
getting worse and we can do nothing without
a speedy physical return of the Christ is to
overlook the spiritual forces of the cross.
We have said nothing about immortality .-
What the Scriptures themselves say is
largely incidental. The Master did not allow
himself to be drawn into any extended con
versation about the details of a future fife,
but he did give us the God of the cross. In
the presence of that cross we can profess the
utmost confidence in the eternal life of the
sons of God, while at the same time acknowl
edging the utmost ignorance as to any of the
material conditions of the future life. It is
142

THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
commonly assumed that the resurrection of
Christ proves that we shall likewise rise, but
the rising of Christ does not of itself prove
that others shall rise. The cross, however —
showing the extent to which the Divine is
willing to go for men — is the ground of our
hope. God will not leave his loved ones to
see corruption. In a word, the cross of
Christ gathers up all the biblical truth. It is
a revelation of God's own character, of his
hope for men, of the methods by which he
seeks to win men, and of the ground of our
faith in a right outcome for men and for
society. We may be permitted to summarize by
saying that scientific and historical bibfical
study is a preparation for the knowledge of
the Scriptures ; that it is exceedingly impor
tant that the student approach with the cor
rect preliminary point of view. The revela
tion of the inner significance, however, does
not dawn until there is recognition of the
need of obedience to the principles laid down
in the Scriptures. And this obedience must
be broad enough to include zeal for the uplift
of our fellow men in all phases of their fives.
143

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
Out of righteous living the devoted life, we
believe, will see that the greatest fact of the
Bible is God; that the greatest fact of God is
Christ ; that the greatest fact of Christ is the
cross.

144

YALE UNIVERSITY I

3 9002 05047 3751

¦Jll III I'll"

iiiftdJ:iiili!iiiii|i|||i|i|| i i i ! '

rM

'''Fl'!''l'iiiili' n !

' ' ir' I'll' 1
" I : ' I *
I'lilillil

i

I I
is Hi if 1 i'!i^'!''' .

,1 ' ' 'i •'¦i'l'!i!i|lj!ii|

i iiiiii;!.:

iili I
1 1111
iyiii III

liliiiiH

ill)

illlll[!|jil!l!l!l!i;

1 1 1

i I
'\ > '.I

'.i'li

1'' '.
.It!l

!l
''1 ,,
I'm,,

m

\'i ,'