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 Use of the Scriptures in theoiogy; the N 
 
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 3 1924 029 370 511 
 
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THE USE OF THE SCRIPTUEES 
 IN THEOLOGY 
 
THE USE OF THE SCRIPTURES 
 n THEOLOGY 
 
 THE 
 
 KATHANIEL WILLIAM TAYLOR LECTURES 
 For 1905 
 
 given before the divinity school op yale university 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 
 IN COLGATE UNIVERSITY 
 
 CHAELES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 NEW YORK 1905 
 
"5 \^^^\ 
 
 Copyright, 1905, 
 By Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 Published May. 1905 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. 8. A. 
 
 £V 
 
AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM 
 
 PER 
 
 SCRIPTURAS SANCTAS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These lectures were delivered before a school of 
 Theology, but their purpose is popular, quite as 
 much as it is professional. They are intended to 
 serve as a help toward the right using of the Bible 
 in present conditions, whether by students, by 
 preachers, or by the people. 
 
 There is a widespread impression that modem 
 studies upon the Bible tend to diminish, or even to 
 destroy its value for the purposes of theology and 
 religion. Against this impression these lectures 
 utter a protest and offer reasons. The Bible con- 
 tinues to be the unspeakably precious treasure of 
 Christendom, and will retain its place and power as 
 the manual of Christianity and the book of God for 
 men. But its place and power must be preserved 
 through perfectly frank recognition of the facts 
 concerning it, and use of it for exactly what it is. 
 Modern study shows it to be in some important re- 
 spects a different book from what it has been 
 thought to be, and it is necessary that we learn to 
 use it in a manner that corresponds to its character 
 thus ascertained. Out of unbehef or fear con- 
 cerning the future of the Bible, we must come to 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 a living confidence in the abiding value of our holy 
 hook, and to the practice of using it in the new 
 manner which our new understanding of it requires. 
 The road leads forward: return to old methods is 
 impossible, and devotion to new methods that are 
 now open to us is full of hope. 
 
 These lectures point the way toward the methods 
 of the future, which the present needs at once to be 
 taking as its own. Save that a few additions have 
 been made, they are published as they were deliv- 
 ered, with no departure from the style of direct 
 address. May He to whose service they are dedi- 
 cated make them helpful to his children, often per- 
 plexed in the present controversies over the book 
 that they hold dear and sacred. 
 
 W. N. C. 
 
 Colgate Uxiversity, 
 
 Hamilton, New Yohk. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Pagb 
 
 I. The Problem, or the present situation, and how 
 the wrong using of the Scriptures has wrouglit 
 harm to Theology . . . . . .1 
 
 II. The Principle, or how Theology in using the 
 Scriptures must be loyal to the one great dis- 
 tinction that is found within them 49 
 
 III. Results Negative, or how the right using of the 
 
 Scriptures removes all else from equality with the 
 Christian Message . . ... ... 88 
 
 IV. Results Positive, or how the right using of the 
 
 Scriptures fills Theology with the Christian glory, 
 
 and sets the Scriptures in the place of power . 127 
 
THE USE OF THE SCRIPTURES 
 m THEOLOGY 
 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 These lectures on the use of the Scriptures in 
 theology come forth from the experience of one 
 who began his life fully inheriting the view of 
 the Bible that was prevalent half a century ago ; 
 who has lived till now through the period of in- 
 vestigation and change, never an expert in bibli- 
 cal studies but always an eager watcher of the 
 work ; who has found himself borne on to a view 
 of the Bible unlike that which he inherited ; who 
 has been called to construct a system of theology ; 
 who has used the Scriptures in that work with 
 reverence and love, and in deference to a princi- 
 ple that seems to him both rational and Christian, 
 though he might wish that he had done it better 
 justice ; who sees the Christian people sorely per- 
 plexed to know just what the Bible is and how 
 it ought to influence their beliefs, now giving it 
 
2 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 up as they need not do, now grasping it desper- 
 ately by untenable arguments lest they lose it, 
 now using it timidly and with weak reserve be- 
 cause they are uncertain of their hold; and who 
 feels that the time has come for frank discussion 
 of the manner in which, with present light, the 
 Scriptures should be used in forming theological 
 belief, whether in schools of divinity, in the pul- 
 pit, in the instruction of the young, or in the 
 life of the private Christian. 
 
 The present hour will be spent in pointing out 
 the problem that confronts us when we endeavor 
 to form a theology by the aid of the Scriptures. 
 The situation is the problem. 
 
 Let us imagine ourselves a company of theo- 
 logical revisers, sitting down as in the Jerusalem 
 chamber at Westminster, to formulate our theol- 
 ogy. We are Christians, and it is Christian the- 
 ology that we are to bring into expression and 
 order. The nature of our task is set before us 
 in the definition of theology ; and though we 
 might define the term in various ways, probably 
 we shall agree, in substance, that theology is the 
 orderly presentation of what we have reason to 
 hold as true concerning God and the relation of 
 men to him. We shall treat many topics, but 
 
THE PROBLEM 3 
 
 they all centre here. God, man, the relations be- 
 tween the two, and what may follow therefrom, 
 these are our themes. A true theology would be 
 an orderly presentation of truth concerning these. 
 
 Before us lie the Scriptures, or the Bible. And 
 what are these ? The Scriptures are those writ- 
 ings, ever sacred among Christians as was the 
 older part among the Hebrew people, in which 
 is preserved the record of Hebrew and early 
 Christian religion, with Jesus Christ and his gift 
 to mankind as the crowning element. In the 
 older part we find the long story of religion in 
 the Hebrew race : the history variously told, the 
 ancient laws, all attributed to God, the weighty 
 words of prophets spoken in the name of God, 
 the songs of religion, and the various other forms 
 in which the sense of God expressed itself. But 
 the specialty of the Bible is Jesus Christ. On 
 these pages we have practically all that we know 
 of his history and his words. He uttered the 
 highest, simplest, most self-evidencing, most final 
 body of truth concerning God and the relations 
 of men to him that this world has ever received ; 
 and here we find it, together with writings that 
 show how it was understood by receptive minds, 
 and brought into life as a transforming power. A 
 
4 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 rich and various treasure our Bible offers us, 
 both in religion and in the history of religion; 
 and as the crown of the whole we have the no- 
 blest view of religion that was ever known, open- 
 ing out by the spiritual power of God into the 
 finest life with God that was ever lived by men. 
 
 Evidently we must use the Scriptures in mak- 
 ing our theology. Their theme is our theme. 
 We treat of God in his relations with men, and 
 they treat of the same, most clearly, luminously, 
 divinely. For our purpose they are of the first 
 importance, and we cannot dispense with their 
 testimony. They must be used, and so used 
 that their high contribution shall come into our 
 theology with its utmost value. 
 
 And of course if they are to be used they must 
 be used for what they are. This is the simple 
 word of honesty. In using them we must rely 
 upon no untenable theories or unprovable assump- 
 tions, either belittling or exaggerating their value. 
 As a whole, and part by part, we must give them, 
 and give them only, the weight to which their real 
 value entitles them, whatever that may be. And 
 our valuation of the Scriptures for theological use 
 must be an intelligent valuation, based upon all 
 that we have means of knowing about them. 
 
THE PROBLEM 5 
 
 Hence we must make it our business to know. 
 Estimates of a former time may prove correct and 
 adequate, and they may not, — that is for us to 
 discover. First of all in our using of the sacred 
 book is the oath of allegiance to truth and fact, 
 the solemn and conscientious resolve that we will 
 receive all knowledge about the Bible as it comes, 
 and that whatsoever is established as fact and truth 
 shall be allowed the force of truth in our theology. 
 This seems an easy oath to take, for it is only the 
 common vow of honesty ; and yet it may not 
 prove an easy vow to keep, for powerful influ- 
 ences from religion itself rise up to tempt us away 
 from keeping it. Nevertheless so far as we have 
 light we must use the Scriptures for exactly what 
 they are. Only so can we look into the face of 
 God when he asks us how we have sought to 
 know the truth. 
 
 The problem is not for us alone, teachers and 
 students in theology. It is for all people. Thus 
 far there has been no book so influential as the 
 Bible. All persons who feel religion to be a vital 
 concern have some sort of theology, and all Chris- 
 tians look to the Bible as chief contributor to the 
 theology which they should hold. Therefore they 
 all need to use it rightly, and for just what it is. 
 
6 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 By what process is the man in the street to be 
 guided by the Bible in his theological convictions ? 
 What is that Bible which lies on every pulpit, 
 gives the preacher his texts, and is the acknowl- 
 edged guide of his religious teaching? How is 
 it to be conceived, and how employed for his 
 purpose? What is the book that is opened by 
 every Sunday-school teacher for instruction of the 
 young? and how should it be used? That these 
 questions are not settled is plain to all. To-day 
 there is a scholarly view of the Bible, and there 
 is a popular view of the Bible, and they are an 
 appalling distance apart. I am not thinking of the 
 varieties into which each of these views is broken 
 up. I mean simply that there is a popular reli- 
 gious view of the Bible, fairly recognizable and 
 fairly well agreed upon, and that there is in like 
 manner a well-accepted scholarly view, which is not 
 the work of freaks or infidels but includes a mass of 
 facts now known and certain. Between these two 
 there is indeed an appalling difference, which 
 nevertheless must some day be overcome. The 
 problem is upon us. 
 
 It might seem too late in the day for a problem 
 about the use of the Scriptures in theology to 
 exist. They have always been used, and we might 
 
THE PROBLEM 7 
 
 think the right method must have been settled 
 long ago by practice. But the problem lies in 
 the nature of the case. A theologian must judge 
 what his documents are, how he stands related 
 to them, and in what manner they bring him truth. 
 If we were the first makers of theology we should 
 encounter this problem ; as it is, we encounter it 
 increased and intensified by our inheritance from 
 the past. 
 
 We encounter a problem of the present time, for 
 just now the question what the Scriptures are is 
 answered in new ways, after new studies. If we 
 are to use the Scriptures for what they are, it is 
 very little to ask that we should put them in their 
 chronological order and let them interpret them- 
 selves thereby. Modern study proposes a new 
 chronological order, which makes the Bible partly 
 a different book. It puts the various parts in new 
 settings, and so changes their effect. This must be 
 considered, and so must new testimony as to 
 authorship and quality. And in general (for I can- 
 not recount the items in detail) there has been a 
 vast amount of intellectual work upon the Bible, — 
 good work, by honorable methods, but work that 
 yields for theology one-sided results. It is inter- 
 rogative, critical, analytical. It is valuable, but its 
 
8 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 first results are rather negative than positive. 
 Apparently, the immediate and visible hold of 
 theology on the Scriptures has been weakened 
 rather than strengthened by the recent biblical 
 study. Constructive work is beginning which 
 will help theology again, but it is not yet very 
 far advanced, and theology waits the final out- 
 come. Just what the available biblical material 
 is ultimately to be is not quite evident as yet. So 
 our Bible is placed in our hands to-day with an 
 open question. 
 
 But we inherit objections to the open question. 
 The past hands us our Bible in a very definite 
 fashion. When we take it up for our present task 
 it comes to us consecrated, defined, and interpreted 
 by long use, upon methods that have become as 
 sacred as they are familiar. All religion is de- 
 clared to be on the side of these principles and 
 practices, and we are warned in the name of God 
 not to depart from them. And yet it remains true 
 that we must decide for ourselves, in our own best 
 light. Must the modern knowledge be silent in 
 the presence of sacred tradition, or must sacred 
 tradition give way in the presence of modern 
 knowledge? Or how are the genuine values in 
 both to be preserved? 
 
THE PROBLEM 9 
 
 When we consider these ways in which the 
 Bible has already been used in theology, it does 
 not take us long to find that instead of solving 
 our problem they intensify it. We inherit from 
 practices that have embarrassed theology in the 
 past and burdened it with perplexities in the 
 present. That a practice is established and ven- 
 erable is often taken to be a pledge of its value, 
 whereas it may be only a chain that binds upon 
 us a needless weight. Theology at present is 
 struggling to be free from certain methods of 
 using the Scriptures by which it has been pre- 
 vented from coming to its best efficiency. It is 
 part of our problem to know how to depart from 
 practices that have become sacred and yet have 
 done injury to our science. 
 
 A first question, if we are to use the Bible in 
 theology, is whether we are to use it all. But 
 question at once opens down into question. What 
 is meant by " all " ? How much is included in the 
 Scriptures? Here is a question that obviously 
 underlies our whole inquiry, but it is one to 
 which scant justice has been done in the history of 
 theology. From the old point of view, the ques- 
 tion of the Canon is much more important than 
 theologians generally have made it. Before the 
 
10 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Bible can rightly be used as theology has been 
 wont to use it, its limits ought to be clearly defined 
 and established: it ought to be shown exactly 
 what books are set apart as sacred writings, and 
 on what grounds these very ones are entitled thus 
 to be distinguished from all others. To justify 
 such use as has prevailed, there is need of a clear 
 and conclusive doctrine of the Canon of Scripture, 
 — a need that has been greatly overlooked. It is 
 a very singular fact that Protestant theology has so 
 steadily assumed the Protestant Canon as divinely 
 authorized, when the current manner of using the 
 Scriptures required it to be clearly proven. A 
 part of the present problem results from this, for a 
 sacred book is offered for our use, and we are asked 
 to employ it in a manner that calls for more at- 
 tention than has been given to the proof of its 
 separateness from all other books. 
 
 But we will take the familiar book that lies 
 before us, and return to our inquiry whether in 
 theology we are to use it all. Is it an equal 
 book, to be received as teaching us truth in all 
 its parts? In Protestant theology it has been 
 common to regard the Bible as a single source. 
 That the Bible is a library, a collection, has 
 indeed been always known, but the working 
 
THE PROBLEM 11 
 
 theory has rather been that the Bible is a book, 
 available in all its parts for the service of the- 
 ology. A statement by a biblical writer in any 
 part of the book has been considered valid for 
 theological use, and material has been gathered 
 with equal hand from the entire range of the 
 Scriptures. Of course it has been understood 
 that passages must be interpreted, and the his- 
 torical setting has not been wholly overlooked, 
 but neither has it been sufficiently regarded. It 
 has been assumed that anything in the Bible may 
 be wrought into theology ; nay, more, — that 
 everything in the Bible must be wrought into 
 theology. Since the whole Bible is the equal 
 text-book, a satisfactory theology must work in 
 all biblical statements. A system that left some 
 biblical utterances outside, not accounted for in 
 its scheme of thought, would be regarded as 
 unsound and in need of revision. Theology must 
 be scriptural, and to that end must ignore no 
 thought expressed in the Scriptures. 
 
 In this the history of the Canon has been well 
 forgotten, for in the forming of the Canon, of the 
 Old Testament or of the New, the full equality of 
 all the writings was never held. But that was a 
 long time ago ; and with the one sacred volume so 
 
12 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 long in hand it is not surprising that the church 
 has formed the habit of using it as aUke through- 
 out. In our present enterprise we have to decide 
 whether this is still to be our practice. Upon 
 the question itself we shall probably have little 
 difficulty, for to-day every intelligent student 
 knows that the ancient method is wrong. For 
 the purposes of theology the Scriptures are not of 
 equal value throughout. Some parts of the Bible 
 contribute to theology as others do not. But this 
 only opens our problem. Distinctions are to be 
 made within the Bible, — that seems certain. It 
 is my aim in these lectures to show what the right 
 distinction is, but at present another point is before 
 us. One serious part of our difficulty lies in the 
 fact that we have to deal with a book that has been 
 employed in this wrong way so long. The book 
 that we open is saturated with effects from the 
 long misuse. It has injurious traditions bound in 
 with it, which threaten thus to continue the harm 
 to theology which the long misuse has wrought. 
 For theology is suffering heavily to this day from 
 the consequences of treating the Bible as equal 
 throughout for theological purposes. These con- 
 sequences enter into our problem. 
 
 One injurious result is that even until now the 
 
THE PROBLEM 13 
 
 Old Testament has been given disproportionate 
 weight in theology, and the New Testament has 
 been deprived of its rightful primacy. 
 
 That the New Testament must have high 
 primacy, if theology is to be Christian, needs no 
 proof. In theory no one questions it. Christ 
 stands first, worthy of the highest honor. The 
 whole testimony of Christianity is to the effect 
 that the Old Testament is excelled by the New, 
 and in an important sense superseded by it. But 
 when the whole Bible lies as one book before the 
 framer of theology, with all its parts expected to 
 contribute with equal right, the advantage of the 
 Old Testament as contributor immediately appears. 
 It is sure to offer more than its rightful share. It 
 is the larger book. It is more pictorial in its 
 modes of representation than its companion. It 
 is more anthropomorphic, and more given to 
 expressing truths by means of institutions. It 
 thus excels in quick suggestiveness, and has a 
 fascinating figurativeness of mode, appealing to 
 taste for the typical and allegorical. Moreover, 
 in spite of all its lofty passages, the Old Testament 
 is less spiritual than the New, and therefore less 
 exacting ; for law, stem though it seems, is really 
 far less exacting than spiritual life, and the re- 
 
14 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 ligion that was before Christ demanded less of 
 men than he requires. By its external and visible 
 methods in representing the relation between God 
 and men the Old Testament offers a less spiritual 
 appeal, but one that strikes quickly into the likings 
 of humanity. It has always been so interpreted 
 as to provide a divine sanction for the spirit and 
 practice of legalism ; and legalism coming with 
 divine credentials meets a ready welcome from 
 human nature that loves it all too well, and finds 
 the door into theology wide open. In a word, the 
 Old Testament is such a book in comparison with 
 the New that to over-exalt it is to unspiritualize 
 theology. And as a matter of fact it has been 
 over-exalted far. The third chapter of Genesis 
 has been more influential upon the doctrine of sin 
 than all the words and attitude of Jesus. The 
 book of Leviticus has done more to give form to 
 the doctrine of salvation than any single book 
 of the New Testament. Legalism has entered 
 theology through the open door, and found per- 
 manent lodgment in the doctrine of the Atonement. 
 The book of Daniel, with the Apocalypse, its 
 companion in pre-Christian type, has influenced 
 eschatology so profoundly that the opposing views 
 of the Fourth Gospel could not even be noticed. 
 
THE PROBLEM 15 
 
 Ethical perplexities coming over from the early 
 books of the Old Testament have influenced the 
 popular conception of God so deeply that Jesus' 
 revelation of the Father could not have free 
 course. Thus in many ways theology has been 
 limited in its spiritual freedom through dictation 
 from those Scriptures which Christ expressly 
 threw into the background. If we are to build 
 up Christian doctrine, we must find a better way 
 of using the Old Testament than theology has 
 usually followed. 
 
 The doctrine of an equal Bible has wrought a 
 similar result within the New Testament. The 
 words of Jesus have not been prized above those 
 of his disciples. 
 
 When at the front of Christianity there stands 
 One who is esteemed not only as God's messenger 
 but as God manifest in the flesh, it would seem 
 that the first question, far in advance of all others, 
 must be, " What did the Master say ? " But in 
 theology the question has rather been, " What do 
 the Scriptures say ? " and every writer in the New 
 Testament has been cited as representing the 
 eternal truth just as really as the Lord. The 
 Lord has not stood above the Scriptures, and 
 the divine Master has not stood above his own 
 
16 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 disciples. They all have been raised to his level. 
 A disciple's view of Jesus has been esteemed just 
 as authoritative as Jesus' view of himself, and a 
 disciple's view of God just as authoritative as 
 Jesus' view of God. An evangelist's interpreta- 
 tion of what Jesus said has been lifted to the 
 level of the word interpreted. A mood and tense 
 chosen by Paul for use has been taken to be just 
 as revelatory of divine realities as the teaching of 
 the Lord. This on the ground that the inspira- 
 tion of God made the disciple-writers equal to 
 the Word made flesh in witnessing to the truth, 
 as all high doctrine of inspiration holds. But they 
 never claimed such equality, and no one in their 
 own time knew that they had it; and we can 
 well imagine what the disciples, adoring Jesus 
 as exalted to the right hand of God, would 
 have said if they had known that their authority 
 would one day be quoted as equal to his. I sus- 
 pect they would have written nothing. How the 
 teachings of the Master and the words of his 
 disciples do really compare with one another, and 
 how Christian testimony from secondary sources 
 ought to influence our thought in theology, we 
 must judge, and this enters into our problem. 
 But we must seek to avoid the injustice to our 
 
THE PROBLEM 17 
 
 sources and the injury to theology that have come 
 from equalizing the disciples with their Master, 
 or the Master with his disciples. 
 
 In general it follows from the practice of using 
 the Scriptures as equal throughout, that the- 
 ology has been prevented from distinguishing 
 the Christian element in the Scriptures from the 
 other elements. Even more, — the doctrine of 
 equality leads toward denial that there is such a 
 thing as the Christian element there. Many a 
 devout Christian would be deeply shocked at the 
 mention of a Christian element in the Bible. A 
 Christian element? then there must be elements 
 in the Bible that are not Christian: and many 
 lovers of the holy book would feel such a sug- 
 gestion to be genuine profanity. The Bible is 
 the book of Christianity, is it not? and must it 
 not be all Christian? But we must talk of a 
 Christian element in the Bible, if we are to talk 
 of things as they are, and of elements that are 
 not Christian. It is quite superfluous to prove 
 this, as soon as we note what it means, that Christ 
 came late in the period of Scripture-making. Be- 
 tween the Jewish and the Christian, Paul, as we 
 know, recognized a tremendous difference, and if 
 we fail to recognize the same it is only because 
 
 2 
 
18 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 our eyes are blinded by tradition. If Paul could 
 read our present Bible as it stands, he would have 
 no difficulty in telling whether it was all Christian 
 or not, or in distinguishing the Christian element 
 amid large variety. It is the prime need of the- 
 ology to distinguish the Christian element in the 
 Scriptures from everything else that lies beside it 
 there. Yet when we take up our Bible for use 
 in theology we take up a book in which this 
 sure distinction has become obscured by ages of 
 practice, and the obscuring is commended and 
 commanded by the very reverence which the 
 sanctity of the book inspires. Of course such 
 obscuring of a qualitative distinction works both 
 ways to the injury of theology. It deprives the 
 Christian element of that primacy to which the 
 supreme rank of Christ entitles it, and it burdens 
 theology with a mass of material that it ought not 
 to be required to carry. When the pre-Christian 
 matter in the Bible is raised to the level of Christ, 
 there is forced into theology a body of incongruous 
 thought that must confuse its judgment and keep 
 its conclusions on too low a plane. Tradition has 
 done theology a serious harm in the name of rever- 
 ence for the Scriptures, and the question how to 
 undo this injury is a part of our problem. 
 
THE PROBLEM 19 
 
 We may well wonder how this doctrine of 
 equality in the Scriptures ever found an honor- 
 able standing. As I have said, the history of 
 the Canon shows that it was no part of the idea 
 in accordance with which the two collections were 
 originally made. But aside from historical con- 
 siderations, an intelligent reading of the Bible is 
 enough to scatter the theory to the winds. If 
 to-day we read the Bible straightforwardly in 
 preparation for forming our theology, we shall 
 find the inequality of it for theological purposes 
 visible throughout. No specialist's eyes are re- 
 quired to discern it, for it lies on the very surface. 
 We can account for the doctrine only by remem- 
 bering that the Bible is in a way the least intel- 
 ligently read of books. A Christian has usually 
 read his Bible with the reverent assumption that 
 it all comes directly from God to him. This 
 prejudgment effectually blinds him to the inequal- 
 ities, or assures him, if he observes them, that 
 they must be only apparent. The pages of the 
 Bible contain an amount of unnoticed facts that 
 is perfectly amazing ; and the spirit that declines 
 to notice them is often the spirit of the deepest 
 reverence. The ordinary reader daily slides over 
 unnoticed facts enough to make a deep change 
 
20 THE SCRIPTUKES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 in his conception of the Bible if he observed 
 them, and to compel him to read it as a different 
 book. And when we pass beyond ordinary read- 
 ing and inquire about the status of the doctrine 
 of equality in the presence of modern knowledge 
 of the Bible, the answer to our inquiry is short 
 and decisive. In the light of what all scholars 
 know, the equality of the Bible for the purposes 
 of theology absolutely disappears. What ordinary 
 intelligent reading suffices to show, that more 
 thorough reading which we call criticism estab- 
 hshes beyond the possibility of doubt : and though 
 to some ears the word criticism has an unspiritual 
 sound, yet, after all, criticism is nothing but com- 
 petent and candid examination. No one now has a 
 right to draw upon the Bible for theology as if 
 all parts of it could serve the purpose. What- 
 ever we do, we must make distinctions in the 
 Scriptures before we can use them in theology. 
 What distinctions to make, and how to make 
 them, is our problem. 
 
 The necessity suggests one worthy modern dis- 
 cipline, through which theology is struggling 
 toward freedom in its use of Scripture. That 
 discipline is Biblical Theology, which has for its 
 object the differentiation of the theological thought 
 
THE PROBLEM 21 
 
 of the Scriptures into its component parts. It is 
 a study of the facts, an examination into reality. 
 It lays our Bible open before us as it is, for the- 
 ological use. Its entrance to the field is a worthy 
 sign that theology is aware of its problem and 
 will not be content without a rational solution. 
 Long ago some one said of Bruder's Concordance 
 of the Greek New Testament, an unobtrusive 
 but indispensable work, superseded only through 
 progress in textual criticism, that it performed 
 the service of pile-driving for theology. Similar 
 value attaches to all sound and thorough biblical 
 work, whether critical, historical, or analytical, 
 and especially, perhaps, to the analytical work of 
 Biblical Theology, through which general Chris- 
 tian theolog}'' is seeking the liberty and power 
 which a right knowledge of its materials will 
 affordo This fine science simply hands over to 
 theology an unequal Bible, with its theological 
 inequalities discovered, marked upon it, and clas- 
 sified for Christian wisdom to use. The vogue 
 of Biblical Theology is the death of the doctrine 
 of an equal Bible. 
 
 The doctrine of an equal Bible, as I have now 
 described it, has never stood by itself constituting 
 a whole. It has always been a part of the doc- 
 
22 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 trine of a Bible equally authoritative throughout, 
 or rather, the doctrine of Scriptures authoritative 
 as Scriptures. As soon as we open our Bible as 
 contributor to theology, we encounter the question 
 whether, and how far, and in what sense, this 
 body of writings is for us authoritative. In 
 these lectures, as a whole, I hope to make plain 
 what seems to be the truth concerning this matter. 
 At this moment I am concerned only with the 
 problem which our open Bible presents, and es- 
 pecially with the perplexing elements which long 
 usage in the past has bequeathed to us ; and 
 to the doctrine of authority we are indebted for 
 a part of the perplexing bequest. 
 
 When the Reformers rejected the authority of 
 the church they accepted the authority of the 
 Scriptures. Since their day it has been generally 
 held by Protestants that the Scriptures as Scrip- 
 tures are invested with full and final authority 
 for theology, so that all genuine testimony of 
 theirs on topics involved is to be received as 
 certain and binding because it comes from them. 
 There is no other voice on earth like theirs, for 
 their voice is the voice of God. They hand over 
 to theology their entire contents, to be accepted 
 without question and wrought into the system 
 
THE PROBLEM 23 
 
 that is to be formed. Theology is not at liberty 
 to decline their testimony, or to dissent from it. 
 The equality of the Bible for theology means an 
 equal and complete authority. 
 
 We well know how strong and urgent this 
 doctrine has been. " What saith the Scripture ? " 
 has been the test question in theology, with the 
 imderstanding that whatever the Scripture may 
 have said is final. This understanding has been 
 built in most firmly to the general Christian 
 thought, so that the holding of any other view is 
 still widely regarded as destructive to theology 
 and treasonable to God. Yet the doctrine has not 
 had so beneficent an effect as its reverent motive 
 would lead us to look for. The doctrine of 
 authoritative words ought to be accompanied by 
 the practice of utmost dihgence and intelligence 
 in ascertaining what the words mean, for certainly 
 we need to know exactly what it is that is taught 
 us by divine authority. No other practice ought 
 to be tolerated by those who hold the written 
 words in reverence so high. Sometimes this 
 requirement has been loyally fulfilled, but some- 
 times it has not, to the great injury of theology. 
 The doctrine of biblical authority has very often 
 been accompanied by the idea that the divine 
 
24 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 meaning in the Word is spiritually simple, and 
 any sincere soul can understand it ; which has led 
 to the claim that whatever any earnest Chris- 
 tian may have found in the Bible is of that 
 divine substance which no one is at liberty to 
 reject. This impression that the spiritual mean- 
 ing is plain has led to the undervaluing of careful 
 interpretation, and to a distinct prejudice against 
 such means of interpretation as are not distinctly 
 spiritual in their nature. Reverence for authority 
 has thus been turned to the disparagement of 
 scholarship. The same impression has led to 
 much narrowness and uncharitableness of judg- 
 ment as to what it is that all Christians are bound 
 to believe on the authority of God. Thus the 
 doctrine of authoritative Scriptures has not borne 
 so high a quality or done so good a service as it 
 ought, when its traditional methods were sancti- 
 fied all along by genuine reverence for God in 
 his Word. 
 
 The long use of the Scriptures upon this princi- 
 ple, as authoritative and final, has brought about 
 a group of injurious consequences that enter into 
 our present problem in theology., 
 
 If we are to receive our Scriptures as abso- 
 lutely authoritative, we have first to assent to the 
 
THE PROBLEM 25 
 
 ground on which their authority rests. The doc- 
 trine of an equal and final authority stands, his- 
 torically, upon the foundation of an equal and 
 infallible inspiration. On no other foundation 
 has it ever been supposed to stand. Not because 
 these writers had authority of their own, not 
 because they knew the truth so perfectly as to 
 be entitled to think for us, has the Bible been 
 regarded as authoritative in theology, but solely 
 because the eternal Spirit gave to these writers 
 truth and thought and words, and thus imparted 
 his own infallibility and authority to what they 
 wrote. On no other foundation could such an 
 authority stand. But when we open our Bible 
 to-day we open a book that is undergoing exam- 
 ination on the inductive method. Our generation 
 is learning to read the Bible in the historical 
 light, and let the book itself show what it is. 
 We seek to discover how these utterances came 
 to be made, and what they meant to the men 
 who made them. The result is that the better 
 we know the Bible in this maimer, the less does 
 it match the theory of an inspiration that imparts 
 infallibility to all its statements, or even to all 
 its utterances in the field of religion. There is 
 no claim of such inspiration, and there is no 
 
26 THE SCRIPTURES IN TPIEOLOGY 
 
 proof of it. The high doctrine proves untenable, 
 and consequently it is passing out of sight. 
 Those who hold it modify it so as really to 
 destroy it, — for such a doctrine is intolerant of 
 modifications, since it is nothing if not perfect. 
 The high qualities of the Bible are of another 
 kind, and the doctrine of an inspiration that 
 imparts infallibility and direct divine aiithority 
 to the entire body of the Scriptures is no more. 
 But out of the history of the matter it has come 
 to pass that theology is burdened in the name 
 of reverence for God with the weight of an unten- 
 able doctrine. To this day Christian theology 
 is supposed to be grounded in the doctrine of an 
 infallible inspiration. The outside world may be 
 excused for understanding it thus, in view of the 
 long-asserted claim of theology itself: but now 
 the outside world has heard on good evidence 
 that a sound theology cannot be built on such a 
 foundation, since the doctrine is not true. Never- 
 theless on that foundation a large part of the 
 Christian world continues insisting that theology 
 must be built. Christianity itself, they af&rm, 
 stands or falls with infallible inspiration. I once 
 knew a minister of high genius who said to me, 
 " If I had to give up verbal inspiration, I should 
 
THE PROBLEM 27 
 
 have to give up Christ." One who had ever 
 heard him pray knew better, for he had a spiritual 
 foundation deeper and better than his theory; bat 
 except upon the most rigid theory of inspiration he 
 supposed a Christian theology, and even a Chris- 
 tian faith, to be impossible. That belief is still 
 abroad in power, and the hurtful reputation of it 
 is abroad also. If we propose a Christian theology 
 we shall be expected by a multitude of outsiders 
 to ground it in infallible inspiration, on which 
 they know that we cannot build a structure that 
 will stand; and at the same time we shall be 
 required by a multitude of Christians to ground 
 it in the same, where we know that we cannot 
 build safely. Not only so, but we shall be 
 expected to prove the doctrine. Thus theology 
 is burdened with a task that cannot be performed, 
 and the ill name of a theory that cannot be 
 defended, and unbelievers are encouraged in their 
 impression that a valid Christian theology is 
 impossible. 
 
 By the doctrine of a finally authoritative book 
 another burden has been placed upon theology, 
 of which the weight has not yet ceased to be felt, 
 although it is beginning to pass away. That 
 burden is the task of so interpreting the Bible 
 
28 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 that it shall agree with itself. Of course an 
 authoritative book will agree with itself. Its 
 statements, probably everywhere and certainly in 
 the field of religion, will be free from contradic- 
 tions. If they seem to differ, it must be assumed 
 to be no more than seeming, and interpretation 
 must be relied upon to reconcile the differences. 
 This is a long-established view of the Bible. How 
 many books have been written on biblical difficul- 
 ties, to vindicate the Bible as divine by showing 
 that it nowhere contradicts itself, — no, not even 
 as to details of history or incidental statements 
 of fact ! Especially on the matters that enter 
 into theology must the Bible speak in unison. Its 
 voice is the voice of God, and its utterance must 
 be one ; and the interpreter must find the unity 
 which certainly must be there. This reasoning 
 is good. Absolute authority must be accompanied 
 by unity of teaching. But what a work to lay 
 upon an interpreter or a theologian, — to interpret 
 so large and various a book as the Bible into 
 unanimity 1 It is a very large undertaking. Per- 
 haps it cannot be done by fair means, and yet 
 it must be done. Any failure, leaving a discrep- 
 ancy unreconciled, can only stand as a difficulty 
 unremoved where difficulties may be fatal, a rock 
 
THE PROBLEM 29 
 
 on which a whole system of theology may go to 
 ruin. And as to the process itself: is it not a 
 strange and anomalous thing that a theologian 
 should be set to harmonize his authoritative 
 material ? Does it seem likely that a divine 
 standard will need interpretmg into unity? And 
 is it really a high process, consistent with true 
 reverence for a divine standard, to be interpreting 
 it with the preconceived intention of bringing its 
 statements into agreement ? We do not so else- 
 where. Honest interpretation of other writings 
 takes them as they are, and lets them mean what- 
 ever they may say: indeed, honest interpretation 
 may almost be said to consist in doing this. But 
 theology has long been expected to interpret its 
 Scriptures into unanimity, and even into assertion 
 of a scheme of thought accepted in advance as 
 representative of their teachings. The process is 
 not a high one, and theology stands at a serious 
 moral disadvantage because of this legacy from 
 the doctrine of an authoritative Bible. Somehow 
 we must clear ourselves from this complication, 
 and use our Scriptures for what they are and 
 what they mean, free from the morally damaging 
 assumption that they must always agree with 
 themselves. 
 
30 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 All the more because of one outcome that is not 
 always recognized by those who most need to be 
 aware of it. There is a strange magic about the 
 work of interpreting a book with which one feels 
 bound always to agree. The process is not favor- 
 able to the ascertainment of truth. If a man is in 
 duty bound to agree with a book, the surest and 
 shortest way is to make the book agree with the 
 man. This is not difficult. The book is inactive, 
 but the man is alive. It may be hard to bind the 
 convictions of a living man into harmony with the 
 teachings of a silent page, but it is easy to inter- 
 pret the silent and helpless page into harmony 
 with the convictions of a living man. The tempta- 
 tion to this is natural, subtle, and almost irresist- 
 ible. A man of strong views does it before he is 
 aware of the desire to do it : the deeper his convic- 
 tions, the more urgent is the temptation. The ex- 
 perienced interpreter who has never noticed this 
 strong temptation has probably failed to analyze his 
 own mental processes. In fact there are great 
 difficulties about learning what an author means, 
 as long as one feels obligation to agree with him 
 at every point. Only free interpretation inter- 
 prets. But for centuries theology has been hand- 
 ling the Scriptures under all the disadvantages 
 
THE PROBLEM 31 
 
 that attend interpreting with duty to agree. It is 
 hard to believe that God requires or desires this 
 at our hands. He would certainly give theology 
 the benefit of all that would render natural and 
 sure the right understanding of its chief source ; 
 and plainly we must seek honorable exemption 
 from the strong temptation to make the Scriptures 
 agree with us. 
 
 From the use of the Bible as authority theology 
 has received another injurious legacy, — the proof- 
 text method. 
 
 The proof-text method came naturally. If all is 
 solidly divine, of course a citation is a proof. So in 
 the books of theologians and the footnotes of creeds 
 it is common to find the statement of a doctrine 
 followed by a list of Scripture references, offered 
 as sufficient evidence that the statement is true. 
 Sometimes the selection has been made with skill 
 and understanding, and sometimes not. Not so 
 very long ago the traditional practice followed the 
 logical inference from equal inspiration, and took 
 the whole Bible for choice of proof-texts, with the 
 result of some strange groupings and some strange 
 proofs. The method is retiring from use, but has 
 not yet wholly withdrawn its effects. We know 
 that it does not rest on facts, and therefore cannot 
 
32 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 yield good results. The various books of the Bible 
 are not of such nature as fairly to yield themselves 
 to such use. We cannot reach right results by 
 citing proof from Ezekiel or Ecclesiastes or the 
 books of Samuel beside words of Paul or the Lord 
 himself. Only by claiming equal authority for all 
 these sources could we defend such a practice, and 
 such a claim we cannot maintain. Texts are not 
 all authoritative, nor indeed, as I hope to show, is 
 the divine message given us chiefly in the form of 
 texts. But we open a Bible that has long been 
 offering its every page ahve with texts to prove our 
 statements; and what, we ask ourselves, is that 
 better method which is to take the place of this ? 
 
 From long use of this kind it has come to pass 
 that the Bible is by no means an easy book to 
 quote with certainty of its right meaning. "When 
 we open it there spring out great numbers of 
 suggested meanings about which we shall act 
 rashly if we take them as correct. Under the 
 influence of the idea of direct authority the Scrip- 
 tures have been used in the interest of edification, 
 until various non-natural modes of interpreting 
 them have become established and traditional, 
 and sacred too. Texts have come to have an 
 atmosphere about them. They carry a sense of 
 
THE PROBLEM 33 
 
 quality, which may correspond to their proper 
 meaning and may not. When Ave use them it is 
 not quite certain what we are using. 
 
 For ages, we know, the leading use of the 
 Scriptures has been to draw profitable lessons from 
 them. The purpose is right, I need not say, but 
 more must be said of the process. Reverence has 
 led to the assumption, expressed or implied, that 
 the Bible must contain everything that tlie soul 
 can need for its spiritual sustenance. As old as 
 the days of Alexandrian Judaism is the idea that 
 the true wisdom of all wise men must be contained 
 in the book of God, and be discoverable there. 
 Accordingly all has been sought there ; the largest 
 meaning must be the real meaning. We may 
 almost say that the Scriptures have had more read 
 into them than read out of them. Into the older 
 Scriptures the meaning of the later has been read, 
 the gospel into the Old Testament, as a matter of 
 course and a Christian duty. On every page of 
 the Bible the name of God has been read with its 
 full Christian significance in mind. Into all the 
 Scriptures theological systems have been read 
 without hesitation. Texts once brought into asso- 
 ciation with doctrine have been assumed to have 
 been written for proof of doctrine. Allegorizing 
 
34 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 is gone now from intelligent circles, but ages of 
 it have left a coloring upon the biblical narrative 
 and a remnant of habit in the general Christian 
 mind. Typical meanings, often groundless, have 
 turned attention awa}'' from good historical sense. 
 Homiletical use might be counted upon to help 
 in the understanding of the sacred words, but in 
 many ways preaching, with all its value, has been 
 a foe to the Scriptures. It has crammed them 
 with lessons, putting lessons in where none ought 
 to be found, and ready always to err in favor 
 of finding the larger lesson. It has suggested 
 that the Scriptures are to be understood only 
 through a kind of professional practice. It has 
 familiarized all sorts of doubtful exegesis, and 
 given wide currency to edifying misinterpretations. 
 It has made mistranslations to be cherished as 
 too precious for correction, if only they yielded 
 edifying texts and enshrined some profitable truth. 
 The simple, straightforward, historical interpreta- 
 tion of the Scriptures has been kept out of its 
 rightful place by reverence for edifying, holy 
 words, maintained under the influence of preach- 
 ing. Moreover, attention in the reading of the 
 Bible has come to be confined to certain aspects of 
 the book and turned away from others. It has 
 
THE PROBLEM 35 
 
 been reverent attention to the Bible as a book 
 of lessons, with astonishing inattention to facts 
 that would alter the lessons if they were noticed. 
 Texts have thus obtained a familiar and conse- 
 crated meaning, to be uttered only with solemnity, 
 but it may not be the true meaning at all. Con- 
 sequently if we attempt in theology to use the 
 sacred words by way of proof, they come to us 
 full of suggestiveness for spiritual purposes, but 
 of a suggestiveness which we cannot safely trust. 
 The meaning that they bring to mind is partly in 
 the words themselves, and partly an accumulation 
 from reverent but uninquiring use. They may be 
 very far from proving what they seem to prove, 
 and our theology may suffer loss of truth if we 
 take them as they appear. Even if a proof-text 
 method were a good method in itself, it could not 
 be successfully employed now, since the texts of 
 the Bible have suffered such serious though unin- 
 tended distortion. One thing is certain. Theology 
 must seize upon the help of criticism and history 
 and exegesis and all else that can show what the 
 Bible really means. But no one of these has a 
 word to say in favor of continuing in the old, easy, 
 superficial proof-text method which has come from 
 taking the Scriptures as authoritative through- 
 
36 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 out. Theology has a deeper and harder work 
 to do. 
 
 Out of all this has come another condition most 
 hurtful both to theology and to the efficiency of 
 religion. With such a view of inspiration and 
 authority as has prevailed, it was quite inevitable 
 that questions about the Bible should obtain a dis- 
 propoi'tionate degree of prominence. Points of no 
 intrinsic importance for the moral and spiritual life 
 have been elevated to the highest rank and insisted 
 upon as vital and decisive. Hosts of good men 
 confound criticism with Christianity. To this very 
 hour multitudes of Christians hold it essential to 
 sound Christianity to believe that Moses wrote the 
 Pentateuch, that there was only one Isaiah, and that 
 the story of Jonah is historical. Questions about 
 the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, and even of 
 the Pastoral Epistles, are still regarded as lying 
 within the region of sceptical doubt. The pulpit 
 is not free to the using of the Bible in its ascer- 
 tained character, and thus ambiguities remain and 
 false impressions are perpetuated. So conscience 
 is embarrassed by the application of false tests, and 
 spiritual life, as well as intellectual activity, is 
 guided in artificial channels and restrained from its 
 proper freedom. And all this is going on at a time 
 
THE PROBLEM 37 
 
 when the living questions are such questions as 
 whether Christianity is able to elevate the ideals of 
 common life, to check the overweening power of 
 money, to hmit self-indulgence, to bring in a high 
 standard of honesty, to protect the family from 
 disintegrating influences, to diminish drunkenness 
 and the social evil, to rescue the lost part of the 
 community, to commend religion to all souls, to 
 condemn and banish war, to create confidence in 
 righteousness as a living power, to establish broth- 
 erly kindness as the law of life, and whether Chris- 
 tians have any power to come together in effective 
 unity for these large Christian purposes. This is 
 the world in which we live. These vast questions 
 are settling themselves, partly through default of 
 attention on the part of Christians, while the 
 Christians are dividing among themselves and dis- 
 trusting one another over the manner in which 
 they ought to understand and use the Bible. Both 
 for theology and for religion it is necessary that 
 we get into a position in which the large things 
 shall be at the front and the minor matters in the 
 rear. We must find a method of using the Bible 
 that will put a stop to the magnifying of questions 
 about the Bible itself above judgment, mercy, and 
 the weightier matters of the gospel. 
 
38 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 One serious element in our problem remains to 
 be considered. When we sit down together as I 
 have proposed, to put into form the truest theol- 
 ogy that we can find, really the first question is 
 that of our own function. What are we to do? 
 How is the theologian related to his materials ? 
 Are we to be contributors to the result, or not? 
 Are we called to think theology out under the in- 
 fluence of the Scriptures, or to receive it from 
 them in solid form ? Is the Bible our inspirer, or 
 our dictator with power of veto ? Are we merely 
 expounders of a final authority, which says, ''Thus 
 far shalt thou go, but no farther," so that we must 
 accept all bibheal testimony as to religious truth, 
 and never dissent therefrom or add thereto? or 
 have we some more independent function, some 
 call to bring to the result something of our own ? 
 
 The logic of the matter is plain. If the book as 
 a book is absolutely authoritative, a theology that 
 truly reproduces the book is final, and in the con- 
 struction of it there is no room for anything from 
 other sources. If the Bible stands as the sole and 
 sufficient rule of faith, in the sense that as a unit 
 it brings God's direct instruction, then it may be 
 expected to yield a clear theology, and a theolo- 
 gian may neither dissent from that theology nor 
 
THE PROBLEM 39 
 
 add to it anything of his own. All through the 
 history of Christian theology there has been an un- 
 derlying claim to this effect, and often a claim dis- 
 tinctly formulated. The Bible is unquestionably 
 the main source of Christian theology, and many 
 hold, or think they hold, that it is the only source. 
 Students have often come to me with this idea, 
 supposing that the theologian's calling was simply 
 to gather out, classify, and express what the Scrip- 
 tures contain on his subject. In this it is assumed 
 that the Scriptures yield a system, and the system 
 carries with it their authority, which is the author- 
 ity of God. Doctrine is inspired, theology is re- 
 vealed from heaven. I remember a book entitled 
 "Revealed Theology." The theologian is only an 
 interpreter, a voice, adding nothing to the utter- 
 ance. 
 
 Perhaps the idea that the Scriptures yield a 
 theology which binds the theologian should re- 
 ceive a word of exposition. It has commonly 
 been assumed that the Bible contains the whole 
 of Christianity, and has upon its pages all the 
 views or interpretations of Christianity that have 
 a right to exist. This is no accident ; it has been 
 arranged by the inspiring wisdom of God. It is 
 true that there are different points of view within 
 
40 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 the Bible : in addition to what the Synoptics con- 
 tain there is a Pauline gospel, and a Johannine, 
 and there are other conceptions besides. But 
 these are authorized views of the gospel : moreover 
 they are harmonious and complementary views, 
 which can be combined into a consistent whole; 
 and this biblical whole is identical with the whole 
 of Christianity. In effect, Christianity is to be 
 brought forth from the Bible as gold is dug out 
 of a mine. It is all there, and the various forms 
 in which we find it there have been so constructed 
 and brought together by the God who made the 
 Bible as to include all that Christianity can ever 
 include. If with our generation we have occasion 
 to inquire what Christianity is, we shall meet with 
 this reply, that Christianity is the sum-total of the 
 biblical teaching, which alone is authorized teach- 
 ing, to be discovered by combining into a solid 
 unity the conceptions of Christ and his revelation 
 that were placed within the Bible in order that 
 they might complement one another into a con- 
 sistent whole. Thus by discovery and recon- 
 struction of a foreordained theological unity in 
 the inspired word there is found a theology that 
 comes to the finder with the authority of God. 
 The positive aspect of such a doctrine is that 
 
THE PROBLEM 41 
 
 the Scriptures, as Scriptures, require theological 
 assent: the negative, that they hold a rightful 
 power of veto. " Hitherto but no farther " is 
 their genuine vrord. We are all familiar with the 
 deep distinction that has been drawn in theology 
 between results of biblical interpretation and re- 
 sults of human speculation : what comes from the 
 Scriptures by interpretation is divine and sure ; 
 what comes by speculation, or human thinking, is 
 on an immeasurably lower level. — it is purely 
 human, uncertain, probably unwarranted, possibly 
 sinful. To differ from the Scriptures is for- 
 bidden, to add to their testimony is profane, to seek 
 sound theology by speculating beyond them is to 
 attempt the impossible, and unworthy of a rever- 
 ent child of God. A theologian is simply in a 
 broad sense an exegete, who sins if he tries to be 
 more, for no human mind is competent to add to 
 the substance of theology, beyond that which the 
 Bible directly gives. In this I am quoting a 
 long-established view of the theologian's office. 
 I have known theologians most conscientious and 
 true who held this conception of their calling, 
 which from their point of view was certainly the 
 logic of the situation. 
 
 But logic and life are not the same. The 
 
42 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 theory that the Bible is dictator with veto 
 power breaks down completely in practice, how- 
 ever devoutly it may be accepted. It has never 
 been consistently acted upon, and yet it has not 
 been frankly abandoned. It calls for a theology 
 constructed solely from the bibhcal material, with 
 no human speculation added. But that is impos- 
 sible. On neither side is the theory workable. 
 
 On the one hand, the Scriptures do not yield 
 a single clear theology to which full divine 
 authority attaches. As to the idea of the Bible 
 just mentioned, that it contains the only author- 
 ized conceptions of Christianity, and holds these 
 so prearranged by inspiration as to complement 
 one another and contain Christianity entire, it is 
 one of the a priori theories, made in advance of 
 examination. Examination would never suggest 
 it, and is sufficient to disprove it. There is no 
 evidence that such prearranged completeness 
 exists, or was ever intended by the divine will. 
 No one has ever told us by authority that the 
 interpretations of Christianity contained -within 
 the Bible are the only permissible interpretations. 
 It simply cannot be shown that by God's will we 
 are limited to these, or that these theologies, so 
 to call them, combine into a single, complete, and 
 
THE PROBLEM 43 
 
 harmonious system that can be identified with 
 Christianity. When we take the Bible for what 
 it is, and let it bear its own testimony, it does 
 not give forth that dictating theological product 
 for which the theory calls. 
 
 And on the other hand it is not possible for 
 a theologian to avoid thinking, or to refrain from 
 working his thoughts into his system. A living 
 man cannot be prevented from making his con- 
 tribution. Nor indeed, when one thinks of it, 
 can a reverent spirit readily believe that God has 
 ever intended to put a veto upon fresh and inde- 
 pendent thought on the themes that enter into 
 theology. To the sea he may have said, " Thus 
 far shalt thou go, and no farther," but not to 
 the soul that is seeking to know the truth. If 
 God has here in the Bible given truth that no 
 more truth may be given, and granted light that 
 no more light may be granted, this is the only 
 place where he has acted so. Usually truth is 
 given for seed, with the intent that harvests 
 beyond measure shall spring from it. The ful- 
 ness of the Christian light is given in Christ, we 
 may be sure, in order that the loyal-hearted may 
 see for themselves thereby, as far as thought can 
 reach. Practically, there are obstacles of every 
 
44 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 kind in the way of acting as if the Scriptures 
 claimed to dictate the whole of theology and 
 veto the contribution of the theologian. 
 
 It is no wonder that the theory has so com- 
 pletely broken down in practice. It is true that 
 many a man has supposed himself to be framing 
 a theology coextensive with the divine testimony 
 in the Bible. Many a man has labored to that 
 end with a pathetic conscientiousness, and some- 
 times one has reverently thought that he had 
 succeeded. But in vain. A man with systematiz- 
 ing genius enough to undertake such an enterprise 
 has too much to succeed with it. Speculation 
 is absolutely unpreventable. Though one bow 
 to the Scriptures with perfect loyalty, the specu- 
 lative element comes in as soon as he begins to 
 think out their meaning and set their testimony 
 in order. No speculation, no system, even though 
 the subject-matter be accepted on authority. No 
 man ever exactly reproduced the Bible in theology, 
 or stopped making theology when he had reached 
 the end of his biblical material. No man indeed 
 ever thought over again the precise thoughts of 
 Paul, or of any other biblical writer ; far less has 
 anyone ever gathered up the thought of them 
 all. But there is no need of trying to prove the 
 
THE PROBLEM 45 
 
 point, for all such endeavor is rendered superfluous 
 by the mention of the great theologians. These, 
 what have they done? Augustine, Aquinas, Cal- 
 vin, Arminius, Edwards, Taylor, Hodge, — were 
 these mere biblicists? Were they even chiefly 
 biblicists ? They were all great thinkers, rea- 
 soners, philosophizers, systematic organizers of 
 thought. They wrought under the influence of 
 the Scriptures, but under that influence each 
 of them thought theology out, and formed his 
 system under the impulse of his own genius. 
 Some of them held the teaching of the Scriptures 
 to be absolutely binding, and distrusted specula- 
 tion ; but no one of them refrained from reason- 
 ing upon the teaching of the Scriptures, or from 
 working into his theology the best and utmost 
 that his rational powers could do. The idea that 
 the Scriptures authoritatively dictate the whole 
 contents of theology has never been vindicated 
 by experience, and their assumed veto upon specu- 
 lation and human contribution to the body of 
 doctrine has never been regarded in practice, even 
 by those who devoutly believed in it. For this 
 inconsistency no one is to blame, since the neces- 
 sity for it resides in the nature of the human 
 soul. 
 
46 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Nevertheless, the theory of dictation and veto 
 continues influential, and the resulting perplexi- 
 ties for the conscientious theologian constitute a 
 part of his problem. The doctrine has waned in 
 some theological circles far more than in others. 
 Moreover, it has waned far more in practice than 
 in theory. High claims for the Scriptures as 
 supreme authority still remain, where the acting 
 upon them has greatly diminished, — a fact that 
 puts theology more or less in a false position, and 
 invites distrust. The whole situation to-day urges 
 upon us with much force, when we begin to the- 
 ologize, the question how we are related to the 
 Bible. As we sit down together for our work, 
 are we bound to accept all biblical statements on 
 the themes of theology and work them into our 
 system? Must we consider ourselves limited to 
 what the Bible provides us? Are we at liberty 
 to dissent from biblical statements? Are we in 
 any true sense judges of the value of biblical 
 statements? If we have any liberty in the mat^ 
 ter, on what ground shall we claim it? If we 
 are not in the old position, then in what position 
 are we ? 
 
 It is high time to give an intelligent answer 
 to these questions, and to do it openly and di- 
 
THE PROBLEM 47 
 
 rectly. Honesty requires us to abandon some 
 of the old ways of using the Bible. Abandon- 
 ment is easy enough, comparatively, but it is 
 not sufficient to satisfy the honesty that requires 
 it. Mere cessation from old ways leaves the 
 right method of use still undetermined, and it 
 leaves large parts of our material waiting for us 
 to decide what use of them we ought to make. 
 We need a principle for use of the Scriptures in 
 theology, as clear and definite as the old, and 
 more tenable. For a while we may manage to 
 make shift without it, but not for long, for un- 
 certainty as to the principle is not favorable to 
 that straightforwardness which honesty demands. 
 In a time of change, the great danger to sacred 
 interests is the danger of insincerity. The pre- 
 ciousness of sacred things may easily induce us 
 to hold fast what intelligence requires us to 
 surrender or to change. Then we shall soon be 
 found holding positions that we first suspect and 
 then know to be untenable, and defending them by 
 arguments that we do not inwardly trust as suffi- 
 cient or as valid, — and all this lest holy interests 
 should suffer from our doing otherwise. Since 
 this cannot be done in a corner, we shall find 
 ourselves and our methods distrusted by honest 
 
48 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 men, and the sacred interests that we sought to 
 safeguard exposed to new dangers by our fault. 
 This sore temptation of a time of change is upon 
 theology to-day, in its relation to the Scriptures. 
 The time has come for frank discussion of the 
 problem, for open acknowledgment that the old 
 position is untenable, and for unreserved inquiry 
 for a better method. It is because the time for 
 such work has come, that I have laid the problem 
 before you in the present hour. 
 
 I venture to think that there is a principle, 
 clear, sound, and applicable to the whole subject, 
 by which we can come to the right use of the 
 Scriptures in theology. To the presentation of 
 this principle the next hour will be given. 
 
II 
 
 THE PKINCIPLE 
 
 I HAVE spoken of the complicated situation in 
 which we find ourselves when we sit down to- 
 gether to use the Scriptures in forming our the- 
 ology, a situation which is our problem. The 
 Scriptures are handed to us new by modern 
 scholarship : they are read in the light of linguis- 
 tic studies, history, archaeology, criticism, analy- 
 sis, reconstruction, and without reference to the 
 ancient idea of inspiration. At the same time 
 they are still delivered to us also by the past, with 
 the atmosphere of long reverential use about them. 
 We are asked, and more than asked, to use them 
 as equal and authoritative throughout. From the 
 past they come to us bearing a burden of harm to 
 theology through long misuse ; with their inferior 
 parts raised to the rank of the highest, with the 
 long habit of falling apart into texts instead of 
 standing as masses, with plain historical signifi- 
 cance lost in other meanings, with various misin- 
 terpretations wrought into their substance, and with 
 
 4 
 
50 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 a right of dictation and veto attributed to them 
 which has never proved effective in practice, 
 and which we cannot show that they rightfully 
 possess. Meanwhile we find that the ground for 
 the ancient manner of use, in the doctrine of an 
 equal and infallible inspiration, is gone. We know 
 that it is our duty and our high privilege to use 
 these writings in the forming of our theology, but 
 how ? I have ventured to say that there exists 
 a principle, clear and sound, that leads to the solu- 
 tion of the problem. 
 
 The principle is, that the Christian element in 
 the Scriptures is the indispensable and formative 
 element in Christian theolog}'", and is the only 
 element in the Scriptures which Christian theology 
 is either required or permitted to receive as con- 
 tributing to its substance. 
 
 I venture to think that this statement has a self- 
 evident sound, — to Christian theology the Scrip- 
 tures contribute their Christian element and 
 nothing else. It seems to need little proof: it 
 proves itself to the listening ear. I am sure that 
 it is all implied in the two definitions with which 
 we began, the definitions of theology and the Scrip- 
 tures. Let me recall them. Theology is the 
 orderly presentation of what we have reason to 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 51 
 
 hold as true concerning God and the relations of 
 men to him ; and the Scriptures are those writings 
 which preserve the story of Hebrew and early 
 Christian religion, with Jesus Christ and his reve- 
 lation concerning God and man for their crowning 
 element. For us Christians theology and the 
 Scriptures, thus conceived, are manifestly insep- 
 arable, and the point at which they meet is plain. 
 They meet in Christ. He is the common posses- 
 sion of the two — he and what he contributes — 
 and he is their common glory. He is the crown of 
 the Old Testament and of the New, and the crown 
 of the Bible as a whole ; and in the field of the- 
 ology there is none that compares with him in 
 clearness of revelation or in fulness of light and 
 truth. If he has made theology to be Christian, it 
 is equally true that he has made the Scriptures to 
 be Christian. To either there is none like him. 
 Now concerning Jesus Christ the primary fact 
 is that his revelation is true. That is to say, he 
 has shown God as he is, in his character and rela- 
 tions with men. He has represented life in its 
 true meaning, and opened to us the real way to 
 genuine welfare and success in existence. What 
 he has made known commends and proves itself as 
 true by the manner in which it fits into the human 
 
52 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 scheme, meets human need, and renders thought 
 rational and life successful. God eternally is such 
 a being as Jesus represents him to be, — this is the 
 heart of Christianity, to be apprehended not first 
 in thought but first in life and love ; and this is 
 forever true. And it is a revelation never to be 
 superseded, but forever to be better and better 
 known. So Jesus Christ brings into the Bible, 
 and into theology, as he first brought into life, a 
 body of everlasting truth. This the Scriptures 
 and theology receive in common from him. 
 
 But notice in what different positions Christ 
 and his contribution stand in relation to the 
 two. To him the Scriptures tend, and from him 
 theology proceeds. In the Bible a long course 
 of life, revelation, and experience culminates in 
 Christ: in theology a long course of experience, 
 reflection, and development comes forth from 
 Christ. Practically Christ stands at the end of 
 our Bible and at the beginning of our theology. 
 When the Founder of the Christian faith enters to 
 the Bible there is very much there that lies behind 
 him. When he enters to theology the whole scope 
 and movement of the work lies before him. 
 
 That is to say, the Scriptures contain that indis- 
 pensable material without which theology would 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 53 
 
 not be Christian or rise to the height of truth, and 
 they contain a great deal more. Speaking in terms 
 of time we can say that they contain a Christian 
 and a pre-Christian part; speaking in terms of 
 quality, that they contain a Christian and a non- 
 Christian element. Of what character the non- 
 Christian part is, or the pre-Christian, we do not 
 tell by giving it the name; that remains to be dis- 
 covered. What is pre-Christian, or non-Christian, 
 may lie close upon the spiritual borders of Chris- 
 tianity, or may be far removed from the Christian 
 view of things : Christ may have superseded it by 
 completion, or by contradiction. These are not 
 matters for assumption, but for inquiry. The 
 point to be held fast and for certain is that the 
 Bible does bring us the contribution of Christ 
 together with much that did not proceed from him ; 
 and this besides, that the difference between these 
 two elements is not necessarily a difference in time, 
 though it is partly that, but is a difference in 
 quality. The great word Christian is not merely a 
 term that belongs on one side of a time-boundary : 
 it is a descriptive and qualitative term, with a mean- 
 ing in itself. There certainly is non-Christian 
 matter in the Old Testament, and for aught that we 
 know there may be in the New. In either place 
 
54 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 the question is one of spiritual quality, character, 
 kinship with the revelation that we have in Christ. 
 
 Now return a moment to the principle. It is 
 the Christian element in the Scriptures that must 
 be received as constituent matter into our the- 
 ology, for it is indispensable and formative there. 
 But non-Christian matter contained in the Bible 
 need not, and must not, be so received. Christian 
 theology has deep interest in such matter, and may 
 employ it helpfully for historical illustration, a use 
 for which it has inestimable value. But nothing 
 that is not Christian in its genuine quality has any 
 place in our Christian theology, even though we 
 may have read it on the pages of the Bible. 
 
 This principle for the use of the Scriptures 
 contains nothing new, neither is it a principle that 
 can be contradicted or set aside. That the Bible 
 contains the revelation of Christ and more has 
 been known ever since the Bible was completed. 
 The Sermon on the Mount affirms it, and Paul 
 insists upon it. No Christian student would think 
 of denying it. Yet as a measuring and testing 
 fact the presence of diverse elements in the Bible 
 has never yet come to its due place in theology, 
 and still less in the popular thinking. It has not 
 been unused, indeed, as a test of beliefs, but it has 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 55 
 
 never yet been allowed to do its work without 
 restraint. The doctrine of an equal Bible, as I 
 have said, has kept it in bondage. So it remains 
 for our time, and for us as theologians, to separate 
 the Bible into its diverse elements, in order that 
 the Christian element in its full glory may be 
 received alone to influence in theology. This is 
 that rule of simplicity and certainty which the- 
 ology has been seeking but has never fully found ; 
 and both the schools and the people need to take 
 it honestly into use and allow it to do its clarifying 
 work. 
 
 But the principle calls for some defining, and 
 for the answering of some questions which it 
 suggests. Just what is the Christian element? 
 Where in the Bible is it to be found ? How much 
 does it include? How is it to be distinguished 
 and identified? Who is to select it? Are there 
 clear marks upon it ? How shall we know when 
 we have gathered it all? Perhaps we may not 
 find a short and easy definition, but these questions 
 can be answered. 
 
 It might be thought that the Christian element 
 in the Scriptures consisted of the words of Jesus, 
 or was coextensive with the record of his life. Or 
 it might be identified with the New Testament, 
 
56 THE SCMPTUKES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 the part of the Bible that was written by Chris- 
 tians. But the test already proposed, of character 
 and quality, is more internal and searching than 
 any such test of localization or measurement. 
 What is Christian is such by reason of its relation 
 to that which Christ signifies or stands for, but 
 the relation lies deeper than considerations of time 
 or immediate origin. It lies in the material itself, 
 and is a relation of likeness, or moral unity. Let 
 this be our standard : — That is Christian which 
 enters into or accords with the view of divine 
 realities which Jesus Christ revealed. 
 
 This is by no means a statement that means 
 little or nothing. Critics often tell us that we 
 know much less about Jesus than we thought we 
 knew, and some of them think that we know very 
 little about him. But though it may prove indeed 
 that some of our inherited knowledge of him needs 
 to be corrected, we can yet say without fear that 
 the chief thing about him we know very well. 
 We know his large significance in the human 
 world, and the substance of his message to us 
 men. What view of God and man he stood for, 
 what he made religion to be, what good he offered 
 to mankind, and what gift of truth and life actu- 
 ally flowed forth from him into the common lot, 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 57 
 
 this we know ; and this we know on such evidence 
 that we are sure the knowledge will not be taken 
 away from us. This is the great thing to know 
 concerning Jesus Christ. If we had forty Gospels 
 instead of four, and knew his life in minute detail, 
 and could read volumes of his words instead of 
 pages, and understood the mystery of his person 
 through and through, but knew not what light 
 upon divine realities he gave, we should not know 
 him as he is, or as truly as we know him now. 
 
 What then is this ascertained and sure signifi- 
 cance of Jesus Christ, which is never to be changed 
 and which no future modifications of our knowl- 
 edge can abolish for us? From him there came 
 forth the clearest, simplest, worthiest, and truest 
 view of God and the relation of God to men that 
 has existed in this world ; and in him there has 
 proved to be inexhaustible power to establish that 
 right relation between God and men in actual life. 
 There is no doubt or mystery as to what his 
 revelation was, and is. He has sent forth living 
 truth concerning God, and has made it to live in 
 men. 
 
 As to this view of God which constitutes the 
 revelation of Jesus Christ, it is necessary that just 
 here we set it before us in few words. It is as 
 
58 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 simple as it is practical and glorious. It is a rev- 
 elation made in life. When Jesus lived in perfect 
 filial fellowship with God and called his disciples 
 to do the same, he was making God known as One 
 who is worthy to receive filial confidence and love 
 from all souls, and available for all who will to 
 live with him as his children. He assumed in God 
 the reality of all that men need to find in him. A 
 God for men to love, to trust, and to adore, a God 
 who hates evil and desires to save men from its 
 control, a God of free, forgiving grace, a God to 
 whom men are precious and who seeks them in 
 love that he may make them what they ought 
 to be, a God, indeed, whose holy love is expressed 
 in the love of Christ himself which goes to death 
 in order that it may save, — such a God Jesus 
 has manifested and commended to our faith and 
 affection. A God too who claims as well as loves, 
 who holds his children strictly to the spirit of their 
 Father, who insists that a man shall love not only 
 him but his neighbor, who is to be served by serv- 
 ing men and honored by doing righteousness, who 
 makes human service and fellowship an element 
 in divine religion, and so blesses all in blessing 
 each, — such a God is he. And since there is 
 such a God of free unpurchased grace, Jesus gives 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 59 
 
 US to know that though men are sinful they need 
 not continue so, though they are sorrowful they 
 need not remain uncomforted, though they are 
 harming their fellows they can be transformed into 
 a power to bless. Out of their evil living they 
 can be brought into such filial life with God as 
 Jesus lived. 
 
 Thus Jesus is the revealer of God, and is also in 
 a true sense the revelation of God. What he the 
 visible friend and Saviour is to men, that God is 
 also, invisible but real and now revealed : and 
 God is this to sinful men because of what he is 
 in himself, essentially and forever. Thus the 
 work of Jesus is revelation, the showing of God 
 in the character in which men may conceive of 
 hun and avail themselves of his being. It is the 
 manifestation of a character which men have never 
 clearly known in God. And in Jesus there is 
 more than revelation, there is power, — or, to 
 speak more truly, his revelation is not an utter- 
 ance but a work : it moves in the realm of power, 
 and not of mere ideas. By the operation of a 
 divine spiritual energy the gospel of new life that 
 he proclaimed is realized in life. It is the power 
 of God unto salvation. The Spirit divine, ever 
 abiding, inspiring, and transforming, fulfils the 
 
60 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 work that Christ proposes. By his influence truth 
 is transmuted into life, and men are brought into 
 fellowship with God in such life as Jesus lived. 
 This is revelation in life, conveyed through ex- 
 perience. In pursuance of the work of Christ 
 God was experienced and therefore conceived — 
 not conceived and therefore experienced — in the 
 character and relation that Jesus has revealed. 
 Life made doctrine, life made the New Testament, 
 Hfe made Christian theology ; and the life was life 
 in which God was to men, in their measure, what 
 God was to Jesus, and what Jesus was to men. 
 
 In this light the Christian element, or the gift 
 of Christ, is not a body of words, or even a body 
 of thoughts, but a body of truth. Concerning 
 God and men, it is not only a view expressed, but 
 a conception reahzed. It is a relation brought to 
 be fact, a reality fulfilled through spiritual power. 
 I have often found students unable to grasp the 
 distinction between a body of truth and a body of 
 thoughts, or even of words. They had always 
 thought of truth as expressed in words, and of 
 the most exact wording as making the best ex- 
 pression. But the Christian body of truth is a 
 body of spiritual reality put into life. Until we 
 make this view of Christ's gift our own, we shall 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 61 
 
 not rise to the spiritual clearness of the true faith, 
 or appreciate the true glory of theology. 
 
 Is there now any need of explaining what is 
 meant by saying that the Christian element in 
 the Scriptures is indispensable and formative in 
 theology, and nothing else from the Scriptures 
 should be admitted to a place beside it ? I think 
 the meaning must be plain. The view of God 
 and life Avhich Jesus Christ brought into effect is 
 true : God and life are such as he has shown us. 
 This vital conception is what Christian theology 
 is made of. This Christian theology is to take, 
 unfold, interpret, apply, and carry to its conclu- 
 sions. This and spiritually sound conclusions 
 from it form the bulk of Christian theology. 
 Christ's view of God and the relations of men to 
 him is to be received as the formative truth, and 
 bring in all truth which it implies, and exclude 
 all doctrine that cannot live with it in spiritual 
 harmony. Then God will be represented only in 
 the character in which the Christian message sets 
 him forth, and the general field of theology will 
 be filled with doctrine that proceeds from this 
 view of God by congenial development and stands 
 in spiritual unity with it. Conceptions of God 
 that conflict with this will be banished, and with 
 
(^2 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 them will go all inferences and conclusions from 
 them. If any proposed doctrine contradicts the 
 large meaning and spirit of Christ, of course 
 Christian theology must have none of it. If any 
 is similar to the Christian view but inferior, less 
 conformed to the one true character, Christian 
 theology may thankfully note the service it has 
 rendered, but must not rank it with that which 
 excels. If any proposed doctrine comes by in- 
 ference from some view of God that is inconsistent 
 with that of Christ, and implies that God is other 
 than as he has revealed him, the doctrine is no 
 truer or better than its source, and must be 
 excluded. Nothing may rank with that which 
 Christ has directly given, except that which be- 
 longs with it by true affinity. If from within the 
 Bible itself the inferior matter has been gathered, 
 that makes no difference. Discovery on sacred 
 pages is no reason why non-Christian matter 
 should be called Christian and embodied in 
 Christian theology. Christian theology must be 
 all Christian. If it is not so yet but still needs 
 Christianizing, the way is plain. Give the Chris- 
 tian view of God free scope, and allow it to banish 
 all that contradicts it. 
 
 With this understanding of the object of our 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 63 
 
 search, we have next to look into the Bible for 
 the Christian element. Where in the Bible shall 
 we find Christ for comparison, or that body of 
 Christian truth which is to be our test ? and how 
 shall we know it ? That which we are to use for 
 comparison in forming our theology is not Christ 
 represented by a saying or two, even though they 
 may be great sayings. It is not Christ represented 
 by the sum-total of the words that are attributed 
 to him by the evangelists. It is not Christ rep- 
 resented by the conceptions of Paul or John. 
 Yet it takes all these in. It is Christ as the 
 giver of his high, large, vital conception of God 
 and our human relations with him ; or it is that 
 large and vital conception given by Christ and 
 sent forth into human experience. The Christian 
 part or element in the Bible is that which joins its 
 voice to the voice of Christ as he tells of God, 
 without tone or undertone of contradiction to the 
 essential truths of his great utterance. 
 
 How is it to be recognized ? for only in so far as 
 we can distinguish this element from everything 
 else can we be sure of bringing into theology just 
 what we ought. What is the true method of find- 
 ing what Christ has given ? 
 
 Only for a moment need we recall that easier 
 
64 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 way which for us is no more. That which is from 
 God is identified as his by inspiration, and the 
 Scriptures are all inspired. So anything in the 
 Bible may be received as from the God of Jesus 
 Christ and accounted Christian. Inspiration is 
 upon it as a sufficient identifying mark. It is 
 through this channel that the Bible has been wont 
 to pour its entire contents into theology. But 
 this was never a worthy method, for the facts that 
 make against it have always been known. Only 
 by overlooking what he knew could a theologian 
 ever treat the whole Bible as fit material for Chris- 
 tian theology, for the Bible has always been known 
 to contain diverse elements, including some that 
 Christianity could not be expected to assimilate. 
 Of course we cannot follow this method now. 
 We must discover the distinctions that exist in the 
 Bible, and gather out what we ought to use. 
 
 The way to identify the Christian element is 
 taught us by its nature. Not because it stands in 
 some special place or bears some certifying mark 
 may we call anything Christian, but only because 
 it is what it is, and deserves the name. Evidence 
 is to be in the thing itself, not in its locality or its 
 label. Inspiration was an outward mark, but the 
 inward certifier is quality ; and quality can certify 
 
THE PKINCIPLE Q5 
 
 itself only by appeal to judgment, or discernment. 
 Quality must be recognized : there is no other 
 way. 
 
 I once asked a class of students how they knew 
 a Christian thought when they saw it. They in- 
 stantly took a keen interest in the question, which 
 they had never asked themselves in just that form 
 before, and began to feel about for a test by which 
 a thought might be identified as truly Christian. 
 Not one of them replied, " By finding it in the 
 Bible," or, " By having it certified by inspiration." 
 Not one proposed any external sign or test what- 
 ever. Every man proceeded to suggest some 
 Christian quality in the 'thought, or some compari- 
 son with Christian truth already known. In other 
 words, they all said that we must hope to know a 
 Christian thought by recognition. Every answer 
 affirmed that we must judge, or discern, the Chris- 
 tian quality. My students were not posing as 
 rationalists, either. They were simply common- 
 sense Christians, mainly conservative in type, look- 
 ing the facts in the face. They rightly felt that 
 the name Christian must be given only to that 
 which bears internal evidence of deserving it ; and 
 they saw that our only way to know whether such 
 evidence exists is to judge, or to employ that 
 
 5 
 
66 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Christian discernment which is the power of vision 
 in the spiritual world. The short method is the 
 true method. The way to know a Christian 
 thought is the same as the way to perceive the 
 blue in the sky, — look at it and discern the qual- 
 ity. We may misjudge, but that is the fault of 
 our poor senses, not of the method of spiritual 
 sense-perception. There is no way but to judge, 
 and recognize. 
 
 In this method there is nothing new and untried. 
 It is the most commonplace of things. All Chris- 
 tians would agree that nothing ought to go into 
 theology but that which is Christian, and the most 
 of us are ready to tell what ought to go in and 
 what ought not. We are always judging one an- 
 other's theologies as Christian or not, on the whole 
 or in special points. We judge whole types of 
 theology in this way, and we judge men and their 
 influence, — theologians, teachers, preachers. My 
 students started no new heresy, they struck into 
 the orthodox practice. Nor, I must add, do we 
 usually pass these judgments by comparison with 
 some special test, found for example in a single 
 text or saying of the Lord. Sometimes we do 
 that, but oftener we carry in mind, just as I have 
 proposed, the impression of a body of truth larger 
 
THE PUINCIPLE 67 
 
 than a few great sayings, and approve or condemn 
 by comparison with that. The habit of using such 
 a body of truth, not distinctly defined and yet defi- 
 nite enough to serve as a standard, is as old as 
 theological judgment, and as modern as ourselves. 
 Nevertheless there, is a deeper note that ought 
 here to be struck. The popular practice in judg- 
 ment is not sure to go deep enough. If we are to 
 identify the Christian element, we need to have in 
 exercise the full outfit of our spiritual powers. It 
 is a spiritual action. We are constantly tempted 
 to rely upon the wrong processes for discovery of 
 what is Christian. Sometimes we turn back to 
 history, and quote doctrinal accumulations as that 
 Christian substance which we are seeking. Some- 
 times we look to scholarship and critical acumen, 
 and imagine that keen eyes of the intellect will see 
 the Lord. But beyond all help that such processes 
 may afford, there is something that can be accom- 
 plished by no such means. There is a spiritual 
 vision involved. No man even in his secret soul 
 may boast of possessing it, and yet it needs to be 
 the very ideal and object of us all. Deep calls 
 unto deep : the Christian element appeals to the 
 Christian element. It is the spirit that discerns 
 the Spirit, the child that knows tlie Father. There 
 
68 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 is an inner life in which power to know the Chris- 
 tian truth is developed. Love of holiness discerns 
 the holy. There is a practical sympathy with the 
 redeeming love of Christ, longing and rejoicing to 
 save, out of which we may be able to look with 
 open vision into the redeeming love of God. 
 There is a spiritual habitude under whose influ- 
 ence we may grow able to detect the faintest 
 gleam of the genuine divine light, and recognize 
 Christ and his likeness everywhere. So too there 
 is such a thing as a trained spiritual reasonableness, 
 by use of which we may draw right conclusions 
 from eternal verity, and perceive what other things 
 must be true if God is such a God as Jesus shows. 
 Such spiritual faculties, inspired by God and clari- 
 fied by experience in Christ, we need for sure dis- 
 cernment of what is Christian, within the Bible as 
 well as without. 
 
 Long practice in the life of reverence ma}^ easily 
 suggest a hesitation when it is proposed that 
 we pass judgment upon the Christian quality of 
 what we find within the Bible. Outside, it is 
 different. We have no hesitation about reading 
 Calvin or Channing or Edwards with discrimina- 
 tion, and affirming while we read that this is 
 Christian and that is not, but the region Avithin 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 69 
 
 the Bible may seem too sacred for us to enter 
 in such a manner. What are we, we may ask, 
 that we should presume to pass jiidgment upon 
 thoughts that are written in the holy book ? Does 
 the due reverence permit us to rule out of our 
 theology as non-Christian something that the Bible 
 offers ? How could we look into the face of God, 
 standing in so presumptuous a position ? 
 
 Such hesitation may be a part of our religious 
 inheritance, but none the less does it need to be 
 unlearned. It is better to ask what are we that 
 we should decline to judge. How indeed shall 
 we raise our faces to God if we will not exercise 
 the powers that he has given us ? What is a 
 proper function of a Christian man, if not to 
 know a Christian truth when he sees it? Christ 
 has brought us the true light, and it is the will 
 of God that we should learn to judge all things 
 by its help. We are only beginners yet in the 
 divine judgment to which we are called, but as 
 beginners we must undertake the work and do our 
 best and truest ; for only by such loyal endeavor 
 of imperfect sons of God can that which theology 
 needs ever be accomplished. And never have 
 we been taught that the covers of the Bible were 
 intended to shut out the searching hght of C hrist 
 
70 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 and exempt its contents from the judgment of 
 his truth. That light shines through the covers 
 of the Bible, as it shines through everything 
 else. What are we that we should refuse to say 
 whether we see the Christian quality in what we 
 read within them? Shall we not tell the truth 
 before God? And after all, what is there so 
 presumptuous in saying that the one hundred 
 and third Psalm is Christian in its view of God, 
 or that the nameless prophets of the Exile were 
 very near the kingdom and even within it ? and 
 where is the presumption in judging that the 
 spirit of the one hundred and ninth Psalm is 
 not the mind of Christ ? — for all these three 
 are just such judgments, of recognition or non- 
 recognition of the Christian element, as our 
 principle requires us to pass. Hesitation seems 
 superfluous when we see what the proposed work 
 really is. 
 
 This leads me to say that it is far too late for 
 us to shrink from passing judgment upon matters 
 that lie within the Bible. We and our Christian 
 predecessors have always been doing it, and we 
 cannot stop. The history of this operation is 
 very long and very suggestive. To human judg- 
 ment we owe the Scriptures themselves, and to 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 71 
 
 human judgment with respect to their highest 
 qualities ; for by what process was the Canon 
 formed, of Old Testament or of New, except by 
 the judgment of the God-loving people as to 
 the fitness of certain writings, because of their 
 authorship and their character, to represent the 
 religion that produced them ? It is because the 
 Christian people judged what was Christian, and 
 selected what was most Christian, that we have 
 a New Testament at all. We are indebted to 
 human judgment also for all the strength that 
 textual criticism has added to our confidence in 
 our sacred documents. Reckon up if you can 
 the human judgments that have entered into the 
 production of Westcott and Hort*s Greek New 
 Testament, or any other good text of the Scrip- 
 tures ; and they have not all consisted merely in 
 weighing external evidence. All literary and 
 historical criticism is work of human judgment, 
 and so is all work in biblical theology. All exe- 
 gesis is judgment, intellectual and spiritual : one 
 part of its life is sound mental understanding, 
 and the other part is spiritual insight. Think 
 how much human judgment has been expended 
 upon the Epistle to the Romans, and remember 
 how little the interpreters have shrunk from 
 
72 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOCxY 
 
 judging what was Christian, when the bearing 
 of Paul's thought upon theology was involved 
 in their inquiries. Even the doctrine of high 
 inspiration was a product of human judgment, 
 for it was built up by inferences and deductions, 
 processes of the mind. All systems of theology 
 are framed by human judgment, which in forming 
 them has to pass upon the quality, the meaning 
 and the theological implications of the Scriptures. 
 And remember that in all the nobler parts of this 
 work the judgment that has been exercised is the 
 work of spiritual discernment, a work of the mind 
 of Christ- in men. This divine gift Christians 
 have all the time been endeavoring to put to its 
 use : even when they failed they have failed in 
 this high enterprise, using as they were able one 
 of the dearest gifts of God to his beloved. To 
 see with the eyes of Christ, to call that good 
 which God calls good, to rule out that which the 
 Christian truth rules out, — this is the highest 
 work and privilege of God's children. We need 
 not draw back as if this work of insight were not 
 for us : rather should we enter upon it with a 
 humble joy. 
 
 If we define the Christian element as broadly 
 — some would say as loosely — as I have pro- 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 73 
 
 posed, and asked the people to join us in our 
 conclusions, we shall be sure to meet two kindred 
 objections. Perhaps the influence of them may- 
 color the thought of our own minds, as well as 
 of those whom we wish to help. I, at any rate, 
 am perfectly familiar with them in the history 
 of my own thinking. Listen to the two together. 
 
 The position is no position, someone says, but 
 a moving point. There is no plain standard of 
 Christianity in this vague body of truth, for the 
 method is subjective, and each man is left to 
 make a Christianity for himself. We must have 
 an objective external standard of Christianity that 
 will mean the same to all, or Christianity will 
 escape us when we look for it. With your broad 
 principle you take away our objective standard, 
 and you take awa}'' our Christianity itself, through 
 uncertainty as to what it is. As for theology, 
 there will not be enough left to make theology of. 
 There are many familiar voices, some of them 
 revered, that I can hear enunciating these kin- 
 dred objections. 
 
 As to the removal of the objective standard of 
 Christianity, I deny that our principle leaves us 
 without such a standard. I affirm that by it 
 alone can we obtain a true one. When we say 
 
74 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 that Christianity is a body of truth discerned by 
 the powers that are given us for discernment of 
 truth, have we not set forth a standard ? I am 
 assuming, indeed, that we believe in the reality 
 of large spiritual truth discernible by human pow- 
 ers divinely influenced. If only we believe in this, 
 surely we have in the significance of Jesus Christ 
 a real standard of what Christianity is, not sub- 
 jective, and perfectly intelligible. But I freely 
 o wn that the principle ignores the need of a 
 standard visible or audible, so unequivocal that 
 it can be understood in only one way. There is 
 no such standard of Christianity, and there can 
 be none. The church and the Bible have been 
 taken to be such standards. Among Protestants 
 it has been very generally held that the right use 
 of the Bible in theology was use of it as the clear 
 and unequivocal external standard of the Chris- 
 tian faith. But the Bible does not conform better 
 to the definition than does the church. The Re- 
 formers hoped that the Bible would prove to be 
 that unifying standard which the church had 
 failed to be ; but it has turned out otherwise. 
 The Bible has not shown that it can be under- 
 stood only in one way by truth-loving souls. 
 When held as standard it has yielded, or sup- 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 75 
 
 ported, the Calvinistic and Arminian theologies, 
 which oppose each other throughout, and represent 
 God in two characters ; and it is claimed to-day 
 with equal sincerity by a hundred sects as the 
 special authority of each. It is not adapted to 
 serve as a plain standard from which only a 
 single meaning can be drawn. It contains too 
 much ; there is too much variety in its points of 
 view, and too much humanity in its writers : there 
 is too much besides Christ. Its highest part I 
 am proposing as standard for Christianity; but 
 a single unequivocal standard the Bible as a 
 book can never be. And moreover, the more 
 we know of what is Christian, the more clearly 
 we see that no single outward standard, like a 
 body of writings, can possibly represent it and 
 do it justice. What is Christian has its power 
 in spirit and life. It cannot be formulated. To 
 insist upon a form of words for it, even of inspired 
 words, is to exchange it for something else. Its 
 spiritual glory is that it is not rigid and unequiv- 
 ocal, the same to all. It is the same to all, yet 
 with endless variety, like life, or love, or God. 
 It is liable to be misunderstood, but this liability 
 is only the defect of its highest quality. So we 
 need not regret the absence of a Christian stand- 
 
76 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 ard of theology that can stand as test of uniform- 
 ity, and hold all Christians to one form and mode. 
 That would not be a Christian thing. The proper 
 standard for judging what is Christian and what 
 is not is the rich body of Christian truth, reveal- 
 ing God for what he is, and entering into life, 
 calhng with all the solemnity of divine judgment 
 for the abandonment of all views that conflict 
 with that glorious revelation. 
 
 This leads me to the other objection, that our 
 principle takes away the definiteness of our Chris- 
 tianity, and leaves us uncertain as to what it is. 
 We are so used to formula-practice in theology 
 that this objection comes naturally enough. Never- 
 theless, it is unworthy of Christians, for it does 
 deep injustice to our actual Christian experience 
 and certainty. There are many who feel that 
 unless we use the Bible in the old way as a deci- 
 sive standard for our Christianity we shall have 
 nothing left, and that if we rely upon judgment 
 and discovery for identifying the Christian element 
 in the Scriptures, we shall discover so little that it 
 will scarcely be worth discovering. But that im- 
 plies that Christianity is so small that searching 
 will not find it, or so like everything else that 
 it cannot be distinguished except by a label. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 77 
 
 Against this view of the dimness and undistin- 
 guishability of divine revelation in Christ, every 
 Christian ought to protest in the name of truth 
 and life. I utterly deny that Christianity is so 
 vague a thing that spiritual discernment cannot 
 find it if we seek, or so poor a thing as not 
 to be worth the search. Can it indeed be so 
 undiscoverable if God is in it? Pardon me if 
 I return a moment to the account of it that I 
 have given, and call attention to the definiteness 
 of that body of truth which Christ has uttered 
 forth into life for mankind. Here we have no 
 shadowy and elusive thing, but a contribution 
 to our theology that stands perfectly solid and 
 strong. 
 
 The heart of theology is the doctrine of God in 
 his relations with men: of this the rest is the 
 unfolding. This is the heart of theology because 
 it is the substance of religion. Now what Jesus 
 taught was not theology at all : it was religion. 
 He lived in God, he lived out God's heart in his 
 own life, he showed men how to live in God. 
 This is true religion, and therefore this is true 
 theology. In what he thus taught there is no 
 dimness or uncertainty. God is such a God as 
 Jesus lived with in holy fellowship, and such 
 
78 THE SCKIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 a God as Jesus showed forth in life and love and 
 death. God is the God with whom Jesus told 
 men they might live in holy fellowship, sinful 
 though they were, because he was a Saviour-God. 
 He is worthy of all love and trust, for he is like 
 Jesus in that love for goodness and for men which 
 bore Jesus to the cross. He delights to pardon, 
 and rejoices over one sinner that repenteth : he is 
 a God of searching and exacting holiness also, 
 demanding likeness to himself. To men who 
 trust him he will be the God of the Sermon on the 
 ]\Iount, a Father, and he will be the Spirit of the 
 Fourth Gospel, indwelling, revealing, sanctifying. 
 He is a God who will make men members of his 
 own divine family, and true members of the 
 human family too, living with their brothers as 
 they ought. This is the heart of Christianity; 
 and this truth has been so tested in life that we 
 may receive it as true indeed. 
 
 Now what I affirm is that in this body of living 
 truth we have a clear Christianity, and we have 
 a distinct and positive body of doctrine for the- 
 ology. Here, first of all, we have that decisive 
 element for theology, a strong conception of God 
 in his eternal and necessary character. From 
 knowing him as he appears in Christ, we are able 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 79 
 
 to understand and acknowledge the claims which 
 he makes upon men. In the light of what Jesus 
 has shown us, we can have no doubt as to the 
 spirit that will animate him in his large relations 
 with mankind, and we can obtain a trustworthy 
 point of view for interpreting his gracious activi- 
 ties. Working in loyalty to the Christian spirit, 
 we can be reasonably sure of a right judgment as 
 to what else is true if Jesus' testimony to God is 
 true, — and this is the open door to a large part 
 of our theological thought. In this light there 
 is no permanent difficulty in knowing what is 
 Christian and what is not, or in judging what 
 ought to enter into Christian theology. For a 
 time we may be in doubt on some point, for there 
 may be many influences that confuse or delay our 
 judgment : time, experience, and holy training will 
 be needed before we can master the great Chris- 
 tian lesson in its simplicity, so fond are we of 
 complicated schemes. But the truth in Christ 
 is not only clear but clarifying, and the promise 
 of true vision will be fulfilled. So Christianity 
 is not lost, but simplified and elevated. It stands 
 clear, self-evidencing, divine, and imparts to the- 
 ology its own clearness, simplicity, and strength. 
 And if the objection still recurs that by this 
 
80 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 broad definition of what is Christian I am opening 
 an outlook into endless differences, since each man 
 will be his own master as to what he will receive 
 as Christian, and they will not agree, and there will 
 be more theologies than ever, I reply, Not so. 
 There is a clear outlook in the other direction. 
 Theology will be more unanimous when it is 
 required only to be Christian, than it used to be 
 when it was required to take the whole Bible in. 
 It is a simpler matter to be in harmony with 
 Christ alone than to agree with Christ and all the 
 writers of Old Testament and New in all their reli- 
 gious utterances. If theology has only to include 
 the gospel, there is good hope that Christian 
 students may yet come to a real harmony. But 
 thus far theology has been expected to assimilate 
 both the gospel and the law, and do justice not 
 only to the reality of salvation by free grace, but 
 to the tradition of salvation through earned right- 
 eousness as well. It has had to show God forth 
 in the fatherly character in which Christ revealed 
 him, and at the same time to preserve the kingly 
 and judicial conceptions of his relations Avith men 
 that are pictured in the Old Testament. It has 
 had to conceive of God as a spirit, and yet keep 
 in vogue large results from the less spiritual and 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 81 
 
 anthropomorphic ideas of earlier time. It has had 
 to proclaim him as purely good, and yet make 
 room for his doing many things attributed to him 
 within the Bible that were not good. It has had 
 to present the Christian ideal for human life, and 
 yet do reverence to inferior ideals that were 
 embodied in ancient theocratic and legal institu- 
 tions. It has had to receive testimony not only 
 from Christ and those who had learned of him, 
 but also from men who had never heard of him 
 and from institutions that he superseded. What 
 wonder that there have been many judgments, and 
 theology has been mixed, inharmonious, contra- 
 dictory, uncertain? The one hope of a growing 
 harmony in Christian theology dwells exactly in 
 that simpHfjdng and clarifying of the standard 
 which is here proposed, by taking the Christian 
 element alone, as all in all. To think with Christ, 
 with men before Christ, and with disciples of 
 Christ who understood him variously, is impossi- 
 ble ; but to think with Christ himself, in loyalty to 
 the God whom he reveals, may lie within the field 
 of hope. Even thus unity will not come at once, 
 for we cannot learn in a day to think in harmony 
 with Christ, nor in another day to follow on to all 
 that such harmony implies; but this is the way 
 
 6 
 
82 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 that leads to the elimination of differences and the 
 establishment for theology of an undying oneness. 
 
 Now for a moment I must sing the praises of 
 the principle that I have been trying to set forth. 
 I affirm without fear that the Christian element 
 in the Scriptures, which is the large view of God 
 in his relations with men which we owe to Christ, 
 enters by right into our theology, brings with it 
 what belongs with it by true affinity, and casts 
 out all that cannot live with it in peace. I praise 
 this principle as plain and unambiguous. It 
 makes the decisive question for theology to be 
 no longer, "What is in the Bible?" but, "What 
 is of Christ and like Christ ? " — and for the 
 answering of this question it defines Christ from 
 his large spiritual work and gift. This gives a 
 clear meaning, that grows ever clearer as we 
 know Christ more profoundly. Also, this prin- 
 ciple is Christian. Surely there is no need of 
 proving that, for it enthrones the Christian ele- 
 ment alone, and admits no other in its presence. 
 
 Moreover, this principle does justice to all the 
 elements in the case, as no other method of using 
 the Scriptures in theology has ever done. 
 
 First of all, it does justice to the Scripturesr 
 It disclaims preconceived theories of them, and 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 83 
 
 examines them. It neither exalts nor degrades 
 them out of their actual position, but takes them 
 for exactly what they are, and uses them in their 
 real character. It takes them not as they look 
 on superficial reading, but as they mean on full 
 examination. To discover what they are and 
 ^vhat they teach, it welcomes all worthy forms 
 of study, liistorical, critical, devotional. It uses 
 them not by text-picking and word-matching, as 
 we must own that they have sometimes been used, 
 but by discernment of their internal characteris- 
 tics and their onward sweep. That the Scrip- 
 tures exalt Christ above themselves, probably all 
 Christians would admit in theory, but many find 
 it hard to admit in practice. This principle alone 
 assumes that fact and carries it to consistent 
 application in theology. It distinctly subordi- 
 nates the Bible to the Lord, the book to his teach- 
 ing. When Christ has entered with his revelation 
 of God, it welcomes him with the honor that is 
 his due. It places him above those who heralded 
 him beforehand, and above those who adored him 
 afterward, for in him and not in them it finds 
 the centre and test of Christianity. So it does 
 justice to the Scriptures by accepting as their 
 testimony in theology only the testimony of liim 
 
84 THE SCRIPTUKES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 to whom they bear witness. To make the Scrip- 
 tures that witness of Christ independent witnesses 
 for docti'ine that differs from Christ, it refuses, 
 in the name of Christ and of the Scriptures too. 
 It does them the justice of not holding them any 
 longer responsible for their superseded parts, and 
 giving them the privilege of testifying to Christ. 
 No other honor could the witnessing Scriptures 
 ask than this, that they be permitted to point to 
 him who was born that he might bear witness to 
 the truth, and say, "Hear ye him." 
 
 Again, our principle does justice to theology, 
 for it makes theology Christian. It insists that 
 tlieology that bears the Christian name shall bear 
 the Christian character. So on the one hand it 
 provides that the full wealth of the Christian reve- 
 lation shall be poured into theology : that the all- 
 glorious truth that Jesus imparted shall enter in 
 its fulness and bring forth fruit after its kind, 
 yielding all such inferences and developments as 
 are congruous with its spiritual quality. It admits 
 to theology all that Christ revealed concerning 
 God, and all that is true if that is true. And on 
 the other hand it provides for excluding from the- 
 ology all incongruous elements, putting the ban 
 upon all that can contradict Jesus or detract from 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 85 
 
 his testimony. It safeguards the religious char- 
 acter of theology, for it acknowledges Jesus as 
 teacher in religion and bringer of the supreme re- 
 ligious gift, and it assures his religious gift the 
 precedence in theology over the contributions of 
 metaphysics and philosophy, however helpful they 
 may be. So it exalts theology to its rightful place 
 of honor, as the servant of the revealing Christ 
 and the living Saviour God whom he reveals. 
 
 Our principle does justice also to the theologian. 
 It pays him the compliment that is due to a man 
 devoted to the highest work, for it is a reason- 
 able principle, calHng for honorable and straight- 
 forward processes of the mind, which alone are 
 worthy of the highest realm. It does him the 
 honor also of demanding much of him ; for it is a 
 spiritual principle, and therefore most exacting, 
 which is only fair to a man whose powers are 
 turned to the knowledge of God. No other prin- 
 ciple for using the Scriptures demands so much of 
 the user as this. It requires all knowledge of the 
 Bible. It calls for deep and true spiritual percep- 
 tion, unerring sympathy with the mind of Christ, 
 and ability to distinguish a Christian thought from 
 the multitude of other thoughts that may throng 
 it about. It requires him to be a man who recog- 
 
86 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 nizes the face of God wherever a glimpse of it 
 shines through; a man who can judge divine 
 things in Christ's own spirit, so as to know what 
 are true developments from his revelation and 
 what inferences from his central truth are spiritu- 
 ally valid ; a man, too, so loyal to the heavenly 
 vision that he will speak the word that he per- 
 ceives to be divine, even though it be called hu- 
 man by men who love the Lord as well as he. All 
 this a laborer in divine theology ought to be, and 
 upon these worthy qualities in him our principle 
 insists. 
 
 And then it gives him his liberty, the glori- 
 ous liberty of the sons of God. It sets above 
 him only that glorious body of living truth which 
 Jesus has given us, and invites him to contribute, 
 if he is able, to the positive contents of theology. 
 According to our principle, thought may be wel- 
 comed into theology that did not originate directly 
 in the Scriptures. Whatever is in unison with the 
 mind of Christ may enter, from whatever source. 
 The Scriptures do not veto the thinking of the 
 present-day theologian : they invite him to think, 
 inspire his thinking, and welcome his thought if it 
 be Christian. Possibly he may make some new 
 application of Christian truth, or draw some infer- 
 
THE PRINCIPLE 87 
 
 ence, spiritually valid but not before accepted, 
 from the Christian thought of God. He may be 
 able to rule out, with divine authority, something 
 that has remained to vex theology by its incon- 
 gruous character. Any true man, thinking God's 
 thoughts after him, may any day bring to theology 
 a contribution that will belong to its very sub- 
 stance. This is nothing new, for theologians have 
 always wrought in hope of being able to do this 
 very thing; but they have done it under some 
 constraint from theories that they held. But the 
 practice accords with a truer theor}?-. In loyalty 
 to the Christian view of God, wherein there is no 
 bondage, there is opened to the student all honor- 
 able spiritual freedom, in which his highest powers 
 have utmost scope and range, for the finding out 
 of all high matters that can be known to men. 
 
 Thus, doing justice to the Scriptures, to theol- 
 ogy and to the theologian, our principle stands 
 vindicated as worthy to govern the use of the 
 Scriptures in theology. 
 
 When our principle has won its rights, some- 
 thing will come of it. There will be negative 
 results in the field of theology by way of elimina- 
 tion, and positive results by way of construction. 
 These we shall consider in the hours that follow. 
 
in 
 
 EESULTS NEGATIVE 
 
 If we apply our principle, and use in theology only 
 the Christian element from the Scriptures, the 
 results will not all be directly constructive : they 
 will be in part destructive, if we wish to call them 
 so, though that is not the best name, as we shall 
 see. Some familiar matters will be missed from 
 theology when Christ has the field to himself. I 
 cannot enumerate all the matters that will thus be 
 eliminated, but I must devote this hour to sugges- 
 tions as to the way in which these results, benefi- 
 cent and not harmful, will be brought to pass. 
 
 Eirst may be mentioned two or three topics that 
 stand by themselves, with their relation to theology 
 determined in another manner. There are some 
 cases in which the contribution of the Scriptures 
 to theology is immediately withdrawn, as soon as 
 we have discovered what the Scriptures in ques- 
 tion really are, — withdrawn because it has become 
 apparent that the writings that lie before us are 
 not witnesses on the question. We used to sup- 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 89 
 
 pose that the first chapters of Genesis were wit- 
 nesses concerning the manner in which the world 
 and man were created, and, through connection 
 with the time-record of the book, concerning the 
 age of the world and mankind. But we have 
 learned to understand these writings better, and 
 now we know that they are not historical records, 
 and bear no testimony as to the age of the world 
 and man, or the manner of creation. If this testi- 
 mony be omitted, the Scriptures contain no testi- 
 mony on these subjects, and hand nothing over to 
 theology concerning them. Theology needs a 
 right conception of the human race, but does not 
 obtain from the Bible an account of its origin, 
 or the origin of the world. The facts must be 
 learned from other sources. This is a case in 
 which the Scriptures, rightly read, withdraw their 
 contribution. 
 
 More reluctantly but under equal necessity, the- 
 ology begins to see that Genesis withdraws its 
 contribution concerning the origin of human sin. 
 The impossibility of maintaining the historical 
 character of the narrative is enough, for we are 
 under the vow of honesty to use the Scriptures for 
 what they are. We have no historical narrative of 
 the beginning of sin, and theology receives from the 
 
90 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Scriptures no record of that beginning. It is not 
 enough that we admit this as a fact, we must use it as 
 a fact ; and that means that theology must account 
 for sin, if at all, without the aid of such a narrative. 
 Here is another case of testimony withdrawn. 
 
 If theology is left in this position, it will be just 
 where the Master left it. He bore no testimony as 
 to the manner of creation or the age of the world 
 and man, and we cannot imagine that these ques- 
 tions could have any bearing, near or remote, upon 
 the substance of his supreme revelation. Nor did 
 he ever refer, so far as we know, to the origin of 
 human sin ; and though distinct belief on that sub- 
 ject has long been accounted part of lo3^alty to him, 
 he never called it so. He found God, humanity, 
 and sin all in existence, and proceeded to utter 
 supreme truth about them. Theology may well 
 be content to stand with the Master, receiving and 
 passing on his testimony concerning things as they 
 are, and convinced that no knowledge or theory of 
 origins, however valuable it might be, is essential 
 to the significance of his message. 
 
 These negative results reached by the withdrawal 
 of testimony stand by themselves. We come now 
 to the comparing of the Christian and non-Chris- 
 tian elements in the Scriptures. 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 91 
 
 Here questions throng. Is the Christian ele- 
 ment all in the New Testament ? or have we some 
 Christian thought from pre-Christian times ? What 
 is there in the Old Testament that is spiritually one 
 with the message of Christ, and what do we find 
 there that once seemed true but cannot be true if 
 Christ is the truth ? We are required to draw this 
 line through the ancient writings, and use for the- 
 ology only what lies on one side of it, and remand 
 to history what lies on the other. Similar questions 
 arise concerning the New Testament. The New 
 Testament is the great Christian book, and gives 
 to theology abundance of Christian material in 
 addition to the words of Jesus, most useful in fill- 
 ing out our understanding of his gift. Is it all of 
 this kind ? Does it contain any thought that origi- 
 nated in non-Christian sources or survived not 
 wholly Christianized from pre-Christian times? 
 Have we here any non-Christian Jewish remain- 
 ders ? Is there anything here that represents God 
 in his relations with men in ways inconsistent 
 with the testimony of Christ? If any such matter 
 is here, it must be distinguished from the Christian 
 element and used only for historical purposes, while 
 theology receives the Christian part. 
 
 All students are familiar with the difference 
 
92 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 between theology and the history of theology. 
 Theology includes what is held to be true, and 
 the history of theology includes what has been 
 held to be true, on the subjects involved, — a 
 difference deep and wide. In the history of 
 theology is included, for example, the ancient 
 doctrine that in the atonement of Christ an of- 
 fering was made to the devil for the deliverance 
 of men from his dominion. That doctrine is deeply 
 interesting in the history of theology, but no one 
 dreams that it now has the slightest claim to a 
 place in theology itself. Other doctrines have 
 had their day and ceased to be. The doctrine of 
 the atonement itself has passed through various 
 forms that cannot all be right since they are 
 inconsistent one with another, and some of which 
 cannot be right if Jesus was right in his view of 
 God. So with other topics. Some of these forms 
 of doctrine are dead, others still live : some are in 
 the history of theology, and some in present the- 
 ology itself. We know how to distinguish the 
 two groups. Now our principle requires that 
 what we do outside the Bible we do within the 
 Bible also. In biblical thought that is pre- 
 Christian or non-Christian we have profound 
 historical and religious interest, for it is part of 
 
KESULTS NEGATIVE 93 
 
 the religious history that is associated with Jesus 
 Christ ; but while we study it in the history of 
 theology we do not receive it into theology now 
 if it represents God as Christ does not. From 
 this process two results will follow. Theology 
 Avill pass some biblical material by, and theology 
 will cancel some paragraphs that have long stood 
 upon its pages. Both from accepted theology and 
 from the Bible itself the gospel of Christ sends 
 some matters into retirement. 
 
 This is no radical or new proposal. We are all 
 perfectly familiar with the operation of it, and are 
 thankful for the results. 
 
 There is a great word in the New Testament 
 that lies at the very heart of the Christian mes- 
 sage : — " God is a Spirit, and they that worship 
 him must worship him in spirit and truth." The 
 thought was not unknoAvn before Christ, or beyond 
 the Hebrew world, but it is rightly esteemed a 
 characteristic thought of Christianity, and a final 
 word concerning God and his relations with men. 
 There it stands forever, a revelation of that which 
 is. But we must not fail to notice how much 
 this great word consigns to the fate of things 
 abandoned. First it antiquates at once all those 
 naive anthropomorphisms which represented the 
 
94 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 simple unchastened conceptions of God that sat- 
 isfied earlier man. Early religion was full of 
 physical picturings of God, presenting him in 
 terms of appeal to the human senses. These were 
 present in the Old Testament, never forming the 
 whole conception of God, but keeping the con- 
 ception low, even while on the lower plane they 
 were helpful to it. The great Christian word 
 silently abolishes the anthropomorphic limitations, 
 sets God forth solely as a Spirit, and opens the 
 way to the highest spiritual relation between him 
 and men. 
 
 But this great word relegates from theology to 
 history much more than the ancient pictorialisms, 
 the eye, the arm, the face, the throne, of God. As 
 the context in the Fourth Gospel suggests, it 
 retires the whole idea of the special localizing of 
 worship. Since God is a Spirit, to be worshipped 
 in spirit and truth, it foUows that " neither in this 
 mountain nor yet in Jerusalem" shall men wor- 
 ship the Father, in that hour which " is now come." 
 Now on the pages of the Bible the localizing of 
 worship is as old as the story of Cain and Abel. 
 It runs through the life of the patriarchs. It is 
 the burden of the history of worship in tabernacle 
 and temple. It is the secret of the significance of 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 95 
 
 Jerasalem. It makes the very substance of the 
 appeal of Deuteronomy. It inspires the fine feel- 
 ing of some of the sweetest Psalms. That God 
 has dwelling-places, and then a dwelling-place, is 
 a central conviction of the people's religion in the 
 Old Testament. Only a few of the prophets 
 clearly rise above it. Thus localized worship is 
 taught within the Bible, and urged, and strenu- 
 ously required in the name of God. One who 
 reads the Bible through finds far more demands 
 for it than rejections of it. Nevertheless it has 
 no place in theology now, for the simple reason 
 that Christ taught us better when he showed 
 that God is a Spirit, to be found and worshipped 
 wherever a soul looks to him in spirit and truth. 
 The God whom we know in Christ is not a God 
 of sacred places. 
 
 This well-known retiring of a biblical idea ought 
 to teach ns its wholesome and cheering lesson. 
 We see Jesus Christ in the very act of driving 
 inferior conceptions out of theology into the his- 
 tory of theology, and we thank God for the whole- 
 some change that he has wrought. Then let 
 us admit that the process is a sound one, and take 
 to heart the fact that every true thought concern- 
 ing God sends some false one into the background. 
 
96 THE SCRIPTURES IK THEOLOGY 
 
 Let us not fear to inquire where the line runs 
 through the Bible, to separate the antiquated 
 from the ever-living. The writer to the Hebrews, 
 speaking of matter that lies within his Bible and 
 ours, says, " Now that which is becoming old and 
 waxing aged is nigh unto vanishing away." Let 
 it vanish, and let us not fail to discover when it 
 has vanished, that we may rejoice the more in the 
 everlastingness of that which cannot be removed. 
 
 There is another instance of elimination of 
 biblical material, equally illuminating with this. 
 In the New Testament much prominence is given 
 to questions about Jews and Gentiles, the privi- 
 leges of the one and the unprivileged condition 
 of the other, and the relations of the two to 
 salvation by Christ. The issue was raised, Ave 
 know, in view of relations that are recorded in 
 the Old Testament. It was a biblical question, 
 and in Paul's day it was a practical question, with 
 the echoes of which the New Testament rings. 
 Yet here is a vital question in the history of the- 
 ology and in the Bible, which is no question at all, 
 or even a topic, in theology now. Paul uttered 
 the great Christian word about it when he said, 
 "Is God the God of Jews only? is he not the 
 God of Gentiles also ? Yea, of Gentiles also, if 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 97 
 
 so be that God is one." One God, one relation 
 of men to God, — that was Paul's Christian de- 
 cision. It was a straight inference from Christ's 
 view of God, and when once it was accepted the 
 controversy was dead. Dead it is. No theology 
 now needs a section on circumcision and uncir- 
 cumcision, or the free access of Gentiles to God 
 in Christ. Though the topic is embedded in the 
 New Testament, Avritten there as a vital part of 
 the Christian gospel, it is now an element in 
 history alone, never more in theology at all. 
 Paul drove it out by the very process that I am 
 advocating now, — by showing what the Christian 
 verity concerning God implied upon the subject. 
 
 We may follow Paul's example in dealing with 
 a kindred question not unknown in theology, — 
 the way of salvation in the Old Testament times. 
 If we hold to the idea of God that Christ has 
 given us, we cannot possibly admit to our the- 
 ology any idea that he, who is ever the same, 
 proposed to accept and save men in one period 
 on the principle of law and works and in another 
 on the principle of grace and faith. Nor can we 
 admit any doctrine that comes by way of inference 
 from such a thought, implying it as true. That 
 the God of grace was ever in his saving of men 
 
 7 
 
98 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 the God of legalism is absolutely inconsistent 
 with the Christian revelation. The one God who 
 is the same to all men is the same in all periods. 
 Though men may have misjudged him and seemed 
 to see him in two characters, he changes never, 
 and his principle in accepting men to salvation 
 is as unalterable as himself. To say this is only 
 to say that Christ has shown the living God as 
 he really is. I do not say that the Old Testament 
 really represents him as in its time a God of legal- 
 ism. Rightly read, as we may now read it, I 
 judge that it does not. But it has often been 
 written into theology that it does represent him 
 so, and it has been added that the Christian apostle 
 Paul represents him as having two methods of 
 salvation, the earlier legal and the later gracious. 
 Whether Paul does so represent him is a question 
 for evidence. But whoever may have conceived 
 the Christian God as a God whose acceptance was 
 formerly earned by meritorious works, it cannot 
 be true, and the thought is one that the Christian 
 message now forbids us to entertain. Earlier men 
 may have thought otherwise, but we know in 
 Christ that the only God always accepts men to sal- 
 vation by the free grace of his own heart, and not 
 on grounds of merit, Therefore all discussions that 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 99 
 
 assume a legal method of salvation once in use by 
 him must drop out of theology, and all inferences 
 from such a view of God must go with them. 
 Whatever such omission would cancel from the- 
 ology it is our high privilege to eliminate. Under 
 this influence, driven out because it is not one 
 with Christ's gospel of free grace, the doctrine 
 that God saves men by imputing to them merit 
 which he has provided for them in Christ will 
 retire into history, leaving theology to be domi- 
 nated by the Christian element in the Scriptures. 
 This doctrine of imputation is venerable in Chris- 
 tian history, but it has its roots in a conception 
 of God which Christianity condemns and super- 
 sedes, and therefore it has no place in Christian 
 theology. The gospel of Christ is far better than 
 the legahsm which theology even yet has scarcely 
 learned to leave behind. 
 
 In the same direction the revelation of Christ 
 leads us farther. Both the legalistic view and 
 the localizing of worship have given sanction to 
 the idea that God holds himself aloof from sin- 
 ful men, and keeps them at a distance. For this 
 idea, long influential in theology, the Bible has 
 constantly been held to be authority. So it is, 
 if we take it all as we And it and are bound by 
 
100 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 it as it reads. If Solomon's temple pictures divine 
 realities and relations as they are, then God dwells 
 apart from men though manifested among them, 
 shut in, as it were, in a secret chamber, and sin- 
 ners are held away from approach to him by a 
 succession of sanctities, while they are repre- 
 sented before him by a series of indispensable 
 propitiations. The tabernacle, the temple, the 
 Jewish legal system, all proclaim the withdrawal 
 of God, the separateness of the Holy, the inac- 
 cessibleness of the divine to the sinful. The 
 developed system of sacrifice in later Judaism 
 gave strong emphasis to the same idea. Now, 
 it is not surprising that men thought thus of 
 God. The idea is very ancient and widespread. 
 It was built into many of those Gentile temples 
 after which we now know that the temple of 
 Solomon was patterned. The idea was reinforced 
 by moral considerations, for when once God was 
 known as pure and demanding purity, all the 
 stronger would be the conviction that he must 
 withdraw himself from the sinful. When his 
 will was expressed in a law of commandments, 
 then such a law must form a hedge about his 
 presence. Surely, it was thought, in his holiness 
 he could be approached by sinners only with pro- 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 101 
 
 pitiations, whereby his wrath might he averted 
 and his favor won. This is a perfectly natural 
 view for sinful men to take of their relation to 
 God, for the one thing certain about sinful men 
 is that they will misunderstand and misjudge 
 God. But we know at present that it is abso- 
 lutely a non-Christian idea. It lacks the very 
 element that Jesus brought in. He had no place 
 for the idea that God holds himself aloof from 
 the sinful : he taught that God's feeling toward 
 the sinful was the same as his own, expressed 
 in coming forth to seek and to save that which 
 was lost. He never taught or gave a hint that 
 God's favor needs to be won, or his wrath averted, 
 by sacrifice or propitiation: on the contrary, he 
 made men know that God is always waiting 
 the opportunity for free exercise of his grace. 
 According to him the only barrier between God 
 and men is the sinfulness of men which keeps 
 them away from him. The holiness of God is 
 manifested in the fact that sinfulness is a barrier, 
 and in the eager desire of God for the removing 
 of the barrier and the bringing of men to his holy 
 fellowship. This is the Christian light upon God, 
 given nowhere else, No other religion has it. In 
 the Old Testament there are gleams of it, still 
 
102 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 dimmed by the clouds of altar-sacrifice, but in 
 its fulness it shines only in Jesus Christ. This 
 central truth, that God is truly revealed in the 
 seeking and saving love of Christ, not only enters 
 into Christian theology, but constitutes its very 
 heart. Kindred conclusions from it must have 
 place in theology, but all that represents God 
 in a manner inconsistent with it must be ban- 
 ished without regret. The ancient word propi- 
 tiation must not come into theology in senses 
 that correspond to the old non-Christian thought 
 of God. If it comes at all, it must enter as it 
 enters the New Testament, where all the propi- 
 tiation that is mentioned is said to be provided 
 by God himself. God, the free and ready source 
 of grace that saves, — this is Christianity, and 
 to this our Christian theology must be made to 
 correspond. 
 
 We may look at another illustration. The field 
 of eschatology, so far as this world is concerned, 
 will be entirely cleared by the application of our 
 principle. Here the decisive influence has always 
 been a non-Christian element. 
 
 When the Messiah should come, what was he 
 expected to do ? Hopes in Israel varied, but 
 not widely. He was to establish a kingdom in 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 103 
 
 Israel, and reign over the chosen people, and 
 make Israel rule over the nations. The ancient 
 kingdom of David, sacred and glorious in national 
 memory, was the type which he would fulfil and 
 glorify. Israelites of past ages would be raised 
 from the dead to share in the glory of his king- 
 dom. The living Israel would be purified from 
 sin that it might reign with him, and would enter 
 the kingdom through the ordeal of a judgment. 
 Thus the chosen people would be glorified with 
 the Messiah in his kingdom at Jerusalem, while 
 the nations would either be blessed in his reign 
 or be punished for their hatred of Israel. This, 
 with variations, was the hope. 
 
 Jesus appeared, and was rejected by the nation 
 in general, but by a minority was welcomed as 
 the Messiah. When he had gone, the Messiah, 
 as these believed, had been among them. And 
 what had he done? He founded no kingdom in 
 his lifetime, nor took any step in that direction, 
 beyond the claim that was implied in his final 
 entrance to Jerusalem. At the hands of Israel 
 the Messiah died. But death was followed by 
 resurrection, and soon he was gone from the 
 earth and was exerting spiritual power upon 
 men from the heavenly world. A church sprang 
 
104 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 up in his name, which started within the Jewish 
 circle but soon went abroad among the nations, 
 where alone, and not among the people of the 
 Messiah, it was permanently established. He 
 was as far as possible from fulfilling the sacred 
 expectations about the Christ, and yet, in the 
 sure conviction of his early followers, he was the 
 Christ. Surely, then, the expectations wo aid yet 
 be realized: fulfilment was only delayed. He 
 had gone from the world in which he was to 
 reign, but the heavens could not retain him ; he 
 would quickly return, the dead would be raised, 
 the judgment would be held, the kingdom would 
 be established, and the Messiah would reign in 
 majesty on the earth. This Christian rendering 
 of the Jewish expectation took powerful hold 
 upon the Jewish Christians, and was passed on 
 by them to the Gentiles who believed, and formed 
 a mighty inspiration in the life of the early 
 church. 
 
 But the expectation was not realized. The 
 Messiah did not return in glory. A wholly differ- 
 ent course of events unfolded. A spiritual work 
 was done, and it was a work that formed a true 
 continuation of what Jesus had done in life and 
 death, a genuine development from his actual 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 105 
 
 mission. There came new holiness and fellowship 
 with God, new love and fellowship with men, new 
 hope of immortality. There came a living and 
 growing chnrch on earth. This was what Jesus 
 had introduced. The Christ who lived brought in 
 a future like himself. Though the advent-hope 
 continued, there came no realization whatever of 
 that hope or any of its elements. The movement 
 of history followed according to the influence of 
 the Christ who came, not according to the hopes 
 of those who pictured him beforehand. 
 
 How could it be otherwise ? From what should 
 a movement of history come forth ? from what was 
 expected to occur, or from what had occurred? 
 Expectations do not determine what history shall 
 be : facts and working influences do that. The 
 Jesus who lived and died was the one from whom 
 the Christian development took its character, not 
 the Davidic king long hoped for but never born. 
 The history that followed Christ has been Chris- 
 tian, imperfectly of course but really : it would 
 have been Jewish, not Christian, if the ancient 
 hope had been reahzed. In other words, the ful- 
 filment of the pre-Christian advent-hope ought 
 not to have come, and could not come. Now that 
 we are far enough away to look at it, we can see 
 
106 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 that the advent-hope was part and parcel of Juda- 
 ism, and no part of the gift of Christ at all. It 
 came most naturally into the early Christian life, 
 seeing that the first disciples did not understand 
 the Master very well, and it was natural that for 
 a time it should remain a living hope. But it was 
 never anything else than a Jewish remainder, a 
 survival, an intrusion of something incongruous 
 into the Christian field. 
 
 The advent-hope had its usefulness for the early 
 Christians, for after Jesus the real Christ had lived 
 and been loved, and died and been glorified, the 
 hope of seeing him again had a quality tliat no 
 Jewish expectation could ever possess. Christian 
 faith, hope, and love all entered glowingly into the 
 looking for his return. So the hope kept the 
 image of the unseen Saviour vividly present to 
 the church, and brightened dark days with a 
 heavenly light. Nevertheless Christ himself had 
 doomed it to disappointment by being what he 
 was. The real Messiah had started history in 
 another direction, and the visible return to Mes- 
 sianic glory on earth was no item in the develop- 
 ment that came forth from him. 
 
 Consequently the advent-hope ought to have 
 been dropped out of Christianity, when time had 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 107 
 
 refuted it and experience had shown the kingdom 
 coming in another way. It was discredited long 
 before the New Testament was complete, for it 
 was never anything but hope of an event close at 
 hand. The Scriptures know absolutely nothing 
 of a return of Christ after two thousand years. 
 But it has had a different fate, full of pathetic 
 interest. It was taken to be a part of Christianity 
 itself. Was it not a part of early Christian life ? 
 Did not the apostles cherish it ? — and they could 
 not be mistaken. Does it not glow on the pages 
 of the Bible? Still therefore the expected event 
 was thought to be only delayed, and so the millen- 
 nial conception of the kingdom, and the vivid 
 advent-hope, have survived until this day, side by 
 side with that spiritual experience which has borne 
 agelong testimony that the real Christ is working 
 on another plan. 
 
 This discredited hope of a soon-returning Christ 
 and a visible kingdom has long been kept alive in 
 perpetual disappointment by the accepted doctrine 
 of the Scriptures. But the sound historical inter- 
 pretation which is now possible assigns to it no 
 place at all in the gift and revelation of Christ, 
 and therefore our principle requires us to drop it 
 and all that belongs to it out of our Christian . 
 
108 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 theology. Visible advent, simultaneous resurrec- 
 tion, assemblage of all men for judgment, millen- 
 nial reign of Christ on earth, — all is Jewish 
 survival, historically discredited by the work of 
 Christ himself : it is a remainder from pre-Christian 
 life and hope, demonstrated to be non-Christian by 
 the different course of Christian history ; wherefore 
 it forms no part of Christian theology. Under the 
 wholesome influence of our principle this whole 
 group of topics Avill disappear, and the Christianity 
 that proceeded from the actual work of Christ will 
 stand delivered from the contradictory conception 
 that has been bound in with it through all these 
 ages. 
 
 I am not overlooking the important question 
 that has already been suggested to every listener. 
 Everyone remembers that the advent-expectation 
 can be quoted from the lips of Jesus Christ him- 
 self. There stands the great apocalyptic passage 
 in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew's Gos- 
 pel, with other sayings of similar effect, pictur- 
 ing the coming kingdom in the common manner of 
 Jewish hope, and announcing the visible advent of 
 the Messiah as close at hand. How can one say 
 the advent-hope is not Christian when it has 
 this endorsement? Is there then a non-Christian 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 109 
 
 element in the words of Christ himseK? Had he 
 too his ideas inherited from an expiring age, exist- 
 ing side by side with his vision of eternal truth ? 
 Did he conceive the coming kingdom in the mis- 
 taken manner of the time ? or are the words of ex- 
 pectation that never came true attributed to him 
 by others, and not his own? 
 
 As to the interpretation of these sayings, we 
 must judge between two ways. One is that 
 while his conception of the spii'itual character of 
 the coming kingdom rose immeasurably above the 
 thought of the time, and was a Saviour's own 
 conception, he still conceived the time and form 
 of the kingdom in the manner which the past 
 had consecrated. The other is that the collectors 
 of the synoptic record, preserving the tradition of 
 the church, gathered in with his words some that 
 were not his, and so attributed to him the ac- 
 cepted view of the kingdom, which they had no 
 doubt that he entertained. Probably there is no 
 third interpretation. The time has not yet come 
 for general agreement here, but the question has 
 arisen in the course of candid study, and is des- 
 tined to remain long in discussion. Therefore let 
 the discussion be open and without reproach. 
 Many persons feel it necessary to hold that Jesus 
 
110 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 spoke the words, in order to preserve the credit 
 of the evangelists and the accuracy of the record, 
 lest we should lose our sense of certainty as to 
 what he said and did. This is the popular feel- 
 ing. Others feel it necessary to hold that he 
 did not speak the words, in order to preserve 
 the spiritual sanity and consistency of our Lord 
 himself, and avoid the conclusion that he mis- 
 conceived the nature of his own work and kingdom, 
 — an object quite as important, one would think, 
 as the maintaining of the credit of the evangelists. 
 Others again, disclaiming any object except to read 
 his life as they find it, think the evidence shows 
 that he spoke the words, or at least some of them, 
 and further, that he conceived the kingdom in the 
 manner of the Old Testament, though with vast 
 heightening of its spiritual character. Some of 
 these, with deepest reverence toward him, regard 
 the retention of the old idea as an unimportant ele- 
 ment in the life of him who was bearing to the 
 world the everlasting message. These are not sur- 
 prised if the messenger of God in the limitations of 
 humanity thought in the manner of his time. They 
 ask how he could have addressed his own genera- 
 tion if he had not. What he lived for, they would 
 say, was not to show at once, or even to see at 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE HI 
 
 once, all truth that was involved in his mission, 
 but to reveal that central truth and etern&;l life in 
 which the true kingdom in its own time would 
 consist. They see so clearly the revealing and 
 redeeming glory of Jesus Christ as not to be 
 troubled by this limitation upon his foresight. So 
 these interpreters, though they find the advent- 
 hope expressed in genuine words of Jesus, would 
 agree with me in judging it to be no part of his 
 gift to the world. 
 
 It is possible that with these last the future 
 Christian faith will more and more agree. The 
 synoptical Gospels, it is true, are not that precise 
 transcript of Jesus' life that they were once 
 thought to be: they embody the church's chief 
 remembrances of him, preserved in various ways, 
 and nowhere attested as faultless remembrances. 
 But exegesis is growing united in affirming that 
 the expectation of an early return in his kingdom 
 cannot fairly be eliminated from the words of Je- 
 sus; and yet the fact stands plain as the sun in 
 the heavens that his life and death led out by their 
 character into a different development, in which 
 an early return had no place or possibility. With 
 these facts theology has to deal, and one should 
 judge only with reverent diffidence and patience. 
 
112 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 When theology has well distinguished the perma- 
 nent gift of Christ from everything else, two re- 
 sults will follow: the Christian gift will shine 
 more brightly than ever in a glory of its own, and 
 the other elements m Scripture will be more justly 
 estimated. To understand Christ more truly will 
 not be altogether to despise tliese more. Our pres- 
 ent judgments of the non-Christian elements are 
 very rough and poor, for want of clear vision of 
 what is truly Christian. What we call Jewish 
 hopes are not for us to cherish, but they were not 
 all gross and unworthy in their time. Much that 
 was never Christian had a genuine value in its own 
 day, and was not unworthy of the noblest minds. 
 It may be that Christians of a later and riper time 
 will not wonder or be grieved that the Christ 
 whom they adore and love saw partly with the 
 eyes of his age, when they perceive how much it 
 means that he revealed the highest things in the 
 very light of heaven, and made to dawn upon this 
 world the glory of the living God. 
 
 The story of the advent-hope teaches us one 
 large lesson. That hope is found in the New 
 Testament: then the pre-Christian matter within 
 the Bible is not all found in the pre-Christian 
 writings. It has been commonly assumed that 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 113 
 
 everything in the New Testament belongs most 
 completely to the Christian period, and is entirely 
 expressive of the mind of Christ, It is on this 
 hypothesis that theology has usually been con- 
 structed. But here is a revolutionary light. In 
 the advent-hope we find a group of pre-Christian 
 conceptions so wrought in with the Christian 
 realities as actually to be taken for a part of them, 
 even until now. They were thoroughly charac- 
 teristic of the life of early Christianity, holding 
 possession not only of the common people but of 
 the loftiest minds. They appear in Paul, most viv- 
 idly in his earlier writings. In the Johannine 
 writings they have almost disappeared, leaving 
 traces only here and there ; but elsewhere they are 
 present with all the power of living convictions. 
 It is easy to account for their presence : their pres- 
 ence itself is what theology needs to consider but 
 has never yet admitted to its proper influence. 
 A distinctly Jewish hope, opposite in effect to the 
 character of Christ's actual working, and pro- 
 gressively discredited by every day of continued 
 life, stands expressed as a living hope within that 
 New Testament which is our primary Christian 
 document. 
 
 This fact gives light, but the light reveals 
 8 
 
114 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 conditions that ought to relieve our difficulty. 
 The natural and inevitable had happened. New 
 ideas never come into a vacant mind: there is 
 always something there already. New ideas come 
 into the midst of old ones, and the new and the 
 old proceed to exist together. Old ideas have the 
 advantage of possession, and do not immediately 
 retire. They stay long after they have had 
 time to go, long after they have encountered 
 thoiTghts that ought to banish them, and long 
 after their possessor may suppose that they have 
 gone. Old and new exist in unstable equilibrium. 
 Probably every one of us to-day is entertaining 
 idea,s that ought long ago to have been banished 
 by other and better ideas existing in the same 
 mind with them. 
 
 This, which is the only thing that can occur 
 when new thoughts enter, is just what did occur 
 in the case of the early Christians, including the 
 men who wrote the New Testament. We can 
 watch the very process. We see the Christian 
 conceptions work with power, and just as clearly 
 do we see the operation of ancient inherited ideas 
 and habits of mind inbred by national training. 
 Both the Christian element and the pre-Christian 
 influences lie open to our eyes as we read these 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE ll5 
 
 precious Christian pages; and we cannot do jus- 
 tice either to the New Testament or to the gospel 
 of Christ until we frankly acknowledge the pres- 
 ence of both and distinguish them from each other. 
 On this point theology has not become con- 
 sistent. On the one hand it has generally been 
 assumed that the writers of the New Testament 
 were preserved from writing anything that was 
 not perfectly accordant with the mind of Christ : 
 hence it has been considered wrong to suggest 
 that non-Christian matter could be found upon 
 their pages. Yet on the other hand it has been 
 recognized that each writer was himself, and 
 showed not only in style but in thought the ef- 
 fects of personal experience and national training. 
 These two conditions could be fulfilled only by 
 perpetual miracle, and to the perpetual miracle of 
 inspiration the supposed result has been attributed. 
 But the reading of the New Testament with open 
 eyes is enough to show that such a miracle has 
 not been wrought. The process natural to the 
 human mind has gone on. New ideas and old 
 have existed in these men's minds. Christian and 
 pre-Christian side by side, and both have influ- 
 enced the written page. It is our bounden duty 
 in gathering material for our theology to recognize 
 
116 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 these facts, and to estimate that which lies be- 
 fore us in the light of its actual relation to the 
 body of Christian truth. 
 
 The writer to the Hebrews, we know, was a 
 man of Alexandrian training, who viewed the 
 gospel with Alexandrian eyes and used the Bible 
 in Alexandrian methods. He allegorized ; and 
 his practice, being found within the field of in- 
 spiration, has often been taken as an authorized 
 example, justifying all Christians in allegorical 
 interpretation. But we know better now- Al- 
 legorizing is distinctly a wrong method of using 
 the Scriptures, and the example of the writer to 
 the Hebrews does not make it right. The same 
 man held the late Platonic idea of patterns in the 
 invisible Avorld, which visible things have been 
 created to resemble ; and he stated the doctrine of 
 salvation by Christ partly in terms of that idea. 
 Commentators and theologians have often sup- 
 posed that therefore they must accept the idea as 
 true, and believe with him that the real and ef- 
 fective sacrifice of Jesus was offered, not on 
 the cross, but after his ascension, in the heavenly 
 temple. This is a difficult doctrine to assimilate 
 into the gospel of the New Testament, but the 
 task has been attempted, in loyalty to the Scrip- 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 117 
 
 tures. But we have learned that no such duty 
 is imposed on us. With his training and for his 
 purpose it was natural for this nameless writer 
 to present the matter thus, but the doctrine of 
 heavenly patterns has long ago retired into the 
 history of theology, and has now no place in 
 theology itself. That this writer understood Christ 
 better because he conceived him thus, or made 
 a permanent contribution to theology thereby, 
 probably no modern theologian believes. Here we 
 find ourselves eliminating from theology a concep- 
 tion that is recorded with glowing confidence on 
 the pages of the Bible. The act is right, and 
 should be repeated wherever we have identified 
 some element brought in from beyond the Chris- 
 tian source and not of the spiritual kindred of the 
 mind of Christ. 
 
 The largest question concerning elimination of 
 temporary matter concerns the contribution made 
 to theology by the apostle Paul. Paul has com- 
 monly been regarded as the theologian of the 
 New Testament, and theology has judged itself 
 bound to adopt all of his thought as its own. 
 He came into Christianity from a thorough train- 
 ing in pre-Christian, non-Christian, and partly anti- 
 Christian views of God and religion. So far as 
 
118 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 concerns the principle of salvation, he received 
 the genuine Christian message into his deepest 
 heart, and probably he entered into the real 
 significance of the gospel more profoundly than 
 any of the original disciples, certainly more pro- 
 foundly than they did at so early a date. He 
 served as the chief agent in leading Christianity 
 out to that worldwide operation which was its 
 proper destiny. His Pharisaic training has always 
 been considered a providential asset of the new 
 faith, since it stood as a most helpful background 
 against which the doctrine of free grace might 
 be clearly exhibited. Yet while this is true, it 
 was perfectly inevitable that he should receive the 
 gospel into a mind in which existed the habits of 
 a lifetime and the ideas which had been formative 
 of earlier belief. It is also true that much of his 
 writing was colored by controversy with Judaism, 
 and many of his terms were used in a sense and 
 manner dictated b}^ the usage in which his oppo- 
 nents miderstood them, — a usage determined, of 
 course, by other influences than Christianity. 
 That every thought written by Paul was solely 
 the fruit of Christian operation in his mind, unin- 
 fluenced by anything else, is disprovable by study 
 of his writings, just as it is impossible in human 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 119 
 
 nature. I should be glad if some competent 
 Christian and scholar would give us a book on 
 " The Old and the New in Paul." He grasped the 
 true gospel, and uttered it forth with energy un- 
 surpassed. But in so speaking as to be powerful 
 in his own time he could not do otherwise than 
 use forms of thought that were then alive but had 
 no hold on permanence. He was compelled to 
 robe the Christian truth partly in inherited gar- 
 ments, which might not become it best through all 
 ages. He was compelled to this by the necessity 
 of being understood and effective, and at the same 
 time it was inwardly impossible that he should 
 do otherwise. His pages bear the record of some 
 distinctly Jewish conceptions, not transformed 
 by Christianity. So there are in Paul both old 
 and new. The new is entitled to outlive the 
 old, but theology has done what it could to 
 keep the old alive. Theology must now learn 
 the difference between the two. The presence 
 of the old is inevitable in nature: the presence 
 of the new is the gift of God. 
 
 But the old in Paul, if it is found, and all that 
 has come into his writings from anywhere else 
 than from Christ, is to be judged. It may be of 
 one substance with Christ's truth, and it may not. 
 
120 THE SCRIPTUKES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Paul used some analogies from Roman law for 
 illustration of Christian realities, and more from 
 Jewish law and institutions. I have heard theo- 
 logians maintain that we must hold those anal- 
 ogies from Roman law, and the Roman law itself, 
 to be virtually inspired of God for expression of 
 religious truth, because Paul used them. Con- 
 cerning the analogies from Jewish law and insti- 
 tutions the same assumption is most familiar. 
 But it will not stand. The points used for 
 analogy were brought in from outside the Chris- 
 tian circle of ideas, and are not to be assumed 
 to be points of Christian truth, Old-Testament 
 matter found in the New Testament is to be judged 
 as to its relation to the Christian element just as 
 we judge it in the Old Testament. Quoting it 
 has not changed it. Using it for illustration of 
 the gospel does not make it a part of the gospel, 
 or require all ages to think in terms of it. So 
 our Lord taught us when he disparaged the 
 Mosaic law of divorce as ranging on a lower 
 plane than the true doctrine. If that law had 
 been cited in the New Testament, or somehow 
 used for illustration, it would not thereby be 
 made Christian, but would still have to be esti- 
 mated at its true inferior value. And we cannot 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 121 
 
 close the case by saying that nothing of such a 
 
 nature could be quoted in the New Testament, for 
 we must take things as they are, and the facts put 
 an end to the expectation that no non-Christian 
 matter will be found in the Christian writings. 
 
 Paul and his companion-writers, especially the 
 writer to the Hebrews, sometimes express faith in 
 Christ in terms of the sacrificial system of the Old 
 Testament. In the ancient Scriptures that system 
 was very prominent : therefore it has been held to 
 be truly expressive of tiae divine mind and en- 
 titled to contribute its idea to Christianity. Old- 
 Testament religion, it is said, was sacrificial, 
 expressible in terms of altar and priesthood, and 
 therefore New-Testament religion must be of the 
 same nature. The New Testament does not abound 
 in sacrificial terms illustrative of the gospel, but 
 they exist, and from the old method of using the 
 Scriptures it has come to pass that the sacrificial 
 idea has been read into much bibhcal language 
 that did not properly contain it. So the idea 
 entered theology, and popular religion, with great 
 power. How full the hymns used to be of sacri- 
 ficial language ! and how steadily have theology 
 and preaching held to the necessity of putting the 
 
122 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 gospel of salvation in terms of altar and sacrifice ! 
 But more recently the sacrificial idea has been 
 more closely examined. It has been noticed that 
 sacrifice is no specialty of the Old-Testament 
 rehgion, but a universal practice of antiquity ; 
 that in the practice of the Old Testament sacri- 
 fice stood as an institution within the covenant- 
 relation between God and man, and never served 
 as a means by which man was to enter that 
 relation ; that the growth of the elaborate sacri- 
 ficial system in Israel was gradual, and came to 
 its completion as an instrument for building up 
 nationalism, rather than as a means of access to 
 God ; that its completion was reached through 
 religious decline rather than through spiritual 
 advancement ; that the prophets and psalmists, 
 the best religious teachers in Israel, disparaged 
 sacrifice and pleaded for religion in the soul and 
 the conduct; and that Jesus Christ himself was 
 silent concerning sacrifice, and like the prophets 
 urged that God called for religion of another kind. 
 All this tends to settle the question whether Jew- 
 ish altars truly represent the gospel at all, or even 
 symbolize the reality that is brought to us by 
 Jesus Christ. The Christian revelation decides 
 the question in the negative. We may be sure that 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 123 
 
 God does not require rts to cast our conceptions 
 of divine realities in the mould of institutions that 
 are not alive to our day and generation, — least 
 of all in terms of an institution that Christ 
 silently extinguished. Pre-Christian light is not 
 as bright as Christian light, and cannot illumine 
 the Christian reality. So when we find allusions 
 to altar-sacrifice in the New Testament we read 
 them as illustrations of sacred truth from sacred 
 institutions, used when they were useful. While 
 the institutions were still alive and suggestive of 
 spiritual meanings they were helpful for illustra- 
 tion of " redeeming grace and dying love," but 
 they formed no part of the permanent setting of 
 the gospel of Christ, and theology does not draw 
 nearer to accordance with the Christian element 
 when it sets Christ forth in terms of altar-sacrifice. 
 There is a genuine Christian idea of sacrifice, but 
 it rises high above the world of altars. The cross 
 is the very throne of sacrifice, but it is not an 
 altar. The interpreting of the Christian idea of 
 sacrifice in terms of Jewish altars has done more 
 than can be told to conceal this higher Christian 
 meaning. The God whom Christ reveals delights 
 in such sacrifices as the spirit of the cross pours 
 out, but has no pleasure in victims of the altar. 
 
124 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Jesus, revealing God, has remanded the entire 
 system of altar-sacrifice to the history of religion, 
 with all that it brings into religious teaching, and 
 has established for permanence that other and 
 higher doctrine of sacrifice which belongs to the 
 religion of the Spirit. So although Jemsh altars 
 are remembered in the New Testament, we learn 
 ourselves to remember them with all their world 
 as something that Christ has relegated to the past, 
 that we may fill our theology from the eternal 
 sources. 
 
 These illustrations show what our principle is, 
 — it is simply the law that we must set the gospel 
 by itself and keep it there. We must not bind in 
 with the gospel of God thoughts that originated 
 and took on their quality where God was not 
 known as he is known in Christ. To Christian 
 theology is entrusted the work and privilege of 
 setting the gospel by itself, and it must use the 
 Scriptures with this end in view. The negative 
 or excluding part of tliis work has been before us 
 in the present hour. The work of separation has 
 never been thoroughly done, and the result is that 
 the genuine Christian reverence still holds firmly on 
 to much that is not Christian. The great distinc- 
 tion cannot be made in a day, and if someone were 
 
RESULTS NEGATIVE 125 
 
 now to draw it with perfect correctness according 
 to the mind of Clirist it would not be accepted at 
 once by the Christian people. It is a work of 
 time. But we can at least see of what nature the 
 undertaking is, and devote ourselves to it with an 
 honest heart. Before the great distinction can be 
 made, it is evidently necessary that that rich body 
 of truth of which I spoke in the second lecture 
 should be more clearly perceived as something by 
 itself. That body of truth concerning God and 
 ourselves is the permanent element in the thought 
 of the Scriptures, and all else is the passing. That 
 body of truth is the eternal element in theology 
 also, and all else we must regard as not only 
 passing but past. The distinction between the 
 transient and the abiding in the Bible has never 
 yet been properly wrought out. The establishing 
 and defining of that distinction will determine 
 the use of the Scriptures in theology. 
 
 The searching study of the Bible that is now in 
 progress will help us in this work. The Scriptures 
 are now being differentiated, so to speak, into their 
 various layers of spiritual value and power. The 
 criticism that is so distrusted is preparing for the 
 hands of theology the real book, with the eternal 
 light on its highest parts. When the passing and 
 
126 THE SCRIPTUREIS IN THEOLOGY 
 
 the permanent, the old and the new, the non- 
 Christian and the Christian, have been well distin- 
 guished, theology will have the unmixed divine for 
 its material. At that time the topics in the theo- 
 logical system will be less numerous, and we shall 
 cover the field by smaller books than our fathers 
 used to write, — not because we know less of God, 
 but because we know more, and Avhat we know is 
 more concentrated in eternal reality. The topics 
 will be less in number, but there will be no infe- 
 rior matters for us to elevate by argument to the 
 rank of the superior, and no pieces of treacherous 
 trestle-work to connect the rock-laid stretches of 
 our road. The subject-matter of theology will ap- 
 peal to the highest spiritual sense of the soul in 
 fellowship with God. Toward the coming of such 
 a day we may work with confidence that our labor 
 is not in vain in the Lord ; and some glimpses of 
 its advantage over the present we may see in our 
 next hour together. 
 
IV 
 
 EESULTS POSITIVE 
 
 If I say that the Christian element alone should 
 enter from the Scriptures into theology, the state- 
 ment may seem to have a negative sound, as if the 
 main effect would consist in eliminations and omis- 
 sions. Such effects Avill follow, as we have seen, 
 much to the benefit of theology, but it would be a 
 great mistake to imagine this the chief result. 
 The Christian element from the Scriptures is to 
 enter theology : it is to enter alone, in all its majesty, 
 and fill the whole place. This is a great and 
 mighty word. It is the word of light and hope for 
 theology, for if the Christian element does come in 
 alone we shall have a theology, never finished, 
 indeed, but ever growing, that will be true forever. 
 I am not to construct that theology to-day, fasci- 
 nating though the attempt appears, but there are 
 three elements in the making of it of which I must 
 speak. I wish to trace the Christian element out 
 of the Scriptures into theology, to show with what 
 power and glory it enters, and to indicate the posi- 
 
128 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 tioii in which the Scriptures are found after their 
 contribution has thus been made. 
 
 The Christian element comes in from the Bible 
 as a whole. We have seen that the pre-Christian 
 element is not all found in the older writings ; and 
 neither is the Christian element all found in the 
 writings of Christian date. The Old Testament is 
 often disparaged, and has even been called the mill- 
 stone on the neck of Christianity. We might 
 expect that from the strictly Christian point of view 
 it would appear at much disadvantage, and that 
 when its excessive influence had been removed 
 Christianity would gladly think of it as a millstone 
 thrown off. But it proves otherwise. When the 
 excessive influence of the Old Testament has been 
 thrown off from theology, the Old Testament 
 begins to be appreciated. The conception of God 
 and his relations to men which Jesus brought did 
 not break with him into a world where it was 
 entirely new. Supreme truths do not come in 
 that way : they have to rise as by a dawning. In 
 the Old Testament, though not there alone since 
 the earth is the Lord's, the Christian truth was 
 already present, though still mingled with much 
 that must be left behind. 
 
 Jesus came in the line of the prophets, — not of 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 129 
 
 the priests or lawmakers, but of the prophets. 
 Flis gospel was not a ritual of access to God, or a 
 code of laws, but a revelation of truth in life, 
 and therein it was a prophetic word. But if 
 Jesus came in the line of the prophets, the proph- 
 ets were in the line that led to Jesus. It was 
 the line of men who in some good degree saw 
 God as he is, and told men what they saw. 
 When Jesus came he took up the prophetic 
 message and carried it on to fulness. Accordingly 
 we find the prophets bringing their contribution of 
 truly Christian utterance to the service of theology. 
 Not perfectly, yet in great measure, their " Thus 
 saith the Lord " agreed with that of Jesus, and 
 they preached the claims of such a God as he 
 revealed. So they contribute to the stock of 
 expression wherein we find knowledge of the Liv- 
 ing One, and many of their words concerning him 
 are among the noblest that we possess. 
 
 With the prophets bringing Christian truth come 
 the psalmists, whose songs have always served for 
 expression of the Christian heart. How poor we 
 should be without the Psalms! and as they serve 
 the high purpose of religion, so they contribute to 
 theology, for they sing out the view of God that 
 accords with the Christian vision. In this they 
 
 9 
 
130 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 have done Christian service never to be superseded, 
 for they have illustrated the feeling that corre- 
 sponds to the true relation of men to God when 
 it is livingly realized. Into theology they bring 
 this invaluable contribution in the realm of feel- 
 ing, and so they help us to remember that our 
 sacred science is not of the intellect alone. By the 
 best of the psalmists this helpful work is well-nigh 
 perfectly done. The whole group brings pathetic 
 contribution also to the history of religion and of 
 theology, for some of the psalmists pass before us 
 as devout souls feeling their way through the 
 moral perplexities of life, and seeking a faith that 
 could survive amid the darkness of the world. 
 They illustrate too the superiority of Christ. In 
 their time love to men, especially to enemies, had 
 not become a part of religion, and so they often 
 fall far below the Christian level. The one hun- 
 dred and ninth Psalm makes us thankful for the 
 dying prayer of Stephen. 
 
 I said that Jesus came not in the line of law- 
 makers or of priests. That the gospel is a new 
 law was indeed a doctrine early accepted among 
 Christians, but it never came from Christ. That 
 the gospel is a new ritual of sacramental worship, 
 with priesthood and altar at its very heart, innu- 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 131 
 
 merable Christians still believej but it has no foun- 
 dation in what the Master taught. That Christ 
 effects a new propitiation of God is held by many 
 as the very substance of the gospel; but when 
 we see how Jesus thought of God and offered his 
 grace to sinful men, his God appears to need no 
 such propitiation as was offered in old time when 
 God was known less truly. Yet this is not to say 
 that priesthood and law have nothing Christian in 
 them and offer nothing to theology. Priesthood 
 brings less than law. The idea of priesthood is 
 swallowed up in the larger idea of access to God, 
 — the priesthood of all believers, — and of help 
 from one to another in access to God. As for law, 
 the idea of obligation which it enshrines is per- 
 fectly Christian, just as it is perfectly natural and 
 eternal. Christ preserves and honors it, but does 
 better for men than lawgiving, by Hfegiving and 
 writing the will of God upon the heart. And in the 
 old historic law, a product of ages of religion, great 
 truth concerning God and the relation of men to 
 him shines forth. Right moral demands are there, 
 which Jesus reasserted, re-enforced, and showed in 
 deeper meaning. Not everything in the ancient 
 law is Christian, but the claim of God is real, and 
 the relation that renders law sacred exists forever. 
 
132 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Besides the distinctly Christian element, the Old 
 Testament puts at the service of theology a mass 
 of suggestive and illuminating history. It is his- 
 tory of growth toward true knowledge of God. 
 In it we see the conception of God and the rela- 
 tion of men to him struggling up from low and 
 partial forms, and cleansing itself toward discern- 
 ment of the perfect love and holiness. They who 
 like may call this progress in the thought of God 
 a purely human development, but a clear-eyed 
 theology will always see in it also the onward- 
 moving God, leading men toward better knowledge 
 of himself. The progressive knowledge came in 
 accordance with the nature of advancing man, but 
 it came none the less in accordance with the will 
 of the revealing God. What life and power does 
 this interpretation pour into the Old Testament! 
 There is knowledge of the highest even yet to be 
 gained from the manner in which the highest be- 
 came known. 
 
 Indeed, the knowledge of this progressiveness is 
 a conti'ibution to theology. It means that in the 
 earlier times God was not altogether rightly known, 
 — from which it follows that actions were attributed 
 to him that were not his. We used to assume that 
 the God of Jesus Christ was actually represented 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 133 
 
 in all deeds and words attributed to God through- 
 out the Bible. Then we had to reconcile all these 
 words and deeds with the character of God as we 
 know it in Christ. Often that could not be done. 
 The endeavor disgusted many at the moral insin- 
 cerity which they felt that it implied, and unsettled 
 the idea of the divine character for a host of Chris- 
 tians. That was one of the practices that came 
 near to making the Old Testament indeed a mill- 
 stone on the neck of Christianity. But now we 
 read in the Old Testament the history of religion. 
 We find realistic pictures of ethical and religious 
 life all along the way, and see how men thought of 
 God from stage to stage of their advancing life. 
 We are not required to think that he was rightly 
 pictured on this page or that. We are required 
 instead to exercise our moral judgment all the way, 
 and call things honestly by their right names, and 
 disapprove what the Christian spirit disapproves, 
 and ascribe to God only what is worthy of the God 
 whom we know in Christ. Thus the Scriptures, 
 rightly read, deliver to theology one clear and sin- 
 gle doctrine of God, the Christian doctrine. What 
 we do find in those older books is the thought of 
 God growing finer and truer up toward Christ, 
 until at length a prophet, adding to the thought of 
 
134 THE SCKTPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 physical transcendence the vision of moral beauty, 
 can say, " Thus saith the high and lofty One that 
 inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy : I dwell 
 in the high and holy place, with him also tliat is of 
 a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of 
 the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite 
 ones. For I will not contend forever, neither will 
 I be always wroth : for the spirit sliould fail before 
 me, and the souls which I have made." 
 
 The heart of the Christian contribution comes 
 into theology, as I need not say again, as the direct 
 personal gift of Jesus Christ. To this we will re- 
 turn after a moment, when we have seen in what 
 living form the Christian element moves on into 
 theology from the writings that form the latter 
 part of the New Testament. 
 
 It is not enough to say of this latter part of the 
 New Testament, the part after the Gospels, that it 
 brings to theology the written statements of Paul 
 and other apostolic men concerning God and Christ. 
 We have here a vital part of the revelation itself. 
 The latter part of the New Testament brings to 
 theology the vision of the Christian revelation do- 
 ing its work, and thereby illustrating its nature. 
 Here we see in what power it went forth from 
 Christ, what life it produced, what inner experience 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 13.5 
 
 it initiated, what transformations it wrought, what 
 thoughts it suggested, what duties it brought home, 
 what power it imparted, what faults it overcame, 
 what aspirations it awakened, what character it 
 breathed into men. We see what leaders it raised 
 up, what teaching it inspired, what writings it 
 brought forth for the common service. We behold 
 the indwelling Spirit working mightily in pursu- 
 ance of the gift of Christ. All this we see to- 
 gether with the limitations that were upon the 
 gospel, and the human causes that restrained it 
 from perfect work. We observe how it entered 
 into union with ideas that it found in the world, 
 and partly assimilated them to itself and partly 
 became assimilated to them, in this doing the inevi- 
 table. In a word, we see how Christ had cast 
 forth his gift into the world of men, to be cared 
 for there by the providence of his Father and the 
 energy of the abiding Spirit. 
 
 Here theology learns what it is that it receives 
 from Christ. The latter half of the 'New Testa- 
 ment utterly refutes the idea that Christianity is 
 a bod}?- of statements, a deposit, an unchange- 
 able substance, a doctrine formulated once for all, 
 Christianity appears on these pages as a living and 
 conifitantly changing thing. Jesus lived and gave 
 
136 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 forth his influence ; and within the New Testament 
 that tells of him we find the harvest from his influ- 
 ence springing up in half a dozen different forms. 
 No one of them is identical, in expression or in 
 thought, with his direct and personal gift. The 
 Pauline Christianity, and the Johannine, and all 
 the others, were developments from him, but they 
 were developments. In each he was reproduced 
 with changes. And they were not alike. They all 
 had one spiritual origin, but they differed widely in 
 their ways of going forth therefrom. In other 
 words, the gift of Christ began its work by taking 
 new forms immediately. It was altered in going 
 from Jesus to Paul, and from Jesus to John ; and 
 the alterations in the two movements were not the 
 same. Theological thought has always been vary- 
 ing, but it never showed larger variation in so 
 short a time than between the days of Jesus and 
 the last writing of the New Testament. 
 
 The idea that Christianity is an unchangeable 
 deposit of doctrine was early accepted, and began 
 to appear even within the New Testament. But 
 instead Christianity was a living and growing 
 power, with a method of its own. It was a body 
 of truth, a body of reality, to be apprehended and 
 experienced ; and it was vital truth, or vital real- 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 137 
 
 ity, cast forth alive into the fertile field of life. 
 Just for the reason that it was truth unchangeable, 
 or reality eternal, it was suggestive in an infinite 
 variety of ways. The one thing certain was that 
 the gift of Christ would take an endless variety 
 of forms. The multiphcation table has but one. 
 Large spiritual truth put into life cannot be kept 
 uniform. So the testimony of Jesus concerning 
 God and men made absolutely certain a long and 
 changing course of Christian theology. Nothing 
 so rich in life and promise of enlargement was 
 ever cast forth into the world as the gift of 
 Christ, and nothing is more certain than that the- 
 ology, receiving so germinant and growing a force, 
 must follow it through form after form, always the 
 same at heart but varying with the nature and the 
 needs of successive ages. 
 
 From this brief account of its contents let us 
 now turn to see with what glory and power the 
 Christian element, the gift of Christ, comes from 
 the Scriptures into theology. 
 
 It comes as the determining element, throwing 
 light upon the whole method of theological knowl- 
 edge. From what has just been said it is plain 
 in what manner our ideas in theology are to be 
 obtained and our convictions established, — not 
 
138 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 by means of direct and authoritative statements 
 deciding each point for us, but by means of the 
 light that is thrown upon the field by great and 
 controlling truths. Our theological certainties 
 are not to be dictated to us: we are to be borne 
 on to them by the sweep of great reaUties. And 
 the great reality that is to sweep us on to our 
 certainties in theology is that truth, or body of 
 truth, concerning God and the relations of men to 
 him which we owe to Jesus Christ. 
 
 God is the first and the last, and our conception 
 of God will rule our theology. It may not do so 
 at once, for there may be many influences that 
 keep incongruous elements for a time together; 
 but in the end the doctrine of God will be the sun 
 of our theological system, bringing the whole into 
 harmony. The degree in which the doctrine of 
 God is dominant in theology is the measure of the 
 degree in which the mind has attained to clearness 
 in spiritual vision and straightforwardness in think- 
 ing. A true theology is a true doctrine of God 
 developed and applied. 
 
 When the Christian element has taken its place, 
 we have for the sun in our system that matchless 
 conception of God which we find in Christ. God 
 is such a God as Jesus lived with: this is one 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 139 
 
 aspect. God is such a God as Jesus expressed: 
 this is another. God is such a God as Jesus 
 taught men to Live with: this is yet another. 
 When we have brought together the elements of 
 character and relation that are thus revealed to us 
 as belonging to God, we begin to see him as he is. 
 That perfect goodness which Jesus helps us to see, 
 that holiness, love, wisdom, trustworthiness, that 
 strictness of paternal judgment, that hatred of sin, 
 that eagerness to save, that grace unto the utter- 
 most, — all these enter in, and of these the charac- 
 ter is composed. Lo, this is our God. For the 
 purposes of theology this conception of God as 
 he is must take possession of us, until we see all 
 things in the light of it as we see the world in the 
 light of the sun. Then the questions of theology 
 rise before us. Solutions of them are not dictated 
 to us by external authority : we have to thinlc 
 them out in the light of God. What is the sig- 
 nificance of man? Man is the beloved creature of 
 such a God, bearing his likeness. What is sin ? 
 Sin is the opposite of the character of such a God, 
 spoiling such a creature. What is salvation? Sal- 
 vation is the work of such a God for such a crea- 
 ture against such an evil. How is salvation 
 accomplished? If we need to know, it is accom- 
 
140 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 plished as such a God will accomplish it. What is 
 the divine life in man? Life with such a God, 
 TVTOUght by such a God. What is human destiny? 
 It is such as such a God will provide for such a 
 creature. What is human loss and ruin? It is 
 separation of such a creature from such a God. 
 
 We may not be able to reach full answers to all 
 these questions. The element of mystery lies large 
 for us men in the field of things divine. But it is 
 our privilege to accept such answers as spring 
 from Jesus' doctrine of God. If someone has 
 bequeathed us doctrine that springs from a lower 
 conception, it is for us to decline the inheritance. 
 Christian theology must discern the God and 
 Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and take doc- 
 trine from him alone. The work that Ls thus in- 
 dicated is for us to do. It has not been done for 
 us. We have to judge how the character and re- 
 lations of God work out into the various forms of 
 truth that we call doctrines. We have the help, 
 negative and positive, of all that has been done 
 before us : we have many clear words of our Lord 
 himself, and the forms in which apostles east the 
 meaning of his gospel, and the long unfolding of 
 theology through the Christian ages. But nothing 
 that others have done exempts us from our task. 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 141 
 
 For ourselves, in our own time, we have to work 
 out the substance of theology in the Christian 
 light. We need have no fear that this broad and 
 open method will leave us without doctrine. It 
 will not yield us doctrine in formulas, but it will 
 enrich us with vital conceptions that satisfy the 
 inmost sense of what is good, and convictions well 
 adapted to perform works of holy power in actual 
 life. 
 
 When the Scriptures thus give us the Chris- 
 tian element as the decisive element, they help 
 us to ground our doctrines in the only place 
 where a sufficient foundation for doctrines so 
 important as those of theology can be obtained. 
 Truth concerning man, sin, salvation, duty, des- 
 tiny, is rightly grounded in truth concerning God. 
 This must be plain, when once we see how great 
 the doctrines are. Great truth must be greatly 
 grounded, and God alone is great enough to 
 sustain doctrines like those of theology. How 
 much smaller and weaker are grounds that are 
 often offered as decisive of points in question, 
 by way of proof -text and specific statement! — 
 as when it is said that the question of destiny 
 in the endless Ufe is decided by the meaning 
 and usage of the ambiguous word aioiiios ; that 
 
142 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 whether Jesus preached to the dead before his 
 resurrection, and so by implication whether he 
 opened a door of hope, is to be decided by the 
 grammatical construction of a complicated sen- 
 tence by a not very accurate writer of Greek; 
 and that whether God needed to be reconciled 
 to sinners as well as sinners to God, is settled 
 by the prevailing usage, which can be only the 
 majority usage, of certain Greek words and con- 
 structions used by Paul. Who has not felt that 
 issues so vast cannot possibly be settled except 
 on larger grounds than these? It is true that 
 the value of these proofs has been found in 
 inspiration, whereby the choice of words as well 
 as thoughts was traced to God. Yet even then 
 these conclusive testimonies of God could be 
 discovered only through careful balancing of 
 human judgment in grammar and lexicography. 
 But the better method gives us better founda- 
 tions. Whether God needs to be reconciled to 
 sinners as well as sinners to God, depends upon 
 what kind of God he is, and this we learn from 
 Christ. The question of destiny in the endless 
 life is to be determined by the character of God, 
 with the implications that it contains as to the 
 significance of sin, the nature of salvation, and 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 143 
 
 the relations in which men stand to him. Whether 
 Christ preached to the dead, it may prove that we 
 have no means of knowing, and we may not suffer 
 from the lack. Whatever accords with Christ's 
 doctrine of God is true in theology; whatever 
 contradicts it is not true in theology ; and where- 
 ever it is indifferent to a question and gives no 
 light upon it, probably that question is not vital 
 in theology. This best of foundations the abiding 
 Christian doctiines have, that they follow by sound 
 reason and spiritual fitness from that conception 
 of God which we owe to Christ. 
 
 Here we should note that the Christian ele- 
 ment that comes into theology lies in the field 
 of religion, not of philosophy or metaphysics. 
 The words of Jesus, his example, his redeeming 
 power, his transforming influence, all move in 
 that sphere of practical relation between God 
 and men which is the sphere of religion. No 
 recorded words of his belong to other parts of 
 life. He has said nothing in metaphysics or 
 philosophy. The metaphysical aspects of the 
 truth that he uttered he has left to be thought 
 out by men, while in religion he brought them 
 the very fulness and glory of God. 
 
 This fact is not a veto upon metaphysics in 
 
144 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 theology. Theology must, of course, follow the 
 thought of divine realities into the world of meta- 
 physics. Such work was begun before the New 
 Testament was completed, and efforts to shut it 
 out from theology must always fail. But we 
 must learn that the Scriptures do not bind the 
 metaphysical work of theology to such Hebrew 
 metaphysics as they may contain, or to the con- 
 ceptions of the first Christian century. As a matter 
 of fact it never has been so bound, though theo- 
 logians have often spoken as if it ought to be. 
 The metaphysical thought that influences theology, 
 both scholastic and popular, until now, is not He- 
 brew, or Pauline, or Johannine : it is late Greek, 
 although it is often assumed to be of biblical 
 origin and carry with it scriptural authority. 
 Each age must work for itself. Our philosoph- 
 ical inquiries concerning God and the soul ought 
 certainly to be pursued in the best light of our 
 day. The Bible does not dictate metaphysical 
 science or psychology from the past to modern 
 thought, any more than it dictates natural science. 
 Remnants of science upon its pages belong to 
 their own past time, and are not taught from 
 heaven to us. Thus if Paul had really believed in 
 a trichotomy of human nature when he wrote 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 145 
 
 the prayer that the Thessalonians might be sanc- 
 tified in body, soul, and spirit, that would not 
 have been a diyine dictation to a Christian psy- 
 chologist to-day. God wishes his children to 
 move along with their race in the acquirement 
 of knowledge. Nevertheless, theology may well 
 call attention to the unspeakably valuable gift that 
 Jesus has brought to philosophy as well as to 
 religion and daily life. To be recognized in all 
 fields, Jesus holds up to faith and sight a living 
 God. He takes for real, and teaches us to take for 
 real, a God who knows and acts and cares. If there 
 be no such God, theology must lose its being and 
 lapse into philosophy, and religion must sink into 
 superstition, but with such a God morality and 
 hope belong to life forever. A great contribution 
 Jesus made to religion, to theology, and to that 
 universal view of things which we call philosophy, 
 when he so calmly assumed the living Spirit whom 
 men may call Father. 
 
 When the Christian element from the Scriptures 
 enters thus alone to theology, it comes with power 
 to render theology very largely independent of 
 biblical criticism. Entirely independent of criti- 
 cism it can never be, but the perilous depend- 
 ence that is involved in older methods will be 
 
 10 
 
146 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 no more when our principle has found its appli- 
 cation. 
 
 As long as we think that the vital contribution 
 comes from the Bible into theology in the form of 
 specific statements couched in inspired words, our 
 dependence is plain. We are compelled to grasp 
 at words. Precision is indispensable : uncertainty 
 checks us, and inaccuracy admitted to our work 
 would vitiate the whole. If yv^e are to bring any- 
 thing from oiir Lord himself with his full author- 
 ity we must know exactly what he said. So we 
 must have our inspired documents in an author- 
 ized canon and an unquestionable text, or they will 
 not possess full value. We become interested thus 
 in textual criticism, hoping for certainty. Textual 
 criticism confirms our general confidence, but slays 
 our hope of absolute precision. And historical crit- 
 icism, which is a valid science, tells us that we are 
 less certain than we thought of the very words that 
 he did utter : memory has not done perfect work ; 
 the church, adoring but misunderstanding, some- 
 times attributed to him what it supposed that he 
 taught; later interpretations have been written 
 back into what he said, and words have been as- 
 cribed to him that represent outcomes from his 
 teaching but not the original teaching itself. Even 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 147 
 
 though but half of this were true, it is enough to 
 shake our entire theology if we have built it upon 
 the accuracy of written records. And when we 
 have been brought into that situation we shall be 
 sorely tempted to lie in the interest of the truth, 
 by denying or ignoring plain facts because they 
 undermine our method and endanger our theology. 
 But the magnificent gift of Jesus Christ to the 
 world in the conception of God and the relation of 
 men to him has been so imparted and received that 
 it cannot be lost. It is not pinned down to accu- 
 racy of manuscripts. We are in no doubt as to 
 what it is, in its large spiritual meaning. We have 
 seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, 
 and have followed his vital force out into the 
 Christian life. His revelation has been raised to 
 a height in history and experience where historical 
 criticism upon the Gospels cannot destroy it. ISTot 
 that criticism is destined to destroy the Gospels ; it 
 is changing them in our hands, but will not si- 
 lence their testimony to Christ, or leave us without 
 sound knowledge of his life. But to us, when we 
 have learned the use of the Scriptures, it will not 
 matter so much whether that magnificent gift has 
 been brought to us in the very words of Jesus, or 
 in the form of resulting words, uttered by men 
 
148 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 who had received the gift. There is a convincing 
 illustration close at hand. No one hesitates to 
 take the saying, " God is love," as a keynote in 
 theology. In these days, in fact, we rule out 
 every theology that does not do it justice. Yet 
 this is no written word of Jesus : it expresses 
 a conclusion drawn by men from the effect of his 
 revelation. It is the Christian revelation distilled 
 through the alembic of the human spirit. But no 
 one has ever felt that it was not just as good a 
 Christian word as if it had been spoken by the 
 Lord. And this illustration may introduce an- 
 other. In the second lecture I quoted the great 
 sentence, " God is a Spirit, and they that worship 
 him must worship him in spirit and truth." This 
 saying holds rank with " God is love," as an un- 
 doubted part of that spiritual revelation which we 
 owe to Christ. In the Fourth Gospel it is quoted 
 as falling directly from the hps of Jesus, and it 
 has always been regarded as his immediate utter- 
 ance. But now it appears that the Fourth Gospel 
 brings us his sayings recast by the writer: per- 
 haps, indeed, it is the work of a later spiritual 
 genius who portrays Jesus, and puts words in his 
 mouth, as he conceives him, in the light of faith 
 and love and theological reflection. In that case 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 149 
 
 this saying also, instead of being a word of Jesus, 
 is a generalization, or deduction, resulting from the 
 sum of Christ's revealing. And what if it is ? I 
 have seen the time when I should have thought 
 the saying lost to theology and robbed of its re- 
 vealing value if Jesus had not uttered it : but lost 
 it would not be. Like its great companion, it ex- 
 presses a central truth which Jesus so taught that 
 men could utter it ; and thus it is just as truly a 
 part of his gift as if he had uttered it himself. 
 
 The question of the manner in which the 
 Fourth Gospel, differing so widely from the syn- 
 optics, brings contribution to theology, is one of 
 the outstanding questions of our time, upon which 
 of course the present limits do not allow me to 
 enter. Only of late has it taken rank as a ques- 
 tion, within the knowledge of the many, but it 
 is a question that must be freely discussed, and 
 decided in the light of facts. Certainly the Fourth 
 Gospel differs far from a simple narrative, and 
 embodies what some great Christian has thought 
 concerning Jesus. Hence its testimony must be 
 compared with that which comes from other 
 sources. But this we know, that it lacks nothing 
 of being a mighty Christian word, uttering in 
 new and lofty forms that truth concerning God 
 
150 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 and life of which Jesus was at once revealer and 
 revelation. And the coming of such a word as 
 this through the soul and experience of a disciple 
 is a mighty Christian work. 
 
 From our vision of the entering to theology of 
 the contribution of the Scriptures we gather 
 plainly enough by what kind of studies it is to 
 be brought thither. This is a lesson to be learned 
 progressively. There is a stage at which it seems 
 that exegesis may bring over into theology what 
 the Scriptures offer it. Learn just what the 
 writers meant to say, and there you have the con- 
 tribution, provided by them directly. There is 
 another stage at which it is perceived that larger 
 study, as of Biblical Theology, must intervene : 
 the results of exegesis must be examined, classi- 
 fied, interpreted, handed over in due order and 
 succession. And there is yet another stage at 
 which it is apparent that these two processes 
 together, indispensable as they are, come short of 
 what is necessary. We become longingly aware 
 of the demand for deep and true spiritual insight, 
 the Christian heart discerning, the sympathy with 
 the mind of Christ that will see all things in his 
 light. We find the need also of large and gen- 
 erous historical perception, discernment of the 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 151 
 
 operation of living forces, power to distinguish 
 between living truth at work and forms of words 
 that may strive to express it, ability to read the 
 Bible in the light of history, vision of the onward- 
 moving God as he appears in ancient story, in 
 Christ, in the Scriptures, and in that ordered 
 knowledge of him which we call theology. One 
 who would rightly use the Scriptures for theology 
 needs an interpreter's skill, a saint's insight, and 
 a historian's judgment. 
 
 It remains to speak of the position to which the 
 Scriptures themselves will attain in relation to 
 theology, when they are used in accordance with 
 our principle. 
 
 The Scriptures themselves are a topic in the- 
 ology. Every theologian has to treat of them. 
 They will continue to be a topic there when they 
 are used as contributing their Christian element 
 and that alone, but in a different manner from the 
 present, and a manner free from many of the diffi- 
 culties that long experience has made familiar. 
 The doctrine concerning the Scriptures, as it then 
 stands in theology, will be a doctrine of their spirit- 
 ual character and value, and not a doctrine of the 
 manner in which they were composed. 
 
 We know what position the doctrine of the 
 
152 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Scriptures usually occupies in theology, and the 
 reasons for it. A theologian usually defines these 
 documents at the outset, and endeavors to show 
 that they were written under a divine influence 
 that rendered them infallible and authoritative. 
 If he does not claim as much as this, he must at 
 least tell what he does think about the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures. Proof of inspiration stands at 
 the front because all that follows is supposed to 
 rest upon the evidence of these Avritings, which 
 therefore must be proved sufficient to bear the 
 weight. Those who follow this order thereby 
 acknowledge that if they should fail to estab- 
 lish their doctrine of inspiration, their structure 
 of theology would be insufficiently supported. 
 This makes the theology no stronger than the 
 doctrine of inspiration. Many theologians have 
 been well aware that their work would be incon- 
 clusive if this doctrine did not stand, and have 
 therefore given the more earnest heed to define 
 and support an infallible inspiration in their sacred 
 documents. 
 
 B ut theories of inspirati on have lately been 
 passing out of sight. Modern examination of the 
 Bible proceeds mainly without reference to them. 
 Dr. Sanday's book on Inspiration, embodying the 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 153 
 
 Bampton Lectures of 1893, is the last important 
 book on the subject, and it does not seem probable 
 that any other discussion from an equally scholarly 
 source will soon appear. It is coming to be no- 
 ticed that about the actual writing of these sacred 
 books we can discover very little. The authors 
 are largely unknown. Inductive study of the 
 books yields no clear information as to the nature 
 and degree of divine influence under which they 
 were composed, and deductive arguments, or a 'pri- 
 ori theories, prove nothing in such a case. So 
 more and more the Scriptures are being examined 
 and used in the light of what they are actually 
 found to be, not in view of the manner in which 
 they were composed. Not as documents classed 
 beforehand as unlike all others are they coming to 
 offer themselves to theology, but as documents 
 to be used like others where they are found like 
 others, and as unlike where they are found unlike. 
 Doubtless this is a revolution that will not go 
 backward. Some of us have lived from the days 
 when Smith's Bible Dictionary was a slightly ad- 
 vanced pubHcation to the days when the Hastings 
 Dictionary of the Bible is conservative ; and we 
 do not expect the movement to be reversed. The 
 treatment of the Bible in the historical light and 
 
154 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 not in view of exceptional inspiration is the method 
 of the future, — or rather it is the method of to-day. 
 If theology does not wish to lose touch with the 
 biblical studies upon which it is dependent, it must 
 accept the new way. 
 
 Many expect this process to lead to abandon- 
 ment of the Scriptures, through denial of their 
 value; but in fact it leads in quite the opposite 
 direction. It gives the Scriptures their standing 
 in theology, and in life, on the ground of their 
 intrinsic value, discovered as value is normally 
 discovered by men. Not because of an inspira- 
 tion that eludes us when we seek to define it, but 
 because of a testimony to God of the very highest 
 order, confirmed in life as forever true, is the 
 Bible to be prized. What Richard Rothe said 
 will come true : — " Let the Bible go forth into 
 Christendom as it is in itself, as a book like other 
 books, without allowing any dogmatic theory to 
 assign it a reserved position in the ranks of 
 books: let it accomplish what it can of itself 
 through its own character and through that which 
 each man can find in it for himself: and it will 
 accomplish great things." This is a better word 
 of faith than any that insists upon an outward 
 badge of divineness on the Bible, and it is the 
 
RESULTS POSIXn^E 155 
 
 only word that is worthy of men who believe the 
 Bible to be in any high sense from God. Surely 
 God would not send forth a book in which this 
 normal and healthy power of winning moral vic- 
 tories did not reside. 
 
 The theology that is built on the Christian 
 element in the Scriptures will not be dependent 
 upon any theory of inspiration. It will have no 
 need to define the inspiration under which the 
 Bible was written, and will not stand upon the 
 precarious ground of such definition. It will 
 need no section on the inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures. This will be no loss, — it will be a gain. 
 I have often told my students that I could show 
 them the divine value of the Bible far more con- 
 vincingly if I could simply exhibit to them the 
 Bible itself, without being obliged to use at all 
 the ancient, ambiguous, confusing word "inspira- 
 tion." The word has lost its clearness without 
 losing its claim: it bears the urgency of sacred 
 tradition after definableness has forsaken it: it is 
 now an enemy to clear thought, and a misleading 
 guide to reverence for the Scriptures. It will be 
 a good day for theology, and for religion, when 
 we fearlessly take the Bible for exactly what it is, 
 with an abiding value resident in itself, and let it 
 
156 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 serve us as the reporter of Christ and the bearer 
 of his revelation of God. 
 
 Neither, at that day, will theology be dependent 
 upon any closely-defined doctrine of the Canon. 
 If we hold a doctrine of infallible inspiration, giv- 
 ing to the Scriptures alone the full authority of 
 God, it is indispensable that we know by God's 
 own testimony what these Scriptures are. A doc- 
 trine of exclusive inspiration must be supported 
 by the doctrine of an unquestionable Canon, or it 
 will be no sure doctrine of divine authority. It is 
 very remarkable, as I have already said, that dis- 
 cussions of inspiration have so frequently ignored 
 the equally important companion-question of the 
 Canon, assuming that the Protestant Canon is cor- 
 rect and divinely authorized. Yet assumption is 
 easier than proof, for the history of the Canon dis- 
 appoints the hope of finding divine authority in 
 selection of the books. But when theology is 
 using the Scriptures simply as bearer of the 
 Christian element and message, it is free to 
 regard the Canon as a historical fact, and not as 
 a crucial point in present doctrine. The Canon 
 was formed by the judgment of the church, and 
 we inherit it: we do not have to form it now, or 
 to vindicate the manner in which it was formed of 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 157 
 
 old. If the latest questions in forming it had 
 been decided differently, the Christian message 
 would have been the same. Nothing depends 
 for theology upon the canonicity of Esther or the 
 Song of Songs, of the Apocalypse or Second 
 Peter, — all of them once disputed books. If 
 the discussion over the Apocalypse had ended 
 in its omission from the Canon, it would still 
 have been the same book, and would have 
 taught us what it teaches now. Apart from all 
 these questions, the foundation of theology stands 
 sure, in the spiritual revelation and gift of Christ, 
 which is known from its quality, not from the 
 choice of sacred books in the religion to which 
 it gave birth. If it should prove that the choice 
 might have been better made, some structures 
 of theology might tremble, but not that which 
 is built upon the Christian element in the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 When we use the Bible thus, we find the true 
 meaning and use of Authority. Authority be- 
 longs in the relation between God and us, and 
 only there. Authority appeals to persons, in 
 their personal life. It is correlative to heart and 
 will and loyalty, not to opinion, or even to belief. 
 In theology and religion the idea of authority has 
 
158 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 been made to cover far too wide a field. It has 
 been conceived as requirement of assent, alike in 
 matters great and small. The Bible has been sup- 
 posed to possess divine authority in support of all 
 its statements, whether concerning the history of 
 Israel, the temptation of Job, the longevity of the 
 patriarchs, or the love of God. It has been ac- 
 counted a part of religion to believe that Ruth 
 married Boaz, that Paul suffered shipwreck, and 
 that the genealogies in Luke and Matthew are 
 correct. Many evils have come of this, of which 
 one is that the majestic strength of divine author- 
 ity has been set to support weights unworthy of 
 its greatness. By the doctrine of authority and 
 an equal Bible God has been called to witness 
 respecting matters with which the soul is not con- 
 cerned, and about which it is not possible to feel 
 that he requires of us a belief. God should not 
 be invoked as witness except in matters of eternal 
 moment, for we cannot really believe that he would 
 offer his authority for determination of any other. 
 In matters of history and ordinary opinion, knowl- 
 edge of facts is the only authority that exists: 
 God himself has no other to offer us. His author- 
 ity moves in another realm, and when we set it in 
 the light of the Christian element we see what it 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 159 
 
 means. That God whom Christ makes known has 
 authority upon us : he claims us and has full right 
 to call us to himself: he is the God whom we have 
 no right to disregard or treat disloyally. His 
 authority is in himself: his is the will that we 
 are bound to do, and his the work from which 
 we must not turn away. And the truth that 
 Christ tells us concerning him comes home to us 
 with God's own authority because it is his truth ; 
 and Christ in uttering it speaks with God's 
 authority, as his hearers perceived, and is One 
 whose word and call it is our bounden duty to 
 obey; and the Bible itself, so far as it brings 
 us that supreme utterance, comes with the au- 
 thority of truth, of Christ, and of God. It is 
 not quite enough to say with Coleridge that I 
 know the Bible to be divine because it finds 
 me. It has the right to find me, — that is the 
 real point. No one has ever attributed to the 
 Bible an independent authority of its own : always 
 it has been the sovereign voice of God that 
 sounded through it. Even so it is. That 
 sovereign voice does sound in the Bible, in the 
 field in which God desires to exercise authority 
 upon the human soul, the field of relation with 
 himself. 
 
160 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 Thus we are enabled to see clearly what is the 
 one limitation that is upon us in the construction 
 of our Christian theology. There is a limitation, 
 but it is not in the form of a biblical veto upon 
 theological thought. God has acted here as every- 
 where, — he has given truth, not as a deposit, but 
 as seed for the bearing of harvests. He has not 
 said -to any student of divine things, " Thus far 
 shalt thou go, but no farther." He opens to us 
 the universe and eternity. The limit that we are 
 to observe is not set by measuring the dimensions 
 of the Bible over upon our field. It is set by the 
 character of the glorious God himself as in Christ 
 we know it. Our theology must be Christian, 
 that is all, — that is, it must set forth the right 
 God. The true light now shineth, and in it we 
 are to walk. Yet this is no arbitrary limitation, 
 dictated through command; it is a warning that 
 otherwise we cannot get it right, since the God 
 and Father of Jesus Christ is the God who exists. 
 Nor is this a restraint: it is an infinite enlarge- 
 ment. God desires us to be in such harmony 
 with his high character as to give the name of 
 truth only to that which corresponds thereto. 
 With vision thus purified, theology will go on 
 forever seeing more and more of that eternal glory 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 161 
 
 which is practical truth for daily life, and gaining 
 more light upon the mysteries that make life per- 
 plexing to the soul. 
 
 Before I leave the subject I must speak for a 
 moment of the widespread need of the principle 
 in the use of the Scriptures which I have been 
 commending. There is scarcely anything that the 
 Christian world needs more. 
 
 I tell no secret — though perhaps many a man 
 has wished he could keep it a secret — when I say 
 that to the average minister to-day the Bible that 
 lies on his pulpit is more or less an unsolved 
 problem. He is loyal to it, and not for his right 
 hand would he degrade it or do it wrong. He 
 longs to speak with authority on the basis of its 
 teaching, and feels that he ought to be able so to 
 do. He knows that the people need its message 
 in full power and clearness, and cannot bear to 
 think that it is losing influence with them. Yet 
 he is not entirely free to use it. Criticism has 
 altered the book for his use, but just how far he 
 does not know. Experience has altered it also. 
 Parts of it do not strike his soul with the force 
 of spiritual authority, as other parts do, or yield 
 themselves to such use as he or his fathers 
 
 11 
 
162 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 formerly made of them. Parts are inexpressibly 
 rich and glorious. He is supposed to use it 
 throughout as God's very word to men now liv- 
 ing, and he retains the feeling that he ought, but 
 he cannot. So he leaves some parts unused, and 
 is not quite sure how much of the remainder he 
 may freely wield as the sword of the Spirit. Yet 
 he must use his Bible constantly, and make proc- 
 lamation of what it contains, and he deeply 
 wishes that he had sure ground for a practice 
 that would satisfy his intelligence, his conscience, 
 and his Christian heart. Some ministers do not 
 feel thus, but many do. They are not irreli- 
 gious or unbelieving, either, though some of their 
 brethren may account them so. They are per- 
 plexed in the presence of an unsolved problem. 
 
 There is a common experience that may suggest 
 relief. It is matter of common experience that 
 every lover of the Bible analyzes the book into 
 its elements as best he can, and has for himself a 
 little Bible of his own making within the Bible, 
 which he loves, reads, and remembers far beyond 
 the rest. Do we not know this for ourselves? 
 One who has not done this is thereby revealed as 
 only a cool reader, not a lover of the book. Let 
 the worn edges of any well-used Bible tell their 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 163 
 
 story. The four Gospels, the Acts, most of the 
 Epistles, the finest of the Psalms, the latter part 
 of Isaiah, passages here and there through the 
 remainder of the book, differing in every case, 
 these make up each one's personal edition of 
 the Holy Scriptures, — ■ these make a smaller but 
 dearer Bible for every one of us, and for all 
 readers who are enamored of the divine message. 
 This distinguishing and selecting we have always 
 done because we could not help it: it was a part 
 of real life and love. But we have done it more 
 or less against our principles, — that is, against 
 our theories, — for the Bible that we have thus 
 treated with the favoritism of intelligent interest 
 was supposed to have one equal claim throughout 
 upon our reverence and attention. But we have 
 done right: now let us do the same thing better. 
 Let us do it on principle, intelligently, without 
 timid hesitation, and for all uses, whether private 
 or public. The ministry needs to do exactly this, 
 and such application of our principle will bring 
 relief to its perplexity. Frankly and fearlessly 
 differentiate the Bible into its elements, Chris- 
 tian, Jewish, historical, traditional, and whatever 
 they may be. Let the mountains rise, let the 
 valleys sink, to the place that God has ordained 
 
164 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 for them. Set by itself that body of truth which 
 our Saviour taught concerning God and religion, 
 and then give glory where glory is due. Put the 
 Bible to its true use, as servant of Jesus Christ. 
 Speak with authority the truth concerning God 
 and man which he revealed, for this you have 
 full right to do. Proclaim the Christian thought 
 in its fulness without doubting or apology, for it 
 is true forever. But do not claim or represent or 
 imply that everything in the Bible is true for- 
 ever, or bears the authority of God for living 
 men to-day. Never speak as if it were so, or 
 encourage the people to believe it. Accept no 
 obligation to make non-Christian matter Christian, 
 or to keep alive what Christ has done to death. 
 Let the past be past and the present present, the 
 human human and the divine divine. When you 
 have helped the Christian element in the Scrip- 
 tures to come to its own, you will have your word 
 of power, differing from everything else in divine 
 energy. Then, too, the real value of the elements 
 that seem discarded through discrimination will 
 begin to be perceived, and the usefulness of them 
 for illustration of the Christian message will be 
 rightly learned. That which out of its place has 
 been an embarrassment will be in its place a help ; 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 165 
 
 and so in due time the book that has lain an un- 
 solved problem on the pulpit will be again, and 
 will continue, an instrument of power. 
 
 The Sunday school needs as keenly as the pulpit 
 to accept our principle and put the Christian ele- 
 ment in the Scriptures in a place of honor by itself. 
 For a generation now, though of late with increas- 
 ing exceptions, the Sunday schools have been using 
 the Bible as one solid whole, which they treated 
 as a uniform and equal book. To go through it 
 in so many years has been one of the ideals in 
 method. So there has been a quarter's lessons 
 in the Christian message, and then another, fre- 
 quently, where the Christian element is least. 
 Meanwhile it has been constantly maintained that 
 the Sunday school was intended to teach religion, 
 and the Christian religion, and lead the pupils 
 directly to the Christian life. Along with this 
 avowed purpose, the management of the lessons 
 has been such as to lead people to suppose that 
 they were all the time study in g religion , and 
 Christianity, and lingering Sunday by Sunday 
 near the gates of sound conversion to Christ. 
 But much of the time they have been doing noth- 
 ing of the kind: they have been studying only 
 history, or traditions, or institutions once con- 
 
166 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 nected with religion, or religion in superseded 
 forms. Sometimes they have studied matter in- 
 credible as history, but urged as history upon 
 their belief by the authority of an equal inspira- 
 tion. Christian matter and non-Christian have 
 been confounded, and even practically identified, 
 by this long misuse. Not far in the future the 
 day will come when the people find this out; and 
 unless the lesson-makers hear the warning in sea- 
 son, by and by there will come a great reaction of 
 weariness against the unreality of work that thus 
 claims to be more religious, and more Christian, 
 than it really is. If the Sunday-school work is 
 not to be turned into a pathetic failure, the lesson- 
 makers must face the difficult problem of distin- 
 guishing the Christian element in the Scriptures 
 from everything else, and setting it forth in 
 its own superiority and spiritual power. The 
 problem of bi;inging this true distinction to its 
 place in the minds of the people is a difficult 
 one in any case, and it is the harder because the 
 Sunday school itself has long been systematically 
 inculcating the doctrine that must now be un- 
 learned. But there is no other way than to mark 
 the distinction between these things that so widely 
 differ, and let the distinction do its work. Some 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 167 
 
 may fear the undertaking as if it were infidel- 
 ity, but in fact it is the best safeguard against 
 infidelity. 
 
 The need of the ministry and the Sunday school 
 is the need of all the people also. For want of 
 distinguishing the Christian element from every- 
 thing else that the Bible contains, the Christian 
 people are suffering far more than they know, and 
 with them is suffering the name and power of 
 popular Christianity. They are aware of per- 
 plexities for which there is really no relief but 
 this; but this way of relief they have not yet put 
 to the test, and for the most part they are afraid 
 of it. There is a vast amount of honest Chris- 
 tian faith practically founded on the Bible, when 
 it ought to be founded directly on God. Is it not 
 founded on the Bible? for if people are asked 
 why they hold their Christian faith, they will 
 answer that these things are so because the Bible 
 tells them so: it is through the Bible that they 
 know them, and because of the Bible that they be- 
 lieve them. Their faith is precious, and they 
 must keep it, but in order to keep it they must 
 keep the Bible just as it is ; and in order to keep 
 the Bible just as it is they feel that they must 
 believe all that is necessary to that end. It is in 
 
168 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 this way tHat so many unimportant beliefs come to 
 be taken for a part of religion. There are earnest 
 souls that assent to many a belief that would 
 otherwise be impossible to them, lest without it 
 they should lose their Bible. Since on the Bible 
 rests their faith, they account it a duty and privi- 
 lege to accept anything that they must, lest their 
 Bible should slip away. And then they meet with 
 changes in knowledge of the Bible, and learn that 
 some of their beliefs, incidental in real value but 
 not to them, B-re doubtful, and are told that more 
 changes are to come ; and then their faith trembles 
 lest it should perish, and they do not know exactly 
 what it needs in order to be made strong and free 
 again. So they maintain their Bible the more 
 strenuously, perhaps by arguments that will not 
 hold, and reassert their faith with an apparent 
 strength that is really an expression of its weak- 
 ness. Most sincerely do I wish that this descrip- 
 tion could be proved untrue, but I know that it 
 cannot. 
 
 How much better would it be if their faith 
 rested directly upon the real object of faith! 
 The object of faith is God. What the troubled 
 faith needs is to change its basis, to transfer itself 
 from one foundation to another. The present 
 
RESULTS POSITIVE 169 
 
 generation of Christians scarcely needs anything 
 else more than to change the foundation of its 
 faith from the Bible to God. Yet perhaps those 
 who need it most would be puzzled to know just 
 what this would be. I have told students of this 
 great necessity, and been met in reply by the 
 question, " But what do we know of God, except 
 through the Bible?" Yes, and what do we know 
 of the star except by help of the telescope ? — and 
 yet the telescope is not the star, and we need not 
 be told that the telescope is given us in order 
 that the star may be revealed. The Bible is the 
 telescope, and God is the star, the sun. The Bible 
 is a means, not an end; a help to faith, not an 
 object of faith. We wrong it if we make it the 
 foundation of our faith : God must be foundation, 
 as well as object. It is the one thing needful, not 
 that we keep our Bible, but that we keep our 
 God. We must know him as in Christ he is, and 
 must know no other. If you say to me, " This I 
 must believe and this reject, lest I lose my Bible," 
 I sa}^ to you in answer, " This I must believe and 
 this reject, lest I lose my God," — lest I fail to 
 mark him as he is in Christ, but get some false 
 conception of him, and bind to my heart some 
 image of God that is unlike the living One whom 
 
170 THE SCRIPTURES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 in Christ we know. Knowledge of him as he is 
 in Christ is what the Bible was given to bring us. 
 If in any of its parts it brings us anything dif- 
 ferent, it is our Christian privilege and duty to 
 mark the difference. If anything in the Bible 
 obscures the Christian thought of God, it is no 
 part of the abiding Christian gift; let it not 
 trouble you: leave it aside if it darkens that 
 divine face which Christ reveals. This is what 
 the Christian people need to learn. We must 
 transfer our faith from the book that reveals 
 God in Christ, to God in Christ whom the book 
 reveals, — from the telescope to the sun. When 
 we have done this, our Christian faith will rest 
 upon a foundation that will stand forever. 
 
OTHER BOOKS BT DR. CLARKE 
 
 An Outline of 
 Christian Theology 
 
 Crown 8vo. $2.50 net 
 
 This is the simplest, clearest, most radical, and most spiritual theo- 
 logical treatise we have ever seen. It is, indeed, in these four characteris- 
 tics rather a treatise on religion than on theology. It is vital, 
 not scholastic ; a minister to largeness of life, through clearness of 
 thought. . . . To ministers holding in whole or in part the new philos- 
 ophy, we recommend this volume as showing them how to use that phil- 
 osophy to conserve, nourish, and strengthen the old faith. — The Outlook. 
 
 We have read it with great interest. Its author, though so modest as 
 not to prefix the word " Professor " to his name, at once commands our 
 respect. He is a clear thinker, a fine scholar, a scientific and philosophi- 
 cal theologian. The work is able, it is stimulating, it is fresh, and reveals 
 him in touch with the latest thought of the day. It is in many respects 
 an epoch-making book. . . . We commend this book to any who desire 
 to get the clearest statement of the new theology that can be found in 
 English. — Presbyterian and Reformed Review. 
 
 Professor Marcus Dods writes : — " Has it ever happened to any of 
 our readers to take up a work on systematic theology, with the familiar 
 divisions, 'God,' 'Man,' 'Sin,' 'Christ,' 'The Holy Spirit,' 'The 
 Church,' 'The Last Things,' and open it with a sigh of weariness and 
 dread, and find himself fascinated and enthralled, and compelled to read 
 on to the last word ? Let any one who craves a new experience of this 
 kind, procure Dr. Clarke's ' Outline.' We guarantee that he will learn 
 more, with greater pleasure, tiian he is likely to learn in any other 
 systematic theology." 
 
 We have received from America many useful contributions to tlieologi- 
 cal literature, but few that surpass this either as theology or as literature. 
 — British Weekly. 
 
OTHER BOOKS BT DR. CLARKE 
 
 A Study of 
 Christian Missions 
 
 i2mo. $1.25 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Missionary Character of Christianity. II. 
 The Missionary Motive of Christianity. III. The Ob- 
 ject in Christian Missions. IV. The Field of Missions. 
 v. Christianity and Other Religions. VI. Organiza- 
 tion FOR Missionary Purposes. VII. Denominations in 
 Missions. VIII. The Present Crisis in Missions. IX. 
 The Next Needs in Missions. X. The Outlook in Mis- 
 sions. XI. The Home Side of Missions. 
 
 No more valuable publication on its subject is known to us. — The 
 Outlook. 
 
 Heartily commended for its clear statement of the missionary character 
 of Christianity, its analysis of the missionary motive, of the present 
 crisis and coming needs, of the outlook for missions and their reflex 
 action upon religious life at home. — The Churchman. 
 
 To the thoughtful student of mission problems his discussion will be 
 most stimulating. — The Sunday School Times. 
 
 A fresh and interesting study of missions viewed from the standpoint 
 of the new theology. — The Interior, 
 
 A searching analysis of the missionary motive as a development and 
 expression of the Christian religion. — Review of Reviews. 
 
OTHER BOOKS BT DR. CLARKE 
 
 CAN I BELIEVE IN 
 GOD THE FATHER? 
 
 Lectures Delivered before the Har- 
 vard Summer School of Theology 
 
 i2mo. $1.00 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Practical Argument for the Being of God. 
 
 Divine Personality. 
 
 The Relation Between God and Men. 
 
 The Moral Effect of the Doctrine of God. 
 
 Dr. Clarke has handled some of the most profound speculations in 
 theology with rare simplicity and force. He introduces his hearer at 
 once to an exposition of the practical argument for the being of God 
 which is unusually lucid and suggestive. His language is simple and 
 the analysis of his thoughts perspicuous. — The Churchman. 
 
 There is no more devout and no more enlightening writer on the sub- 
 ject of Christianity than the Rev. Dr. William Newton Clarice. . . . 
 Aside from its relation to the subject under discussion, the reading of 
 this article is an intellectual delight, it is so completely thought out and 
 clearly stated. — Brooklyn. Eagle. 
 
 These lectures will bear the test of careful reading, and they are so 
 interesting that they may be read with pleasure as well as with profit. 
 — Chicago Advance. 
 
 An interesting and suggestive defence of theism. — The Outlook. 
 
OTHER BOOKS BT DR. CLARKE 
 
 What Shall We 
 Think ^/Christianity? 
 
 The Levering Lectures before the 
 Johns Hopkins University, l8gg 
 
 i2mo. $i.oo 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Christian People. II. The Christian Doc- 
 trine. III. The Christian Power. 
 
 A singularly beautiful and powerful statement of the essentials of 
 the Christian Religion, clothed in an exquisite simplicity of form 
 and language, while its crystal clearness of thought leads the reader 
 deep into the heart of the truth itself. — The Christian Advocate. 
 
 . . . The address of a cultured man to cultured hearers ; they 
 are intent on what is essential and vital ; they deal with facts rather 
 than theories ; the note of realism is heard throughout, — The Outlook. 
 
 We cannot but recognize the noble optimism, the religious enthu- 
 siasm, and the excellent mental poise Dr. Clarke exhibits. — The 
 Churchman. 
 
 Prof. Clarke treats his theme in a broad fashion, examines the his- 
 torical development of the Christian people, the Christian doctrine, and 
 the Christian power, and presents the results of his investigation in 
 the light of well known facts. — N.Y. Times Saturday Review. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers 
 
 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 
 
11' 
 
 iiH 
 
 11