Div.S. 
 2000.4 
 
 
 
 1A PLAIN MAN'S. 
 | WORKING VIEW II 
 | Or BIBLICAL IN") 
 
 SPIRATION - 
 
 Lager  . 
 
 
 
DUKE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FRIENDS OF 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 
 
Gm Moaldice— 
 
 Te hae 1 Sarge 
 wth Vln Cone / 
 
 Inara, 1905 
 

 
A Plain Man’s Working View 
 
 OF 
 
 Biblical Inspiration 
 
 By 
 ALBERT J. LYMAN, D.D. 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
 
 s 
 Se FS ha 
 

 

 
 
 
 scripture inspired of God is also For ee 
 —2 Tim. 3. 16, Revised Version. Spots, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING 
 VIEW 
 
 Any reasonable religious address 
 (and we must not unyoke these two 
 adjectives) should start from ground 
 which is not only common to speaker 
 and hearer, but is also in agreement 
 with the common sense of fair-minded 
 men. In venturing one more word 
 upon the subject of Biblical Inspira- 
 tion, it is my first wish to maintain 
 throughout, as far as possible, this 
 common ground of a plain man’s 
 thought and feeling. 
 
 The mere mention of the subject, 
 Inspiration of the Bible, opens at 
 once a vast field of tumultuous cur- 
 rent discussion. As you know, the 
 Bible is.a world, a literature. Ten 
 
 thousand bright brains are inces- 
 [5] 
 
 ew ere ars 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 santly busy upon it. A stream of 
 fresh volumes concerning it pours, 
 without intermission, from the presses 
 of Germany, England, and Amer- 
 ica. The critical problems which it 
 presents are multiform, intricate, in- 
 numerable, never settled, indeed, be- 
 cause new ones continually arise. An 
 entire lifetime would be requisite in 
 order even to review all the questions 
 now raised as to the authenticity and 
 authority of the writings we call the 
 Bible. 
 
 If, therefore, our acceptance of the 
 Bible as a trustworthy moral and re- 
 ligious guide must be delayed till we 
 decide these critical questions, we 
 might as well relinquish at once all 
 hope of finding within the Scriptures 
 any final lamp for our moral 
 guidance. 
 
 Is there, then, some shorter, more 
 [6] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 practical path to a working conclu- 
 sion upon this subject ? 
 
 This question was shot upon me 
 freshly and very forcibly by a letter 
 I received some time ago from a col- 
 lege man, the valedictorian of his 
 class in a prominent New England 
 college. ‘The letter contained this 
 straight and level question: “Can you 
 tell me in what sense, if any, I can 
 reasonably” (that word was under- 
 scored) “regard the Bible as an in- 
 spired and trustworthy guide in life, 
 without waiting to settle all the crit- 
 ical questions ?” 
 
 I felt, in the first place, that my 
 correspondent was right in under- 
 scoring that word “reasonably.” If 
 we cannot have a reasonable faith, 
 let us have none at all. This is Prot- 
 estantism. Nothing short of this is 
 
 Protestantism. Protestantism, how- 
 [7] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 ever, let us remember, does not love 
 the noun less because it loves the ad- 
 jective more. It insists as firmly upon 
 faith, vital and genuine, as it insists 
 that such faith shall be reasonable- 
 
 True Protestantism has little re- 
 spect for that empirical rationalism 
 which, ignoring in advance, and with- 
 out argument, the spiritual element in 
 man, cuts in twain the higher reason 
 itself, and so hops and flops through 
 the country of thought, traveling upon 
 one leg instead of two. 
 
 Digression is a tempter, and in- 
 asmuch as [ have already yielded to 
 it, let us carry the digression a bow- 
 shot further. Protestantism, as I 
 take it, is the equal balance of 
 blended reason and faith, maintain- 
 ing each of these in full integrity, 
 with justice to both, and with detri- 
 
 ment to neither. It is a reasonable 
 £8] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 faith, both words being equally em- 
 phasized. Some people seem to be 
 so taken up with the adjective that 
 they forget the noun; and others so 
 pleased with the noun that they for- 
 get the adjective. The former go 
 careening into an airy rationalism; 
 the latter stiffen down into an inert 
 orthodoxy, or get water-logged with 
 “saccharine sentimentalism,” as 
 Prof. Peabody, of Harvard, calls it. 
 But surely this choice between all 
 sail and no ballast, and all ballast 
 and no sail, is a pitiful alternative; 
 and the resultant controversy be- 
 tween the men of the adjective alone, 
 and the men of the noun alone, is 
 hardly less absurd than the situation 
 presented in one of our Brooklyn 
 courts the other day when a hus- 
 band and wife were arraigned for 
 
 violent and persistent quarreling. 
 [9] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 “Can’t you and your husband live 
 together happily, without quarrel- 
 ing ?”’ asked the judge of the woman. 
 
 “No, your Honor, not happily,” 
 was the reply. 
 
 Reason and faith, “now and for- 
 ever, one and inseparable,” is the true 
 formula of the Republic of Truth. 
 
 be 
 ! 
 
 “Impossible!” cuts in the metaphy- 
 sical empiricist, “‘ the two terms are 
 mutually exclusive.” ‘Quite pos- 
 sible and altogether appropriate,” 
 answers practical experience. Let us 
 blend our oxygen and hydrogen if we 
 would produce good, healthy drink- 
 ing water? You may not be able to 
 state in definite philosophical or even 
 psychological terms the subtle spir- 
 itual chemistry of this union, but the 
 propriety of it is attested by the 
 full-toned symmetrical manhood re- 
 
 sulting therefrom. So in the order 
 [10] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 of the heavens, the planetary orbs 
 may tug and strain to dash from 
 their orbits into independent suicide, 
 but because at once propelled and 
 held in the equal balance of two 
 diverse but blended forces, they pur- 
 sue the order and beauty of their 
 curving path, as if they rolled against 
 rims of immovable crystal. 
 
 Falling back sharply from the 
 prolixity of this excursus_ into 
 the direct track of the argument, 
 we go on to say that the fear- 
 less admission of my correspondent’s 
 word “reasonably” involves two 
 requisites: 
 
 First. A verifiable starting-point 
 in our line of inquiry. 
 
 Second. An intelligently logical 
 method of advance from that start- 
 ing-point. 
 
 I therefore asked myself this ques- 
 
 [11] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 tion, How can we, starting down 
 upon the ground floor of verifiable, 
 incontrovertible facts, steering clear 
 of all special inquiries as to the 
 origin of the Scriptures, taking them 
 just as we have them to-day, no 
 matter who wrote them or when 
 they were written, assuming only 
 what everybody concedes concern- 
 ing them — how can we proceed 
 upward without a break in the 
 logic till we stand on the terrace 
 of a practical working faith in the 
 Bible as the supreme moral and re- 
 ligious guide ? 
 
 No doubt the question, so put, would 
 be regarded as very amateurish by the 
 average Biblical critic; but there is 
 such a thing as dying of thirst while 
 waiting for the analysis of a cup of 
 spring water, and common sense as 
 
 well as science has certain “inalien- 
 [12] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 able” rights. I discovered that for 
 myself, when put to it, I could find 
 some hints toward an answer to the 
 question even when put in this prac- 
 tical and peremptory style, and such 
 hints as I could find I propose to give 
 to you, as I gave them to my college 
 correspondent. I give them for what 
 they are worth. They helped him to 
 “pole his canoe up the rapids,” as 
 he said, and, later on, he told me they 
 had helped other men for the nonce, 
 until they could make good a more 
 critical and scientific Biblical anchor- 
 age for themselves. ‘They may not be 
 worth anything to you, but I have 
 ventured to fancy that possibly a 
 swift and straightforward report of 
 one man’s voyage through the eddies 
 might be of aid to some of you. 
 
 I wish you to challenge this line of » 
 
 argument now, to follow and attack 
 [13] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 it at every point. If at any point the 
 logic fails, throw out the case; but 
 give the argument a fair hearing. 
 Don’t stand and cavil. If the logic 
 - holds, then admit the case and act 
 accordingly, so as to walk, as Socrates 
 said, “ sure-footedly in this life.” 
 
 The process of the logic, starting 
 from what I call the ground floor of 
 verifiable facts, involves four steps, 
 each of them necessary. ‘The first 
 two of them will seem to you mere 
 platitudes; but for me they are in- 
 dispensable, and the only approach 
 to the steps which follow. The four 
 steps are these: 
 
 First. There is such a thing as what 
 we call intellectual or literary inspira- 
 tion—in a word, genius; and the Bible 
 exhibits in many of its writings—not 
 in all, but in many—a very high de- 
 
 gree of this inspiration of genius. 
 [14] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 Second. ‘There is such a thing 
 as moral inspiration, and the Bible 
 exhibits in most of its writings— 
 not in all, but in most—a supreme 
 degree of this moral or ethical 
 inspiration. 
 
 Third. The Bible exhibits, here 
 and there—not everywhere (for I 
 claim nothing but what can be 
 
 
 
 proved) —marks of a special and 
 spiritual wmspiration, that is to say, 
 gleams of insight so profound and 
 wonderful, into the depths of religious 
 truth and the spiritual life of man, as 
 to be apparently beyond any natural 
 power of production possessed by the 
 plain men who, on any theory of the 
 Bible, originated these writings in a 
 rude land and age. 
 
 Fourth. There are so many of 
 these special flashes or headland 
 
 lights in the Bible, and they are so 
 [15] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 distributed in the texture of the writ- 
 ings, that they become interpretative 
 and corrective of all the remainder of 
 the Biblical record, foci of Biblical il- 
 lumination, giving to the whole Bible, 
 as we have it, substantial unity, ad- 
 justing and coérdinating our ideas as 
 to the subordinate portions of Scrip- 
 ture, explaining them and furnishing 
 the means for practically correcting 
 whatever errors they may contain; 
 so that the Bible as a whole—and 
 here is the heart of the idea—the Bi- 
 ble, as a whole, becomes self-adjust- 
 ing, self-explaining, self-correcting, 
 and, therefore, practically trust- 
 worthy, if we take the whole of it, 
 as a guide to duty and to God. 
 
 May I, then, beg you to climb with 
 me this simple staircase of four steps, 
 and see if they cannot each be veri- 
 
 fied ? 
 [16] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 I 
 
 The Bible includes many writings 
 which exhibit extraordinary genius 
 or intellectual inspiration. 
 
 The point here is that we take the 
 position of the literary critic, of the 
 student of language, of enlightened 
 university culture. We insist upon 
 our right to apply this word ispira- 
 tion to the nobler activity of the 
 human brain. Who wrote the Forti- 
 eth chapter of Isaiah, or when it was 
 written, is here of secondary im- 
 portance. I know a diamond when 
 I see it, whoever cut it. 
 
 We agree with the evolutional logic 
 when it affirms that the human intel- 
 lect, in its supreme products, shines 
 with something from the Oversoul. 
 We agree with those who, from Plato 
 
 to Emerson, find in genius a gleam 
 [17] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 from the Eternal, so that we look be- 
 yond the “banks and braes of Bonnie 
 Doon” to find the primal source of 
 Burns’s wild music, and beyond the 
 meadows of the Avon for the secret 
 of enchantment woven into Shake- 
 speare’s dream of the “Midsummer 
 Night.” “Poetry was ever thought 
 to have some participation of divine- 
 ness,” said Bacon. 
 
 We find neither extravagance nor 
 irreverence in such homage. When 
 we worship with Coleridge in the 
 “Vale of Chamouni,” or voyage with 
 his “Ancient Mariner” amid the 
 emerald ice of the Antarctic world— 
 when we follow Spenser passing yon- 
 der with his faerie bells, or Calderon 
 of Spain, or walk by the Arno with 
 that stern Florentine, whom alone we 
 name with Homer and Shakespeare 
 
 as the three monarchs of song—then, 
 [18] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 in the presence of such genius, we 
 drop our compass and measuring 
 line, and exclaim, “This is, in very 
 truth, in some real sense, an inspira- 
 tion of the Infinite.” 
 
 Now, on this scale of genius, the 
 Bible, as it rests in my hand to-day, 
 whatever may have been its origin, 
 contains many passages which are of 
 the noblest writing of this world. I 
 will not overstate the matter. I am 
 not going to give away my case by 
 flamboyant generalization; but it is 
 fair to say that the narratives, the 
 histories, the dialogues, the parables, 
 the dramas, the letters, which make 
 up the Bible, clustered as they are 
 about the same generic and progres- 
 sively unfolding religion, set forth the 
 ideas of that religion with a literary 
 -energy and splendor equal to the 
 
 average level of the pagan classics. 
 [19] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 We have heard the phrase, our 
 now current phrase, “The Bible as 
 Literature’’—a good phrase, provided 
 we remember that literature means 
 more than writing, more even than 
 fine writing. It means choice, su- 
 preme, immortal writing. In that 
 sense, parts of the Bible are litera- 
 ture. Says Renan of Saint Paul, 
 “His style, even simply as a writer, 
 is one of the most striking and in- 
 imitable that ever existed.” ‘There 
 are passages in the Psalms and in the 
 Minor Prophets whose poetic vigor 
 and sweep of imagery match with 
 Homer. And, above these even, is 
 such a work as the Book of Job, an 
 archaic masterpiece, at least level 
 with the higher summits of Greek 
 tragedy. And still above this, su- 
 preme in human language for beauty 
 
 of form and truth to life, are the 
 [20] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 parables and maxims attributed to 
 Jesus. Nothing in Plato is at once 
 more exquisitely natural and yet 
 more original and profound. 
 
 You will bear in mind, let me re- 
 peat, that I am now not speaking as 
 a Christian believer, as an adherent 
 of an orthodox creed, an advocate of 
 a certain religious technique—noth- 
 ing of the kind. I am simply a stu- 
 dent, at ease in my library, ad- 
 miring genius, resenting any sham 
 of genius, but aware of a certain 
 thrill when I stumble upon something 
 fine in Thucydides, or Anacreon, or 
 Saint John’s Gospel, or the Book of 
 Psalms. You shall not, then, give 
 me Juvenal and steal away from me 
 Ecclesiastes. As a literary man, I 
 object. You shall not allow to me 
 the tragedies of A’schylus and filch 
 
 from my bookshelves the drama of 
 [21] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 Job. Your chatter about uncertain — 
 date, doubtful authorship, is away 
 off from the mark. The Iliad is the 
 Iliad, wherever Homer was born. I 
 have here, evidently, in some of these 
 old Biblical writings, a literary fire- 
 opal of the highest value. It fasci- 
 nates me. The more mysterious its 
 origin, the more it fascinates me. 
 
 If, then, we assert in the literary 
 realm, as we do, the touch of actual 
 inspiration, the breath of the In- 
 finite anywhere, we assert it here. If 
 genius has ever caught a spark from 
 the Throne, as it has, here it shines. 
 If any writings on earth are 
 worthy, simply as writings, of the 
 admiring and passionate regard of 
 the human intellect, they are these. 
 
 Now this, for me, is the ground 
 floor. This is verifiable. This is 
 
 where I start. No religion in it nec- 
 [22] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 essarily, but something that makes 
 my bookshelf richer with the Bible 
 
 on it. 
 
 Il 
 
 Now comes the second step—and 
 it is equally verifiable—the asser- 
 tion of the preéminent moral in- 
 spiration of very much of the Bible 
 —not all of it, but very much of it. 
 This also is a legitimate use of the 
 word inspiration. When we warm 
 ourselves at the furnace we need not 
 ask who mined the coal. 
 
 In various lands and ages have 
 appeared certain writings which from 
 their elevation of moral teaching have 
 been known as the world’s Bibles. 
 The ancient classic world had its 
 Socrates and Epictetus, China its 
 Confucius, India its Sakya-Muni, 
 
 Rome its Marcus Aurelius, Islam 
 [23] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 its Mohammed and Koran, and the 
 writings of these moral sages have 
 been called correctly .the world’s 
 Bibles, because they express the pro- 
 foundest verdicts of the human con- 
 science. 
 
 But on this scale our Bible, on the 
 whole, stands unquestionably first. 
 And the proof of this is found in the 
 superior moral effect of the Bible 
 when wholly open and duly received. 
 It has in some real sense mastered 
 the master nations. Wendell Phillips 
 once made this reply in a coterie at 
 Boston, when some one told him that 
 Jesus was amiable but not strong: 
 “Not strong?” replied those never- 
 blanching lips. “Not strong? Test 
 the strength of Jesus by the strength 
 of the men whom he has mastered” — 
 titans such as Augustine, Cromwell, 
 
 and Luther. 
 [24] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 “Civilized society,’ said Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes, “‘is a strong solu- 
 tion of books.” So the ethics of civi- 
 lized society is a strong solution of 
 the Book of books—the Bible. 
 
 The Bible is the moral athlete, be- 
 cause it has to some extent conquered 
 the most athletic peoples of the mod- 
 ern time. Possibly this is the best 
 way in which to test the moral 
 potency of a book, namely, to observe 
 its effect, just as we estimate the qual- 
 ity of a rifle by observing the shot 
 rather than by steadfastly gazing 
 down into the barrel of the rifle, 
 which is the method of some crit- 
 ics. But were we to look into the 
 Bible itself, what shall we discover ? 
 
 Take, for instance, the Biblical 
 thought of the Deity, progressively 
 unfolded, it is true, but at last stand- 
 
 ing complete—one uncreated, un- 
 [25] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 fathomable Personal Energy, in the 
 vast vortex of whose limitless life 
 dwells somehow an Eternal Father- 
 hood, a mysterious Sonship, humanly 
 incarnate, a HolySpirit, quickening all 
 things. Take its thought of man, as 
 that God’s true son, noble and erring, 
 lost and saved; take its tremendous 
 conception of sin, which makes 
 schylus seem pale; take the amaz- 
 ing grasp of its idea of human re- 
 sponsibility; take the growing light 
 and final flash of its vision of im- 
 mortality—and you have an assem- 
 blage of ideas by the side of whose 
 moral might all other books or clus- 
 ters of books seem tiny and thin. 
 Even to touch the Bible and think 
 what it has accomplished in the 
 world is like laying your hand upon 
 a great hot cannon. 
 
 Mohammed’s Koran sounds well 
 [26] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 enough when you read it by the creak 
 
 of the slow sakieh as you drift on the 
 Nile; but it seems verbose and 
 petty when set beneath the colossal 
 and fiery arches of-Isaiah or Job. 
 Marcus Aurelius is impressive 
 when read in the ruined Roman 
 Forum; but the ethics of Aurelius 
 compared with the ethics of Paul are 
 like the Matterhorn in the pallor of 
 evening compared with the same 
 Matterhorn in the morning sunrise. 
 No other book has either so recog- 
 nized or so stirred the human con- 
 science as the Bible has. Its moral 
 insight is rarer, its moral breadth is 
 nobler, its moral discrimination is 
 surer, its moral pressure more re- 
 sistless than that of any other pro- 
 duct of the inspired conscience of 
 humanity. 
 
 And this is for me the second step 
 [27] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 following upon the first, and equally 
 verifiable. Is not the logic reason- 
 able, as far as we have gone? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Now for the third step, which is, 
 naturally, the crucial one, and yet, 
 so far as I can see, as inevitable and 
 verifiable as the others, provided it 
 be taken from the top of the other 
 two. 
 
 When I have climbed these first 
 two steps, and not until I have (mark 
 this), then I see something more. 
 But this next step is a reasonable 
 step, not an unreasonable jump. 
 
 I do not approach faith as I vault 
 into a saddle, one spring and that the 
 end of it. I climb into faith, up these 
 successive steps provided by my own 
 intellectual and moral nature. I walk 
 
 up the staircase of my own mind. 
 [28] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 Therefore the two great steps already 
 indicated are for me indispensable in 
 my path up to faith in the Scriptures. 
 But once well up these two steps I 
 am led on irresistibly to take an- 
 other. To employ our rifle-shot 
 : colloquialism, I have to take another. 
 Beyond the occasional literary inspi- 
 ration, beyond the supremely remark- 
 able moral inspiration, the Bible dis- 
 closes, in certain places, here and 
 there—not everywhere, but here and 
 there—gleams of an insight so tran- 
 scendent, into the spiritual nature, 
 experience and ideal of man, as to 
 be in sober judgment clearly beyond 
 
 the human power of the plain men 
 - who produced these writings in those 
 half-barbaric and brazen ages, and in 
 that rude, provincial selvage of Asia, 
 remote from all the culture and educa- 
 
 tion of the world. 
 [29] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 How can I account for the moral 
 beauty, the finish, the cosmopolitan 
 note, the profound harmony with uni- 
 versal human experience, disclosed in 
 the finer Psalms? Who taught the 
 Syrian Semite who composed Eccle- 
 siastes to be so modernly blase, and 
 create a Faust in advance? Or turn 
 to the New Testament. Here also I 
 assume nothing as to precise date or 
 authorship. Here are the documents. 
 We know they were in circulation by 
 the latter part of the second century. 
 Harnack pushes back the date of Saint 
 John’s Gospel to 110-120 A.D. But 
 how can I possibly account, on merely 
 natural grounds, for the spirituelle 
 loveliness, for instance, of the Para- 
 bles of the Synoptists, or the Dis- 
 courses of the Gospel of John, 
 by anything I can find in the 
 
 Syria of Herod, or the Alexandria of 
 [30] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 Philo—by anything, indeed, in the 
 
 Roman empire of the first century or 
 even of the second ? . As well look for 
 a spray of Syrian lilies bursting from 
 a stack of Roman spears. 
 
 But more than this, these Biblical 
 writings, some of them, match the 
 best inner life of men to-day, two 
 thousand years afterward—of modern 
 men, the finest modern men, living in 
 a new age, interested in questions un- 
 dreamed of in that day, interested in 
 democracy, in physical science, indus- 
 trial enterprise, social reform. The 
 very inner essence indeed of the ethi- 
 cal and spiritual life of the modern 
 time is met and matched by these old, 
 incomparable writings. What magic 
 had the fishing nets of Galilee thus 
 to anticipate the summit centuries of 
 Europe and the New World? 
 
 These flashes of spiritual prevision 
 [31] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 are as much beyond the unaided 
 human foresight of those plain men 
 as yonder jeweled sword handle of 
 Orion is beyond the reach of infant 
 fingers. 
 
 And more astonishing even than 
 this is the picture the New Tes- 
 tament writers give of Jesus. This 
 to me is supreme evidence of some 
 higher than human force concerned 
 with the production of part, at least, 
 of the New Testament. As you 
 know, Jesus did not write his own life. 
 So far as we know, he left no memo- 
 rial save the shifting and wavering 
 impressions left upon the rocking 
 brains of a small group of fright- 
 -ened fugitive fishermen and _ ple- 
 beians. Some decades of years later 
 these exquisite Gospels appear, so 
 unparalleled in the beauty, con- 
 sistency, symmetry of the figure of 
 
 [32] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 Jesus which they present. How 
 then could a group of frightened 
 fugitives so, on the whole, agree in 
 the general tone of their reminis- 
 cences, while showing just enough of 
 difference to disprove collusion ? 
 “Fear is an ague,” says Butler, in 
 ‘“Hudibras.” No intellectual ague in 
 these writings, certainly! How could 
 rude, uneducated men suppress all 
 extravagance in narrative and pro- 
 duce that which two thousand years 
 later, at the peak and pinnacle of a 
 new civilization, shall be counted the 
 supreme idyll of the world? As well 
 might a group of common quarry- 
 men, all hammering together, chisel 
 out the Apollo of the Vatican. To 
 my mind the gap is impassable with- 
 out the admission of the aid of a 
 higher than human intelligence, some- 
 
 how correlating and aiding theirs. 
 [33] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 IV 
 
 Fourth, then, and last. Only one 
 step remains, and we take that 
 swiftly and easily from the top of the 
 other three; but not until we have 
 climbed the other three. 
 
 It is this. So numerous are these 
 special supreme gleams in the Bible, 
 and so distributed are they, that, like 
 turret-top lights over a city, they 
 serve to explain other biblical writ- 
 ings; or, to change the figure, they 
 furnish adjusting instruments by 
 which to interpret the rest of the Bib- 
 lical literature. 
 
 Thus the Bible, as a whole, just as 
 we have it to-day, becomes, in a true 
 and adequate sense, selj-explanatory, 
 self-adjusting, and, so far as is neces- 
 sary, self-corrective. If this can be 
 
 made out we have our case; we have 
 [34] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 the key to the working use of the Bible 
 as the supreme moral guide. The 
 limits of space forbid detailed review 
 of the evidence at this point; but itis, 
 if I do not mistake, demonstrative. 
 The Bible itself, if one takes in the_ 
 
 whole of it, creates in the mind that 
 - just critical temper, that fair and fine 
 discrimination, which lies at the bot- 
 tom of the highest of the higher 
 criticism itself. Higher criticism is 
 a child of the Bible, not an alien 
 inspector of it. | 
 
 The New Testament, for example, 
 explains, interprets, supplements, 
 and, in a sense, corrects the Old 
 Testament. “‘Prove all things,’ even 
 me,” peals forth the Biblical com- 
 mand. Beneath the intellectual chal- 
 lenge and warrant of such a maxim 
 true criticism is born. The Bible itself 
 
 not only permits but explicitly re- 
 [35] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 quires the free exercise of free intelli- 
 gence in reading the Bible. “It is 
 the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh 
 profiteth nothing.”” Spiritual insight 
 and balance of judgment is here ex- 
 plicitly admitted as the prerequisite 
 for just exegesis—a warrant in the 
 Bible itself for something more 
 than a mechanically verbal interpre- 
 tation of the Bible. So that the 
 human limitations, the local idioms, 
 the natural divergencies, the occa- 
 sional subordinate inaccuracies in the 
 various separate writings, become 
 
 explicable and harmonized in the full, _ 
 
 fair light of the Bible itself. Read 
 the closing paragraphs of the Book of 
 Ecclesiastes, for example—what we 
 know as the last “chapter.” It is of 
 the essence of immortal literature and 
 of immortal ethics also, and its grave 
 
 moral dignity and rhythmic finish, 
 [36] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 like the musical march of a great 
 Greek chorus, give the clue to a 
 proper interpretation of other por- 
 tions of this puzzling Writing. 
 
 The Book of Hebrews affords spir- 
 itual interpretation to the earlier He- 
 braic ceremonial law. The Epistles 
 illumine the Gospels, and the Gos- 
 pels themselves supplement one 
 another. One Epistle modifies and 
 adjusts the impression received from 
 another, and there are single sen- 
 tences which to the free-minded, rey- 
 erent student give the clue for the in- 
 terpretation of entire documents. 
 Certain signal sentences, for example, 
 in the Book of Romans, illuminate 
 the entire letter, showing that it was 
 designed and must be conceived of, 
 not as a didactic theological treatise, 
 but as a tremendous moral thunder- 
 
 bolt hurled upon the then Roman 
 [37] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 world. So that classic passage in 
 the thirteenth chapter of First Co- 
 rinthians illuminates and explains 
 the whole entire drift of those two pa- 
 thetic letters to the church at Corinth, 
 the saddest writing in the New Tes- 
 tament, which without the true in- 
 terpretation seem in some respects so 
 perplexing. 
 
 Always it is the higher that inter- 
 prets the lower, the larger that inter- 
 prets the less; the finer sentences that 
 explain the commoner; the whole Bi- 
 ble that gives perspective in which to 
 judge every document in it. In a 
 word, these writings themselves fur- 
 nish the standard and the method by 
 which we may, to a large degree, ex- 
 plain and understand whatever is lo- 
 cal, partial, incomplete, or mistaken 
 in them. 
 
 Pull out all the stops in this 
 [38] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 organ of the Bible. Let it play as a 
 whole, freely, in the midst of your 
 own free mind and moral nature, and 
 the total resultant impression and 
 effect will be to create a mental atti- 
 tude and atmosphere to which the 
 Bible itself becomes like a self- 
 adjusting telescope. Not that the 
 Bible, even when thus used, will give 
 a complete answer to all the ques- 
 tions you may ask about it; but, 
 when employed in this complete way, 
 this strangely self-adjusting volume 
 so far explains, balances and _ar- 
 ranges its own separate utterances, 
 and the harmony of them, as that 
 the moral perspective of the whole 
 becomes practically trustworthy in 
 leading men to duty and to God, and 
 even “infallible,” if you wish to in- 
 sist on that word—I am not afraid of 
 
 it—as a moral guide. And this can- 
 [39] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 not be said with the same truth of 
 any other book or cluster of books. 
 
 So here I am at the top of my four 
 _ steps, having made, to my own ap- 
 prehension, at least, no irrational 
 jump to get there. I start with na- 
 ture and end with a supreme Christ, 
 without a break. I start with reason 
 and end with faith, without a break. 
 I cannot reach my third and fourth 
 steps except by way of my first and 
 second; but once well up the first and 
 second, I am irresistibly led on to the 
 third and fourth. 
 
 Now this does not tell me who 
 wrote Genesis; but it keeps me rea- 
 sonably quiet and serene while the 
 critics are finding out who wrote 
 Genesis. Our argument lies beneath 
 the critical discussion as to the pre- 
 cise date or the authorship of the 
 
 documents. 
 [40] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 And the final conclusion is this. 
 Here is a volume which, as a whole, 
 possesses unity, and is, beyond any 
 other volume, a trustworthy moral 
 guide. Infallible? Yes, practically, 
 and in a working sense, if you take 
 the whole of it. I do not pin my faith 
 upon any one particular verse by it- 
 self. This has been the curse of the 
 sectarian ages. I can prove any- 
 thing, if I am required to produce 
 only one text for it. It is the perspec- 
 tive of the whole, the rhythm of the 
 entire Bible, that can be preéminently 
 counted on and trusted; and that can. 
 What more do you want? This is 
 precisely what we do want. We do 
 not want a petty infallibility, a mere 
 literal inerrancy, even were that pos- 
 sible, a baby inerrancy, that would 
 keep men in the intellectual nursery. 
 
 That would be puerile and unworthy 
 [41] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 of God. We want something that 
 comes to the strong free brain of a 
 live man, as the result of the exercise 
 of his own intelligence. To provide 
 such a thing as that would be likely 
 to be a great God’s way with his 
 own child. 
 
 Verbal infallibility, in the sense of 
 the literal mechanical inerrancy of 
 every separate text and phrase, taken 
 by itself, is an irrational and impos- 
 sible dream in regard to a book which 
 is to be translated into a hundred dif- 
 ferent languages, and retranslated 
 from age to age. So much of quick- 
 silver mingles with language, as a re- 
 sult of the subtle growth of words and 
 the changing minds of men, that 
 literal inerrancy, which is to be equally 
 inerrant in a hundred languages and 
 a hundred epochs, is inconceivable. 
 
 But the divine method of securing 
 [42] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 practical religious trustworthiness 
 in a book which is to be a world’s 
 Bible is a far finer and deeper 
 method than that of verbal exac- 
 titude. 
 
 And the finer method is this— 
 to aid and inspire chosen men 
 themselves to evolve a Bible which, 
 as a whole, shall be infallibly selj- 
 adjusting to the fair mind; for this 
 puts a premium upon our own reason 
 and our own moral intuition, and 
 upon our exercise of them, upon that 
 which is “‘likest God within the soul.”’ 
 We may thus examine and compare, 
 collate and adjust, interpreting the 
 details of the Bible in consistency 
 with its own main principles and 
 laws, just as we study and inter- 
 pret physical nature, that other 
 Book of God. So the human mind 
 
 itself is educated into fellowship with 
 [43] 
 
A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW 
 
 that Divine Source from whom both 
 it and its Bible came. . 
 
 And the experimental proof of the 
 soundness of this view is that men 
 and women who take the whole and 
 entire Bible in this way do, as a matter 
 of fact, go right in life. ‘They who, 
 not singling out isolated texts and 
 forcing them into unnatural perspect- 
 ive, take the whole Bible in its 
 large, beautiful, progressive symme- 
 try, rather than a sectarian slice 
 of it, do find duty and see God. 
 They find their noblest selves and 
 become our best class in the com- 
 munity. 
 
 I must not multiply closing words. 
 The argument has been presented 
 at a speed, which allows only of 
 outline, and it leads on much farther 
 than can be followed now—even to 
 
 the heart of Christ; but in these 
 [44] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 initial and crucial stages of it, it 
 seems to me solid and _ verifiable, 
 recognizing that inevitable, impera- 
 tive word of my college corres- 
 pondent—“ reasonably.” 
 
 The method of the argument, as I 
 have sketched it, is both scientific 
 and sacramental, appealing both to 
 the critical reason and to the 
 moral sense in their order—in a 
 word, to the entire binocular of the 
 soul. 
 
 And these are the four steps of it. 
 May I name them again? 
 
 First. Occasional very high lit- 
 erary inspiration. 
 
 Second. General supremely high 
 moral inspiration. 
 
 Third. Many clearly demonsira- 
 ble instances and flashes of appar- 
 ently superhuman spiritual inspir- 
 ation. 
 
 [45] 
 
. A PLAIN MAN’S WORKING VIEW . 
 
 Fourth. These turret-top lights so 
 distributed and so commanding as 
 to be largely explanatory of the re- 
 mainder of Scripture, so that a sane, 
 free soul can walk in the light of such 
 a Book, can fight in the glory of such 
 a Book, can die in the peace of such a 
 Book, and at the end of all know that 
 he has done his whitest and his best; 
 and so that—may I say, without any 
 cheapness of sentiment, which is the 
 last thing tolerated in these twentieth 
 century halls—the worn maternal 
 hands, which at last are folded in 
 white, have never done a finer thing 
 than to give that Book to you and to 
 me. 
 
 It is hardly going too far to say 
 that we need the entire Bible prop- 
 erly to interpret any word in it. But 
 the entire Bible, taken fairly, does 
 
 interpret, in a practical and working 
 [46] 
 
OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 way, every word in it, and_ this 
 total impression is just and _ true. 
 It leads me, certainly and surely, to 
 the gates of life, to the bosom of the 
 Father. 
 
 That, my comrades, is the right 
 kind of Book for you and for me. 
 
 [47] 
 

 

 
Date Due 
 
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Div.S. 220.1 L986P 512247 
 
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