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THE BIBLE— WHAT IT IS AND IS NOT 
 
THE BIBLE 
 
 WHAT IT IS AND IS NOT 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH WOOD 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 1907 
 
^'^V'^ 
 
 ^ "of 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Great Bibles of the World . 9 
 
 II. The Authorized Version ... 24 
 
 III. The Text and the Canon . . 38 
 
 IV. The Revised Version ... 56 
 V. Infallibility 73 
 
 VI. Inspiration 87 
 
 VII. Mistakes in the Bible . . . 106 
 
 VIII. Evolution in the Bible. — I. God . 123 
 
 IX. Evolution IN THE Bible. —II. Man . 142 
 
 X. Evolution IN THE Bible. — III. Morality 157 
 
 XI. The Religion of the Bible . . 173 
 XII. What is left apart from Myth and 
 
 Miracle ? 189 
 
 XIII. The Right Use and Interpretation 
 
 OF THE Bible .... 204 
 
 XIV. The Higher Criticism . . . 217 
 
THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 Few things are more important to the progress 
 of a reasonable reUgion than right views about 
 the Bible. Foolish claims are made for the Bible 
 which it does not make for itself. It nowhere 
 claims to be an infallible book ; it does not assert 
 what many of its ignorant admirers assert, that 
 every chapter, every verse, every word, is verbal!}'- 
 inspired. These claims have done it great injury, 
 because many men having come to see that 
 they cannot be sustained, have jumped to the 
 equally false conclusion that none of the claims 
 of the Bible on our reverence are worthy of atten- 
 tion. The Bible has been wounded in the house 
 of its friends. I beheve if right views about the 
 Bible prevailed, and if the truth about the Bible 
 were generally known, scepticism would be robbed 
 of many of its favourite arguments and mockeries. 
 It is because good men go on contending for 
 theories about the Bible which will no longer 
 
10 THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 hold water that it is possible for scepticism to 
 go on throwing ridicule upon the Bible. Half 
 the sneers, and more than half the arguments 
 against the Bible heard in our secular halls proceed 
 upon the ground that Christians claim the Bible 
 to be infallible. Once let it be known that 
 Christians study the Bible as they do any other 
 great book ; that they believe in its human origin ; 
 that they know it to contain mistakes ; that they 
 value it not for its myths and miracles but for 
 its moral and spiritual records and teaching, 
 and the sceptic will be robbed of half his weapons. 
 More than that, the intellect and conscience 
 of many a good man would be immensely relieved 
 if only he felt he might read the Bible in a reason- 
 able way, and were not bound to believe that it 
 teaches science, or is never mistaken in its 
 histories, figures, dates, or even precepts. 
 
 What I wish to bring home to you in these 
 lectures is the real and priceless value of the Bible. 
 But it is folly to think that to get people to value 
 the Bible we must hide the truth about it. Every 
 scholar, every minister of religion, now knows 
 that the Bible is not free from taint of human 
 error ; but there are many who seem to think 
 that this can be kept from the people, and that it 
 is unwise to let everybody know it. 
 
 What a miserable faith in religion we must 
 have if we think it can ever be injured by the 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH II 
 
 knowledge of truth ! On what a very sandy and 
 insecure foundation Christianity must rest if, 
 in order to preserve it as a temple for ourselves 
 and our children, we must cry ' Hush ! ' when 
 it is proposed to tell people the simple, exact, 
 ascertained facts about the Bible. Besides, it 
 is perfectly useless to try and keep them from 
 the common people. They leak out in newspapers ; 
 they are the subject of articles in cheap and 
 popular magazines ; they turn up in social discus- 
 sion ; and if Christian teachers fail to present 
 them to the public, they get presented with a 
 highly unfavourable bias by secularist writers. 
 Why should we fear to discover and make known 
 the truth about the Bible or about anything 
 else ? It has been gravely urged that the results 
 of modern Biblical criticism should only be 
 pubhshed in the Latin language, so that the minds 
 of ordinary people should not be disturbed by 
 that which is the peculiar preserve of scholars. 
 Let us have done with such moral cowardice. 
 As Bishop Butler said, ' Things are what they are, 
 and the results will he what they will he."" Why, 
 then, should we try to make believe otherwise ? 
 Yet when a preacher tries to show the people the 
 truth about the Bible ; tells them honestly that 
 the science of the Bible is incorrect ; that the 
 morality of the Pentateuch is defective ; that no 
 scholar believes Paul to have written the Epistle 
 
12 THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 to the Hebrews ; that the numbers in Exodus 
 are grossly exaggerated ; many people are alarmed, 
 as if, when we begin to remove the dirt from an 
 old master, we were going to destroy the glorious 
 picture itself. But we remove the dirt with which 
 it has become encrusted that the picture may 
 be more clearly seen and better appreciated than 
 before. So if we apply an honest and searching 
 criticism to the Bible we shall clear away many 
 errors and mistakes that have hitherto obscured 
 much of its teaching, and the truth of God that 
 is in it will shine out more purely and clearly 
 than ever. 
 
 * Oh,' but it is said, ' you must not unsettle 
 men's minds ; the old views do no harm, and 
 it is not safe to set men questioning.' On the 
 contrary, I believe in provoking men to ask 
 questions, and I do not believe that the old views 
 do no harm. To believe that the Bible is 
 miraculously inspired and the infallible word 
 of God, if it be not so, is not an innocent belief, 
 a harmless faith. It is something that stands in 
 the way of religious progress, more than anything 
 else of which we can conceive. And as to un- 
 settling men's minds about the Bible, that 
 mischief, if it be a mischief, is already done. 
 Reasonable opinions about the Bible are in the 
 air ; they are like floating seeds, you cannot 
 control their flight. Shut them out at the front 
 
RESULTS OF WIDER KNOWLEDGE I3 
 
 door, and they will float in at the window ; sweep 
 them from your dwelling, and they will spring up 
 in your garden. And if you let the people go on 
 believing a lie, the people will find you out in a 
 few years ; and then where wdll your religious 
 influence be ? Be not afraid. The truth about 
 the Bible must be good for religion and not ill. 
 Do not be afraid of these reasonable views, and 
 remember how much you injure the Bible by 
 claiming for it what it does not claim for itself. 
 You do not add to the value of a loaf of bread by 
 declaring that it will quench thirst ; you do not 
 increase the pleasure you receive from a rose in 
 June by asserting that its scent will cure a bad 
 toothache ; you do not draw out the true meaning 
 of a great picture or a beautiful landscape by 
 ascribing to it a didactic purpose ; and you do 
 not enhance the Bible by makirg for it unfounded 
 claims, or strengthen its hold on the human heart 
 by wrong assumptions as to its origin and character. 
 It is one of the results of the widening know- 
 ledge of the last hundred years that nations, 
 races, and religions know a deal more of each 
 other than at any previous time in the world's 
 history. When nations lived without much 
 communication, it was possible for each to think 
 that it was the race specially favoured of heaven, 
 and that its religion contained the whole truth 
 of God. But this faith is shaken when we come 
 
14 THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 to know our neighbours better. The Moham- 
 medans have the profoundest beHef in the Koran 
 as the only Bible for man. You know the story 
 of the Mohammedan caHph at the burning of 
 the great Ubrary of Alexandria. ' If these hooks 
 agree with the Koran, we do not need them ; if not, 
 they are false. So in any case let them he destroyed,'' 
 The Buddhists have the same reverence for 
 Buddha and for their sacred books that we have 
 for Jesus Christ and the Bible. It is now seen 
 that each nation has been guided by God, and 
 that no part of the world has been left without 
 light from, heaven. There have been inspired 
 men in all great races since the world began. 
 Each nation has received a fragment of truth. 
 Each nation has made the mistake of supposing 
 its fragment to be the one and only divine and 
 complete system of religion.. It has written 
 its Bible, and supposed that here was the closed 
 book of the revelation of God, and the final deposit 
 of Eternal Truth. Now, this belief could easily 
 be held by any nation so long as it was isolated, 
 so long as the nations knew very little of each 
 other. It is only within the last century that 
 many of the great systems of ancient and eastern 
 religion have been opened up to the life and 
 thought of the modern western world. 
 
 But just as we have learned that Europeans 
 are not the only civilized peoples — that in Japan, 
 
TRUTH IN ALL RELIGIONS I5 
 
 for instance, a noble civilization and a noble art 
 existed long before ours — so we have learned 
 that the religions of the great races are not all 
 false while ours is the only true, but that there 
 is ranch that is akin to our rehgion in many 
 other lands. We have learned that our experience 
 has not been unique. We have learned that 
 other peoples have passed through similar phases 
 of growth and have arrived at similar conclusions ; 
 that they have discovered similar truths concern- 
 ing God and man, similar principles of right and 
 wrong. We have learned that they have Bibles 
 of their own which they think came by special 
 inspiration and are infallible just as we think 
 ours, and that they have set themselves up 
 as exclusive possessors of truth as we have 
 done. Do not mistake me. I am not putting 
 these other reHgions and Bibles on the same 
 level as Christianity and the New Testament. 
 In all nations there have been true prophets 
 inspired of God ; but in no other nation have 
 they been so conspicuous or reached such a 
 high level of inspiration as among the Jews. 
 To take the analogous case of art : we know that 
 all the great nations have developed artistic 
 powers ; yet I do not hesitate to say that in 
 one race especially has the artistic faculty been 
 so prominent as to make it an authority on 
 art for all the rest. As Greece was specially 
 
l6 THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 endowed with the artistic nature, so the Jews 
 were specially endowed with the rehgious nature. 
 For while the science of Comparative Religion 
 has shown that there are half a dozen Bibles 
 in the world, each containing much that is 
 beautiful and true, it has also shown the immense 
 superiority of the Christian over all other sacred 
 scriptures. Other Bibles may contain isolated 
 sentences of equal or greater significance, but 
 they have no such average beauty and value. 
 In admitting the inspiration of other prophets 
 besides the Jewish, and of other Bibles than ours, 
 I am not detracting from ours. I do not detract 
 from the Alps by calling Snowdon a mountain. 
 I do not dim the glory of the rose by calling the 
 marsh-marigold a flower. I do not narrow the 
 Thames by calling the Tamar a river. No, nor 
 any more will the supreme spiritual inspiration 
 of the Jewish prophets suffer depreciation through 
 a frank acknowledgment of a true, although 
 inferior, inspiration elsewhere. 
 
 What are the great Bibles of the world ? They 
 are six in number : — 
 
 I. — The Vedas of the Brahmins. 
 
 2. — The Zend-Avesta of the Parsees or Persians. 
 
 3. — The Tripitika of the Buddhists. 
 
 4. — The Chinese Sacred Books. 
 
 5. — The Mohammedan Koran. 
 
 6. — The Jewish and Christian Scriptures. 
 
THE VEDAS AND ZEND-AVESTA \J 
 
 There are other sacred books in the world, 
 but these are the most important. Every one 
 of these Bibles would be an interesting subject 
 for a lecture. We must now be content with a 
 few words about each. 
 
 1. The Vedas of the Brahmins are the sacred 
 books of Hinduism. They include various collec- 
 tions of hymns chanted at religious services and 
 sacrifices, and Prof. Max Miiller tells us that they 
 date from 1200 B.C. The Vedas are a vast national 
 literature like our own Bible, but much larger. 
 Like our own Bible they contain myths and 
 miracles, psalms and prophetic utterances. We 
 must remember that 120 millions of mankind 
 reverence these Vedas as the word of God, and 
 the Brahmins believe them to be so entirely 
 the inspiration of God as to have existed in his 
 mind before time began. ' Vedas ' means know- 
 ledge, wisdom. 
 
 2. Zend-Avesta, the sacred books of the 
 Parsees, are ascribed to Zoroaster, the founder 
 of the Parsee religion. He lived and taught 
 more than 3000 years ago, and some of the 
 noblest men in ancient history — Cyrus and Darius 
 for instance — ^were his disciples. Zend-Avesta 
 means ' scripture,' and the book was probably 
 gathered together by Zoroaster from ancient 
 traditions, myths, and hymns, to which he 
 added many precepts of his own. It is not 
 
l8 THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 easy to over-estimate the importance of the 
 Zend-Avesta as a guide to one of the noblest 
 and purest of the ancient faiths. The Persians 
 were worshippers of one god only. They declared 
 the unity and indivisibility of the Divinity. 
 The disciple is taught to be pure in thought 
 and word and deed ; to be temperate, chaste^ 
 and truthful, and to do all that will increase 
 the welfare of mankind. Men are not to cringe 
 before the powers of darkness or crouch before 
 a tyrant ; they are to meet them upstanding 
 and confound them by unending opposition and 
 the charm of a holy life. It was the Persians 
 who first clearly taught the immortality of 
 the soul, a doctrine which did not appear among 
 the Jews until they came into contact with 
 Persian thought. 
 
 3. The Tripitika of the Buddhists is the 
 Bible of a religion which numbers more followers 
 than any other faith in the world. It is an off- 
 shoot from the ancient Hindu religion, and was 
 founded by Buddha, a man of princely birth, 
 who appeared 628 B.C. He is sometimes called 
 Gautama, and sometimes Sakyamuni. For a 
 beautiful picture of this noble man, likest to 
 Christ of all ancient teachers, I advise you to 
 read Mr. Rhys David's little book on Buddhism, 
 and Edwin Arnold's great poem, ' The Light of 
 Asia.' The Buddhist scriptures are called the 
 
BUDDHIST AND CHINESE BOOKS I9 
 
 * Tripitika,' or ' three baskets,' being in three 
 parts. The first ' pitika/ or basket, contains 
 rules of discipHne ; the second, the discourses 
 of Buddha ; and the third treats of philosophy 
 and the subtle mysteries of religion. The words 
 of Buddha, handed on from age to age, and 
 preserved at first solely in men's memories, were 
 at last set down in writing. Much is in the 
 Tripitika which Buddha never uttered ; but 
 they are regarded as we regard our Bible. 
 Buddhism was the state religion in India 
 for nine centuries ; it is one of the religions of 
 China ; it is the religion of Tibet, of Japan and 
 Ceylon ; and the Tripitika, like the Bible, has been 
 freely translated out of the original into many 
 of the languages of the east. With its com- 
 mentaries, it forms an immense Hterature, five 
 or six times as large as our Bible. The central 
 idea of Buddhism is the salvation of the soul 
 from evil, and from the changes of life by 
 contemplation of truth and goodness, and finally 
 by absorption of the individual in universal 
 Being. 
 
 4. The Chinese Sacred Books. ' The Five 
 Kings ' and ' The Four Shoo,' consist of ancient 
 hymns, myths, etc., brought together by Confucius 
 and enlarged by his own discourses. This great 
 soul, who was reviled in life, but whose influence 
 now sways the hundreds of millions of China, 
 
20 THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 was bom 531 B.C., a few years before the death 
 of Buddha. The sacred books he edited are 
 called * Kings,' the warp threads of a web. The 
 name signifies that which is woven together, 
 like the use of our word ' text,' from the Latin 
 * textum ' — that which is woven. These books 
 teach that there is one supreme Being everywhere 
 present, all-seeing, who commands pure thoughts, 
 right deeds, and watchfulness of tongue. They 
 teach a reverence for the past which in many 
 respects is slavish ; but they also teach a duty 
 to the present which makes the Chinese one of 
 the most orderly and law-abiding people on the 
 earth. 
 
 5. The Koran, the Bible of Islam, is the work 
 of Mohammed, and consists of extracts and stories 
 from the Jewish Scriptures, together with a 
 large number of Eastern legends, and Moham- 
 med's own dreams and sayings. ' Islam ' — ' the 
 righteous man ' — is the youngest of the great 
 religions of the world ; and hence we are able 
 to see how its first simple teaching became overlaid 
 with myths and foolish superstitions. For ex- 
 ample, although Mohammed came into the world 
 like other children, wonderful things were said 
 to have taken place at his birth : one legend 
 relating that the angels took him from the arms 
 of his nurse, drew his heart from his bosom, 
 and then squeezed from it the black drop of 
 
POINTS OF LIKENESS 21 
 
 original sin which is in every child of Adara. 
 He was bom 571 years after Christ, and rose 
 from a camel-driver to be one of the greatest 
 forces of the world. He preached for forty years 
 the great truth ' La Ellah Ellah ' — ' there is no 
 god but God.' That God is one, and not three, 
 is the great doctrine of the Koran ; and next 
 in order is taught submission to God's will. 
 Koran means ' the reading.' 
 
 I have no time to show you the many points 
 of likeness to be found in these various Bibles ; 
 how they all abound in stories of miracles ; how 
 they teach the same rites and sacrifices ; how 
 the ideas of immaculate conceptions and virgin 
 mothers are common to other religions and 
 Bibles as well as our own ; how the Messianic 
 idea, too, is found in the Vedas and in the Chinese 
 Scriptures ; how even the same ceremonies are 
 enjoined, so that when the first Christian mis- 
 sionaries went among the Buddhists, they were 
 surprised to find a rehgion so much resembling 
 their own in its rites and ceremonies, even to the 
 shaven crown of the priest and use of a rosary, 
 and they could only account for the resemblance 
 by supposing that the devil had forestalled God 
 by coming there ahead of him and setting up a 
 counterfeit as much like Christianity as possible. 
 But I might show you more. I might show 
 profounder resemblances : how all teach purity, 
 
22 THE GREAT BIBLES OF THE WORLD 
 
 mercifulness, justice, contempt of riches, humility ; 
 so that neither faith, nor love, nor truth, nor 
 disinterestedness, nor forgiveness of injuries, nor 
 patience, nor prayer, nor the sentiment of 
 brotherhood is monopolized by any form of 
 faith. They are taught in all the great Bibles 
 of the world. 
 
 I do not say they are taught as nobly and 
 clearly as in our own. I am not claiming that 
 all the great Bibles of the world stand on the 
 same level ; or that their teachings are identical. 
 Mingled with much that is true and beautiful, 
 these Bibles have much in them that is degrading, 
 foolish, and superstitious. What I affirm is 
 simply this : that from the furthest east to the 
 remotest western horizon, God, by whatever 
 name he has been called, has been present with 
 his kindling light, and that in many races outside 
 the Jewish pale he has raised up true prophets 
 for himself, who have spoken such words of 
 grace and truth that they have greatly moved 
 the hearts of men, have been the power of God 
 unto better things, have been carefully remembered 
 by grateful disciples, and finally enshrined in 
 sacred books. This fact is the basis of the great 
 and modem science of Comparative Religion. 
 Every one of these sacred books has an admixture 
 of earthy matter ; every one contains gleams of 
 heavenly wisdom ; every one has helped to purify 
 
ALL THAT IS GOOD FROM GOD 23 
 
 the great stream of human hfe as it flows down 
 to the sea. 
 
 Children of men ! the unseen Power, whose eye 
 For ever doth accompany mankind. 
 Hath looken on no reUgion scornfully 
 That ever man did find. 
 
 Which has not taught weak wills how much they can ? 
 WTiich has not fall'n on the dry heart Hke rain ? 
 Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man : 
 Thou must be bom again ? 
 
 These various rehgions will not acknowledge 
 each other ; each claims to have a monopoly of 
 God and truth ; each has denied that religion 
 could have any fountains beyond its own saints 
 and prophets. But whatever has been of vital 
 power in each — and they would not have lasted 
 so long had they been wholly false — has come 
 from the same source, the inspiration of the 
 Almighty. God is now seen to have been, not 
 the God of a tribe, a nation, or a church, but 
 the God of the whole earth ; and although one 
 people possessed the God-consciousness in striking 
 superiority to all the rest, so that by their special 
 endowment blessing might flow to all mankind, 
 yet in every nation he that feared God and 
 worked righteousness hath been accepted of him. 
 
 All souls that struggle and aspire. 
 Ail hearts of prayer by thee are Lit ; 
 
 And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire 
 On dusky tribes and centuries sit. 
 
II 
 
 THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 
 
 We have seen that the Bible does not stand 
 alone, but is one of a distinct class of books called 
 the sacred books of the world. All the foremost 
 religions of mankind have had sacred books 
 which have been regarded with the same feelings 
 of veneration that our own Bible inspires among 
 us. This is not for one moment to say that one 
 Bible is as good as another, or that all stand on 
 one level. Snowdon is a mountain and the 
 Matterhom is a mountain, but one is immeasur- 
 ably loftier than the other. And the Bibles of 
 the world differ in their value to the human race, 
 differ in the nobility and inspiration to which 
 they rise. Our own Bible is easily first, although 
 perhaps not for the reasons generally assigned. 
 Its superior divinity has for the most part 
 engrossed the zeal of its defenders. But what 
 I care for most is its superior humanity. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT HEROES 25 
 
 Shakespeare is not a whit more human. What 
 an insight it has into the human heart ! How 
 it reveals to us the secret places of the human 
 mind, and so reveals to us ourselves ! How, as 
 it unfolds the great drama of humanity, are we 
 shown that God is the educator of man ! Human 
 life, as depicted in the Bible, is largely typical. 
 Men lived boldly from within, and what they 
 said and did had that broad human significance 
 which forecasted what men would say and do 
 to the end of time. How true to human nature 
 is that mixture of good and evil we find in its 
 heroes ! Popular theology would have us think 
 of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David as almost 
 perfect in character, quite beyond anything 
 which we see in our day. Popular scepticism 
 flies to the other extreme, and can speak only of 
 the deceitfulness of Jacob, and the adultery of 
 David, asking with a sneer, ' What sort of a God 
 is he when these are called men after his own 
 heart ? ' Both are wrong. These men were by 
 no means perfect, and the Bible never speaks 
 of them in that way. They were terribly 
 imperfect ; they fell, they were punished, and 
 they carried the penalty of wrongdoing with 
 them to their graves. But this is their glory : 
 that they knew they were imperfect, and were 
 not content ; they lifted themselves above the 
 average morality of their day ; they made 
 
26 THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 
 
 strenuous efforts after something nobler ; they 
 were led on by God to higher levels than men 
 had yet attained ; they were men who, in spite 
 of their sins, still clung to the sense of God. The 
 good that was in them was marred and debased 
 by the alloy of selfish, base, and cruel elements ; 
 and we are shown, as we are shown nowhere 
 else, these two struggling with each other, the 
 victory sometimes to the evil and sometimes 
 to the good, yet on the whole, in the long run, 
 the good prevaiHng. It is our own deceit we read 
 in the story of Jacob ; it is our own shame and 
 repentance we hear in the bitter cries of David. 
 These men are not wax figures on which moral 
 maxims are hung like suits of clothes made to 
 the pattern we require. They are warm, living, 
 human souls in whom we find our own experience. 
 We see how Jacob's treachery found him out 
 and was paid back in kind, and accompanied 
 him, a dark shadow upon his life, all the days 
 of his pilgrimage ; and we know from our own 
 lives that we can never escape the consequences 
 of any of our deeds. We listen to Job arraigning 
 and challenging God, and we think we hear our 
 own hearts speak in passionate trial. We hear 
 Nathan saying unto David, ' Thou art the man,' 
 and we know that Nathan stands just for our own 
 accusing conscience. Whether the Bible be a 
 divine book or not, it is certainly the greatest 
 
THE BOOK OF TWO RELIGIONS 27 
 
 book of the human heart and of human Hfe 
 ever written. 
 
 It is the distinction of the Bible to be the 
 sacred book of two great religions, the Jewish 
 and the Christian. Consider what the Old Testa- 
 ment has been to the Jewish people — a nation 
 without a country now for eighteen centuries — 
 in all their homeless wanderings. It was their 
 consolation through a thousand years of Christian 
 persecution. Consider, too, what the Bible has 
 been to Protestant Christians, the charter of 
 their freedom from the jurisdiction of the Pope ; 
 an armoury of weapons against idolatry and 
 priestly domination ; to French Huguenots and 
 Scotch Covenanters and English Puritans, a 
 nurse of heroes, teaching them many a song of 
 battle, many a hope of final victory. 
 
 Surely such a book, with such a history, and 
 such a fame, and such intrinsic value, merits 
 the most careful consideration. It has been before 
 the world so long — its youngest chapters 1700 
 years — and has been so much read and studied, 
 that it would seem as if it ought to have been 
 fairly comprehended long ago. But please re- 
 member that until the Protestant Reformation 
 the Bible was hidden from the common people 
 in the priestly ark of an unspoken language. 
 The common people have only been in possession 
 of the Bible about four centuries. A little farther 
 
28 THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 
 
 back the New Testament was assailed by monks 
 and priests as an invention of the devil ; and 
 even the scholarship which hung over the Bible 
 before Erasmus was superstitious and uncritical 
 to the last degree. Since then there has been a 
 steady progress in the direction of a more 
 scientific comprehension of its character ; and 
 through the labours of a host of great and 
 laborious scholars we are now in a better position 
 to judge of the Bible, to separate the legendary from 
 the historical, and the true from the erroneous, 
 the gold from the rubble, than were even those who 
 lived when its parts were first brought together 
 into one book. And yet, so far as I can judge, the 
 new criticism has made but very little impression 
 upon the popular estimate of the Bible and the 
 uses to which it is put. Even ministers who 
 are acquainted with the new criticism, and 
 substantially accept it, go on using the Bible 
 as if nothing had happened, when something 
 has happened of fundamental interest and im- 
 portance. As for the average disciple in our 
 Protestant communities, the Bible is for him 
 what it was for his fathers. It is one book. 
 Its parts are all of equal value. A text here 
 is as good as a text there or anywhere else ; Old 
 Testament as edifying as New ; the Book of 
 Judges on the same level as the Epistle to the 
 Philippians ; words taken out of their connexion 
 
THE DANGERS OF LITERALISM 29 
 
 made to mean exactly the opposite of what was 
 in the writer's mind ; the minutiae of Christian 
 theology found in or read into the obscurities 
 of Hebrew history. Dr. J. Mason Neale, the 
 well-known hymn writer, has pubhshed a sermon 
 on the text, ' Now therefore^ king, come down 
 according to all the desire of thy soul to come down.''^ 
 The literal sense of the passage, a petition of 
 the Ziphites to Saul to come down that they 
 may deliver David into his hand, is nowhere 
 mentioned. It is applied to Christ's coming 
 down, first in his incarnation ' from the crown 
 of celestial majesty to the diadem of thorns,'' and 
 secondly to his coming down in the Eucharist 
 at the call of the priest ! Such a method of 
 interpreting Scripture is both fanciful and 
 frivolous. Or, take the words ' Touch not, taste 
 not,'^ which are constantly quoted on temperance 
 platforms as though they were an Apostolic 
 injunction not even to hand to a neighbour a 
 glass of wine. But these words are a popular 
 saying of the ascetics which Paul quotes only 
 to condemn. He reproaches those who are subject 
 to such rules and ordinances. The text is made 
 to mean exactly the contrary of what the Apostle 
 taught. These are only two instances of the 
 misuse of the Bible out of thousands that might 
 be given. 
 
 ^ Sam. xxiii. 20. 2 Col. ii. 21. 
 
30 THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 
 
 What then have we in our Authorized Version 
 of the Bible ? First notice the title. The Bible, 
 that is to say, The Book. But this title is a very 
 modem one. It is only within recent centuries 
 it has gone by this name — ' the book ' in the 
 singular number. Five hundred years ago the 
 Bible was not called ' Ton Bihliofiy the book, 
 but * Ta Bihlia,^ the books — a much exacter 
 designation ; one which, if it had been retained, 
 would have done something to prevent the almost 
 universal misconception that the Bible is one 
 book, and not a collection of books, the various 
 offspring of 1200 years of literary activity — the 
 collected fragments and remnants of a great 
 national literature. What we have in the Bible 
 is not one book, but a library brought together 
 within the same covers. Even the plural form 
 of the name was never used until the fifth century. 
 Before that they were called the scriptures, 
 or the writings. 
 
 Leaving the title and opening the book, what 
 do we find ? If it be a Catholic copy or one 
 of the older Protestant copies, we shall find 
 three divisions : the Old Testament, the , 
 Apocrypha, and the New Testament. We will, 
 however, leave out of consideration the Apocrypha, 
 although it is received by CathoHcs as of equal 
 authority with the rest. 
 
 The two divisions that are left consist of 
 
FRAGMENTS OF A NATIONAL LITERATURE 3 1 
 
 histories, legal enactments, poetry, prophecy, 
 letters, myths, hymns, sermons, pamphlets, fly 
 sheets, stories, parables, proverbs, treatises, and 
 almost every kind of hterary effort. 
 
 The Old Testament has in it thirty-nine separate 
 books, and the New Testament twenty-seven, 
 making a library of sixty-six little volumes in 
 all. So far as the thirty-nine books of the Old 
 Testament are concerned, they are, as I have 
 said, the collected fragments and remnants of 
 a great national literature. The lost books of 
 the Bible would be an inestimable treasure if 
 they could be found. It seems that there are 
 no less than sixteen books missing from the Old 
 Testament which clearly ought to be there ; at 
 least, which are referred to and quoted in the 
 Bible as if they were genuine Old Testament Books. 
 The Book of Jasher, the Book of Nathan and Gad, 
 the Book of the Wars of the Lord, the Book of 
 Ahijah and Iddo, Solomon's Parables and Treatise 
 on Natural History, the Words of the Seers, 
 the Prophecy of Enoch, and others are all 
 mentioned ; and in some places long quotations 
 are given from them, such as David's lament over 
 Saul and Jonathan. This is the first point that 
 comes out in the most superficial examination of 
 the Bible ; that it contains the remnants of two 
 great hteratures — that of the Jewish nation, and 
 that of the early Christian Church. 
 
32 THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 
 
 Then as to its authors. Many of the books are 
 anonymous, and others, such as the Pentateuch, 
 are attributed to people whom we know could 
 never have written them, because they contain 
 allusions to events which happened after they 
 were dead. Who wrote the Book of Judges and 
 of Joshua, the so-called Five Books of Moses, 
 the Books of Samuel, the Book of Job, we shall 
 never be able to settle ; about some of them we 
 cannot even make a guess. As for the others 
 they represent all classes of society from King 
 David to the shepherd Amos ; there are women, 
 poets, soldiers, musicians, fishermen, statesmen, 
 physicians, men of all callings and all conditions, 
 among the writers and contributors to this 
 wonderful collection. 
 
 As to its date, the most erroneous opinions 
 prevail. The notion formerly held was that the 
 first five books of the Old Testament were written 
 by Moses nearly 1500 years before Christ. But 
 with the growth of modern scholarship this idea has 
 been steadily losing ground. It is now seen that 
 very large portions of those books could not have 
 been written or arranged until long after Moses' 
 death, probably not until he had been dead 
 four hundred years. Moses did not write the 
 account of his own death, Moses did not give in 
 the Pentateuch the names of places which had no 
 existence when he lived ; or mention names of 
 
MOSES AND THE PENTATEUCH 33 
 
 weights and measures then unknown, or allude 
 to events as past and well known which only 
 happened after his death, or show a technical 
 acquaintance with the topography of a land 
 he was never allowed to enter. Moses probably 
 wrote very little, only the Ten Commandraents, 
 the Song of Miriam, and one or two other passages. 
 In some form or other, * the Law,' as this part 
 of the Bible was called, was probably first put 
 together in Samuel's time — perhaps by Samuel ; 
 but in the form in which we have it, not until 
 about four hundred and fifty B.C., in the reign 
 of Nehemiah. The Genesis myth of the creation 
 of the world, the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob, had long been transmitted in oral form, 
 and no doubt date back much before Moses. 
 They may, indeed, have existed in a written 
 form as family records, but were certainly not 
 brought together in the way we have them until 
 a late period in Jewish history. 
 
 Our English Bible is, as you know, a translation 
 from certain Hebrew and Greek MSS. But this 
 which we call the Authorized Version to-day 
 was not the first of such translations. It is the 
 last but one of the series beginning with the 
 work of Tyndale, Coverdale, and their compeers, 
 followed by the Geneva, the Bishops', the Douay 
 Bible and others, until at last under the patronage 
 of King James I in 1611, 294 years ago, the 
 
34 THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 
 
 version was published with which we are all so 
 familiar. 
 
 Now I must call your attention to two or three 
 particulars of our English Bible. You will find as 
 you open it that it is divided not only into books, 
 but these books are cut up into chapters and 
 verses. Are these chapters and verses any part 
 of the original ? Not at all. We need to bear 
 this in mind because sometimes it is a matter 
 of great practical importance. There are no 
 chapters and verses in the Hebrew and Greek, 
 but each book consists of one solid mass of words, 
 without divisions of any sort, without capitals 
 or marks of punctuation. Not until 1551 was 
 the Bible printed with its present divisions of 
 chapter and verse, by Henry Stephens, the great 
 printer-scholar of his time. The divisions, though 
 often convenient, yet often obscure the sense 
 and break the connexion ; and the verse arrange- 
 ment especially has been a fruitful source of 
 textual polemics, resulting in bad blood and bad 
 theology. The verse divisions are often so purely 
 arbitrary that in many instances it would have 
 been just as accurate if the text had been divided 
 into sections of half an inch in length without 
 any regard to their meaning. 
 
 Another thing peculiar to our English Bible is 
 the chapter headings and running titles, indicating, 
 according to King James's translators, the mean- 
 
TRANSLATION NOT INFALLIBLE 35 
 
 ing of the authors. With the exception of the 
 Psalms they all date from 161 1. They are no 
 part of the Bible. Many of them are not only 
 fanciful but grossly incorrect. They are really 
 a process of interpreting Scripture according to 
 the theology which was orthodox in 1611. It 
 is these headings which have caused that noble 
 eastern love-poem, the Song of Songs, to be so 
 misunderstood and ridiculed, turning a beautiful 
 human lesson into an allegory of Christ and his 
 Church. Many of the running titles in the 
 Pentateuch and Prophets are equally absurd. 
 
 Let us remember, then, as we handle the Bible 
 that the original writers are not responsible 
 for these headings any more than they are 
 responsible for the divisions into chapters and 
 verses. 
 
 One other thing about our English Bible must 
 be borne in mind. Let us grant for a moment 
 that the original Hebrew and Greek MSS. are 
 the infallible word of God. Nevertheless, as we 
 open our English Bible, we cannot feel that we 
 have in our hands an infallible translation of this 
 infallible work. No one claims that the trans- 
 lators were infallible. We have only their 
 judgment as to what the original writers mxcant, 
 put into the best English they knew. But now we 
 know that many portions of the existing Hebrew 
 and Greek MSS. were copied from other sources. 
 
36 THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 
 
 Were those copyists infallibly protected from error ? 
 The records, had they been originally infallible, 
 would still have needed special and continuous 
 miracle (which no one claims) to protect them 
 through generations of oral tradition, cuneiform, 
 and hieroglyphic picture-writing, many languages, 
 many scribes, many printers. No two transla- 
 tions are exactly alike. Even in the Revised 
 Version, made by the best scholarship in the 
 world, the American and English members differed 
 very seriously as to the meaning of certain words 
 and phrases. These differences are so important 
 that an appendix has been added containing 
 them. Supposing even that 3500 years ago God 
 Almighty spoke a few sentences face to face 
 with Moses, there is no conceivable machinery 
 or combination of circumstances which could 
 ensure the perfectly accurate transmission of 
 those words to us. We have received them 
 through records which, while generally trust- 
 worthy, cannot be trusted in many of their minute 
 details, and through men who were as liable to 
 err as we are. We may well believe that nothing 
 essential has been lost ; but we cannot believe 
 that everything preserved has been preserved 
 without mistake. Yet in our English Bible as 
 it is, what a boon we have ! Even the obscurer 
 parts of the Pentateuch are full of moral and 
 spiritual teaching of eternal value. In spite of 
 
THE VALUE OF THE BIBLE 37 
 
 their unintelligent and often superstitious interpre- 
 tation, how mightily have the Scriptures worked 
 for life and godliness ! Many who use the Bible 
 in a very faulty way have yet found it to be the 
 Bread of Life unto their souls. It is like the air 
 we breathe : we may pollute it but we cannot do 
 without it. It is like wheaten flour : we may 
 cook it badly, and make an indigestible mess of 
 it instead of palatable bread ; but even as heavy 
 and unpalatable dough it sustains human life. 
 EngHshmen have long misunderstood and mis- 
 applied many parts of the Bible ; yet how much of 
 what is best in the EngHsh character, how much 
 of its love of honesty and plain dealing, its 
 reverence for domestic purity, its passion for 
 freedom, may be traced to the famiharity of om* 
 fathers with the letter of the Bible ! And if the 
 Bible has exercised so great an influence over men 
 who so often used it wrongly, how much greater 
 wiU be its influence when it is everywhere used 
 with intelligence, by men who are alive to the 
 eternal difference between the letter and the 
 spirit ! 
 
Ill 
 
 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 In connexion with these lectures I have 
 received an interesting letter in which the writer 
 says : ^ If we admit that any fart of the Bible is 
 mistaken, how can we have confidence with regard 
 to the rest ? Either it is all inspired or every man 
 is free to pick and choose as he pleases' 
 
 Now this is not at all an uncornmon frame 
 of mind. Often in the course of controversy 
 the cry is raised, ' The whole Bible or nothing.' 
 In the ' Life of Lord Shaftesbury/ we are told that 
 this great-hearted but narrow-minded man was 
 much shocked by the assertion that the Books 
 of Chronicles and the Gospel of St. Luke were 
 not on the same level of inspiration. He replied : 
 ' There is no security whatever except in standing 
 upon the faith of our fathers, and saying that the 
 blessed old book is God's word written from the 
 very first syllable to the very last, and from the last 
 book to the first.' But is it true that we are shut 
 
THE ' ALL OR NOTHING ' THEORY 39 
 
 Up to the alternative, the whole Bible or nothing ? 
 If we speak of a gold mine we do not mean to 
 say that nothing but gold is found there : what 
 we mean is that while quartz, and sand, and mud, 
 and rubble are there, gold is its valuable and 
 distinctive product. What would you think of a 
 miner who should say : ' How am I to tell the 
 difference between the gold and the rubbish ? ' 
 You would say : ' You must use your eyes, your 
 common sense, and the tests which a knowledge 
 of mining supply.' The Bible is a gold mine ; 
 but all is not gold found there, and we have to 
 discriminate. We are told that to destroy a 
 verse or a letter of the Bible is to destroy the 
 whole ; either all is true or nothing can be rehed 
 upon. But you never think of applying the 
 * all or nothing theor^^ ' to any other book. If I 
 open the Globe edition of Shakespeare, I find 
 included among his plays, ' Timon of Athens,' 
 which, when I carefully examine, I conclude 
 was written by Shakespeare only in part. But 
 do I therefore invalidate Shakespeare's claim 
 to be the author of ' Hamlet ' ? Or do I ask the 
 foolish question, how am I to know that anything 
 is by Shakespeare if I admit that he did not write 
 every word of that which passes under his name ? 
 The answer is obvious. You must discriminate : 
 you must bring to bear the tests furnished by 
 wide reading, by literary criticism, by familiarity 
 
40 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 with Shakespeare and his comrades, and, above 
 all, by good sense. 
 
 You would think the man a fool who threw 
 away his Shakespeare because it turned out that 
 * Timon of Athens ' was not from Shakespeare's 
 pen at all ; and what shall we say of men who 
 declare that the Bible is worthless for a similar 
 reason ? When a man asks how he may know 
 whether this portion of the Bible is inspired or 
 not, I answer. Use your common sense ; what 
 is the impression the passage makes on you ? 
 Do you feel it to be an utterance of quickening, 
 hallowing power ? How does it compare with 
 other utterances about whose inspiration you 
 have no doubt ? And if you are warned that in 
 all this you are just trusting to the light of reason, 
 I answer. What else is a man to trust ? Unless 
 he brings his reason to bear upon religious 
 problems — reason enHghtened by conscience, affec- 
 tion, experience, and knowledge, what else can 
 he bring to bear ? But his reason may deceive 
 him. Yes, and so may our eyes deceive us, when 
 they tell us that the sun goes round the earth. 
 Often we have to correct the testimony of our 
 eyes by knowledge obtained in other ways. Yet, 
 on the whole, our eyes are the guides God intended 
 us to follow, and we do not pluck them out because 
 once and again they make mistakes. So, on the 
 whole, reason is the guide God intends us to follow 
 
NO ORIGINAL MS. 4I 
 
 in religion, and we do not discard its testimony 
 because sometimes it is mistaken. If reason 
 ever leads us astray it is simply because we have 
 not exercised it diligently enough. 
 
 This much, then, to dispose of an objection 
 which has troubled some who are attending 
 these lectures. 
 
 To-night our subject is the Text and the Canon. 
 By the text we mean the original Hebrew and 
 Greek MSS. from which our translation is 
 made. 
 
 Now it may surprise some of you to know 
 that there is no one original Hebrew or Greek 
 MS. containing the books of our Bible. There is 
 no one authorized copy of the Old Testament 
 in Hebrew, no one authorized copy of the New 
 Testament in Greek. There are great numbers of 
 MSS., some older than the others ; but no two 
 of them exactly alike, so that scholars, before 
 they translate, have to construct a text — that 
 is, have to compare and collate, and out of 
 various MSS., and various readings, compile a 
 Greek Testament, from which they make the 
 translation. 
 
 Let us take the New Testament. We have in 
 the world a collection — not in any one place, 
 but in many places — of nearly 1700 Greek MSS. 
 of the New Testament. Sometimes a MS. is 
 complete, containing all the books, sometimes 
 
. 42 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 containing certain books not now admitted, 
 sometimes omitting books which we receive. 
 
 Are all these MSS. aUke ? Does there seem 
 to h,ave been any supernatural supervision 
 exercised in making these copies to keep out 
 errors or mistakes ? You can judge for your- 
 selves when I tell you that in these 1700 MSS. 
 there are nearly 150,000 various readings. It 
 is only just to say, of course, that the larger 
 part of these variations are minute, not touching 
 matters of great importance ; sometimes only 
 the difference in the spelUng of a word ; some- 
 times a difference in the name of a place ; but 
 some of them are important enough to extend 
 to whole paragraphs and parts of chapters. 
 
 These variations came about in the most 
 natural way. Through the errors of copyists ; 
 through the desire of copyists to make something 
 clear which they thought they could do by 
 changing one word for another ; through differ- 
 ences of opinion as to the evidence for this and 
 that story or utterance ; through the incorporation 
 into the text of some comment made by a 
 learned father ; and alas ! through the wilful 
 changing or insertion of words to bolster up a par- 
 ticular theological doctrine, these variations were 
 produced. Most of them are the simple errors 
 of copyists, mere slips of eye, ear, memory, or 
 judgment. If you have ever had a long letter 
 
THE THREE EARLIEST MSS. 43 
 
 copied by the hands of a clerk, or if you have 
 ever attempted to do any copying yourself, you 
 know how easy it is to leave out or mis-spell a 
 word, or to substitute a wrong one, or to make 
 any one of a dozen common errors. If, however, 
 you remember that these Greek MSS. were not 
 divided into chapters and verses, but were written 
 sohd, without capitals, without punctuation marks, 
 without any division even into paragraphs, you 
 will see how easy it was for errors of one kind or 
 another to creep in. 
 
 But, you say, surely the earliest MSS. of all 
 would be free from most of these errors, and if 
 we translate from them we shall be all right. 
 But the earliest MSS. of all are copies of copies, of 
 copies, of copies ! Do you know we have no MS. 
 of the New Testament earlier than the fourth 
 century ? There are three MSS. earliest in date 
 which are reckoned as the greatest authorities 
 on the Text of the New Testament. The oldest 
 in existence is the Sinaitic ; the next is the 
 Vatican ; and the third is the Alexandrian. 
 The Sinaitic is at St. Petersburg ; the Vatican 
 is at Rome ; and the Alexandrian in the British 
 Museum. 
 
 The Sinaitic and the Vatican belong to the 
 fourth, and the Alexandrian to the fifth century. 
 That is to say, we have no MS. that takes us back 
 nearer to Jesus than 300 years after his death. 
 
44 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 But we know from other sources that if earUer 
 MSS. could be recovered they would be as full 
 of differences as those we possess. The works 
 of the Fathers of the second and third centuries 
 contain quotations from the New Testament, many 
 of which do not at all agree with each other ; 
 and these same Fathers are constantly charging 
 their opponents with wilfully corrupting the text 
 of Scripture for their own party purposes. The 
 greatest name of those days is that of Origen, 
 and, writing on this subject, he says : ' As the 
 case stands, it is obvious that the difference between 
 the copies is considerable, partly from the carelessness 
 of individual scribes, partly from the wicked daring 
 of some in correcting what is written, partly from 
 those who add or remove what seems good to them 
 in the process of correction.'' 
 
 He himself expressly notices thirteen different 
 readings in the four Gospels. If even the first 
 autograph MSS. from the writers' hands were 
 before us, we should not feel confident that we 
 had received in every case the exact words of 
 Jesus. For the Evangelists themselves tell us 
 how often the disciples misunderstood their 
 Master. When he called himself ' The Bread 
 of Life,'' and said, ' He that eateth me shall live 
 by me^ they understood the words literally 
 and could make no sense of them. How can we 
 be sure of the verbal accuracy of reporters who 
 
DIFFERENCES IN MSS. 45 
 
 are so liable to be stuck fast by the letter ? I 
 have no doubt that, on the whole, we have in the 
 Gospels an account which gives us substantially 
 the sayings and the teaching of Jesus ; but we 
 have no such infallibly accurate account as justifies 
 us in building a tremendous doctrine — such, for 
 instance, as that of everlasting punishment — on 
 the literal rendering of a couple of texts. Before a 
 doctrine so awful is offered me for belief, I should 
 like to be assured that the meagre texts on which 
 it is based do really report the very words of 
 Jesus, and that it has no other authority than 
 the blunder of a copyist. Why, these three great 
 MSS. preserved to us, differ from each other on 
 many minor and some important points. The 
 Alexandrian MS. contains the Epistle of Clement 
 to the Corinthians, and omits the first twenty-four 
 chapters of St. Matthew. The Vatican MS. 
 does not contain the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, 
 and Philemon — nor the Apocalypse. The Sinaitic 
 MS., procured by the great scholar Tischendorf 
 from an old monastery on Mount Sinai in the 
 year 1859, contains the Epistle to Barnabas 
 and the Shepherd of Hermas — two books now 
 rejected. When these MSS. contain the same 
 books they differ as to many words and phrases 
 in them, and we are thrown back on probability, 
 on common sense, and on human scholarship as 
 to which is the most likely reading. 
 
46 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 The difficulties of the text are still greater in 
 Hebrew. The number of ancient Hebrew MSS. 
 is very few, nor do any of them date from before 
 Christ. You must remember that Hebrew had 
 been a dead language nearly 400 years B.C. The 
 language of the Jews in Palestine was Aramaic, 
 and of the Jews who lived in the towns of the 
 Mediterranean, Greek. For the benefit of the 
 Jews living in Palestine, translations of the Old 
 Testament had been made into Aramaic, and 
 these were called Targums ; for the Jews living 
 in the Levant, a translation had been made into 
 Greek. There is no sign that either Jesus or any 
 of his disciples had any knowledge of Hebrew. 
 The quotations from the Old Testament in the 
 New are never from the Hebrew, they are mostly, 
 from the Greek translation called the Septuagint. 
 The Septuagint was a version made at Alexandria 
 for the Jews who had settled in the Levant. 
 There is a pretty story of its formation. It 
 relates that one of the Ptolemies, wishing to adorn 
 his Alexandrian library with the writings of all 
 nations, requested from the Jews of Jerusalem a 
 Greek version of their Scriptures ; that the Jews, 
 of Jerusalem sent seventy eldeis to Alexandria, 
 well skilled both in Hebrew and Greek ; that 
 the king separated them from each other, so 
 that each lived in his own cell, nor had any 
 communication with another, and bade them all 
 
VARIOUS READINGS 47 
 
 translate the several books of the Old Testament ; 
 that when they came together before Ptolemy, 
 at the end of their labours, God was glorified, 
 for all the seventy versions made apart agreed 
 exactly from beginning to end in every word and 
 phrase. Justin Martyr, in relating the story, 
 adds that he was taken to see the seventy cells 
 in which the translators worked ! In reality there 
 can be no doubt that the version was gradually 
 made by several authors and at different times. 
 It seems to have been finally completed about 
 200 B.C. It was this version that was quoted by 
 the Apostles ; which was everywhere appealed 
 to in the early Christian Church ; and which the 
 Ethiopian eunuch was reading when Philip 
 met him. 
 
 It included what the Hebrew Bible did not 
 include — the Apocrypha ; and this is how the 
 Apocrypha came to pass into use in the Christian 
 Church. The Apocrypha forms no part of the 
 Hebrew Bible. 
 
 Now, aU that I have said about the errors of 
 copyists and the various readings of different 
 MSS. with regard to the New Testament, appHes 
 to the Old, with this further element bearing 
 upon the question of literal verbal accuracy. 
 You are aware, perhaps, that the Hebrew language, 
 as originally written, was made up entirely of 
 consonants : that is, Hebrew words as written 
 
48 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 had no vowels at all. The vowel sounds which 
 made the consonants pronounceable were handed 
 down orally. It was not until 600 years after 
 Christ that the accent marks were added, which 
 point out to the student where the vowels should 
 come in, and what they should be. Thus a 
 word of three consonants might mean this or 
 that according to the vowel sounds added ; and 
 these vowel sounds must be added according to 
 the judgment of the reader as to the meaning. 
 Suppose Enghsh were printed without vowels, 
 and you should find a word of the three 
 consonants, ' p.p.r.' It might mean paper, or 
 piper, or pepper — you would gather the meaning 
 from the context. Or suppose the word consisted 
 of two consonants, ' p.n.' It might be pen, or 
 pun, or pan, or pain, according to the vowel 
 sound added. Do you not see how this must have 
 added to the difhculty of translation and have 
 been an additional source of error ? That I 
 may not convey a false impression, let me quote 
 an actual instance given by Professor Robertson 
 Smith. In one passage Jacob is represented as 
 uttering his dying woids to bis sons while leaning, 
 upon his hed. Another passage referring to the 
 same scene, tells us that he did so leaning on his 
 staff. This is easy of explanation when we knew 
 that the two words bed and staff are in Hebrew 
 one word, and may be made to mean either bed 
 
THE CANON OR RULE 49 
 
 or staff, according to the vowel sound added. 
 What a wide field for misconception and error 
 there is open here !^ 
 
 Now let me say a few words about the Canon. 
 Canon means a rule — it first referred to a carpenter's 
 rule or measure, and from that came to be applied 
 to any standard by which things were judged. 
 Thus the canons of art are the rules of art. A 
 canon in music is a piece of music which follows 
 a very strict rule, the melody being the model 
 on which all the other parts are formed. Even 
 the Canon of a Cathedral gets his title in the same 
 way ; he is one belonging to an order and under 
 a certain definite rule of discipline. So the 
 Canonical books of the Bible — the Canon — are 
 the books that have a right to be there, because 
 they answer and come up to a certain rule 
 or standard of judgment. They have been 
 measured and found to be inspired and authentic. 
 
 But the curious thing is that nobody knows 
 what this rule is or who framed it. Are all the 
 books included in the Bible that ought to be there ? 
 Well, nobody knows. The Canon was not settled 
 all at one time : like Topsy, it ' growed.' Look 
 at the Old Testament. There was no such book 
 at all as the Old Testament until 450 B.C. In 
 
 1 A striking instance is noted by Dr. G. Adam Smith in his 
 commentary on Isaiah xxix. — the obscure oracle of Oriel. 'A riel 
 may mean either the Lion of God or the Hearth of God.' p. 211. 
 
50 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 its present form it was the work of Ezra and his 
 scribes. But right up to the destruction of 
 Jerusalem it was a matter of dispute whether 
 Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, 
 Ecclesiasticus, the Maccabees, and other books of 
 the Apocrypha, should or should not be included ; 
 and the dispute was only stopped by the destruc- 
 tion of the Temple, and the dispersion of the Jews, 
 which put an end to the growth of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 Thus, without any superhuman guidance, the 
 Canon of the Old Testament came to be settled. 
 And in my judgment some of the books which 
 were left out were more worthy of a place than 
 some which were left in. Or take the New 
 Testament. It is possible, in this case, to follow 
 the process of formation more closely than in 
 the case of the Old Testament. 
 
 From the way in which the New Testament is 
 commonly regarded, one would suppose that it 
 came down from heaven, as the Koran of the 
 Moslem fable did, in a single night : that it was 
 written either by the Almighty hand or at his 
 immediate dictation. But what we find is, that 
 for ages the New Testament writings were not 
 regarded as Scripture at all. A Christian of the 
 second century would have been as much shocked 
 as a Jew at putting them on a level with the 
 Old Testament. The Bible of the Christian 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 5 1 
 
 Church — for at least 200 years after Christ — was 
 the Old Testament, and the Old Testament 
 only. Oral tradition was esteemed of greater 
 value than the written Epistles and Gospels. 
 By the close of the second century, however, 
 a change appears. Certain New Testament books 
 have come into general favour, and are beginning 
 to be reverenced and quoted and set apart as 
 a new collection of inspired writings. As time 
 went on they grew more and more into use by 
 the Churches, and came to be read side by side 
 with the Old Testament. Nobody settled this. 
 It settled itself. Accident, taste, practical needs, 
 good sense, settled it. Yet for centuries the 
 various Churches continued to use side by side 
 with the writings which make up our New Testa- 
 ment, various books which we call spurious. 
 It is curious to note that hardly one of the great 
 Fathers of the Church draws the line of canonicity 
 where we draw it. In almost every case they 
 include some books that we reject, or reject 
 some that we include. Irenaeus, one of the earliest 
 and most authentic, rejects five books now in 
 the New Testament — Hebrews, Jude, James, 
 II Peter, and III John, while he includes the 
 Shepherd of Hermas. The celebrated TertuUian 
 rejects all the books of the New Testament, 
 except the four Gospels, Acts, thirteen Epistles 
 of Paul, the Apocalypse, and I John. That is, 
 
52 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 he rejects Hebrews, Jude, I and II Peter, II and 
 III John, and James. 
 
 Meanwhile, every Church did as it pleased-, 
 and the greatest confusion prevailed until the 
 year a.d. 332, when the Emperor Constantine 
 entrusted Eusebius with authority to make a 
 complete collection of the sacred writings for 
 the use of the Catholic Church. The list contained 
 all the present books except the Revelation of 
 St. John. And so it went on, and notwithstanding 
 decisions of the Councils, books continued to be 
 read in the Churches which were not on the list, 
 and others on the list were regarded with suspicion. 
 Jerome and Augustine were much divided in 
 opinion. The Roman Catholic Church has never 
 heartily accepted the Hebrews. Even Protestants 
 were far from unanimity in regard to the right 
 of certain books to be in the Bible. They claimed 
 for themselves freedom of judgment to say what 
 is Scripture. ' The Fourth Book of Esdras,' 
 said Luther, ' I toss into the Elbe.' The Epistle 
 of James he caUed ' An Epistle of straw.' 
 Erasmus maintained that the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, II Peter, II and III John, and the 
 Apocalypse were not written by Apostles ; but 
 he says he does not esteem them of less value 
 on that account, for if they contain good teaching 
 it does not matter by whom they were written. 
 Calvin, in like manner, thought that Hebrews 
 
COU^XIL OF TRENT 53 
 
 and II Peter were not written by Apostles. He 
 is doubtful about James and Jude, but he approves 
 of them because, he says, ' they contain useful 
 reading ' — a very sensible and sufficient reason. 
 
 In 1545 the Papal Church called the Council 
 of Trent to deal with the heresies of the Reforma- 
 tion. At this Council, and for the first time 
 in the history of the Christian Church, the question 
 of the contents of the Bible w^as made an absolute 
 article of faith and confirmed by an anathema. 
 The books of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, 
 and the New Testament, as we have kno^^m it, were 
 declared to be aU on the same level, and to have 
 doubts about any of them was to bring down a 
 curse upon the soul. In this Council there was 
 not one great scholar, nor one German divine. 
 So that while it has been a great feature of 
 Protestantism to refer to the authority of the 
 Bible instead of the Pope, it was the Papal Church 
 that set up a hard and fast hne about the books 
 of the Bible and made it heresy to question them. 
 
 Such is the story of New Testament canonicity. 
 Such were the accidents and vicissitudes to which 
 the New Testament writings were subjected 
 before they arrived at the position of supernatural 
 and infallible authority. Nowhere along the 
 line have we a particle of e\ndence of any super- 
 natural guidance or illumination which enabled 
 those who judged these books and others to decide 
 
54 THE TEXT AND THE CANON 
 
 which were and which were not of miraculous 
 origin. The most varied motives contributed to 
 the final arrangement — some prudential, some 
 superstitious, but scarcely any based on sound 
 scholarship. 
 
 Among the strangers who are attending these 
 lectures, some may be startled and shocked 
 when they hear it declared that the Bible is not 
 infallible — that it is entirely a human book — 
 that it has grown, as other things have grown, in 
 a natural way, and has not been preserved from 
 error any more than Shakespeare's Plays or 
 Plato's Dialogues. But let me tell you that all 
 this does not take away one jot from the beauty 
 and worth of the Bible as a whole. Like you, 
 I once believed in an infallible book ; but I can 
 honestly say that the Bible means far more to 
 me now that the scales have dropped from my 
 eyes and I see it as a human production than 
 when I believed in its Divine origin. It is easy 
 for the scholarship of to-day to see that the men 
 who are responsible for our Bible being what it 
 is now made many and grave mistakes. Never- 
 theless, could we understand all the circumstances, 
 we should very probably be surprised, and 
 certainly we should see that we had reason to 
 be grateful, that these mistakes were not more 
 and graver still. That the books which have 
 been declared Canonical and handed down as 
 
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 55 
 
 such to US are so unique, shows that a great 
 and wonderful law Uke that which scientific 
 men call ' natural selection,' or ' the survival of 
 the fittest,' has been at work in the Bible, and 
 has preser\^ed to us the things fullest of Divine 
 wisdom and teaching. Twelve hundred years 
 of religious Evolution, and of the development 
 of the moral and spiritual powers of a speciailly 
 rehgious race, have given us our Bible. 
 
 It contains the prayers, the hymns, the story 
 of the moral progress, the failures, the aspirations, 
 the autobiography of human nature on its religious 
 side, from its infancy to its perfection. 
 
 Out from the heart of Nature rolled 
 The burdens of the Bible old ; 
 The word unto the prophets spoken, 
 Was A\Tit on tables yet unbroken ; 
 Still floats upon the morning wind, 
 Still whispers to the willing mind ; 
 One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 The heedless world has never lost ! 
 
IV 
 
 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 It is a matter of thankfulness that we have at 
 last a Revised Version of the Bible in our hands, 
 a Bible which is free from the adulterations and 
 obscurities that have so long marred its beauty 
 and its meaning. Like most great undertakings, 
 it had been for a long time ' in the air ' before 
 it was actually taken in hand. Although divines 
 and scholars and the educated laity were perfectly 
 aware that the Authorized Version contained 
 many errors, both of text and translation, that 
 phrases had been tampered with in order to back 
 up certain doctrines, that passages had been 
 inserted which formed no part of the original, 
 and that, instead of sound scholarship, King 
 James's translators often displayed a theological 
 bias ; yet the shrinking from change was so great, 
 and the fear of consequences so cowardly, that 
 the matter was delayed from time to time, till 
 for very shame it could be put off no longer. 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF REVISION 57 
 
 Of course there were great difficulties in the way. 
 There was the veneration and love which had 
 gathered for so many years around the Old 
 Version, and which regarded any attempt at 
 revision with as much horror as the dissection 
 of the body of some dear friend. There was the 
 latent fear that in the event of a thorough and 
 honest revision, men would have to give up 
 some of their old notions and doctrines which 
 had been based upon interpolations and bad 
 translations. This dread sometimes took a 
 ludicrous shape. I remember lecturing, now 
 thirty-five years ago, on the need of revision, 
 doing what little I could in my own circle to 
 create a right public opinion on the subject, 
 when a good man got up, and in a voice trembling 
 with emotion, deprecated laying any hands on 
 the Sacred Ark. He said, ' I owe my conversion 
 to a certain text in one of St. Paul's Epistles. 
 Now, suppose in a revised version that text 
 should be omitted on the ground that it is an 
 interpolation — where should I be ? ' Where 
 indeed ? There was, of course, no arguing with 
 an ignorance, a density, and a fear like that. 
 Then there was the dread that the New Version 
 might substitute for the simple, graceful, and 
 idiomatic diction we so much loved, a strange, 
 modern, learned, inkhom diction. There was 
 really some ground for this apprehension, because 
 
58 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 in previous attempts at revision by private hands 
 such frightful sins against good taste had been 
 committed, as to make revision a byword. In 
 1768, a divine named Haywood offered the 
 world a new translation of the New Testament, 
 ' with freedom, spirit, and elegance,' as he phrased 
 it. Heie are two specimens of his improvements. 
 For ' the child is not dead ' in the old version, 
 he gave ' the young lady is not dead ' ; and the 
 opening of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, ' a 
 certain man had two sons,^ he changed into ' a 
 gentleman of splendid family and opulent fortune 
 had two sons.'' 
 
 Benjamin Franklin tried his hand at the Book 
 of Job. You all recollect the famous verse in 
 our translation : ' Then Satan answered the Lord 
 and said, Doth Job fear God for nought ? ' Franklin 
 makes this, ' Does your Majesty imagine that Job's 
 good conduct is the effect of mere personal attachment 
 and affection ? ' 
 
 Bishop Louth sins also in the attempt to 
 substitute fine English for the simple, idiomatic 
 English of the Authorized Version. Thus, in 
 his translation of the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, - 
 he changes the phrase, ' Speak ye comfortably 
 to Jerusalem ' into ' Speak ye animating words 
 to Jerusalem.'' 
 
 I am sorry to confess that one of my predecessors 
 in the pulpit of the Old Meeting fell into the 
 
PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS 59 
 
 same pit. In a Book of Prayers, prepared for 
 this congregation, a revised Burial Service is 
 included, with a new translation of the famous 
 chapter in Corinthians which we read on those 
 solemn occasions. You wiU remember the words, 
 ' But some man will say, With what body do they 
 come ? ' And you will also remember the plain 
 way in which St. Paul indicates his opinion of 
 the inteUigence of such an inquirer — ' TAow 
 fool, that which thou sow est,'' etc. But thou fool 
 was much too vulgar for our ancestors in this 
 Church, and so they translated — ' Thou incon- 
 siderate man.' No wonder men dreaded the 
 possibility of a revision giving them a Bible 
 in fine English. Then it was said that the time 
 was not ripe, that scholars were not yet agreed 
 as to the authority of certain readings, that the 
 version in use had answered all practical purposes 
 for so many years that we need be in no hurry 
 to amend it. 
 
 Happily these reasons could not hold their 
 own against an enlightened public opinion. It 
 was in June, 1870, that the Revisers began 
 their labours. 
 
 They were divided into two companies — one 
 for the Old Testament, and one for the New 
 Testament. They were composed of the most 
 eminent scholars England could furnish, and 
 wisely chosen irrespective of creed or Church 
 
6o THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 No one can forget the celebrated communion 
 service in Westminster Abbey, when, at the 
 invitation of that loving, large, and catho]ic 
 spirit, Dean Stanley, the Revisers met to implore 
 the Divine blessing on their labours, and 
 Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist, 
 and Unitarian knelt together at the same altar, 
 and received in common the touching memorials 
 of the Christian faith. The work begun with 
 such high hopes and in such a liberal spirit was 
 carried through with admirable energy, patience, 
 temper, and skill. Few people have any concep- 
 tion of the amount of time and labour given, 
 without one penny of reward, by the Revisers. 
 The Old Testament Company were fifteen years 
 at work. They sat for 792 days and every day 
 for six hours. The New Testament company 
 sat for nearly 500 days, and in addition there was 
 an immense mass of correspondence with the 
 American company which sat at the same time. 
 And the result is that we have at last something 
 like the true Bible in our hands. Not that all 
 obscure parts have yet been made clear, nor 
 that it is settled in every case which is the true 
 reading. The Revised Version contains a mass 
 of marginal notes, which appear as alternative 
 readings, and in as many as 1200 instances the 
 American company differ from their English 
 brethren, their differences having been recorded 
 
RELIGION NOT DEPENDENT ON THE BIBLE 6l 
 
 in appendixes. But in the present state of 
 knowledge and scholarship we have a version 
 perhaps as near perfection as we could hope 
 to attain. 
 
 This is a result and a success in which the 
 adherents of a liberal Christianity especially 
 rejoice. Not that in the nature of things we are 
 likely to feel quite so deep an interest in getting 
 the best rendering of the best text as our 
 Evangehcal and orthodox friends ought to feel. 
 For I suppose most of us believe that the true 
 credentials of religion lie deeper than Authorized 
 Version, or Revised Version, or Greek MSS., or 
 Hebrew vowel points : that they are written, not 
 with pen and ink, nor even engraved on tables 
 of stone, but rather stamped indelibly on the 
 fleshly tablets of the human heart. 
 
 Our religion would survive, I imagine, not only 
 the corruption of texts, but the very destruction 
 of the Bible itself, and re-create itself with every 
 new-born soul, for ' of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven.'' This is not to say we do not feel the 
 immense importance and preciousness of the 
 Bible, both as a record of the religious history of 
 man and a fountain of living inspiration. Only 
 with us it is not the Bible alone that is our religion ; 
 for us the Bible is not the only word that pro- 
 ceedeth out of the mouth of God. Yet it is so 
 great and valuable a word that we earnestly desire 
 
62 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 to have it in an accurate form. We do not want 
 the theology of the tenth, or the seventeenth, or 
 the nineteenth centuries obtruded upon us as 
 we read the sweet, passionate lyrics of the Book 
 of Psalms, or when we listen to the heart-moving 
 words of Jesus. That the Bible should speak 
 for itself has been our desire all along, and so 
 we especially rejoice that all which made the 
 Bible speak with another voice than its own 
 has been done away. 
 
 For instance, what an enormous amount of 
 mischief has been done by the headings of the 
 chapters and the running titles at the top of the 
 pages of the Authorized Version, professing to 
 tell us what they are about. These headings and 
 titles are really little doctrinal sermons, foisting 
 a particular theology into the Bible. We all 
 know Carlyle's scorn of the ' Intelligent Editor ' 
 and the ' Intelligent Commentator,' who does 
 so much tc darken counsel with words ; and some 
 of you will remember the story of the poor woman 
 to whom a tract was given containing the parable 
 of the Prodigal Son with explanations, and who, 
 on being questioned, said ' she understood the 
 parable quite easily, and hoped some day to 
 understand the explanation.' So the Bible tells 
 its own talp, as a rule, quite clearly ; yet finger- 
 posts were put up by King James's translators, 
 who wanted it to tell their tale. For instance, 
 
MISCHIEF OF CHAPTER HEADINGS 63 
 
 what is called the ' Christology of the Old Testa- 
 ment,' that is, finding in it numberless references 
 to the unborn Christ, is largely due to the chapter 
 headings, by which the divines of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries tried to make the Bible 
 support the doctrine of Christ's pre-existence. 
 If ordinary people had not been told that a certain 
 account or description by the prophet of Cyrus 
 or Hezekiah was really a description of Christ, 
 it would never have entered into their heads 
 to make the application. The celebrated chapter 
 in Isaiah (ch. ix) where we have the words, ' For 
 unto us a child is horn, unto us a son is given, and 
 the government shall he upon his shoulder : and 
 his name shall he called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
 the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince 
 of Peace,'' refers, as every careful reader may 
 see, to Hezekiah. He is the wonderful child 
 who shall restore peace and glory to Israel and 
 reign in righteousness. But the chapter heading 
 is ' Christ's birth and kingdom ' ; and the phrase, 
 ' the mighty God,' which Dr. Rowland Williams 
 tells us should be ' the mighty Hero,' has been 
 often quoted to prove the deity of Christ. If 
 it proves deity at all, it proves the deity of 
 Hezekiah. But it does no such thing. Now it 
 is a great gain that in the Revised Version those 
 chapter headings are done away and the Bible 
 is allowed to speak for itself. 
 
64 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 The next thing that strikes the reader of the 
 Revised Version is the abohtion of the purely 
 arbitrary divisions of chapter and verse — divisions 
 which often break the connexion and mar the 
 sense and create many difficulties for the reader. 
 In the Revised Version the text is arranged 
 in paragraphs, the old numbers of the chapters 
 and verses being given at the side for the sake 
 of convenience in reference, and no one can fail 
 to see that the sense of the Bible is much more 
 connected and more comprehensible in this way 
 than in the Authorized Version. 
 
 A third general feature of the revision remains 
 to be noticed — the printing of all the songs, 
 psalms and poetry verse-wise, so as to show at 
 once that we are dealing with poetry and not 
 with prose. It is a great gain that the songs 
 and national ballads interspersed through the 
 historical books should be printed as songs, and 
 we should know them to be what they are, 
 quotations from ancient books of national poetry. 
 Probably if that little extract from an old ballad- 
 book given in Joshua x. had been originally 
 printed as it is now, a good deal of troublesome 
 speculation might have been spared about that 
 most perplexing of all alleged miracles — the 
 standing still of the sun. A phrase of poetry 
 would never have been mistaken for a statement 
 of fact. 
 
THE R.V. IX RELATION TO DOCTRINE 65 
 
 Let me now refer you to a more important 
 matter. How far does the Revised \'ersion 
 affect questions of doctrine ? Now that we have 
 a translation no longer biased by the theology 
 of a particular school, how is the theolog}' of the 
 various schools affected ? We are loudly assured 
 that ever\i:hing remains as it was, that the 
 orthodox theology, the theology of the creeds 
 and the articles, the theology of popular 
 Evangehcahsm and of popular Anghcanism, come 
 out of the trial unscathed. ' Not one of these 
 changes,' cries Bishop Wordsworth, ' affects one 
 tittle or iota of the Christian faith/ ' It is 
 certain,' echoes Canon Farrar, ' that no questions 
 of faith or doctrine are altered by the New Testa- 
 ment.' It is boldly asserted that, in spite of 
 changes and omissions, nothing has occurred 
 which need give a moment's alarm or even 
 thought to the orthodox theologian. Nothing 
 has happened ! On the contrary, I aver that very 
 much has happened, and that this is so weU 
 known, that it almost looks as if there were a 
 conspiracy to keep the Re\ised Version out of 
 use in our churches on this very score, ^^'hy, 
 this has happened at the least — no one who 
 comprehends the simple facts of the Revised 
 Version can any longer hold that the Bible is 
 infallible. In the New Testament alone, the total 
 list of changes in text and translations, including 
 
66 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 changes of punctuation, number 36,191. In 
 1600 cases the Greek text from which the 
 Authorized Version was made has been changed ; 
 in 18,000 cases words have been changed by a 
 substituted rendering, and 4600 words have been 
 added in translation. In all, seventeen per cent, 
 of the words of the New Testament have been 
 more or less altered. Of course out of this vast 
 multitude of variations from the Authorized 
 Version, only a very small proportion relate to 
 what are commonly known as doctrinal passages. 
 Nevertheless, the whole body of them bears heavily 
 in virtue of its sheer numerical weight, on one 
 point of doctrine — that of infallibility. It is 
 impossible to regard as infallible a book in which 
 the last revision has made 36,000 corrections, 
 and which the American Revisers tell us ought 
 to be corrected in 400 additional places. 
 
 Notice at the outset two or three striking 
 omissions from the commonly received text. 
 Perhaps it was a matter of course that the cele- 
 brated passage should be struck out — ' For there 
 are three that hear record in heaven, the Father, the 
 Word, and the Holy Ghost ; and these three are 
 one,^^ The evidence against it is so overwhelming 
 that for a long time it has been given up by the 
 most ardent defenders of the Trinity. The 
 revisers, who, with one exception, were all Trinit- 
 
 1 I John V. 7. 
 
THE R.V. AND THE TRINITY 67 
 
 arians, declare unanimously that this celebrated 
 passage is no part of the Bible at all, but that it 
 was inserted by some over-zealous disciple to 
 bolster up a favourite doctrine, and like honest 
 men they have ruthlessly cut it out. But what 
 are we to say to those who assert that its omission 
 makes no difference to orthodox doctrine ? It 
 is the only text in the Bible which clearly states 
 the doctrine of the Trinity : in no other place 
 is it declared that ' these three are one ' ; it is 
 the one unmistakable proof text from which 
 thousands of sermons have been preached. The 
 doctrine is only inferred from other texts ; in 
 no other place is it explicitly taught. Does it 
 make no difference to the scripture proof of a 
 doctrine that the one and only text which plainly 
 declared it is now pronoimced a forgery ? It is 
 only childishness and folly to say everything is 
 as it was, and revision has made no difference. 
 
 Our Baptist friends have been accustomed to 
 justify their refusal of baptism to children, and 
 their doctnne of believers' baptism only, by the 
 requirement of Philip and the confession of faith 
 on the part of the eunuch of Candace before his 
 baptism : and Philip said, ' If thou helievest with 
 all thine heart thou may est {be baptized). And he 
 answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is 
 the son of God.'^ But now when the Baptist turns 
 
 ^ Ads viii. 17. 
 
68 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 to the New Testament he cannot find his favourite 
 passage : it has no place in the best manuscripts, 
 and the revisers have expunged it as an inter- 
 polation. No other text so clearly upheld the 
 Baptist position, and yet we are told that its 
 excision leaves the question untouched ! 
 
 Another noticeable omission is the explanation 
 that the troubling of the water in the pool of 
 Bethesda was due to the interposition of an angel. ^ 
 The verse containing this picturesque incident 
 is declared by the revisers to be no part of the 
 original narrative. It is a striking instance of 
 the growth of miraculous stories. What we see 
 happened in this case, we are led to believe is 
 what happened in many other cases. Everything 
 strange and unaccountable in the ancient world 
 was at once put down to supernatural agency. 
 At Bethesda, as in many places well known to 
 health-seekers, there was an intermittent spring 
 having medicinal properties. The author of this 
 Gospel was familiar with the virtues of the 
 Bethesda spring, which he leaves us to suppose 
 were due to natural causes. But a later copyist, 
 possessed by the spirit which sees the miraculous 
 in anything strange, must needs introduce by a 
 little touch a supernatural element into the 
 story. In this case the too busy hand has been 
 detected in the very act of turning the simple 
 
 1 John V. 4. 
 
IMPROVED READINGS 69 
 
 into the miraculous. But in how many un- 
 detected cases may the simple, natural incidents 
 of the life of Jesus have thus received a super- 
 natural explanation ? The revisers have shown 
 us here a miracle in the making, and, to my mind, 
 the sight is most instructive. 
 
 Leaving unnoticed other important omissions, 
 let me call your attention to some improved 
 renderings of passages that have a bearing on 
 Christian doctrine. 
 
 Roman Catholics and High Churchmen have 
 long been in the habit of quoting the words, 
 * There shall he one fold and one shepherd,'''^ as 
 showing that there ought to be one only visible 
 church on earth. But this text is now^ rendered, 
 not one fold, but one flock, a very different matter. 
 One fold is one visible organization, one divinely 
 appointed church ; but one flock may be gathered 
 in many folds, and scattered in many churches. 
 
 Our evangelical friends have for ages made 
 much of the words, ' Without shedding of blood 
 is no r emission. ^^ This has been one of the 
 cardinal texts of their theology — proving the 
 necessity of the actual blood-shedding of Jesus 
 to the forgiveness of sins. But is not their 
 favourite doctrine shaken to its foundations by 
 the new rendering of the whole verse ? 'And 
 according to the law, I may almost say, all things 
 
 "^ John X. 16. ^Hebrews ix. 22. 
 
70 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 are cleansed, with hlood, and apart from shedding _ 
 of hlood there is no remission.'' Now we see that 
 these words were uttered not at all as expressing 
 a Christian truth, but as a reproach to Judaism. 
 Judaism taught that without shedding of blood 
 there is no remission, but the writer's point is 
 that Christianity teaches something far better. 
 
 Or look at some of the well-known and often 
 quoted proof texts of the doctrine of Christ's 
 Deity. Here is the famous one, ' God manifest 
 in the flesh ''^ The revisers tell us that the word 
 God * rests on no sufficient ancient evidence,' 
 but that the passage should read, ' He who 
 was manifested in the flesh.'' Does this make 
 no difference to the proof of the Godhead of 
 Christ ? It is a great difference. One striking 
 proof text is now admitted to be no proof at all, 
 having no bearing on the question. 
 
 One other instance will suffice. Here are the 
 words : ' Hereby perceive we the love of God, because 
 he laid down his life for us.^^ According to this 
 rendering it was God who laid down his life 
 for us and died on the cross, and in this sense 
 it has been triumphantly used as proving that 
 Christ is God. But how does this Revised Version 
 run ? ' Hereby know we love, because he laid down 
 his life for us.' The fact is, the old transcribers 
 and translators were so full of a certain theology 
 1 I Timothy iii. i6. 2 i joAw iii. 16. 
 
THE RESULTS OF REVISION 7I 
 
 that they read it into the Bible on every possible 
 occasion, and whenever they came to the pronoun 
 ' he ' for Jesus, naturally foisted into it their own 
 doctrinal conceptions and at once changed it 
 into the august name, God. 
 
 What in the face of these and similar facts 
 of revision are we to say to the candour of those 
 who tell us that things are just as they were, 
 and that no Christian doctrine has been affected 
 one jot or tittle ? Many doctrines are affected. 
 The word atonement no longer appears in the 
 New Testament ; the word predestination is 
 gone ; the word damnation is turned into 
 judgment ; our vile body becomes the body of our 
 humiliation, and the ascetics are robbed of a 
 text which justified them in macerating the 
 flesh. Fasting is now no longer commanded by 
 Christ ; neither is it a command to search the 
 Scriptures ; money is no longer the root of all 
 evil, but a root of all kinds of evil. The great 
 Trinitarian text, ' These three are one,^ is no more, 
 and two important texts proving the Godhead of 
 Christ are shown to have no reference whatever 
 to that doctrine. These are great gains to a 
 more reasonable creed. I know we may easily 
 make too much of them, but, on the other hand, 
 we are invited to make nothing of them. The 
 Revised Version is of great doctrinal significance. 
 It tends to break down the rigidity of orthodoxy. 
 
72 THE REVISED VERSION 
 
 and it justifies that Liberal Christianity which we, 
 in this place, hold and teach. We, at any rate, 
 have every reason to be grateful for the help 
 which the Revised Version gives us to a better 
 understanding of the work of Christ and his 
 Apostles. We who know the fatal force and 
 fascination of words, and have learnt to realize 
 the immense and inconceivable mistakes which 
 have been made by nearly all English churches 
 through the deficiencies and mistakes of the 
 Authorized Version, welcome with the deepest 
 thankfulness the Bible which the revisers have 
 placed in our hands, as bringing before the 
 English reader for the first time the true sense of 
 inspired writers. 
 
V 
 
 INFALLIBILITY 
 
 * 
 Those of you who have followed me with 
 patience in the lectures already delivered will 
 perhaps think it scarcely necessary to devote a 
 whole evening to the subject of the infallibility 
 of the Bible, since I have already given you many 
 reasons to show the absurdity of such a doctrine. 
 But the subject is so important, and the influence 
 of the doctrine lingers so long, even when it has 
 been formally abandoned, that I do not think it 
 will be waste of time to look at it a little more 
 closely. A doctrine which has been driven into 
 the minds of English people for 300 years is not 
 easily dislodged. Men will admit that it is with- 
 out foundation, and yet they go on really acting 
 upon it as if it had never been questioned. Look 
 at the way men still appeal to ' texts ' when they 
 want to prove an article in their creed, or to 
 demolish a theological opponent. Right reason, 
 scholarship, experience, human feeling, common 
 
74 INFALLIBILITY 
 
 sense, all these are nothing if a text can be quoted 
 on the other side. I remember a debate, some- 
 what celebrated at the time, in which an evangelical 
 clergyman persisted in interrupting his opponent 
 by calling out ' Chapter and verse ! chapter and 
 verse ! ' as though the very words were a magic 
 talisman of error. And men who say they do 
 not contend for the infallibility of the Bible yet 
 confidently quote isolated texts as though they 
 settled the matter in dispute. Thej^ are compelled 
 when hard pressed to give up the doctrine of 
 Infallibility ; but they think they can retain as 
 tenaciously as ever the consequences and corollaries 
 of the doctrine, phrases which spring out of it 
 and have no meaning apart from it, and deductions 
 which could flow from it alone. Look at the 
 infinite efforts made by commentators and divines 
 to explain discrepancies and reconcile contradic- 
 tions, which, only that it is necessary to prove 
 the Bible infallible, would have no significance 
 whatever. 
 
 I propose to show you two things : (i) That 
 an infallible standard in faith and morals is not 
 desirable ; and (2), if it is desirable, it is not to 
 be found in the Bible. 
 
 I. We know that in many trade matters, in 
 disputes about weights and measures, quantity 
 and quality, it is desirable to have infallible 
 standards of judgment from which no appeal 
 
GUIDES AND ORACLES 75 
 
 can be made. If we think we are cheated in the 
 quantity of silk we buy, we can bring the shop- 
 keeper's yard measure to an absolute test ; we 
 can even send round inspectors of weights and 
 measures to detect the slightest departure from 
 the infallible standard. In the same way, men 
 often think there ought to be some outward, 
 visible, infallible standard of religious truth and 
 moral right. For the journey of life is no easy 
 business, and man naturally longs for some guid- 
 ance along its difficult and dangerous paths. 
 He says to himself, ' God, my maker, cannot have 
 meant me to face these dread perils, these 
 tremendous issues, unguided by his wisdom, 
 unsustained by his hand. There must be some- 
 where for me an infallible guide.' And having 
 concluded, theoretically, that infalhble guidance 
 must be somewhere, man has gone on to imagine 
 it in this or that, or to create it out of his super- 
 stitions, or has suffered himself to be deluded by 
 priests, soothsayers, and oracles, that they have 
 the sure and absolute truth. 
 
 The Jews had their Urim and Thummim, 
 enchanted stones kept in a pouch of the high 
 priest's breastplate, and consulted for direction 
 in all times of grave perplexity. According to 
 one tradition these stones changed colour, showing 
 bright before a victory and dark before a defeat ; 
 while another tradition tells us that one stone 
 
76 INFALLIBILITY 
 
 stood for * yes,' another for ' no,' and a third 
 was neuter, and that the three were used as lots, 
 the high priest giving answer according as the 
 one or the other was drawn out. Whatever the 
 method, it is clear that Urim and Thummim 
 were instruments of divination by which it was 
 thought the will of God was made known. The 
 Bible is also full of references to Egyptian 
 
 * magicians ' and their ' enchantments,' to 
 
 * wizards,' ' sorcerers,' ' soothsayers,' all of whom 
 professed to reveal the will of heaven, and to give 
 infallible directions to those who observed their 
 rites. The casting of lots was a favourite method 
 of ascertaining the divine purpose. When the 
 disciples, after the fall of Judas, met to elect a 
 successor in his place, they chose two, and then, 
 having prayed, they cast lots, and when the lot 
 fell upon Matthias they supposed they had an 
 infallible intimation of the will of God. Among 
 the Romans the ' Sortes Virgilianae ' was a method 
 of reading the future by consulting the ^Eneid 
 of Virgil. You take up the book, open it at 
 random, and the passage you touch by chance 
 with your finger is the oracular response. The 
 same method has been used with the Bible right 
 up to our own time, and is called ' Sortes Biblicae.' 
 The Greeks had their oracles at Delphi and at 
 Dodona. At Dodona, those gifted with the 
 power to interpret listened to the rustling of the 
 
THE CRAVING FOR ASSURANCE 77 
 
 leaves in an ancient oak, or to the moaning of 
 doves in its branches, or to the resounding of the 
 wind in the brazen tripods that surrounded the 
 Temple, professing to gain in this manner a know- 
 ledge of the future. You will remember how, 
 in the ' Winter's Tale,' Shakespeare makes 
 Hermione, the wrongfully-accused Queen, appeal 
 to the oracle of Apollo at Delphos. In Rome there 
 were soothsayers and diviners, who watched the 
 flights of certain birds and the movements of 
 certain sacred animals, so claiming to interpret 
 the will of the gods. To refer again to Shakes- 
 peare : when Julius Caesar has misgivings about 
 the fatal procession to the Capitol, he says to 
 his servant, ' Go bid the priests do sacrifice, 
 and bring me their opinions of success.' ' What 
 say the augurers ? ' he asks when the servant 
 returns, who replies — 
 
 They would not have you stir forth to-day ; 
 Plucking the entrails of an offering forth. 
 They could not find a heart within the beast. 
 
 It is this craving which men have for guidance, 
 this shrinking from coming to a decision for 
 themselves, this disinclination to take the trouble 
 to judge what is right and wrong, that has given 
 strength in the Roman Church to the dogma of 
 the Pope's Infallibility, and in Protestant 
 Churches to the dogma of the Infallibility of the 
 
y^ INFALLIBILITY 
 
 Bible. Men are cowards ; they shrink Irom 
 personal responsibility ; they dread the sweat 
 and the struggle of mental and spiritual conflict ; 
 they want things made easy and to be saved 
 from the burden and care of exercising personal 
 judgment ; they would even give up that glorious 
 prerogative of manhood, Free Will, if they could 
 be sure of infallible guidance. In a remarkable 
 passage Professor Huxley has told us that if some 
 Power would undertake to wind him up like a 
 watch every twenty-four hours so that he should 
 infallibly do right, he would gladly give up his 
 freedom of will. It is this feeling which, more 
 than any other, induces men to go over to the 
 Church of Rome. They want to be saved aU 
 these questions, all this trouble of choosing and 
 judging for themselves ; they want an easy time, 
 and are glad to hand over moral and religious 
 problems to the decision of anyone who will 
 undertake for them. Yet natural and almost 
 inevitable as is this craving, it is not healthy, 
 it is not desirable ; and that it is not so is shown 
 in the fact that it has never been gratified.. 
 Guidance — yes, we all need that, and we all may 
 have it ; but not to the abnegation of our own 
 reason and judgment. Infallible guidance is 
 impossible if men are to be really virtuous, 
 strong, wise, and capable : it means that men are 
 to give up Free Will and become automata. 
 
HOW TO THINK 79 
 
 But without Free Will what virtue is there in 
 what I do ? If I cannot make a mistake, there 
 is no goodness in doing right. If everything is 
 to be settled for me, I lose the best part of mental 
 and spiritual training — the training I go through 
 in learning to judge, to reason, to form conclusions, 
 to come to a decision. 
 
 We all understand the difference between 
 teaching an intelligent boy what to think and 
 how to think. Suppose that he has a problem to 
 solve, or a sentence in a classical author to translate. 
 The teacher may show him the solution in a 
 moment, or read the sentence to him in English. 
 So far he understands it — he knows what it means. 
 He knows that sentence perfectly, hut it is all 
 he knows. There is, however, another way. 
 The teacher may spend much time in instructing 
 the boy, not only in the meaning of a particular 
 sentence, but as to how sentences are formed, 
 how the parts of a sentence are related, how to 
 look in any sentence for the verb and the noun, 
 and how their inflexions bear on the sense. The 
 boy may not for the moment be able to teU what 
 this particular sentence means as glibly as his 
 comrade who has had it read off to him in English ; 
 but he is in the way of understanding in time, 
 not this sentence only, but all sentences, and of 
 attaining to a perfect knowledge of the language. 
 But you know no boy will master a language 
 
So INFALLIBILITY 
 
 who has the sentences infaUibly translated for 
 hira, or who has a crib to which he can always 
 refer. You teach him how sentences are made, 
 and then you throw him on his own resources, 
 sure that in blundering is the only way to 
 acquire mastery. 
 
 So it is in morals, so it is in religion. If every- 
 thing were settled for us we should have no mental 
 and no spiritual training, and at the end we should 
 be just as much babies as ever. God does give 
 us guidance ; he puts certain great principles 
 into our hands ; he gives us a sense of right and 
 wrong ; he gives us reason, and conscience, and 
 affection — divine lights and voices within us. 
 But he does not send a visible, tangible guide 
 with us through the unknown desert, to mark 
 out every step for us, and to spare us all anxiety 
 about the road. He rather instructs us as to the 
 character of the country, the landmarks, the 
 bearings of the stars, and leaves us to find our way 
 for ourselves, assuring us that he is not ignorant 
 of or indifferent to our prayers. We shall make 
 blunders, but we shall be gaining power ; we shall 
 fall into mistakes, but we shall be training our 
 reason, so that at last we are not babes but men. 
 God will have us know for ourselves — not because 
 he speaks to us through some infallible authority, 
 but because by thinking, observing, experimenting, 
 our natures are trained into nobler goodness and 
 
ONE BOOK, MANY OPINIONS 8l 
 
 into clearer wisdom than could ever be possible 
 under infallible guidance. 
 
 2. My second point is that if such an infallible 
 guide be desirable, it is not to be found in the Bible. 
 As an infallible guide the Bible must be condemned 
 for a lamentable failure. If it be an infallible 
 directory for faith and conduct, telling men what to 
 think and do, the differing sects and Churches of 
 Christendom are an amazing phenomenon. Every 
 sect goes to the Bible and finds there the infallible 
 justification it looks for. The Pope gets out of 
 one passage the doctrine of the Church's authority 
 to forgive sins ; the priest gets out of another 
 passage the rite and dogma of baptismal regenera- 
 tion ; the Mormon gets out of it a sanction for 
 polygamy ; the monk draws from it the dogma 
 that man's body is corrupt and must be macerated ; 
 the Independent finds that there ought to be no 
 bishops ; the Trinitarian that Jesus is God ; the 
 Unitarian that Jesus was only a man. The 
 Calvinist finds the election of the few ; the 
 Universalist the salvation of all. All go to the 
 same source, and yet all draw different conclusions. 
 Where, then, is its infallibility if it speaks with 
 such different voices ? Here is the chronic 
 difficulty — a revelation of truth, God's own 
 truth from God's own Hps, as many believe ; 
 and yet, among those who with their whole 
 hearts accept the revelation, infinite diversities. 
 
82 INFALLIBILITY 
 
 internecine strifes over these very words of the 
 Eternal. 
 
 To treat the Bible as if it were an infallible 
 receipt-book for all difficulties and doctrines, 
 and apply its texts, most likely wrenched out of 
 all connexion with the subjects on which they 
 were meant to bear, to the easy solution of all 
 controversies, as though the mere letter of one 
 sentence settled everything, and the intellect 
 had no other duty than that of humble 
 acquiescence, is to make it an idol. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. Once more, I 
 repeat, I want to loosen no one's hold on the 
 substantial truth of the Bible. But substantial 
 truth is one thing, infallible truth is another. 
 We have guidance in the Bible about the greatest 
 matters — about God and duty, about righteous- 
 ness and holy living, about love and peace and 
 justice and immortality. We have the substantial 
 truth ; but we have also errors, mistakes, con- 
 fusions, contradictions, and we have to get at 
 the truth by the exercise of reason, judgment, 
 and conscience. 
 
 I have already shown you that the English 
 Bible is not free from error, and to contend for 
 that would be contending that the translators, 
 copyists, and printers were all miraculously 
 preserved from mistake. What are the people 
 who have held the Infallibility of the Authorized 
 
TRIFLING MISTAKES 83 
 
 Version of the New Testament to say to the fact I 
 mentioned last Sunday, that the Revised Version 
 contains 36,000 changes ? I have shown you 
 that there is no Greek and no Hebrew text free 
 from error, and that no two of those ancient MSS. 
 absolutely agree. The usual answer made to 
 this mode of dealing with the question is, of 
 course, that it is hypercritical : that it makes a 
 mountain of a mole hill : that the mistakes of 
 copyists and translators are altogether trifling. 
 But a trifling mistake destroys infallibility. A 
 thing is either perpendicular or it is not ; there 
 are no such things as degrees of perpendicularity. 
 There are no such things as degrees of infallibility. 
 One mistake vitiates the whole claim, for if the 
 authority is mistaken on one point, what 
 guarantee have we that it may not be mistaken 
 on another ? It is admitted that literally and 
 verbally the Bible is not infallible, but we are 
 told this does not matter. Although not infallible 
 it contains the infallible word of God. And so, 
 divines, having conceded our point of the fallibility 
 of the Bible, are yet extremely angry when we 
 point out that the world was not made in six days, 
 or that it is not true that the Almighty approved 
 of the wholesale slaughter of the Canaanites, 
 or that the morality of the Pentateuch is defective. 
 It is a fallible book, but it must not be questioned ! 
 And they are in the greatest fright if one bolder 
 
84 INFALLIBILITY 
 
 than the rest ventures to tell the people that 
 Matthew and Luke are at irreconcilable variance 
 about the pedigree of Jesus, or that Peter niis- 
 applies a psalm, or that Paul was quite mistaken 
 when he prophesied the immediate coming of 
 Christ. The speaker is denounced as an Atheist, 
 and a tremendous amount of devout ingenuity, 
 or, rather, indevout acuteness, is shown in the 
 attempt to reconcile discrepancies or explain 
 away plain statements by forcing on them 
 allegorical meanings. When pushed in a corner 
 the fallibility is admitted ; but in practical use 
 men go on treating the Bible as if the dogma of 
 its infallibility had never been questioned. 
 
 Where, then, you may ask, is infallible guidance 
 to be found ? I answer, you cannot divest your- 
 self of responsibility ; you must judge, yon must 
 think, you must decide, believing that God's 
 spirit is as surely within you to-day as it ever was 
 within Isaiah or John ; and that an inspiration 
 as true, as real as that which ever prophet or 
 apostle reached is yours, if you will. The inspira- 
 tion of the men of old in awakening the conscience, 
 proves not the possibility only, but the actual 
 reality of a present communion with the Father. 
 When once this is felt, then a criterion of truth 
 is given better far, because more educational in 
 its influence, than any outward infallible standard. 
 ' For God must be better than the best we can 
 
THE INWARD WITNESS 85 
 
 think, juster and purer than our highest thought, 
 more loving, tender, and patient than our com- 
 passion's widest reach. Ask, then, when other 
 certainties fail, does this or that view of religious 
 truth most enlarge and deepen my love to God 
 and man ? Do I feel more the embrace of a divine 
 Life when I try to believe in everlasting damnation, 
 or when I trust the larger hope ? What is most 
 congruous with the essential conditions of thought 
 and springs of feeling within me, a universe of 
 lifeless atoms, or a world that lives and moves 
 and has its being in God ? ' How do I most 
 worthily think of God — when I think of him as 
 damning little children for a sin which they never 
 committed, but which Adam committed ; or 
 when I think of him as loving a little child more 
 tenderly than its mother ? Trust your best 
 instincts, your most humane feelings, your finest 
 sense of truth and justice ; trust them, rather 
 than the letters of a book, as the voice of God 
 within you. These things are his ' kindly light,' 
 promising to every active, earnest soul, a clearer 
 day, a brighter experience, a higher truth. Keep 
 your face towards the light, in the direction of 
 purer feeling, larger charity, firmer self-control, 
 more faithful loyalty to the duty and the truth 
 you know, for then you will be guided better 
 than by some infallible standard. Why should 
 you be alarmed at following the light of God 
 
86 INFALLIBILITY 
 
 within you rather than the words of a book ? 
 ' God will not condemn you for any intellectual 
 mistake, but only for the disloyalty of soul 
 which will not follow the guidance of his spirit 
 towards a higher tone of life and a larger-hearted 
 faith. But he who in reverence, sincerity, and 
 self-sacrifice follows the bright shining of God's 
 light, may feel assured that, like a ship with its 
 compass, he carries a guide with him which 
 shall bring him right at last.'^ 
 
 1 See J. A. Picton's New Theories and Old Faith for a masterly- 
 discussion of the whole subject. 
 
VI 
 
 INSPIRATION 
 
 Some years ago I was drawn into a religious 
 discussion with an earnest-minded man who, 
 when I questioned the authority of a text he had 
 quoted, turned round upon me and said : ' But 
 do you beHeve in the inspiration of the Bible ? ' 
 ' That,' I answered, ' entirely depends on what 
 you mean by inspiration.' ' Oh, come,' said he, 
 * don't let us have any quibbling about words. 
 A plain question can have a plain answer. Do 
 you or do you not believe in the inspiration of 
 the Bible ? ' ' I do not call that a plain question,* 
 I replied ; ' and while I have no desire to quibble 
 about words, I must yet decline to palter with 
 words in a double sense. Tell me what you mean 
 by inspiration, and I'U tell you what I believe.* 
 ' Oh,' said he, ' I see what you are at ; you want 
 to keep the word and to say you believe in it 
 after you have emptied it of all that it has ever 
 meant. Inspiration means for me that all that is 
 
S8 INSPIRATION 
 
 taught in the Bible came from God, or it means 
 nothing.' 
 
 Now this is an illustration of the difficulty 
 a liberal and reforming theologian finds himself 
 in when dealing with religious problems. There 
 are large numbers of men who refuse to believe 
 that words can have any other meaning than 
 that which they have always understood them to 
 bear, or that doctrines can be restated to suit the 
 growing intelligence of the age. Dr. Abbott 
 calls them the Conservatives in Religion — the 
 people who want to keep everything as it is. 
 That is a plain and easy policy, and is no small 
 commendation in a busy age. The same thing 
 is true of the position taken up by sceptics and 
 iconoclasts — the party who would destroy every- 
 thing, and who say that all these old doctrines 
 and beliefs are false. That also is a plain and 
 easy policy. ' To preserve everything as it is, or 
 to destroy everything root and branch, either of 
 these has the merit of simplicity and ease, appreci- 
 able by the laziest of minds in the laziest of 
 humours. But the policy of the Reformers — of 
 the party of Growth and Progress — now involving 
 partial destruction and now partial conservation, 
 is by no means of this plain, simple, easy kind. 
 It obhges them to discriminate, to give reasons 
 for destroying some things and preserving others, 
 and to justify their choice. But to discriminate, 
 
CONSERVATIVES AND DESTRUCTIVES 89 
 
 how tedious ! And to justify discrimination, how 
 dull for the reader of the justification ! ' 
 
 The orthodox people say, ' You must accept 
 the scriptures in a lump as the Word of God.' 
 Why ? Because if you once begin to weigh 
 evidence and discriminate there is no telling where 
 you will stop. But the sceptics say, ' You must 
 reject the Scriptures as the word of God in toto.^ 
 Why ? Because it is impossible to discriminate 
 between one part and another. It is not the 
 first time that the orthodox and the sceptics 
 have joined hands against the Reformers, 
 declaring that the old doctrine of the infallibility 
 of the Bible and the old methods of interpretation 
 are the only reasonable ones. So with regard 
 to the doctrine of the Inspiration of the Bible, 
 both Conservatives and Destructives are alike 
 agreed that it can only mean what they declare 
 it always has meant — that every word of the Bible 
 came from God. But the Reformers side with 
 neither — the}^ discriminate. They deny that all 
 is true or that all is false. They assume as 
 a matter of reasonable expectation that in the 
 texts of the Old and New Testaments there will 
 be found errors which it is the duty of earnest, 
 honest, capable students to discover and remove. 
 The removal or acknowledgment of these errors 
 does not prove that other portions of this great 
 literature are false. The discovery of mistakes 
 
90 INSPIRATION 
 
 and discrepancies in the gospel narrative does 
 not affect our faith in the life and character there 
 revealed — a life and character to which testimony 
 is borne, not by isolated texts, but by the New 
 Testament as a whole, and by the whole life of 
 the Christian Church. When astronomers by 
 their disputations about the spots on the sun, shall 
 succeed in blotting out the sun itself from the 
 heavens, then, and not till then, will religious 
 reformers apprehend any danger that criticisms 
 of the gospel history will efface Jesus of Nazareth 
 from the affections of mankind. 
 
 It is difficult, if not impossible, to frame a 
 logical theory of inspiration which shall adequately 
 express one's belief in the reality and permanence 
 of one of the greatest factors in human life and 
 development. My quarrel with the orthodox 
 doctrine is, not that it asserts too much but that 
 it asserts too little — ^that it is narrow and local. 
 Confining Inspiration to a book, an age, and a 
 race, and failing to take into account the varied 
 forms under which it manifests itself, the popular 
 orthodox doctrine is entirely inadequate. If 
 we believe in God as the everywhere present, the 
 everywhere quickening spirit, whose is the 
 beautiful grace by which all good is wrought, in 
 whom each man lives his little life from morning 
 until evening, whose light hghtens the ages and 
 the nations as they advance from stage to stage 
 
INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL QI 
 
 of progress, then we see that Inspiration has been 
 present with humanity through all its history, 
 beaming brightly here, showing dimly there, 
 but never absent from the seeking heart. My 
 doctrine of Inspiration is not a light which makes 
 all lands dark except Palestine, and all books 
 secular except the Bible, but one which casts an 
 interpreting ray into many a pathetic oi terrible 
 superstition by which men have felt after God 
 if haply they might find him. It is a doctrine 
 which enables me to hear the same music in 
 many tongues. This is not to deny that in some 
 tongues the music has had a volume, sweetness, 
 and force which have made that particular 
 manifestation of it peculiarly suggestive of a 
 heavenly source. But in kind the power is every- 
 where the same ; it only differs in degree. Every 
 good and holy thought, every noble deed, every 
 high endeavour, every pure aspiration, is by and 
 through so much of God as works in humanity ; 
 for without him we can do nothing. Inspiration 
 is natural to the human race, and its degree is 
 determined by character and capacity. All men 
 have it ; some more, some less, according as 
 their natures are large or small, and according as 
 they open their minds to truth and their hearts 
 to goodness. Touching some words in the Bible, 
 I do not believe them to be inspired at all. But 
 when I come to other portions language is all too 
 
92 INSPIRATION 
 
 poor to express my sense of the glory and fullness 
 of the inspiration they reveal. From what foun- 
 tain but God's Spirit could have come any one 
 of a hundred passages from both Old and New 
 Testaments that instantly flash on our minds 
 when we think of what is brightest in religion. 
 At what spring but that of the world's purest, 
 sweetest inspiration could all these men have 
 drunk whose words have sounded down the ages, 
 thrilling the hearts of untold millions as human 
 hearts have never else been thrilled ? 
 
 But what do I mean by Inspiration ? Absolute 
 freedom from error ? Not at all, for the treasure 
 is in earthen vessels — the heavenly light shone 
 through human minds and took of their colour 
 and weakness. Do I mean Infallibility ? Not 
 at all, for a man may be divinely moved to act 
 and speak and yet not act and speak with in- 
 fallibility. As a whole he may be true, but there 
 will be weakness and imperfection here and there. 
 Do I mean that these words are really God's 
 words ? Not at all. They are human words, 
 every one of them, but they were uttered when 
 the hearts and the minds of men were under en- 
 nobling influence caught by communion with God. 
 
 I do not know any better definition of Inspira- 
 tion than that given by Mr. Greg in his Creed of 
 Christendom — ' That elevation of all the spiritual 
 faculties by the action of God upon the heart, which 
 
NOTES OF INSPIRATION 93 
 
 is shared by all devout minds, though in different 
 degrees, and which is consistent with many errors."* 
 
 Inspiration is a continuous though variable 
 force in the development and progress of mankind. 
 
 There are at least three elements we look for 
 in an inspired utterance, by which we may dis- 
 criminate the pure gold from baser metal. 
 
 I. Spontaneity. By spontaneity I mean that 
 which is free, simple, and original. Anything 
 laboured, anything artificial, anything that is a 
 mere echo or platitude, shuts itself out at once 
 from the inspired. A special note of inspiration 
 is that it is not bound about by rule and custom 
 and creed, but goes back farther than these 
 to the simple feelings of the common heart, 
 to the intuitions and instincts of uncorrupted 
 human nature. It is free. It is also simple. 
 It does not deal with the obscure or temporary 
 phases of thought, nor does it study the trickeries 
 of speech. It speaks the language of the universal 
 human heart. Then it is original, but always 
 how it does not know. For genius never knows the 
 secret and cause of its finest products ; its best 
 thoughts come to it as surprises of light ; and the 
 new truths it gives to the world, it has discovered, 
 not invented. I suppose there never was an 
 inspired work yet, the source of which the author 
 could explain. There was an illumination, an 
 impulse, a suggestion from above, and the word 
 
94 INSPIRATION 
 
 was spoken which burns for ever in letters of 
 fire on the forehead of the morning sky. It is 
 true, these things came not without human effort ; 
 but no amount of human effort will account for 
 them or produce them. Every true thinker 
 recognizes that his thoughts are gifts. He works 
 to attain them, but the attainment is not the 
 result of work alone. He has seasons of dryness 
 when all his work is of no avail ; and then again, 
 there comes a renewal of life and light, from what 
 far-off sources he knows not, except that whenever 
 he is really original the source is not in himself. 
 Now, there have been men in different ages, 
 and in different parts of the world, gifted spirits, 
 strong in righteousness, and endowed with the 
 insight and the foresight of goodness, who have 
 perceived far more than their fellow-men the 
 open secret of the world ; have been more pro- 
 foundly conscious of the presence and power of 
 God, have lived more habitually in communion 
 with the Father of Spirits, who have spoken with 
 authority — the authority which belongs to wisdom, 
 character, insight, and the subordination of self 
 to the will of God. There has been in these men ■ 
 the sense of suggestion from above. Their truth 
 was not their own, but a discovery, and a gift, a 
 surprise to themselves as well as others. Such a 
 one is not his own : he is as though possessed 
 by a power greater than his will, beyond his control, 
 
SPONTANEITY 95 
 
 vaster than his imagination. This element of 
 spontaneity must be kept in mind if we would 
 gain a true idea of inspiration. 
 ^ It is not always present in a man ; sometimes 
 it leaves him. It is what old Herrick said : — 
 
 It is not every day that I 
 Fitted am to prophesy ; 
 No, but when the spirit fills 
 The fantastic panicles, 
 Full of fire, then I write 
 As the Goddess doth indite. 
 Thus, enraged, my lines are hurled, 
 Like the sybils through the world : 
 Look how next the holy fire 
 Either slakes or doth retire : 
 So the fancy cools — till when 
 That brave spirit comes again. 
 
 So also sings a nobler poet, George Herbert. 
 His health had broken down, and he had lost all 
 power of song. But 
 
 Now in age I bud again, 
 
 After so many deaths I Uve and write ; 
 Once more I smell the dew and rain, 
 And relish versing : O my only Hght, 
 It cannot be 
 That I am he 
 On whom thy tempests fell all night. 
 
 This then is the first note of an inspired soul — 
 spontaneity. He acts and speaks as under an 
 
96 INSPIRATION 
 
 impulse, which is not always with him, which he 
 did not create, but which is from above. 
 
 2. When we say of any man, that he spoke 
 or acted like one inspired, we generally imply 
 that his speech or action was characterized by 
 an exalted moral tone. We talk, indeed, of poetic 
 inspiration ; but it jars on the conscience to 
 ascribe that to any poetic utterance which is morally 
 bad. Poetry is moral — the better the poetry the 
 higher the moral tone ; the finest is like the verse 
 of Saadi, which the angels testified ' met the 
 approbation of Allah in heaven. "" ' In poetry,'' 
 said Goethe, ' only the really great and pure advances 
 us.'' Men of genius have sometimes debased 
 their genius, and written things full of vice and 
 pruriency. But not by their utterances in these 
 moods do they live in the grateful hearts of men, 
 but by quite other utterances, when they rise 
 above such moods into the fine, keen air of moral 
 truth and right. Byron's ' Don Juan ' is a work 
 of genius, but of genius which owed much to 
 frequent sips of ardent spirits. It would be 
 utterly incongruous to speak of ' Don Juan ' 
 as inspired. But when we read ' Hamlet ' or 
 * Macbeth,' we feel that those plays are full of 
 impulse received from above ; for while they 
 were not written to teach this or that moral lesson, 
 they do what is far better, they purify the springs 
 of thought and feeling, out of which morality 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF APPEAL 97 
 
 flows. In all great poems, as in all great 
 prophetic utterances and in all great pictures, 
 there is this moral exaltation, the ideals of the soul 
 are refined and uplifted. All life is ennobled by 
 Handel's ' Messiah,' by Raphael's ' Madonnas,' 
 by Shakespeare's plays, even as it is by the Book 
 of Psalms. 
 
 3. Inspiration is that which is of universal 
 application. If any utterance is only for an age, 
 and local in its interpretation, we do not regard 
 it as inspired. The Psalms, for instance, were 
 mostly suggested by local considerations, the 
 trials, the joys, the experiences of David and 
 others, under peculiar circumstances. But, never- 
 theless, we feel as we read them that they pass 
 beyond the limits of the local and the individual — 
 they belong to humanity — they are true of 
 human nature and life ever3Avhere. Or take 
 Christ's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 It was spoken at Jerusalem about Jerusalem, 
 and in a manner which seemed hmited to 
 Jerusalem. But had the prophecy been true only 
 of that city of sorrows, it would never have been 
 regarded as inspired. Whereas Christ's principle 
 was this : that the doom pronounced on Jerusalem 
 was universally applicable, and that it was but 
 a style and specimen of God's judgment every- 
 where. The judgment comes wherever there is 
 evil grown ripe for judgment, wherever corruption 
 
98 INSPIRATION 
 
 is complete. And the gathering of the Roman 
 ,eagles to the carcase is but a specimen of the way 
 in which judgment at last overtakes any city, any 
 country, and any man in whom evil has reached 
 the point where there is no possibility of cure. 
 We who have lived through the last fifty years 
 have seen the eagles gathered together in Naples, 
 in America, in France, in Bulgaria. The Lord's 
 judgment on Jerusalem has been fulfilled many 
 times — it was not simply of local but of universal 
 application. 
 
 Look at the Beatitudes, look at the parables 
 of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, 
 look at Paul's noble hymn on charity, look at 
 Isaiah's utterances ; all these are everywhere 
 true, and come home to men of all times and all 
 conditions. They touch the human heart with 
 pathos, wherever there is a heart to feel ; they 
 tell men what is fairest and noblest and divinest 
 in life, whatsoever their creed and church. They 
 are universal. We say, then, of one who is 
 inspired, that he speaks and acts with spontaneity ; 
 that there is in his words and deeds a certain 
 unmistakable moral elevation ; and lastly, that 
 his utterances are of universal significance and 
 application. 
 
 I do not say that all utterances marked by these 
 three notes of inspiration stand on the same 
 level of beauty and authority. The spark in a 
 
DEGREES OF INSPIRATION 99 
 
 Leyden jar is just as truly a manifestation of 
 electricity as the lightning flash that ploughs 
 its fiery furrow across the midnight sky ; but the 
 one is a manifestation on a much more impressive 
 scale than the other. We do not call the electric 
 spark in a Leyden jar a flash of lightning, although 
 it is that in essence ; and we do not call all those 
 utterances inspired which while possessing the 
 notes of inspiration, possess them on too small 
 a scale to win the attention. All souls that love 
 and pray and choose between right and wrong 
 are inspired ; but between these souls and the 
 great luminous names that shine as stars for ever 
 — Isaiah, Moses, Buddha, John, Socrates — there 
 is the same difference as between the spark of the 
 Leyden jar and a flash of lightning. 
 
 And as we say of scenes in nature peculiarly 
 suggestive of all-embracing life that they are 
 Divinely fair, so we say of thoughts and w^ords 
 and teachers and prophets peculiarly instinct with 
 moral grandeur, they are Divinely inspired. So 
 we say of the Bible — it is the inspired book of the 
 world ; not that it is infallible ; not that it is 
 free from error ; but that in its utterances we find 
 as we find nowhere else in like fashion, spontaneity, 
 moral exaltation, and universal significance. 
 
 But I am still asked, How may I discern be- 
 tween that which is inspired in the Bible and that 
 which is not ? To say that I must take it all 
 
100 INSPIRATION 
 
 or give it all up is as great folly as it would be 
 to say that men must either give up the use of 
 com as food or consume it husks and all. The 
 question with us is simply to what extent do the 
 utterances of the Bible make the impression of 
 inspiration on the heart ? With what decree of 
 power do they quicken conscience, and appeal 
 to what is best within us, and stir up the thought 
 of God ? There are two utterances lying side 
 by side in the Bible, one of which indeed touches 
 me to the quick, while the other is to my feeling 
 as dead and powerless as a mummy. May I 
 take the one and leave the other ? Why not ? 
 I cannot prove to you that both are alike good. 
 No one can. What a man's own heart proves 
 to him as good is the only thing that is good 
 to him. His neighbour may tell him there is 
 light in a certain utterance, warmth, and 
 heavenly food. But if when he goes to it he finds 
 neither light nor warmth nor heavenly food, 
 it will only be hypocrisy in him to pretend other- 
 wise. If he be a humble man he will be slow 
 to say there is nothing inspired in an utterance 
 which others have found helpful ; he will not 
 hastily set aside as of no value things which at 
 present are to him as the letters of a foreign 
 alphabet. He will wait ; he will investigate ; 
 he will try the discriminating power of these 
 notes of inspiration we have been considering. If 
 
DISCRIMINATION NEEDED 10 1 
 
 the utterance will not stand the application of 
 such a test he may be tolerably sure that the 
 instinctive feeling of his heart has not played 
 him false. Let us take one instance only — the 
 utterance of Jesus as given in Luke xxii. when the 
 disciples disputed among themselves which of 
 them should be greatest in the kingdom. ' And 
 he said unto them (v. 25) The kings of the Gentiles 
 exercise lordship over them : and they that exercise 
 authority upon them are called benefactors. But 
 ye shall not he so : hut he that is greatest among 
 yoUy let him be as the younger ; and he that is chief , 
 as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he 
 that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth ? is not he 
 that sitteth at meat ? hut I am among you as he that 
 serveth. Ye are they which have continued with 
 me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you 
 a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me ; 
 that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, 
 and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of 
 Israel.'' The first part of this answer presents 
 no difficulty either to the understanding or the 
 heart. It is perfectly in keeping with many other 
 sayings of Jesus ; and not only his sayings, 
 but with his whole life and character. We know 
 that the Great Teacher laid most impressive 
 emphasis on the virtues of humility and service. 
 In the washing of his disciples' feet he acted as 
 it were a striking parable which they could never 
 
102 INSPIRATION 
 
 forget. Once before, when this same dispute 
 had arisen, he rebuked his disciples by means 
 of a little child. ' He that is greatest among you, 
 let him he as the younger ; and he that is chief, 
 as he that doth serve. I am among you as one that 
 serveth' But then follow the words, 'And I 
 appoint unto you a kingdom — that ye may eat 
 and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on 
 thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.'' What 
 are we to make of such a saying ? It is quite 
 incongruous with all the rest. It seems to say, 
 humility is only necessary for a little while ; have 
 patience and be submissive now ; presently you 
 will have dominion and sit on thrones as judges 
 of the tribes of Israel. But humility and service 
 are virtues everywhere and in all places, in heaven 
 as on earth ; and Jesus cannot have meant that 
 humility would some day have its reward by 
 being exchanged for rule and power ! On the 
 contrary, he was utterly opposed to such ideas. 
 Is this then an inspired utterance out of Christ's 
 mouth, or has it crept into the narrative from 
 other sources ? Let us try it by the three notes 
 of inspiration. No one will say that it was an 
 utterance marked by spontaneity, for it was 
 just an echo of the earthly, worldly kingdom 
 with which the disciples so persistently dazzled 
 and deceived themselves as with a mirage of the 
 desert, and which Jesus so constantly condemned. 
 
JEWISH IDEALS IO3 
 
 He will have nothing to do with a kingdom 
 in which there are thrones and palaces, and again 
 and again he has to remind his disciples that 
 ' the kingdom of God is within yon.'' Is it marked 
 by moral exaltation ? So far from that, we 
 are let down by these words at once to a lower 
 level of thought and feeling, and an element is 
 introduced which is positively immoral — the 
 promise of future reward and compensation for 
 the suffering of present humiliation. Humility 
 is not a good to be sought for its own sake, carry- 
 ing its own reward and blessedness with it ; but 
 it is to be endured as the stepping-stone to proud 
 dominion. ' Sitting on thrones judging the twelve 
 tribes of Israel.'^ Is it of universal application ? 
 On the contrary, it is narrow, exclusive, local, 
 and Jewish. We know what Jewish ideals and 
 Jewish expectations were at that time. We 
 find these ideals and expectations filling the 
 disciples' minds. We know that they had no 
 place in Jesus' mind. Yet, here we have Jesus 
 reported as reproducing at second hand the 
 commonplaces of Jewish expectation. What shall 
 we conclude but that this is no part of the utter- 
 ance of Jesus at aU, since it is so painfully 
 incongruous with all else he taught and with his 
 whole character ? It is one of those Jewish 
 conceptions that have degraded the church 
 and given rise to the fanaticisms of Fifth- 
 
104 INSPIRATION 
 
 Monarchy men and others — instructive instances 
 of the ' reign of the saints ! ' And if this habit 
 of discriminating between one utterance and 
 another is called eclecticism, I will remind you 
 of a somewhat rude answer given by Carlyle to a 
 charge of teaching Pantheism — ' / care not if it he 
 Pot-theism if it he true.^ 
 
 The great test of the inspiration of any scripture 
 is its power to touch the common heart of the 
 race. David may or may not be the author of 
 the twenty-third Psalm ; but all can feel the truth 
 and inspiration of the words, ' The Lord is my 
 shepherd, I shall not want J I am told that John 
 wrote in his epistle, ' He that loveth not knoweth 
 not God, for God is love.'' Two questions arise-r- 
 hrst, did John say it ? and secondly, is it true ? 
 Now I do not know whether John said it or not ; 
 I have no means of knowing ; I have only the 
 tradition in this ancient record. But what of 
 that ? Is it true ? For me it is no matter 
 whether John said it or one writing in his name ; 
 it is equally good and true whoever said it. I 
 believe he did say it ; but if you can prove to me 
 that he did not say it, and show me that this 
 verse in his epistle was inserted in the third 
 century, or even in more recent times, and is 
 no part of the Bible at all, it makes no difference. 
 I shall say it is inspired whoever said it. It 
 comes home ; it answers to the best that is in me, 
 
THE ONE RELIGION IO5 
 
 it has the notes of spontaneity, of moral exaltation, 
 and^of universal significance. 
 
 There is, we know, one primitive and sure 
 
 Religion pure. 
 Unchanged in spirit, though its forms and codes 
 
 Wear myriad modes — 
 Contains all creeds within its mighty span, 
 The love of God displayed in love for man. 
 
VII 
 
 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 It is told of a great scientific man of our day 
 that when he first visited Rome and went into 
 the Vatican, he sat down before Raphael's ' Trans- 
 figuration ' and filled three pages of his notebook 
 with its faults. It was the most natural thing 
 in the world for him to do. How should he, a 
 physicist, approve of three figures suspended in 
 the air in defiance of the laws of gravitation ? 
 Or what could a zoologist say to an angel out- 
 rageously combining in his person the wings of 
 a bird and the legs of man ? There were plenty 
 of faults to be found, and he found them ! 
 
 Yet what an odious and repulsive task for a 
 man to set himself ! What a carping mind it 
 reveals that a man should be first of all struck 
 with the defects of a noble work of art, and not 
 with its beauty and grandeur ! What an utter 
 Philistine a man must be who could occupy him- 
 self in studying, not the genuine poetry and 
 
SPOTS ON THE SUN IO7 
 
 beautiful colouring of the picture, but its faults ! 
 ' Oh, yes,' you would answer impatiently, ' but 
 did you ever see anything more grand in its 
 conception ? Look at the power, at the spiritual 
 expression, at the grace ; do you not feel the 
 inspiration ? ' 
 
 Now you may think that I am only just such 
 a Philistine in directing your attention to the 
 mistakes in the Bible, as if a man of crooked, 
 captious mind, looking at the sun should only 
 see its spots, or another looking at a great picture 
 should only see its faults. But I should be utterly 
 ashamed of myself if that were my attitude of 
 mind. I have said much in previous lectures 
 to show you my profound sense of the value, 
 the preciousness, the inspiration, and the eternal 
 benediction of the Bible. It is because of my sense 
 of its value that I wish to put reverence for it 
 on a reasonable ground. It is because I want to 
 get it loved and honouied for right reasons that 
 I attack the wrong reasons which are put forward 
 for love and reverence. The old reasons and 
 claims have brought it into discredit, and it is 
 to prove the unsoundness of those views that 
 I direct your attention to the mistakes of the Biblel 
 For, suppose that Raphael's ' Transfiguration ' 
 had been elevated by a number of its admirers 
 into a position above all other pictures ; suppose 
 we were told that it was the only inspired picture 
 
I08 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 in the world ; suppose students of art were taught 
 that it gave us the only true scheme of colour 
 and the only right way in which to compose a 
 picture ; and that it was so perfect as to be the 
 model, in all its details, for artists in all time ? 
 Do you not think it might become the duty of 
 some honest spirit to declare that this was not 
 so, and to prove it by a study of the mistakes 
 in the picture ? Would you say such an honest 
 critic was an enemy of Raphael ? You would 
 say he was a friend. Raphael would have been 
 the last man in the world to claim infallibility 
 for his picture, or to set it on a pedestal by itself, 
 apart from all other pictures. If the ' Trans- 
 figuration ' is to be thus foolishly exalted, and 
 made the only standard of form and colour and 
 composition, then it becomes a sacred duty to 
 show that it has defects. So it is with the Bible, 
 and I need not further apply the parable. 
 
 Further, one of the very best helps to a right 
 understanding and true appreciation of the Bible 
 is to convince ourselves of the liability of its 
 writers to mistake. 
 
 It is perfectly clear that the Bible writers both 
 could err and did err. Let us take one little 
 instance — quite insignificant, which does not 
 matter in the least, and yet which is typical. 
 There are two accounts in the New Testament 
 of St. Paul's conversion brought about by a voice 
 
THE PROCESS OF ' RECONCILIATION ' I09 
 
 from heaven. In one place m the Acts we are 
 told St. Paul's conapanions heard the voice ; 
 but in another place in the Acts we are told they 
 did not hear the voice, but Paul only. That is 
 a plain contradiction, and one or other of the 
 statements is a mistake. It does not matter ; it 
 is not of the least importance. But if the Bible 
 is infallible, then it is of great importance ; for 
 in order to bolster up the infallibility of the Bible 
 you have to show that there is no contradiction. 
 Need I say that, by a curious twisting of plain 
 words, this has been done, and that the two 
 statements have been ' reconciled,' as it is called. 
 They have been ' reconciled ' over and over 
 again, and in various ways ; but only by methods 
 which you would be ashamed to apply to any 
 other book' — methods which are the opprobrium 
 of Bible criticism, and by which (as Bishop Butler 
 says) anything can be made to mean anything. 
 There is between the two statements a contradic- 
 tion as clear as can be.-"- The contradiction 
 proves nothing against the good faith of the 
 reporters — it only proves that one of them was 
 mistaken. What does it matter ? Nothing at 
 all to me ; and takes nothing from the value 
 of the story. But to the Infallibilist it means 
 much, and must be reconciled. 
 
 Look at the way in which the plain statement 
 
 1 See Literature and Dogma, p. 138. 
 
110 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 of the creation of the world in six days is explained 
 away by these ' reconcilers.' Geology put all 
 the believers in the letter of Genesis into frightful 
 confusion. First they denied the conclusions of 
 geology ; then they said ' days ' did not mean 
 * days/ but 'ages'; and now, at last, they 
 seem to have agreed that Genesis is the unfortunate 
 Jonah on board the otherwise infallible ship, 
 and must be given up to devouring storms of 
 criticism. Every other part is miraculously in- 
 spired, but this may be doubted. What miserable 
 subterfuges are these ! What does it matter if 
 Genesis is mistaken ? Nothing at all. On a 
 matter of science I should expect it to be mistaken. 
 I can read it with just as great profit as before ; 
 but if I believe every word of the Bible to be 
 inspired, why, then I am in a painful dilemma. 
 So far from believing, that if we give up the old 
 theory of the Bible we lose anything of value, I am 
 one of those who believe that the modern concep- 
 tion of the Bible is a distinct and definite gain 
 to the world, and that we are taking stumbling- 
 blocks out of the way of the influence of the 
 Bible by admitting that it contains mistakes. 
 But of this gain I will speak later on. Just 
 now let it suffice to show you that there are 
 mistakes. 
 
 Let us take a little bit from the story of the Fall 
 of Man — Adam and Eve — the apple — the serpent 
 
THE GARDEN OF EDEN III 
 
 ^-the garden. There is much in this story that 
 is suggestive ; it is true to human nature ; when 
 I read it I feel it relates my own experience. 
 But is it historically and literally true ? Is it 
 infallibly true in all its details ? Were there 
 ever such things as talking serpents, and trees 
 bearing magical fruit ? When I meet with these 
 things in other religions I know what they are — 
 more or less beautiful myths embodying man's 
 early dreams and guesses as to the origin of evil. 
 Why should I think that in Genesis I am dealing 
 with literal history ? That the serpent should 
 have found a place in early Hebrew annals is 
 perfectly natural when I remember how widely 
 serpent- worship prevails in the East. But we 
 get into hopeless conflict with science and common 
 sense w^hen we forget that this ancient story 
 is a myth and not history. Does any living man 
 believe that the whole tribe of serpents crawl 
 on their bellies as a punishment for an offence 
 committed by one of their number 6000 years 
 ago ? Why, we know that the serpent always 
 did crawl on his belly long before man appeared 
 on the scene. We can prove it, for we can dig 
 the serpent out of the pre-x\damite strata and 
 see that this was his condition thousands of years 
 ere this curse was pronounced. Does any living 
 man believe that death first invaded this world 
 when Adam sinned ? One must be ignorant 
 
112 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 of the most elementary facts of science to think 
 so. Death was present here in all its fell power 
 long previous to Adam ; here are the fossils to 
 prove it. And yet people go on telling us that 
 if Adam had not sinned man would never have 
 died. Does any living man believe that thorns 
 and thistles first appeared on the earth in con- 
 sequence of the curse ? So far from that part 
 of the curse being true — ' thorns also and thistles 
 it shall bring forth to thee ' — we know that the 
 queen of flowers, the rose in our gardens, comes 
 from a thorn, and that instead of the earth 
 yielding thistles to man's labour, it does nothing 
 of the sort, but brings forth whatever fair flower, 
 and healing herb, and life-giving plant we sow 
 therein, according to the laws of nature, which 
 are the laws of God. 
 
 Then as to the curse on labour. What hardy, 
 brave, diligent Englishman feels labour to be a 
 curse ? He knows that it is one of his greatest 
 blessings and rids him at once of three great 
 evils, poverty, vice, and ennui. It is by labour 
 we enter into fellowship with God, sharing the 
 joys of creation. ' My father worketh hitherto^ 
 and I work.'' 
 
 Labour's strong and merry children, 
 
 Comrades of the rising sun, 
 Let us sing a song together 
 
 Now our toil is done. 
 
THE FALL A PARABLE II3 
 
 No desponding, no repining ! 
 
 Leisure must by toil be bought ; 
 Never yet was good accomplished 
 
 Without hand and thought. 
 
 Even God's own holy labour 
 
 Framed the air, the stars, the sun, 
 
 Built our earth on deep foundations, 
 And the world was won. 
 
 Every part of this fivefold curse, if taken literally, 
 is proved to be contrary to fact and experience. 
 The author is speaking according to the lights 
 and conceptions of his age. But he is mistaken. 
 What then ? Is not the story of the Fall still 
 true to human nature ? Is it not in this way man 
 always wakes up to moral consciousness and 
 acquires his sense of right and wrong ? The 
 story of Adam is the story of the moral experience 
 of every human being. Childhood is the Garden 
 of Eden in which we all have wandered, happy, 
 innocent, free. But at last comes the day when 
 we consciously choose the evil instead of the good, 
 and never again can it be with us as it was before ; 
 never again can we return to that Eden, our 
 unthinking innocence. Yet it is a higher life we 
 now begin to live, and the Fall is a giant step in 
 human progress. But what if the details are fanci- 
 ful and mistaken ? Why, we ought to be thankful 
 that on the very first page of the Bible there is 
 something which plainly warns us against literalism. 
 
114 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 In the Book of Leviticus we are told that the 
 hare is unclean because it cheweth the cud but 
 divideth not the hoof. The fact is, the hare 
 does not chew the cud and the writer was in error. 
 It is not, however, of the least consequence, 
 unless I hold a theory of the Bible which compels 
 me to believe that every word is literally true. 
 
 Take two or three figures concerning the 
 Israelites and their departure from Egypt. It 
 is said that seventy souls — Jacob's family and 
 household — went down into Egypt, but at the 
 end of 170 years they had increased to three 
 millions — an utterly incredible story. And of these 
 three millions it is said that there were six hun- 
 dred thousand fighting men. Now, consider the 
 enormous commissariat difiiculties of marching 
 these three millions of people out of Egypt. The 
 moving city, twelve miles square, the two hundred 
 thousand tents, the one hundred and fifty thousand 
 oxen, the two million sheep, the three million 
 people, all marched out of Egypt in a single night, 
 all supported in the desert for forty years. We 
 are quite sure that, to say the least of it, the 
 numbers here are woefully inaccurate. 
 
 I pass over many things to notice only a 
 command given that on the capture of a certain 
 city all the men and all the married women and 
 all the little children should be put to death, 
 as likewise all the cattle, but that the young 
 
A REASONABLE VIEW OF THE PENTATEUCH II5 
 
 unmarried women should be saved alive, and 
 distributed among the soldiers and the priesthood.^ 
 Do you think God commanded that ? Do you 
 not think there is a mistake when it says God 
 did command it ? 
 
 Let no one say I am attacking the Pentateuch — 
 I am simply telling you the truth about it. I am 
 directly and indirectly attacking a theory held 
 concerning it which the Pentateuch neither asserts, 
 implies, nor endorses. And I wish to say further, 
 that when we take a rational, natural view of the 
 origin of this book, we find nothing which need 
 surprise us, nothing which calls for apology. 
 Its views of the creation of the world, of the nature 
 of God, of the history of man, of the origin of 
 evil, are similar to those entertained by other 
 peoples in the same relative grade of civilization. 
 They are simply the views of God and man and 
 the world through which any people in its develop- 
 ment naturally passes, but in which no people 
 ought to stay. That is the point. When we 
 go to the Bible without any theory of miraculous 
 inspiration we find what we should expect. It 
 is all perfectly natural, and we see in the beginning 
 of the Bible that beginning of morality and of 
 religion which is in the nature of things, and 
 which is the starting-point from which the Bible 
 moves upward and onward to something better. 
 
 1 Numbers xxxj. 
 
Il6 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 But, on the other hand, consider the difficulties 
 that harass our every step if we hold to the theory 
 that every word is true and miraculously inspired. 
 We are compelled perpetually to the disingenuous 
 twisting and turning of texts, in order to bring 
 Genesis into harmony with the facts of science. 
 We are compelled practically to be dishonest 
 with ourselves in regard to the science and the 
 inspiration of the Pentateuch. We are compelled 
 to believe that the inferior morality of the 
 Pentateuch — a morality which permitted slavery, 
 polygamy, and revenge — is the eternal right and 
 wrong of God. We are compelled to perpetually 
 apologize for God : to explain to men how it 
 could be possible and just for one who is the 
 loving, tender Father of men to-day, to have 
 ordered the wholesale cruel slaughter of defenceless 
 women, innocent children, helpless cattle, reserving 
 the young women for the lust of the soldiers. 
 
 It is not something to mourn over but to be 
 grateful for that we need no longer attempt these 
 excuses and justifications, but can say, in all 
 these the Bible is mistaken. Such a confession 
 puts ever5^thing right, enables us to use our brains, 
 to read the Bible naturally, to see with a new 
 interest how the race has been educated, and 
 brought on from one standard of conduct and 
 belief to another. 
 
 Pass on to the New Testament, and out of many 
 
THE DISCREPANT GENEALOGIES II7 
 
 instances that might be mentioned, notice only 
 two grave mistakes in its pages. Look at the 
 genealogies given by Matthew and Luke to prove 
 that Jesus was descended from the royal race, 
 the house of David. Now notice. Both Matthew 
 and Luke tell the story of the miraculous co^icep- 
 tion. They both tell us that Jesus was the son 
 of Mary without any human father. Yet they 
 both take pains to give us the genealogy of Joseph. 
 But if Joseph was not the father of Jesus, what 
 does his genealogy prove ? It no more proves 
 that he was descended from David or Abraham 
 than it proves I am. Jesus was claimed to have 
 descended from David because a man who was 
 not his father descended from David ! Again, 
 the two genealogies do not agree. Matthew and 
 Luke differ from each other over about forty 
 names. In fact, the genealogy given by Luke 
 is wholly different from that given by Matthew, 
 and the most desperate efforts of divines have 
 been unable to effect even the semblance of a' 
 reconciliation. Not only does Matthew give 
 twenty-six generations between David and 
 Joseph when Luke has forty-one, but they trace 
 the descent through an entirely different line 
 of ancestry. According to Matthew, the father 
 of Joseph was named Jacob ; according to Luke, 
 Heli. Clearly they cannot both be right, al- 
 though many ingenious hypotheses have been 
 
Il8 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 invented to explain and harmonize these singular 
 discrepancies. The most favourite of these 
 assumes that one is the genealogy of Joseph 
 and the other of Mary — a convenient idea, but 
 entirely gratuitous, and positively contradicted 
 by tlje language of the text. Either Matthew 
 or Luke is mistaken. Yet, what does it matter ? 
 Nothing. 
 
 Once more. The Apostles unanimously and 
 clearly taught and believed that the end of the 
 world was at hand, and would arrive in the life- 
 time of the existing generation. On this point 
 there appears to have been no difference of 
 opinion amongst them. People try to explain 
 their words away, but their meaning is so palpable 
 that no effort can confuse our perception of it. 
 ' The time is short' ' The Lord is at hand.' ' The 
 end of all things is at hand' ' Little children, it 
 is the last time' ' Behold, I shew you a mystery ; 
 we shall not all die, hut we shall all he changed.' 
 ' This we say unto you hy the word of the Lord, 
 that we which are alive unto the coming of our Lord, 
 shall not prevent them which are asleep' ' For the 
 dead in Christ shall rise first, and these which are 
 alive and remain shall he caught up together with 
 them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.' 
 Nothing can obscure or explain away the simple, 
 straightforward meaning of all these words. What 
 then ? History has shown that Paul and his 
 
THE SECOND ADVENT ^ II9 
 
 fellow-Apostles were mistaken in their notion 
 of what was going to happen. But we can easily 
 see how this belief coloured all their teaching. 
 The firm and living faith that a few years would 
 bring their Lord in his glory, and the fearful 
 termination of all earthly things — ' when the 
 heavens should he gathered together as a scroll, 
 and the elements melt with fervent heat ' — and that 
 many among them should be still alive, and should 
 witness these awful occurrences with human eyes, 
 and should join their glorified Master in heaven 
 without passing through the gates of death, 
 could not exist in their minds without producing 
 not only a profound contempt for all the pomps 
 and distinctions of the world, but an utter care- 
 lessness for the future interests of mankind ; 
 nor without making them indifferent to all 
 political questions and to the reform of great 
 abuses in social life. What mattered slavery if 
 the world was soon to come to an end ? What 
 interest could they feel in the Imperial system 
 and the reform of government when the King of 
 Kings was daily expected to assert his dominion ? 
 ' If the world and all its mighty and far-stretching 
 interests — if the earth and its infinite and varying 
 beauties — were indeed to be finally swept away 
 in the time and presence of the existing actors in 
 the busy scene of life, where was the use of forming 
 any new ties of kindred or affection which must 
 
,120 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 terminate so suddenly and so soon ? Why give 
 a moment's thought to the arts which embeUish 
 life, the sciences which prolong it,, or the know- 
 ledge which enriches and dignifies its course ? 
 Marriage, children, wealth, power, philosophy, 
 slavery, tyranny — what were they to men who 
 knew that ten or twenty years would transplant, 
 not only themselves but the whole race of man 
 to a world where all would be forgotten ? And 
 this conviction teeming with immense and 
 dangerous consequences, and held by all the 
 Apostles, was, we know, mistaken and unfounded. 
 There was scarcely any doctrine which they held 
 so undoubtingly, or preached so dogmatically 
 as this, and yet they were in total error. '^ 
 
 If, then, they were so misinformed and mistaken 
 in a matter so important, what confidence have 
 we that they never made a mistake about any 
 other question ? 
 
 On the other hand, I aver that it is an immense 
 gain to look at the Bible with reasonable eyes, 
 and to frankly admit that there are mistakes in 
 it. We are no longer under obligations to defend 
 what is intellectually, and it may be morally, 
 indefensible. We are no longer compelled to 
 apologize for, or explain away and harmonize, 
 the contradictions of the Bible. The man who 
 would be a Christian, but who would like to keep 
 "^ Greg's Creed of Christendom. 
 
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL DIFFICULTIES 121 
 
 his common sense if he may, says ' But must I 
 beUeve in talking serpents, and talking asses, 
 and the Tower of Babel ? What about the 
 conquest of Canaan, and these slaughterings 
 commanded by God ? WTiat about the shaking 
 dowTi of a city wall at the sound of a number of 
 rams' horns blowTi by the people ? or the staying 
 of the sun in the heavens until the battle can be 
 finished ? What about the genealogies of the 
 New Testament ? Must I believe that Jesus 
 drowned two thousand swine, or blasted a fig-tree 
 with a word ? What about the prophecies of 
 the immediate end of the world ? ' I speak of 
 these things to indicate the kind of intellectual 
 and moral burden that rests upon a man who 
 attaches Christianity to the old theory of the Bible. 
 All these things have to be defended or explained, 
 and they cannot be defended in the court of reason, 
 nor explained without a process of twisting plain 
 words out of their meaning, which is discreditable 
 both to the intellect and to the conscience. It is 
 an unspeakable gain to be able to throw off all 
 this burden, whijch neither the past nor the 
 present has been able to bear, and to accept that 
 which is true because it is true, feeling under no 
 obhgation to shut our eyes or to stop our thinking. 
 We should be glad to know the truth about the 
 Bible, and to be free from a theory of its literal, 
 historical accuracy, which breaks down on every 
 
122 MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE 
 
 page of it. It is a great gain that we no longer 
 refuse to recognize discrepancies, and no longer 
 make miracles the primary evidence of Christ- 
 ianity, as was generally done by writers of the 
 last century. No one can read Stanley's Lectures 
 on the Jewish Church, and feel that he has missed 
 anything of moral or spiritual value because the 
 miracles have vanished from the pages. You 
 may eliminate the miracles from the Gospel 
 narrative and leave untouched its religious power. 
 We do not weaken the force and inspiration of 
 the Bible by admitting its mistakes : that which 
 remains — its spiritual insight and sympathy ; 
 its record of men's search for God and cry to him ; 
 its story of the religious development of a race 
 specially endowed with the sense of God ; its 
 unique fulfilment of all moral aspiration in Jesus 
 Christ, these stand out all the more clearly when 
 once we disentangle them from theories, legends, 
 events, which in any other history we should 
 promptly set aside as of no account. 
 
VIII 
 
 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE— GOD 
 
 A GREAT many people have a theory of the 
 Bible which puts both them and it into a painful 
 position. They think that all its parts are of 
 equal value, and that its ideas and doctrines 
 are all on the same level of wisdom and authority. 
 They read Judges as they read St. John, and 
 think it is equally profitable for instruction : 
 they suppose that the teaching of Moses about 
 God, and man, and morality, is on the same 
 level as that of St. Paul, and furnishes an equally 
 safe guide for nineteenth century footsteps as 
 for the Jews in their desert-wanderings. Yet 
 they cannot help seeing that the conduct of 
 Abraham and Jacob, Samson and David, and 
 many another, would in these days be met with 
 the sternest reprobation ; while many of the 
 precepts of the Pentateuch, if now proposed as 
 the basis of legislation, would be regarded as both 
 immoral and inhuman. To square the Pentateuch 
 
124 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 with modern conceptions of theology and morality, 
 they have to make the most painful efforts to 
 explain away the plain meaning of the ancient 
 narrative, by putting a strain upon words they 
 will not bear. Disgraceful bits of history are to 
 be Understood in a spiritual sense ; awkward 
 facts in the lives of Patriarch and Judge are 
 allegorized away, and in a sense the poet never 
 intended, 'things are not what they seem.' 
 Now all this would be got rid of if men once grasped 
 the idea that we have in the Bible — teaching, not 
 all on one level but on an ascending scale ; history, 
 not of one religion but of many religions — or, 
 rather, of religion in its various stages of growth 
 and development. What we have in the Bible 
 is a more vivid and impressive picture than can 
 be found sxiywhere else in literature of the evolu- 
 tion of religion and morals on a large scale. 
 The Books of the Bible range over a period of 
 1200 years, and during that long time we see a 
 people rising out of low and barbarous conceptions 
 of God and morality, advancing by gradual growth 
 to such lofty and spiritual conceptions as were 
 taught by Jesus. In the earlier stages, therefore, 
 we have laws and doctrines which are now set 
 aside, and which, while suited to the age in which 
 they came to birth, are totally unsuited for us. 
 
 No one recognized this more clearly than Jesus. 
 In the. Sermon on the Mount, how often does he 
 
A PROGRESSIVE ELEMENT IN SCRIPTURE 125 
 
 use the phrase, ' Ye have heard that it was said 
 by them of olden time ' — but ' / say unto you^ 
 setting aside the old morality for something 
 nobler. Once the Pharisees came to him, trying 
 to catch and puzzle him with one of the old Mosaic 
 regulations about divorce. It was a regulation 
 suited for the childhood of man, but which man 
 had now outgrown. Christ answered, ' /or the 
 hardness of your hearts Moses wrote the precept,'''^ 
 that is, because ye were too ignorant, too childish, 
 and too low down in the scale for anything else. 
 What Moses commanded w^as not absolutely good 
 it was only relatively good ; it was as much as 
 men then — -in that stage of civilization — were 
 able to bear and understand. If we once recognize 
 the progressive element in the Bible, we shall 
 be relieved of many difficulties about the Bible ; 
 and, looking at it with freer and more intelligent 
 eyes, shall see it to be a more wonderful book 
 than ever, by reason that it is not all of a piece, 
 not all of equal value, but follows the natural 
 order of grow^th that the human being follows — 
 a growth. from infancy to childhood, from child- 
 hood to youth, from youth to manhood. But are 
 you going to feed the man wdth the pap-boats of 
 infancy ? Would you not expect to find a greater 
 wisdom at the end than at the beginning of a 
 long period of growth ? 
 
 1 Mark X. 5. 
 
126 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 The fact is, in the Bible there is not one standard, 
 but many standards. There is a progressive 
 theology and a progressive morality throughout. 
 In the beginning there are primitive and childish 
 views of God, which we cannot now endorse 
 without irreverence. 
 
 The earlier writers of the Old Testament 
 represent God as walking, talking, having bodily 
 form ; wrestling with one patriarch ; eating veal 
 and cakes with another ; contending, and for a 
 time in vain, with the magic of other gods ; 
 smelling the smell of meat on the fire ; getting 
 angry ; being jealous ; repenting ; sanctioning 
 fraud ; committing cruelty ; and exhibiting 
 almost every passion and imperfection of man. 
 Many of these conceptions are the simple and 
 fitting conceptions of a simple, childish age ; 
 but as we advance this passes away ; the thought 
 of God becomes slowly purified, ennobled, and 
 uplifted ; through Judges, through Psalmists, 
 through Prophets, the development goes on, 
 until we have the beautiful conceptions which 
 we find in the New Testament — i.e., God as Love ; . 
 God as Spirit ; God as Light ; God as a Father. 
 The twilight is gone, the perfect day is here. 
 
 We think none the worse of astronomy because 
 it had its first beginnings in the superstitions of 
 astrology ; we value chemistry none the less 
 because it arose out of that ignorance and groping 
 
THE CRUDE BEGINNING I27 
 
 in the dark called alchemy. So the religion we 
 profess is none the less elevated and spiritual 
 because it had its beginning in much that was 
 ignorant and superstitious. The true idea of 
 God is gradually disclosed. Man thinks oi God 
 first of all as very much like himself, as a magnified 
 man who walks in a garden, who comes down from 
 the sky to spy out what people are doing, as though 
 he did not know ; as having a human form and 
 attributes ; as being easily provoked to anger — in 
 one word, man's conception is anthropomorphic. 
 God is just a magnified man ; not, however, the 
 man of the nineteenth century, a magnified 
 General Gordon, or David Livingstone, or Dr. 
 Arnold, but a magnified man of the early centuries 
 — a magnified Caractacus, or a magnified Romulus, 
 or a magnified Abraham, with all the defects, 
 the passions, and the ignorance of such characters. 
 What a long way do we travel from such crude 
 conceptions of God to the conceptions we find in 
 John and Paul. The distance between the two 
 is immense, yet the one passed by a slow process 
 of growth into the other. 
 
 I. Look at this first of all as depicted in the 
 various names for God we find in the Bible. 
 For names are not mere labels or numbers by 
 which you may know A from B. Names in all 
 primitive ages are descriptive : they tell us what 
 a man or a thing is. Man, for instance, means 
 
128 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 ■ one who thinks ' ; husband is ' the house-band ' ; 
 the earth is that which is ' eared,' the old Saxon 
 name for ploughing ; daughter is * the milking- 
 maid ' ; father means ' protector ' ; sister, ' one 
 who pleases or consoles.' Thus did the old words 
 carry with them moral or natural meanings. So 
 in the Bible the names given to its heroes are nearly 
 always descriptive either of their character or 
 their exploits or the hopes aroused by their appear- 
 ance.- Look at Abraham ; his name passes 
 through three stages, each of which tells us 
 something. First he is Ab, the father ; then he 
 is Ahram, the lofty father ; then he becomes 
 Abraham, the father of multitudes. Jacob is 
 the ' supplanter,' who becomes transformed into 
 Israel, ' a Prince of God.' David is ' the darling,' 
 and so forth. 
 
 Now look only at three of the names for God 
 we find in the Bible. 
 
 In the Pentateuch there are two distinct 
 accounts of creation, and two distinct sources 
 of information blended together, but often contra- 
 dicting each other, yet which we can easily unravel, 
 by noting that in each case a different name for 
 God is employed. In the first account of creation 
 given in Genesis i.-ii. 4, God is called Eloah ; 
 but in the second account given in Genesis ii. 4, 
 to the end of chapter iii, God is called Jehovah. 
 
 I need not pause now to point out the dis- 
 
THE NAME ' ELOAH ' 129 
 
 crepancies between these two narratives ; I only 
 want you to notice that there are two narratives, 
 and that we are deaUng here with two sets of 
 documents. But in naany places in the Pentateuch 
 this difference is to be observed, so that we 
 have come to speak of Elohistic and Jehovistic 
 documents. 
 
 Now what does the first name for God mean ? 
 Eloah simply means ' the strong one.' It comes 
 from the root el, the strong, and was man's first 
 name for God. It is from the same root which 
 expresses in Hebrew the strength of the mighty 
 forest bull, the strength of the ancient oak. It 
 is the same word as ' Allah,' which, in the religion 
 of Islam, has produced a profound sense of the 
 presence of God. ' Allah,' God is great, is the 
 cry of the Moslem. It is an idea which may lend 
 itself to many errors, but it is true and helpful 
 as far as it goes. You may find traces of it in 
 various Bible names. Thus, Beth-^/ means the 
 stones of God, and Veni-el, the face of God ; so 
 that we find not only the legendary Adam, but 
 Jacob, 2000 years later, speaking of God as 
 ' the strong one.' It was not a very exalted 
 conception of God, but it was a very natural one 
 for man in his infancy. That which first produces 
 an impression of awe upon his mind is the might 
 and majesty of the forces around him — the storms, 
 the wind, the lightning, the seasons^ the scorching 
 
:t3Q EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 sun, the blight, the pestilence, the tornado, the 
 awful sea, the towering mountains, the rushing 
 rivers. Everywhere he sees the evidence of some 
 \yondrous energy, some mighty force, which is 
 resistless, and against which he can do nothing ; 
 and he falls down and worships it as strength. 
 
 But from this true, although inadequate idea, 
 we pass on to another — the idea which is embodied 
 in the second name — the name revealed to Moses 
 — ' I am that I am ' — or Jehovah. Here is a great 
 and important advance. Jehovah means not 
 strength, but Eternal, that which was, that which 
 is. This is the name which expresses to us 
 the self-existence, the unchangeable simplicity 
 and unity of God which is not to be represented 
 in any outward form. 
 
 The strength, the power of God, might be and 
 was set forth in all the different shapes of sacred 
 stones, sacred tree, and sacred animal. But the 
 Eternal is not these. Eternity, whatever it be, 
 is something deeper and vaster. It cannot be 
 represented by a graven image. It is the 
 Unchangeable, the Invisible. It is not a magnified 
 man with parts and passions ; it is spiritual ; 
 it forbids idolatry. 
 
 I pass over other names which, as their thoughts 
 enlarged, the Jews came to give to God — 
 Jehovah-Sabaoth— that is, the Eternal — who is 
 the leader of the hosts of heaven and the hosts 
 
THE NAME FATHER I3I 
 
 of earth, the Ruler of principalities, powers, and 
 dominions ; and later on, the Holy One. I pass 
 over those names of God which we find in the writ- 
 ings of the final oracle of the Apostolic age, whose 
 title and whose date may be fairly questioned, 
 but whose profound insight into these problems 
 cannot be denied. St. John has not told us that 
 God is a being of three persons, nor that he is a 
 being with personality at all. In St. John's 
 definition we are told that God is spirit, and 
 that God is Light ; but most emphatically and 
 repeatedly that God is Love. It is a definition 
 which has never been reasserted in any creed ; 
 but it is a definition which is worth more to the 
 human heart than all the creeds put together. 
 I leave all these to notice only the name by 
 which Jesus bade us think and speak of God, 
 and which he invariably used — the Father. From 
 one point of view it may be said that Jesus came 
 into the world to give men this new name for God. 
 To proclaim a new name was his mission. ' / 
 made known unto them thy name.''^ ' Our Father 
 which art in heaven : hallowed he thy name.^^ 
 The Father — our Father. That is the great name 
 of the Supreme, a name as much greater than the 
 Strong, or the Eternal, or the Lord of Hosts, as 
 he who revealed it is greater than Abraham, Moses, 
 or David. The name of God to us is ' Our Father ' ; 
 
 1 John xvii. 26. 2 Matthew vi. 9. 
 
132 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 the love, compassion, far-reaching watchful care of 
 a Father is the figure which best brings before us 
 the love, compassion, and watchful care of the 
 Ruler of the Universe. 
 
 Here, then, in the names used at various stages 
 to represent the thought of God, we see a wonder- 
 ful growth and development. 
 
 2. Notice the same law of growth leading 
 up to the monotheistic idea. We are accustomed 
 to think of the Jews as separated from the 
 idolatrous nations around them by their worship 
 of the one only God, and we quote the first of the 
 ten commandments, ' Thou shalt have no other 
 gods before me.^ But the ten commandments, 
 even if we assign them to Moses, were of late date 
 in the history of man, and even they did not 
 announce the truth of monotheism — one only 
 God, ' Thou shalt have no other gods before 
 me.' Then there were other gods, but they were 
 not to be Israel's gods ; there were other gods, 
 but none of them before Israel's God. Israel's 
 God was the first and the greatest of the gods ; 
 but for a long time in Bible history there is no 
 denial of the reality of other deities. The God 
 of the Hebrews was in the first instance the God 
 of the Hebrews, not the God of any other people : 
 stronger and wiser than other gods ; but in all 
 senses a local god, the god of a tribe, and not 
 the god of the whole earth. Thus in Exodus 
 
* THE GOD OF THE HEBREWS ' I33 
 
 we have the passage, * Who is like unto thee, 
 Jehovah, among the gods ? ' In the first Book of 
 the Kings we read, ' There is no god like thee in 
 heaven above or on earth beneath' When Moses, 
 by Jehovah's command, repairs to Pharaoh, to 
 demand that he let Israel go, he does not represent 
 God as the one sole God of the universe, he simply 
 represents him as the ' God of the Hebrews.'^ Let 
 us stand for a moment with Moses in the presence 
 of Pharaoh, and see him holding his magical 
 rod in his hand. When Aaron flings down his 
 rod and it turns into a serpent, the priests of 
 Pharaoh's religion throw down theirs and they 
 turn into serpents also. Aaron possesses no 
 power which is not common to the other magicians, 
 except that the God of Moses and Aaron is a 
 greater God than the god of Pharaoh. Moses 
 did not doubt the existence and the reality of 
 the gods of Egypt. There is no trace of that 
 whatever. Until after the time of David, there 
 was no question as to the reality of the existence 
 of the divinities of the surrounding nations. 
 Moloch, Dagon, and Astarte were real gods. 
 The only point was that Jehovah, the God of 
 Israel, was above all the others, a greater god 
 than the rest. That was proved satisfactorily 
 to Moses and Aaron when their serpent ate up all 
 the other serpents. Their magicians could turn 
 their rods into serpents, but only one serpent 
 
134 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 could devour the others. This showed the 
 supremacy of the God of Moses. When a king 
 went to war, it was not simply a war between two 
 peoples and their kings, but it was a war between 
 their gods also ; for Dagon on the one side and 
 Jehovah on the other, were supposed to fight 
 just as much as the Philistine king and the king 
 of Israel. Precisely the same is true in Homer's 
 Iliad. There the Greeks and Trojans were fighting 
 in the plains ; but the air was thick with the gods 
 of Olympus, urging on and inspiring the champions, 
 guiding the dart of one and the spear of another, 
 overthrowing the horses and chariots. We find 
 these ideas throughout ancient times, and they 
 are as apparent in the early parts of the Bible 
 as in the Greek and Roman mythologies. 
 
 All along in the history of the Jews we hear 
 of their continual relapse into idolatry, but it was 
 not until after David that the idea dawned upon 
 them that the gods of the nations round about 
 were no gods at all. The God whom Moses serves 
 is the God of a family and a tribe — ' the God of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' He is not asserted 
 to be the only God : the power of rival deities is 
 not denied until we get to such writers as Micah 
 and Isaiah. Some of the very texts which are 
 now quoted to prove a monotheistic belief on 
 the part of the Jews, in reality prove just the 
 opposite. Jehovah is ' King of Kings ' and 'Lord 
 
THE CHARACTER OF GOD I35 
 
 of Lords ' — * a great King and above all gods.'* 
 The lords and gods over whom he is supreme 
 must exist, or such words would mean nothing. 
 The conception of the one living and true God 
 was a plant of slow and gradual growth in the 
 Hebrew mind. As civilization advanced and 
 men rose to higher and nobler levels of life, so 
 their thoughts of God were purified and enlarged ; 
 and in Isaiah and the later prophets we have the 
 truth of monotheism as clearly revealed as in the 
 Pentateuch it is unknown. 
 
 3. Notice the same law of growth in men's con- 
 ceptions of the character of God ; in the develop- 
 ment of the moral and spiritual nature of God. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the childhood of 
 the race will have the same thoughts of the 
 Supreme Moral Perfection as we cherish who 
 live in its manhood. The ideas of gentleness, 
 of patience, of universal love, of unswerving 
 beneficence, of untiring goodness, are impossible 
 to men in a low state of development. They 
 think of God only as they can. He is strong, 
 but he is vindictive ; he gets his way by 
 unscrupulous means ; he has favourites ; he is 
 jealous ; he is only partially informed of what 
 is going on in the earth ; he is just the imperfect 
 Being which man imagines when he is groping 
 his way out of darkness into dawn. This is what 
 we find God to be in the earlier chapters of Bible 
 
136 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 history, and no one need be shocked to discover 
 what is eminently natural in the Bible record 
 of man's religious development. It is only because 
 of the stupid way in which men will regard all 
 the parts of the Bible as of equal value, and speak 
 of the God of Adam, and Abraham, and Moses 
 as if he were the same as the God of Paul, Peter, 
 and John, that it is necessary to point out in 
 particular cases how far the earlier conception 
 of God falls short of moral perfection. 
 
 Take the morality involved in the story of the 
 Fall of man. Take the God who creates this man 
 and woman, and puts them into the garden without 
 the slightest particle of experience, without know- 
 ing that they had an enemy in all the universe, 
 and then makes not only their own fate, but the 
 fate of the world depend on one ignorant act, 
 he himself knowing that the serpent was cunning, 
 yet giving them not a hint. Such a thought of 
 God is only possible in a rude age. Look at the 
 Exodus and see what kind of a God deals with 
 Pharaoh and with the children of Israel. He 
 declares beforehand to Moses that he is going to 
 harden Pharaoh's heart, so that, in spite of 
 everything Moses may do, Pharaoh will not 
 consent to the departure of the Jews. He takes 
 upon himself the responsibility of Pharaoh's 
 future conduct. He distinctly endorses lying 
 at the outset. He tells Moses to say that they 
 
IMPERFECT IDEAS OF GOD I37 
 
 want to go three days' journey into the wilderness 
 to sacrifice to their God. If they can only get 
 three days' start by a trick, all will go well. 
 Moses is not to say anything about running away. 
 God tells him to deceive Pharaoh and to get his 
 consent under false pretences. And for what 
 Pharaoh does, and cannot help doing because the 
 Lord has hardened his heart, he punishes the whole 
 land of Egypt, nien, women, and children. Not only 
 that, but he punishes with disease and death all the 
 poor innocent cattle throughout the whole realm — 
 punishes them for what he has made one man do. 
 
 A little later on we read that God ordered 
 the Jewish people, when they were ready to start 
 on their journey, to borrow every valuable thing 
 they could of their neighbours, and carry it off. 
 Thus they are commanded to rob as well as lie. 
 
 Of course, you will say, Moses was mistaken 
 when he spoke of these commandments as coming 
 from God. He was really speaking in his own 
 name, and applying to that critical state of 
 affairs the stratagems and the morality natural 
 to his age. Most true : but what then becomes 
 of the infallibility of the Bible, and the equal 
 value of all its parts ? Besides, what we have 
 to consider is this — that the Jews saw no 
 incongruity in attributing such commandments 
 to God ; it fitted in with their conceptions of 
 God, and they were not shocked, as we should be, 
 
138 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE-»-GOD 
 
 by such orders given forth as Divine injunctions. 
 Look at the injunction in Exodus xxii. ' Thou 
 shalt not suffer a witch to live.'' This command- 
 ment given by Moses, in the name of God, has 
 resulted in the hanging, burning, stoning, kilhng, 
 and torturing, in one way and another, of hundreds 
 and thousands of innocent persons. Now we know 
 that there is no such thing as witchcraft, and yet 
 we are shown God beHeving in it. 
 
 To us, all these are marally degrading concep- 
 tions of God, according to which he is not perfectly 
 just, true, and good. But they are conceptions 
 natural to such a people as the Jews, in their 
 then state of civilization ; they could think no 
 other. The point is, that they did not stay there, 
 and the Bible does not stay there. Always this 
 people, with their deep religious instinct, are 
 feeling their way to something better ; ' never 
 are they satisfied ; the ideal is enlarged, purified, 
 uplifted, and their thoughts are widened with 
 the process of the suns. Mingled with their 
 degrading views of God, there are other views 
 of God in the Pentateuch which are grand, 
 noble, and subhme, and a great deal that 
 the highest and most lovely civilization in any 
 •age need not be ashamed of or apologize for. 
 But we must discriminate. We must not sup- 
 pose that every time the writer says, ' Thus 
 saith the Lord,' that the Lord really did speak 
 
CONTRASTING IDEAS OF GOD I39 
 
 thus ;^ and we must learn to notice the brighter and 
 darker thoughts of God contending with each other 
 for the pre-eminence, until the brighter prevail, 
 so that in the prophets all these degrading views 
 of God disappear. The Jewish race has this glory, 
 that we see in it the slow but sure development 
 of the God-consciousness which is in all men, 
 culminating at last in the man Christ Jesus. 
 Mark the grovv'th, notice the immense distance 
 between such passages as these : — 
 
 I. 'And Noah offered 2. ' Thou desirest not 
 hurni-offerings on the altar, sacrifice, else would I give 
 And the Lord smelted a it. Thou delightest not in 
 sweet savour, and the Lord burnt- offering.' 
 said in his heart, L will 
 not again curse the ground 
 for man's sake.' And — 
 
 Or between these : 
 
 I. * Ye shall offer a 2. ' The sacrifices of 
 
 burnt- offering, a sacrifice God are a broken spirit, a 
 
 made by fire, of a sweet broken a^id a contrite heart, 
 
 savour unto the Lord, thir- God, thou wilt not 
 
 teen bullocks, two rams, despise.' 
 and fourteen lambs.' And 
 
 1 No scholar at this time of day would construe such phrases 
 as ' Thus saith the Lord,' and ' The word of the Lord came,' as 
 implying a supernatural revelation. Not in Palestine only 
 but in all Eastern nations it was the custom to attribute any 
 specially good impulse directly to a supernatural source. 
 
140 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — GOD 
 
 Or these : 
 
 I. * The Lord tepented 2. ' The strength of 
 him that he had made man.' Israel is not a man that 
 And — he should repent.' 
 
 Or these : 
 
 I. ' And the Lord said 2. ' Lord, who shall 
 unto Moses, Speak now in abide in thy tabernacle ? 
 the ears of the people, and Who shall dwell in thy 
 let every man borrow of holy hill 9 He that walketh 
 his neighbour, and every uprightly, and worketh 
 woman of her neighbour, righteousness, and speak- 
 jewels of silver and jewels eth the truth in his heart.' 
 of gold. And the Lord 
 gave the people favour in 
 the sight of the Egyptians. 
 And they spoiled the 
 Egyptians.' And — 
 
 What totally different conceptions of God 
 are here set forth ; what a progress has been made 
 in the course of a few centuries from the God of 
 Samuel, who ordered the infants and sucklings 
 to be cruelly slaughtered, and the God of Jesus, 
 who said ' Suffer the little ones to come unto me, 
 and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven.' Think of the God of Moses, to whom 
 the smell of roasting flesh is a sweet savour, 
 and the God of Micah, who proclaims, ' What 
 doth the Lord require of thee, man, but to do justly. 
 
THE LINE OF DEVELOPMENT 141 
 
 to love mercy y and to walk humbly with thy God ? ' 
 How thankfully we trace the line of develop- 
 ment, and how much more rich and full of meaning 
 is the Bible when we read it in this light, and see 
 God working and waiting through the ages to 
 teach men the truth about himself as they were 
 able to bear it. The history revealed in the 
 Bible is the history of the growing purity and 
 lustre with which the thought of God has beamed 
 forth on human souls. Patriarchs who were 
 possessed with a sense of the unseen ; lawgivers 
 who strove according to their light to rule the 
 earth by a better order than men had yet known ; 
 prophets who heard in stillness and spoke in 
 thunder ; psalmists whose words tremble with 
 the consciousness of the majesty and mercy of 
 God — all had their part in educating the percep- 
 tions of the human race, till at last men had 
 advanced to the position when they could take 
 in the teaching of Christ about a Father in heaven. 
 The partial and fallible conceptions of God in 
 the earlier parts of the Bible belong to its essence ; 
 they illustrate the history of the evolution of the 
 idea of God. But from the earliest times there 
 was a yearning, a hungering, a looking forward to 
 something better ; the dawn slowly broadens 
 into day, and we have finally the perfect idea of 
 God given to us by Jesus, the Impersonation of 
 Divine Grace and Truth. 
 
IX 
 
 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE— MAN 
 
 When you catch a ray of light in a prism it 
 Ijreaks up into various parts, and the colours of 
 the rainbow are seen lying side by side, melting 
 into each other. ' The burnished flaming arch * 
 that o'erstretches the whole heaven, is perfectly 
 set forth in your three-sided strip of glass, no 
 larger than a man's finger. A single tiny beam 
 of sunshine, caught in this manner, illustrates 
 and explains the vast and perfect rainbow spanning 
 the sky from north to south. 
 
 In the same way, the life of any single human 
 being contains within itself a history in miniature 
 of the human race as a whole. The stages in 
 the progress of the individual : the ignorance, 
 innocence, and helplessness of childhood ; the 
 beauty, dash, and enthusiasm of youth ; the 
 patience, wisdom, endurance, and power of 
 manhood, are a perfect picture of the development 
 of mankind. 
 
MAN BEGINS AT ZERO I43 
 
 The old theology represents man as having been 
 created perfect, from which condition he fell 
 away. The new theology, truer to the facts of 
 nature, and reading the Bible with more 
 enlightened eyes, represents man in his first 
 appearance on the earth as an infant, ignorant, 
 innocent, helpless, and from that point moving 
 towards perfection. Man begins where the infant 
 begins, at zero, at nothing, and his history is a 
 constant progress towards a better state. The 
 race has its childhood, its youth, and its manhood ; 
 and if I wanted to symbolize these three stages 
 of growth in three Bible names, I should select 
 Adam, David, and St. Paul. In Adam you have 
 the race in its infancy ; in David, its beautiful, 
 passionate, wayward youth ; in St. Paul, its wise, 
 strong, and disciplined manhood. 
 
 One immense advantage which follows from 
 reading the Bible in the same way we read any 
 other book is this, that its earlier portions are 
 seen to be eminent^ natural and fall in with what 
 we know from other quarters about the infancy of 
 the human race. The old myth of a perfect moral 
 condition and a full-orbed manhood, followed 
 by a gigantic fall which brought ruin upon the 
 race, is seen to be a later theological conception 
 forced upon the narrative. If we take the story 
 as it stands, it is all of a piece with what anthro- 
 pology has told us about primitive man ; and as 
 
144 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MAN 
 
 we follow the story in the Bible of man's develop- 
 ment, it harmonizes with the record outside its 
 pages. 
 
 I. I want you to notice that we have in the 
 Bible the story of man's growth in civilization. 
 
 A great many people are alarmed as to the 
 conclusions of Mr. Darwin and others on the 
 origin of man. But, however far back we may 
 trace man's physical nature, from whatever earlier 
 forms it may be thought possible to derive the 
 bodily frame which we possess, no one can go 
 farther back or deeper down than the statement 
 in Genesis, ' The Lord God made man out of the 
 dust of the earth.'^ It is thought man is humiliated 
 by the supposition of his development from some 
 lower form of animal life. But he cannot have a 
 humbler origin than the dust of the earth. ' The 
 first man is of the earth, earthy '^ says the great 
 Apostle, and so says the latest voice of science. 
 
 The words ' Adam,'' and ' homo,'' and ' htimanus,^ 
 all alike mean ' out of the ground.' The ladder 
 on which man climbs to heaven has its first rung 
 on the earth. We begin low down in the scale, 
 and from that we move away to the intelligent, 
 the moral, and the spiritual. 
 
 It is true that on the first page of the Bible 
 we have a declaration about man which is one of 
 the divinest things ever spoken, ' God made man 
 
 1 Genesis ii. 7. ^ i Cor. xv. 47. 
 
THE IMAGE OF GOD I45 
 
 in his own image. ^^ There is nothing in all Scrip- 
 ture more beautiful, more inspiring, or more 
 suggestive than this. It is the secret of all that 
 is noble in human nature and in human history. 
 But, like other great truths announced in ancient 
 times, the world was not ready for it. It was 
 a seed which sank into the ground and remained 
 hidden there until Christ came and quickened it 
 into vitality. We have not yet grasped its full 
 meaning ; not yet do we understand all that is 
 meant by the image of God ; not yet has human 
 nature developed to the full its divine capabilities. 
 We have to look for the meaning of this statement, 
 not to man as he was first made, but to man as he 
 came to the flower of perfect manhood in Jesus 
 Christ. It is my faith that the image of God 
 was there in man from the beginning ; but it 
 was there as the oak is in the acorn, so that if 
 you would know what the oak is, you must not 
 look at the acorn at all, but at what it becomes 
 after centuries of growth. 
 
 Further, this glorious revelation about man soon 
 drops out of sight. It is only found in the first 
 of the two accounts of creation given in Genesis. 
 
 The second account, beginning at Genesis ii. 4, 
 says nothing of man made in God's image ; we 
 are on a lower level of inspiration, and listening 
 to a narrator who sees things from another point 
 of view — the point of view, not of the prophet 
 1 Genesis i. 27. j^ 
 
146 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MAN 
 
 who discerns what this creature, man, is capable 
 of, but of the historian who sees what he is. 
 
 And what is he ? Modern science tells us that 
 the first man was not at all that perfect, exalted 
 moral being depicted in Milton's ' Paradise Lost,' 
 but was originally an ignorant, naked savage. 
 That was his first state, and that is how he is 
 presented to view in Genesis. The life of Adam 
 was the life of a South Sea islander in the Pacific. 
 At its best it is a life sweet and idle, in a land so 
 fruitful that no labour is required for its support, 
 and a climate so genial that no provision is 
 necessary for shelter. It suits the islanders, 
 who are mostly pulp, morally and mentally — 
 the human jelly-fish, without muscle or fibre ; 
 but you and I would sicken of it in a week, as we 
 would sicken of a week with Adam in the garden 
 of Eden. As he is painted for us in Genesis, 
 Adam was a creature of small intelligence and 
 feeble will, having no moral strength, succumbing 
 to the first temptation, worshipping a fetish in 
 the form of a serpent, as they do in the South Sea 
 islands to-day. What is called his fall was his 
 waking up to discern for the first time between 
 good and evil ; and, so far from a fall, was a giant 
 step in human progress. His expulsion from the 
 garden to get his bread by the sweat of his brow, 
 so tar from a punishment, was a benediction, 
 since only by having to battle with nature, and 
 
PROGRESSIVE CIVILIZATION I47 
 
 endure the stern necessity of hunger, could he 
 ever emerge from the ignorance and helplessness 
 of his first savage state. 
 
 From that point the Bible shows us man 
 advancing from stage to stage of civilization. 
 After the first naked, helpless, savage state, 
 we are shown man as a hunter, capturing and 
 slaying animals, and living largely by the chase. 
 ' Ninirod was a mighty hunter before the Lord.'^ 
 Then, from chasing wild animals, came the 
 taming of certain animals for domestic use — sheep 
 and goats, oxen and camels. Men from hunters 
 became shepherds. We have the two stages or 
 two employments in conflict with each other 
 in Esau and Jacob. Esau was the hunter, Jacob 
 was the shepherd ; and the shepherd represented 
 a more advanced stage of civilization than the 
 hunter. But the shepherd's was a wandering 
 life, without any other house than the moving 
 tent, and was not sufficient for man's wants. 
 There grew up out of it the arts of agriculture : 
 men learned to plant and reap, and we read of 
 ' seed-time and harvest''^ This represented a still 
 more advanced civilization ; and it has been 
 suggested that the story of Cain and Abel is 
 just a parable of the conflict between the wandering 
 shepherd and the settled husbandman, the nomad 
 tribes and the agriculturists. 
 
 1 Genesis x. 9. 2 Genesis viii. 22. 
 
148 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MAN 
 
 We have a hint given us as to the invention of 
 ironwork and music by the mythical children of 
 the mythical Cain : * Tubal-Cain, a sharpener of 
 every instrument of copper and brass ; Jubal, the 
 father of all such as handle the harp and pipe.^^ 
 Next, people are gathered together in villages and 
 towns. We read of ' fenced cities,' and from life 
 in towns, we get commerce and merchandise : 
 we read of ' Zebulun dwelling at the haven of the 
 sea,^^ which was a harbour for ships, and of 
 ' the Midianitish merchantmen who passed by.^^ 
 Society became more and more complex ; man 
 advanced, step by step, in the arts of life and in 
 the refinements of civilization, according to a 
 law of progress which is as clearly seen at work 
 in the Bible as it is in all secular history. Nothing 
 can be more in accordance with fact and experience 
 than the development of man as depicted in the 
 Bible ; first the savage, then the hunter, then 
 the shepherd, then the agriculturist, then the 
 craftsman, then the congregating of people in 
 towns, and out of all this the growth of commerce. 
 You will also notice, side by side with this develop- 
 ment, the growth of the family into the clan 
 or tribe, and the growth of the tribe into the 
 nation. I do not desire to lay too much stress 
 upon this correspondence between the Biblical 
 and scientific accounts of the growth of man 
 
 ^Genesis iv. 21-22. ^ Genesis -xh-x.. 13. ^(^^^^5/5 xxxvii. 28. 
 
GROWTH IN INDIVIDUALITY I49 
 
 in civilization, for the Bible is not a primer of 
 science ; but at the same time it is interesting and 
 instructive to notice that the order of progress 
 indicated by the one is the order indicated by 
 the other. It makes the Bible of far greater value 
 when we see that its story of man is not the story 
 of a once perfect being, ruined by a trivial offence, 
 but of a being whose course from the first moment 
 of breath until now has been of slow but sure 
 progress. 
 
 2. Notice that we have in the Bible the story 
 of man's growth in Individuality. 
 
 The idea of individuality, the sacredness of 
 the individual life, the inestimable preciousness 
 of each human soul, the doctrine that every man 
 has a right to be himself, and that every man is 
 of value to God — this idea scarcely exists in the 
 early part of the Bible and has no prominence. 
 The absence of such an idea accounts for human 
 sacrifices ; it was because Isaac had no right in 
 his own life and did not belong to himself, but to 
 his father, that he and Abraham saw nothing 
 unnatural in his proposed death. 
 
 The absence of such an idea accounts for the 
 cheapness in which human life was held, for 
 the wholesale slaughter of the Canaanites, women 
 and children as well as men at arms, for the 
 destruction of the families of the men who had 
 been convicted of crime, as Korah, Dathan, and 
 
150 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MAN 
 
 Abiram ; it accounts for slavery and polygamy. 
 
 In all the ancient world this remarkable want 
 is apparent, a true idea of the individuality of 
 man, an adequate conception of him as an 
 independent person, a substantial being in himself, 
 whose life was his own and who had natural rights 
 of his own. Man always figures as an appendage 
 to somebody else — the son to the father, the 
 father to the chieftain, the wife to the husband, 
 the slave to the master, the subject to the monarch. 
 He is the function or circumstance of another. 
 In the early civilizations of Greece and Rome, 
 as well as Israel, the individual was nothing, 
 the family was everything. Society was not a 
 collection of individuals, but an aggregation of 
 families. The unit of society was not, as it now 
 is, the individual man, but the family. So if 
 the head of a family was a criminal, his wife, 
 children, and slaves, who had no rights apart 
 from him, were all supposed to be involved 
 in his guilt, and were punished with his punish- 
 ment. In a public execution the criminal's 
 family was put to death. 
 
 There was, in fact, aU over the world a totally 
 different conception of human rights from that 
 which now prevails. Thus the law of Lycurgus, 
 for the destruction of weakly infants in Sparta at 
 their birth, would have been impossible had 
 there not been a very different conception of the 
 
DEFECTIVE IDEAS OF INDIVIDUALITY 151 
 
 rights of the human being in his own hfe from 
 that which now exists. With us, the rights of 
 man commence at his birth, and an infant an hour 
 old is recognized as having a moral and legal 
 right of property in his owti life which the whole 
 world cannot take away from him. Had that 
 been the received idea in the age of Moses, the 
 wives and children of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram 
 could not have been sacrificed as they were. 
 It was an idea too great even for Moses. It is 
 an idea so self-evident to us that we can hardly 
 conceive of society without it, and we are apt to 
 suppose that it must have been equally self- 
 evident to any human being, in any age, who had 
 the simple exercise of his reason. But all history 
 shows, as well as the Bible, that so far from this 
 idea having been always obvious to the human 
 understanding, it is a plant of slow and gradual 
 growth. It is a defective idea of individuality 
 we see set forth among the Jews. But we also see 
 its purification and development. It was the 
 glory of the Prophets that they brought a better 
 thought of man to light. 
 
 Never yet in the world's history, before the 
 days of Isaiah, had a man been more precious 
 than gold I^ Nothing had been so cheap as human 
 life. But far away in the distance the prophets 
 saw a day, when a man would be a treasure above 
 
 1 Isaiah xiii. 12. 
 
152 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MAN 
 
 price ; it was their glory that they looked forward 
 to a time when the question should be asked, 
 * What shall a man profit if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul ? '^ 
 
 As the story advances from Moses to the 
 later prophets we see the idea of individuality 
 growing. Each man is responsible for his own 
 deeds only. In the days of Ezekiel it would have 
 been impossible to put a man's wife and children 
 with him to death for crimes that he alone had 
 committed, since that prophet taught ' The soul 
 that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not hear 
 the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father 
 hear the iniquity of the sonJ^ What a long way 
 we have travelled from the reckless treatment 
 of human beings in the days of Moses, to the 
 teaching of Christ about the value of one sheep 
 and one lost piece of silver ! Christ saw that 
 each human soul was in distinct personal relation 
 to God. He saw that God had a thought of 
 beauty about each vile sinner ; a care and a 
 purpose for him which forbade his being treated 
 with contempt, or as of no account. He was a 
 child of God, made in God's image, and therefore 
 unspeakably precious. 
 
 It is this idea which is the true basis of our 
 modern democracy ; it is the vitality of all the 
 political movement of the future. No doubt the 
 
 1 Matt. xvi. 26. 2 Ezekiel xviii. 30. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN 153 
 
 idea of individuality may, and has, run into 
 extremes, but it is an idea destined to bear much 
 precious fruit. Now this idea came not from 
 the Old Testament, where at most it is only a 
 prophetic hope, but from the New Testament, 
 where it is a living, burning message. Heathenism 
 had no such notion of man as man. Judaism 
 had it not. The ancient Republics were strangers 
 to it, for they were nothing but oligarchies built 
 upon slavery. It came with power into the world 
 for the first time when it was revealed that it 
 was not for the high, not for the philosophical, 
 not for the wealthy, not for kings, or nobles, 
 or patricians, but that it was for man as man, 
 for each soul of man, that Jesus poured out his 
 soul unto death. Man, God's child ; God, man's 
 heavenly Father ; Christ living and dying to uplift 
 the outcast and the beggar — this was the gospel 
 of Individuality. It is a gospel which the Bible 
 slowly unfolds, until we hear Christ saying, 
 possessed as he was with a sense of the unspeakable 
 value of man as man, though he be slave or criminal 
 ' / am come to seek and to save that which was lost.^^ 
 The dignity and value of man as man is the 
 ruling idea of our nineteenth century civilization. 
 It is that which gives life to whatever of good 
 there is in Secularism ; it is the secret of what 
 vitality there is in Comtism. When Secularism 
 
 1 Matt, xviii. 1 1. 
 
154 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MAN 
 
 speaks of the rights of man, it is simply translating 
 the language of the Bible into its own dialect ; 
 and when Comtism magnifies the idea of humanity, 
 it but echoes the teaching of Jesus Christ. It 
 has been the special cry of the modern Reformer 
 that it is not as king, or as peer, or as a star of 
 refined life, or even as a cultivated or educated 
 person, that man is great, but that he is great 
 in himself ; that every man has in him the dignity 
 and excellence of human nature, and is an in- 
 dependent being having inalienable rights. 
 Listen to Shelley : — 
 
 Yon sun. 
 Lights it up the great alone ? Yon silver beams, 
 Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch 
 Than on the dome of kings ? Is mother-earth 
 A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn 
 Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil ? 
 Yet every heart contains perfection's germ : 
 The wisest of the sages of the earth. 
 That ever from the store of reason drew 
 Science and truth, and virtue's deathless tone, 
 Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, 
 Proudly sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued 
 With pure desire and universal love, 
 Compared to that high being of cloudless brain, 
 Untainted passion, elevated will 
 Which death might alone subdue. 
 Him, every slave now dragging through the filth 
 Of some corrupted city his sad life. 
 Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, 
 Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense 
 
THE BIBLE AND THE IDEA OF HUMANITY I55 
 
 With narrow schemings and unworthy cares. 
 Or madly rushing through all violent crime. 
 To move the dead stagnation of his soul, — 
 Might imitate and equal. 
 
 Where did the poet get this idea ? Out of 
 the Bible, however reluctant he might be to own 
 it. It does not exist elsewhere. We know the 
 history of this idea, as we know the history of a 
 scientific idea, a discovery, or an invention. 
 The very men who reject the Bible are indebted 
 to the Bible for the most valuable thing they 
 have to teach. It is instructive to see how fuU 
 the world has become of this idea of humanity 
 when once disclosed ; how it exults in it when 
 once it is understood. Often it is distorted and 
 often exaggerated ; but, however coloured and 
 discoloured by human thought, it is a saving idea 
 which has taken possession of the w^orld, and 
 di\ndes ancient from modern societ}^ by an 
 immeasurable gulf. 
 
 But while Christ's doctrine of man has revolu-- 
 tionized society, it has done so by the gradual 
 influence of an unseen spirit, not by rules and 
 regulations. There is, for instance, no express 
 prohibition of slavery, either from the lips of 
 Jesus or his Apostles. John Wesley said that 
 * slavery is the sum of aU \dUainies ' ; but it is 
 doubtful whether Paul thought slavery to be a 
 particularly dark evil. The Apostles did not see 
 
156 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MAN 
 
 how far the principles they were teaching led them. 
 But the New Testament gave to the world an 
 idea of man side by side with which slavery could 
 not exist. 
 
 Still more striking is the victory of this idea 
 over the ancient sentiment in regard to marriage 
 and the relation between the sexes, involving, 
 as it did, the degradation of woman. 
 
 Polygamy disappears. Woman is made the 
 spiritual equal of man. No prohibition is issued : 
 no rule is laid down. But the idea of individuality, 
 in the course of time, won its way — the idea that 
 every woman, as well as every man, has sacred 
 rights — an independent existence, an individu- 
 ality of her own, a nature more precious than gold. 
 
 Nor has the development of this idea come to 
 a close. Still we do not value men as we should. 
 Still we think with contempt of the peasant, 
 the slave, the criminal, the negro. Still selfish- 
 ness and pride cheat us into the belief that, in 
 one way or other, we are superior clay to the 
 ignorant, the dull, and the superstitious. Still 
 we find it hard to believe that man is made in 
 God's image ; but when we do once believe it, 
 when the world realizes its full meaning, then 
 will come the long looked for golden age, and then 
 ' up springs Paradise around.' 
 
X 
 
 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE— MORALITY 
 
 When the idea of evolution first seized upon 
 the world it was thought to ignore, if not to deny, 
 the agency of God in creation. If the perfect 
 and complete horse did not spring into existence 
 in a moment, at the fiat of an Almighty will, 
 it was said that the Almighty did not make the 
 horse at all. If man came up from lower stages 
 of animal existence by successive generations 
 of growth, then it could not be true that God 
 made man in his own image. Orthodox divines 
 could not conceive that God made the horse at 
 all, unless he did it in a particular way ; nor that 
 he was the Creator of man, unless man was 
 called forth instantaneously. They said that 
 such a theory of the process of creation did away 
 with the Creator. But is it less wonderful and 
 less worthy of the wisdom of God that he should 
 create slowly and gradually instead of suddenly 
 and all at once ? The means, the how of creation 
 
158 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 implies no opinion one way or the other as to the 
 source of creation. Ought God to seem to us 
 less or more real and august, because he works 
 by the method of evolution, which is in harmony 
 with all our works, rather than by another method 
 of which we have no analogy in human experience ? 
 
 So people have found it hard to believe that 
 God has been the teacher of man, unless he gave 
 man the perfect religion and the perfect morality 
 at the beginning. They are shocked when they 
 hear that it is a very imperfect conception of God 
 we have in the Pentateuch and a very imperfect 
 moral ideal. When Mr. Matthew Arnold tells 
 us that we have in the Old Testament a spiritual 
 God, and a spiritual religion, and a lofty morality 
 gradually and on an immense scale discovering 
 themselves and slowly becoming, and not as in the 
 popular view, ready made of precise dimensions, 
 many cry out ' Atheist ! ' But where is the 
 atheism ? Is God less real and wonderful because 
 he teaches men gradually and as they are able to 
 bear it, rather than flashing the full light of noon- 
 day upon them all at once ? Shall we say in our 
 ignorance, unless God taught men by a particular 
 method we will not believe he taught them at all ? 
 Let us be at once more humble and more scientific. 
 Let us study the facts before we frame our theories 
 as to his methods. 
 
 Studying the Bible, then, as we study nature. 
 
MANY MORAL LEVELS 159 
 
 not to make it square with preconceived theories, 
 but simply to find out the facts and then let the 
 theories grow out of the facts, we learn that man's 
 moral instruction is in line with God's methods 
 of working in all other directions. The perfect 
 form, the perfect morality is not at the beginning, 
 but at the end. There is not one only moral 
 standard in the Bible, but many standards. 
 The morality of Jacob is bn a lower level than the 
 morality of Moses, and the morality of Moses is 
 far behind that of Isaiah. David has not that 
 lofty ideal of conduct we see in Hezekiah, and 
 Hezekiah is not to be compared with St. Paul. 
 There is growth throughout, and the distance from 
 the Ten Commandments to the Beatitudes of 
 Jesus is immeasurable. The glory of the Bible 
 record is this — not that Genesis is as useful a 
 moral guide as the four Gospels, but that 
 there is constant progress. The precepts at the 
 beginning are faulty, the morality is defective, 
 but there is a perception in the minds of the 
 successive heroes of Jewish history that something 
 better may be attained. All its noble spirits are 
 marked by this — that they look forward, that 
 they are dissatisfied with things as they are, 
 that they see, as in a dream, a fairer social state 
 and a nobler morality drawing them on. 
 
 I take it that this is always the work of inspira- 
 tion ; not that the inspired man is infallible. 
 
l60 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 or sees the complete and perfect moral truth, 
 but that he rises in moral stature a little above 
 the level of his times, and discerns, earlier than 
 his fellows, the next stage in moral progress. 
 In the Jewish religion and morality there was 
 something over and above the actual letter of the 
 law ; there was also a principle of progress in the 
 system ; an inner spirit and movement ; an 
 impulse which tended strictly in one direction. 
 The dispensation looked out of itself : it looked 
 forward ; and the prophets were always painting 
 glowing pictures of a better and brighter day 
 which should appear. The belief in a better 
 rule of life on earth was the standing prophecy 
 of the Jewish religion ; it did not belong as an 
 individual gift to particular persons, but dwelt 
 like a guiding spirit in the nation, inspiring it 
 with an ideal which dwarfed the present state — 
 a good in the distance, towards which it was 
 advancing. When the Jew sinned he knew he 
 had sinned, and when he obeyed the law he knew 
 that he was not yet perfect. His vision overlooked 
 the immediate present to fix upon a remote horizon 
 which was illumined with a mysterious glory, 
 and gleamed with a moral beauty and perfection, 
 when violence should no more be heard in the 
 land, and greed and passion should be so subdued 
 that the lion should lie down with the lamb. 
 Thus while the Divine, unseen spirit of religion 
 
DUTY RELATIVE l6l 
 
 made use of an imperfect moral standard — the 
 only one for which civilization was then ready — it 
 was slowly educating men up to a higher standard ; 
 and while God, as it were, accommodated himself 
 to the childhood of man and to a defective idea 
 of right and wrong, he was at the same time 
 eradicating it and preparing the way for some- 
 thing better. 
 
 Now in judging the various moralities of the 
 Bible, we must remember that all prescribed duties, 
 tables of commandments, and rules of conduct are 
 relative. They are none of them the absolute 
 and perfect morality ; the things commanded or 
 forbidden are right or wrong under the circum- 
 stances ; they may under one set of circumstances 
 be right and under another wrong. It is true 
 there are eternal principles of morality, which 
 are the same for all ages ; but their interpretation 
 varies, and the rules by which they are carried 
 out are modified from time to time according 
 to the changed conditions of social hfe. Duty 
 is relative to knowledge and ability. Those 
 savage races in Central Africa, through which 
 Mr. Stanley has been making such a perilous 
 journey, are not to blame because they do not 
 love their enemies, but hate them unto death. 
 They know no better. They are to be pitied 
 but not blamed. They are in the same condition 
 as the Jews when Moses said to them, ' Thou 
 
l62 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy. '''^ 
 The Jews had no knowledge and no faintest 
 conception that it was their duty to love all men ; 
 and they are not to be blamed for hating their 
 enemies, because in their then state of transition 
 they knew and could think no other. Forgiveness 
 of enemies was a thought impossible in those days 
 and therefore not a duty. The thought slowly 
 grew. Even so great and noble a teacher as 
 Plato knew it not, and commended the Athenians, 
 above all the people in Greece, because they had 
 manifested to their enemies the Persians ' a pure 
 and heartfelt hatred.' That was an Athenian's 
 duty in the time of Plato, as it was a Jew's duty 
 in the time of Moses. 
 
 Duty then is relative to knowledge : it is also 
 relative to ability. What a man cannot do, 
 is no sin for him to omit. The command is 
 ' Bear ye one another^ s burdens ' ;^ but suppose 
 a man is a helpless cripple, and suffers daily 
 from distressing sickness, how can he fulfil the 
 duty of burden-bearing ? Duty is also relative to 
 circumstance and opportunity. ' He that provideth 
 not for his own family,'' says an Apostle, ' is worse 
 than infidel,''^ and no duty is more generally binding 
 than this. But when John Rogers went to the 
 stake for conscience' sake, he left his family 
 unprovided for. Was it his duty to provide so 
 
 1 Matt. V. 43. 2 Qal, vi. 2. ^ \ Tim. v. 8. 
 
OBSOLETE DUTIES 163 
 
 absolutely for his family, that he must deny his 
 conscience in order that he might live to be their 
 support ? The relativity of Duty must be borne 
 in mind when we judge the morality of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 We need neither be shocked nor surprised 
 when we find duties commanded to fulfil which 
 would be criminal now. ' Thou shalt not suffer 
 a witch to live.'^ The command to stone to death 
 unruly and disobedient children, on the simple 
 accusation of their parents — such things in these 
 days would be cruel, horrible, and impossible. 
 In Deuteronomy xiv. 21, we read — ' Ye shall not 
 eat of anything that dieth of itself : thou shalt give 
 it unto the stranger that is in thy gates that he may 
 eat it : or thou may est sell it unto an alien. '^ How 
 does such a way of getting rid of bad meat recom- 
 mend itself to your conscience ? Precepts like 
 these betray a very defective morality. 
 
 Let us take the case of slavery. Slavery is 
 inculcated and legislated for in the Pentateuch 
 and recognized as moral, and in those days it 
 was moral. It was a distinct advance in humanity 
 on the old practice ; it was relatively better than 
 that which preceded it. Slavery grew out of 
 the question — what are we to do with prisoners 
 taken captive in war ? At first it was the custom 
 to massacre them indiscriminately : every war 
 
 1 Exodus xxii. 18. 
 
164 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 was a war of extermination. But by and by a 
 more humane thought took hold of men ; this 
 indiscriminate slaughter of helpless prisoners 
 came to be regarded as too shocking, and they were 
 made slaves instead. It was a step forward in 
 morality and a gain to civilization. 
 
 The same is true of Polygamy, intolerable as 
 the idea is to us. It was at the time a gain to 
 civilization and an advance in morality. If you 
 carefully trace the growth of social life, you will 
 find that there are lower stages than Polygamy. 
 There was a time when human beings herded 
 together promiscuously, and there were no ties 
 binding any particular woman to any particular 
 man ; there were no permanent families ; there 
 was not the shadow of wifehood. But Polygamy 
 represents a higher stage of morality : it is a 
 recognition of some sort of binding tie between 
 men and women, and a new sort of family relation. 
 It is man's first step out of barbarism, and, 
 relative to his knowledge and circumstances, 
 marked a stage of moral progress. We have out- 
 grown it, but we can look back upon it as having 
 had its place in the evolution of morality. 
 
 Is Jacob then to be blamed because he was a 
 Polygamist ? Not at all. Such a conception 
 of the family and of the relations of the sexes 
 was not wrong for him, and we are foolish to expect 
 that on such a question he should be before his 
 
CHRISTIAN ETHICS 165 
 
 time. But that which was not wrong in the 
 Patriarchs would be unspeakably wrong in us. 
 The morality which is good for the negro in 
 Central Africa is not good for the civilized man. 
 Let us turn to the Sermon on the Mount and 
 hear Jesus saying : ' Ye have heard that it was 
 said to them of old time .... hut I say unto you,'' 
 etc.^ This is how the Great Teacher prefaces his 
 instruction on five points of niorals and conduct. 
 Taking up the questions of murder, adultery, 
 oaths, retaliation, and the scope of human love, 
 he shows that the ancient rule is not large enough 
 for the children of the newest time. Thought, 
 feeling, and civilization have advanced, and 
 demand a more spiritual morality. The old rule 
 was sufficient for the age in which it was uttered, 
 and remained sufficient for many a succeeding 
 age ; it was as much as men could then take in : 
 but man has since made progress, and now 
 Jesus proceeds to expound a higher law. In 
 another place he says, ' Moses for the hardness of 
 your hearts gave you commandments which were 
 not good '^ — that is, which were not absolutely 
 good. They were good for the age and time and 
 circumstances ; but they passed away when men 
 reached a higher stage of civilization. The Jews 
 under Moses could not have understood the lofty 
 spiritual teaching of Jesus ; they needed something 
 
 1 Matt. V. 21. .2 Mark x. 5. 
 
l66 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 rougher, and on a lower level of thought and 
 feeling. But you cannot have the higher stage 
 of growth without the lower. Is the Bible, then, 
 of less moral value to us because we see in it a 
 growing morality ? Not so, but it is no longer of 
 equal value in all its parts. If we assert that the 
 morality of the Pentateuch belongs to a more 
 elementary stage of human life than the morality 
 of the Sermon on the Mount, we simply assert 
 that the one is less profitable for our instruction 
 than the other. And yet the examination of the 
 lower stage in the Bible is of value because it 
 gives us a profound conception of God as an 
 Educator, training with Eternal Patience the 
 races of men into ever higher knowledge. 
 
 Notice, as a specimen of his teaching on other 
 questions, how Jesus deals with the ancient law 
 of Retaliation — Lex Talionis. The Mosaic law 
 ran — ' // a man cause a blemish to his neighbour, 
 as he hath done, so shall it be done to him, breach 
 for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.^^ And again, 
 with awful, horrible minuteness, ' Life for life, eye 
 for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning, wound 
 for wound, stripe for stripe.''^ Now this is a rude 
 and early conception of justice, which we find 
 in all primitive races. Man's first notion of 
 justice is, like for like. To retaliate in the same 
 manner is the only way to punish the criminal ; 
 
 1 Lev. xxiv. 20. . 2 Exodus xxi. 24-25. 
 
LEX TALIONIS 167 
 
 and revenge, according to a recognized law, is 
 an advance upon a state of society in which 
 criminals go unpunished. In this way we see 
 man's sense of justice struggling into shape. 
 But it was very imperfect, and gave rise to many 
 evils. You have heard of the vendetta which 
 flourished so long in Eastern Empires and still 
 is found in Corsica, the duty of the living relatives 
 of a man who has been murdered, or even killed by 
 accident, to revenge the death of the murdered 
 one. Life for life cries the wild justice of revenge. 
 
 A little advance is made upon this in the 
 Mosaic law, by the provision of Cities of Refuge 
 for men who had killed by accident, or as we should 
 say in case of justifiable homicide. If they reached 
 the City of Refuge before they were caught they 
 could not be put to death ; yet if they were 
 caught before they reached the city, the pursuers 
 were justified in killing them. It was still very 
 barbarous ; but it was the effort to climb a little 
 higher than the first naked, unconditional precept 
 of ' eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' 
 
 When we have advanced to the book of Proverbs 
 we have reached higher ground. ' // thine enemy 
 he hungry, give him bread to eat ; and if he he 
 thirsty, give him water to drink : for thou shalt 
 heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord 
 shall reward thee.^^ 
 
 1 Prov. XXV. 21-2. 
 
l68 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 The writer here is a whole world ahead of Moses, 
 and has a totally different conception of duty. 
 
 Next, listen to Jesus after he has quoted the 
 Mosaic precept — ' But I say unto you, Love your 
 enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to 
 them that hate you, and pray for them which 
 despite fully use you.^^ 
 
 Humanity has at last come to its flower ; the 
 moral ideal is wonderfully exalted ; love, mercy, 
 and tenderness have taken the place of revenge. 
 Popular critics of the morality of the Old Testa- 
 ment apply the coarsest possible argument to 
 this subject. They think it enough to point to 
 a rude penal law, such as the law of retaliation, 
 to the wholesale slaughter of the Canaanites, 
 to the cursing Psalms, to the treachery of Jacob, 
 to the drunkenness of Noah, to the adultery of 
 David, and it at once follows that this is the 
 morality of the Bible. But this is to judge the 
 sculptor from the broken fragments of stone. 
 
 It is not the morality of the Bible unless it is 
 the morality to which the Bible leads up in the 
 end. The morality is to be tested by what it 
 became in Jesus, not by its previous stages of 
 growth. The morality which permitted retaliation 
 and polygamy was the morality of an inferior 
 and subordinate stage of human existence, and 
 this stage passed from use and sight as the higher 
 1 Matt. V. 44. 
 
A PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH 169 
 
 emerged into view. The popular critic adheres to 
 a class of commands which were stepping-stones to 
 higher things ; but the morality of the Bible is 
 in what it became in its finest examples, and not 
 in the preliminary stages. God in Old Testament 
 history was working towards a spiritual religion 
 and a spiritual morality. The Mosaic law was 
 just as far as an unenlightened people could go ; 
 it was, indeed, a little in advance of the times ; 
 yet when you assert that it was imperfect you 
 state a fact. But there were germs of something 
 nobler within it, there was an inner design which 
 you must also consider, a tendency, a principle 
 of growth, by which the nation was brought up 
 inch by inch, to higher levels of moral feeling 
 and perception. There was the consciousness 
 with the nobler spirits of Judaism that life must 
 be urged on to conformity with a fairer vision. 
 Look at David. Nothing that you can say of the 
 murder of Uriah and the connexion with Bath- 
 sheba can be too severe. You condemn his 
 conduct with indignation, and you are right, 
 but so does the Bible. When Nathan, the prophet, 
 said, ' Thou art the man' all the avenging furies 
 of David's conscience began to sting. But you 
 will notice that this sort of crime on the part 
 of an Eastern prince was quite common, and up 
 to this time had been very leniently treated. 
 Never before had a prophet dared to beard 
 
170 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 such a prince, and say, ' Thou art the man.'' It 
 is a landmark in the progress of moraUty. And 
 David is different from other oriental kings in 
 this, that he knows that he has done wrong. 
 He had reached a higher conception of duty than 
 others, and therefore he could not sin and be easy 
 about it. It was not public opinion which 
 tormented him, for public opinion in his age 
 would have easily excused his offence ; it was 
 conscience rising above the age which toimented 
 him, which compelled him to subterfuges and 
 duplicities, and at length wrung from him the cry, 
 ' Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, God.'' Such 
 a thing as this could scarcely have happened 
 in any other country and court at that time, 
 or in many a succeeding age. 
 
 It marks a great character, to take a higher tone 
 than that of his time or nation ; and although 
 David fell, with him it was a fall, and not the 
 ordinary level of his life, nor the path which he 
 recognized as the right one. The same dark 
 deeds might have been done by a Pharaoh or a 
 Herod, and they would have been forgotten long 
 ago : little noticed by the subjects, never reproved- 
 by a prophet, and causing not a moment's uneasi- 
 ness to the monarch. But to see an Eastern 
 autocrat miserable, tormented, punished, repent- 
 ing, because of an act which any fellow- sovereign 
 would have dismissed as a clever trick, this was 
 
MORAL VALUE OF THE BIBLE I7I 
 
 altogether strange, and showed a man rising in a 
 moral sense to a higher level than the accepted 
 level of his age ; and so helping fonvard. as by a 
 prophetic spirit, the moral standard of mankmd. 
 In the Bible, then, we have a growmg concep- 
 tion of morality. We see the idea m its rude 
 beginnings, only half articulate, emerging with 
 many a struggle, from the lieshly and the earthy ; 
 we see it in various stages of growth ; we see it in 
 its glorious and unique consummation in Jesus 
 Christ. So it does not matter how many mistakes 
 we find out in the Bible, nor does the imperfection 
 of its heroes take away from its significance. 
 For so long as the world wants to know what 
 morality is, and how to get it, and how men rose 
 out of an inferior morality and reached the high 
 level of Paul and John, the Bible wiU hold its own. 
 The idea is in other ancient books ; but in the 
 Bible it is plainer and easier to come at than am'- 
 where else, and incomparabh' more impressive. 
 The Bible has the genius for morality, for righteous- 
 ness, for truth, justice, and love, and for making 
 us feel what they are, and giving us an enthusiasm 
 for them. It is true the ideal of morality we 
 cherish now would have been impossible in the 
 infancy of the human race. Xo one would have 
 understood it. Had it been revealed it would 
 have done more harm than good. But from the 
 infancv of the race, we are shown the law of 
 
172 EVOLUTION IN THE BIBLE — MORALITY 
 
 progress at work ; and along that line of moral 
 development man steadily advances — sometimes, 
 indeed, turning back, but always repenting with 
 tears and shame and new resolution — slowly led 
 on by God from one moral conquest and one moral 
 ideal to another, until the great Son of Man 
 appears with a conception so lofty, so beautiful, 
 so spiritual, so perfect, that the world still fails 
 of its achievement. But we have a prophetic 
 hope in our hearts that we shall not always fail ; 
 and as once again the Christmas bells begin their 
 jo5rful chime, we renew our effort and cry : 
 
 Ring out wild bells to the \\ild sky. 
 
 Ring out old shapes of foul desire ; 
 
 Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 
 
 Ring out the thousand years of old, 
 Ring in the thousand 3^ears of peace. 
 
 Ring in the vaUant man and free. 
 The larger heart, the kindher hand ; 
 Ring out the darkness of the land. 
 
 Ring in the Christ that is to be. 
 
XI 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 John Stuart Mill speaks with a touch of 
 scorn of those who fancy the Bible is all one 
 book. For, while it is a matter of convenience 
 to have the writings of Isaiah, Solomon, Paul, 
 and John bound up in the same covers, the 
 arrangement is not without grave disadvantages. 
 It has led people to forget that these books were 
 written by very different authors at very different 
 times, and representing very different periods 
 of enlightenment, and different stages of morality 
 and religion. It is only as we remember that 
 the Bible is not one book of equal value in all its 
 parts, but a library consisting of the remnants 
 of two great literatures — the Jewish and the 
 early Christian — that we have found the true 
 key to its interpretation. 
 
 And yet, as the author of Natural Religion 
 has pointed out, while it is a great mistake to 
 think that the Bible is all one book, it is perhaps 
 
174 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 a still greater mistake to think that it is not one 
 book, or that it has no unity. From first to last, in 
 poem and parable, in history and drama, in 
 prophecy and in precept, it is concerned with 
 the same things. 
 
 Its various books are linked together by the 
 presence of a few leading ideas of immense im- 
 portance to the welfare of mankind. 
 
 In some of the books these ideas are only in 
 germ, or in an early stage of growth, while in 
 others we see thern in their full development. 
 * Certain large matters are always in question, 
 and the action moves forward with a slow evolu- 
 tion, like the denouement of a play, through a 
 thousand years of history.' The later books are, 
 in a very true sense, the fulfilment of the earlier, 
 as the noonday is the fulfilment of the dawn, 
 and the man is the fulfilment of the child. If 
 we take up the Shakespearean fancy and say 
 that the life of the individual passes through 
 various stages, we may notice how widely different 
 is the lover making a sonnet to his mistress' 
 eyebrow, from the infant muling and puking 
 in his nurse's arms ; or the Justice of the Peace, 
 full of wise saws and modern instances, from the 
 whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining 
 morning face. Yet the various stages, so widely 
 different from each other, are bound together 
 in a very real unity and make one life. So it is 
 
THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE I75 
 
 that there is a unity in every national Uterature, 
 notwithstanding the distance between its first 
 early ballads and its latest and ripest authors. 
 In like manner there is an unmistakable unity 
 in the Bible which makes of its various parts 
 a living whole. 
 
 From one point of view it is true that there is 
 no such thing as the religion of the Bible, but 
 that there are many religions in the Bible. Yet 
 it is a mistake to think that there is not one religion 
 in the Bible, although it is nowhere systematized 
 or drawn out into the articles of a creed. We have 
 in the Bible the record of man's continual search 
 for God, that search taking on ever new and 
 higher forms, and advancing along one definite 
 line of growth and progress. Only when we speak 
 of the religion of the Bible, we are bound to think 
 of it, not in its crude and early stages, but what 
 it was aiming at and became in its last and finest 
 examples. The end and not the beginning is the 
 test of Bible religion : what it is in the beautiful 
 flower, and not what it is in the rough, hard, 
 unattractive seed. 
 
 But the rehgion of the Bible, what it is the Bible 
 is after, is very generally misconceived. Many 
 people think that the religion of the Bible is the 
 religion of heaven and hell, and that it is a book 
 which teaches chiefly the littleness and worthless- 
 ness of this life and the greatness of the life to 
 
176 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 come — only valuable because it shows us how 
 we may, after we have done with life on earth, 
 escape the pains of hell and secure the bliss of 
 heaven. Nothing could be a more grotesque 
 caricature. In the Old Testament scarcely any- 
 thing is said about a future state at all. It 
 does not appear that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
 had any conception of the immortality of the soul, 
 or of life continued after death in another world. 
 Moses is silent about it ; Samuel never refers 
 to it ; and even in the prophets of later times 
 there are no clear declarations of a future state. 
 It was not until the return from captivity in 
 Babylon, where th€ Jews had come in contact 
 with the disciples of Zoroaster, that the thoughts 
 of heaven and hell began to take hold upon their 
 minds. Even then, such laboured pictures of 
 the state of the dead, and the rewards and punish- 
 ments meted out to them, as we find in Homer, 
 Plato, Virgil, and Dante are entirely absent 
 from Jewish literature. Not that the belief in 
 rewards and punishments is wanting, but that 
 men are rewarded and punished here and now. 
 It is this present life with which patriarchs and 
 prophets are concerned : how to live in peace 
 and prosperity ; how to get God's will done on 
 earth. It is not until we reach the New Testament 
 that the thought of a future life becomes part 
 of the teaching of religion, although it never 
 
OLD TESTAMENT CHRISTOLOGY I77 
 
 assumes the prominence with Paul and John 
 that it has done since with their successors. They 
 do not dwell upon it as a motive of conduct ; 
 the basis of their preaching is not * Flee from the 
 wrath to come.'' We find no elaborate descriptions 
 of the future state. A few simple affirmations 
 about it suffice the Apostles. The Bible is not a 
 book about the state of the dead, but about 
 the conduct of the living. 
 
 Or, take the Christology of the Old Testament, 
 which is supposed to run through its various 
 parts and unite them to the New Testament, 
 welding the whole into one book. If we find 
 distinct prophecies of Christ in Genesis and in 
 the succeeding books which are all fulfilled in 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ-idea constantly 
 appearing through a thousand years of literary 
 effort, then undoubtedly these books have the 
 unity which comes from being linked together 
 by a golden thread of Messianic prediction. 
 That these books are linked together by common 
 ideas I as firmly believe as I firmly disbelieve 
 their Christology. Manifestly, it is more and 
 more clearly seen that these predictions of Christ 
 were never in the minds of the writers at all, 
 but are an afterthought ; and that men have found 
 them in the Old Testament because they have first 
 of all carried them there. Coming to these ancient 
 writings with their minds filled with the thought 
 
178 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 of Christ, they have seized upon passages which 
 they could apply to their Master, and have 
 concluded that this, of course, was their original 
 application. ' The words of a genius, such as 
 Shakespeare, have an ever-germinant significance, 
 and constantly find new applications in modes 
 of human life which Shakespeare could by no 
 means have imagined.' Many ancient words 
 which first had only a local bearing are now seen 
 to have a secondary and world-wide bearing. 
 But it was simply the local meaning which was 
 present to the mind of the writer, and their 
 wider prophetic meaning is given to them after 
 the events of which it is supposed they speak. 
 The words of Jacob on his death-bed, ' The sceptre 
 shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come, 
 and to him shall the gathering of the people be,^^ 
 are often quoted as a miraculous instance of 
 prediction uttered 2000 years before the Christian 
 era. But the Messianic idea had not yet risen' 
 among the Jews : it was an idea of much later 
 birth than Jacob ; and if, as I think probable, the 
 Pentateuch was not given to the world in its 
 present shape until 450 years B.C., how can we 
 be sure that we have here the very words of Jacob, 
 and not some gloss of the later editor to whom 
 the Messianic idea was famihar ? But, setting 
 that consideration aside, let us ask, Have we here 
 
 1 Genesis xlix. 10, 
 
MISTAKEN MESSIANIC IDEALS I79 
 
 a translation on which we can rely ? The fact is, 
 this is one of those difficult and obscure passages 
 of the Old Testament about which no two scholars 
 seem agreed. The Revised Version gives three 
 alternative readings in the margin, while other 
 authorities still further enlarge the number. 
 It would seem that the right rendering of the 
 passage is as follows : ' The sceptre shall not 
 depart from Judah, so long as the people resort 
 to Shiloh (the national sanctuary before Jerusalem); 
 and the nations shall obey him J To fasten on these 
 words a Christological meaning is the desperate 
 resort of theologians, who must find in the Old 
 Testament, willy nilly, texts to support their 
 preconceived doctrines. 
 
 Or, take the apphcation of the well-known 
 chapter, Isaiah liii., to Christ. We can aU see 
 how marvellously it answers to the character, 
 suffering, and work of the Son of Man ; nor are 
 we wrong in thus transferring it to our Master. 
 But it is another question whether this was its 
 original historical scope. The subject of this 
 chapter is some martyred servant of God, recog- 
 nizable by the Jewish exile in allusions here made 
 to him, but who this man of sorrows was, whether 
 Hezekiah, Josiah, the writer himself, or Israel as a 
 whole, we cannot say. But we have no reason to 
 think the application we make of these touching 
 verses to Christ was at all intended by the prophet. 
 
l8o THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE' 
 
 His words were larger than he knew. There is a 
 well-known passage in Plato's Republic, descriptive 
 of the career which would be necessary to prove 
 a love of virtue for its own sake, and showing 
 such a startling resemblance to the general outlines 
 of the life and death of Christ that it is just 
 as impossible for a Christian in reading it to keep 
 such appHcation out of view as it is in reading the 
 chapter from Isaiah.^ Both these voices from 
 the past are in a very true sense prophecies of 
 Christ ; that is, they show an inspired idea of 
 what perfect purity, love, and devotion must 
 undergo in a world of sin. But if the one writer 
 is to be credited with consciously predicting 
 the historical Christ, there is no reason why we 
 should deny this to the other. 
 
 The fact is the Christology of the Old Testament 
 is altogether fanciful ; and exists only in the 
 minds of those who are committed to a certain 
 theology. What can be more absurd than the 
 application of that noble love-poem, the Song of 
 Songs, to Christ and his Church ! It is the travesty 
 of interpretation. According to this method of 
 treating the Bible men have caught at any 
 isolated expressions which, by ignoring the context, 
 could be forced into a Messianic allusion ; and 
 
 1 ' In such a situation the just man will be scourged, racked, 
 fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering 
 every kind of torture, will be crucified.' — Plato's Republic, 
 IL 362. 
 
SEVEN LEADING IDEAS l8l 
 
 by the same method, the Bible may be made to 
 predict anything — the career of Napoleon the 
 great, or the downfall of Napoleon the little. 
 And indeed there are prophet-mongers who find 
 all about the Napoleons in the Bible. Let us 
 leave this unprofitable method of interpretation 
 for something more sober and soHd. 
 
 The leading ideas which give unity to the Bible, 
 which appear more or less clearly in all the separate 
 books and bind them into a great whole, and which, 
 in the main and generally, may be called the 
 ReHgion of the Bible, are as follows : — 
 
 1. The Consciousness of God. 
 
 2. The Providential government of the world. 
 
 3. Man's moral freedom and responsibility. 
 
 4. Communion with the Divine. 
 
 5. Righteousness the secret of happiness. 
 
 6. Sacrifice, passing through rite and symbol 
 
 to spirit and hfe, the cross of Christ 
 standing for its highest manifestation 
 — the sacrifice of self to humanity, of 
 ease to duty, of hfe to truth. 
 
 7. The world's progress towards an ever- 
 
 brightening future. 
 These do not exhaust the fist ; but they are 
 the ideas which stand out wdth prominence from 
 first to last. In addition there are two great ideas 
 peculiar to the New Testament which must not 
 be overlooked. 
 
l82 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 1. Love the motive power of the perfect 
 
 Christian Hfe. 
 
 2. The future state and the ImmortaUty 
 
 of the soul. 
 
 There is no time to dwell upon each of these 
 features of the Religion of the Bible. You will 
 observe generally two things (a) That they are 
 not dogmatic and theological ideas, but practical, 
 moral, and spiritual ; and (b) that they are not 
 truths about which men and churches dispute, 
 but about which all Christian people are agreed. 
 Notice in particular two of these great leading 
 ideas. 
 
 First, the Consciousness of God. From the 
 ' Psalm of Creation ' with which the Bible opens 
 to the glorious dreams and visions of the 
 Apocalypse, one thing is unmistakable — man's 
 sense of relation to and dependence on God. 
 We see the thought of God working itself clear 
 from superstition, narrowness, and partiaUty, 
 to such inspiring declarations as ' God is Love,' 
 ' God is Light,' ' God is Spirit.' We see man 
 for ever feeUng after God if haply he may find 
 him ; we see and are made to feel and share the 
 irrepressible craving of the soul after a perfection 
 above us, towards which the struggUng ages urge 
 the world a little nearer. It was the glory of the 
 Patriarchs that their hearts vibrated to the 
 thought of God. With all their faults, weaknesses, 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD 183 
 
 and immoralities, they had a conception of God 
 higher than that of their age ; they Hved their 
 lives in the presence of the Unseen ; God was 
 not to them, as to the people round about, an 
 object of blind and pusillanimous terror. The 
 God of Abraham is a friend, not needing to be 
 appeased by human sacrifice — a dark and baneful 
 usage Abraham is taught to abandon. How 
 does psalm and prophecy throb with the idea 
 of God ! ' As the hart panteth after the water 
 brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, God.''^ ' The 
 Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want.^^ ' Thou 
 wilt shew me the path of life : in thy presence is 
 fulness of joy for evermore.''^ ' Seek ye the Lord 
 while he may he found ; call ye upon him while 
 he is near.^^ And so it goes on from page to page 
 and from book to book, until we have that unique 
 consciousness of God which we find in Jesus 
 Christ — that union of man with God which he 
 expresses in the words ' / and my Father are one ' ;^ 
 so that it was God thinking through his thought, 
 and God loving through his love ; that sense of 
 oneness with God which made loneliness impossible 
 even under the kiss of Judas and the curse of 
 Peter. The whole Bible is vivid with the conscious- 
 ness of God. The conception goes through many 
 changes before the fullness of the truth about 
 
 1 Psa/m xlii. I. ^ Psalm -xxx^. \. ^ Psalm xvi. 11. 
 
 * Isaiah Iv. 6. ^ John x. 30. 
 
184 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 God can be reached, but the sense is always there. 
 Ten thousand variations are played on the one 
 theme ; but the theme is heard throughout, 
 
 * God is the strength of my heart and my portion 
 for ever.^^ 
 
 It is this, first of all, makes the Bible of eternal 
 value — it has the sense of God ; it comes home 
 everywhere to the seeking heart of man, moved 
 as it too is by the sense of God. I know we are 
 told that this is no longer true and that man has 
 outgrown the sense, and the thought, and the 
 need of God. But its mere assertion does not 
 make it true. There are men among us in whom 
 the sense of God is blunted and indistinct — and 
 I know that some of these are disinterested and 
 enthusiastic seekers after truth. But they repre- 
 sent only a passing phase of life, a back current 
 that interferes not with the flow of the mighty 
 stream. You tell me of the great names of 
 agnostics and others who know nothing of God. 
 Still, if names are to be weighed against names, 
 where shall we find three of greater significance 
 than Darwin, Carlyle, and Tennyson ? If the 
 nineteenth century has any intellectual giants 
 at all, any prophets of truth and wisdom, these 
 are among the first. ' No man,' said Darwin, 
 
 * can stand in the tropic forests without feeling 
 that they are temples filled with the varied 
 
 1 Psalm Ixxiii. 26. 
 
THE IDEA OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 185 
 
 productions of the God of nature, and that there 
 is more in man than the breath of his body.' 
 Listen to Carlyle : ' This fair universe, even in 
 the meanest province, is in very deed the star- 
 domed city of God. Through every star, through 
 every grass blade, the glory of a present God 
 still beams.' And Tennyson, in yet more beautiful 
 language, sings — 
 
 The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, the hills, the plains, — 
 Are not these, O soul, the vision of him who reigns ? 
 Speak to him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet, 
 Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. 
 
 Secondly, notice how the idea of righteousness 
 runs through the Bible, joining all its parts 
 together as by the links of a mighty chain. ' Do 
 justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy 
 God,''^ is its great practical instruction. ' The 
 Lord loveth the thing that is right. ^^ ' / will wash 
 mine hands in innocency ; so will I compass thine 
 altar, Lord.'''^ The religion of Abraham is a 
 religion, as King Abimelech says, of ' integrity 
 of heart and innocency of hands. ''^ Moses is not 
 a theological teacher ; he is a political leader 
 and a moral reformer. The ten commandments 
 formulated with authentic voice and for ever 
 that moral order and right are paramount. The 
 great souls of Greece and Rome were not wanting 
 
 1 Micah vi. 8. 2 Psalm xxxvii. 28. 3 Psalm xxvi. 6. 
 * Genesis xx. 5. 
 
l86 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 in noble conceptions of duty ; yet, as it has been 
 finely said, ' No Roman legislator inscribed at 
 the head of his statute the sublime demand, " Be 
 ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.^^ '^ 
 Immoralities are denounced both in Athens and 
 in Rome, but there is no one to write the fifty- 
 first Psalm. Plato speaks as lofty words about 
 righteousness as Isaiah, but they find no echo in 
 the hearts of the people. It was the glory of 
 Israel that the nation as a whole adopted the 
 teaching of the prophets as its standard. This 
 people, with a thousand backslidings, had yet the 
 intuition and the genius for righteousness. ' It is 
 joy to the just to do judgment, ^^ was a saying, not 
 for exalted philosophers, but for common life, 
 heard every Sabbath day in every village 
 synagogue. Whenever a prophet lifts up his voice, 
 this is the burden of his cry, ' Cease to do evil ; 
 learn to do well \ ;^ and although the Jews in the 
 early stages of their religious development had 
 learned many valuable things from those picture 
 lessons, the rites and ceremonies which Moses 
 had instituted, yet what streams of fiery contempt 
 the prophets poured upon them when it came to 
 be thought that they, rather than justice and 
 mercy, were the true sacrifice of God ? All 
 history is looked at in the light of moral right 
 and order. We are shown the great unrighteous 
 
 '^Leviticus xix. 2. ^Proverbs xxi. 15. ^Isaiah i. 16. 
 
ALL IS MORAL 187 
 
 kingdoms of the ancient world tottering to their 
 fall because of their tyrannies, cruelties, and 
 wickedness ; we are shown how doomsday comes 
 at last to every iniquity under the sun, how all 
 things are moral, and how there is a trend and a 
 steady bias in nature and in human history 
 making for righteousness. 
 
 This imperishable feature of the Bible, now 
 showing clear, and now for , awhile clouded, 
 unites its various authors and books in one 
 glory and grandeur. The sense of righteousness, 
 manifesting itself at first very imperfectly, grows 
 with the nation's growth until it receives its 
 consummation in Christ, who bears in his own 
 person and teaching immortal testimony to the 
 truth that well-doing is the beginning and the 
 end of all religion, and the secret of joy and peace. 
 ' Not every one that saith unto me, Lord^ Lord, 
 shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; hut he that 
 doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. ^^ 
 All is moral. This is the gate of even the highest 
 mysteries and the beatific vision itself, ' Blessed 
 are the pure in heart ; for they shall see God.'^ To 
 hunger and thirst after righteousness is the only 
 path of blessedness. 
 
 These ideas of God and Righteousness are the 
 distinctive ideas of the religion of the Bible, as 
 they are the unifying ideas of its separate parts. 
 
 ^Matthew vii. 21. ^Matthew v. 8. 
 
l88 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE 
 
 The great value of the Bible is to animate and 
 fortify faith in God and Righteousness, and to 
 quicken within us the consciousness of their reality. 
 For in the Bible they are vivid and intense, so 
 that no one can miss them nor what they mean. 
 We trace on its pages their growth ; and in our 
 best moods we find ourselves responsive to them, 
 because they were spoken, not only in the olden 
 time by holy men, but are whispered in our own 
 ears by the spirit of the living God. 
 
XII 
 
 WHAT IS LEFT APART FROM MYTH AND 
 MIRACLE ? 
 
 In the first of these lectures I noticed that our 
 own Bible has many features in common with 
 the other great Bibles of the world. Our Bible 
 does not stand alone in its moral precepts, and 
 it has no monopoly of the great ideas of religion — 
 God, conscience, duty, sacrifice, prayer, a future 
 life. Neither are its miraculous stories peculiar 
 to itself, nor its picturesque myths. The sacred 
 books of Buddhists and Brahmins have their 
 marvellous tales of the dead brought back to life, 
 of sight restored to the blind, of incarnations and 
 virgin mothers, of angelic appearances, visions 
 and voices, magical fish with money in their 
 mouths, talking serpents and asses, bread from 
 heaven and water from rocks. Our widened 
 knowledge of the races, religions, and literatures 
 of the world shows us that such stories as these 
 always arise in certain stages of civilization. 
 
igo APART FROM MYTH AND MIRACLE 
 
 The mind of man, ignorant of science, not yet 
 trained to reason rightly or to observe accurately, 
 was on the look out for the marvellous, and gave 
 to every startling or unusual event a supernatural 
 explanation. Under certain circumstances, wher- 
 ever men are found, there is, as Shakespeare says — 
 
 No natural exhalation in the sky, 
 
 No scope of nature, no distempered day. 
 
 No common wind, no customed event, 
 
 But they will pluck away his natural cause, 
 
 And call them meteors, prodigies and signs, 
 
 Abortions, presages, and tongues of heaven. 
 
 There is no imposture in all this. For want 
 of better knowledge it did not seem unlikely that 
 the thunder should be the angry voices of the gods, 
 or that an eclipse should be caused by a great 
 dragon trying to devour the sun, or that the ticking 
 of an insect in the woodwork, heard only in the 
 stillness of the night, should be the sign of quickly 
 coming death. But as knowledge grows from 
 more to more, it is seen that all these things 
 are capable of natural explanation, and happen 
 according to well-known laws ; the margin of the 
 marvellous and miraculous is gradually reduced. 
 So many strange things have been found at last 
 to have perfectly simple and natural causes, 
 that the conviction is forced upon us, all things 
 that happen or have happened will be thus 
 explained when once we apply the key of know- 
 ledge. We see now that miracles do not happen. 
 
BIBLE-TRUTH INDEPENDENT OF MIRACLE I9I 
 
 A thousand wonderful things, which years ago 
 would have been accounted for by miraculous 
 stories, are now accounted for by the regular 
 operations of nature. 
 
 The first answer of many people to the question, 
 How much will be left of the Bible when myth 
 and miracle are taken out ? would be. Very little. 
 Myth and miracle have seemed to them so very 
 important and to involve such large doctrinal 
 conclusions, that a Bible from which they were 
 left out must, they think, be very shrivelled in 
 size and shorn of half its teaching. On the 
 contrary, were the miraculous entirely blotted 
 out of the Bible, you would not have reduced 
 its volume by one-tenth, nor its moral and spiritual 
 teaching in the smallest degree whatever. The 
 force of the ten commandments remains, whether 
 you believe or disbelieve that they were written 
 by the actual finger of God on two tables of stone. 
 It is still wrong to steal and murder, although the 
 thunders of Sinai be resolved into a myth ; we 
 know that God still says, ' Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery,'' although the granite crags of the desert 
 never burned with fire. God is still the righteous 
 ruler of men, although Elijah never called down 
 flames from heaven to consume his sacrifice ; 
 and the Beatitudes are robbed of nothing of their 
 beauty because Jesus never drove a herd of swine 
 into the sea. We can no longer believe that 
 
192 APART FROM MYTH AND MIRACLE ' 
 
 diseases were cured by handkerchiefs which had 
 touched the body of Paul, but this does not affect 
 in the least our estimate of Paul's greatness, 
 nor take away one jot or tittle from the value 
 and inspiration of that remarkable series of letters, 
 written by his own hand, which have been pre- 
 served to us in the New Testament. 
 
 The question of miracles does not seem to me 
 so important as those who believe in them, and 
 many who disbelieve in them, would have us think. 
 It is said that the Christian faith is grounded 
 on and attested by miracles. But if Christianity 
 can only be believed because it is accompanied 
 by miracles, it rests on a rotten foundation. 
 No miracle, no manifestation of power, can prove 
 rnoral and spiritual truth. This is not the popular 
 opinion, but a simple illustration will make it 
 clear. Suppose I could change by a wave of 
 the hand, this- Bible on my desk into a plum- 
 pudding, I should not make what I am saying 
 truer or more reasonable. Such a miracle would 
 not prove that I was a teacher sent from God 
 or that my doctrines were the truth of heaven. 
 It would prove that I knew a good deal about 
 the transmutation of one substance into another 
 substance, but it would by no means prove 
 that I was an authority on questions of faith 
 and conduct. Yet I know that many ignorant 
 people would feel differently. In their judgment, 
 
MIRACLES UNIMPORTANT I93 
 
 could I visibly and undeniably, without any 
 trickery learned of Maskelyne and Cooke, change 
 this Bible into a plum-pudding, or this hymn-book 
 into a loaf of bread, I should be regarded as an 
 infallible teacher of morals and religion. But 
 educated common sense knows that such a 
 tremendous inference is quite irrational. Unless 
 the reason is convinced, and the heart captivated, 
 and the conscience quickened by the truth itself, 
 no miracle and no wonder can commend it to us 
 as the Bread of Life. 
 
 Theologians say of Christianity, All is gone if 
 miracles are given up ; Atheists say, Miracles 
 are no longer credible, therefore Christianity is 
 false. I deny the one as I deny the other. I 
 say that the Theologian attaches too much value 
 to the preservation of miracles, and the Atheist 
 too much value to their destruction. All that is 
 purest, brightest, and best in Christianity, all 
 that appeals to conscience, which has a purifying 
 influence on the heart, which makes known to 
 men a Father's grace and truth, which touches 
 the mystic susceptibilities of the spirit, is altogether 
 independent of this miracle or that. What makes 
 a man a Christian, is not belief in the accuracy of 
 the writer who tells us that Christ restored the 
 ear of the servant cut oif by Peter in a moment 
 of blind frenzy, but to be pure in heart, to hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness, to be meek and 
 
 N 
 
194 APART FROM MYTH AND MIRACLE 
 
 merciful, and to love as Christ loved, to trust 
 and obey a Father in heaven in Christ's spirit, to 
 cherish the mind that was in Jesus. Nothing of 
 value in Christ's teaching, nothing of wisdom in 
 his words, nothing of beauty in his character, 
 nothing of inspiration in his example, nothing 
 of persuasion in his cross escapes us when we give 
 up miracles. It is not true, as is commonly 
 asserted, that miracles are inseparable from the 
 life of Christ or from the religion of the Bible. 
 At this time of day it is monstrous to assert 
 that if I am compelled to disbelieve in the story of 
 the blasted fig-tree, I have no longer any right 
 to call Christ my master, and that I can have no 
 confidence in what he was and taught. It is 
 both stupidity and folly to say that discipleship 
 to Christ is impossible unless I believe that Peter 
 drew a fish to the shore with a penny in its mouth. 
 Jesus Christ rises in my estimation as I see his 
 wonderful influence over men was gained, not 
 by exhibitions of magical power, but by the force 
 of his unique character, his limitless self-sacrifice, 
 his grasp of the burden of sin, his fellowship 
 with God, his unbounded, never-failing sympathy. 
 I do not take up the position that miracles are 
 impossible. I do not know what is possible or 
 impossible in God's world. Whether miracles 
 have ever happened is entirely a question of 
 evidence. Is the evidence trustworthy ? Does 
 
THE EVIDENCE FOR MIRACLE I95 
 
 it come from people whose habits of observation 
 
 prevent them falling into mistake ? Or, does 
 
 it come to us from an age accustomed to believe 
 
 in the marvellous, when faith in miracles was 
 
 in the air, when wonders were looked for, and 
 
 myths and legends sprang up as in their natural 
 
 soil ? What is the worth and amount of the 
 
 evidence ? For evidence, it must be remembered, 
 
 may be perfectly honest and yet mistaken. I 
 
 have no patience and no respect for those who say 
 
 that the Biblical writers were impostors because 
 
 they recorded as miraculous things that were 
 
 not miracles. There is no reflection on the moral 
 
 character of these men. I could as soon believe 
 
 in that most improbable of all the miracles, 
 
 in the standing still of the sun in heaven, as 
 
 believe that a man like John would tell lies even 
 
 to magnify the fame of his master. Witnesses 
 
 are often true and upright, and yet their evidence 
 
 is not trustworthy. The men and women who 
 
 gave evidence as to the baleful influence and the 
 
 dark deeds of witches were quite honest and 
 
 believed every word they said ; but we now know 
 
 that they were mistaken. The simple-minded 
 
 peasants of Galilee, seeing how the paralysed 
 
 and the demoniac were cured, cried a miracle ! 
 
 a miracle ! whereas growing experience and 
 
 observation show that here was an instance of a 
 
 not uncommon force often exercised by the 
 
196 APART FROM MYTH AND MIRACLE 
 
 healthy over the unhealthy, the perfectly sane, 
 morally and intellectually, over the insane — the 
 force of will, of emotion, of imagination and faith. 
 For many of the so-called miracles of healing were 
 not miracles at all, but are to be accounted for 
 by a well-known although little investigated 
 and little understood law of mental and moral 
 influence.^ We know what was not known years 
 ago, how greatly the mind influences the body : 
 how by acting on the imagination and emotions, 
 and by the power of living faith, wonderful and 
 instantaneous cures have been wrought in accord- 
 ance with natural laws. Quackery and deception 
 have often been mixed up with cases of this kind ; 
 but no physician and no man of any general 
 intelligence would doubt that such cures have been 
 and still are, occasionally, performed. We may 
 find instances quoted by such great authorities 
 as Dr. Maudsley and Dr. Carpenter. The cure 
 of a man sick of the palsy — that is paralysis — 
 in this way would be a miracle for the spectators 
 of the first century, while it would be no miracle 
 now. Of course such a power of healing is 
 confined to diseases which arise out of a more 
 or less deranged nervous system : it might cure 
 or alleviate neuralgia, as we know mesmerism 
 does, but it could not restore a lost limb. 
 
 Now it should be noticed that the majority of 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma. 
 
MIRACLE AND FAITH-HEALING I97 
 
 Christ's ' mighty works ' were acts of heahng 
 of this sort, and these acts of heahng by a faith 
 wrought upon through imagination and emotion 
 must be separated from those alleged marvels, 
 such as the restoration of the lost ear cut off by 
 Peter, or the blasting of the fig-tree, or the drown- 
 ing of the swine, in which faith could not be a 
 factor. We can no longer believe in marvels 
 demanding a suspension of the laws of nature ; 
 but we can very easily believe in the acts of 
 healing brought about by the action of one 
 mind on another, and by the response of faith, 
 because we have seen such instances in our 
 own day, and know that all this is in accordance 
 with nature. 
 
 Many people in these days have given up all 
 miracles except those recorded in the Bible. 
 They think that the miracles of the Buddhists 
 and Brahmins and Mohammedans are altogether 
 false ; that the miracles of the Greek and Roman 
 Churches are impostures ; but that the miracles 
 of the Bible form a class by themselves. Yet, if 
 the question is to be settled by evidence, there 
 is just as good testimony for many other miracles 
 as well as those of the Bible. We read in the 
 New Testament of the blind restored to sight, 
 and we believe. But St. Augustine tells us that 
 when he was a young man living in the city of 
 Milan, a revelation was made to the great bishop 
 
igS APART FROM MYTH AND MIRACLE 
 
 Ambrose of the place where two martyrs, Gervasius 
 and Protasius, were buried. Many crowded to 
 behold these venerable relics, and among them 
 a man who was entirely blind. After much 
 persuasion and pushing, the blind man made his 
 way up the church to the shrine where the bodies 
 lay, had his hand laid on the face-cloth of one 
 of the sacred corpses and applied it to his eyes. 
 Whereupon he received his sight. This, we are 
 told by the stickler for Bible miracles only, 
 was an imposture or an illusion. Why ? The 
 evidence supposed to prove the one is not a bit 
 better than the evidence supposed to prove the 
 other. Augustine was a man of the keenest 
 intellect, and every whit as trustworthy as the 
 writers of the four Gospels. He tells us that the 
 cure of the blind man was known to himself and 
 to the whole city, and excited a passion of joy 
 and gratitude. Yet we are sure Augustine was 
 mistaken. But if we cannot trust Augustine, 
 how can we trust St. Luke ? 
 
 Or, take the most striking of all the miracles 
 recorded in the New Testament — a miracle 
 exceeding in wonder even the raising of Lazarus. 
 It describes an incident following immediately 
 on the death of Jesus : — 
 
 ' And the earth did quake ; and the tomb were 
 ofened : and many bodies of the saints that had 
 fallen asleep were raised ; and coming forth out of 
 
AN ASTOUNDING MIRACLE I99 
 
 the tombs after his resurrection they entered into 
 the holy city and appeared unto many.^^ 
 
 Did you ever consider what a marvel is here 
 recorded ? The raising of Lazarus from the dead 
 was the raising of one ; but here many were raised, 
 and not simply after four days, but after age of 
 entombment, and they appeared in the streets of 
 Jerusalem. They w^ere not ghosts ; their bodies 
 were raised, and they were seen by many. There 
 is a circumstantiality about the narrative which 
 shows the writer really believed it. But then, 
 look at the difhculties of the narrative to us. 
 What became of their bodies ? Did these saints 
 live their lives over again on earth ? or did they 
 go back to their tombs after a few hours or days ? 
 These are questions on which the narrative 
 throws no light. A still more important question 
 arises : how is it that this staggering, stupendous 
 miracle is recorded in only one of the four Gospels ? 
 The other evangelists must have known it as well 
 as Matthew : it was not a thing done in a corner, 
 nor a thing that could be kept secret. Yet there 
 is not a word of it in any other part of the New 
 Testament, although it is impossible to imagine 
 that Mark, Luke, and John would have been silent 
 about an event so full of significance if it had 
 really happened. We are driven to the conclusion 
 that this is a mere myth, built up by the pious 
 
 1 Matthew xxvii. 51-3. 
 
200 APART FROM MYTH AND MIRACLE 
 
 imagination of some later disciple, and when it 
 had been generally received as true, incorporated 
 with the Gospel story. 
 
 For we have come to see how this sort of story, 
 legend, or myth grows up. Herodotus relates 
 that when the Persian invaders came to Delphi, 
 two local heroes buried near the place arose, 
 and were seen by many, fighting on behalf of the 
 Greeks. Herodotus writes here of times when 
 he himself was alive ; not of a fabulous antiquity. 
 By his training he was a far more competent 
 observer of facts than the evangelists, and his 
 character stands as high as theirs. 
 
 Yet we say Herodotus was mistaken. No one 
 now believes that this really happened. It makes 
 a beautiful legend for poetry and art ; but if any 
 one contends that Phylacus and Antonous actually 
 arose out of their graves and took part in that 
 battle between Greeks and Persians, we should 
 regard him as demented. In an age when men 
 are looking out for the marvellous, any unusual 
 circumstance takes on a supernatural complexion, 
 and a very few years suffices to produce a full- 
 grown myth. The story of Herodotus and the 
 story of St. Matthew, when placed side by side, are 
 seen to be of the same sort, and to arise out of the 
 same expectation of the wonderful. But we do 
 not discredit Herodotus as an historian because 
 in instances like this he was mistaken. We 
 
MIRACLES AS PARABLES 201 
 
 discriminate. Neither do we discredit St. Matthew 
 because he was sometimes mistaken. We dis- 
 criminate. 
 
 For my own part, I should be sorn,^ to use an 
 expurgated Bible — a Bible from which all these 
 stories of marvels and miracles had been cut out. 
 They are ' linked to many a truth divine,' they 
 have become to us full of s\mibohcal meaning, 
 parables and poetry suggestive of much that is 
 valuable. Treat them as parables and poetr\^, 
 and they help to nourish the religious life : treat 
 them as histor}', and they become more and more 
 an intellectual stumbling-block But suppose we 
 expunge them entirely from the Bible, what then ? 
 WTiat have we left ? Almost ever\'thing of value. 
 We have a noble and instructive histor\' in which 
 we are shown, on a large scale, man's moral and 
 rehgious development. We have a histor}^ in 
 which is revealed to our gaze, as in no other histor}', 
 what is the secret of a nation's strength and 
 happiness. Other nations are like bees working 
 under ordinary' hives of straw ; this nation is 
 like a community of bees working under a glass 
 hive. We are permitted to see more clearly 
 in their case than in others the providential 
 hand of God, both in blessing and in punishment. 
 We have ' the goodty fellowship of the prophets,' 
 and their insight into the truth and the ways of 
 God ; we have the evolution of a spiritual from 
 
202 APART FROM MYTH AND MIRACLE 
 
 a carnal Israel ; we have lawgivers and seers, 
 in advance of their times, bringing the world on 
 from stage to stage of moral conception ; we 
 have poets expressing in words which are for all 
 time the hopes, the sorrows, the burdens, the 
 penitence, the aspirations, the triumphant faith 
 of the human heart. And, to pass over much else, 
 we have a character, unique in human history, 
 which in its beauty, tenderness, matchless grace, 
 love of truth, spiritual power, moral perfection, 
 and universal sympathy, stands out as the ' first- 
 horn among many brethren,'' ' the chief among ten 
 thousand,^ and this even though he never walked 
 upon the stormy waters, and was the son of a 
 human father ! 
 
 We have been singing this evening Christmas 
 carols which repeat in our ears, year by year, 
 the beautiful myth with which the Gospel story 
 opens. If you question me, I am compelled to 
 say that I can no more believe a choir of angels 
 carolled over the sheepfolds of Bethlehem, than 
 I can believe that the world was made in six days. 
 But far be it from me to say that the account 
 of creation given in Genesis is of no value to me 
 because I cannot accept it as science and history. 
 On the contrary, it is to me full of instruction. 
 It is a myth, but it grows out of a kernel of fact — 
 that God and not chance made the world, that one 
 Divine Being is the sole cause of the universe, that 
 
THE FACT WITHIN THE LEGEND 203 
 
 all noble work is gradual, that man is made in God's 
 image. iVs poetry I read it, and find it full of 
 spiritual suggestion. If I may use it, not as history, 
 but as the Psalm of creation, I will gladly do so. 
 
 Even as the opening words of the Old Testament 
 are the Psalm of creation, so the opening words 
 of the Gospel narrative may be called the Psalm 
 of the new creation. Is Christmas an exploded 
 legend because the stories of a miraculous incarna- 
 tion and angelic appearances are only myths ? 
 Not at all. The myths have grown up around a 
 kernel of fact. Jesus was bom, whether an 
 angel did or did not say, ' Behold, I bring you 
 tidings of great joy.'' The solid fact of history 
 marked by Christmas is the coming of Jesus, 
 with its inexhaustible train of consequences, its 
 unspeakable riches. It is tidings of great joy, 
 and glory to God, and peace on earth, although the 
 angelic song only arose out of the devout imagina- 
 tions and fervours of early disciples. Beautiful 
 and beneficent ideas are enshrined in the myth, 
 and the heart of Christendom to-day gladly seizes 
 the poetical expression which early faith gave 
 to the advent of its Master. No more fitting 
 vehicle for the hopes and joys awakened by the 
 coming and the world-wide influence of Christ 
 can be found than this exquisitely touching legend 
 from the past — gleaming with the lights, faces, and 
 music of a heavenly world. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE RIGHT USE AND INTERPRETATION 
 OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Picking up the other day a journal pubhshed 
 by the Secularists, I read the following short and 
 pithy announcement : — ' The day of the Bible 
 is over,' which to my mind was very much 
 the same as if a man who had managed to 
 exist on nuts, blackberries, and mushrooms, had 
 solemnly announced to the world, the day of 
 bread is over. On the contrary, we may con- 
 fidently say, while here and there a man may be 
 found who has learned to do without bread, 
 for the vast majority of the human race, so long 
 as they experience the daily return of hunger, 
 so long will they turn to bread as their natural 
 and enjoyable food. The day of the Bible is 
 over ? Precisely the contrary, I venture to say, 
 is the case. The day of the Bible is yet to come. 
 Hitherto the Bible has been largely misconceived ; 
 the letter has been exalted above the spirit ; it 
 
THE BIBLE NOT A CRYPTOGRAM 205 
 
 has been alternately quoted and derided as a 
 scientific authority ; men have gone to it as to 
 a book of magic to save themselves from the 
 trouble and responsibility of choosing and deciding ; 
 they have interpreted its sayings and events by 
 methods which make it mean anything under the 
 sun. Not long ago we were all laughing over 
 The Great Cryptogram, a foolish book by a fooHsh 
 American, intended to prove that Lord Bacon 
 wrote Shakespeare's plays. The author professed 
 to have discovered in the plays themselves the 
 key to a great puzzle. By piecing together 
 certain lines occurring on certain pages, and 
 at more or less regular intervals from each other ; 
 and by dividing words into halves, and then 
 joining the half of one word to the half of another 
 word, and so on, he made the plays tell us that 
 Bacon was their author. But by the same method 
 another ingenious puzzle maker could prove as 
 easily that Abraham Lincoln wrote Romeo and 
 Juliet, and the Duke of Wellington As you like it. 
 It is not too much to say that the Bible has been 
 too often treated as a great cryptogram. That 
 truly devout soul and Christian poet, John Keble, 
 adopted and defended an astonishing instance 
 of this kind of cryptogrammic interpretation 
 from one of the ancient Fathers. ' See,' he says, 
 ' how Abraham, who first gave circumcision, 
 looked forward to Jesus. He circumcised the 
 
206 RIGHT USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 men of his household, in number 318. And this 
 is a type of Christ on the cross, because 318 may 
 be represented in Greek by the letters t t 7;, of 
 which T is in the shape of a cross, and t r^ 
 stand for the two first letters in the name of Jesus.' 
 This, of course, is a puzzle and not a very clever 
 one either, for the whole point turns on the passage 
 after it has been translated into Greek, since the 
 Hebrew letters have no such numerical signification. 
 But the puzzle breaks down again when we remem- 
 ber that 318 was the number of Abraham's house- 
 hold not at the time of circumcision, but long 
 before in the war with Chedorlaomer. This is 
 explained by the theory that the mystery of the 
 number was wonderfully revealed to Abraham 
 and that his household was providentially kept 
 at the same figure. Now the sad thing is, not 
 that this was an interpretation discovered by an 
 ignorant Father in the second century, but 
 that it should be adopted and endorsed by a 
 learned divine in the nineteenth century. It 
 is one out of a thousand instances which might 
 be given to show that the habit of interpreting 
 the Bible as a puzzle still flourishes. I can 
 only say if the Bible means all this plain men 
 and women can never hope to understand it. 
 Thank God, we are beginning to see that explana- 
 tions like these do not interpret the Bible at all, 
 but obscure it. That, , in spite of such childish 
 
THE FUTURE OF THE BIBLE 207 
 
 methods of exposition, the Bible has worked so 
 mightily in the past for uplifting, instruction, 
 and comfort is a wonderful testimony to its vitality 
 and influence, which no stupidity of commentators 
 has been able to suppress. But we are only just 
 shaking off these obscurities and shackles of 
 interpretation, and the great days of Bible- 
 influence are not in the past, but in the future. 
 'When once we learn to read the Bible simply 
 and naturally, taking it for what it is, and not 
 for what we think we should like it to be, it will 
 get a hold upon the human heart such as it has 
 never had before. Believing as I do that the 
 Bible is one of the best gifts God ever gave to 
 man, I believe that when it is valued for right 
 reasons and not for wrong ones, and we have put 
 its use and enjoyment on sure and safe grounds, 
 it will exercise a sway over the growing life of man 
 which will leave far behind all its past achievements. 
 ' The letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life.'' This 
 great saying I believe to be the key to the right 
 use and interpretation of the Bible. We men 
 of the nineteenth century, steeped in the habits, 
 occupations, and thoughts of an entirely different 
 civilization from that in which the Bible came 
 to birth, are all abroad when reading it, unless 
 we have learned to distinguish between the 
 form and the essence, the transitory and the 
 permanent, the accidental and the essential. 
 
208 RIGHT USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 and to discriminate these two elements in religion 
 and in a religious literature. It is blind adhesion 
 to the letter which has so often led the Church 
 into untenable positions. The real authority of 
 the Bible has been gravely imperilled when men 
 have invoked its letter to prove that it was 
 impossible that human beings should live at the 
 antipodes, that it was impious to believe that 
 the earth went round the sun, that geology was 
 a delusive science because it taught that creation 
 was not the work of six days but of untold ages, 
 that resistance to even the most arbitrary govern- 
 ment is forbidden to Christian men, that God 
 for his own greater glory has sent some men into 
 the world foreordained to eternal damnation. 
 All these mistakes arose from clinging to the 
 form and forgetting the essence. ' It is the 
 spirit that quickeneth : the flesh profiteth nothing. "^ 
 Literalism has been the curse of Biblical inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 But I would have you remember that there is 
 literalism and literalism. It was a great saying 
 of Martin Luther's, ' The words of the Holy Ghost 
 can have no more than one simplest sense which 
 we call the scriptural or the literal meaning.' 
 There is a sense in which literalism is among the 
 first duties of the Biblical student. We are to 
 go to Scripture, not to find what we think, but 
 what the writers said. Our first duty is to ascer- 
 
LITERALISM 209 
 
 tain the exact meaning of the words they used, 
 the meaning they must have had to those who first 
 heard them. We must beware of reading into 
 them our own dogmatic bias. In this sense, 
 literaHsm, the rigid and determined exclusion of 
 mere mystic fancies, the insistence on the 
 grammatical, philological, historical, simple sense 
 of the words, is of the utmost importance. 
 
 The wrong kind of literalism is that which 
 sacrifices the sense to the mere sound ; the 
 kind of literalism which insists on abiding by the 
 hard, naked letter in defiance of every rule which 
 modifies the use of language. It is the temper 
 of mind which reads poetry as if it were prose ; 
 which, for instance, if it found in the Bible the 
 words ' All the world's a stage, and all the men 
 and women merely players,' would insist that the 
 Christian could only lawfully follow one calling, 
 that of the actor. ' God,' as Luther so admirably 
 said, ' does not reveal grammatical vocables, 
 but he reveals essential things.' All human 
 language, from its very nature is and must be 
 very imperfect. The language of the Bible is 
 full of gracious shadows. Thousands of texts 
 of scripture, many of the utterances of Jesus, 
 were never meant to be taken according to the 
 letter ; nay — if so taken, they would stand in 
 antagonism to the essence of his teaching. 
 Parables and metaphors, figures of speech, the 
 
 o 
 
210 RIGHT USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 particular illustrations of great principles, must 
 be taken into consideration at every step. 
 
 The strangest thing about the unintelligent 
 literalism which dominates popular theology is 
 that it is so perfectly arbitrary in its application. 
 It will insist with tenacity upon the literal meaning 
 of one text or set of texts which suits its purpose, 
 while it calmly explains away as metaphorical 
 another text or set of texts, which, if understood 
 with equal literalism, would involve the modifica- 
 tion or abandonment of some favourite dogma. 
 They insist that when we read, ' everlasting 
 punishment' everlasting must be interpreted 
 according to the letter as meaning for ever, and 
 ever, and ever ; but when we read ' everlasting 
 hills, "^ they say everlasting is a figure of speech I 
 ''All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,^^ 
 means all ; but, ' 7, if I be lifted up from the 
 earth, will draw all men unto me,'^ means, not all, 
 but some. There are thousands who denounce 
 us as infidels when we call the story of the Fall 
 of Man a myth or an allegory ; and yet the same 
 persons will, without the slightest warrant, apply 
 the most extravagant allegory to verse after verse- 
 of the Song of Solomon. It was this arbitrariness 
 which made the Roman Catholic controversialists 
 say that Scripture was treated by Protestants 
 as * a nose of wax,' to be twisted this way or that : 
 
 "^Romans iii. 23. ^ John xii. 32. 
 
THE LETTER KILLETH 211 
 
 a sword which they could put into any scabbard. 
 
 What is wanted is intelligence, common sense, 
 an appreciation of the limitations of language, 
 and a conviction that the Bible is to be read in 
 the same way that any other book is read, with 
 discrimination — not turning poetry into prose, 
 nor taking metaphor and illustration for command 
 and dogma. John Bun^^an used to be distracted 
 \\ith agony because he took quite literally the 
 saying, ' // ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, 
 ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove'^he?ice to 
 yonder place, and it shall remove ' ;^ and therefore 
 felt driven to test his own faith by bidding the 
 puddles on the Bedford road dr}- up at a word. 
 But he would never have been troubled had he 
 understood that Jesus was just using one of 
 the common metaphors of the East, perfectly 
 intelligible to his hearers. The notion that to 
 ' remove mountains ' was to be taken literally, 
 was one which would onh^ have caused a smile 
 on the face of men who were accustomed to confer 
 on any great teacher the comphmentar}-^ title of 
 ' A Remover of Mountains.' The\' would have 
 understood in a moment that Jesus was expressing 
 the divine truth that difficulties vanish before 
 the power of faith. 
 
 ' The letter killeth : the spirit giveth life' This 
 is to say, we must use the Bible, not as a book of 
 
 1 Matthew xvii. 20. 
 
212 RIGHT USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 rules, but as a book of principles. You all know 
 the difference between a rule and a principle. 
 It is the difference between a loaf of bread and a 
 handful of corn. The loaf of bread is more 
 immediately useful to a hungry man than a 
 handful of corn. But when he has eaten it there 
 is an end of it. It answers a temporary purpose, 
 but to-morrow he wants another. A handful of 
 corn, however, while it will not satisfy to-day's 
 hunger, has in it the promise and potency of bread 
 for generations. If sown it will bring forth a 
 hundred-fold, and if sown again there will be a 
 harvest sufficient for a nation's wants. A rule 
 is for to-day ; principles are for all time. A 
 rule only fits a particular set of circumstances — 
 change the circumstances, and the rule breaks 
 down ; but principles adapt themselves to all 
 circumstances. The principle is, ' Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself ' ; the rule was 
 almsgiving. Now, however, the rule is no alms- 
 giving, because it is no longer love to our 
 neighbour to give to beggars in the street, but 
 very great injury. Many of the illustrations of 
 Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are sore 
 stumbling-blocks to people, because they think 
 the illustrations are commands for all time. 
 But the essential things are the principles — 
 benevolence, the forgiveness of injuries, patience, 
 sacrifice. How are we to apply these principles to 
 
MORAL IMPULSE 213 
 
 the circumstances of our own day is left to sancti- 
 fied common sense. 
 
 ' The letter killeth : the spirit giveth life,'' This 
 is to say, we go to the Bible, not for moral maxims, 
 but for moral impulse ; not for a scheme of faith, 
 but for spiritual inspiration. Moral maxims of 
 equal beauty may be found in other books. 
 Confucius and Seneca will supply us with a code 
 of ethics much more systematic than anything we 
 find in the Bible. What they do not supply us 
 with is moral impulse. In the Bible the first thing 
 that strikes us is, not the completeness of the 
 ethical code, but the variety, interest, and charm 
 of human biography with which it is filled. In 
 its men and women we see good struggling with 
 evil, a higher moral law ever calling them to 
 fresh conquests, and embodying itself in their 
 lives and endeavours. And there is something 
 quickening in the story of moral effort in a human 
 soul which is never found in a maxim. What we 
 want in setting out on the journey of life is not a 
 moral handbook with cut and dried rules for every 
 difficulty, but the light and impulse of great 
 examples. We want to know what others have 
 done — the pioneers of godliness. We are artists 
 who can never learn our profession from any 
 manual of art, however complete ; but whose 
 first necessity is to sit at the feet of the old masters 
 and study their methods, achievements, and 
 
214 RIGHT USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 aims. If we do this merely to make ourselves 
 slavish imitators of the great artists of other days, 
 then we shall utterly fail ; but if we do it to 
 enable us to profit by the efforts of the past in 
 our own attempts to reach the ideal glimmering 
 upon a far horizon, then it is invaluable. The 
 Bible is full of most glorious examples, not to be 
 copied in every particular, but to give us impulse 
 to strive as they strove. Above all, it is 
 dominated by one example which is unique. 
 Here, indeed, in Jesus Christ, is a man. The 
 world had never seen before what it was to be a 
 man. It had heard plenty of moral maxims. 
 Poets and prophets, lawgivers and psalmists, 
 had set before it an ideal of the Perfect Life in 
 words, but here was one in whom the words — 
 
 , . . . had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands, the creed of creeds, 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds 
 
 More strong than all poetic thought. 
 
 Christ was not so much a wonderful teacher 
 as he was a wonderful fulfilment ; he came not 
 to give a new moral code, but to live a life, and in 
 that life to realize all moral aspiration. In him 
 moral beauty is no longer an abstraction : it is 
 warm, living, and concrete ; we can now believe 
 in it, and we are moved by that glorious, pathetic 
 life to believe that great moral achievement is 
 no impossible thing for us. Following a leader 
 
SPIRITUAL POWER 215 
 
 as we could never follow a maxim, we do and 
 conquer a thousand things we should otherwise 
 never attempt. What we receive from him is 
 moral impulse — not a letter, but a spirit. 
 
 In the same way we go to the Bible, not to 
 find a scheme of faith, but spiritual inspiration. 
 If the Bible is to supply us with a ready-made 
 creed, then it is wonderful that there should be 
 such differences as to what this creed is. If it is 
 intended as a formal treatise, supematurally 
 drawn up, to serve as a textbook of theology, 
 then it must be pronounced a dismal failure. 
 It is not a formal treatise at all, but a great 
 literature, and it is not by quoting texts to prove 
 our particular doctrines, but by saturating our 
 minds with its spirit that we use it aright. How 
 many books on theology, on the creeds, on various 
 doctrines there are, which all proceed upon the 
 method of proving this or that by an array of 
 texts quoted from the Old and New Testaments, 
 from poetical and prose writings, from historj'- 
 and legend, from Judges and Job as freely as 
 from the synoptic Gospels, quoted indiscrimi- 
 nately and with no reference to the context. 
 This is the abuse of the Bible. I once heard a 
 good man prove the doctrine of the Atonement 
 from the story of Cain and Abel. He told us that 
 Abel's sacrifice was more acceptable than Cain's 
 because it consisted of blood, whereas Cain's only 
 
2l6 RIGHT USE OF THE BIBLE 
 
 consisted of fruit. And this, forsooth, proved 
 that sin could only be expiated by blood ! Such 
 a use of the Bible would be impious if it were not 
 childish. No, the true use of the Bible is not to 
 prove doctrine, but to move the heart to prayer, 
 aspiration, loving effort, hopeful sympathy. When 
 I read the words, ' The eternal God is thy refuge, 
 and underneath are the everlasting arms ' ; when I 
 catch the strains of David's harp, ' The sacrifices 
 of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite 
 heart, God, thou wilt not despise ' ; when I listen 
 to Isaiah's invitation, ' Ho ! every one that thirsteth, 
 come ye to the waters ' ; when I hear John saying, 
 ' God is love,'' then I am lifted up above my 
 ordinary self, I feel the attraction of the heavenly 
 above the earthly, and there is excited in the soul 
 a sense of life, love, and peace, which is worth 
 more than all creeds. The glow of a living faith 
 draws me near to God, and I am moved by that 
 spirit of purity, truth, and self-sacrifice, which 
 is the inspiration of the religious life everywhere, 
 and the vital impulse of all true progress. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 Those of you who are alive to the movements 
 of religious thought in our day, or are in the habit 
 of reading our religious journals, must be famiUar 
 with the phrase The Higher Criticism. You 
 have seen it in the reports of speeches, sermons, 
 and lectures, in leading articles, in magazines, 
 and in the letters of angry or dismayed correspon- 
 dents attacking it. To those of us who long ago 
 gave up the popular theories of Biblical inspiration 
 the anger and dismay seem both belated and 
 absurd. It is as if at this time of day there 
 could stiU be found adherents of the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy, filled vaih. anger against Copernicus 
 and all his works. The controversies aroused by 
 Colenso, Dean Stanley, Jowett, the pioneers of 
 the higher criticism, seem so far away, and the 
 position they took up, which once aroused the 
 fiercest passions of men and churches are now so 
 generally accepted even in orthodox circles, 
 
2l8 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 that it is a little surprising to see good men still 
 alarmed at what the higher criticism is doing. 
 For one thing is certain — the higher criticism so 
 far has not diminished any man's regard for the 
 Bible, but by enabling it to be better understood, 
 has enhanced its value even in the eyes of the 
 most thoroughgoing of critics. That this will 
 likewise be the result of new labours in the 
 critical field not one scholar in a hundred ever 
 doubts. 
 
 This much may be said in excuse for the 
 alarmists, that the phrase, The Higher Criticism, 
 is somewhat vague, and needs exposition before 
 it can be properly understood. A ' critic ' is one 
 who is able to distinguish, and ' criticism ' means 
 the power or art of distinguishing. But there are 
 of course wrong kinds of ' distinguishing ' or 
 criticism. Roughly speaking there are three 
 kinds of criticism applied to the Bible. 
 
 I. There is ' Textual ' criticism — the examina- 
 tion of the words and their meaning when first 
 used, and of the various ' readings ' of any given 
 passage in the best manuscripts ; the proof that 
 this passage or that has been interpolated and 
 forms no part of the original text ; or the proof 
 that words and sentences have been wrongly 
 translated. It was textual criticism to which 
 the Bible was submitted by the Revisers, and 
 the Revised Version is one of its noblest triumphs. 
 
THREE KINDS OF CRITICISM 219 
 
 2. Secondly, there is ''Historical' criticism — 
 the weighing of the evidence for alleged events, 
 the measure of proof that they did or did not 
 happen, etc. Did the walls of Jericho actually 
 fall down at the blowing of trumpets ? Did 
 the body of Jesus, reanimated, come out of 
 the tomb ? Was Jesus born at Nazareth or 
 Bethlehem ? These and many other disputed 
 events are submitted to a criticism of judgment 
 called ' historical,' they are weighed by evidence, 
 by congruity, by probability, in fact by the 
 same tests we apply to alleged events in Grecian 
 or Roman histor}^ 
 
 3. Lastly, we come to the ' Higher Criticism,'' 
 which is partly historical, and more largely 
 ' Literary,' and still more largely the application 
 of human feeling, moral consciousness, and 
 sanctified common sense to the problems of the 
 Bible. The ' lower ' criticism of the letter is 
 ' textual ' ; the ' higher ' criticism has in it a 
 spiritual element. It does not ask, ' Is this saying 
 to be found in all the best authorities ? ' but, 
 ' Does it bear the marks of inspiration ? is it 
 congruous with other sayings of the same teacher ? 
 is it a genuine utterance of the speaker's or 
 writer's when tried by what we know he was 
 in life and character ? ' x\gain, ' while this 
 passage or that belongs to the text as we have it, 
 was it really written by the man whose name it 
 
220 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 l>ears ? or have we in this book tradition gathered 
 irom various sources, the work of various hands, 
 and embedded in the narrative — a skilful patch- 
 work instead of a garment woven throughout 
 on one loom ? Let us suppose a chapter of 
 English history containing paragraphs from Bede, 
 King Alfred, and William of Malmesbury, woven 
 together into a narrative by some later hand 
 and published under the name of Hume. The 
 distinguishing of these paragraphs, showing their 
 various authors would be one of the labours of 
 higher criticism. Yet again, ' When the text 
 of an ancient writing has been settled as accurately 
 as possible by the canon of textual criticism, 
 it becomes the province of the " higher " criticism 
 to determine its origin, date, and (if it be 
 composite) literary structure, by distinguishing 
 between the data available for the purpose.'^ 
 
 I cannot, however, agree with Professor Driver 
 in limiting the higher criticism to questions 
 of date, origin, and literary structure. Higher 
 criticism is more than literary and historical ; 
 it tries any given utterance by moral and spiritual 
 standards, and asks does it bear the notes of 
 congruity and of a genuine inspiration. For 
 instance, are these long discourses about the end 
 of the world put into the mouth of Christ at the 
 close of Matthew's gospel at all in keeping with 
 
 1 Driver ; Preface to Lectures on the Higher Criticism. 
 
THINGS INCREDIBLE 221 
 
 what we know of the character and temper and 
 method of Christ, and with his teaching as a whole ? 
 Textual criticism has decided that they are a 
 genuine part of the book. But although they are 
 there, did Christ really utter them, or have we 
 here genuine fragments of his teaching enlarged 
 and misinterpreted by the legends and expectations 
 which grew up about him in the early church ? 
 In Mark xiii. we are told that certain of the 
 disciples went privately to the Master and asked 
 him when these ' last things ' should be. In reply 
 he is reported to have said, of the sundry 
 marvellous signs and wonders which had taken 
 place, the Son of Man would be seen coming in 
 clouds with great power and glory. ' And then 
 shall he send forth the angels, and shall gather together 
 his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost 
 part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven. . . . 
 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not 
 pass away until alt these things he accomplished.^ 
 Now is it credible cihat Christ told his hearers 
 that in their own lifetime he would come back 
 to earth and reign in great glory ? We know 
 that all these expectations of an immediate 
 second advent cherished by the early church were 
 disappointed. Was Christ the author of the 
 disappointment ? Did he really believe and 
 teach that in less than thirty years time he 
 would come back to earth in clouds, with great 
 
222 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 power and glory ? That cannot be answered by 
 textual, historical, or literary criticism. It can 
 only be answered by what I have called ' sanctified 
 common sense,' that is by a sympathetic insight 
 into the mind and character of Christ himself ; 
 and by asking, Is this like him ? Is it congruous 
 with the whole trend of his teaching ? Is it likely 
 that he himself was deceived ? Is it in keeping 
 with his simplicity and spirituality that he should 
 talk in this mundane, scenic, not to say sensational 
 way ? I do not believe it. It seems to me it is 
 impossible for anyone to believe it who realizes 
 the spiritual character of Christ's teaching, and 
 his wholly spiritual idea of the kingdom, and how 
 he was always endeavouring to check the common 
 notion of a material kingdom, with thrones and 
 power and palaces, trying instead to make 
 men realize that it was inward and spiritual. 
 The prophecy in Mark xiii. is largely materialistic. 
 It gives expression to a national dream which 
 Christ was so far from countenancing that he 
 strove unceasingly to turn men from it. To 
 proclaim not the advent but the eternal presence 
 of the universal kingdom was his self-imposed 
 mission. About this the higher criticism says. 
 We have here something quite foreign from the 
 mind and character of Christ : being what he was 
 and in view of his fundamental doctrine of 
 inwardness it was impossible that he should 
 
MISTAKES OF INTERPRETATION 223 
 
 speak in this theatrical fashion. In parts of this 
 chapter we breathe a quite different atmosphere 
 from the Sermon on the Mount, the great parables, 
 and the unquestioned ethical and spiritual teaching 
 of the Master. Interpreted by these, much of 
 this prophecy rings spurious, and must be laid 
 aside as essentially false to the mind of him who 
 said ' The Kingdom of God is within you.'^ 
 
 I know it may be objected that this aspect of 
 the higher criticism depends very much upon 
 individual tact and perception, and requires a 
 delicacy of touch and a sensitiveness of discern- 
 ment which must always be uncertain in operation. 
 But it is not claimed that this method is infallible. 
 There is no method of interpreting the Bible 
 which is free from mistake. The strictest adherent 
 to the theory of Biblical infallibility has never 
 claimed infallibility of interpretation. Further, 
 Bible-study and interpretation is always governed 
 by the assured knowledge and existing ideas of any 
 given age. The idea of evolution has entirely 
 changed the modern student's view of the Bible. 
 In making that change the nineteenth century 
 suffered a certain loss as well as rejoiced in a 
 certain gain, and in some cases was led to 
 erroneous conclusions. The higher criticism can 
 claim no freedom from human error, neither can 
 textual nor historical criticism. But the ability 
 1 See Lecture VI. 
 
224 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 required to distinguish between genuine and 
 spurious sayings of Christ, the tact and deHcacy 
 of perception necessary, are not beyond the reach 
 of any devout, sympathetic mind. All it needs 
 is such a sense of the moral fitness between cause 
 and effect as can detect in the gospels the fountain 
 ideas from which the purest streams of moral 
 and spiritual influence in the world's history 
 have flowed. Those whose business it is in 
 banks and behind counters to deal with gold and 
 silver coins, get to know without applying chemical 
 tests but by simple touch and sight, the difference 
 between good and bad money. So those who 
 make it their business day by day to emulate the 
 spirit of Christ, may quickly learn the art of 
 distinguishing the fine gold of his words, even 
 though they have little scholarship. 
 
 The higher criticism thus has two aspects. 
 In the first place it is that which brings the 
 intellectual method of our time to bear upon 
 Bible interpretation ; and secondly, it is that 
 which brings to the same work a certain elevated 
 spiritual discernment. 
 
 In both divisions of the Bible these methods 
 have been applied with the result of making 
 the book as a whole more human, vivid, and 
 instructive. The intellectual methods of the 
 higher criticism, the methods of historical and 
 especially of literary investigation have laid bare 
 
RESULTS 225 
 
 the composite nature of the Hexateuch, showing 
 us at least five different strands woven into the 
 one web, and by editors who hved many hundred 
 years after the death of Moses. It has placed the 
 Book of Psalms under the microscope and dis- 
 covered five separate collections of Jewish hymns, 
 brought together in one book long after the return 
 from exile, and teeming with ideas and conceptions 
 which had no place in Jewish religious thought at 
 the time of David. The most lenient judgment 
 of scholars does not now allow David to have 
 been the author of more than a dozen of these 
 wonderful songs of penitence and praise. The 
 higher criticism has clearly shown us two Isaiahs 
 in the book of that name, and in the two divisions 
 (ch. i.-xxxix. and ch. xl.-lxvi.) occasional frag- 
 ments by other writers. But as I have indicated 
 the higher criticism is not merely concerned with 
 literary problems, questions of the date, author- 
 ship, origin, etc. It goes on to appraise the 
 moral and spiritual value of the various portions 
 of the Old Testament. It is the higher criticism 
 which places the Song of Solomon, Esther, and 
 Book of Judges on a lower level of religious 
 excellence than Job and Isaiah. It is sanctified 
 common sense, it is the spiritual aspect of the 
 higher criticism, which repudiates the tone and 
 morality of the cursing Psalms. It is the Higher 
 Criticism which condemns the barbarities of the 
 
 p 
 
226 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 Canaanitish wars, and refuses to allow them any- 
 moral sanction because they are prefaced by the 
 convenient formula — ' Thus saith the Lord.' It 
 is the Higher Criticism which sets aside the 
 thunder, lightning, and awful trumpet of Sinai 
 as features that really accompanied the revelation 
 of the Mosaic law. And if any are alarmed at 
 this interpretation of the story, it is surely 
 sufficient to remind them that the moral teaching 
 of the Mosaic law remains untouched when all 
 these picturesque elements have been stripped 
 away. It is quite as wrong to steal and commit 
 adultery although the rocks of the desert never 
 echoed to a supernatural trumpet, and murder 
 remains a crime although God never wrote 
 the commandments on tables of stone. Higher 
 Criticism is in fact the ability to distinguish 
 between spiritual ideas and the drapery of legend, 
 myth, and parable in which they are clothed, 
 and which people destitute of imagination have 
 too often mistaken for history. 
 
 But now a strange thing happens. While all 
 scholars are agreed on the duty and advantage 
 of applying the principles of the higher criticism 
 to the Old Testament, there are some who when 
 it is proposed to apply the same principles to the 
 New Testament, cry ' hands off ! ' Even that 
 candid critic, Dr. Driver, appears to think that 
 the ' Higher Criticism ' must be much more chary 
 
THE REAL FRIENDS OF THE BIBLE 227 
 
 when dealing with the EvangeHsts than when 
 Deuteronomy is under review,^ But it is im- 
 possible to fence round the New Testament from 
 criticism when once the Old Testament has been 
 subjected to its standards. A Bishop may see 
 no incongruity between declaring his beliefs in 
 the mythical nature of the story of the Fall and 
 his condemnation of one of his clergy for speak- 
 ing of the story of the Virgin Birth in the same 
 manner. But men of simple common sense will 
 say that the liberty of criticism which is claimed 
 for the supernatural stories of the Old Testament 
 cannot with justice be denied to men when dealing 
 with those of the New. And if it be replied that 
 a fundamental doctrine of Christianity is bound 
 up with the story of the Virgin Birth, it is only 
 necessary to point out that an equally fundamental 
 doctrine is bound up with the story of the Fall. 
 It appears to be thought that the New Testament 
 can be saved from the Higher Criticism by throw- 
 ing the Old to the wolves. But the higher critics 
 are not wolves waiting to devour. They are the 
 real friends of the Bible, withdrawing our eyes 
 from details which we once fancied important, 
 and fixing them upon the eternal truths and the 
 grander elements which have been more or less 
 obscured. Of both portions of the Bible alike 
 it may be said in the words of Archdeacon 
 
 4 See Preface to The Higher Criticism. Hoddeif & Stoughton 
 
 < 
 
228 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 Wilberforce, ' intelligent criticism becomes the 
 pathway to spiritual discovery.' 
 
 The Higher Criticism for instance cannot be 
 excluded from the consideration of the authorship 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The conclusion, 
 now everywhere accepted, that Paul could not 
 have been its author has been arrived at not 
 simply along the line of literary structure and 
 historical evidence. There has also entered into 
 the problem the question — ' Does the teaching of 
 Hebrews harmonize with the great Apostle's main 
 ideas? or have we not here a different line of 
 thought, and, in fact, a widely different theology 
 from that which we find in Romans and Galatians ?' 
 But this discovery of a different line of thought 
 which does not fit in with what we know of the 
 mind of Paul, does not detract from the value of 
 Hebrews, or imply that it ought not to have a place 
 in the New Testament. On the contrary, it 
 adds to the interest and instruction of the New 
 Testament when we see how early in the history 
 of Christian thought differences appeared, so 
 that John moves in one direction, Paul in another, 
 and the anonymous author of Hebrews in a third.. 
 This is a spiritual discovery of the most sugges- 
 tive kind. 
 
 The Higher Criticism has been busy with the 
 Fourth Gospel. Great scholars still differ as to 
 its date and authorship. Literary and historical 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 229 
 
 criticism have not yet settled whether it was 
 written by John or another. But in the midst 
 of the dispute there is heard a knocking at the 
 door, and a Higher Critic enters with the question 
 — ' Whoever was the author, have we here a 
 faithful, hteral record of the Master's words as 
 he actually spoke, or a kind of translation of his 
 ideas after they had passed through a mind 
 coloured by a certain philosophy ? Are these 
 long, subtle speeches, tinctured by Alexandrian 
 philosophy, which we find in the Fourth Gospel, 
 congruous with the Jesus of the Synoptics who 
 speaks in short, proverbial sayings ? Is it a 
 record of the Hfe and work of Christ we are reading 
 or an interpretation ? '^ Literary and historical 
 criticism have their place in this discussion, 
 but the matter cannot be settled, the question 
 can hardly be understood, without the aid of that 
 other feature of this Higher Criticism, the spiritual 
 discernment which is bom of famiharity with the 
 mind and soul of Christ. A thorough acquaint- 
 ance with the Jesus of the Synoptics compels us 
 to say, quite apart from literary and historical 
 investigations, ' what we have in the Fourth 
 Gospel is a reconstruction, and a biography of 
 Jesus from the point of view of a writer w^ho has 
 a doctrine of the personahty of Christ to expound 
 
 1 The Bible in the Nineteenth Century. By J. Estlin 
 Carpenter, M.A. p. 412. 
 
230 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 of which the earher evangeHsts knew Httle or 
 nothing.' 
 
 Let it then be understood that the Higher 
 Criticism is not destructive but constructive, 
 and lifts us up to where we see the moral and 
 spiritual teaching of the Bible disencumbered 
 of faulty history, of imperfect science, and of the 
 swaddling bands of myth and legend. The Bible 
 has a right to be understood. Our deep reverence 
 for it compels us to interpret it along the Hue 
 of its leading eternal and universal ideas, and 
 not along the line of its local and temporary 
 accompaniments. I know it sometimes seems 
 that the devout and critical spirits are in conflict 
 with each other, our own minds their battle-field, 
 and that the former says to the latter, ' Thou art 
 not a Christian ; I can have no fellowship with 
 thee.' But to say that is to play false to our own 
 nature as well as false to the Bible. The need 
 to know and to know truly is as deep within us 
 and as God-given as need of prayer, or the power 
 of faith. It is a divine compulsion to inquire 
 and distinguish — that is, to criticize — which is 
 laid upon the mind. Whatever may have been 
 the case in other times, to-day frank and honest 
 criticism is a necessity for the church's life. The 
 work of the Higher Criticism is to save the moral 
 and spiritual teaching of the Bible from being 
 thrown overboard with so much of its history 
 
THE AIM OF CRITICISM 23 1 
 
 and science. It distinguishes between the shell 
 and the pearl, between the earthen vessel and 
 the treasure it holds, between the letter and the 
 spirit, between that which is of time and earth 
 in the record, and that which is of heaven and 
 eternity. Criticism, then, is a sacred obligation. 
 It has in view a thoroughly positive end — to see 
 truth as it is, freed from all accretions of time 
 and place and partial knowledge. The Higher 
 Criticism is a superior method of interpretation, 
 a better road to the original teaching of Bible 
 writers ; it is the mental process whereby the 
 true nature of Bible teaching is appreciated and 
 manifested. It seeks to know the Bible from 
 within and along the lines of its own meaning 
 and purpose. Our duty to the Bible is different 
 from that of our fathers, since each age is bound 
 to interpret it in terms of its own experience, 
 and in the light of its own intellectual as well as 
 spiritual culture. We are called by criticism to 
 a better understanding of the Bible than was 
 possible in any earher age. And the result 
 is a Bible more vivid and richer in spiritual 
 suggestion than the Bible our fathers knew — 
 a book which is the autobiography of religion 
 on earth, the record of the unfolding of man's 
 spiritual nature, traversing all the distance from 
 the lowest barbarism to the highest spiritual 
 civilization under the inspiration of Jesus. 
 
332 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 : The changed view of the Bible brought about 
 by criticism makes immensely for faith. The 
 loss of the old view is, I know, to many most 
 painful. It was a real comfort to their hearts 
 to believe that they had a book which contained 
 the infallible word of God. It was a comfort 
 to believe that they could open this book and 
 find a ready solution of all the problems that 
 otherwise would be so troublesome. It was much 
 to believe that they had here, from beginning to 
 end, a transcript of the Divine mind. All that 
 they have lost. But are there no gains ? Is 
 not the Bible coming back to us in another way 
 as the grandest book in the world ? It is coming 
 back to us as a record of the aspirations, failings, 
 sins, and strivings of a great race specially 
 endowed with the genius for religion. It is return- 
 ing to us as a human book, glowing with human 
 fervour, thrilling with human hope, warm with 
 human affection, inspired with the story of 
 man's effort to get into right relationship with 
 God. We are no longer responsible for its 
 mistakes. We are not troubled to reconcile its 
 contradictions. We have no longer to defend 
 that in it which is indefensible. It is coming 
 back to us as the greatest rehgious Hterature 
 of mankind ; a book profitable for doctrine, 
 for correction, for instruction in the great deep 
 things , of righteousness, love, and peace ; a 
 
THE WORK OF CHANGE 233 
 
 book we read as the history of our race along 
 the religious line. 
 
 So all the changes wrought in men's ideas by 
 science, history, criticism, right reason, scholar- 
 ship, and a growing humanity — changes which 
 to many seem only loss, are really so much gain ; 
 they take away something but they give us in 
 clearness, in surety, and in hopefulness more 
 than they take away. Much is pulled down, but 
 it is that a fairer building may rise out of the ruins. 
 It is as Oliver Wendell Holmes has sung : — 
 
 The waves unbuild the wasting shore 
 
 Where mountains towered, the billows sweep. 
 
 Yet still their borrowed spoils restore, 
 And raise new empires from the deep. 
 
 So while the floods of thought lay waste 
 
 The old domain of chartered creeds, 
 The heaven-appointed tides will haste 
 
 To shape new homes for human needs. 
 
 Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled 
 The change our outworn age deplores ; 
 
 The legend sinks, but faith shall build 
 A fairer throne on new-found shores. 
 
 The star shall glow in western skies 
 
 That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine, 
 
 And here a fairer temple rise 
 
 Than crowned the rock of Palestine. 
 
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