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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 

BELIEFS ABOUT THE BIBLE 
 
 BY 
 
 M. J. SAVAGE 
 
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 BOSTON 
 GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 
 1883 
 

 Copyright, 1SS3, 
 By GEORGE H. ELLIS. 
 
To 
 
 HIM WHO WAS MY BOYHOOD'S IDEAL, AND TO WHOSE 
 
 LATER CARE I OWE THE BEST OF WHAT I 
 
 HAVE DONE OR BECOME,— 
 
 TO 
 
 MY BROTHER. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 We have just been celebrating the four hundredth 
 anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther. The one 
 thing with which his name is more prominently asso- 
 ciated than with anything else is — for the Protestant 
 world — the dethronement of the Pope as God's vice- 
 gerent on earth, and the establishment of the Bible in 
 his place. It is then a fitting time for us to raise the 
 question as to whether this work of his can be regarded 
 as a finality. More important than any discussion as 
 to what system of doctrine or church polity the Bible 
 may be interpreted into supporting, is the deeper 
 inquiry as to how we are to regard the Bible itself. 
 This book is an attempt to give a plain answer to that 
 inquiry. 
 
 Boston, November, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The English Bible, , s 9 
 
 II. The Text and the Canon, 23 
 
 III. The Pentateuch, 40 
 
 IV. The Prophets, 
 
 V. The Writings, 79 
 
 VI. The Bridge between the Testaments, ... 96 
 
 VII. The Epistles, 11 1 
 
 VIII. The Gospels, 126 
 
 IX. The Religion of the Bible, . . . 144 
 
 X. The Morality of the Bible, 157 
 
 XI. The Present Use and Worth of the Bible, . 175 
 
 XII. The Eternal Bible, 190 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 
 
 The Bible is the key point of the modern theological con- 
 troversy. Whatever theory of its origin, its nature, its 
 authority, shall win in this critical contest that is going on, 
 will influence the thought and the progress of the religious 
 world for all future time. 
 
 What kind of a book is this ? Is it the word of God ? Is 
 it infallible ? Is it inspired ? Is it ultimate authority con- 
 cerning the nature of God, the nature of man, human duty 
 and human destiny ? Is it a book unique, to be set apart in 
 a class by itself ? Is it unlike all other productions that the 
 world has ever seen ? These are the questions that need to 
 be asked and that press for an answer. How important they 
 are I need not waste words in impressing upon your minds. 
 If this book be indeed in its entirety the word of God, if it 
 be infallible, if its conceptions of the divine nature and 
 human nature, of morality, religion, and the future be un- 
 changing truth, then there is nothing so important as that 
 we should know it, that we should believe it heartily, and 
 that we should act upon it every day of our lives. 
 
 On the other hand, if these claims be not true, then the 
 claim itself is vicious, mischievous, and injurious to man. It 
 stands in the way of human progress. For example, sup- 
 pose a ship at sea : the captain has on board a chart which 
 he believes to be perfectly accurate in every part. He has 
 
10 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 a compass, the needle of which he believes to be always true 
 to the north. If they be what he supposes, then they will 
 of course help him \ and it is of the utmost importance to 
 him that he should know it and believe it. But, if the chart 
 be inaccurate, if the compass is not to be depended on, then 
 to trust in them will certainly lead him astray, and maybe 
 cause disaster and wreck. 
 
 Now, then, if the Bible conception of God, the Bible teach- 
 ing concerning his nature, be true, then it is very important 
 that we should know it ; but if it be not, and we think it is, 
 then in our religious conceptions we may be all astray. If 
 the Bible teaching concerning human nature, the origin of 
 man, the origin and the nature of sin, be false, and we be- 
 lieve and act upon them as though they were true, then we 
 are taking just that course which must stand in the way of 
 an accurate solution of the problem. If the Bible doctrine 
 as to the final destiny of the race be not true, and neverthe- 
 less we bend all our energies, contribute our money, time, 
 and effort in order to escape certain supposed dangers when 
 those dangers do not really exist, we are not merely wasting 
 time, money, and thought, but we are leading humanity 
 by an entirely false road, and making it practically im- 
 possible for us to find out the real truth concerning these 
 all-important problems. He who believes that the Bible is 
 the infallible word of God must of course hold to this faith 
 as the highest of all virtues, the most important of all things 
 in the world. If, then, it be not true, he is substituting a' 
 false standard of right and wrong for the true one. If the 
 Bible be infallible, the most important thing in the world is 
 that we should believe it. If it be infallible, then to disbe- 
 lieve it becomes a crime in our thought. The use of reason 
 is turned into a danger. Doubt becomes a sin; while, if 
 the Bible be not infallible, the highest duty of man is to 
 
The English Bible. II 
 
 doubt it. The highest duty of man is to use his 
 reason, is to find out what is the constitution of human 
 nature, and on what its development and future pros- 
 perity depend. I say then that to believe that the Bible is 
 infallibly inspired, if it be not so, is not an innocent belief, a 
 harmless faith. It is something that stands squarely in the 
 way of human progress, more than anything else of which we 
 can conceive. 
 
 We need then earnestly, simply, without prejudice and 
 without passion, to ask and answer these grave questions in 
 the light of all the knowledge and help that we can obtain. 
 In regard to my own attitude toward it, I wish to say to 
 you that I have no prejudice against a revelation. My heart 
 on the contrary would bound and leap with joy to meet 
 and welcome a revelation, could I believe that it were true. 
 Could I believe that God did speak in this marvellous way, 
 with what eagerness would I listen to catch the faintest 
 utterance ! Did I believe that some supernatural light might 
 be shed down upon our human pathway which should bring 
 the solution of our human problems, over which brain be- 
 comes weary and hearts ache, with what gladness would I 
 look for the faintest glimmer of a ray of that divine light and 
 guidance ! Whatever, then, I shall say in the course of 
 these discussions, I beg you not to think that I am influ- 
 enced in the slightest degree by any antagonism toward the 
 revelation idea itself. But by as much as I desire light, by 
 precisely so much am I anxious not to be deceived. 
 
 Let us then, with these preliminary ideas, take up the book 
 and look at it, and see what it is. 
 
 We find that it is called "the Bible," "the book"; and yet, 
 as we trace its history a little, we discover that this title is a 
 very modern one. It is only within recent centuries that 
 it has gone by this name, " the book," in the singular number. 
 
12 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 It was called long before that, in the Greek, Ta Biblia, " the 
 books," indicating by this title what at least is the apparent 
 truth, — that it is not one book, but a little library brought 
 together and made one by being put within the same limiting 
 covers. Before it was called "the books/' it was called "the 
 scriptures," or "writings." But although the Old Testament 
 went by this title, which indicated that they were set apart by 
 themselves, it was long before the same descriptive and 
 sacred title was applied to the New Testament. 
 
 Leaving the title and opening the book, what do we find ? 
 If it be a Catholic copy or many of the older Protestant 
 copies, we shall find three grand divisions, the Old Testa- 
 ment or covenant, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament 
 or covenant ; the word " covenant " probably representing 
 more accurately the idea of the original word than does 
 the word " testament." We will leave out of consideration 
 the Apocrypha, because the Protestants have always rejected 
 it, although the Catholics have accepted it as of equal au- 
 thority with the other two divisions. 
 
 We find it not only divided into two divisions, but that 
 there are many books, thirty-nine in the Old Testament, 
 and twenty-seven in the New, making a library of sixty-six 
 little volumes in all. Let us run over the contents for a 
 moment, that we may get the scope of this work. 
 
 At the beginning, we find the Pentateuch, commonly re- 
 garded as the five books of Moses. They tell us about the 
 creation of the world, the origin and distribution of nations, 
 the emigrations of the early peoples, until at last God is 
 represented as selecting one and constituting it his own 
 peculiar people. We trace this people from its wanderings 
 from the far East through Palestine, until we find them 
 slaves in Egypt. Then, we find them escaping from under 
 the bondage of the Egyptian kings into the wilderness, where 
 
The English Bible. 13 
 
 they are supposed to have wandered forty years. During 
 this time, the statutes of God are given them through the 
 agency of Moses. Then come Joshua and Judges, books 
 which tell the story and the conquest of Canaan, stories of 
 the heroes and the wars of the separate tribes before they 
 were compacted under one law into one kingdom. Then, at 
 the end of this, we find a beautiful little poetic idyl, the story 
 of Ruth, her faithfulness and love. Next follows the history 
 of the kings, the various dynasties, the wars of the two king- 
 doms of Judah and Israel between themselves and between 
 them and the surrounding nations. These are related to us 
 in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Then, we 
 have the story, in Ezra and Nehemiah, of the' captivity of 
 the people in Babylon, their return, and the rebuilding of 
 their beloved temple. Next comes the story of Esther, and 
 the founding of one of the great festivals of the Jews ; the 
 attempt of their persecutors to destroy them, and the re- 
 venge wrought on them by the permission of the king. 
 Now, we find ourselves face to face with Job and that old- 
 est problem of the world, a problem not yet solved, of 
 human suffering, and how it may be reconciled with justice 
 in the government of the world. Passing from that, we find 
 that we have in our hands the hymn-book of the Jews, that 
 which they used in their temple service, called the Psalms 
 of David. Then come the Proverbs, a collection of wise 
 sayings popularly attributed to Solomon. Next, the little 
 Book of Ecclesiastes, one of the darkest, most hopeless, 
 most pessimistic works that the religious or literary world 
 has produced, setting forth the vanity of human life, the 
 emptiness of all things under the sun. Then comes a beau- 
 tiful Eastern love-poem, misunderstood, perverted, ridiculed, 
 and yet containing one of the most beautiful lessons in all 
 Scripture, the Song of Solomon. Next, we are in the pres- 
 
14 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 ence of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, followed by what 
 was supposed to be Jeremiah's lament over the desolation 
 of his people. Then come Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve 
 minor prophets. When we come to the New Testament, we 
 find the Four Gospels, — you will see later why there are 
 four now, originally there were many more,— supposed to be 
 written by the men whose names they bear ; the first three 
 very much alike in their general characteristics, the last one 
 standing apart and constituting a class by itself. The Acts 
 then tell us about the history of the founding of the early 
 Christian Church. Then there are fourteen letters supposed 
 to have been written by Paul to these churches, answering 
 their questions, solving their problems, telling how to order 
 and regulate their affairs, advising with reference to matters 
 of doctrine and practice. Next comes a general Epistle by 
 James to all the churches ; then two bearing the name of 
 Peter, three bearing the name of John, and one little one 
 bearing the name of Jude. Lastly comes the Apocalypse, 
 the Revelation of St. John, wherein is set forth in gorgeous 
 strain his lofty vision of the supposed course of human his- 
 tory, until the second coming of Christ and the revelation of 
 the city of God coming down out of heaven. 
 
 This is the book of which we are to treat in its varied 
 contents. It claims to cover everything from the creation 
 of the world unto the end of all mundane things, — the fold- 
 ing away of the heavens like a scroll, and the entering in 
 of that existence, when, in the words of the angel, "time 
 shall be no more." 
 
 Where did this book come from ? So far as we are to 
 consider the question to-day, it is a translation. I shall not 
 be able to cover more ground this morning than the treat- 
 ment of the English Bible. We have then a translation 
 from certain Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. This which 
 
The English Bible. 15 
 
 we call the received text to-day was not the first of the 
 translations. It is the last of the series, beginning with the 
 work of Tyndale, Coverdale, and their compeers, followed 
 by the Geneva, the Douay, the Bishops' Bible, and others, 
 until at last, under the patronage of James I. of England, 
 in 161 1, two hundred and seventy-one years ago, the book 
 as we have it was published. 
 
 I want to call your attention to two or three peculiarities 
 of our English version before we go on to the theories 
 which are held concerning it. 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 it is a matter of a good deal of 
 practical importance sometimes. The divisions of chapters 
 and verses were simply the work of the publisher, made for 
 mere convenience of reference ; and, sometimes, they are so 
 badly made that they interfere very seriously with the 
 apprehension of the meaning of the original writers. 
 
 For example, it is quite commonly the case that the 
 paragraph or section is divided in such a way that, in read- 
 ing one chapter, you may begin in the middle of one subject 
 and leave off in the middle of another, thus getting no idea 
 of the matter as it lay in the mind of the writer. The verse 
 division is also purely arbitrary, hardly any more accurate 
 than as though they were divided into sections of half an 
 inch in length without any regard to their meaning. I have 
 seen many a time on the walls of public halls and churches 
 isolated texts hung up as mottoes, which not only do not 
 convey the idea of the original writer, but often quite the 
 opposite. As one concrete example, — I speak of it without 
 expressing any convictions I may have in connection with 
 temperance, — I have seen in halls the motto, "Touch not, 
 
1 6 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 taste not, handle not," as though God, by the mouth of 
 Paul, had issued that as a divine injunction. If, however, 
 you take the trouble to look into Paul's own writings, you 
 will find that he simply quotes, "Why are ye subject to 
 ordinances (touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are 
 to perish with the using) ? " to condemn them. That is, Paul 
 says precisely the opposite of what he is made to say in 
 this purely arbitrary use of the text detached from its 
 surroundings. 
 
 Not only this, but you find also along the headings of the 
 pages and at the beginning of chapters certain running titles 
 and comments, indicating what, according to the author of 
 these titles, is contained in the pages and chapters so 
 marked. Was this any part of the original? No. This, 
 again, was the work of the publishers ; and, many a time, these 
 headings are not only fanciful and imaginary, but grossly in- 
 correct. That is, they are really a process of interpreting 
 Scripture, turning headings and indexes into commentaries; 
 and, as I have said, they are grossly incorrect. 
 
 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 idea must be borne in mind in this connection. 
 Let us grant for a moment that the original Hebrew and 
 Greek manuscripts are the infallible word of God. Never- 
 theless, as we open our English Bible, we cannot feel that we 
 have in our hands a verbal transcript of this infallible work, 
 because no one claims that the translators were inspired. 
 We have only their judgment as to what the original writers 
 meant, put into the best English of which they had any prac- 
 tical control. So that, whatever the original may be, the 
 translation is not infallible, but is the result of the judgment 
 
The English Bible. \*J 
 
 of fallible men ; and this is emphasized by the fact that no 
 two translations are alike, and that, even in this revised ver- 
 sion of the New Testament which we have received within a 
 year or two, there are a vast number of places where the 
 English and American scholars differed very seriously as to 
 the meaning of certain words and phrases. These differ- 
 ences are so important that an appendix has been added, 
 containing them. If you take up an American edition, you 
 will find the opinions of the English revisers as to these 
 points given in an appendix by themselves ; and, if you take 
 up an English copy, you will find the American revisers' 
 opinions given in an appendix by themselves. We must 
 therefore bear in mind that there may be an important differ- 
 ence between the Bible as first written and the Bible as 
 translated, whatever theory of the original may be held. 
 
 Now, then, let me place before you, as clearly as I can, 
 some of the different theories concerning this great book 
 that have been held by the religious world in our Protestant 
 age. 
 
 The first one is that which has gone by the name of verbal 
 inspiration. Those who held to this theory — and there are 
 some still who hold to it to-day, I suppose — believed that 
 every word as it appeared in the original Greek and Hebrew 
 manuscripts was directly and definitely inspired by God ; so 
 that it was as literally God's word as though he had himself 
 held the pen, and had chosen those words and no other. 
 This theory was carried so far by the early Puritan divines 
 that some actually believed that not only the words, but the 
 punctuation points, were inspired. This seems something 
 trivia] to us ; and yet, if you look at it a little, you will see 
 that it is an essential part of the theory. You know how 
 possible it is to change the sense of a passage in a letter or 
 a book by changing the position of a comma, a semicolon, 
 
1 8 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 or a period. Only a little while ago, I saw a famous letter of 
 Mr. Darwin's, over which there has been much controversy 
 as to whether he said a certain thing or whether he said 
 something else, the whole depending on where you put the 
 punctuation mark. It is evident, therefore, that the location 
 of a comma is not a light thing./ Indeed, it seems to me as 
 important that the punctuation should have been inspired as 
 the words ; and yet I may have occasion, as I go on, to show 
 you how absurd any such conception as this must be, be- 
 cause the original manuscripts, many of them, from which 
 our version is taken, contained not only no punctuation, but 
 no division into chapters or even paragraphs. They simply 
 present to the reader one solid page, with no division into 
 words even, and many times with only an abbreviation rep- 
 resenting a word. Whatever, then, may be true of the trans- 
 lation, there were no punctuation marks in the originals as 
 we have them ; and consequently, if they were definitely and 
 infallibly inspired, it must have been through the medium 
 of the human copyist or the printer. This is the first theory. 
 
 The next, which has been the one more commonly held 
 in the Protestant world, and the one generally held by those 
 who call themselves strictly evangelical, is plenary inspira- 
 tion, from a Latin word meaning full or complete. While 
 they would not stickle for the very words or punctuation 
 marks, they held and taught, and still hold and teach, that 
 the human writers of the original manuscripts of the Bible 
 were so divinely controlled as to preclude them from • the 
 possibility of any mistake, so that the Bible in every part 
 is completely true without any mixture of error. This is 
 the theory of plenary inspiration. 
 
 There is another theory which is coming to be quite 
 popular, especially among the younger men in the ministry, 
 those who are glad to call themselves by the name of liberal 
 
The English Bible. 19 
 
 orthodox. It is the theory which teaches that, though the 
 Bible may be in error in regard to scientific matters, though 
 it may make mistakes as to historical facts, though it may 
 be wrong in its figures and chronology, still it is true 
 and the infallible word of God, so far as concerns its moral 
 and religious teaching. That is, it may make mistakes in 
 geology, in geography and chronology and history, but that, 
 whenever it comes to teaching anything about human destiny, 
 then it is infallible. That always seemed to me a strange 
 conglomerate of a theory. Undoubtedly, it has resulted 
 from the pressure that has been brought to bear upon the 
 modern world along these lines of science and history and 
 chronology, a pressure so severe as to have broken down 
 at these points the whole theory of plenary inspiration. 
 That is, these men have been compelled to admit that Biblical 
 science was wrong, that the writers were mistaken in history, 
 that they blundered in chronology • yet, falling back from 
 this, they have taken refuge in the citadel of the unknown 
 and unknowable. They insist on claiming that these 
 writers are infallible here ; and they can keep on doing this, 
 so far as I can see, as long as they please, because nobody 
 knows enough about this matter to contradict them. They 
 can claim that the Bible is infallible, when it teaches us 
 about the innermost nature of God, the future world, the 
 need of forgiveness, because we cannot bring these partic- 
 ular questions to any practical test. This theory, then, is 
 one that holds that the Bible is infallible and inspired only in 
 those parts where it is practically impossible to bring it to 
 any decisive test. 
 
 But there is still another one which has been popular 
 among the old Unitarians, and is held by a great many of 
 them to-day. That is, they would not put their finger upon 
 each particular thing in the Bible, and say that this is infalli- 
 
20 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 ble, absolute, and unchanging truth, while this other is error. 
 They do not say that the Bible is the word of God ; but they 
 change the phrase, and say that it contains the word of God, 
 although they give no rule for telling what is the infallible 
 word of God and what is the human addition or misconcep- 
 tion. I could never find any standard by which they pro- 
 posed to bring this matter to the test, except the standard of 
 individual intuition and taste. As though a man should say, 
 "That part which I like, which strikes me as reasonable, 
 which I am inclined to believe, which is practically helpful 
 to me, I take as the infallible word of God and reject the 
 rest." But let them dare to apply this test, and they have 
 a different Bible for each person, each making his own selec- 
 tion among the different parts. 
 
 There is one more theory, still more attenuated than this. 
 You see how they have gradually diminished and faded 
 away, until at last the conception of the writers is something 
 so nearly invisible as to need a microscope to get a good 
 view of it. This theory is that, although the Bible is not 
 the word of God in any general sense, though it does not 
 contain the word of God in any special sense, yet that some- 
 way it is a different book from all others in the world, hav- 
 ing a quality of inspiration about it that is unique, that sets 
 it apart. They would feel a little shocked and troubled if 
 you should place the Bible on the same level with Shak- 
 spere or Goethe, if you should propose to criticise it under 
 precisely the same methods, if you should treat it simply as 
 a human production. 
 
 There is yet another theory ; and that is the one which 
 treats the Bible as a purely human production, like any 
 other natural, human work. Heine, the great German poet, 
 gave an accurate and adequate expression to this idea, when 
 he said — he being a Jew by parentage — that the Bible was 
 
The English Bible, 21 
 
 *a 
 
 simply " the great family chronicle of the Jews." This theory 
 treats the book as a great body of religious and ethical 
 literature, as the spiritual biography of a nation, the produc- 
 of a thousand years of hope and fear, and struggle and 
 aspiration, and yet a perfectly natural human production, 
 springing out of the human heart and human life just as 
 naturally as any other part of the world's great literature. 
 This is what Emerson gave utterance to in the famous 
 couplet of his famous poem, "The Problem," — 
 
 " Out from the heart of nature rolled 
 The burdens of the Bible old." 
 
 There is one more thought which is the extreme antipode, 
 so to speak, of the extreme inspirational and infallible theory, 
 — a theory held and taught with a great deal of vigor by cer- 
 tain rough iconoclasts of the time, and not only by those, 
 but by some of the leading scholars of the world. This is, 
 that the Bible is so false in its conceptions of God, so un- 
 founded in its teachings concerning human nature, so one- 
 sided in its ethical ideas and precepts, so barbaric in a 
 large part of its Old Testament stories, so mystic and 
 unreal in a large part of the New, that it is a positive evil 
 to have the book commonly in the hands of the people, 
 looked on with the reverence and awe with which it is com- 
 monly regarded. James Anthony Froude, the great English 
 historian, says — I quote only his idea from memory — that, 
 when he looks over the history of the last thousand years, and 
 sees the unspeakable amount of evil that has been wrought 
 in Christendom as the result of believing that the Bible was 
 the inspired word of God, he could not help feeling that, 
 having it in all homes, regarded as it was, the book was 
 working an incalculable amount of injury. He would regard 
 it, therefore, as a production not to be commonly spread and 
 
22 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 commonly used in the shape in which it is held at the pres- 
 ent time. A concession to a part of this theory was made 
 recently by Dr. R. Heber Newton, a brilliant Episcopal min- 
 ister, who is reported in the New York Herald to have said 
 that the Bible, in its entirety, ought not to be publicly circu- 
 lated, that there should be at least a selected or expurgated 
 edition published before it is spread broadcast over the world. 
 These, then, are the different theories concerning this book, 
 of which I have given you this general account. It is not 
 my purpose to pursue the subject further to-day. As to what 
 we are to think of it, how it originated, who wrote it, when, 
 where, what influence it has had on the world, and what 
 influences we may expect it to have still, — these questions 
 will be the subject of future discourses. 
 
THE TEXT AND THE CANON. 
 
 A lady present in my audience last Sunday morning 
 (I hope she was not one of my regular hearers, because I 
 should be sorry to be so misunderstood and misinterpreted 
 by one hearing me constantly) was overheard to remark 
 that she did not see any use in Mr. Savage's attacking the 
 Bible, a book that had done so much good in the world, 
 whatever the truth about it might be. This may represent 
 the attitude of more than one ; and, for this reason, I wish 
 to make one or two remarks concerning it. 
 
 In the first place, I am only telling the simple truth about 
 the Bible ; and it seems to me a most damaging admission 
 for any one to make concerning a man, an institution, or a 
 book, that telling the truth about him or it is attacking it. 
 In the next place, we need to draw a very clear-cut line, or 
 distinction, between the Bible and the theories that have 
 been held or taught concerning it. If you will notice, I 
 think you will bear me witness that I have never attacked 
 the Bible ; and it is not my purpose to do so in this course of 
 sermons. I only attack what I regard as certain false, un- 
 founded, vicious theories involved in the claims put forth on 
 its behalf, which it has never put forth, and has never at- 
 tempted to sustain. In the third place, we need to remem- 
 ber that theories and beliefs concerning God, concerning 
 Bibles, concerning institutions of one kind or another, may 
 have been really helpful to man in some stage of his prog- 
 ress ; and yet these same beliefs and theories may afterward 
 
24 Biliefs about the Bible. 
 
 come to be hindrances that stand in the way of his further 
 advance. So much by way of comment on this type of 
 criticism. 
 
 Last Sunday morning, I treated of the English Bible, its 
 contents, its divisions, natural and artificial, and the theories 
 that have been held in the past, and are now currently held 
 concerning it. In so doing, I took note of the well-known 
 fact that this English Bible of ours is a translation from an 
 earlier literature ; and I called your attention to this some- 
 what important point, that, even though the originals of the 
 Old and New Testaments may have been infallible and in- 
 spired, we cannot claim that we have now a book which is thus 
 infallible and inspired, unless we know that the translators 
 were divinely assisted in their work ; and this no man that I 
 have heard of has ever put forth as a sober claim. But, 
 even though we knew that the Old and New Testament 
 manuscripts were originally infallible and inspired, we should 
 not be sure that those copies that the translators used pos- 
 sessed these characteristics, unless we could be certain that 
 we have in our present copies just those books, and no more, 
 that were in the first place rendered infallible, and unless 
 we could be perfectly sure that they had come down to us 
 through the ages unchanged in every essential feature. But, 
 again, though we knew that the manuscripts of the Old and 
 New Testaments had never been changed, though we could 
 be sure that the translators had a copy that had never 
 been varied by a phrase or a sentence or a word or a letter, 
 we should not then be certain that the book was infallible 
 and inspired. We should need to go back and find out 
 where this original came from, and what credentials it 
 brought with it when it came. That is further back than we 
 shall be able to go this morning, and I shall confine myself 
 to considering the text and the canon. 
 
The Text and the Canon. 25 
 
 As we go one step back of our English Bible, what do we 
 find ? Do we find some one copy containing just the books 
 of our present Bible, no more, no less ? Do we find that 
 this Bible has been transmitted from generation to genera- 
 tion without any changes or any mistakes ? Instead of 
 that, we find the truth to be almost as far the other way as 
 you can conceive or imagine. As there are some special 
 points that I wish to bring before you concerning the manu- 
 scripts of the Old Testament, I shall treat first of those of 
 the New. 
 
 We have in the world a collection, not in any one place, 
 but in all, of somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen 
 hundred New Testament manuscripts. Sometimes a manu- 
 script is complete, containing all the books, sometimes con- 
 taining certain books not at present admitted. In other 
 cases, the manuscript covers only a fragment or one book or 
 even a part of a book. Are these all alike ? Does there 
 seem to have been any supernatural supervision exercised 
 in making these copies, to keep out any error or mistake ? 
 Does there seem to have been even ordinary human care 
 exercised to prevent the intrusion of any errors ? You can 
 judge for yourself, when I tell you that, within the range of 
 these seventeen hundred manuscripts, there are somewhere 
 in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty thousand vari- 
 ous readings. It is only just to say, of course, that the 
 larger part of these variations are minute, not touching mat- 
 ters of great importance, sometimes only a difference in the 
 spelling of a word, sometimes a difference in the word itself, 
 sometimes a difference in a phrase ; but some of them are 
 important enough to extend to even whole paragraphs and 
 parts of chapters, so that many of these variations are very 
 important indeed. 
 
 Prof. George P. Fisher, of Yale Theological Seminary, 
 
26 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 one of the leading orthodox scholars, in an article published 
 last summer in the North American Review, touching this 
 matter of the various readings in the manuscripts, has sought 
 to avoid the force of this very important point by saying that 
 these manuscripts are probably nearly, if not quite, as 
 accurate as those we have of Plato, of Aristotle, or of the 
 Commentaries of Caesar; that we do not feel any special 
 doubt as to the teachings of Plato or Aristotle or Caesar on 
 account of the variations in manuscripts, and we ought not 
 any more to feel anxiety or trouble about the New Testament 
 variations. But there is a very marked distinction between 
 the two cases, and one that an acute scholar like Prof. 
 Fisher certainly ought not to have overlooked. No one 
 claims that your life and mine for this world, much less our 
 eternal destiny for heaven or hell in the next world, depends 
 on the accuracy of a reading in Plato or Aristotle or Caesar's 
 Commentaries. If some great Church should turn one of 
 these books into its Bible, and make human destiny hinge 
 on the accuracy of the phrases of Plato or Aristotle, you 
 would then see that the world would rouse and wake up 
 in its interest as to whether we could be certain that these 
 readings had come down uncorrupted from the past. There 
 is no justice then in making any such comparison as this. 
 The point we wish to know is whether we can be so certain 
 as to the phrases, the wording, the literal teaching of this 
 book, called the New Testament, that any body of men 
 has a right to build a world-wide doctrine, and make- the 
 eternal peace or the misery of men depend on the reading 
 of a text. 
 
 It is thus a question of very great importance for us to 
 find out whether a book, on whose behalf such extraordinary 
 claims are made, has come down to us accurately as it was 
 written by its authors. I have said, however, that there 
 
The Text and the Canon. 27 
 
 are some one hundred and fifty thousand different readings 
 in its manuscripts. How can we account for them ? Under 
 what influences have they come to exist ? Under the most 
 natural ones in the world. If we consider the New Testa- 
 ment as simply a human production, it is not strange that 
 we should have these different readings, changes of texts, 
 misunderstandings, misinterpretations. Every scholar knows 
 that, concerning Shakspere for example, there are thousands 
 and thousands of different readings, over which the critics 
 speculate and study. But it does not arouse any general 
 interest in the world, because it is of no practical importance 
 to man whether Shakspere used this particular word in this 
 particular place or that. No question of human destiny 
 hinges on it. It is merely a matter of literary curiosity. 
 
 These changes then have come about in the most natural 
 way. In the first place, through the blunders of copyists. 
 You are aware that printing is quite a modern invention ; and 
 that these manuscripts were written by hand, by the monks 
 and students of the Middle Ages, and in the early ages of 
 Christianity. If you have had a letter 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 misspell a 
 word or to substitute a wrong one or to make any one of a 
 dozen common errors in copying a piece of work. Here is 
 the source of a great many of them. Another rises from 
 the fact that it was quite a common thing for the various 
 makers of manuscripts to write in the margin of the book, or 
 at the foot of the page, various little notes and comments ; 
 to suggest one word for another where they thought some 
 previous copyist might have made a mistake. When a new 
 copy was to be made, the man who was engaged in doing it 
 would wonder a great many times whether these notes in the 
 margin ought to be a part of the text, something that the 
 
28 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 previous copyist had left out ; and, thinking they ought, he 
 would incorporate them into the text itself. A great many 
 changes, doubtless, came about in this way. If you remem- 
 ber that these Greek manuscripts generally were not divided 
 into verses and paragraphs, but that they were written solid, 
 you will see how easy it was for errors of one kind or an- 
 other to spring up in this way. If, for example, I should 
 send you a manuscript to-day without any division of para- 
 graphs, sentences, or even of words, as some are written, all 
 the letters about the same distance apart, and the whole 
 page solid, the chances would be a hundred to one against 
 your making me an accurate copy, putting in the punctuation 
 where I intended it to be, dividing the sentences into words 
 as I had them in my mind, and so giving an accurate tran- 
 script of the whole. 
 
 There is another source of error still that has sprung out 
 of the doctrinal bias of the copyist himself. Deliberate lib- 
 erties were taken a great many times by the copyist, in im- 
 proving the text, as he supposed, leaving out a word that he 
 did not like, or inserting one that he did. As in that great 
 warfare that waged in the early Church between the Arians 
 and Athanasians, between those who believed in the new doc- 
 trine of the Trinity and between those who fought against it, 
 how natural it would be for a copyist to change a phrase 
 this way or that, either on one side or the other, softening 
 it down a little, so that it would not bear so emphatically 
 against the doctrine which he really believed to be true ! 
 A great many times these men might honestly make these 
 changes, feeling so sure that they had the right interpretation 
 that only good could come from their amending the text a 
 little, so that it should be impossible for the careless reader 
 to misunderstand it. 
 
 Again, we must remember that the standard of literary 
 
The Text and the Canon. 29 
 
 ethics then was very different from the modern standard. 
 To-day, we call a man a plagiarist, we convict him of literary 
 theft, and he would be publicly disgraced, were he capable 
 of writing books in such a way as these early workers were 
 accustomed, as a common thing, to do. For example, it was 
 a very common thing, during the first four or five hundred 
 years before Christ and three or four hundred years after, — 
 yes, seven or eight hundred years after, — it was quite a 
 common thing for them to take the work of earlier writers 
 in composing a book of their own, to borrow here and there 
 such material from those books as they cared to use, and 
 to incorporate it bodily into their own work, adding and 
 changing here and there as they pleased, patching and piec- 
 ing in such a way that only a critic could detect the way in 
 which it had been done. Work of this sort can be traced 
 in the manufacture of some of the manuscripts both of the 
 Old Testament and the New. 
 
 Not only that, but it was not at all uncommon for writers 
 at this time to do another thing which our standard of lit- 
 erary honesty would most severely condemn ; and that is to 
 put into the mouth of the speaker not the words which he 
 really used, but such words, even extending sometimes to 
 long speeches, as they supposed he would have used, or 
 might properly have used, on such and such an occasion. 
 Let me indicate to you how recently work of this kind has 
 been done. In some of our modern school-books there are 
 speeches or orations, supposed to have been delivered in 
 Parliament by celebrated orators, which everybody knows 
 w r ere never delivered at all. There were no reporters at 
 the time the speeches were made. The way in which the 
 speeches were prepared was for some good writer, who knew 
 that such a speech had been made at such a time, to write 
 out what might have been said on that occasion by that 
 
30 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 speaker; and it passes in the modern world as the real 
 speech. Sometimes, a thing of that sort is done by a smart 
 reporter now. I was told not a great while ago by a prom- 
 inent newspaper man at the head of a leading paper that he 
 had sometimes been obliged to report the speeches of pol- 
 iticians, when he could not get near enough to hear more 
 than now and then a word. Yet he must produce a speech. 
 So he caught at this and that, as best he could ; and, know- 
 ing the general sentiment of the speaker, he would write out 
 as nearly as possible what he might be presumed to say. 
 And, once, he did his work so well that he received a per- 
 sonal letter with the thanks of the orator. He probably 
 wrote out as good a speech as the speaker made, even if it 
 was not just the one that he did make. 
 
 To go back to more ancient times, you are accustomed 
 to find facts like these in the works of Thucydides, Xeno- 
 phon, and Plato. Thucydides and Xenophon put into the 
 mouths of military leaders speeches that they made to 
 the soldiers on the eve of such and such a battle. But 
 every one knows perfectly well that the writers are only 
 putting into the mouths of their heroes the speeches which 
 they might have made, or which would have been fitting 
 to make, not the actual words that they used. If you take 
 up the Dialogues of Plato, you find long utterances of 
 Socrates ; but Plato does not claim to make a verbal report 
 of Socrates' words. He represents the general position of 
 Socrates on these subjects; and he puts into his mouth 
 words which are not the words of Socrates at all, but which 
 are the words of Plato. This is very well, if it is fully 
 understood. But, when we know that this may have been 
 done in the case of Jesus, and that, in all probability, it was 
 done by the writer of the Gospel of John, when he puts 
 long prayers and speeches into the mouth of Jesus, which are 
 
The Text a,7id the Canon, 31 
 
 entirely unlike that which the other three gospel writers give; 
 when we are taught to believe that our eternal destiny 
 hinges on the accuracy of these reports, it becomes impor- 
 tant that w r e should know the character of the literary ethics 
 which underlie this work, to know how they are produced, 
 and how much weight and authority they carry with them. 
 
 Not only this, but, to go a step farther, not only did they 
 incorporate the works of other writers, and put into the 
 mouths of speakers and hearers that which they did not 
 say, but that which they might have said ; but they went to 
 the extent of creating and producing whole books under the 
 influence of a doctrinal bias, and for the purpose of carrying 
 this or that belief through the public mind, and making it 
 dominant in the religious circles of their time, which were 
 outright forgeries. We should call them forgeries to-day, 
 although it is a serious question whether we ought to hold 
 the writers guilty, as we should in the nineteenth century* 
 Such writing was not looked upon then as it is now. If a 
 man felt that he was serving a good purpose, that he was 
 helping on right thought, he considered himself justified in 
 doing this kind of work. There are books extant to-dav 
 that came very near being incorporated into the Bible \ and 
 it is quite possible that such books were incorporated, books 
 which were written two or three hundred years perhaps after 
 the time of their supposed author, and were published with 
 the names of some old saint or hero attached to them, that 
 they might gain currency and authority in the great religious 
 discussions of the time. We must remember these things, 
 when we take up the question as to the accuracy and authen- 
 ticity of the manuscripts that have come to be part of our 
 modern Bible. 
 
 Let me pass now to the manuscripts of the Old Testa- 
 ment. I wish to say of them in general that all these things 
 
32 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 which I have said concerning the New Testament will hold 
 equally with them, so that I need not repeat them. I only 
 wish to call your attention to one or two peculiar facts 
 which bear upon the question of their accuracy. You are 
 aware, perhaps, that the Hebrew language, as originally 
 written, was made up entirely of consonants ; that is, the 
 Hebrew word as written or printed has no vowels at all. It 
 was quite commonly the case that precisely the same word 
 as it appeared on the written manuscript or printed page 
 would have this meaning or that, according to the vowels 
 which were understood to go along with the consonants 
 thus written or printed. To give you a very commonplace 
 example, suppose that English were printed without any 
 vowels, and you should find the two consonants, b, n, you 
 would see that it might mean bane, bone, bean, or been, 
 or half a dozen other things, according to the vowels which 
 should be combined with these two consonants to complete 
 the word. 
 
 There are cases in the Bible where precisely this kind of 
 liability to error occurs. As a practical illustration, Prof. 
 Robertson Smith tells us that, in one passage, Jacob is rep- 
 resented as uttering his dying prophecies and farewell words 
 to his sons while leaning upon his bed. Another passage, 
 that refers to the same scene, says that he did it leaning 
 upon his staff. This is easy of explanation, when we know 
 that the two words in Hebrew for bed and staff are precisely 
 alike in their consonants, and may be made to mean one or 
 the other according to the vowels added. Of course, you 
 can see what a wide field for misconception and error there 
 is open here. It is long since the time of Christ, some- 
 where between the sixth and ninth centuries, that the system 
 of vowel points was generally adopted, so that the reading 
 of the Hebrew text was settled beyond controversy. 
 
The Text and the Canon. 33 
 
 Now, then, without spending more time on the actual or 
 possible sources of error in the manuscripts, let me say a 
 few words in regard to the formation of the canon. As I 
 have often said, if we were sure that we had an accurate 
 copy of the original text, we should even then need to be 
 sure that we had just those books which ought to be included 
 in this collection that we call the Bible ; and we should also 
 need to know when this collection was settled, and under 
 what influences. It is a very common opinion that the Old 
 Testament canon was settled at least by the time of Christ ; 
 yet this is far from having been the case. About the time 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah, the time of the return from the Jew- 
 ish captivity, the Pentateuch was about as it stands to-day. 
 But long after that time, away down to the time of Christ, 
 and for nearly a hundred years after that, the canon of the 
 Old Testament remained open; and it was still a question 
 which books should be included, and which shut out. 
 
 Under what influences was the canon settled at last ? 
 Was there any criticism, any special scholarship brought to 
 bear upon it? None whatever. We can have no sort of 
 intellectual respect for the decisive influences which at last 
 fixed for all time the canon of the Old Testament scriptures. 
 There came to be an exaggerated, superstitious reverence 
 for the Old Testament in the Jewish mind ; and it was carried 
 so far that they believed there was some wondrous, super- 
 natural, almost magical significance that might be discovered 
 in every word and phrase and letter. It became a matter of 
 the utmost importance to them, holding this belief, that they 
 should be able to know what words and letters really were 
 to be considered part of the Old Testament scriptures ; and 
 so there was an arbitrary selection made by the rabbins, 
 who determined what particular text should be regarded as 
 the true scripture. After this there was a persistent at- 
 
34 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 tempt made, and it was very successful, to suppress every 
 other copy, and all variations from this, which they had de- 
 termined should be the accepted reading. It was even 
 taught that it was a dangerous, a fatal sin to read or have 
 to do with any other copies. It therefore became a part of 
 the Jews' religion to accept a certain text and no other ; and 
 so slavish was the fear induced in connection with this that 
 the copyist of the Old Testament books from that time 
 copied everything, even to the erasures and blots on the 
 page, not daring to depart by a hair's breadth from anything 
 which he found in the manuscript. 
 
 The Jewish canon, then, was settled under the influence of 
 the rabbins toward the last part of the first century. The 
 question whether Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon ; 
 or Ecclesiasticus, the Maccabees, and others which now con- 
 stitute part of the Apocrypha, should be included or not, 
 was suddenly stopped by the destruction of the temple, 
 which put an end to the growth of the Old Testament. 
 
 Thus, without any trace of superhuman guidance, was the 
 canon of the Old Testament finally settled. And, in my 
 opinion, some of the books which were left out are more 
 worthy to be there than some admitted ; and I believe that 
 they would have been admitted, had it not been for the 
 sudden and violent ending of the Jewish nationality. Every- 
 thing old was looked at through the haze and glamour of 
 supernaturalism. Everything was idealized; and everything 
 modern, as it is to-day with us, was regarded as common, 
 and not having about it any of those supernatural qualities. 
 
 Now as to the settlement of the New Testament canon. A 
 large number of books which have not come down to the mod- 
 ern world formerly existed, and stood their chances of becom- 
 ing Christian scriptures in the early centuries of the Church. 
 There was a very large number of gospels, a great many 
 
The Text and the Canon. 35 
 
 epistles, and numerous apocalypses, or revelations. Under 
 what kind of influences and at what time was it settled 
 what should be received as Scripture, and what not ? For 
 the first hundred or two years, when the Old Testament 
 was regarded as sacred scripture and treated and spoken of 
 as such, there was no such feeling for any written books 
 of the New Testament, because it was the universal belief 
 of the whole body of the Church that Jesus, after a few 
 years at ,the most, was to return again from the skies, and 
 establish the visible kingdom of God upon earth. In the 
 face of an expectation like that, what was the use of writ- 
 ten books ? It was only after this dream had faded away 
 that the Gospels were composed. The Epistles of Paul were 
 written before, to meet important cases of necessity and 
 to answer questions arising at the time ; but Paul had prob- 
 ably no idea that there would ever be any controversy as 
 to whether his doctrines were the absolute truth or not. A 
 large number of the books were written after this dream had 
 faded away, and they felt the necessity of having some 
 present guidance. And as it seemed a long time since 
 Jesus had disappeared in the heavens, since the apostles had 
 become memories and ideals, — as it became a wonder for 
 some old man to be able to say that he had seen one of the 
 apostles, or that he had seen somebody who had seen one 
 of them, — they began to venerate and reverence that old 
 time ; and, as the links which connected them w r ith it more 
 closely than anything else, they began to reverence the books 
 and writings that tradition asserted had come down from 
 this distant past, and which bore in themselves the imprint 
 of the personality and authenticity of those men that had 
 actually seen the Lord and claimed to know just what he 
 said. Under these influences, then, the old Scriptures — old 
 at that time — came to take on an air of authority, to be 
 
36 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 invested with popular reverence, to be looked on as some- 
 thing closely linked with Him who had come out of the 
 heavens and had disappeared into them, and to have about 
 them a touch of the divine. 
 
 But who settled what books should come in, and which 
 should stay out? You will be a little astonished when I say 
 to you that the question never has been settled, and is not 
 settled yet. It was settled by the common consent of the 
 early Church that the four Gospels should be recognized as 
 a part of the New Testament Scriptures; but there has 
 been controversy from that day to this concerning such 
 books as Revelation, as the second and third Epistles of 
 John, the second of Peter, the Epistle of James, and con- 
 cerning other parts of the New Testament. 
 
 Let me give you a hint as to the kind of influences which 
 came in to determine and settle the question at last. As an 
 illustration, suppose I take the Apocalypse or Revelation 
 of John, which was probably one of the earliest of the New 
 Testament writings. This teaches the immediate or the 
 speedy coming of Christ in the heavens. While that belief 
 was prevalent in the churches, the book was very popular. 
 It was read and accepted everywhere. But when the people 
 waited, and Jesus did not come, and the dream faded away, 
 the book itself very naturally fell into disrepute. They 
 came to believe that the author had been mistaken, or that 
 he had not been inspired. Again, there was a fluctuation 
 and a return of feeling in its favor, as this failure of the 
 prophecies became forgotten. They took it up again, and 
 began to read it with a new interpretation, idealizing it, 
 putting a new meaning in its gorgeous, figurative language, 
 and so getting out of it spiritual edification. They said it 
 was not intended to be understood as literal truth con- 
 nected with political upheavals and disturbances of that 
 
The Text and the Canon. 37 
 
 age. Upon this new tide of feeling, the book came back 
 into favor. Take again the influence brought to bear on the 
 Epistle of James. James was supposed to have repre- 
 sented the old First Church in Jerusalem, and was of great 
 authority in the early Church. He teaches, however, in 
 this Epistle, salvation by works ; and you know it has always 
 been a popular Epistle among Unitarians. Paul teaches 
 just as vigorously salvation by faith alone, and we can trace 
 the controversy in the early Church here. Those who 
 believed in Paul did not like the Epistle of James, and 
 those who believed in James opposed the Epistles of Paul. 
 There are traces in the New Testament of Paul's Epistles 
 being treated with the most keen criticism and almost abuse. 
 Luther said of James it was an epistle of straw, because it 
 went against his prime doctrine of salvation by faith. 
 Luther would not have it in the Bible. He proposed also 
 to leave out the Revelation, saying it was not worth anything, 
 and should not be there. 
 
 I speak of this to show how freely this New Testament 
 has been handled. Until the days of the Reformation, no 
 such universal, superstitious feelings have been held as are 
 prevalent in orthodox circles to-day. The Council of Trent, 
 in the sixteenth century, a Catholic council, settled finally 
 for Catholicism the canon of the Bible ; and this included not 
 only the Old and the New Testaments as we have them, but 
 the Apocrypha. There has never been any oecumenical 
 council of Protestants, and so there has never been any 
 Protestant settlement of the canon of the New Testament. 
 
 What, then, are the results at which we arrive ? Is it not 
 quite clear that, even if there ever has been an infallible 
 revelation from God in the form of a book, we have in 
 our hands no means for adequately determining the limits 
 of that revelation ? I certainly know of no way of deciding 
 
38 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 whether Revelation and the Epistle of James should be parts 
 of any such book. Even if I knew that God had given an 
 infallible revelation in the form of a book, I should not 
 know what books they were ; and I have no means of 
 knowing. If we choose to shut our eyes, and take the 
 authority of an utterly unfounded and unauthentic tradition, 
 we can settle the question in that way. We can settle any 
 question by shutting our eyes. But, if we choose to keep 
 our eyes open, and search for a reason that is satisfactory to 
 an unbiassed mind, such a reason is nowhere to be found. 
 
 So much for the canon. Come now to the text. Here 
 again let me say, were I sure that God had given an infalli- 
 ble book revelation to the world, I should have no sort of 
 reason for supposing that I had an accurate verbal copy in 
 any English, Greek, or Hebrew manuscript now in existence. 
 We have not a single manuscript of the New Testament 
 which takes us as near to Jesus as we are to-day to Shak- 
 spere. 
 
 The oldest manuscript 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 the Vat- 
 ican, and the Alexandrian in the British Museum. The 
 Sinaitic and the Vatican belong to the fourth century, the 
 Alexandrian to the fifth. We have no manuscript that takes 
 us back nearer to Jesus than the fourth century. Consider 
 then, with all these influences to produce variations, what 
 might have gone on through those three hundred years con- 
 cerning which we are perfectly in the dark, and then tell me 
 whether there is any reason which appeals to a rational man, 
 which is capable of making him believe that we have any 
 one single text of the New Testament so verbally accurate 
 as to give us assurance that we have really the word of God 
 as he first spoke it to man. Have we any such accurate 
 
The Text and the Canon. 39 
 
 knowledge of texts or words as justifies any Church in 
 pointing out such a text, and saying that, on the strength of 
 it, thousands and millions of people are to be sentenced to 
 eternal doom? If I am to have the question raised concern- 
 ing my eternal welfare, I would like to have it determined on 
 the real word of God, if such a thing exists, and not on the 
 possible blunder of a copyist. 
 
 Such, then, are the simple facts concerning the text and 
 the canon of the Bible. As to more special facts concerning 
 the authenticity and authorship of particular parts of the 
 Bible, as to when and where and by whom they were written, 
 what authority they possess, and the nature of that authority, 
 these will be subjects for future research. 
 
THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 The Pentateuch means the five books, or, perhaps more 
 strictly speaking, the fivefold book. The limits of it, as it 
 stands in our Bible to-day, are not precisely what they al- 
 ways have been ; for Joshua and Judges were to be found, in 
 the old copies of the Hebrew Bible, along with the first five 
 books, the whole making substantially one composition 
 which went under the general designation of " the Law." 
 I shall this morning, however, pay no attention to this fact, 
 as it is not essential to my purpose. I shall consider only 
 those books that go by the general name of the Pentateuch. 
 
 The traditional belief is that these books were written by 
 Moses under immediate, divine inspiration, and of course 
 written before the Jews had entered the land of Canaan. 
 This is a significant fact to notice, because you will remem- 
 ber Moses, the reputed author, died on the other side of the 
 Jordan, in the wilderness, at the close of the traditional 
 forty years' wandering. 
 
 These five books contain, among other things, an account 
 of the creation of the world, the creation of all things that 
 live, breathe, and move upon the surface of the earth, in- 
 cluding man. They contain an account of the origin and 
 distribution of nations, the origin of language, or rather of 
 languages, and the origin and nature of evil, popularly 
 called the fall of man. Traditionally, they are infallible; 
 and their teachings are set up as a standard for human 
 
The Pentateuch. 41 
 
 belief, a standard to depart from which is, in the popular 
 estimation, rebellion against God, outright and wicked infi- 
 delity ; and, of course, if the traditional conceptions concern- 
 ing these books be true, then it is rebellion against God to 
 doubt and deny, or teach anything else. You see then the 
 practical importance of the question whether there is suf- 
 ficient ground for believing that they are inspired and infalli- 
 bly true. 
 
 Those who have held this theory have said that the world 
 came into existence in such and such manner, and at such 
 and such a time : therefore, it is sin for science to dare to spec- 
 ulate or to suggest any other time or method ; and, on that 
 theory, it is sin. It is daring to look the Almighty in the 
 face, and question the truth of his word. They contain a 
 certain account of the origin of man ; and it is no wonder 
 that those who hold this to be infallibly true should be hor- 
 rified at the suggestions of a scientist like Darwin, because, 
 if Darwin be true, God, according to their theory, is not true. 
 
 So concerning all the other questions of which these 
 books treat. Because God has said, Thou shalt not suffer a 
 witch to live, therefore hundreds and thousands of poor, 
 excitable, nervous, weak-minded young women and old 
 women have been tortured and put to death. Because 
 God has made it the duty of a man to betray to the author- 
 ities any confession of doubt as to the truth of this book, 
 therefore persecution has become a sacred duty ; and the 
 men who with bloody hands and flaming torch kindle the 
 funeral pile may look up in the face of our Father in 
 heaven, and expect his smile of approval. Because God 
 has indorsed slavery, polygamy, massacre, wars of extermi- 
 nation, therefore all these things have had their advocates, 
 even in the recent past, as eternally right. 
 
 It becomes then a matter of great practical importance in 
 
42 Beliefs abotit the Bible. 
 
 religion, as well as in science and morals, for us to know 
 whether this book, as we hold it in our hands to-day, be the 
 utterance of God or the traditions of men. And, because of 
 the importance of this, I shall speak as plainly as I can con- 
 cerning the Pentateuch. 
 
 There are three main questions that we need to raise and 
 to answer : — 
 
 i. Who wrote it, and when ? 
 
 2. Without regard to who wrote it, is it true ? Does it 
 tell us the truth in science, history, and chronology ? 
 
 3. Without any regard to whether it is true in its history, 
 its chronology, its geology, its science, are we to accept 
 its conceptions of God and man as final ? Are they up to 
 the standard of our nineteenth century religion and morals? 
 
 These are the three points that, as briefly as I can con- 
 sistently with clearness, I want to ask you to consider with 
 me. 
 
 You will notice that I coupled together, as though they 
 were one, the two questions, when the Pentateuch was writ- 
 ten and by whom. I do this because these two questions 
 are inextricably woven together. If we find sufficient reason 
 to make us believe that Moses wrote it, that settles the 
 question when it was written. It was written during his life- 
 time. If, however, we find reason to suppose that it was 
 composed at some later period, then that negatively settles 
 the authorship : Moses at least did not write it. For this 
 reason, the questions are practically one. 
 
 I want to treat this subject in such a plain and simple way 
 that you will not think I am going into technical and crit- 
 ical details that are profound, abstract, and far away. I 
 want to make it simple, practical, and concrete, so that 
 every man as he opens the book may be his own critic. 
 
 Suppose I should take the complete edition of Shakspere's 
 
The Pe7itateuch. 43 
 
 works, and, as I glanced through it, I should find passages 
 right in the midst of " Macbeth " or " King Lear " or " King 
 Richard III.," that referred to the telephone or steamboat ? I 
 should know most certainly that, whatever might be true 
 concerning the rest of the plays, Shakspere never wrote 
 those particular passages. I might, however, grant that it 
 was nothing more than the interpolation of some other 
 writer, while Shakspere was really the author of all the rest. 
 But suppose that these passages are so woven into the text 
 that we cannot tear them out without making a break, leav- 
 ing a gap, which a master like Shakspere never would have 
 left. Suppose, moreover, that I find woven into the very 
 substance of some of the plays passages that, by implica- 
 tion, and unconsciously on the part of the author, refer, let 
 us say, to the corn laws of England, or the agitation concern- 
 ing free trade, or the debate about the disestablishment of 
 the Church ? Suppose I find these matters taken for granted 
 throughout the substance of the plays. What should I be 
 compelled to believe ? I should know that Shakspere never 
 wrote them, though his name and autograph were on every 
 page. Though I had a thousand affidavits certified to by the 
 notaries of the time, still I never could be made to believe 
 it, because it would be unspeakably absurd on the face of it. 
 
 Now let us look at these five books called the books of 
 Moses, and see if we can trace anything parallel to what I 
 have alluded to concerning Shakspere. According to the 
 popular theory, the Pentateuch must have been written in 
 the wilderness, before the children of Israel entered the 
 land of Canaan at all. I shall not go into the subject 
 deeply, but make general statements. What I give you are 
 only specimens of what may be very much enlarged and 
 prolonged. 
 
 As we look over the Pentateuch, we find statements like 
 
44 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 this : Such a thing occurred before there was any king over 
 Israel. Do you see the significance of that? When was 
 there a king over Israel ? You have got to leap over the 
 time of the conquest, come down by Joshua and the Judges, 
 past the time covered by Samuel and his work, down at 
 least to Saul, years and years after the time of Moses, be- 
 cause there was no king at all in Israel before that time. 
 Yet here this writer says this took place before there was any 
 king. Of course, then, he lived after the time when there 
 was a king ; and he is calling their attention to something 
 that existed in the long distant past. 
 
 Again, we find one of the towns referred to and called by 
 the name of Hebron; while we know from Jewish history 
 that it was not called by that name until after the conquest 
 of the land, and until after Caleb, one of the leaders of the 
 people, had conquered this city and had named it Hebron 
 after one of his sons. Suppose I should find some document 
 purporting to be written by General Washington, and in that 
 document he should refer to the city of Chicago. It would 
 be precisely parallel to this. 
 
 Again, there are several passages which say, when such 
 and such a thing occurred, the Canaanite was then in the 
 land. The history teaches us that whole generations after 
 the time of Moses had passed by before the Canaanites were 
 all expelled. And of course this passage was written long 
 after the expulsion. Would Captain Miles Standish be likely 
 to write, Such a thing took place while the Indians were still 
 in Massachusetts ? 
 
 We find another passage like this, — a command to the 
 people not to remove the ancient landmarks which have 
 been set up as divisions between one man and his neighbor. 
 Before any such command could have issued, the people 
 must have been long in possession of the country. Individ- 
 
The Pentateuch. 45 
 
 ual possession must have been established by common con- 
 sent, so that the dividing lines between their property could 
 be spoken of as ancient. Sentiment had gathered around 
 them with this sense of personal possession, and the public 
 mind began to feel that it was wrong to disturb these marks 
 that separated between the property of one man and that of 
 another. These are superficial hints ; but the finger-marks of 
 a later time than that of Moses are all over the Pentateuch. 
 
 Let me now give you an idea of the composition of the 
 Pentateuch, which makes the matter plainer still, if possible. 
 
 These five books, or six, if we include Joshua, bear traces 
 that they are not one single document written by one single 
 hand all the way through, but that they are a composite, rep- 
 resenting the work of different writers and different periods 
 of time. So clear and distinct is the work of those several 
 writers that you can take the book apart into separate pieces 
 and have at least three separate books, each one quite com- 
 plete and definite by itself. That is, you can have three sep- 
 arate stories as though written by three individual persons at 
 three different periods of time. 
 
 Suppose that you should go to England and should find 
 there, somewhere off in the country, a house, the oldest part 
 of which was of Norman architecture, with a later part in 
 the Elizabethan style and still another part indicating the 
 work of the time of Queen Anne. Suppose there was a 
 local tradition that the three parts were built by one archi- 
 tect who lived in the time of William the Conqueror, that he 
 was inspired to foresee what the Elizabethan and Queen 
 Anne styles would be, and that he therefore built the house 
 with the three styles at one and the same time : would you 
 credit this story ? It is just as credible, reasonable, and easy 
 to believe as it is to believe that the first six books of the 
 Bible were written at the same time and by the same hand. 
 
46 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 Let me show you how clearly this may be made out. You 
 may be surprised to know how very modern this work is. 
 The oldest part of it takes us down to about 621 B.C. We 
 know from the history of the people that up to this time 
 they had never known anything of the second and third 
 parts of the Pentateuch ; that they had not known anything 
 about the peculiar legislation of the second and third parts ; 
 that they had shown no indication of obeying what is be- 
 lieved to be the divine legislation of those parts. About 
 the year 621 B.C., we trace indications of a part of the Book 
 of Deuteronomy. The oldest part of the Pentateuch goes 
 by the name of the Book of the Covenants. About the 
 time of Josiah, we find indications of what is now a part of 
 Deuteronomy, quite distinct in its legislation, commanding 
 the people to do things that, up to that time, they had never, 
 apparently, heard about or done. Straightway, the people 
 begin to obey this Book of Deuteronomy. They follow its 
 directions, make it their highest standard, until, in the neigh- 
 borhood of 450 B.C., when Ezra comes back from Babylon, 
 at the return of the people from the captivity, he brings in 
 his hand the book of The Law of the Lord, which makes up 
 the third part of this composite, — the Pentateuch. This is 
 very markedly different from either of the two preceding 
 parts. Until the time of Ezra, there is no proof of the 
 people knowing anything about this part of the law, or being 
 under any obligation to obey it. After that time, it is the 
 standard and guide of the people, in the light of which all 
 the preceding portions are interpreted. It becomes a master 
 that they at least always claim to obey. Here, then, you 
 see that we can take these three documents apart, and have 
 three different stories and three different eras or epochs of 
 legislation. This is settled beyond question in the mind of 
 every intelligent and unbiassed critic. A man would prove 
 
The Pentateuch. 47 
 
 a lack of scholarship or a lack of fairness by even claiming 
 a doubt. By these surface indications, by the structure of 
 the book, it is placed beyond question that Moses did not 
 write the substance of the Pentateuch or any one of its 
 books. The historical portions of the Old Testament run- 
 ning parallel with the Pentateuch make all this clear. 
 
 Are we, then, to refer nothing of the Pentateuch to Moses ? 
 Moses was the great traditional leader and law-giver of the 
 people ; and it was perfectly natural that, as time w r ent on, 
 they should refer everything back to him. A precisely anal- 
 ogous thing is going on right before our eyes. If you will 
 only read the development of the doctrines of the Catholic 
 Church, you will find it is very simple at the outset, growing 
 more and more complex and composite with every passing cen- 
 tury, — now announcing the doctrine of the immaculateness of 
 the virgin, then exalting her to be mother of God, a deity, 
 and taking her to heaven ; then passing from the infallibility 
 of the Church to the infallibility of the Pope himself, — all this 
 grand development of doctrine going on, yet the Church claim- 
 ing all the time that it has not changed its doctrine from the 
 very beginning until now. The Church does not admit that 
 it has added an article of belief to its faith in all these cen- 
 turies : it is simply formulating now what the Church has 
 always believed. That is the claim. So the Jews, as time 
 went on, age after age, simply claimed that they were putting 
 into new shape what was implied in the work that Moses 
 did, and which was the teaching of the law of Moses. It is 
 not peculiar then to ancient times. The process is going 
 on around us to-day. 
 
 Did Moses then have nothing to do with it ? That is a 
 very hard question to answer. He may have been the author 
 of the ten commandments, — not in the form in which they 
 stand to-day, but in some briefer, simpler form, — because, 
 
48 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 originally, they were called " the ten words." He may have 
 been the author, then, of the ten commandments. It is 
 questionable whether we can attribute anything to him 
 beyond that ; and even so much is not quite certain. 
 
 Now let us pass to our second point. The Pentateuch 
 we have found to be written not by any one person nor at 
 any one time. It covers centuries, and comes down to at 
 least 450 B.C. But no matter who wrote it, no matter when 
 it was written, the most important thing for us to settle is 
 whether it is true ; whether it contains divine and infallible 
 truth concerning God, concerning science, concerning mat- 
 ters of chronology and history. If we can find that it is 
 true, then we can accept it ; and it will become authority to 
 us. It will be just as authoritative as the multiplication 
 table ; and it will make little difference who wrote it or when 
 it was written. Here, again, I can only give you a few ex- 
 amples ; because, to cover the whole ground, would require 
 a whole book, and a large book at that. 
 
 Take the story of the origin of the world, the creation, as 
 it is told in Genesis. Can we believe it to-day ? It tells us 
 that the world was created, and not only the world, but the 
 sun, moon, and stars, the whole visible universe, six thou- 
 sand years ago ; that it was created: in six natural days. I 
 hope that none of you will be deceived in regard to this mat- 
 ter, or put off with any theory of indefinite epochs, such as 
 have been used to explain the meaning of the word "day." 
 The evening and the morning were the first day; and the 
 evening and the morning were the second day. The author 
 definitely tells us that he was talking about days bounded by 
 the evening and the morning. Nothing can be clearer than 
 that ; and it is simply shuffling, it is dishonest, it is disingen- 
 uous, playing with words, for anybody to attempt to recon- 
 cile Genesis and science by considering these days as long 
 
The Pentateuch. 49 
 
 periods of time. If you so consider them, then the seventh 
 day, the Sabbath, is a long rest ; and we should have to rest 
 for six or ten or twenty thousand years. The writer then tells 
 us that the world was created in six natural days, six thou- 
 sand years ago, and that a certain definite order was followed 
 in that creation. It says that light w r as created on the first 
 day, and that the sun, moon, and stars were created on the 
 fourth day. According to this, we had light and evenings and 
 mornings for three days before we had any sun, moon, or 
 stars; and, if you are going to stretch those days to long 
 periods of time, we must have had millions of years of 
 mornings and evenings before we had sun, moon, or stars. 
 
 One other point. It tells us that the fishes and the birds 
 were created on the same day, and that on the next day the 
 animals, creeping things, reptiles, etc., were created. Now, 
 it is a commonplace in scientific knowledge that the reptiles 
 preceded the birds on earth. Here, again, is a grand mis- 
 take as to the order of the creative work. So much as to 
 the indications of the difficulties here. 
 
 There is another and distinctive account of the creation, 
 in Genesis, written by a different hand and at a different 
 time. These two accounts contradict each other. In one, 
 Adam and Eve were made on the same day. In the other, 
 Adam was made a day or two, or several long epochs of 
 time, if you so consider it, before Eve was made. All the 
 animals were passed in review before Adam, to see if he 
 could choose one which he could be reconciled to take as a 
 companion. He does not find any to suit him ; and the 
 Lord, having decided that it was not good for Adam to be 
 alone, makes Eve for a companion for him. 
 
 Passing from these, let us come to what the Bible has to 
 tell us in regard to the origin of languages. You know it has 
 become a great, distinct, wide-reaching science of itself, so 
 
50 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 that the discovery of any critical point in the development 
 of a language is enough to make a man famous all over the 
 world. But does Prof. Whitney or Max Miiller or any 
 of the great leading linguists of the world ever think of 
 going back to the Bible to study the building of the Tower 
 of Babel as having anything to do with the origin and diver- 
 sity of languages ? There is not an intelligent man in the 
 world who would not smile at the suggestion • and yet, ac- 
 cording to the popular ideas of Orthodoxy, these men should 
 go to the plains of Shinar, and accept the fact that the Lord 
 in heaven, becoming seriously alarmed lest these gigantic 
 and presumptuous men might scale the holy heights to his 
 throne, to prevent such a catastrophe, came down and looked 
 over the country to see what they were doing, and decided 
 to confound their language, so that they could not talk to 
 each other, and thus puts an end to their enterprise. This is 
 the account the Bible gives us of the origin of languages. 
 It would be an insult to your intelligence to tell you that it 
 is not true. 
 
 Take two or three figures concerning the Israelites and 
 their departure from Egypt. It is said that seventy souls 
 went down into Egypt. At the end of their sojourn there, 
 they had increased so that there were three millions, — an 
 utterly incredible story. There were as many Hebrews then 
 as there were inhabitants in the thirteen colonies at the time 
 of the Revolution. Out of these three millions, there were, 
 it is said, six hundred thousand fighting men; that is, they 
 had an army as big as the biggest one in modern Europe. 
 Yet, when they started out, and Pharaoh gathered together 
 his horses and chariots to pursue them, they whimpered and 
 cried and were afraid, and called upon Moses as though 
 they were going to be eaten up, instead of standing up to 
 fight for their liberty and freedom with their army of six 
 
The Pentateuch. 51 
 
 hundred thousand men. It is a little curious, too, since the 
 Bible tells us that during the plagues in Egypt all the ani- 
 mals were destroyed, how Pharaoh had no trouble in gather- 
 ing horses enough for a large army. 
 
 Look at another thing. There were three millions of 
 people in the land of Goshen, as many as there were in 
 the whole of the United States at the time of the Revolu- 
 tionary war. Yet word is got around to all these people so 
 quickly that, in one night, they departed in such haste that 
 they took their unleavened bread in their kneading-troughs, 
 taking also their horses, cattle, fowls, all domestic animals, 
 the old and the young, the sick and the well. The whole of 
 the three millions of people were notified to gather up 
 everything that they possessed, and to leave the country in 
 one night. If anybody can believe that, he need have no 
 further trouble with Munchausen or the Arabian Nights. It 
 is utterly incredible and absurd. And when the three mill- 
 ions of people enter Palestine, though the whole country 
 was not so large as the State of Massachusetts, they are 
 warned to drive the inhabitants out slowly, lest the wild 
 beasts of the land get the upper hands of them ! 
 
 In the third place, look at a few of the implications as to 
 the religious and moral character of the God of the Hebrews 
 at this time, and see whether you can accept the religious 
 and moral teaching of the Pentateuch as valid for us in the 
 nineteenth century. I want, however, to bear distinct testi- 
 mony to all that is good, grand, tender, and sublime in the 
 Pentateuch ; and there is a great deal, a great deal that the 
 highest and most lovely civilization in any age need not be 
 ashamed of or apologize for. Take the opening words of 
 Genesis, for example, — though you must remember that 
 they were written toward the time of Christ, — the sublim- 
 ity of the picture of God saying, Let there be light, and 
 
52 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 there was light. This conception of God is grand. Again, 
 we find grand conceptions of him as the thunderer, as he 
 who dwells in the heavens, who rules over his people, guides 
 them, loves them, cares for them. All these things I wish 
 to admit in a word ; but the question is not whether there is 
 grand and noble teaching, but, Is all the teaching infallible 
 and inspired ? That is the question. With the answer to 
 that question the popular theory must stand or fall. 
 
 Let us look at a few indications. Let us take this same 
 God, in the very first chapter ojE Genesis, in regard to his 
 creative work. I refer to the puerility of that idea of having 
 all the animals pass in review before Adam for him to see 
 if there was any one suitable to be a companion for him. 
 Take the creation of Eve as given to us,-— the Almighty put- 
 ting Adam to sleep, and performing a surgical operation, 
 taking a bone out of his side and making a woman out of 
 it : this picture of the infinite God of this universe coming 
 down and working in that fashion ; and, again, after the fall, 
 represented as becoming butcher, tanner, and tailor, killing 
 animals, and out of the skins making coats for Adam and 
 Eve to wear ! This is what it tells us. You must take these 
 facts in their literalness and simplicity, and not refine them 
 away with your spiritualizing methods and interpretations. 
 
 Take the God who makes this man and woman and puts 
 them into the garden without the slightest particle of experi- 
 ence, without knowing they had an enemy in all the universe, 
 and then making not only their own fate, but the fate of all 
 the world depend on one ignorant act, he himself knowing 
 that the serpent was coming, yet not a breath or hint of it 
 given to them. Conceive the state of mind of a people who 
 believed that the future of the whole human race could 
 depend on whether they ate an apple or did not, who could 
 believe and make Jehovah himself believe that the question 
 
The Pentateuch, 53 
 
 of the immortality of these sinful people depended on 
 whether they could taste another apple or not. For it tells 
 us that God was afraid they would get hold of the tree of 
 life and become deathless ; and, lest such a thing should 
 happen, lest they should eat of this tree and become immor- 
 tal, he drove them out of the garden and put flaming swords 
 and dragons at the gate. You must rid yourselves of the 
 notion that the cherubim were angels. A cherub in the old 
 Hebrew was a dragon as much as was the one that guarded 
 the garden of the Hesperides. It was a dragon that was 
 placed at the entrance to the garden of Eden to keep Adam 
 and Eve from returning thither. 
 
 I have referred to the story of Babel. I will not speak 
 about the kind of God implied in the story of the flood. 
 Let me speak rather of the character, the conception of the 
 God who comes to Abraham in the form of man, with two 
 angels for companions. He sits down in the tent-door of 
 the Arab chieftain, while he hastens to bake cakes, to catch a 
 calf and dress and roast it ; and then the Almighty God of 
 the universe is pictured as eating roast veal and cakes with 
 Abraham. That is what it tells us. And, after he makes a 
 certain promise concerning Sarah, he notices that Sarah is 
 laughing at him behind his back, because she does not be- 
 lieve a word of what he is saying ; and he rebukes her for 
 her discourtesy. These are some of the pictures that are 
 given of God in all their crudeness of barbaric conception. 
 
 Look at the exodus, and see what kind of a God deals with 
 Pharaoh and with the children of Israel. He declares be- 
 forehand to Moses that he is going to harden Pharaoh's 
 heart, so that, in spite of everything he shall do, he will not 
 consent to their going. He takes upon himself the blame 
 for the future conduct of Pharaoh, or at least the responsi- 
 bility for it. He distinctly indorses lying at the very outset. 
 
54 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 He tells Moses to say that they want to go three days' 
 journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to God. He does 
 not say anything about running away. He tells them to 
 deceive Pharaoh, to get his consent on false pretences. And, 
 for what Pharaoh does, he punishes the whole land of Egypt, 
 — men, women, and children. Not only that ; but he pun- 
 ishes with disease and death all the poor, innocent cattle 
 throughout the whole realm, — punishes them for what he has 
 made one man do. 
 
 Let us go on a little further. We find that this God, on 
 more than one occasion, distinctly and definitely indorses 
 lying to carry out a purpose. What else does he do ? He 
 distinctly indorses human sacrifice. It is implied all the 
 way through. In accordance with this implication, human 
 sacrifice lasted in Israel till within a few centuries of the 
 time of Christ. The God of Moses distinctly commands 
 human sacrifice. He says, if you have vowed to devote a 
 man unto the Lord in sacrifice, you shall not in any wise 
 suffer him to be redeemed, he shall surely be put to death. 
 
 Take another thing. When Achan sins, what does the 
 Lord do? He commands Moses to go and separate not 
 only this one man from the people, but his wives, his 
 brothers, his sons-in-law, his daughters-in-law, the whole 
 clan, — men, women, and children, — all the cattle and house- 
 hold goods and effects that he owned ; and then the earth 
 opens and swallows them up. He punishes with torture and 
 death not only the man himself, but everybody related to 
 him, — as though, if one of you here to-day should commit a 
 larceny or a murder, your whole family — wife, friends, and 
 relatives — should be tortured and put to death for it. 
 That is the method 'in the Pentateuch. 
 
 I wonder if you have ever noticed this : that in this same 
 Pentateuch there is a command that on a certain occasion 
 
The Pentateuch. 55 
 
 a city should be captured, and that all the men and all the 
 married women and little children should be put to death, as 
 likewise all the cattle ; but that the young, unmarried women 
 should be saved alive, and distributed among the soldiers and 
 the priesthood. What do you think of that kind of a god 
 for the worship of the nineteenth century ? Slavery, polyg- 
 amy, wars of extermination, everything barbaric that you can 
 name, — I cannot catalogue any more, — you will find in- 
 dorsed somewhere within the limits of the Pentateuch ; and, 
 if that is the divine and infallible word of God for all time, 
 then these crimes, these barbarisms that the world has re- 
 pudiated with horror as belonging to uncivilized times, ought 
 to be recognized as part of the ethical and religious code of 
 Boston in the nineteenth century. 
 
 Is it necessary for us to assume a theory of inspiration to 
 account for this book of the Pentateuch ? The highest con- 
 ceptions of God which are entertained there were entertained 
 in Egypt before Moses was born. Its highest and noblest 
 morals were also held and practised to some extent in 
 Egypt long before Moses was born. Is it necessary to as- 
 sume inspiration to account for these mistakes in science and 
 chronology, to account for this conception of God and this 
 code of morality which we have seen to be so barbaric and 
 defective ? 
 
 In closing, I wish to call your most sincere and earnest 
 attention to two or three things : — 
 
 In the first place, I wish you to note that I have not been 
 attacking the Pentateuch. I am simply telling you about it. 
 I am directly and indirectly attacking a theory held concern- 
 ing it, which the Pentateuch neither asserts, implies, nor 
 indorses. And I wish to say, further, that, when we take 
 a rational, natural view of the origin of this book, we find 
 nothing there which need surprise us, nothing there which 
 
56 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 calls for apology. The views of the origin of the world, 
 /of the nature of God, of the origin of man and of evil, are 
 similar to those which were entertained by other peoples in the 
 \ same relative grade of civilization. They are simply the views 
 concerning God, man, and the world, through which every 
 people in its development naturally passes, but in which no 
 people ought to stay. That is the point. When, then, we 
 take this natural theory of the origin and growth of these 
 books, we find what we should expect; and we are com- 
 forted by the consideration that we are compelled to believe 
 that religion and morality are a part of the nature of things, 
 and, as such, based on eternal foundations ; that they grow 
 as nations grow, that they take on the character of special 
 grades of civilization, that they are lifted up as civilization 
 is lifted up, that they are enlightened as men are enlight- 
 ened, made broad and tender and humane as men are 
 brought up to the ideal of their humanity. 
 
 But, on the other hand, consider the difficulties that harass 
 us at every step, if we take the old and traditional theory 
 of these books. We are compelled perpetually to disingen- 
 uous twisting and turning of texts, in order to bring it any- 
 where into harmony with the demonstrated facts of the 
 modern world. We are compelled practically to be dis- 
 honest with ourselves in regard both to science and the 
 inspiration of the Pentateuch. We are compelled to believe 
 that certain moral characteristics which arose in the bar- 
 barism of the past world are the eternal right and wrong of 
 God. We are compelled perpetually to apologize for God ; 
 to explain to men how it could be possible that he who is the 
 loving, tender Father of men to-day was once the cruel, 
 bloody, heartless, false persecutor and deceiver of men. 
 
 Is it not then something, not to mourn over, but to be 
 grateful for, to get such a belief in the growth of religion and 
 
The Pentateuch. 57 
 
 morality, such a conception of the origin and development 
 of sacred books, as shall permit us to use our brains, to keep 
 the tenderness of our hearts, and at the same time to be loyal 
 to our highest thought of the living God ? 
 
THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Lest I should be misunderstood on what is quite an 
 important point for a general comprehension of the develop- 
 ment of the Hebrew religion, I take this occasion to say that, 
 if I had pursued the strict chronological order of develop- 
 ment, I should have taken this subject first, and the Penta- 
 teuch afterward. That is, the work of the prophets pre- 
 ceded the law in the shape in which it appears in our Bible 
 to-day. The period of prophecy, I may say, in a general 
 way, stretches from the eleventh or twelfth century B.C. to 
 the fifth century B.C. Parts of the Pentateuch appeared at 
 various times during this period ; but it was not brought into 
 its present shape, as we have it now, until the greater part 
 of the work of the prophets had been accomplished, some- 
 where within the fifth century ; so that, chronologically speak- 
 ing, instead of saying the Law, the Prophets, and the Writ- 
 ings, we should say the Prophets, the Law, and the 
 Writings. Please bear this in mind, so as not to misunder- 
 stand the real order of development, as I give you some 
 indications of the crude and barbaric origin of prophecy 
 among the Jews. 
 
 The traditional idea of prophecy, the one in which I 
 myself grew up as a boy, and which I held even in the 
 beginning of my own ministry, and that which, I believe, is 
 widely prevalent in the public mind, is that the prophets 
 
The Prophets, 59 
 
 were a distinct order of men, appearing only among the 
 Hebrews, and leaving traces of themselves only in the 
 religion of Israel and in the Old Testament; that they 
 were in a certain sense a homogeneous body of men; 
 that though they might be like the different instruments in 
 an orchestra, each playing his own special part, yet, to- 
 gether, they made one music ; that they had substantially the 
 same ideas of right and wrong, and those the very highest, 
 the divine and unchanging ideas of ethics ; that they had 
 substantially the same ideas concerning God, all agreeing 
 in the highest, most refined, sublimated, and spiritual 
 thoughts of God, such as are fitted to lead on and lift the 
 thought of the world forever. Beyond this, it is a part of 
 the popular idea that one of the main duties of the prophets 
 was to foretell future events, things that were to occur fifty, 
 a hundred, or a thousand years in the future, which, by no 
 possibility, could be foreseen except by some one directly 
 and supernaturally illuminated by the divine spirit itself; 
 that, thus illuminated, they became a direct proof of the 
 supernatural nature of religion, one of the foremost pillars 
 to uphold the popular conception of the supernatural char- 
 acter of the Bible, and the religion it represents. 
 
 I remember when I used, as a theological student, to be 
 considering the great matter of Christian evidence, that the 
 miracles and the prophets were placed side by side, like 
 the two great pillars, Jachin and Boaz, that stood in the 
 porch of Solomon's temple. Miracles and the prophets were 
 the two unimpeachable supernatural evidences of divine 
 inspiration and the infallibility of the Bible. 
 
 The special thing that the prophets wers able to see and 
 foretell, as was supposed, was the coming Messianic kingdom. 
 They were commissioned to outline in unmistakable terms 
 the figure of Jesus as the coming Messianic King, and thus 
 
60 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 to foreshadow all the glory of his divine and eternal reign. 
 This seems to me to be a fair representation of the tra- 
 ditional idea of the prophets and their work. I shall only 
 treat it indirectly, as I go on with my subject. 
 
 Let me call your attention to three quite distinct and 
 definite phases of the development of prophecy among the 
 Jews. I do not mean to say that these three are clearly 
 outlined, following one after another, without any very 
 marked connection between them. I only say that, in the 
 continuous line of development, from the seer or soothsayer 
 up to Isaiah, there are marked phases that it is worth while 
 to notice. 
 
 In the first place, as I open the Bible, I find sixteen books, 
 four called the major prophets and twelve the minor, repre- 
 senting the work of those whose writings or sayings have 
 been traditionally preserved for us. A part of these sixteen 
 books were not spoken, not preached, not delivered at all, 
 but were simply written. Some of them were undoubtedly 
 spoken, and then written out afterward either by the 
 prophet himself or by some one who heard him, who sup- 
 posed himself to be correctly reporting what the prophet 
 said. 
 
 As you look over any one of them, — Isaiah, for example, 
 — you will find that a very small part of it even pretends to 
 be given in the form of prediction, to foretelling anything 
 that is about to take place in the immediate or in the far- 
 distant future. Neither are we to understand that all of 
 these books were written by the persons whose names stand 
 at their heads in all cases, nor that any one of them was 
 written through, just as it stands, by any one author. At 
 least, it is safe to say that, in a large number of cases, they 
 represent a variety of authorship. They are made up as one 
 might make up the speeches of Burke or Sheridan, if he had 
 
The Prophets. 6 1 
 
 only fragments of them, parts written here and there, col- 
 lected without much regard to their quality, and without 
 much regard to their chronology or place or time of 
 delivery, the whole collected perhaps many years after they 
 were spoken, and edited by some one who should put them 
 in final shape for posterity. This is the general conception 
 that you are to have of these written prophecies. 
 
 Now for the contents of some of them. Suppose we open 
 Isaiah, and indicate briefly some specimens of the topics 
 treated. In one chapter, he goes on to encourage the people 
 when they are in distress and are downcast by giving them 
 general promises of the divine favor, and by assuring them 
 of deliverance after they shall have received the requisite 
 amount of punishment which they have deserved, and which 
 he declares to be for their good. Then, he rebukes the 
 tyranny, the impurity, the idolatry, or some other sin, of the 
 king or some of the great ones at court. Then, he will turn 
 to animadvert very severely on the fashionable frivolities of 
 the ladies of Jerusalem at that time, describing the tinkling 
 ornaments, the wristlets and anklets and bells, and telling 
 them they would certainly meet with divine judgment and 
 retribution for this lightness and frivolity of life. Then, the 
 prophet takes up some burden concerning the present condi- 
 tion of Egypt or Assyria, threatening divine judgment on 
 them for their encroachment on the people of God, or some 
 judgment on the king for entertaining the idea of alliance 
 with these foreign powers. Then, idol worship in the high 
 places, the mingling of the people in the lascivious worship 
 of Ashera, the Syrian Venus, are reproved. In this way, the 
 prophet is more a preacher of righteousness than one who 
 foretells events that are to take place at some future time. 
 In some few places there may be what may be called proph- 
 ecies ; but what they mean I shall consider later. 
 
62 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 Now take a step back, and see another type of prophet. 
 Take the prophet Elijah. He wrote nothing. None of his 
 speeches, if he ever made any, have been recorded. There 
 are only isolated words or sayings. He is not the man of 
 writing, the man with a pen, the man of words. He is a 
 man of deeds, the actor, the one who appears at some crisis 
 of the nation's history, and casts into the scale of what he 
 believes to be right and truth the tremendous weight of his 
 supposed supernatural, divine influence. He stands up for 
 what he believes to be the rights of the people, and attacks 
 the tyranny and idolatry of the king. He appears like a 
 meteor flashing across the startled sky of one of those old 
 superstitious kings, and then disappears again into the night. 
 Like John the Baptist, he dresses himself in sackcloth, eats 
 whatever he can find in the wilderness, spends years at a 
 time living in the desert places or concealed among the few 
 people who believed in him, and at some crisis epoch of the 
 people appears, suddenly startling the king and nobility out 
 of their semi-secure state. He appears to Ahab, and an- 
 nounces that for three and one half years it shall not rain, 
 and then disappears. At the end of that time, he suddenly 
 reappears to Ahab, as he is far away from the capital, and 
 tells him to hasten to the palace ; for he hears the sound of 
 rain. He then goes up into a mountain, and sees a little 
 cloud no larger than a man's hand, which spreads over the 
 sky. Then, in that wild, rapid, frenzied way of the times, he 
 cries out, runs down to Ahab, and in front of his chariot till 
 he reaches the royal city of Samaria. This is a different 
 type of prophet from Ezekiel or Isaiah. 
 
 Go back, and note a third phase, earlier still than these. 
 Here is Samuel, not worshipping in the temple, for there is 
 no temple ; having no fear about the high places \ worship- 
 ping God under the image of a bull or golden calf, as it is 
 
The Prophets. 63 
 
 called in some parts of the Bible ; and engaged in the prac- 
 tice of what we should call to-day clairvoyance, soothsaying, 
 or, except for the evil significance of it, witchcraft. He is 
 the man to whom Saul goes to find out where something is 
 that has been lost. We find, in connection with this sort 
 of prophecy, there were what were called schools of the 
 prophets, — gatherings of young men who lived in the same 
 place, and who were susceptible to this same curious kind of 
 influence which came upon them, and who, when they were 
 under this influence, acted like madmen, stripped off their 
 clothes, lay for a day and a night naked upon the ground, 
 uttering meaningless cries and sounds, and were supposed, 
 while in this condition, to be controlled, guided, by the 
 indwelling spirit of the God who had taken possession of 
 them. 
 
 I want now to show you what kind of influence this was, 
 and how it was interpreted by the people. 
 
 If we go back to ancient Greece, we shall find they had 
 one method of divination which was by the casting of dice. 
 They had painted dice, and, after going through some relig- 
 ious ceremony, or praying to some particular god, they threw 
 these dice, and then interpreted the will of the god accord- 
 ing to the indications of the throw. As we read about that 
 in the heathen writers, it strikes us as utterly irreligious, as 
 promotive of anything but piety or spiritual worship. Yet 
 do not be startled when I tell you that the eleven apostles, 
 after the suicide of Judas, took precisely this method for 
 getting at the divine will as to the appointment of the 
 twelfth man to take the place of the betrayer. If you 
 remember the story in the Book of Acts, it says that the 
 apostles gathered together and picked out two men, either of 
 whom they thought would be a fitting one to fill this impor- 
 tant office. Then, they prayed to God and cast lots, or threw 
 
64 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 dice, as we should say. In this way, as they supposed, was 
 indicated the will of God as to which one of the two should 
 be the chosen. 
 
 There is another thing worth our notice in this connection 
 in the New Testament. In the Book of Acts, it says that, at 
 the time of the Pentecost, when the divine spirit came like a 
 rushing mighty wind, and when the Holy Ghost like cloven 
 tongues of fire appeared on the heads of the members of the 
 infant church there gathered, the disciples spoke with tongues. 
 Remember that the Book of Acts was written a great many 
 years after Paul wrote his Epistles. Tradition had enlarged 
 the original story until the writer really supposed, and tells us, 
 that these persons spoke so that the different nationalities that 
 were gathered there all understood them, each speaking in 
 his own language. 
 
 Now go back a step, and see what Paul says about this 
 same phenomenon. Paul tells us that there were a great 
 many different gifts of the spirit among the young churches. 
 Some understood the gift of prophecy, some had gifts of 
 healing, some could lay their hands on others and they 
 would receive the spirit. Among these gifts was one called 
 the gift of tongues. Those who read the New Testament 
 superficially suppose this was the gift of speaking in other 
 languages ; and this is what the author of Acts had in mind. 
 If you study the language of Paul carefully, you will find 
 nothing of the kind. The man who has the gift of tongues 
 thrills, quivers, sighs, rolls up his eyes, is in a rapt, " pos- 
 sessed " condition, and in this condition he pours out a stream 
 of meaningless sounds; he babbles. This is what Paul 
 means when he tells us about speaking with tongues. But 
 he and the early Church supposed this was a divine utterance 
 of the spirit of God who had taken possession of the per- 
 sons, and that the sounds, meaningless to ordinary hearers, 
 
The Prophets, 6$ 
 
 contained some divine message which required an inspired 
 interpreter to tell the people what it was. Do not seek this 
 gift of tongues, he says, because it does not edify, unless 
 there is some one who can interpret. Do not bring discredit 
 on the young Church by seeking to practise these gifts, 
 unless there is some one present with the divine power of 
 interpreting these meaningless cries, and of telling the 
 people the message that ought to be conveyed. He dis- 
 tinguishes this from what he calls prophecy by saying he 
 would rather prophesy, or speak five words that people could 
 understand, than any number of words in a tongue. It is 
 not an unknown tongue. The translators, supposing that 
 was what he meant, put in the word " unknown." It is not in 
 the original. 
 
 This same phenomenon reappeared in modern London 
 under the preaching of the famous but eccentric Edward 
 Irving. But that which was divine inspiration in the first 
 century was repressed as an impropriety in the nineteenth. 
 
 Now come back to the Old Testament, and find some 
 traces of the method by which the people believed they 
 could come into possession of divine knowledge. It was 
 very common for the people, when they wanted to find out 
 any hidden thing, to go to the high priest and ask him to 
 divine by Urirn and Thummim. What were these ? They were, 
 it is thought, bright precious stones which were set in the 
 high priest's breastplate. We do not know how they used 
 them ; but, in some way, these precious stones were supposed 
 to have the magical power of divination. The high priest, 
 as the result of some special ceremony or sacrifice, by the 
 use of these stones, precisely as a modern fortune-teller by 
 cards, was able to tell secrets, and answer the questions of 
 those who came to him. 
 
 We do not know, as I said, the special method of using 
 
66 Beliefs about the Bible* 
 
 these stones ; but, as a possible hint, I may say there are a 
 great many stories of magical stones that were supposed, 
 after a religious ceremony, to have the power of disclosing 
 what was going on in distant places by a series of shadows 
 passing across the face of the stone itself, so that the person 
 who held the stone to his eye could see these moving pict- 
 ures. Whether this was the way in which they divined the 
 future by Urim and Thummim, I do not know. 
 
 There was another method of divination that was by the 
 use of the efihod. This was a curious girdle of the priest, 
 which again in some way, the actual report of which has not 
 come down to us, was used in processes of divination. 
 They also used the teraphint, small idols, in the same way. 
 You will recollect that Rachel, when fleeing from her father, 
 laid so much stress on these portable deities that she stole 
 them from her father and hid them in the furniture of her 
 camel and sat upon them, thinking thus she should be able 
 to keep with herself the divine favor and magical protection 
 that went along with the little images of the gods. 
 
 I speak of these things as common throughout the Old 
 Testament. Let me give you one or two as illustrations, for 
 it seems as though people read the Bible with their eyes 
 shut, or else as though they considered these things as some- 
 thing entirely distinct from the practices of other nations and 
 other religions. 
 
 Let us stand for a moment with Moses in the presence of 
 Pharaoh, and see him holding his magical rod in his hand. 
 Moses, of course, was looked on by Pharaoh as a sooth- 
 sayer, a magician, a prophet like those he already knew, and 
 any number of whom he had about him. When Moses 
 flings down his rod, and it turns to a serpent, all the others 
 throw theirs down, and they turn into serpents also. Moses 
 possesses no power which is not common to the other magi- 
 
The Prophets. 67 
 
 cians, except — and here is the indication of the interpreta- 
 tion given by a later belief to these old traditions — the God 
 of Moses was a greater God than the God of Pharaoh. 
 Moses did not doubt the existence of the gods of Egypt. 
 There is no trace of that whatever. Until after the time of 
 David, there was no doubt as to the reality of the existence 
 of the gods of other peoples. Moloch and Dagon and As- 
 tarte were real gods. The only point was that Yahveh, the 
 god of the people of Israel, was above all the others, a 
 greater god than any of the rest. That was proved satisfac- 
 torily to Moses, when his serpent ate up all the other ser- 
 pents. These magicians could turn their rods to serpents, 
 but only his serpent could eat the others. This showed the 
 supremacy of the God of Moses. 
 
 When a king went to war, it was not simply a war be- 
 tween two peoples and their kings, but it was a war between 
 their gods also ; for Dagon on one side and Yahveh on the 
 other were supposed to fight just as much as the Philistine 
 king and the king of Israel and their followers. Precisely 
 the same is true in the Iliad. There the Greeks and Tro- 
 jans were fighting on the plains, but the air was thick with 
 the gods of Olympus urging on and inspiring the champions, 
 guiding the dart of one, the spear of another, overthrowing 
 the horses and chariots, so that, when the day was done, it 
 was a question whether the conquest was achieved by the 
 people or by the invisible gods and goddesses of the air. 
 We find these ideas throughout ancient times, and they are 
 as apparent all over the surface of the Old Testament as in 
 the tales of the Greek and Roman mythologies. 
 
 Let me give you an illustration of the way the Greeks 
 used to divine, and see how all this belongs to one stage of 
 development. Had you gone to Dodona, in Greece, you 
 would have found there one of the most famous of all the 
 
68 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 ancient oracles. Any one who came to Dodona could ask a 
 question as to the future, or about any hidden thing, and get 
 an answer from the priest in charge. How did the priest 
 get his information ? He listened to the rustling of the wind 
 in the supposed sacred Dodona oaks and beeches ; and he 
 claimed to have the divine power of interpreting the sounds 
 made by this rustling, and thus getting the divine message. 
 Suppose you were to go to another famous oracle of the 
 Greeks, perhaps the one best known, the oracle of Delphi. 
 What would you have found there ? A temple built over a 
 chasm, or cave, from which issued a vapor ; and this vapor 
 either actually had, or was supposed to have, the power of 
 setting nervous organizations, such as were adapted to be 
 priests at Delphi, into a mesmeric or convulsive condition. 
 Whatever was true under its influence, it was only such an 
 influence as you could produce by giving certain gases now. 
 The person becomes unconscious ; and before he is entirely 
 gone, as we say, he gives utterance to certain words or inco- 
 herent sounds and cries. These words were supposed to be 
 the utterance of the gods who had taken possession of them, 
 and these were the answers that were given to those who 
 came to inquire at their shrine. 
 
 This excited condition was sometimes induced by the aid 
 of instruments of music, as in the case of Samuel. The 
 school of prophets was preceded by the harp, the tabret, and 
 pipe. We find this the case all over the world among bar- 
 baric people. Certain persons who are very susceptible are 
 wrought on by these sounds until they are supposed to be 
 in a religious frenzy and able to give divine messages to the 
 people. It is also produced by drugs of certain kinds. In 
 India, the Soma, a drink capable of producing intoxication, 
 was formerly worshipped as a god, and the person under its 
 influence was supposed to be delivering a divine message. 
 
The Prophets. 69 
 
 Many of these things, though haloed by the glamour of 
 distance and the superstitious reverence that gathers about 
 the past, were precisely analogous to the results of religious 
 frenzy as exhibited in the excitement of modern revivals. 
 He who — as I have — has attended a negro revival meeting, 
 or who has attended a Methodist church on the frontier, and 
 has seen a man or woman rolling on the floor, possessed by 
 " the power," knows what ignorance is ready to call divine. 
 
 Again, one of the prevailing beliefs common all through 
 the Bible, in the New Testament as well as the Old, was in 
 the divine meaning of dreams. Either the person himself, 
 or some other person for him, could interpret these dreams. 
 Joseph had the power of dreaming and of interpreting his 
 own dreams. Pharaoh had wonderful dreams, but he had to 
 call Joseph in to give him the meaning. The people had 
 no doubt that these dreams brought a meaning from the 
 other world, and that thus they came into the possession of 
 divine secrets. 
 
 Let me now give you the underlying idea, the common 
 belief of barbaric men out of which all these beliefs have 
 sprung. You are aware, perhaps, that the soul and body 
 have been regarded in almost all ages, from earliest times 
 certainly, as quite separable and distinct from each other, 
 not only as capable of being separated at death, but 
 temporarily, so that the spirit could go out of a man, and 
 he could lie like a vacant house with no occupant, till it 
 came back; or, during his absence, another spirit could come 
 in, and take possession. To take possession of a man, then, 
 merely meant that some other spirit had come into his 
 body, and made him do what it would, in spite of the man's 
 individuality. We have a reminiscence of this in our com- 
 mon language. We say of a person that has fainted, " He 
 has gone." That used to mean the soul had gone, had left 
 
yo Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 the body. Even now, when a person is getting over a 
 fainting fit, we say he is "coming to," — his soul is coming 
 back to the body. We carry this survival of the once 
 universal idea into our language to this day. It was 
 believed in all sincerity in the Old Testament and New; 
 it was believed in Homer; it was believed all over the 
 world, in a certain stage of human culture, that the soul could 
 go away and come back, or that another soul could take 
 possession. It was believed — Cicero teaches it, Philo 
 teaches it, all of them teach it — that, when the soul goes off 
 in a dream, the scenes which pass through the person's mind, 
 the conversations it engages in, are just as real as any event 
 of waking life. They had no idea of the philosophy of 
 dreaming; and, if a man fell asleep, and during that sleep 
 had a talk with a neighbor, and told when he waked up that 
 he had seen such an one, and had had such a conversation 
 with him, they believed that it had really happened. It is 
 perfectly natural then that out of this should spring the 
 idea of possession by another spirit. For example, a person 
 is seized with a fit of epilepsy and falls into a swoon and 
 goes through certain motions, or, as in delirium, carries on 
 conversation with others. When he comes out of it, he is 
 told that he said so and so, or did such things ; and he very 
 frankly replies, " No, I did not say it, I did not do it." He 
 has no memory, no consciousness of it. It was the most 
 natural thing that they should have thought that such a 
 person had been taken possession of by another will, by a 
 disembodied spirit, and, while in this condition, the spirit 
 had made him do these things, and had thus talked through 
 him. 
 
 It takes only one more step to say that in this way we can 
 get divine revelations ; and people who were susceptible to 
 these influences, people who were easily wrought upon, 
 
The Prophets. 7 1 
 
 nervous persons, who had a tendency toward any of these 
 peculiar psychological phases of development, who were 
 inclined to hysterics and epilepsy, — these, as we know, were 
 the ones who were sought out to serve as priests and medi- 
 ums between this world and the next. 
 
 You are aware perhaps that among barbaric peoples, 
 among the North American Indians, among the Arabs still, 
 among all people in that stage of culture, that an insane man 
 is looked on as inspired, and he is treated with the utmost 
 tenderness and care. His words are watched as though 
 instinct with divine meaning, or, if not inspired by a good 
 being, they think possessed by a bad being. All through 
 the New Testament, down through almost the entire history 
 of the Catholic Church, this belief in demoniacal possession 
 is very apparent ; and the business of the exorcist, or one 
 capable of driving the spirit out, was one of the most im- 
 portant functions exercised by the priesthood. 
 
 Here, then, we have the root of all the traditional beliefs 
 concerning divine possession, prophecy, revelation through 
 another. 
 
 These prophets of the Old Testament back in the time of 
 Baalam, Samuel, past Elijah till we come to Isaiah, and the 
 grandest development of prophetic life among the Jews, all 
 believed that they were taken possession of by the spirit, and 
 that they were speaking not their own words, but the words 
 of this indwelling power, which for the time being had sub- 
 dued their own aptitudes and faculties, and simply used them 
 for this purpose. 
 
 I do not wish you to understand that, because I have 
 given you thus the root of prophecy, I have not the 
 highest and noblest feeling of respect toward the grandest 
 fruits and noblest outcome of it in Hebrew history. It is 
 nothing against astronomy that it had its beginning in astrol- 
 
72 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 ogy. It is nothing against chemistry that it had its begin- 
 ning in alchemy. It is nothing against any of the grand 
 scientific developments of the world that all human culture, 
 if traced down, finds its roots in crudeness, in ignorance, in 
 senseless speculations. The function of prophecy among 
 the Hebrews was one of the grandest, in its higher develop- 
 ments, that has ever been seen in the history of any religion 
 on the face of the earth. The prophet was the tribune of 
 the people, standing between the tyrant and the wronged, 
 lifting up his voice for the noblest ethics and the grandest 
 religious ideas of his time. It is indeed true that the 
 earlier prophets did not teach the morality which we should 
 expect of the leading teachers of to-day, but they taught the 
 highest of their age. It is true that many of the earlier 
 prophets were not monotheists. They believed in a great 
 many gods. They worshipped images of Yahveh in the 
 high places. Elisha and Elijah were not monotheists. They 
 lived in the northern kingdom, after it was separated from 
 Judah. The first thing the leader of the northern kingdom 
 did was to set up two golden oxen, images of Yahveh, — for 
 God was worshipped at this time under the images of these 
 golden calves, — as other people worshipped their gods under 
 some other form. These great laws against idolatry were 
 developed a long time after David and Elijah and Elisha. 
 It was a later outcome of the religious development ot the 
 people. They worshipped Yahveh under these images. 
 They were not scandalized at idol worship, and that the 
 symbols of the worship of some other god stood right along- 
 side their own : only they felt that Yahveh was their special 
 God, and they recognized him as supreme. 
 
 We look back at these prophets, and, thrown into shadow 
 by their sides or leading up to them, we see the indis- 
 tinct outline of other prophets who have been forgotten. 
 
The Prophets, 73 
 
 They, in their time, were believed in as much as Elijah or 
 Elisha. As time goes by, it sifts and gleans the gold from 
 the sand ; and as we look back, down the ages, we fix our 
 minds on Elisha, Elijah, Samuel, Isaiah, Micah, Amos, those 
 great men. Why ? Not because they were believed in 
 chiefly by the people of their time, but because they really 
 were the men who stood for the highest and grandest things 
 of their age ; and the others were pronounced, after the age 
 had gone by, to be false prophets, because it had been 
 proved by experience that the things they stood for and 
 taught were not the highest truth of the time. The process 
 of selection was as natural as that by which we take out 
 Abraham Lincoln and Gov. Andrew as the ones that best 
 represented the ideas that experience shows were the highest 
 and truest of their time, those to which victory was given, 
 and which have been made the dominant ones of the age. 
 
 These people, then, did a grand service for Israel. It is 
 these prophets that we have to thank for the highest and 
 finest outflowering of the religious life of the people ; and 
 the idea which they represented was higher than any relig- 
 ious development that the world had then seen. When Jesus 
 said God is to be worshipped, not in this particular place or 
 that, but in spirit and in truth, because he is spirit, he was 
 only echoing the grandest sayings of Micah and Isaiah and 
 Ezekiel. They taught this grand spiritual religion. They 
 stand as representatives and prophets of monotheism to all 
 coming time. We shall not be able to get any higher, 
 sweeter notions of religion than some which they taught. 
 All we can do is to take the germ, develop and apply it 
 broadly over human society. When Micah says, "What 
 doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ?" he has given us 
 as fine a definition as the world has yet attained. We can- 
 
74 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 not improve the definition : all we can do is to live it out. 
 There is one other point as important as any of which 
 I have treated, and that is the question whether the prophets 
 did ever foretell things that were to come to pass in the far dis- 
 tant future in such a way as to indicate that they had anything 
 in the way of supernatural knowledge. I answer in one 
 word, No. There is no proof whatever that the prophets 
 had any supernatural knowledge of the future in any degree 
 beyond that of any shrewd observer of the forces at work 
 in his time, who has learned to understand that every 
 condition is a cause that must be followed by its natural 
 effect. Let me take up two or three typical examples, that 
 I may show you how true this is. It is commonly said that 
 Jeremiah prophesied that the Jews would go into captivity 
 for seventy years, and then return. He does make that 
 prophecy, but it was not fulfilled. It is common to say that 
 it was ; but they reach the fulfilment by doctoring the facts, 
 by fixing an arbitrary time for the beginning and an arbitrary 
 time for the ending of the period. In that way, they can 
 reach to about sixty-six years. They say that that is near 
 enough, and call it seventy years ; but it is a purely arbitrary 
 process, and is beneath the notice of any intelligent and 
 respectable critic. 
 
 Again, Ezekiel in the twenty-sixth chapter makes a definite 
 prophecy that Tyre, on the eastern shore of the Mediter- 
 ranean, was to be conquered by Nebuchadnezzar and his 
 army. It was to be utterly destroyed, so that the bare 
 rock on which it was built was to be a place for the spread- 
 ing of nets by the fishermen. The city of Tyre has been 
 destroyed, and there is not much left but the bare rocks ; and 
 the fishermen have probably spread their nets a great many 
 times on them since that day. But the critical point is that 
 it was not done by Nebuchadnezzar, nor for a great many 
 
 
The Prophets, 75 
 
 years after his time. It was really destroyed by Alexander 
 the Great, when going East for the conquest of Persia. 
 So this prophecy was not fulfilled. 
 
 Take that prophecy supposed to be connected with the 
 New Testament and the development of Christianity. Isaiah 
 says, A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and 
 his name shall be called Immanuel. Then, it goes on to 
 say that, before this child grows to be old enough to distin- 
 guish good from evil, a definite event, which is close at 
 hand, shall happen. This prophecy has been always applied 
 to Jesus, and it has been supposed to be a confirmation of 
 the most stupendous miracle of history. In the first place, 
 Isaiah does not say anything about a virgin : he simply says 
 a young woman. For all that the word means in the 
 original, she might have been married half a dozen times. 
 Then, it is definitely stated that the event which is to take 
 place is not in any far distant future. It is to occur before 
 the child shall be old enough to know good from evil. 
 It is only a faith so blind that it will not see, that dares, in 
 the face of modern scholarship, to bring up a case like this 
 as an example of a prophecy relating to a far distant event, 
 and to claim that it has been fulfilled. 
 
 I say then, in general terms, that there is not a single case 
 in the Old Testament of a distinct and definite prophecy of 
 a distant event, where there is satisfactory proof that it was 
 ever fulfilled. The prophets themselves did not claim to 
 exercise any such power of foretelling events. 
 
 What did they do ? They did just what any of us can do 
 in a measure. If, for example, I should examine a railroad 
 bridge, and find one of the abutments or piers was crum- 
 bling, and that with every train that went over it it grew 
 weaker and weaker, it would not take any supernatural 
 knowledge to say that some day the bridge would fall, and 
 
j6 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 involve ruin and disaster. If I were to see that there was 
 a growing hatred of France on the part of Germany, and a 
 growing power in Germany to accumulate money, to equip 
 and train magnificent armies, and if, by and by, something 
 should happen to give Germany the opportunity it desired 
 to declare a war with France, it would not require supernat- 
 ural knowledge to prophesy desolation as the result. If I 
 see any one of you breaking the laws of health, it does not 
 need divine inspiration to foretell the sequel. 
 
 These prophets then foretold that, unless people repented 
 and forsook their evil ways, such and such calamities would 
 naturally and necessarily follow ; and this grew out of their 
 belief that God was a sovereign who loved righteousness, 
 and would not suffer his laws to be permanently disobeyed. 
 This is the sum of what is genuine and worthy your notice 
 among the prophecies of the Old Testament. 
 
 I want to give you one or two illustrations outside of the 
 Bible, to show you that there is no need of supernatural aid 
 to foretell some things which are very startling. Look at 
 the prophecies of Lord Chesterfield, of Arthur Young, 
 of William Cobbett, of Heine, of David G. Crowley. If 
 they had been in the Old Testament, they would have been 
 picked out as those of the most astonishing nature. They 
 are more definite in their terms, and more completely ful- 
 filled, than anything that the Bible anywhere contains. 
 Lord Chesterfield was that famous dandy, a writer and 
 thinker of a certain sort, a person of whom some one once 
 said that he would have been a philosopher, if the universe 
 had been a drawing-room ; a man of no character, one far 
 from the ideal of a prophet. He prophesied, long before 
 the time, the coming of the French Revolution. Arthur 
 Young, a traveller and shrewd thinker and observer, prophe- 
 sied the same thing, when no one in Europe dreamed of its 
 
The Prophets, 77 
 
 possibility. William Cobbett did a more wonderful thing. 
 He was a farmer of marked ability, a good thinker, a writer 
 of good English. At the very beginning of this century, he 
 prophesied the secession of the Southern States. David G. 
 Crowley, in a magazine which was published in New York in 
 1872, — which is no longer published, — prophesied the great 
 panic which swept over this country and ruined so many 
 business men. He went so far as to say that this would 
 probably be precipitated by the failure of the Northern 
 Pacific Railroad and the bankers connected with it. But 
 the most remarkable prophecies of the modern world are 
 those of Heine, the German poet, a man of whom it has been 
 said that he read all the sanctities of morals and religion 
 backward, a man who was bitter, cynical, malevolent toward 
 his enemies, ungrateful to his friends, thoughtless, sarcastic ; 
 not a man that would be supposed to be selected by the 
 Supreme Being as a medium of prophecy. He prophesied, 
 long before Europe and America dreamed of such a thing, 
 the war between Germany and France, and that France would 
 be utterly overthrown; he spoke of the line of forts which 
 Thiers was building around Paris, saying that the enclosing 
 army would crush the city like a contracting iron shroud ; 
 that the communists would arise in their fury; that they 
 would strike at the fine public buildings, and the higher 
 developments of science and art ; and that, in the midst of 
 great popular disturbances, they would hurl the Vendome 
 column to the ground. These are specimens of some sec- 
 ular prophets and their work. I venture to say that nothing 
 in the sacred literature of the world is so definitely outlined 
 and so exactly fulfilled. They were based upon a skilful 
 reading of the forces of the world and upon a knowledge of 
 the laws of cause and effect. 
 
 Prophecy in Israel at last died out, and was superseded by 
 
78 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 the Law and its interpretations in the synagogues ; and the 
 synagogues were the direct predecessors of the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 We need not regard it as a loss that there is no power of 
 foreseeing the future. It would undoubtedly be to us a 
 calamity; and yet we do have the power to read just as much 
 of it as we need to know. As Patrick Henry once said, 
 No one can read the future, except in the light of the past. 
 In the light of that past, tracing the causes and the forces 
 that work in human history, we are able to tell the natural 
 and necessary results of any forces we choose. Instead of 
 this delusive light that comes in the absence of reason, that 
 takes possession of the brain, and sweeps away a man's will 
 and a man's intelligence, and utters meaningless intimations 
 concerning the future, — instead of that, we find to-day God 
 and his eternal truth by the development of reason, by its 
 broadest use in every department of human life, by humbly 
 studying the facts of the universe, and deducing their laws, 
 and thus tracing the causes at work that have made the 
 present and that are making the future. 
 
THE WRITINGS. 
 
 Not long after the return of the Jews from captivity, that 
 section of the Old Testament which went by the name of 
 the Law, the principal part of which was the Pentateuch, 
 came into its present condition. It is said that Ezra returned 
 from Babylon with the law of the Lord in his hand. Some 
 time after this, — perhaps during the fourth century before 
 Christ, — the second collection of the Old Testament was 
 made, and generally accepted among the people. This sec- 
 ond collection went by the name of the Prophets, and it is 
 this of which I treated in my last discourse. 
 
 After the Law and the Prophets had been collected, and 
 had been received universally by the people, and had acquired 
 that character of peculiar sacredness which made them re- 
 garded as the very word of God, there still remained a large 
 body of miscellaneous writings which had not yet acquired 
 this character of sacredness. They were coming, however, 
 to be looked upon as having a peculiar, precious character 
 or quality, which set them apart from any and all other 
 books excepting those which were already accepted in the 
 canon. These miscellaneous writings were twelve in number. 
 They were the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, 
 Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, 
 Nehemiah, and Chronicles. These were the twelve books 
 which made up the collection which was called the Writings. 
 
 In the New Testament, when you find the Old Testament 
 
80 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 referred to, it is generally under the name of the Law and 
 the Prophets, or the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms. 
 Jesus is sometimes represented as using this last phrase. 
 Those three terms cover the whole of the Old Testament 
 literature, the word " Psalms " being used first as the most 
 important part of the collection, and thus giving name to the 
 whole. I remember James Freeman Clarke published a vol- 
 ume of sermons, in which the name of the first sermon is 
 used as the title of the whole book. In just this way, the 
 third collection went by the name of the Psalms, because 
 it was the first and most important part. 
 
 I shall not be able to go into any minute and critical 
 examination of each of these twelve books, for I neither 
 have time nor is it necessary for the purpose I have in view. 
 My object is to consider the origin, authority, and authen- 
 ticity of the books that make up our Bible, so that we may 
 understand how we ought to treat them, how much obedi- 
 ence we ought to yield to them, and what relation they bear 
 to the other great books of the world, what relation they 
 bear to the conduct of our daily life. 
 
 It will not be necessary for me to touch at length on many 
 of these books. I will only characterize them in a word, and 
 concentrate the attention of the morning on three or four of 
 chief importance. 
 
 The Chronicles in the Hebrew copy of the . Scriptures 
 stood as the very last book, although it has been placed 
 before the Prophets in our modern collection. It is a some- 
 what loosely written history, derived from the Temple archives 
 and historical records, which either were not accessible to 
 the writer of Samuel and Kings, or which for one reason or 
 another he failed to use. It is of no special importance, 
 and need not detain us. 
 
 Daniel has played a very important part in the history of 
 
The Writings. 8 1 
 
 Christian speculation. It stands, as you know, as the fourth 
 of the major prophets, and goes by the name of prophecy. 
 During the larger part of the Christian centuries, it has been 
 understood that it was written by Daniel himself during his 
 captivity in Babylon, and that it is a distinct prophecy con- 
 cerning great future events which, in majestic figure and 
 vision, are outlined and foreshadowed. Yet the Book of 
 Daniel, as a matter of fact, was the very last one which the 
 Jews received into their canon. Instead of having been writ- 
 ten in the sixth century, it was written probably in the second 
 century, during the time of some of the Jewish wars, per- 
 haps under the tyranny of Antiochus, with the purpose of 
 encouraging the people in times of very great oppression. 
 Yet this book has been characterized in all earnestness as 
 a " pious fraud," meaning by that not what we should mean, 
 were that term used to characterize any modern composition. 
 The writer of Daniel had no idea of doing anything wrong. 
 He believed he was justified in the work in which he was 
 engaged. He was an earnest lover and friend of his people, 
 and desired to comfort them, and strengthen their hearts 
 and hands in the great conflict in which they were engaged, 
 to keep them patient until they should be victorious and 
 reorganized. He writes this book, and attributes its author- 
 ship to Daniel, a person who lived some hundreds of years 
 before. He thought, by sending it out under the authority 
 of this great name, it might speedily take hold of the popu- 
 lar mind and heart, and produce the desired effect. Yet 
 this book has been the one to which the Second Adventists 
 have appealed. A book from whose mystical figures people 
 have dared to read the future, year after year and age after 
 age, dealing with "a time, times, and a half," with the big 
 horn and the little horn, and with the beasts, in their en- 
 deavor to picture the future course and destiny of nations. 
 
82 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 You will judge from the time when the book was written 
 how very little profit there has been in this kind of specula- 
 tion. 
 
 Esther is a very peculiar book, one that the Jews long 
 looked at askance before receiving it into their canon. It is 
 marked by the fact that it does not contain the name of 
 God, and has no religious character about it whatever. The 
 Jews, while they were in captivity, adopted a feast called the 
 Purim, which became one of their most famous feasts, and 
 to which they were greatly attached. After the return from 
 the captivity, it was difficult to make this feast popular in 
 Palestine. Undoubtedly for the purpose of giving a plausi- 
 ble Jewish origin to this festival, and to make it acceptable 
 to the Palestine Jews, this book was written. At least, such 
 is its probable scope and purpose. 
 
 Ruth is a beautiful pastoral idyl, one of the most beauti- 
 ful things in the whole Bible. Its whole purpose, so far as 
 we can see, and that which made it so dear to the popular 
 heart, is the fact that it traces the supposed genealogy and 
 origin of David, their favorite king and their ideal national 
 hero. 
 
 Lamentations is simply an anonymous book, written in a 
 strain of elegy, and mourning over the desolations of the 
 people. 
 
 Ezra and Nehemiah, two books, though substantially one, 
 give us an account of the history of the revival of the Jewish 
 people and the reorganization of their national religion after 
 their return from the captivity. 
 
 The Book of Proverbs, supposed to have been written by 
 Solomon just as it stands, indicates on its surface that it has 
 a divided authorship. The last chapter, it is said, was 
 written by the mother of King Lemuel, another by Agur. 
 Whole chapters throughout the book are not proverbs at 
 
The Writings. 83 
 
 all, but ethical treatises, containing advice from one who 
 has been through life and learned its temptations and mean- 
 ing. They could not have been written by Solomon or by 
 any one man. Many of the proverbs are not even of Jewish 
 origin. But the tendency to attribute such a book to a 
 particular author is perfectly natural. As if to-day I should 
 make a collection of prudential maxims such as Poor 
 Richard made himself famous for, and entitle it Maxims 
 by Benjamin Franklin and others, and the book should 
 grow and additions be made to it, it would be easy for the 
 popular mind to think that he was the author of them all. 
 People would cease to make any distinction between his 
 maxims and the others. They would quote these maxims 
 as though all belonged to Poor Richard's sayings. In this 
 way, the Book of Proverbs has probably grown. Solomon 
 had a great reputation among his people for shrewd observa- 
 tion, for wise and witty sayings. He was skilled and 
 experienced in interpreting riddles and solving problems 
 of nature and of life ; and he came to stand in their minds 
 as a representative proverb-maker, and tradition associates 
 his name with this collection. This tendency is perfectly 
 natural. You constantly hear people quoting sayings from 
 Sydney Smith which may possibly have been familiar to 
 ancient Rome or Greece, or perhaps may have originated 
 last year in a Western newspaper, but attributed to him, 
 because he is the representative wit of the English people ; 
 and it is safe to suppose that anything witty of which the 
 origin is not known was originated by him. 
 
 Let us now concentrate our attention on the four most 
 important books in this collection called The Writings. 
 
 First, the collection of Psalms, the Psalms of David, as 
 they are popularly called. I used to suppose, and probably 
 most of you were taught to believe, that, in spite of the faci 
 
84 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 that the sons of Korah and the name of Moses and other 
 names are given as the composers of some of these psalms, 
 yet David was the writer of them all. This, I say, is the 
 popular idea that has been in the minds of the people for 
 centuries. 
 
 What is this Book of Psalms ? It is nothing more nor 
 less than the Jewish hymn-book. It is the hymn-book of 
 the second temple ; that is, the temple built under the aus- 
 pices of Ezra and Nehemiah on the return of the Jews from 
 their captivity in Babylon. As we examine the book, we 
 find it divided into five different sections or separate classes 
 of hymns or psalms. The first reaches from the second to 
 the forty-first psalm ; the second, from the forty-second 
 to the seventy- second ; the third, from the seventy-third to 
 the eighty-ninth ; the fourth, from the ninetieth to the one 
 hundred and sixth; the fifth, from the one hundred and 
 seventh to the one hundred and forty-ninth. You will 
 notice that I say nothing about the first or last psalms. 
 The first was added after the general collection was made 
 as a sort of general introduction, and in the old Jewish 
 psalm-book the second psalm counted as the first. The 
 one hundred and fiftieth psalm was added as an epilogue to 
 the general collection. So there were originally only one 
 hundred and forty-eight psalms. You will find the second 
 psalm quoted in the New Testament; and, although our 
 translators have made Jesus quote from the second, in the 
 original Greek he quotes from the first, because that was 
 originally the first. 
 
 These five books were collected at five different times. I 
 need not go critically into this. The first book, either par- 
 tially or entirely, was brought together and was in use dur- 
 ing the service of the first temple, the temple of Solomon. 
 In this first book, if anywhere, we must look for some of the 
 
The Writings, 85 
 
 poetic work of King David; for, after that first book, you 
 will probably find none of his work at all. As you look at 
 these psalms, you will see that they have various headings, 
 
 — such as "A Psalm of David," or "David's confidence in 
 God's grace," or " David praiseth God for his deliverance," 
 
 — but you are to remember as you read them that these are 
 no part of the original work at all. All these headings and 
 notes are the work of editors, and not of the poetical authors 
 themselves. If you look back to your childhood, you can 
 remember how you used to hear the minister in the pulpit, 
 or your father at morning worship, reading, as though they 
 were a part of the inspired Psalm, certain detached words 
 which we now know to be a sort of musical notation. It is 
 as though, when reading the hymn, I should read the words 
 andante, fortissimo, — Italian words for the guidance of the 
 musicians. So certain words, such as Selah and Higgaion, 
 are simply indications to the singers as to how the music 
 should be performed, whether with accompaniment of instru- 
 ments or by voices alone, whether high or low, etc. 
 
 Now, a word in regard to temple music, that you may 
 understand something as to how these hymns were used. 
 Some were used only for special occasions, as on festivals, — 
 as we have our Easter and Christmas hymns, suitable only to 
 those occasions. Others formed part of the general service. 
 It is stated in one place in the Bible that they had some 
 four thousand singers. That is probably a larger number 
 than was permanently attached to the temple. They had, 
 however, between two and three hundred men and women 
 engaged in the temple singing. The idea that the women 
 must be shut off in a gallery by themselves apart from the 
 men was not a part of the Old Testament idea of service. 
 It is a more modern notion. There were then between 
 two and three hundred voices. These were accompanied 
 
86 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 generally by stringed instruments simply to aid the singers, 
 as we are accompanied by the organ to sustain and guide 
 and direct the multitude of our voices. If you think of the 
 three hundred men and women's voices, with lyres and harps, 
 and now and then cymbals to mark the time, as we use them 
 to-day, you will have a very good idea of the temple choir, as 
 they performed their daily and Sabbath services. Only you 
 must not think of them as singing as we do ; for harmony, or 
 the blending of the different parts of the song in one gen- 
 eral effect, is a modern thing in music, and was unknown to 
 the ancient Hebrews. They had no poetry in the sense in 
 which we use that word, perfect in rhythm, time, and rhyme. 
 Theirs was perfect only in alliteration and rhythm, or meas- 
 ure. There was no rhyme. Their singing was more like a 
 chant than anything we call harmonic music : they sang only 
 melody. 
 
 These five books, then, that make up the Psalms, were col- 
 lected at different times by different editors. They came at 
 last to be looked on as chiefly the work of David. How did 
 this idea arise ? In several ways. 
 
 Suppose I should make a collection of hymns. I might 
 take, as a basis, " Watts and Select." If by and by that 
 book passes out of use, and somebody else makes a collec- 
 tion, and carelessly marks all taken from "Watts and 
 Select" as simply "Watts," meaning the collection and not 
 that he was the author, when by and by " Watts and Select " 
 should be entirely lost, many would suppose that Watts was 
 the author of all the hymns bearing his name in the last 
 collection. And remember that in those old times there 
 was no printing, and no chance for people to correct errors 
 by comparison. In this way, therefore, many of the old 
 psalms that formed part of the Davidic collection, which 
 was formed for the first temple, were transferred to the later 
 
The Writings. 8? 
 
 books, and were therefore thought to have been written by 
 David. 
 
 It is absurd to suppose that he wrote many. Let me indi- 
 cate a few reasons why he could not have done so. I take 
 one of the Psalms, for example, with reference to the temple 
 worship. Of course, David did not refer to that. There was 
 no temple in existence until after he was dead. If joy and 
 love in temple worship were expressed, it was written by 
 some one who lived after there was a temple. 
 
 Take the one hundred and nineteenth psalm, devoted to a 
 passionate love and admiration for the law. The law came 
 into its present shape after the captivity. Before a person 
 could write the one hundred and nineteenth psalm, the law 
 .xiust have been familiar to his mind for years and years, 
 u„til there could grow up this passionate admiration and love 
 for it. It must have been made dear by association. It 
 could not have been written until within a few centuries 
 before Christ, hundreds of years after David was dead. 
 
 The one hundred and thirty-seventh psalm, beginning, " By 
 the riveis of Babylon there we sat down ; yea, we wept, when 
 we remembered Zion," must have been written by some one 
 who had been in Babylon during the captivity, hundreds of 
 years after David was dead. 
 
 How has the popular idea of David arisen ? The people 
 have assumed that David wrote the Psalms ; and then they 
 have gone to work and created an ideal sort of man, made 
 up of the materia is of which the Psalms are composed, and 
 they call that Do,vid. That is, they have assumed that he 
 wrote the Psalms, and have created an ideal image of such a 
 man as would be likely to write such things as these. They 
 have made him spiritual, noble, a monotheist, giving the high- 
 est worship to God. But look at the outlines of the early part 
 of his life. He went into the wilderness at the head of a 
 
88 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 band of cut-throats, murderers, and convicts of every kind, 
 and there remained for a certain number of years, until strong 
 enough to seize the throne. Then, he is a barbaric leader, a 
 man of immense power and force of personality, a man of 
 great genius, a man who first welded those conflicting tribes 
 into one nation, but no more of a saint than Richard Coeur 
 de Lion or Henry VIII. He was cruel and vindictive. He 
 worshipped Yahveh ; but he also worshipped Baal, and 
 named one of his sons for him. He sacrificed the seven 
 sons of Saul to Yahveh ; and, when he conquers the Ammon- 
 ites and captures one of their rebellious cities, he puts the 
 inhabitants to the severest torture, and burns them alive. 
 And he did this to all the captured cities of the Ammonites. 
 This is not the kind of man you would think of as writing 
 the poetic and beautiful and spiritual lines of many of the 
 Psalms, that have been the comfort of souls for hundreds of 
 years. You might as well think of Henry VIII. writing a 
 treatise against Divorces as to suppose that King David was 
 the author of most of the Psalms. The contradiction on 
 the face of it is as clear in the one case as in the other. 
 
 How many did he write then ? Instead of giving you my 
 own opinion, I will give you the opinion of Prof. Robertson 
 Smith, the author of the article on the Bible in the Encyclo- 
 pedia Britannica, one of the most eminent Biblical scholars 
 in the world. He thinks it would be very critical to say that 
 David did not write any. According to his opinion, he may 
 have written the eighteenth and the seventh. He thinks ' it 
 is probable he wrote them. 
 
 The Psalms, however, whoever wrote them, do not depend 
 upon their authorship for their power and beauty. They 
 range from the highest lyrical poetry in the world to mechan- 
 ical verse without any trace of inspiration. Some are 
 acrostics : the writer begins every line with a certain letter 
 
The Writings. 89 
 
 of the Jewish alphabet. But there are others that bubble 
 up like springs that have their source at the very heart of 
 the world, full of life and sun and joy forever. Some of the 
 Psalms, however, derive a great part of their wealth from 
 association. A Cremona violin is not so valuable when first 
 constructed. After it has been used for years and years,, 
 after it has expressed the joy and sorrow of the world, until 
 these have been wrought into it, so that it seems as though 
 it had a soul of its own, then it becomes a valuable instru- 
 ment, — valuable because of these stored-up vibrations, and 
 worthy of the touch of the grandest master. Precisely so 
 these Psalms have been played upon by human sympathies 
 and hopes and fears and imaginations for centuries, until 
 they are permeated and colored all the way through by the 
 passionate joy and the passionate sorrow of the human 
 heart. 
 
 As an illustration how association changes the very inter- 
 pretation of the passage itself, take that familiar one, " Oh ? 
 worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. " How sweet 
 and fine this thought ! — the beauty of holiness, representing 
 a state of culture that is looked on as ideal beauty. Does 
 the author mean that ? If I should give you the original 
 meaning, all the spiritual aspiration goes out of it. The 
 writer simply says, I will worship the Lord in the beauty of 
 consecrated garments, with beautiful robes and ritual. But 
 you will never get that idea back into it again ; for the heart 
 of the world has written over that line, and filled it with 
 spiritual meaning. So a large part of the wealth of the 
 Psalms is not what the writer put into them, but what the 
 experience of the world has written between the lines. 
 
 The Song of Solomon is generally spoken of apologet- 
 ically. It was a long time after it was written before it was 
 introduced into the canon. As it stands, it is the oldest 
 
90 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 book probably in Hebrew literature. It was after the time 
 of Christ before it was admitted as a sacred book. It was 
 cherished in the heart of the people, but they could not get 
 over the fact that it did not appear to be at all religious. 
 They could not find any reason for admitting it to the canon, 
 until at last Rabbi Akiba, a man of overmastering influence, 
 said that the whole world was not worth the day on which 
 that song was given to Israel ; and that fact, together with 
 the idea that it was attributed to Solomon, settled the ques- 
 tion, and it was admitted. The probability is that Solomon 
 had nothing to do with it. It is sometimes charged with 
 being an obscene and impure book. There is not a more 
 beautiful or pure poem on the face of the earth. What 
 does it teach ? What is its moral ? It is a dramatic poem, 
 or as near that as the Jewish genius ever attained, and rep- 
 resents a beautiful country maiden, who is betrothed to a 
 shepherd lad, enduring the blandishments of the courtiers 
 who are endeavoring to lure her from her country lover, and 
 make her the chief figure in the royal harem. In spite of 
 all these blandishments of the gay court and city, she resists, 
 and remains true to her rustic lover, and at last is permitted 
 to go back to her friends, her home, and her love. That 
 is the moral. If any one can find anything impure in that, 
 they could question the purity of a rose in a glass vase on 
 the parlor table. There is nothing particularly religious in 
 this book except this undying faithfulness. Yet the heart 
 of it is true from beginning to end. But do you suppose 
 Solomon would sit down deliberately and write a song in 
 which he would delineate his discomfiture, and set forth 
 how he tried to woo and w r in a country maiden, and could 
 not succeed, but had to let her go back to her country lover 
 again ? People who go through with that experience do not 
 usually set it forth in songs of that fashion. With this 
 
The Writings. 9 1 
 
 conception, the song is beautiful from beginning to end. 
 Let us pass to Ecclesiastes. This is also one of the last 
 books admitted to the canon. It came in with a great deal 
 of difficulty, and probably would never have been admitted, 
 had it not been that Solomon was supposed to be the author. 
 His name floated it, so tha.t it kept on the surface of Jewish 
 thought; and we may be thankful for the kind of half- 
 fraud which gave his name to the book, because it is an 
 intensely interesting specimen of ancient literature. The 
 writer says, " I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jeru- 
 salem." Take that last phrase. When Solomon was king, 
 there was no king anywhere else except in Jerusalem. Why 
 should he say that he was king in Jerusalem ? If a Presi- 
 dent of the United States should speak of himself, he would 
 not say, when I was President in Washington. There is no 
 president elsewhere : why specify it in that fashion ? But, in 
 later times, there was another king at Samaria ; and it would 
 be natural for a person in a subsequent period to use such 
 an expression. Again, Solomon would be likely to use the 
 present tense. He was king all the time until he died. He 
 would not write of himself in the past. Again, the writer 
 refers to Judea as a province. It was not a province for 
 hundreds of years after the time of Solomon. If you know 
 the character of the book, you will see with what difficulty it 
 must have been admitted. There is little religious in it. 
 It is pessimistic to the last degree, hopeless of this world, 
 despairing of human society, hopeless of the future. The 
 writer is a fatalist. He says that the world is all vanity and 
 vexation of spirit ; that there is nothing in human life ; that 
 a person who is dead is better than one living, and one not 
 born better than either of them ; that the whole world is 
 empty, one endless round of vanity and vexation. If a 
 person is rich, has many gardens and much increase, he 
 
92 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 becomes satiated and tired of it all, and disgusted with life 
 in any form. Animals and man are about on the same 
 level : the same things happen to both ; there is no future 
 for either. It is very curious, as Mr. Chadwick has observed 
 in a lecture on this subject, that a passage from this book 
 intimating that there is no future life is placed over the 
 entrance to Mt. Auburn : — " Then shall the dust return to 
 the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who 
 gave it." To any one familiar with Oriental thought, this 
 simply means that the body goes back to the dust, and the 
 spirit, that spark that we call life, goes back and loses its 
 personality, is absorbed in the infinite God from whom it 
 came. That is what that passage means. Thus, the Book 
 of Ecclesiastes was put into the Jewish canon, and became 
 a part of the Bible of Christendom, although it explicitly 
 denies every tenet of Christianity. The name of Solomon 
 floated it in. But, dreary as it is, it represents a phase of 
 human life that finds its echo in the world to-day. It is 
 only fair, however, to say that the last two verses contain 
 a sentiment so noble as to redeem much that is vastly 
 inferior. 
 
 Let us now consider perhaps the greatest book in the Old 
 Testament, Job. When was this written ? It is supposed 
 that it was written somewhere in the neighborhood of the 
 seventh century. It is an attempt on the part of the writer 
 to consider the oldest and the newest problem of humanity, 
 perennial in its interest, mighty in its hold on the thoughts 
 and hopes and fears of man. He considers the question 
 why it is that good men suffer, why they are in sorrow and 
 trouble, why they are overthrown and cast down, why it is, 
 if there is a righteous government of the universe, that there 
 is no certain prosperity for virtue and truth ; that, in spite of 
 the good man's endeavors to do right, he may be cast down 
 
The Writings. 93 
 
 to earth, and trampled under the feet of tyranny, selfishness, 
 and wrong. You will see the nature of the problem to the 
 Jew, when you remember that it was the fundamental idea 
 of his religion that Yahveh was a God of righteousness who 
 would reward the virtuous. As they expressed it, " I have 
 never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging 
 bread " ; though I could never help feeling that the writer of 
 that verse had had a narrow experience of life. 
 
 The Jews at this time had no real faith in any future life. 
 There are no intimations of it until toward the very last, 
 and then they are dim and indefinite. They teach that God 
 will reward the righteous with long life, with health, with 
 friends, with many children, all the elements of prosperity. 
 That is the reward for serving Yahveh. Yet, in the face of 
 this, they saw the righteous suffering. It was the solution of 
 this problem that was in the mind of the great thinker who 
 wrote this book. It was probably written not long after 
 the death of Josiah, somewhere about 641. He was the 
 king above all others who was their ideal for righteousness 
 and truth, devotion and service to Yahveh. The prophets 
 had long been saying that, when they should have a king 
 true to the law, who should put down idolatry, who should 
 serve Yahveh, they would have prosperity and victory over 
 their enemies. Here, then, was a king faithful and true, 
 from first to last, putting down idolatry, lifting up the law, 
 bringing only good to Israel, yet killed in mid career, and 
 his people overthrown. No wonder that this great loving 
 heart and grand poetic brain, the author of Job, should be 
 stunned and amazed at seeing all his old ideas put to rout. 
 What does it mean ? Does Yahveh really rule and care for 
 the world ? If he does, why does he permit such contradic- 
 tion in human affairs ? This is the problem. You remem- 
 ber the introduction, where Satan is represented as appearing 
 
94 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 before God. The Persian influence had not at that time 
 affected the Jewish belief, and Satan had not developed into 
 a hater of God. He has access to the very court of God 
 himself, and even talks with the Lord on his throne. This 
 introductory scene may very likely have been written by 
 other hands : it does not settle the wonderful problem any- 
 way. It sets forth how Job is suddenly overthrown. It lets 
 us in behind the scenes, and lets us hear the partial solu- 
 tion, though it is not what we should regard as a solution 
 to-day. 
 
 The book is dialogue in form, and is made up of conversa- 
 tions between Job and the three friends whom he calls mis- 
 erable comforters, and an interpolated speech of Elihu. 
 Then, Jehovah himself speaks. The speech of Elihu inter- 
 rupts the dialogue, but it does not give the solution of the 
 problem. Does the whole book settle the question ? Does 
 it give us any answer to this great problem ? Not at all. 
 We face the mystery overhanging the world from the begin- 
 ning until now. When Yahveh appears himself, and speaks 
 out of the whirlwind, what does he say ? He does not give 
 any explanation. You have no right to question God. You 
 must bow and submit : that is the only solution which the 
 writer could discover. As one of the Psalmists says, " I was 
 dumb : I opened not my mouth because thou didst it." The 
 Book of Job does not carry us any further. 
 
 Have we discovered anything to throw light on that prob- 
 lem since ? Only this : it seems to me that the theory of 
 evolution hints an answer such as the world has never dis- 
 covered before, and which, to my mind, is more rational than 
 any attempted solutions that have been offered. Why do 
 we suffer ? I do not believe we suffer in order to test us, 
 because the Almighty and Satan have entered into a contro- 
 versy whether we will cling to him, if he puts us to trial. I 
 
The Writings. 95 
 
 do not believe we suffer because God appoints this or that 
 amount of pain to us on account of something we have done ; 
 as I heard a tender-hearted mother saying, " Oh, what have 
 I done that God has taken my child away ? " I reject that 
 whole conception of the government of the world. I do not 
 believe that God, because a mother does not go to church, 
 or because she loves her child too much, out of jealousy 
 sends diphtheria or scarlet fever to put the little child to 
 ■ death as a punishment to her. It seems to me infernal, this 
 conception of God. I could not love a Being like that. 
 
 What does modern science tell us ? Simply this : that we 
 are surrounded on every hand by a great natural order ; that 
 we are a part of it ; that life and health and happiness 
 come as the result of our conformity to this law and order. 
 If I keep the laws of my physical life I am well, if I break 
 them I am sick • and neither praying nor cursing has any- 
 thing to do with the question whether poison is wholesome 
 or bread is injurious. Pain is a signal marked " Danger," set 
 up along our pathway on every hand. If we step from this 
 pathway, consciously or unconsciously ; if we break a law vol- 
 untarily or by the force of inheritance, — pain, disease, death, 
 come as necessity. Pain means broken law. Welfare and 
 happiness mean law kept ; and the result of this is to teach 
 us progressively through the ages to know and keep the laws 
 of the universe, in which are life and peace forevermore. 
 
The Bridge between tie Testaments. 
 
 As you open any one of our common Bibles, you will find 
 that there is a break between the Old Testament and the 
 New which has been filled by the binder with only the blank 
 leaves for a family record. This break has been, in the 
 popular mind, a blank for hundreds of years, as much so as 
 the unwritten leaves. Yet something of vast moment must 
 have happened between the closing of the Old Testament 
 and the beginning of the New, which we must understand 
 in order to appreciate the movements which are so alive on 
 the scene of the New Testament record. This break is no 
 slight one, as you will see when your attention is called to 
 the dates. The date of the prophecy of Malachi is placed 
 in the Bible, in the margin, as 397 B.C. That is, our Bible 
 gives us the impression that the Old Testament closed 
 nearly four hundred years before the New Testament began. 
 If you ascertain the date of the first writings of the New 
 Testament, you will find it was somewhere between fifty and 
 sixty years after the birth of Christ. Here is a gulf appar- 
 ently of four hundred and fifty years between the Old Testa- 
 ment and the New. It was years, in my own case, before I 
 had looked up this matter enough to have any comprehen- 
 sion of what had been taking place during those centuries 
 which must have united these two periods of time. In 
 order that you may see how important must have been the 
 
The Bridge between the Testaments. 97 
 
 activities going on, I shall ask you to note two or three par- 
 ticularly marked things. 
 
 When the Old Testament closed, there was no trace any- 
 where of any belief, on the part of the Jews, in any doctrine 
 of immortality, in any heaven or hell. The New Testament 
 is full of both. There was no trace anywhere, at the end of 
 Malachi, of any developed doctrine of angels, good or bad. 
 The New Testament is full of the hierarchies of good angels, 
 under their leader, and, over against them, the hierarchies of 
 bad angels, under the fully developed Satan, or Devil. When 
 we have finished the Old Testament, we have learned nothing 
 about any kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God, as to be 
 expected very soon on the earth. The very first cry that 
 meets us as we open the New Testament is, " The kingdom of 
 God is at hand." When the Old Testament closes, there are 
 almost no traces anywhere of an immediate expectation of 
 the Messiah. The New Testament seems to begin with the 
 Messianic cry in the hearts and on the lips of all the people. 
 So the words "grace" and "sin" and the idea of the atone- 
 ment, and all these things with which the New Testament is 
 filled, had found no clear and definite expression at the close, 
 or what was supposed to be the close, of the Old Testament 
 record. 
 
 But there is danger of our having an entire misconception 
 of the facts, if we suppose that there is really a very long 
 break between the records of the Old and New Testaments. 
 A large part of this misconception comes from the mistakes 
 that have been made in regard to the dates of the records. 
 For example, the Old Testament canon was not closed 397 
 B.C., although this is the popularly regarded date of the 
 prophecy of Malachi. As a matter of fact, the Old Testa- 
 ment canon was not closed until after the destruction of the 
 temple, nearly a hundred years after the birth of Christ; and 
 
98 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 it was closed at this time, not because all those books which 
 were regarded as worthy to be reckoned in its number had 
 been included, but because the destruction of the temple 
 and the dispersion of the Jews among the peoples, as the 
 result of their conquest by the Romans, made it impossible 
 for them any longer to carry on this religious and literary 
 activity. Only those books, then, which had become sacred 
 in the minds of the people at the time of the destruction of 
 their nationality, were looked upon as belonging to the old 
 and sacred period of their history, and about them gathered 
 this halo of antiquity and respect which always belongs to 
 those things which are revered as part of a nation's past. 
 
 The Book of Malachi was not the last of the Old Testa- 
 ment. Several of those books which are included in the 
 canon date long after the prophecy of Malachi. The Book 
 of Daniel, of Ecclesiastes, and several others, were of more 
 recent date than that prophecy. 
 
 There is a large body of literature, the name of which you 
 may be familiar with, that has not been included in either 
 the Old Testament or the New by Protestant Christianity, 
 although a part has been accepted by the Catholic Church, 
 which fills up this apparent gulf between the two Testaments. 
 This literature shows a development of religious and politi- 
 cal life among the Jews, and explains what must otherwise 
 be a great mystery. A part of this literature goes under the 
 name of apocalyptic writings, and a part under the name of 
 apocryphal writings. Apocryphal means hidden, and apoca- 
 lyptic means just the opposite, unfolded or revealed. The 
 apocalyptic literature was so named, because it was supposed 
 in some way to lift the veil which hides the future, and in a 
 series of shadowy outlines to picture the great events that 
 were to come. The writers of these visions did not expose 
 themselves to detection by being over-definite in drawing the 
 
The Bridge between the Testaments. 99 
 
 outlines of coming events. They Lave written them in so 
 cloudy and indefinite a fashion that it has been a question 
 with interpreters in all ages as to whether this precise picture 
 or that was supposed to refer to one historic event or another. 
 
 The apocryphal literature would be well worthy an hour's 
 study in your presence, had we time. A large part of it is 
 so very noble, so splendidly written, so full of fine ideas, that 
 it can only be the result of an accident that it is not a part 
 of the Old Testament itself. 
 
 I intimated that the canon was closed suddenly by the 
 destruction of the Jewish nationality, and that, but for this, 
 the Book of Ecclesiasticus, the Wisdom of Solomon, the 
 histories of the Maccabees, and others of these powerful 
 works, would undoubtedly have appeared in the Old Tes- 
 tament canon. As we study these books, there is no reason 
 that we can see why they should not have been included, so 
 far as we can judge of their intrinsic worth. They are cer- 
 tainly much superior to some parts of the Old Testament. 
 Some parts of Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon 
 are quite equal to anything that goes by the name of sacred 
 Scripture in any of the religious writings of the world. 
 
 We cannot admit, of course, that this apparent break be- 
 tween the Testaments is a real cessation of Jewish life, activ- 
 ity, and development. We are now accustomed to the 
 modern word "evolution," to a belief in the continuity of 
 growth, — that nothing happens suddenly, or without a cause, 
 or springs full-grown out of nothing. 
 
 If, for example, we had no history of this country from 
 the time when the Pilgrims landed until the Boston harbor 
 "tea-party" or the battle of Lexington, — if it was all un- 
 written, so that we left off with their landing at Plymouth, 
 and began again at the beginning of the Revolution, — we 
 should have no sort of doubt or question as to whether there 
 
ioo Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 had been most intense political and intellectual activity on 
 the part of the people during this time. We should have to 
 assume a line of continuous development from one point 
 to the other. Precisely the same is true concerning the his- 
 tory and development of the Jews. We cannot understand 
 the beginning of the New Testament life and literature, 
 unless we assume an intense activity on the part of the Jews 
 during this period, which is not covered by that which we are 
 accustomed to call sacred literature. 
 
 There are two possible courses open to me this morning. 
 I could take up this apocalyptic and apocryphal literature, 
 and outline it, giving you specimens of its contents, analyze 
 them, show what these writers were thinking about, and point 
 out their effect on the popular life ; but this would lead me 
 too far and into too minute details, and would make the sub- 
 ject wearisome. On the other hand, I can simply give you 
 results. I can tell you what we have learned by studying 
 this old history and literature. I can tell you what the Jews 
 were doing politically, intellectually, socially, and religiously, 
 and in this way enable your thoughts to cross this great 
 gulf from the Old Testament to the New. 
 
 Leaving on one side, then, except as I may refer to it inci- 
 dentally, this whole mass of literature, I will give you, in as 
 brief and clear outline as I can, the history of what the Jews 
 were doing during this most important period of their his- 
 tory and development. 
 
 In the first place, let me tell you the political vicissitudes 
 through which they passed, because these led the way to the 
 other changes ; and it is necessary to know them, in order to 
 comprehend their later movements. 
 
 When the Jews first returned from the Babylonish captiv- 
 ity, they were under a Persian protectorate. That is, these 
 exiles returned home by permission of the Persian king, and 
 
The Bridge between the Testaments. 101 
 
 under the escort and guidance of Persians, protected by Per- 
 sian power. They were permitted by Persian authority to 
 rebuild their temple, and to renew, as far as possible, their 
 old-time life. They were under this power continuously, and 
 at peace for a long number of years. They enjoyed practi- 
 cal independence during that time. The Persians were so 
 far away that the kings did not care to interfere with them, 
 and they were allowed to develop according to their own 
 ideas. Their chief priest, or high priest, was practically the 
 supreme power. Of course, if any conflict arose, the people 
 would have the right to appeal to Persia, so that the Persian 
 king was the ultimate authority in all political questions ; but, 
 practically, the Jews were independent. They remained in 
 this way until that young Grecian king, Alexander, started 
 in his great career of conquest. On his way to the East, he 
 took Jerusalem as one of the great cities in his course, and 
 conquered the Judasan power, bringing it to his feet and 
 leaving it as one of his subjects, while he went farther east 
 to break down the entire Persian rule in all its range. 
 
 After Alexander's death, this great world-wide kingdom 
 broke up into four pieces. Judaea fell to the share of Ptol- 
 emy, the ruler of Egypt ; and, for a long time, we find Judsea 
 a dependency of Egypt. About this time, the great city 
 of Alexandria was built as the capital of the Ptolemies. It 
 soon became one of the most famous cities of the world, 
 the seat of commerce and of literature. It was one of the 
 great centres of learning, and exerted an influence throughout 
 the world. It was a great cosmopolitan city 7 . Greeks, 
 Romans, Jews, Egyptians, Orientals of every name, centred 
 here, and formed this great seething, political, intellectual, 
 and religious life. It was during the reign of the Ptolemies 
 that the Old Testament was translated into the Greek ver- 
 sion called the Septuagint. This Greek translation of the 
 
102 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 Old Testament is the one that is always referred to in the 
 New Testament, when quotations are made there. So that, 
 if you find that these quotations are different from the Old 
 Testament, you may understand this difference, by remember- 
 ing that they quoted from the Septuagint, which sometimes 
 differs in words and phrases from the ordinary reading of the 
 Hebrew. 
 
 After the Jews had been under the reign of the Ptolemies 
 in Egypt, they passed under a new conqueror, the Syrian 
 kings, or dynasty of the Seleucidae, of whom the representa- 
 tive at that time was Antiochus Epiphanes, or Antiochus the 
 brilliant, who was nicknamed, on account of his strange and 
 unaccountable ways, Epimanes, or the madman. He did 
 everything he could to denationalize the Jews. He abolished 
 their temple worship. He made it obligatory upon every 
 Jew to worship the gods of Greece and the gods of Greece 
 alone. He did everything he could to pour contempt on 
 the temple, even going so far as to sacrifice swine upon the 
 altar, the last and extremest indignity, in the eye of a Jew, 
 which could be committed against his national worship. 
 
 He not only sacrificed this animal upon the altar of the 
 temple, but, making a broth of the remains, he sprinkled it 
 over their sacred books and utensils, doing whatever he 
 could to defile everything that they called sacred. He 
 carried this so far, however, that he defeated the very pur- 
 pose he had in view ; for one day, as a renegade Jew was 
 about to offer a pagan sacrifice, Mattathias rushed on him 
 and slew him. This started a revolution, which ran like 
 wild-fire all over the country. It resulted in the Jews attain- 
 ing their freedom, and becoming a nation again by them- 
 selves. The son of Mattathias, Judas, the Hammer, as he 
 was called, became king. He beat his enemies to pieces, 
 established a new dynasty, and for many years the Jews 
 
The Bridge between the Testaments. 103 
 
 ruled themselves, and were independent. But, by and by, they 
 formed an alliance with that new power in the West, which 
 was so soon destined to rule the whole world. When two 
 rival claimants for the Jewish throne were quarrelling as to 
 the succession, Rome stepped in, and assumed a protector- 
 ate, which meant their subjection; and, from that time on to 
 the destruction of the Jewish city, Judaea was only a province 
 of the Roman Empire, ruled a part of the time by kings 
 appointed in Rome, a part of the time by Roman procurators 
 and other officers of the Empire. 
 
 So much for an outline of the political history. You see 
 how active were those times concerning which we have known 
 so very little, and how and what were the influences at work 
 which mingled not only the nationalities, but the philosophies 
 and religions of the world in such a way as to prepare for 
 the development of a new religion. 
 
 Mark for a moment how these influences were at work. 
 Here were brought together, in these great cities of Rome 
 and Alexandria, peoples from all over the world, each with 
 its own religion, each worshipping its own separate gods. 
 And as they grew wiser, and thought more deeply about this 
 subject, do you not see how scepticism must have resulted ? 
 Whose god was the true one ? Here were a hundred gods ; 
 here were many religions represented in these great cities. 
 A man could take his choice, and worship this or that ; but 
 it was impossible for him to believe in them all. When the 
 question was raised, Which one shall I believe in? the 
 answer was likely to be, In none. The system each religion 
 represented was so vulnerable, the gods were so clearly only 
 the idealizations of national hopes and aspirations, that the 
 people of no one nation could receive the gods of another; 
 and so they finally ceased to be respected, even by their own 
 followers. 
 
104 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 The systems of philosophy and all the ideas of the world 
 were also brought together and compared one with another, 
 so that they might be comprehended, that they might be 
 tested, to see which were capable of standing. 
 
 Among the great movements going on in the intellectual 
 development of the Jews was the attempt to reconcile the 
 doctrines of Judaism with the great philosophies of Greece. 
 Philo, who lived in Alexandria, a Jewish scholar of the 
 century preceding the birth of Christ, is the most distin- 
 guished name of this epoch of Jewish life. He spent his 
 life in endeavoring to reconcile the philosophy of Plato with 
 the Old Testament ideas, attempting to find traces in these 
 higher pagan philosophies of some primitive revelation that 
 should bring their thought into connection with that of his 
 old-time fathers. Out of this fusion of ideas sprang many 
 of those conceptions which became living forces in the 
 New Testament thought and in the development of the 
 young Christianity. Not only was there a fusion of Jewish 
 and Grecian ideas, but also of Oriental and Gnostic specula- 
 tions. These philosophies were compared, and possible 
 relations sought out ; and thus there was formed in the popu- 
 lar mind a preparation for a new development, something to 
 come that had not yet been understood or known. 
 
 I wish now to point out one or two other lines of growth 
 which were going on in the Jewish mind and life. 
 
 As we open the New Testament, we find everywhere men- 
 tion of the synagogues. Jesus, whenever he visits any little 
 town, goes into the synagogue ; and, when the roll of Old 
 Scripture is unfolded and read, he rises and speaks to the 
 people. There is no trace of a synagogue in the Old Testa- 
 ment. This, then, is an entirely new development in re- 
 ligion. Between the time when the Old Testament closed 
 and the New began, the synagogue had arisen. It occupied 
 
The Bridge between the Testaments. 105 
 
 a large part of the national life, — larger than even the tem- 
 ple worship. Every little village had its synagogue; and ? 
 in Jerusalem, they could be counted by the hundred. There 
 were as many synagogues as there are churches in the most 
 populous of our Christian countries to-day. What were 
 they ? Simply little meeting-houses ; places where the peo- 
 ple came together on the Sabbath day, and listened to the 
 reading of the Old Testament scriptures. And then, after 
 the reading, just as in a modern Quaker meeting, any one 
 was at liberty to stand up and comment on the passage that 
 had been read, and give utterance to whatever religious 
 opinions or thoughts he might have in his mind. This devel- 
 opment bears in a most important way upon the growth of 
 the Christian Church. The synagogue is the direct parent 
 and predecessor of the Christian Church. It is undoubtedly- 
 true that, if there had never been a synagogue, there never 
 would have been a church ; if there never had been a scribe, 
 there never would have been a minister • for the scribe was 
 attached to the synagogue, and was the man who copied or 
 made the rolls of the Law, the man whose business it was 
 to understand the Law and interpret it to the people. The 
 Law, as you know, is in the old Hebrew ; and at this time the 
 Hebrew language had ceased to be spoken or written by the 
 people. The common language was the Aramaic. It was 
 spoken by Jesus and his apostles. It was neither Hebrew 
 nor Greek, but a new dialect. The Scripture passages were 
 read and translated, and comments made upon them by the 
 scribe ; and you therefore see how naturally his work pre- 
 cedes that which the Christian minister has done for the last 
 eighteen hundred years. 
 
 Along with this development of the synagogue, this sort 
 of communal religious life of the people, there was a devel- 
 opment of sects and parties among the Jews that we need 
 
Io6 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 to understand. There are, in the later time, references to 
 the Sadducees, the Pharisees, scribes, lawyers, Hellenists, or 
 Grecians, the Herodians, and the Essenes. In the Old 
 Testament, you find no traces of any of them. They had 
 all grown up during this time between the Old Testament 
 and the New. 
 
 What were these parties ? We are accustomed to speak of 
 the Sadducees as sceptics. I think this is the popular idea 
 of them, — that they were the New Testament sceptics. 
 
 We are accustomed to say that they did not believe in any 
 thing, — that they did not believe in angels, in a resurrection, 
 nor in any future life. Yet we shall make a capital mistake, 
 if we think of them as sceptics at all. The Sadducees were 
 simply the old, respectable, titled, wealthy conservatives 
 among the Jews. They were typical conservatives. They 
 did not believe in angels, or the resurrection, or spirits, or 
 the future life. Why ? Because the Old Scriptures, which 
 they stood by, and were ready to fight for through thick and 
 thin, did not teach any of these ideas. They stood by the 
 Law, by Moses, by all that which was oldest and most 
 respectable in national life. They rejected all these new- 
 fangled ideas, as they regarded them. 
 
 Who were the Pharisees ? I used to think of them as the 
 conservatives, but they were the precise opposites. They 
 were the popular party that was ready to accept new ideas. 
 They represented best the national life of the time. They 
 were the ones who not only believed in Moses, but in the 
 traditions ; and the traditions gave them an opportunity to 
 incorporate into their belief, and to accept as a part of their 
 religious convictions, a thousand things that the Old Script- 
 ures never had said. They were the popular party among 
 the people. 
 
 I have told you who the scribes were. The lawyers were 
 
The Bridge between the Testaments. 107 
 
 substantially the same as the scribes, — not lawyers like ours 
 of to-day, but interpreters of the Old Testament law. 
 
 The Hellenists formed a party which would naturally 
 spring up as they came into contact with Grecian ideas and 
 learning. They believed that they ought to break down 
 their Jewish exclusiveness, that they ought to study Hel- 
 lenistic literature. They were of course very unpopular 
 with those who believed in keeping exclusively the old ideas 
 and old-time national life. 
 
 Then there was the great party of the Essenes, only re- 
 ferred to incidentally in the New Testament. They lived a 
 life of seclusion. They were something like the modern 
 Shakers, very simple and pure in manners, hospitable and 
 gentle. They have been suspected of being connected in 
 some way with Oriental ideas, perhaps with Buddhism ; and 
 it is a serious question whether they have not had more to 
 do with the Christian Church than they have had credit for. 
 It is at least a curious fact that, as soon as churches sprang 
 up all through the Roman Empire, the little sect of the 
 Essenes disappeared, and were never seen again. 
 
 Passing from a consideration of these sects among the 
 Jews, let me give you a little more definite idea as to where 
 a great many of the popular ideas in the New Testament 
 came from, and how they came into being during this period 
 of which we have so little record in our hands. I refer to 
 the theories of the kingdom of heaven, of angels, of the 
 resurrection, of the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds 
 of heaven, of the judgment, of heaven and hell, and all 
 these things which are so common now in Christian thought. 
 There is no trace of them, as I have told you, in the Old 
 Testament. Where did they come from ? They were not, 
 the larger part of them, native developments of Jewish 
 thought alone. Nearly all of them were borrowed from the 
 
108 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 Persian. They were the results of the life which the Jews 
 led during their captivity. Among the Persians, and the 
 Oriental nations from whom the Persians themselves derived 
 many of their ideas, these conceptions were full-grown per- 
 haps before the time of Moses himself. 
 
 Very soon after the coming home of the Jews from Babylon 
 there crept into their thought this belief of a great hierarchy 
 of angels good and bad in perpetual conflict. From this 
 comes the idea of the New Testament devil in perpetual 
 conflict with God. We find, growing up in the apocalyptic 
 books, especially in Enoch, which is full of these ideas, the 
 full development of a belief in a judgment to come, of 
 Messiah coming in the clouds of heaven, in a separation of 
 the good and the bad after that judgment, of an eternity 
 of blessedness and an eternity of punishment, expressed in 
 almost the same ^language which we find afterward on the 
 lips of Jesus himself. Almost all these ideas were appar- 
 ently developed from seeds which were planted in Jewish 
 thought during the time the Jews came in contact with the 
 great Persian power. 
 
 I want to lay the emphasis of this part of my theme on the 
 question of the Messiah and the part it played in Jewish 
 thought and life. If there had been no dream of a Messiah, 
 there would have been no Christianity. It is very impor- 
 tant, then, to inquire where this idea came from, and how 
 much it had to do with the development of their later thought 
 and life. 
 
 If we confine ourselves to the Old Testament, we find no 
 clear doctrine of a Messiah at all. We do find this, how- 
 ever, which was a preparation of the soil for the reception 
 of the seed, which developed into the thought of the Mes- 
 siah. The Jews believed — and it was necessary, holding 
 the idea of God and his government that they did — that 
 
The Bridge between the Testaments. 109 
 
 they were to be prospered, that a kingdom was to be estab- 
 lished which should be permanently blessed, whenever the 
 time should come that the people were faithful to the law of 
 their God. They did not believe in any future life : they 
 believed in prosperity in this life as a reward of goodness. 
 Here is the germ which developed into the doctrine of the 
 Messiah ; but there is no trace of their believing in the 
 coming of any personal king, only that the kingdom after 
 the idea of David's rule should be restored. But this idea 
 of a pre-existent Angel-Messiah, who should come as the 
 angel of God to rule the world, was a common Persian 
 thought ; and I believe that this idea among the Jews can 
 be traced to their connection with this Oriental religion. 
 Here, then, we find the next great step in the doctrine of the 
 Messianic idea. 
 
 The next step is simply to identify this supposed super- 
 natural being with some one actually come. You will see 
 then why it was that, when Jesus was born, the people were 
 expecting the coming of the Messiah. They were being true, 
 as never before, to the law of Jehovah. They believed, ac- 
 cording to the fundamental idea of their religion, that this 
 must bring them prosperity. They had accepted the idea 
 that a kingdom was to come, and that some one sent of God, 
 either a divine or an ideal man, was to rule over the chosen 
 people j that he was to come and sit in judgment on all the 
 earth ; that the dead were to be raised, and that the end of 
 the world was to come ; and that he was to usher in a new and 
 grand heavenly kingdom that should be without end. They 
 were looking then on every hand for the Messiah. It was Lo 
 here ! and Lo there ! And the first thing asked of Jesus, 
 when he preached that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, 
 was, Art thou the Messiah, the one we have expected \ or 
 shall we look for another ? So, if Jesus was to play any part 
 
I io Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 in bringing in the kingdom of heaven, he must be considered 
 as this expected Messiah. The role of Messiah was thrust 
 upon him. He was to be the agent of God to bring in the 
 kingdom of heaven. The people would accept no other. 
 
 I believe, then, that the time had come, in the history of 
 the world, when a new religion had to be born. The people 
 had lost faith in the old ones. They had lost faith in their 
 old philosophy, in all their old conceptions of God and man. 
 There was an earnest expectation on the part of the people 
 all over the world of some new development of another type, 
 and a higher type, of life. So I believe that, if Jesus had 
 never been born, we should have had Christianity still, or 
 something substantially like it. For the ideas and anticipa- 
 tions of Christianity were in the popular heart and mind, 
 filling all the air. It only needed that they should centre in 
 or crystallize about some person who should be accepted as 
 the Messiah ; and, had this person not been Jesus, some other 
 person must be found. I think this is clear, when we study 
 the writings of Paul. Paul is the actual father of historic 
 Christianity; but Paul never saw Jesus, except in a vision. 
 He says very little about what Jesus said or did. His writ- 
 ings are full of the ideal Messiah, but he takes almost no 
 note of Jesus of Nazareth. It is this new revelation from 
 God, this new head of a new Christianity, with which Paul 
 deals. Thus, we find all these influences, which had been at 
 work during the time of which we have no record in our 
 Scriptures, culminating at last, naturally and necessarily, in 
 the birth of a new religion, and that new religion the one that 
 we call Christian, 
 
THE EPISTLES. 
 
 As we come from the Old Testament to the New, we notice 
 that there are four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles 
 that lead the list of those books that have come to be 
 regarded as canonical. It is worthy your note, in passing, 
 that the Acts of the Apostles does not treat in any general 
 way of the doings of the twelve apostles, but only concerns 
 itself with certain passages in the life chiefly of Peter and 
 Paul. The significance of that I shall refer to later. 
 
 As I wish to treat of the New Testament, in a general 
 way in the order of time, rather than the order in which the 
 publishers have happened to place the books, I pass by the 
 Gospels and the Acts and come to the Epistles ; for you are 
 probably aware of the fact that nearly all the Epistles, the 
 principal ones most certainly, were written some time before 
 any of the Gospels were brought into their present condition. 
 
 When the First Epistle was written, which was probably 
 the first Epistle of Paul to the Church in Thessalonica, 
 Jesus had been dead but about twenty years. That is, the 
 people were then about as far away from his time as we are 
 from the time of Abraham Lincoln, and, of course, there 
 would be a great many persons alive who had either seen 
 Jesus, or who had seen somebody that had seen him, — 
 enough to keep alive and fresh the traditions of the princi- 
 pal events in his life, the principal phases of his doctrine, 
 
112 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 and the generally believed account of his death. We must 
 bear in mind, however, all the way through, that these early 
 •churches did not believe that Jesus was really dead, but 
 only that he had been withdrawn into the heavens for a 
 little time, whence he was to return again in the clouds, 
 accompanied by an innumerable retinue of angels, to raise 
 the dead, to judge the world, and to usher in the new king- 
 dom of God which he was to establish here upon earth. I 
 refer to this only to show you the general intellectual and 
 religious atmosphere of the time when these Epistles were 
 written. 
 
 There is another point to be noted. You will find that 
 these letters are written to the Church in Philippi, to the 
 Church in Ephesus, to the Church in Galatia, to the Church 
 in Rome, etc. That is, and this is the point, the first 
 churches, as we should naturally expect, were organized in 
 the great cities scattered over the Roman Empire, the princi- 
 pal centres of intellectual life and thought. I refer to this, 
 so as to bring you into sympathy with the natural growth 
 of these churches, that you may see how, under ordinary 
 human laws, they happened to be what they were. 
 
 In process of time, those who rejected the claims of Chris- 
 tianity came to be called pagans and heathen. Did you ever 
 think why ? The word " pagan " is from a Latin word paga- 
 nus, which means a villager. The word " heathen " is simply 
 heath-men, men who lived out on the heath, peasants. This 
 suggestion is mainly interesting, as I think, because it lets us 
 into the secret, which is true to-day just as it was then, that 
 any new movement always finds its first footing in the town, 
 where thought is most active, where opinions are most fluent, 
 where it is easier to get a hearing for a new idea, and where 
 a new thought first finds lodgement in the minds and activi- 
 ties of men. However sturdy and noble and grand the coun- 
 
The Epistles. 1 1 3 
 
 try may be in the make-up of its moral fibre, yet it is always 
 a little behind the town. Just as last year's fashions are this 
 year's fashions in the country, so the intellectual and relig- 
 ious fashions follow this same law : they start in the centre 
 of intellectual activity, and then spread slowly toward the 
 country. 
 
 These churches, then, these new organizations, were dotted 
 here and there over the Roman Empire in the great centres 
 of commercial and intellectual activity. They were not, as 
 yet, — between 50 and 60 A.D., when the first Epistles were 
 written, — very numerous, very large, or very powerful. 
 
 These little churches were simply made up of the few men 
 who had accepted the claims of the new Messiah, and who, 
 while they were waiting for his immediate return, — for both 
 Jesus and Paul taught explicitly that he was to come back 
 before that generation had entirely passed away, — would 
 naturally place little emphasis on the affairs of this world. 
 It is not strange, therefore, that they established practical 
 communism, selling their houses and lands, just as in modern 
 times Millerites have done, believing that the world was com- 
 ing to an end in three, five, or ten years. What was the use 
 of laying out schemes of business, plans for the regeneration 
 of this world, social or political improvements ? What was the 
 use of being troubled, if Caesar was a tyrant and was ruling the 
 world ? What was the use of mourning about these things ? 
 So Paul tells them not to be troubled, for the time is short, 
 and the end is at hand. Therefore, they sold their property, 
 and tried to make one another as comfortable as possible, 
 establishing these little brotherhoods in the great centres 
 of activity, and then, laboring and doing their daily duty as 
 best they could, awaited the coming of the kingdom of God 
 with its heavenly magnificence and glory. In the face of a 
 belief like that, of course it would not occur to any one to 
 
114 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 write any Gospels. What did they want of Gospels ? The 
 people who were living already knew about Jesus, and some 
 of them were to live until he came again. So they did not 
 take the trouble to make any record of his life and teachings 
 at that time. 
 
 But you will see how naturally the Epistles arose. Here 
 were these churches, perplexed on every hand by practical 
 questions. They had just come out of heathenism. In those 
 days, if you were to dine with a heathen, the chances were 
 that he would go through some religious ceremony preceding 
 the feast, to consecrate the animal that he was to have for 
 his dinner. It was a very vital question, then, whether the 
 new Christians were to be permitted to attend such feasts, and 
 eat the meat that had been offered to idols ; whether in so 
 doing they became accomplices in idolatry. You remember 
 how often Paul refers to this. They questioned, also, 
 whether it was necessary to keep the Mosaic law, and they 
 looked to their leaders for answers. Those who had seen 
 Jesus, or who had received traditions of him from others' 
 lips, could have him for guidance in this matter ; but others 
 did not know just what they were required to believe, and 
 all sorts of practical questions would naturally spring up 
 while they were waiting for his second coming. It was to 
 answer these difficulties and to solve these practical problems 
 that the Epistles came to be written. 
 
 We must remember another thing. It is absurd for any- 
 body to suppose that Paul or Peter or James, or any of the 
 writers of the Epistles, ever had the slightest idea that these 
 letters would become a part of a book, to be referred to as 
 a standard of belief and doctrine eighteen hundred years 
 after that time. And this absurdity appears in what I have 
 already stated, that they expected the world to come to 
 an end before the people who wrote the letters were dead. 
 
The Epistles. 115 
 
 They expected Jesus to come again to earth, and reign again 
 as their king, for at least a thousand years. This idea is 
 still thrilling and throbbing through parts of the New Testa- 
 ment, especially the Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation. 
 It is all on tiptoe with this upward and onward looking 
 for the coming of the Lord. When Jesus should come, 
 there would be no reason, and almost no need, of any 
 book to announce his will; for he himself would be the 
 living king, dispensing his own law and executing his own 
 judgments. 
 
 These letters, then, were simply temporary and local expe- 
 dients to meet the exigencies of that time. If you read 
 them carefully in the light of that idea, you will find nearly 
 all your perplexities solved. It is not my purpose to go into 
 minute criticism of one Epistle after another. Instead of 
 any textual criticism, I wish to give some general ideas for 
 which they stand ; but it is worth my while to point otu 
 first one or two significant facts concerning a few of them. 
 
 Take the little Epistle of Jude. Jude says that he was the 
 brother of James. He was not himself an apostle, but, per- 
 haps, the brother of an apostle. There is one thing in that 
 little letter which of itself is sufficient to forever render 
 absurd any claim for the entire infallibility of the Bible. I 
 have spoken to a great many orthodox ministers concerning 
 it, who had never had their attention called to it. I spoke 
 to you last Sunday concerning the Book of Enoch, — a wild, 
 crude, unreliable, apocalyptic book, written within a hundred 
 years of the time of Christ. Jude quotes it as being the 
 work of the old patriarch, "the seventh from Adam." Here 
 is a palpable blunder. 
 
 The Epistle of James was written apparently to offset 
 Paul's doctrine of "justification by faith." James evidently 
 thought Paul was pushing that too far. He said it was well 
 
Il6 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 enough to have faith, but you must supplement faith and 
 manifest the reality of that faith by works, or it becomes 
 dead and fruitless. This was the first general contribution 
 to the seething discussion of the age. 
 
 There is no occasion for me to say anything concerning 
 the three Epistles of John, except that there is little reason 
 to suppose John the Apostle wrote them. Neither need I 
 detain you with a special reference to the writings known as 
 the Epistles of Peter. The second certainly was not written 
 by him, and it is doubtful about the first ; but it makes little 
 difference to us. 
 
 Concerning the Epistle to the Hebrews, ordinarily called 
 the work of Paul, there is hardly a scholar in the world who 
 thinks that Paul wrote it. It devotes itself to an endeavor 
 to justify Christianity to those who had come out from the 
 Jewish Church. It shows how the old dispensation was 
 preparatory to Christianity; that every thing prefigured it; 
 that it represented the symbol and shadow of which Chris- 
 tianity is the substance and reality. This, you will see, must 
 have met a very pressing need or want at that time, when 
 one of the most important and practical questions of the 
 Jew was whether, when he became a Christian, he was false 
 to the old and divine dispensation which had been given to 
 his fathers. 
 
 I wish now to confine myself entirely to the attitude and 
 work of Paul. Paul is the great name in historic Christian- 
 ity, second only in rank and dignity to that of Jesus, and 
 not even second to him in the power which he has exerted 
 over thought. Instead, however, of going into a general 
 examination of the Epistles, I want, in some general, graphic 
 way, to give you Paul's attitude toward the universe, to set 
 forth the scheme which he held, and which he made a vital 
 power in the development of civilization. There is no man 
 
The Epistles. 117 
 
 in all the past ages more alive to-day than Paul, or who is 
 having more to do with men that have never thought very 
 much about it, and who have least appreciated the signifi- 
 cance of the work which he wrought. 
 
 It is not necessary for my purpose that I should discuss 
 all the questions that have been mooted by the critics as to 
 whether he wrote all the Epistles that have passed under his 
 name. It does not make any speqial difference to our 
 consideration, for the doctrines we care to note are taught 
 in the Epistles which are undoubtedly his. 
 
 In the first place, then, in order to understand this Pauline 
 doctrine, you must remember that he was a grand, sturdy, 
 unfaltering believer in predestination of the most cast-iron 
 sort. No man who ever lived has taught it more explicitly 
 and clearly than he. God is the absolute sovereign, and he 
 has a right through all the eternities to do whatever he will ; 
 and puny, short-sighted man has no right to question it. 
 This is the attitude of Paul. God has a perfect right, to 
 use his figure, to take one lump of clay, and make a vase to 
 hold flowers in the parlor: he has a right to take another 
 lump, and make a coarse, crude pot for use in the kitchen ; 
 and neither lump has a right to say anything about it one 
 way or the other. He has a right to make one man for one 
 use, and another for another, — to predestinate one to suc- 
 cess and glory, to predestinate another to failure and dis- 
 aster ; and these have no right to question either the wisdom 
 or justice of the dispensation. But, in justice to Paul, I wish 
 you to note that the outcome of his doctrine is quite differ- 
 ent from that of Calvin and modern Orthodoxy. 
 
 The next great doctrine of Paul is his uncompromising, 
 unhesitating acceptance of the legend that teaches the fall of 
 man. Adam, the first man, stood as the earthly head of 
 humanity up to his time. The doctrine of the " federal head- 
 
n8 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 ship," as it has come to be called in theology, is undoubtedly 
 a Pauline doctrine. Man, with Adam at the head up to the 
 time of the birth of Christ, had been simply a disastrous 
 failure. In Adam, all died ; through Adam came sin ; through 
 Adam came sorrow; through Adam came all the disasters 
 that have ever afflicted poor, suffering humanity. Paul, of 
 course, had none of the means of knowledge at the disposal 
 of any intelligent man in the modern world. He did not 
 know, therefore, that death had reigned not only since Adam 
 and over all his descendants, but for some thousands and 
 millions of years before Adam was ever thought of. He did 
 not know that suffering and pain had been in existence, not 
 only among men, but in the animal world for millions of 
 years. If he had, he would have had no more faith in the 
 doctrine of the fall than I have. But Paul believed in the 
 federal headship of Adam ; that he was the representative 
 and leader of the world up to that time, and that, under his 
 headship, the world had been a failure. Naturally, then, he 
 turned to some scheme of recovery. He desired to find 
 some way in which this long failure could be turned into 
 success. He desired to find some method, a part of the 
 secret council and fore-knowledge of God, — for not only the 
 fall, but the redemption was part of the predestination of 
 Paul, — by which a new order of things could be instituted, 
 and the world be ultimately crowned with success. 
 
 Here, then, we are led to consider Paul's view of Christ. 
 There is another thing also, at the outset, to which I wish to 
 call your careful attention ; for people seem to read the Bible 
 in a blindfold and sleepy way, if they read it at all, — never 
 thinking of comparing part with part, or treating it as they 
 would treat any other book, or as they should, if they wish to 
 learn anything from it. I was taught in this way myself. 
 I was taught to read so many verses as so much religious 
 
The Epistles. 119 
 
 duty accomplished ; so many square inches of Bible, so much 
 goodness. Thus, people read the Bible, never using their 
 brains and common sense about it. 
 
 We need now to consider Paul's attitude toward Christ, — 
 toward Christ, not toward Jesus ; for it is hardly too much 
 to say that Paul made no account of the personal Jesus 
 whatever. I want to make that distinction clear. Paul does 
 not have anything to say about Jesus. The only time he 
 quotes his words is when he gives the story of the Last 
 Supper, and, in another place, where he quotes a saying 
 from Jesus that does not appear in the Gospels. He does 
 not anywhere say anything about what Jesus did. He has 
 not a hint anywhere of any miraculous conception. He 
 speaks of no miracles in the modern sense of that 
 word. He only refers in a general way to signs and won- 
 ders. But he believed that "speaking with tongues," that 
 incoherent gibberish and babbling, was a miracle; so you can 
 understand what he meant when he spoke of signs and won- 
 ders. He says nothing about his raising people from the dead 
 or feeding the multitude. Yet you must remember that he 
 stood nearest to Jesus of all who wrote of him in the New 
 Testament. It is strange that he should not allude to these 
 things in all of his Epistles. There is not a trace of his 
 having any personal love for Jesus, the man. He says, 
 frankly and distinctly, that he never saw him, except in a 
 vision ; and he makes so little account of these things that, 
 when he comes up to Jerusalem and talks over the condition 
 of the early Church with the apostles, he says they had 
 nothing to tell him that he cared anything about, — to use his 
 own phrase, they " added nothing" to him. He refers to the 
 apostles very slightingly, "those who seemed to be some- 
 what," to be pillars. He speaks of them with hardly dis- 
 guised antagonism and irony; and he was in antagonism with 
 
120 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 them the most of his life. You see how little account he 
 makes of the historic Jesus. What does he make account 
 of ? Of the theologic Christ as standing for a part of the 
 scheme of the divine economy in the salvation of the 
 world. 
 
 There are three distinct stages of progress very perceptible 
 in Paul's writings, as illustrating three stages of growth in 
 his mind concerning the doctrine of Christ. In the first 
 place, he is converted to the belief that Jesus is the Messiah. 
 But he does not stop there. We find at the last that he had 
 risen to the belief that Jesus was a pre-existent being ; that 
 he was the Angel-Messiah ; that he was the first-born of 
 every creature; that he was the beginning of the creation of 
 God, and only less than God himself. But the great thing 
 that he believed, whether he called him Messiah or pre- 
 existent angel or head of the Church, was that Jesus was 
 the head of a new and renovated humanity. 
 
 I have told you what Paul believed about Adam, that he 
 was the head of the race that was a. failure. Over against 
 Adam, the old man, he sets Christ, the new man, revealed 
 from heaven as the new head of the new humanity. This 
 is the most significant thing in the whole belief of Paul, so 
 far as his doctrine of Christ is concerned. He was the head 
 of the new order of humanity. Those who became engrafted 
 into the Church, those who became followers and disciples 
 of Christ, put off the old idea of Adam, sloughed off their 
 whole association with the old and false order of humanity, 
 and became members of this new race,— the redeemed and 
 renovated Church of God. This is the doctrine of Paul 
 concerning Christ. 
 
 I said, a little while ago, that the predestination taught by 
 Paul had a far different outcome for the history of this world 
 from that taught by Calvin and the orthodox churches of the 
 
The Epistles. 12 1 
 
 day. He teaches that the fall of man and the redemption 
 are parts of the one divine plan of him who, as a sovereign, 
 works his eternal will. But he held so grand a conception 
 of God that he believed it is a part of this sovereign will 
 that the world ultimately, this whole groaning, travailing, 
 weeping, and crying creation, shall be redeemed. So he 
 teaches that the Jews were rejected and outcast only as a. 
 temporary thing, only as the occasion of the bringing in of 
 the Gentiles. He teaches that, when by and by the Gentiles 
 are all brought in, then the Jews also are to be reclaimed ; 
 and then, under Christ, there is no longer to be any Jew or 
 Greek, any civilized or barbarian. They are all to be one 
 as parts of this new humanity. Christ is to be the head of 
 it, and all the world is to be brought into one under his head- 
 ship. Then, at the last, Christ is to deliver up the kingdom 
 to the Father, and God is to be all and in all. 
 
 Ultimately, then, Paul was both a Universalist and a Uni- 
 tarian ; for, although he teaches the pre-existence of this 
 Christ, he teaches plainly his subordination to God, -and, as 
 the final outcome of everything, that he is to give up the 
 kingdom to the one God, and all men are to be part of this 
 kingdom. This is the outcome of Paul's doctrine of predes- 
 tination. 
 
 I have left to the last that which is the grandest work that 
 Paul wrought, — a work as grand as that which almost any 
 man has ever wrought in the history of humanity. 
 
 I said in the beginning that there were two factions in 
 the early churches. It was inevitable that there should be. 
 Here were these Jews who had been taught and trained for 
 ages into the belief that the Mosaic dispensation was not 
 only divine, but eternal ; that, on the basis of this, a new 
 kingdom, after the type of the kingdom of David, was to be 
 established, and the Jews were to rule over the world for- 
 
122 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 ever. But here comes in a new claimant, a new Messiah, as 
 those who accepted the Messianic doctrine believed. And 
 here comes Paul, organizing churches all over the Roman 
 Empire, and saying that this divine dispensation of Judaism 
 is obsolete and outgrown. It is very natural that it should 
 require some time to accept so strange a doctrine as that. 
 James said, the old first church at Jerusalem said, all the 
 apostles said, You must also keep the law of Moses, or you 
 cannot be saved. They sent their emissaries after Paul all 
 over the Roman Empire, because they regarded him as the 
 most dangerous heretic of the age. They felt that he was 
 trying to do good, but that he was teaching false doctrine in 
 saying that it was not necessary to keep the law of Moses. 
 After a while, they found that they had to compromise, and 
 they said, You do not have to keep all, but there are certain 
 things you must keep ; and, for a long time, they still clung 
 to the idea of the shadow after they had given up the sub- 
 stance. It was ages before they gave up the notion that a 
 Jewish Christian was not better than a Gentile one. They 
 believed that there was an advantage in having been born in 
 the Jewish religion. This was the origin of the great divi- 
 sion in the Church, with Peter at the head on the one hand, 
 and Paul at the head on the other. For a great many years, 
 this discussion rent the Church in twain and almost threat- 
 ened its existence. You find traces of it throughout the 
 New Testament, one party hitting at the other, and that in 
 turn striking back; Paul striking hard blows on one side, 
 and his opponents returning them on the other. 
 
 The Acts of the Apostles is a very late book. It was 
 written after this warfare between the two churches had 
 practically died out. It was a sort of compromise, written 
 by somebody who wanted to unite these two factions. You 
 will notice a strange parallelism between the sayings and 
 
The Epistles. 123 
 
 doings of Paul and Peter in this book. If, in one chapter, 
 Paul is represented as doing something wonderful, you will 
 find Peter doing as strange a thing in the next. This book is 
 evidently written for the express purpose of healing over this 
 division in the Church and doing justice to both sides. 
 
 But, now, what is the point of the grand work that Paul 
 did ? If it had not been for Paul, we might not have had an 
 historic Christianity. We should certainly have had a very 
 different one, and not so good a one as that which we have 
 had. It would have been impossible for the early apostles 
 to have forced upon the Roman Empire not only a belief in 
 Jesus, but also the practice of all the ritual of the Jews. 
 If they had attempted that, the whole effort would have 
 broken down, and Christianity would have been merely a 
 new sect of Judaism confined to a few followers. But Paul, 
 with his views, felt that the hour of the Mosaic ritual had 
 struck. The past had been a failure, or at most only a 
 type, a shadow leading on to Christ, the head of the new 
 humanity. And so he said : The works of the law, that 
 neither you nor your fathers could keep, are dead rubbish, 
 to be swept away. So he dispensed with sacrifices and 
 the Jewish Sabbath, and it may be noted he did not say 
 anything about any other. You need not pay any atten- 
 tion to the laws of Moses, he said. They are all gone by. 
 They are only a shadow leading to Christ; and, now that 
 Christ has come, everything is summed up in faith in him. 
 And so arose Paul's doctrine of justification by faith. He 
 became the liberator of the world, and we are to rank him as 
 hardly second among the great men who have snapped the 
 shackles that have bound the freedom of the human race. 
 Paul broke off this enclosing shell of Moses, and set civiliza- 
 tion free. This doctrine of justification by faith was the 
 weapon with which he did it ; for he said : Whether you are 
 
124 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 Jew or Gentile, it does not make any difference. Only appro- 
 priate and incorporate into your own life the life of this new 
 Christ. Do it by faith. If you believe and accept, you are a 
 part of this new dispensation of God. And so Jew and 
 Gentile, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, no matter who, any man 
 who accepted Christ, became a part of this new kingdom of 
 heaven \ and thus all the petty, worrying, wearing, exacting, 
 ritualistic ceremonies of the Jews were abolished at one 
 stroke. Paul's belief in salvation by faith was not a mere 
 petty intellectual assent to an idea. It was with him a be- 
 lieving in something all over, in such dead earnest that you 
 are ready to give your life for it ; just as you business men 
 believe in a thing so that you are ready to risk a fortune on 
 it. Faith is not merely saying, yes, when somebody an- 
 nounces a proposition. It is a belief that drags a whole 
 train of character and consequences after it. That is Paul's 
 belief in justification by faith. 
 
 How broad that was, and what power of freedom it had in 
 it, was proved again in the sixteenth century. The Christian 
 Church, under the Catholic power, had become nothing more 
 nor less than a worse Judaism, with ritual and ceremo- 
 nial, — everything except character, manliness, and force, — 
 when Luther rose; and the weapon with which he broke 
 the chains of modern Europe was Paul's old grand doctrine. 
 I am not sure that we are done with that weapon yet. It 
 does not belong by any patent right to Orthodoxy. Paul 
 forged the weapon. Paul tried its temper and proved its 
 power. Then, it lay rusting and waiting for a thousand 
 years, until Luther proved strong enough to wield it, and 
 once more to fight again the battle for human freedom. 
 And, though it be put away in its armory, it will be called 
 for again and again. For this doctrine means simply going 
 right deep down to the heart of humanity, and saying that 
 
The Epistles. 125 
 
 what you believe with your whole heart, and are willing to 
 put your life into, is that which makes you what you are. 
 
 This, then, is the service which Paul rendered to the world \ 
 and it is hints of this service which are scattered all through 
 these Epistles, and which will make them in all coming 
 time, whatever theory of the Bible may go up or down, of 
 inestimable value to those who care to know the history of 
 humanity. 
 
THE GOSPELS. 
 
 As we open the New Testament, we find the four Gospels, 
 Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, leading the list of its 
 books. Yet, as I had occasion to tell you in my sermon on 
 the Epistles, if we follow, as I have tried to do in a rough 
 fashion, the chronological order, we shall place the Gospels 
 at the end of the New Testament rather than at the begin- 
 ning. It was perfectly natural and indeed inevitable, as I 
 have already showed you, that the Gospels should have been 
 written after the Epistles were. It could hardly have been 
 otherwise in the state of Christian belief that existed then ; 
 for it was a part of that early belief taught, as they sup- 
 posed, not only by apostle and teacher, but by the Master 
 himself, that Jesus was very soon to return from sitting at 
 the right hand of God in the heavens, that he was to raise 
 the dead, that there was to be a general judgment and a 
 miraculous ushering in of the world-wide Messianic kingdom. 
 Of course, then, expecting him, perhaps to-night, possibly to- 
 morrow, next week, — at the utmost, very soon, — they would 
 feel no necessity of writing down long stories of his life or 
 connected statements of what he had said. It was only 
 after they had waited and were disappointed ; after they had 
 expected, and he had not come ; after they had begun to 
 look over the promises of his coming, and see if, in any way, 
 they could explain the delay, — it was only after all this that 
 there arose on the part of those little scattered Christian 
 
The Gospels. 127 
 
 communities in the Roman Empire a feeling of the necessity 
 for some connected and authoritative record of what the 
 waited-for Jesus had said and done. Then, of course, it was 
 very natural that those who had opportunity to know these 
 things should write more or less full and connected accounts 
 of them, and that thus the Gospels should spring up. 
 
 These four Gospels, four little thin pamphlets, — for they 
 could all be comprehended within the limits of less than a 
 hundred pages, — are really the most significant part perhaps 
 of all the world's literature. They tell, or claim to tell, the 
 story of the life of that Galilean peasant who, after spend- 
 ing his youth in utter obscurity, flashes into the sight 
 of his countrymen for a year, or two, or three, according 
 as we take one account or another, then disappears by 
 an ignominious death, and, after two or three hundred years, 
 is exalted, in the reverence of the civilized world, to the 
 position of Almighty God. No rational man, then, can be 
 indifferent to the nature and authority of these little books, 
 when they tell us a story which has played a part in the 
 history of the civilized world so stupendous, so unique, that 
 it stands alone, and has no second. 
 
 What, then, is it that we desire to know concerning them ? 
 We want to know of course, first, by what authority these 
 little pamphlets speak. Are they the word of God, infal- 
 libly, eternally true? Or are they the traditions of men, 
 stories naturally springing up and growing through the 
 imaginative and creative consciousness of the early Church ? 
 Who wrote them ? Did Matthew and Mark and Luke and 
 John write them, just as we have them to-day ? If they did, 
 who were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and how much 
 are their opinions worth ? 
 
 Whichever way we look at these Gospels, you see we 
 come back to the question of the authority of these books, 
 

 128 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 the power by which they speak. It is in pursuit of this that 
 I ask you to come with me this morning, while I examine 
 this subject. I trust you will appreciate the difficulty and 
 magnitude of my task. It is nothing more nor less than 
 to condense into some comprehensible shape whole libraries, 
 and, if I may, pack them, so that my story shall have 
 some significance and meaning, within the abbreviated limits 
 of an hour. 
 
 Let us then start from the stand-point of our modern 
 world, and go up the ages, and see what we can find out 
 about these books. 
 
 The oldest manuscript that we have of them takes us 
 back only to the fourth century, — that is, some three 
 hundred years after the death of him concerning whom they 
 were written. The first question we naturally ask is, 
 whether there is reason to suppose that we have these four 
 little books in substantially the same shape in which they 
 were originally written. Three hundred years had passed 
 since the death of him of whom they are a biography ; and 
 we do not know just when they came into the precise shape 
 in which they are to-day. The names now attached to 
 them we do not find until nearly the last quarter of the 
 second century, — that is, perhaps one hundred and fifty 
 years after the death of Jesus, although the earliest forms 
 of the Gospels may have existed long before that. 
 
 The first question, then, as I have said, is whether we 
 have an accurate transcript of these four little books in 
 substantially the same shape in which they were when they 
 first took form. We are obliged to answer this question in 
 the negative; for the different manuscripts of the Gospels 
 which are in existence give us some hundreds, if not 
 thousands, of various renderings. There are differences in 
 words or in phrases, a difference of half a sentence, some- 
 
The Gospels. 129 
 
 times differences of whole paragraphs, or sometimes half a 
 chapter, or even more than that. Then, we know that there 
 were changes through the carelessness of transcribers. 
 There were changes from dogmatic reasons, in order that 
 the person copying or using them might make them teach 
 what they held to be true. In this way, changes of greater 
 or less magnitude were made. Sometimes, they were the 
 result of intentional fraud. Let me give you the authority 
 of Origen, one of the most famous and learned of all the 
 church Fathers. It was some time after the New Testament 
 books were written before they took on the character of 
 sacred writings, when a man would not have been regarded 
 as sacrilegious for taking from or adding to them. They 
 were considered as the work of ordinary men, and not too 
 sacred to be touched or changed as yet. But, whatever may 
 have been thought of the books of the New Testament in 
 the early Church, the entire Church at the time professed to 
 regard with almost superstitious sacredness the books of 
 the Old Testament. That was the Scripture before the New 
 Testament became Scripture. Yet we have the authority of 
 Origen, writing in the fourth century, for the statement that, 
 in the heated and angry controversies of that period, people 
 did not scruple to change even the text of the Old Testa- 
 ment for their own purposes. Concerning the Septuagint, 
 he says: "There are evidently great discrepancies in the 
 copies of the Septuagint, whether attributable to the careless- 
 ness of scribes, or to the rash and pernicious alteration 
 of the text by some, and the unauthorized interpolations 
 and omissions of others." Origen writes in that way about 
 the manner in which the early Church dared to treat even 
 the Old Testament Scriptures ; so you can imagine with 
 what freedom they would handle the less sacred and newer 
 books that afterwards came to be the New Testament. 
 
130 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 We know, then, that there were great changes made. 
 These books floated around in the churches, and passed 
 through some of the most biting, bitter, and burning con- 
 troversies that the religious world has ever seen. They 
 hurled texts on both sides with as much vigor as has been 
 done in the modern world. When you remember that there 
 were only manuscripts, that there were no printed books, no 
 standards of authority or appeal, you can see how easy it 
 might be for a man to make a change in his own copy, and 
 then claim that that was the original. Another man having 
 a copy that did not agree with it would claim that his was 
 the original, and the one who claimed the loudest would be 
 likely to carry the day. 
 
 Another point. Were there more than four Gospels, and, 
 if so, how does it happen that we have only four to-day ? 
 
 There were a great many Gospels written in the early 
 Church. I have here in my hand, for example, a copy of 
 the apocryphal New Testament. It is almost as large as 
 the genuine one. This book is made up of Gospels, visions, 
 and allegories, which were rejected by the orthodox of the 
 Church as time went on. It contains at the beginning four 
 Gospels, the Gospel of Mary, the Protevangelion, the Gospel 
 of the Infancy, the Gospel of Nicodemus. I also hold in 
 my hand the book of an eminent High Churchman of 
 England, entitled Lost and Hostile Gospels, which gives an 
 account of ten which were known to the early Church, a 
 part on one side of the great controversy, and a part on 
 the other. I had occasion, in a previous sermon, as you 
 will remember, to refer to the great controversy in the 
 early Church between Paul, who was in favor of admitting 
 the Gentiles, and the other section, headed by Peter and 
 James, who believed that no Gentiles should come in, or 
 only by practically becoming Jews. This controversy raged 
 
The Gospels. 131 
 
 for a long period of years \ and we find, as a record of it, 
 certain Gospels called the Petrine Gospels, representing the 
 Hebraic side, and another set called the Pauline Gospels, 
 which take Paul's side of the controversy. They went to 
 the extent of changing the records of the Gospels them- 
 selves, coloring them to suit one faction or another of this 
 great party controversy. These Gospels, many of them, 
 were written or changed, as it was supposed, in the interest 
 of heretical sects, though it is quite a question whether those 
 that came to be called heretical were not originally the 
 orthodox ones who changed to heretics by being left be- 
 hind; for Orthodoxy changed, as it has been changing 
 ever since, and that which represented the older ideas 
 became the heresies left behind. 
 
 Along toward the latter part of the second century, we find 
 that the sifting process has gone on, and the Church has come 
 to a general consensus of opinion as to which Gospels should 
 be accepted as genuine ; and those were the four that we have 
 in our hands to-day. 
 
 We can reconstruct some of those lost and hostile Gospels ; 
 that is, we can tell almost the whole story of the life of 
 Jesus as told there, through picking up the quotations made 
 here and there in the controversial writings of the day. 
 Take, for example, the Gospel of Marcion, one of the leading 
 heretics of the time. He had a Gospel which he claimed to 
 be older than any we possess, and which I am inclined to 
 think was so. This represented Jesus as human, and took 
 the Hebraic side of the controversy. Marcion, being one 
 of the great leaders of heresy, was quoted by all the princi- 
 pal writers of the time. They quoted his Gospel here and 
 there and everywhere to such an extent that we can, in the 
 literature of the early Church, pick out nearly the whole of 
 it, and put it together like a piece of mosaic work. As 
 
132 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 letting you into the secret of the state of mind of one of 
 those early Fathers that we are accustomed to look upon 
 with such exaggerated reverence, let me give a specimen of 
 his opinions. After the Gospel of John had been written 
 and become popular, and the four Gospels had been decided 
 on, Irenaeus, writing about 185 A.D., gives his reason why, in 
 his opinion, there are these four Gospels and no more ; and 
 it is a most astonishing reason. He does not say there are 
 four Gospels because there were only four writers who told 
 the truth, because there were only four who wrote with au- 
 thority, that there were only four who were inspired to do 
 this kind of work. He does not say anything about that. 
 What does he say ? " It is impossible that the Gospels can be 
 more or less than they are. For, as there are four zones in 
 the world which we inhabit, and four principal winds, while 
 the Church is spread abroad throughout the earth, and the 
 pillar and basis of the Church is the gospel and the spirit 
 of life, it is right that she should have four pillars, exhaling 
 immortality on every side, and bestowing renewed vitality 
 on men. From which fact, it follows that the Word has 
 given us four versions of the gospel united by one spirit." 
 
 I want you now to consider with me a little the traces of 
 growth which have taken place in these four Gospels. If 
 you look at them carefully, you will have to divide them into 
 two parts ; the first part containing the first three Gospels, 
 Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the second part John, by itself. 
 The first three have been called the Synoptic Gospels, from 
 two Greek words meaning taking a common view, or seeing 
 together. They give in general the same view of Jesus, dif- 
 ferent from that of John. 
 
 Look at the first three, and you will see some of the evi- 
 dences lying on the surface which prove to us that we do not 
 have the record as it could have been written in the time or 
 
The Gospels. 133 
 
 near the time of Jesus. Of course, I shall not be able to go 
 into very minute points of criticism. I shall only give you 
 specimens of what might be multiplied indefinitely. 
 
 Take the genealogies first. Matthew has a genealogy, and 
 Luke has one ; yet they both tell the story of the miraculous 
 conception. They both tell us that Jesus was the son of 
 Mary without any human father. Yet they take the pains to 
 give us at length the genealogy of Joseph, as though that had 
 anything to do with it. Unless Jesus was the son of Joseph, 
 giving his genealogy does not prove that he was the son of 
 David or of Abraham, any more than it proves that I am. Of 
 course, it has nothing whatever to do with it. Take one or two 
 other little hints akin to this. Jesus is represented when a 
 mere boy as betraying remarkable precocity in the journey 
 made to Jerusalem. Yet we find his mother, who ought to 
 
 (Eave known whether he was the son of the Holy Spirit, 
 utterly astonished at this evidence of precocity. We find his 
 brothers charging him with being possessed with the devil, and 
 having no sort of faith in him. We find his townsmen laugh- 
 ing at him, ridiculing his pretensions. Could it be possible 
 that they had had the slightest hint that this was the son of 
 the Most High God, — not only that, but very God himself ? 
 If so, ought they to have been very much astonished at any 
 proof of wisdom he might display in his early childhood or 
 in any part of his career ? Ought his mother to have been 
 astonished that he should feel that he had a career before 
 him, and that he did not ask parental guidance or permis- 
 sion concerning it ? 
 
 Another point. We find in the Gospels as we have them 
 now a phrase in which Jesus is represented as giving his 
 disciples the following command : " Go ye therefore and 
 teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father 
 and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Turn to PauPs 
 
134 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 Epistles. We find him talked about, charged with baptizing 
 disciples into his own name. Would it have been possible 
 for him or for any of the disciples to have baptized in the 
 name of Paul, when they had been commanded to baptize in 
 the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? We 
 know perfectly well from the development of doctrine that, 
 until the second or third centuries, the doctrine of the Trinity 
 was not held at all. So that the fact that this phrase is lying 
 there on the surface of the gospel proves beyond question 
 that it belongs to a later age, and must have been placed 
 there after the doctrine that it represents had grown into 
 the consciousness and belief of the early Church. 
 
 Take another point. Jesus is represented, the very last 
 thing before he left the earth, as commanding his disciples 
 to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every 
 creature " ; yet he has not been dead ten years before the 
 Church is rent into factions wrangling over the question 
 whether they shall allow any Gentile to hear preaching or 
 not, whether they shall admit a Gentile, even if he wants 
 to come. Is it possible that Jesus could have uttered those 
 words, and all the apostles have forgotten them so quickly? 
 Think what a weapon they would have been to Paul ! What 
 if he could have said to Peter and James, Do you not 
 remember that the very last thing the Master said before 
 leaving the earth was that we were to preach the gospel to 
 every creature ! But neither Paul refers to it in controversy, 
 nor does James or Peter. The inference is irresistible 
 that the words were placed there in a later age, after the 
 Pauline faction had won the day; and, then, Jesus is 
 represented as indorsing that which was an accomplished 
 fact. 
 
 In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus is represented 
 as telling how to deal with those who should become hereti- 
 
The Gospels. 135 
 
 cal or offenders in the Church. There was not any church 
 in existence until long after he died. It was absurd to 
 suppose he was talking about church regulations before the 
 Church existed. Then, the spirit of the directions is utterly 
 foreign to the Master. He was always exceedingly tender 
 to publicans and sinners and outcasts. But, here, Jesus is 
 made to say of such an offending disciple : " If he neglect 
 to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man 
 and a publican." Can you conceive those words in the 
 mouth of the tender, forgiving, human Son of Man ? 
 
 Take one more point. In the twenty-fifth chapter of 
 Matthew, Jesus is represented as sitting on the throne 
 of judgment, and before him are gathered all the nations 
 of the earth ; and he is giving, as Almighty God, the con- 
 ditions of eternal salvation. What are they? Simply, 
 moral goodness, — healing the sick, visiting those in prison, 
 feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, looking after 
 the lowest outcast. These are the conditions. If there 
 were any other conditions, can you conceive him who 
 had come on purpose to save men as forgetting all 
 about them ? What is to become then of all that shall die 
 between the time he utters those words and the time that 
 Almighty God shall correct his statement, and give a true 
 version of the conditions of eternal life? Yet, in the last 
 chapter of the Gospel of Mark, we find the same Jesus 
 represented as sending his disciples into all the world to 
 preach the gospel to every creature. And what are the 
 conditions of salvation that are here given? "He that 
 believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that 
 believeth not shall be damned." Not a word about good- 
 ness or morality. Instead of its being the Son of Man 
 who utters these last words, I am compelled to imagine in 
 his place a robed and self-sufficient bishop of the Church, 
 
136 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 domineering and dictatorial toward those who dared to 
 question his words. 
 
 These three Gospels represent three traditions in part; 
 and, in part, they represent one common tradition concern- 
 ing the life and teaching of Jesus. I want to hint a word 
 about that which would take me a long time to develop with 
 fulness and clearness, so that you may see by what process 
 we get back through the maze of the improbable and the 
 miraculous, until we find ourselves in the presence of the 
 simple Son of Man. 
 
 Each writer gives the story of his life. You will find it 
 not only a common story, but the same words, the same 
 phrases are perpetually recurring in each of these three 
 different Gospels. It is settled beyond question, I think, as 
 a principle of criticism that these three writers used some 
 common materials; that is, Mark did not borrow from 
 Matthew, nor Luke from either, but all three used a common 
 fund of tradition. We find traces in the traditions of the 
 times of logia, little fragmentary writings. Some one had 
 gathered the sayings of Jesus, another had written a partial 
 account of what he did, and so there grew up this common 
 fund of tradition concerning him. And, when these Gospels 
 were written, they used this common story, making such 
 additions as they thought best. If we take out that which 
 is common to them all, if we take out the story in which 
 they all agree, and leave out that which is added, we come 
 to that to which scholars have given the name of the triple 
 tradition. Suppose we take three Lives of Lincoln or 
 Washington, distinct in many points, and yet agreeing in 
 many, we should feel more certain of those things which 
 were told by all three than of what was told by any one 
 alone. Precisely the same is true here. If we extract the 
 story from these three Gospels, we can make out a complete 
 
The Gospels. 137 
 
 history of Jesus of Nazareth, and use only the very words 
 which are common to all three of these different writers. 
 
 If we make such a story as that, what kind of a man do 
 we find ? The supernatural birth is lost at once, so also the 
 story of the supernatural resurrection and ascension into 
 heaven. Nearly all the more stupendous and incredible 
 miracles are gone ; and we stand in the presence of a simple, 
 loving, tender, heroic, devoted man, — a man about whom 
 wonder stories are beginning to gather, and they seem so 
 simple and so natural that we can almost see the materials 
 out of which they have sprung. This is the process that 
 criticism is going through with to-day, just as it seeks to find 
 the origin of any wonderful story that it believes to have 
 had an historic basis. 
 
 I have said John stands apart. The other three Gospels 
 were growths. Neither Matthew nor Mark nor Luke wrote 
 them. Those names as attached to them were purely tradi- 
 tional, but without one particle of authority. We do not find 
 those names until nearly two hundred years have gone by. 
 
 It is a fact recognized by all the best orthodox criticism 
 of to-day, as represented by Prof. Robertson Smith in the 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and by Dr. Abbott of the English 
 Church in the same, that these Gospels are unapostolic digests 
 of early traditions. That is, some one has edited and gath- 
 ered into the shape in which we have them materials a good 
 deal older than they. The Gospel of John, however, stands 
 alone. Here, Jesus is not a simple man. It is announced 
 in the very outset that it is not a simple man of whom he 
 writes. John's Gospel is a theological treatise. He starts 
 out with a thesis which he is going to prove, and he selects 
 from the materials here and there that which shall serve his 
 purpose ; and, when he is done, we recognize hardly a single 
 lineament of the simple son of Joseph and Mary of the first 
 
138 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 three Gospels, and we find in his place a grand, pre-existent, 
 spiritual, metaphysical abstraction ; for the Jesus of John is 
 not a man. He could by no possibility have been the same 
 person about whom Matthew, Mark, and Luke are writing. 
 By the time John wrote, the doctrine had developed of his 
 being the pre-existent Christ, partaking of the nature of God. 
 He says nothing about any human origin or birth, but begins 
 with him in the heavens, before he descends to earth. Then, 
 after a brief phenomenal appearance here, he disappears 
 into the clouds again. 
 
 Let us note two or three points of difference between this 
 conception and the others. According to the first three 
 Gospels, the public life of Jesus is given as about a year and 
 a half; and he makes one journey to Jerusalem, spending 
 most of his life in Galilee. 
 
 John, on the other hand, appears to give his public life as 
 continuing three years. He makes three journeys to Jerusa- 
 lem, and spends the greater part of his life in Judea. Both 
 cannot be true. See how different are the whole circum- 
 stances, the whole atmosphere, and the kind of man. The 
 writer of John evidently lived out of Judea. He lived after 
 the destruction of Jerusalem. He makes all kinds of mis- 
 takes in geography. He does not locate the towns correctly, 
 nor under the right names. John was intensely Jewish in 
 belief and sympathy, and yet the writer of this Gospel speaks 
 of the Jews as though they were a foreign people. He even 
 speaks to the Jews of things in their law as what is written 
 " in your law/' Suppose I, a citizen of Massachusetts, should 
 stand here and talk about one of the common statutes under 
 which we all live as of "your law." If I came from Ohio, it 
 would be appropriate enough ; but, if I lived in Massachu- 
 setts, it would be absurd. Or, as if I were writing a book, 
 and should speak about Americans as though I were an Eng- 
 
The Gospels. 139 
 
 lishman or a Frenchman. John is speaking all the time of 
 what the Jews did and said, reflecting the time when the 
 Christians began to look on the Jews as natural enemies, 
 and the persons who had crucified their Lord. Let me read 
 a sentence here from Dr. Martineau, one of the leading 
 Unitarians of the world : — 
 
 That a constant companion of the ministry of Jesus should shift it 
 almost wholly to a new theatre, should never come across a demo- 
 niac, and never tell a parable; should remember nothing about the 
 Kingdom of Heaven and the Coming of the Son of Man; should have 
 forgotten the last Passover of the little flock, with its institution of the 
 Communion, and have occupied those festival hours with the Crucifixion 
 instead ; should have lost the Master's terse maxims and sweet images of 
 life, thrown out in homely dialogue, and have fancied in their place 
 elaborate monologues, darkened with harsh and mystic paradox, — is so 
 utterly against nature as to forfeit the rank of an admissible hypothesis. 
 
 That is, Dr. Martineau thinks it absurd that John could 
 have been the author of this Gospel. Jesus does not utter 
 any parables in this Gospel. He tells them not to make long 
 prayers, and yet he prays through a whole chapter. He who 
 was tender and loving toward the past, and who counted 
 himself as a prophet like those of old, and who accepted his 
 mission as prophesied and foretold, is made to say that all 
 who came before him were thieves and robbers. The Jesus 
 of John's Gospel is metaphysical, unlovable, hardly human, 
 utterly unlike the simple man of Nazareth of the first three. 
 
 Now, I must tell you how it came that such a Gospel as 
 this should have been written, and under what bias it was 
 composed. 
 
 I have referred before to the philosophy and the sect of 
 the Gnostics. They grew up in this way. When the Septua- 
 gint translation of the Bible was made, there started up in 
 Alexandria a great school of philosophy, the avowed pur- 
 pose of which, in part, was to reconcile the religion of the 
 
140 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 Jews and the philosophy of Greece ; and, from that day on, 
 this mixture of Old Testament religion and Grecian philoso- 
 phy went on, fermenting and changing according to the 
 popular taste and speculations of the time, until, along in the 
 second and third centuries, we find ourselves face to face 
 with this great system of Gnosticism. What was the cen- 
 tral point of their belief? They believed that matter was 
 essentially evil and the source of evil; that God was the 
 ineffable, the infinite, the unseen, who dwelt remote from all 
 possible contact with the visible world. Yet, in some way, he 
 was the source of all life and all things. They had, there- 
 fore, to bridge over this almost infinite gulf between God 
 and the world by conceiving or speculating on what they 
 called ceons, or emanations. 
 
 That is, in some inexplicable, mysterious way, a god a little 
 lower than the Infinite One emanates from him, constituting 
 a god of the second class, and then from this god of the 
 second class emanates a third, and so on till, to make up 
 the complete chain, there are about thirty different (eons or 
 emanations. The last and lowest of the whole range was the 
 one who created the world. They identified him with the 
 Jehovah of the Old Testament. When they began to specu- 
 late about the nature of Jesus, they conceived that, in some 
 marvellous, mysterious way, he summed up all this chain of 
 eeons, or emanations, so that it is said that in him dwelt 
 all the fulness of the godhead bodily. You find in him the 
 whole plerotna, the technical term by which they designated 
 this whole range of ceo/is that linked the Infinite God to the 
 world. It was a wild region of speculation. They did not 
 have one single fact to go on, and it did not seem to occur 
 to any one of them that they needed a fact. It was one wild 
 chaos of speculation, in which the simplest and mildest 
 virtues became endowed with personality. 
 
The Gospels. 141 
 
 The opening of John's Gospel seems very simple in Eng- 
 lish, — all this about life and light and truth. But, when we 
 look at it carefully, we find that these were sub-gods, deities, 
 spelled with a capital letter, personified ; and Jesus sums them 
 all up in himself, and becomes the link to bind God and the 
 world together. Under the influences of this philosophy, 
 John's Gospel was written. It was a reconciling book be- 
 tween the divisions in the Church, between the Gnostics 
 and the other believers. When one who understands Gnosti- 
 cism looks at it, he sees it all covered with the finger-marks 
 of that system, as modern literature is covered over with the 
 finger-marks of evolution or Darwinism. It could not have 
 been written till Gnosticism was in the air, any more than 
 Darwinism could exist till Darwin had lived. 
 
 In what position do we stand concerning the life and 
 words of Jesus ? Have we a record of them that is perfect, 
 complete, authoritative ? 
 
 No, we must confess that we have not, so far, as we can 
 be certain, the testimony of a single eye-witness of anything 
 he ever did. Paul is our oldest witness, and he never saw 
 Jesus. We have not the authoritative record of a word he 
 ever uttered. Yet do not misunderstand me, or think I go too 
 far. I do not doubt in the least that we have substantially a 
 true account of the sayings of Jesus. There are a good many 
 things recorded that I believe he did not say, and of course 
 he said a thousand things which are not there. But the 
 words of Jesus were of such a nature that they were not 
 easily to be forgotten. We may safely trust them to tradition, 
 and expect them to be reported with a great deal of ac- 
 curacy ; and we may believe that we have them substantially 
 as he uttered them. 
 
 As we slough off the accretions and later growths of 
 miracle and marvel, what kind of a man do we see Jesus 
 
142 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 must have been? Simply, a tender, gentle, true, God-con- 
 scious man, sympathetic toward all men, a hero, a martyr, 
 a man who shared the doubts and errors of his age, — which 
 is only saying that he was human, — and yet rising above it 
 like the Andes above a plain. He was grand in his heroism, 
 simple and true when standing for his convictions in the 
 face of the Roman governor and the howling mob; thought- 
 ful and tender to the last, yet going unflinchingly to feel the 
 nails driven through the quivering flesh that fastened him to 
 the cross; a man, combining manhood's strongest strength 
 and womanhood's tenderest grace; a man to be loved, to 
 be honored, to be everything except worshipped. A man 
 whose name we may be proud to wear, if we do not change 
 it until it has a meaning that he would not have recognized. 
 When we come to speak of the miracles, there is no intel- 
 ligent jury in Boston could ever be induced to commit a man 
 to prison for thirty days for the crime of larceny, unless they 
 had stronger evidence for it than we have of any New Tes- 
 tament miracle. We have stronger evidence for miracles 
 performed in the time of Saint Augustine, in the time of 
 Thomas a Becket, for those in Lourdes last year, than we 
 have of the New Testament miracles. Yet we let them 
 pass by us as the idle winds which we make no account 
 of. Shall we then believe these because they are old, be- 
 cause they are anonymous, because we cannot put the wit- 
 nesses on the stand and cross-question them, because we do 
 not know who they were or when or where they lived. But, 
 even if we had proof of such things, what then ? It seems 
 strange to me that people should make so much of the ques- 
 tion whether John wrote the Gospel bearing his name or not. 
 If he did, it is purely a literary question. If I knew that 
 John, who leaned on the bosom of Jesus, wrote the Gospel, 
 and therein declared that he was a supernatural being, why 
 
The Gospels. 143 
 
 should I believe it ? Suppose that Mr. Herndon, after an 
 intimate association of years with Lincoln, should tell me 
 that it was his private conviction that Abraham Lincoln was 
 a supernatural being : should I believe it ? It would be only 
 his opinion, and we must have something more than a simple 
 opinion of any man before we can accept the stupendous 
 statement that three in heaven are different from three on 
 earth, and that a fallible, weak, suffering, dying man is at 
 the same moment the eternal and infinite God of all the 
 . worlds. 
 
 But, after these are all gone by, we have in this New 
 Testament the record of a life whose influences cannot die, — 
 one which, so far as it has had opportunity to make its own 
 simple way and tell its own simple story, has been largely 
 sweetening, brightening, helpful, uplifting, — and divine. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 It is generally assumed that there is such a thing as " The 
 Religion of the Bible." And, further, it is also generally 
 assumed that this religion is one, simple, and easily discov- 
 ered. Men speak of "the Word," as though indeed the 
 Bible were only one word, and had but one utterance. One 
 man says, " I am a Bible Christian, " as though that were a 
 perfectly definite thing that any one could easily deduce from 
 •a plain reading of the book. " The Bible is the religion of 
 Protestants," said Chillingworth, thinking that thus he was 
 plainly setting forth the grounds of the Reformation as 
 against the pretensions of Rome. " Go and read your Bible 
 prayerfully, and you will find it a sure and safe guide," — so 
 from our childhood have we heard our ministers telling us. 
 
 All this takes for granted that the Bible contains and 
 clearly sets forth some one, definite system of religious 
 truth, to the exclusion of all other systems. But what are 
 the facts, as practically set forth in the real condition of the 
 " Christian " world ? The Romanist prayerfully reads his 
 Bible, and he finds in it the primacy of Peter, the supremacy 
 of the Church, and the direction to " do penance " for the 
 forgiveness of sins. The Protestant prayerfully reads it, 
 and he discovers that Rome is the "mystic Babylon," the 
 "mother of harlots," the " abomination of desolation." The 
 Churchman reads it prayerfully, and he sees priestly suprem- 
 acy and sacramental salvation. The Congregationalist reads 
 
The Religion of the Bible, 145 
 
 it prayerfully, and comes away convinced that sacramental- 
 ism is the deadly "works of the law " that are forbidden, 
 and that every believer is his own all-sufficient priest. The 
 Baptist looks into it, and sees all true believers going clean 
 under the water ; while most other sects see them only going 
 down to the edge of the water and standing there to be sprin- 
 kled. Cromwell and his Roundheads read it, and saw every- 
 where " the Lord of Hosts " leading on his followers to battle; 
 and they went out shouting, " The sword of the Lord and of 
 Gideon!" The Quaker reads it, and finds everywhere "the 
 Prince of Peace/' hears only the command, "Resist not 
 evil," and repeats after his Master, " He that takes the sword 
 shall perish by the sword." The Unitarian reads it, and 
 comes away flourishing the text, " My Father is greater than 
 I " ; and he remembers that Jesus was sometimes ignorant, 
 was weary and hungry, and seemed in all points a man. 
 The Trinitarian goes into the same armory, and comes out 
 wielding the phrase, " I and my Father are one." The Ortho- 
 dox sees overshadowing all the pages the dreadful image of 
 justice and wrath, says, " Our God is a consuming fire," and 
 sees this fiery wrath flaming against his enemies even to 
 the lowest hell. The Universalist sees only the loving 
 "heavenly Father," and turns the most awful forebodings 
 into Oriental tropes and pictorial rhetoric. The Mormon 
 picks out phrases to bolster up his polygamy ; the monoga- 
 mist falls back on Adam and Eve, and cries out even against 
 divorce ; while the Shaker, on the basis of the personal ex- 
 ample and specific words of Jesus, forbids all sexual relations 
 whatever. The Northerner loaded his gun with texts, and 
 went out to fight for freedom ; while the Southerner quoted 
 Noah's curse against Ham, and the patriarchal example, 
 and so met Bible with Bible in defence of slavery. 
 
 What, then, is this strange book? The gypsy fortune- 
 
146 Beliefs abottt the Bible. 
 
 teller sometimes invites her maiden inquirer to look into her 
 magic mirror, and assures her that she shall see the face of 
 her future husband. She looks and sees her own ; and, for 
 explanation, she gets the intelligence that, when married, 
 her face will be her husband's. Is the Bible a magic mirror, 
 in which every comer sees his own face reflected ? All 
 these sects — mutually exclusive, contradictory, antagonistic 
 — appeal with equal confidence to the same book as the 
 charter of their rights and the ground of their authority. 
 Each one is sure that it is right, and equally sure that all 
 the others are wrong. And, until recent times, there has 
 been a short and easy way of accounting for all dissentient 
 opinion. Each sect has said, " All good and honest people 
 see it as I do. A different opinion means wilful blindness 
 and a bad heart." And, since they have all held it the plain 
 duty of "the Lord's people" to destroy his enemies, and 
 since each one has held it self-evident that its enemies and 
 the Lord's enemies were the same, the dominant sect has 
 generally thought best to give its opponents a foretaste in 
 this world of the Lord's " uncovenanted mercies " stored up 
 in the nether regions of the next. 
 
 But thoughtful people are beginning to wonder if it can 
 be possible that a book that is read in so many different 
 ways can teach one and only one system of truth. They are 
 beginning to wonder if it can be a plain revelation that 
 reveals so many different things. Of course, if one is at 
 liberty to pick and choose, to wink hard when you come to 
 the hard places, to twist texts by private interpretation until 
 you get a meaning out of them that their writer never 
 thought of, to adopt Swedenborg's method, and make pas- 
 sages mean almost anything except what they say, — why, 
 then, of course, one can get any teaching he pleases out of 
 anything. The spelling-book or the dictionary might serve 
 
The Religion of the Bible, 147 
 
 for a Bible, if it can be treated in that way. In one of his 
 humorous letters during the war, Nasby said that the text, 
 " Cursed be Canaan," and Paul's directions about returning 
 the fugitive slave, Onesimus, were to be taken literally : " all 
 the rest of the Bible is figurative." If one may treat as 
 " figurative " whatever he does not happen to like or want to 
 believe, why then, all of us can believe the Bible, and get out 
 of it anything we please. But, I take it, we will all agree 
 that, intellectually, this is hardly respectable, and that, mor- 
 ally, it is not quite honest. 
 
 Turning then and looking at the Bible with wide-open, 
 reasonable eyes, what do we find it to be ? It contains 
 snatches of rude song and fragments of custom-made law 
 that are perhaps two thousand years older than Christ; and 
 it is not completed for two hundred years after his time. 
 Tradition, history, law, theology, ethics, proverb, idyl, poetry, 
 letters, authentic, anonymous, pseudonymous, all mingled 
 together! It is not a book: it is a national literature. 
 Suppose I should make a compilation. Let me gather the 
 fragments of far-off Saxon sagas and legal maxims; put 
 in a little of the Venerable Bede, of 'Beowulf, of Chaucer; 
 include some of Froissart's Chronicles and a play of 
 Shakspere ; make a collection of English and American law, 
 history, and poetry; let me bind them all together in one 
 volume ; then let me try to gather out of it all one simple 
 system of belief, in which all the variety and contradiction 
 should harmonize, — what would you think of such an 
 attempt? I can imagine you admiring my ingenuity, but 
 it would certainly be at the expense of my judgment. Very 
 like this is the effort of those who try to get out of the 
 Bible one consistent system of religious teaching. The 
 Bible, as I have said, is not a book, but a national literature. 
 It is the biography of a race. It is predominantly a relig- 
 
148 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 ious literature, for the simple reason that the national genius 
 was predominantly religious. Their God was also king \ and 
 so law and custom, politics and poetry, were all looked at 
 from the theocratic stand-point. 
 
 But this peculiar feature of the Biblical literature brings 
 out in strong relief two very important facts, that we need 
 carefully to note before we go on in our search. 
 
 1. It shows us that religion is natural, a part of the nature 
 of things,— something not put on like a garment, and that 
 thus can be as easily thrown off. It is a part of human 
 nature, and so as permanent as human nature itself. Those 
 who seek for it a supernatural origin and ground render it 
 a very doubtful homage and service. For if it is not an 
 inherent part of human nature, but something thrust into 
 the system from without, then human nature may some day 
 decide to thrust it off, and get on without it. But, in reality, 
 it is man's eternal search for the secret of life, his endeavor 
 to get into right relation with the nature of things. 
 
 2. The other fact is this : since it is a part of human 
 nature, we should expect to find its form growing and chang- 
 ing, just as the external manifestations of all the other 
 elements of human nature grow and change. So, instead 
 of being troubled by the early crudenesses and the kaleido- 
 scopic changes in theology, these things are just what we 
 ought to expect. 
 
 There is, then, in the ordinary sense of the words, no such 
 thing as "the Religion of the Bible.'' Instead of that, 
 there are the religions of the Bible. Or, if you prefer 
 another way of putting it, there is the eternal search for 
 God, taking on ever new and higher forms and phases, to 
 keep step with the growing intelligence and civilization 
 of man. 
 
 Not as exhausting, but only indicating the facts, let us now 
 
The Religion of the Bible, 149 
 
 trace some of the more important features of some of the 
 different religions of the Bible. 
 
 1. As, then, we turn to the oldest traditions of the religion 
 of Israel, not only do we find no Christianity, which so many 
 claim to be the religion of the Bible, but we find no Judaism ; 
 neither do we find even the tribal worship of Yahveh. We 
 are face to face with pure and simple nature worship in its 
 crudest forms. We find the traces of fetichism all around 
 us, such a fetichism as to-day goes along with and indicates 
 the lower barbarism of tribes like the Fijis or those of 
 Central Africa. 
 
 For example, we find the worship of sacred trees, sacred 
 stones, sacred serpents, sacred animals, a sacred box or 
 ark, divination like that of the old augurs, sex-worship, the 
 worship of the planets, and an attempt to appease the 
 ferocious god by human sacrifices. It is quite true that 
 the later writers attempted to interpret all these things in 
 the light of their later monotheism, just as the Catholic 
 Church incorporated the older paganism, and tried to make 
 it a part of Christianity. But that does not change the 
 facts. The common people worshipped the sacred oaks 
 at Mamre, though later times tried to explain this popular 
 reverence by associating them with a supposed camping 
 station of Abraham. Jacob pays reverence to a stone 
 where he has a wondrous dream. Moses lifts up a brazen 
 serpent, supposed to possess magical curative virtues. At 
 the exodus, and even as late as after the death of Solomon, 
 Yahveh is worshipped under the image of a bull. And the 
 Temple itself perpetuated the remnants of the old bull- 
 worship by the horns attached to the altar, and the twelve 
 brazen oxen which stood under and held up the laver used 
 for the sacred lustrations. The Israelite armies supposed 
 they carried their god around in a box or ark. The 
 
150 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 Philistines could capture him, and leave them defenceless 
 without his aid. Rachel steals the gods of her father 
 Laban, hides them under the camel furnishings in her tent, 
 and sits upon them. Divination, like that of all the pagan 
 nations, was practised by patriarchs, by Samuel, by David, 
 by the High Priests, and even by New Testament apostles. 
 Sex-worship — the Ashera, translated "grove" in the Old 
 Testament, was a symbol of it — was practised with all 
 kinds of abominable rites. The festival of the new moon, 
 and the Sabbath itself, show the general hold of planet- 
 worship on the life of the people. And Abraham, Jephthah, 
 Samuel, David, and many of the later kings, illustrate the 
 early practice and the very late hold on the public mind 
 of human sacrifice. 
 
 These things are not strange. Since all races have passed 
 through these crude and brutal stages of religious develop- 
 ment, we ought not to wonder that Israel does the same. 
 Only these facts are not quite consistent with a special 
 revelation, or with the notion that the Bible contains but 
 one religion. 
 
 2. After nature worship there comes a general popular 
 recognition of allegiance to one god. 
 
 This does not mean that they always worshipped only 
 him, nor that that they disbelieved the existence of any 
 others. It only means that they had adopted him as their 
 tribal god. That they continued to worship others is 
 apparent all the way through the Old Testament. The 
 prophets are always rebuking them for it, and their calami- 
 ties are always being attributed to it. Though, on this 
 theory, it is a little strange that an idolatrous king like 
 Manasseh has a long and prosperous reign, while the faithful 
 servant of Yahveh, like Josiah, is cut off in disastrous 
 defeat. 
 
The Religion of the Bible. 151 
 
 As long as they believed in the real existence and power 
 of other gods, it is hardly strange that they should try to 
 win their favor. Mr. Conway tells us of a Christian woman 
 in England who always bows when the devil's name is 
 mentioned ; prudently arguing that, if he really exists and is 
 as powerful as he is represented, it may be just as well to 
 keep on the right side of him. 
 
 Some of the very texts that are frequently quoted to 
 prove a monotheistic belief on the part of the Jews, in 
 reality prove just the opposite. Yahveh is " King of kings 
 and Lord of lords," a "great King above all gods." The 
 lords and gods over whom he is supreme must exist, or such 
 words mean nothing. 
 
 And it is absurd, also, to try to think that the god of Sam- 
 uel and David is the same being as the god of the second 
 Isaiah and of Jesus. The older conception is of a being 
 who comes down on earth, as Jupiter and Mercury used to 
 do, and walks about, talks, and eats like a man. He is 
 jealous ; he is ignorant, having to go down to Babel and 
 Sodom to see what is going on ; he makes mistakes and 
 repents ; he likes the smell of a burning ox offered in 
 sacrifice ; he rejoices over the destruction of an enemy like 
 a red-handed tribal war-chief. 
 
 3. But, as ages go by, and the people rise to a higher 
 type of civilization, the popular god is transformed, and 
 reflects this higher type of civilization. We are face to face 
 with a spiritual mo?iotheism. To the higher prophets, only 
 one god really exists : " All the gods of the nations 
 are idols." They have ears, eyes, hands, and feet; but 
 they neither hear, see, handle, nor walk. And this 
 higher god cares nothing for their sacrifices nor the smell 
 of their burnt offerings. He only wants truth in the inward 
 parts and righteousness of life. How different he from 
 
152 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 the old god who himself inspired prophets to lie, glorified 
 treachery, sanctioned rape, and took delight in the blood 
 of his enemies ! The highest peak of the Old Testament 
 is reached when Micah proclaims, "What doth the Lord 
 require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy God ? " 
 
 Here is a religion of simple moral monotheism, — one god 
 only, and he to be worshipped only by lofty-souled reverence 
 and human goodness. 
 
 4. But Israel does not remain on this lofty table-land of 
 noble thought and pure devotion. From this time on to 
 the birth of Jesus there is a declension toward the lower 
 level of legalism, ritual, and ceremony. The free inspiration 
 of the prophets has died out, and they begin to look back 
 and live on the past. Instead of being themselves inspired, 
 they worship the records of a past inspiration. Sacrifices 
 and tithes and petty observances take the place of character 
 and noble deeds. They quarrel over such questions as to 
 how often and in what ways they shall wash their hands. 
 They measure off the precise distance which it is permitted 
 one to walk on the Sabbath. They wear charms about 'their 
 persons, made up of magical texts of Scripture. They 
 buy supposed merit at the expense of long and tedious 
 prayers. They hamper every hour of the day with some 
 petty observance, to break over which they think will incur 
 the anger of their god. 
 
 But what a god he must be to care for such humdrum 
 boy's play as all this ! This is the second childhood of a 
 religion, the decrepitude of an age that can only sit by the 
 fireside, and tell over what it has done. 
 
 And, in all these forms of the older religions, one impor- 
 tant fact is to be specially remarked. Those who talk about 
 " the religion of the Bible " are accustomed to tell us that 
 
The Religion of the Bible. 153 
 
 the one object of it ail is to save our souls in the next world. 
 But, throughout these four forms of religion to be so clearly 
 traced in the Old Testament, soul-saving in the next world 
 has played no part at all. Until the very last there was no 
 popular belief in or teaching about any next world at all. 
 Until within two thousand years, then, this same God (as 
 the popular faith teaches), who is now so anxious to have us 
 save our souls, never told the world, never told his chosen 
 people, that they had any souls, or that there was any next 
 world ! When these old Jews come up to judgment and 
 ask God why he did not let them know about it, what will 
 he answer ? Is it not even absurd for men who claim to be 
 intelligent to tell us that two religions, the sole object of 
 one of which is to save people in the other world, and the 
 other of w r hich does not teach any other world at all, are still 
 one and the same ? Jewish rewards and punishments, down 
 almost to the time of Christ, were all confined to this w r orld. 
 
 5. But now we have come to still another and a new relig- 
 ion. Jewish hopes and Persian dreams have wrought 
 together. Pagan speculations and Israelite apocalypses, like 
 the Book of Enoch, have filled the air with vague expecta- 
 tions. The people are looking, either through revolution on 
 earth or an avatar from heaven, for the coming of an ideal 
 kingdom. John appears in the desert, proclaiming that "the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand." The young Jesus appears 
 at his baptism, and is designated as the expected Messianic 
 king. He accepts the supposed prophetic appointment. 
 But he carries it out in such a way that even John begins to 
 doubt if he is really the one, and sends messengers from his 
 prison at Machaerus to ask him. 
 
 What, now, really was the religion of Jesus ? In a word, it 
 was this. Through his instrumentality, God was soon to usher 
 in, suddenly and by miracle, a kingdom of heaven. It was 
 
154 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 to be established on earth. The terms of admission to its 
 divine citizenship were very simple. Not a word about 
 Trinity or atonement, — only acceptance of him as the Mes- 
 siah ; repentance, or a practical change of life so far as it 
 had been evil ; and the practical living out of moral good- 
 ness as he understood and taught it. The dark side of it 
 was — if it be really true that Jesus taught it — the going 
 away of those who refused his conditions " into everlasting 
 punishment, prepared for the devil and his angels." To 
 Jesus, the devil was as real a being as God ; and he undoubt- 
 edly accepted the superstition of his time as to the demoniacal 
 origin of disease. 
 
 Here, then, is a religion entirely distinct from anything the 
 Old Testament contains, and also almost altogether unlike 
 anything that later ages have called by the name of 
 Christian. 
 
 I am aware that large numbers of people attempt to alle- 
 gorize these facts all away. But it seems to me neither 
 scholarship nor plain dealing to torture the language of 
 Jesus into conformity with modern thought, as long' as it is 
 perfectly well known that this same modern thought was 
 unheard of in that age. The language of Jesus is to be 
 interpreted in the light of the beliefs and ideas prevalent at 
 the time he lived and spoke. I am then compelled to be- 
 lieve that, in the historic sense of the word, Jesus himself 
 was not a Christian. He was a theist, pure and simple ; or, 
 in the sense that he believed in only one God, a Unitarian. 
 
 6. But the New Testament contains the fruitful germs and 
 outlines of another religion still. There is, first, the religion 
 of Jesus ; and then, after that, there is a religion about Jesus. 
 Jesus himself did not teach what has come to be called Chris- 
 tianity ; but Christianity, formed of many composite elements, 
 grew up around the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, and so 
 
The Religion of the Bible. 155 
 
 made his Messiahship, the C/iristos, its central doctrine. 
 Hence the name. It was the crystallized result of the 
 flowing together of many speculative ingredients, pagan, 
 Jewish, philosophic. It started with the idea of " the king- 
 dom of God," just as Jesus did. At first, it was to be here 
 on earth \ then, after long waiting and many disappointments, 
 it was transferred to the other world. But it radically di- 
 verged from the teaching of Jesus in regard to the condi- 
 tions of entrance into that kingdom. The man Jesus was 
 changed into a god \ and about this central article of faith 
 there clustered an aggregation of mystic, philosophic, and 
 speculative beliefs, the acceptance of all of which became 
 the condition of salvation. Around these beliefs grew a 
 thorny hedge of ceremonial, as tangled and luxuriant in 
 its development as the world had ever seen. The guard- 
 ians of these became dominant, and made it so hard to be 
 saved that hell grew populous and heaven exceedingly lone- 
 some. 
 
 Then, as ages went by, came revolt, and the multiplication 
 of sects, each one claiming it had the whole gospel. And, as 
 each one emphasized this doctrine or that, the conditions of 
 salvation became multiplied and bewildering. It was faith, 
 it was works, it was ritual and sacrament, it was the blood, 
 it was one thing or another according to the church you at- 
 tended or the preacher you heard. All pointed to the Bible ; 
 and, since all these things are in the Bible, it is not very 
 strange that those who look should find almost anything 
 that they desire. 
 
 Dr. George E. Ellis has recently raised the question — and 
 a storm at the same time — as to whether the Bible is ortho- 
 dox. You might as well ask as to whether English Litera- 
 ture is orthodox. It is, and it is not. It all depends upon 
 what part of it you read. If you fix your attention on one 
 
156 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 phase of teaching, and if you then consider everything that 
 contradicts that as figurative, why, then, it becomes compara- 
 tively easy to harmonize the whole around a few ideas. But, 
 if you take the Bible for what it is, — a national religious 
 literature, — you will cease talking about "the religion of the 
 Bible." You will trace the upward steps and stages of 
 growth in religion, as well as in all other things ; and, look- 
 ing forward instead of behind, you will learn to believe that 
 God is really alive to-day, and that his last word is not yet 
 spoken. 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 I wish to give expression to just one word of preface 
 before beginning the treatment of my theme, lest the purpose 
 that I have in view, and the method of carrying out that 
 purpose, shall be misunderstood. If we could only take 
 this grand old book for what it really is, for what it really 
 claims to be, how gladly would I spend my time not in 
 criticism, but in eulogy; for it occupies a unique position 
 in the history of our race. On the basis of what it claims 
 to be, there is no grander book in the world. You will 
 understand then that, in what I am about to do this morn- 
 ing, I am not criticising the Bible, I am not finding fault 
 with its ethical teaching ; I am only criticising a theory, a 
 conception of the Bible, a teaching about it, which has 
 dominated the world for centuries, and which, as I believe, 
 stands in the way of the world's further and nobler progress. 
 
 There are two questions that must be asked and answered, 
 in order that we may understand the position which this 
 book holds in regard to the ethical teachings of the world. 
 
 In the first place, does the Bible contain one, and only 
 one, system of ethical teaching? Is the teaching in the 
 early part of the book the same as that of the middle and 
 latter part? Are there no signs of progress and growth 
 
158 Beliefs abozct the Bible. 
 
 such as we find connected with the other religions of the 
 world ? 
 
 The next question is: Is the highest ethical teaching of 
 the Bible perfect and complete, meeting the wants of the 
 nineteenth century, and capable of satisfying the needs of 
 any possible development of human life and thought in the 
 future? If the Bible contains one system, and only one, 
 and if that one system is perfect and divine, then we should 
 be able to believe, when we take this book in our hands, 
 that we actually held a divine and infallible revelation. But, 
 if there is more than one system, and if one system is higher 
 than another • if there are traces and evidences of growth, 
 and if the highest teaching is not complete and perfect for 
 all time, — why then, of course, we shall not be able to believe 
 that we have an infallible and divine revelation of moral 
 truth. They who deal in apology or defence of the Bible 
 talk to us of a progressive revelation. But a " progressive 
 revelation " is an absurdity, on the theory of a divine and 
 infallible one. If, for example, God gave light and guidance 
 to the Hebrews only so fast and so far as they were intellect- 
 ually developed enough to appreciate it, so that they received 
 comparatively the same kind of light that other nations 
 received at the same stage or degree of development, then 
 we are reduced to the absurdity of supposing that God 
 reveals truth only as fast as people are capable of finding it 
 out for themselves; which of course is a contradiction in 
 terms. These, then, are the two questions. 
 
 Leaving one side, now, for the moment, all thought of a 
 divine revelation of moral truth, looking abroad over the 
 world and tracing the origin and development of ethical 
 principles, we find this one thing everywhere plainly to be 
 observed : In all parts of the world, among nations that have 
 reached substantially the same level of intelligence, the same 
 
The Morality of the Bible. 159 
 
 grade of civilization, and are in substantially similar circum- 
 stances of life, we find substantially the same ethical princi- 
 ples and precepts. That is, people in China, when they 
 had risen to a certain level of intellectual and moral devel- 
 opment, held substantially the same ideas of character and 
 conduct that people in Egypt held, when they had reached 
 the same level or a similar one. We find the same natural 
 process of growth at work as in the vegetable world. If 
 you climb up the sides of the Alps, so many feet above the 
 level of the sea, and then climb up the same height above 
 the level of the sea on the sides of the Andes, if you do not 
 find the same vegetable growths, you find corresponding ones, 
 in similar circumstances. This is the method of nature. 
 
 If, then, we should find no revelation touching the matter 
 of right and wrong, we should expect to find this principle 
 at work everywhere. Outside of the Bible, we do find this 
 principle at work. We find in similar circumstances, ia 
 similar grades of development, and in similar grades of intel- 
 ligence, similar precepts and principles. If we shall find 
 substantially the same thing true concerning the Bible, then, 
 of course, we must surrender the idea that here is anything 
 supernatural or exceptional. We must place Bible ethics in 
 the same natural category and classification with all the rest 
 that we can discover. 
 
 Before discussing Bible ethics, simply as a suggestion, a 
 hint of what may be found in other places, as a sort of back- 
 ground to my thought, I wish to give you two or three speci- 
 mens of the ethics of ancient Egypt, that you may see what 
 kind of ideas, what sort of conception of God and duty, men 
 were capable of attaining and really did attain three thousand 
 years at least before Christ was born. In the first quotation 
 that I shall make, you will perceive their conception of God. 
 This, of course, while a part of religion, is also a part of 
 
l6o Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 * 
 
 ethics. If you can find out what sort of character men 
 attribute to God, you will find a reflection on the sky of their 
 own moral conceptions of that which is highest and best. 
 Within recent years, a large part of the sacred literature of 
 ancient Egypt has been recovered. On monuments, in 
 papyrus rolls, on tombs, and preserved in many different 
 ways, have been found sayings which date back beyond the 
 popularly supposed period of the occurence of the flood, — 
 perhaps some of them older than the creation itself, as dated 
 by the popular chronology. 
 
 Here are a few of these sayings, — the first addressed to 
 God : — 
 
 " Every one glorifies thy goodness. Mild is thy love toward us : thy 
 tenderness surrounds our hearts. Great is thy love in all the souls of 
 men." m 
 
 "Let not thy face be turned away from us : the joy of our hearts is to 
 contemplate thee. Chase all anguish from our hearts. He wipes tears 
 from off all faces." 
 
 " Hail to thee, Ra, Lord of all truth ; who listeneth to the poor in his 
 •distress ; gentle of heart, when we cry to thee ; deliverer of the timid 
 man from the violent ; judging the poor, the poor and the oppressed; 
 sovereign of life, health, and strength." 
 
 " The heart of man is no secret to him that made it. He is present 
 ivith thee, though thou be alone." 
 
 Then here is a fragment from an inscription on a tomb, 
 giving the idea of the writer as to what kind of life he should 
 have lived : — 
 
 " I honored my father and my mother. I loved my brothers. I taught 
 little children. I took care of orphans as though they had been my own 
 children." 
 
 There has been recently brought to light, from the ruins 
 of that old civilization, almost a complete work, called the 
 Maxims of Ptahhotep, which dates from the age of the 
 
The Morality of the Bible, 161 
 
 Pyramids, and which even then refers to the authority of 
 ancient times. It is the most ancient book in the world, 
 as far as is known. Renouf, the great French Egyptian 
 scholar, says that " they inculcate the study of wisdom, the 
 duty to parents and superiors, respect for property, the 
 advantages of charitableness, peaceableness and content, 
 of liberality, humility, chastity, and sobriety, of truthfulness 
 and justice. " M. Chabas, who first gave the book to the 
 world, says : " None of the Christian virtues is forgotten in 
 it: piety, charity, gentleness, self-command in word and 
 action, chastity, the protection of the weak, benevolence 
 toward the humble, deference to superiors, respect for 
 property in its minutest details, — all is expressed there, 
 and in extremely clear language." 
 
 /We cannot resist drawing the inference from this that, if 
 ancient Egypt three thousand years before Christ was capa- 
 ble, without a revelation, of attaining to a knowledge and, 
 in some degree, to a practice of all the finest so-called Chris- 
 tian virtues, it is hardly possible to make out any necessity 
 for a revelation, in order to teach these a thousand or two 
 years later to another people. 
 
 Had I time, I would like to place beside these one speci- 
 men from the Mahdbhdrata, the great Indian or Hindu epic. 
 There is one selection which I am obliged to think is finer, 
 higher, more humane than anything which the whole Bible 
 contains. It represents one of seven brothers, the last of 
 the seven, standing at the entrance to the Indian heaven. 
 His six brothers, his wife, and his faithful dog, the constant 
 companions of his life, have fallen by the way; and he 
 stands alone at the gates. The gods come down to welcome 
 him ; and there is a throne waiting him, vacant till he shall 
 occupy it. They bid him come in, but he stands there, and 
 asks the gods what is to become of his brothers, his wife, 
 
1 62 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 and his dog ; and, until he is assured that they also shall 
 share his bliss and his glory, he turns his back on the 
 heavens, and refuses to enter. I know of nothing in all 
 religious literature higher, finer, grander than that. Cer- 
 tainly, it compares most favorably with the old Puritan 
 picture of the saints leaning over the battlements of heaven, 
 and enjoying the spectacle and listening to the groans of 
 their brethren in eternal torments below. 
 
 I now turn, to treat, as briefly as I can, some suggestions 
 concerning the moral teachings of the Old Testament and 
 the New. 
 
 i. First, let us look at the Old Testament, and attempt to 
 answer my first question, whether there is one system of 
 teaching in the Bible, whether the Old Testament teaches 
 the same as the New. Of course, in so brief a review, I 
 must omit many points. I only intend to take up specimens 
 here and there. 
 
 One of the first things we come across is the doctrine of 
 revenge, or retaliation. We find in the Old Testament that 
 practice which, in Southern Europe, in tales of love and pas- 
 sion, we are familiar with as the vendetta, or the duty of the 
 living relatives of a man who has been murdered, or killed 
 by accident, to pursue and relentlessly revenge the death of 
 the murdered man. We find this taught and indorsed by 
 Yahveh himself, who goes so far as to establish certain 
 cities of refuge where a man might flee, provided he had 
 killed a man by accident, or, as we should say, in case of 
 justifiable homicide. If he were caught before he reached 
 that city, it was justifiable to put him to death, even if 
 he had not intended to commit murder. That is a part of 
 the social morality of the Old Testament. Would we con- 
 sider that up to the level of the best life of the nineteenth 
 century ? The New York Nation has been calling very 
 
The Morality of the Bible. 163 
 
 vigorous and earnest attention to practices similar to this 
 in the South, treating them as evidence of savagery, and 
 calling upon the South to cleanse its skirts from these relics 
 of barbarism before they can expect that civilized people will 
 go there to live, or invest their capital among them. This, 
 then, is instinctively pronouncing judgment on this kind of 
 ethics by the conscience of the modern world. 
 
 Turn to another institution which is taught and indorsed 
 and regulated by God himself in the Old Testament, the 
 system of polygamy. If the Bible were to be treated like 
 any other book, I should not have a word to say against 
 polygamy in the Old Testament. There was a time when 
 it was moral. If you trace the upward growth of social life, 
 you will find that man began several grades lower down 
 than polygamy ; and polygamy is a step in advance of that 
 which preceded it. It is part way up the ladder from where 
 the human race began toward the position we now occupy. 
 I should have nothing against polygamy as part of the proc- 
 ess of the social development of the world. We criticise 
 it to-day only because the world has outgrown it. It was 
 well enough in its time and place • but the world has now 
 higher moral conceptions of social order, and so looks down 
 on that as something belonging to a barbaric past. You 
 know how we look upon the Mormons to-day, what a blot 
 we consider it on the national escutcheon, how we apologize 
 for it and hope to outgrow it and leave it behind, how we are 
 ashamed of it in the face of Europe ; and yet it is recognized 
 by God himself, taught, arranged for, ordered by him. We 
 find ourselves, on the orthodox theory, in the curious position 
 of apologizing for God, if that is a part of an infallible and 
 eternal revelation. 
 
 Leaving that, we come to slavery. Slavery is recognized 
 in the Old Testament as right. The people are permitted 
 
164 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 not only to buy strangers, but their own race, other Jews. 
 There is one slight mitigation, when they are dealing with 
 their own brethren. Although they were permitted to buy 
 and hold a Jew as a slave, after six years he was set free by 
 the limitation of the law concerning him. But, if he were 
 married and had become the father of children, if he chose 
 to go out and take his liberty, he had to leave his wife and 
 family still in slavery, — a diabolically ingenious device for 
 keeping him in slavery himself ; for no true man would leave 
 his wife and children, and take his freedom on those terms. 
 
 In regard to slavery, I should say precisely as concerning 
 polygamy. If I might treat it from the stand-point of the 
 natural development of the world, it would need no apology 
 in the Old Testament. Slavery itself was once relatively 
 right. It was relatively better than that type of social life 
 which preceded it. It took the place of the indiscriminate 
 slaughter of one's enemies in time of war. It was a definite, 
 distinct step upward in social evolution ; and I should not 
 be called to apologize for it, if people did not tell me that 
 it was a part of the divine revelation. If it were, it must 
 be not only good for that age, but for any and every age. 
 
 Let us next consider the Old Testament code of morals 
 concerning other nations in time of war. God permits — nay, 
 he commands — wars of absolute extermination. He com- 
 mands them to put to death men, women, and children, 
 infants in arms, gray-headed age, even to destroy the very 
 cattle and everything which had belonged to the tribe with 
 which they were at war. Merciless massacre is part of the 
 ethics of the Old Testament. Would we consider anything 
 like that as justified for a moment in regard to the relations 
 which nations maintain with each other in the nineteenth 
 century ? If there were a respectable people on the face of 
 the earth capable of carrying on war as it is carried on there, 
 
The Morality of the Bible. 165 
 
 under divine guidance and orders, the civilized world would 
 rush to arms to compel that nation to be humane. 
 
 One other point. I have said that the conception which 
 any people hold concerning God is a part of its morality, 
 because the character of the deity is a reflection of the char- 
 acter of the people themselves. What kind of character, 
 then, must we attribute to these old Jews, when we look at 
 the kind of god who reveals himself through a large part of 
 the Old Testament, — a god who is jealous, a god who likes 
 flattery, a god who is cruel, a god who takes delight in the 
 cries of slaughtered victims and in the smell of their blood 
 and the smoke of their burnings, a god who permits and 
 accepts human sacrifices, a god who teaches his own proph- 
 ets to lie, a god who commands rape, a god guilty of almost 
 every crime. Of course, this does not exhaust the Old 
 Testament teaching concerning God. You will not mis- 
 understand me so crudely as that. There is no finer teach- 
 ing concerning God than some parts of the Old Testament 
 furnish, — none loftier, none nobler, none more beautiful: 
 only these things are also there. They are a part of the 
 book. And, if the book is divine and infallible revelation, 
 then these are divine and infallible revelations of moral 
 truth, because they are a part of the record. I need not 
 enlarge upon this point, in order to enforce upon your thought 
 and feeling the conviction that the Jews made progress just 
 like all other people : only we find them here in their period 
 of barbaric semi-development, and so we find barbaric morals, 
 just as we find them in Asia, Africa, or in Europe, among 
 our own brutalized and barbaric forefathers. There is the 
 finger-marks of a natural growth in moral ideals, precepts, 
 and principles all through the Old Testament, from the 
 lowest beginning up to the sublime spiritual conceptions 
 of the second Isaiah, as high and lofty a flight as the world 
 contains. 
 
1 66 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 2. Let us now come to the consideration of the second 
 question. If there is any perfect morality anywhere in the 
 Bible, we shall expect to find it in the New Testament. It 
 is a very common opinion — the liberal orthodox are begin- 
 ning to share it and stand by it — that, while the Old Testa- 
 ment contains much that is barbaric and outgrown, the New 
 Testament, at any rate, is perfect. I think it is the opinion 
 of large numbers, perhaps the majority, of liberals, even if 
 they reject the dogmatic teachings of the New Testament, 
 that the highest part of it is supreme, perfect, final, and 
 cannot be outgrown. I think it is a very common feeling, 
 on the part of liberal Christians generally, that Jesus was an 
 absolutely sinless, perfect being, and that he gave a perfect 
 system of ethics to the world. I shall not argue the question 
 of his own character, as it is not a part of my theme. I will 
 frankly express to you my opinion that I know no reason 
 why I should suppose that Jesus of Nazareth was absolutely 
 free from error and human frailty. I know no reason why I 
 should suppose that he was perfect in every particular. 
 Sublime, God-conscious, noble, sweet, pure, true, — yes ; yet 
 I think there are evident traces in the New Testament of 
 his sharing the limitations, the prejudices, the mistakes, and 
 the common frailties of man. 
 
 But, say a great many, the Sermon on the Mount, at least, 
 is faultless. I think it is a common opinion, among those of 
 the liberal faith, that the Sermon on the Mount is a perfect 
 standard of moral truth. They hold it up before the world, 
 and demand the intellectual and moral homage of mankind 
 for everything which it contains. But, as I study it, I 
 cannot so regard it. The New Testament contains in es- 
 sence, in germ, some of the highest and finest principles 
 that the world has ever seen. If the saying of Jesus con- 
 cerning loving God and man with all the heart could be 
 
The Morality of the Bible. 167 
 
 expanded and carried out practically, with all the light of 
 the growing intelligence of the world ; if it could enter into 
 all the details of human character, — it would make a perfect 
 world ; but a system of ethics is not to be judged by some 
 germ principle, but by the interpretation of that principle as 
 it falls from the lips of the teacher himself. 
 
 Let us, then, test this Sermon on the Mount in two or 
 three directions, by looking at some of the specific applica- 
 tions of ethical principles which fall from the lips of Jesus. 
 
 Before I pass to specify those parts, I wish to make one 
 or two remarks concerning the attitude which the world 
 holds toward this wondrous discourse. I do not believe 
 there is a single orthodox person or church in the world, 
 which even tries, strictly and literally, to obey the Sermon on 
 the Mount. If any body of people, any city, any town, any 
 tribe, any nation, should attempt to carry out these teachings 
 literally, it would bring the world, as far as they were con- 
 cerned, to a stand-still. In other words, many of those prin- 
 ciples are simply impracticable. They never have been 
 carried out and never can be in this kind of a world. Those 
 who laud them the most never think of trying to obey them. 
 Let us now specify a few particulars. 
 
 Jesus teaches us, as plain as language can express it, 
 improvidence, lack of forethought, lack of careful provision 
 for the future. Again, the doctrine of charity which is here 
 inculcated has perhaps wrought more evil in the past history 
 of the world than much of the hard-heartedness and cruelty 
 of the rich. I am perfectly well aware that men attempt 
 to reinterpret all these sayings and make them mean what 
 they think they ought to mean ; but it seems to me that the 
 true and just and common-sense canon of criticism would 
 lead us to judge these sayings of Jesus in the light of the 
 thought of his time, not in the light of the thought of ours. 
 
1 68 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 So judging them, we are to take them literally. We are to 
 take him as meaning what he says. He says, " Take no 
 thought for the morrow." I know that they translate that, 
 " Be not anxious about the morrow " ; but, even if I grant 
 so much, still the world could not get on by literally obeying 
 it. The world must be anxious about the morrow. The 
 world must take thought. The world must provide for the 
 future. The very distinction between barbarism and civil- 
 ization is that the barbarian obeys this principle, and the 
 civilized man never did, does not, and never can. One of 
 the highest marks of civilization is that men have planned, 
 forecast, traced the present working causes to their possible 
 consequences, and provided against the future. We cannot 
 live in this world like lilies and birds, unless we are trans- 
 formed into lilies and birds. We are men, factors in a com- 
 plex civilization, and the principles which apply to these 
 things do not apply to us. 
 
 Jesus teaches us that, if we trust in the Father, if we ask, 
 we shall receive ; that we are to care only for the kingdom 
 of heaven ; that we are to make no provision for the morrow. 
 That is the simple, ingenuous teaching of Jesus. In his 
 doctrine of giving, he says : " Give to him that asketh thee, 
 and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou 
 away." Lend, asking for nothing again, expecting nothing. 
 That is, if anybody comes and asks you for anything, let 
 him Lave it without any regard to ever receiving it again. 
 That is the simple teaching ; and we know that is most likely 
 to have been the meaning of Jesus, because these ideas were 
 all in the air at the time. The young man comes to him, and 
 asks, " What shall I do to inherit eternal life ? " And his 
 reply is, " Go, sell everything thou hast, and give to the 
 poor." If a man should obey literally that direction to-day, 
 he would be considered a public enemy. This doctrine of 
 
The Morality of the Bible. 169 
 
 charity, as far as carried out, has always tended to create 
 permanent pauperism. If it were carried out in all its liter- 
 alness, it would fill the world with irresponsible lazzaroni. 
 It is sometimes said that these teachings were intended to 
 be only local and temporary in their application. If so, it is 
 at least a serious defect that a statement of that fact is not 
 plainly made. 
 
 Take the next step, the teaching of Jesus concerning 
 poverty and riches in general, which is very near akin to this. 
 The doctrine of the New Testament all the way through is 
 that riches are evil. "Blessed are the poor." " Woe unto 
 you that are rich, for you have received your consolation." 
 "Blessed are they that weep now, for they shall laugh." 
 "Woe unto those that laugh, for they shall weep." Take the 
 parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It is ordinarily 
 assumed that Lazarus was somehow a very virtuous man, 
 and that Dives was a bad man. Jesus does not say one 
 single word about Dives being a bad man. There is not a 
 charge brought against him, except that he was rich. He 
 does not say anything about Lazarus being a good man. 
 There is no praise for him, except that he was poor. When 
 they get into the next world, Dives is not told that he is 
 to suffer in consequence of his having been a sinner; 
 but Abraham says to him, " Remember, in your lifetime, you 
 had your good things, and Lazarus evil things : now, he is 
 comforted, and you are tormented." Not a word about good 
 or bad. Dives is simply punished to make things even, and 
 Lazarus rewarded to make things even. All the way through 
 the New Testament, there is a very apparent antipathy to 
 wealth ; and the Catholic Church has rightly interpreted it, 
 in making voluntary poverty one of the Christian virtues. 
 Yet modern civilization has developed the fact, beyond pos- 
 sibility of question, that wealth, the accumulated resources 
 
170 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 of the world, lies at the very base and is the prime and 
 essential condition of all civilization. There is no possi- 
 bility of man being civilized until there is a little saved 
 beyond what is needed to eat up or wear out for the day. 
 There is no chance for schools, for music, for art, for educa- 
 tion, no chance for anything beyond taking care of man as 
 an animal, until there is some wealth saved in the world. 
 Lay not up for yourselves riches on earth, only care about 
 riches in the next world, says the New Testament. I think 
 it is a very good idea to look out for both ; but the world 
 would come to a stand-still, and civilization would be under- 
 mined and a failure, if those precepts were literally carried out. 
 
 Let me turn to another ethical principle, touching marriage 
 and divorce. I think it is generally taken for granted that 
 the New Testament is impervious to criticism here, if no- 
 where else ; and yet it seems to me that this is far from true. 
 Jesus' doctrine of divorce is one that no Protestant nation 
 has ever dared to incorporate into law or carry out in prac- 
 tice. Yet they claim to be Christian in their methods of 
 legislation. 
 
 Jesus says you shall put away your wife for one cause and 
 one only ; but, mark you, he does not make any provision 
 for the wife putting away her husband at all ! The New 
 Testament doctrine of divorce is entirely one-sided. The 
 wife is not permitted to put away her husband for any cause. 
 
 Another point. Not simply in the teaching of the Book 
 of Revelation and of Paul, but in the teaching of Jesus him- 
 self, marriage does not occupy the highest social rank. It 
 is a little under a cloud. There is something else that is 
 better. Jesus himself says that, if a man is able to receive 
 it, the celibate life is superior to the married one. PauFs 
 direction about marriage is that it is better to marry than to 
 do worse. In the Book of Revelation, the one hundred and 
 
The Morality of the Bible, 171 
 
 forty-four thousand peculiar saints set apart from all the rest, 
 even in heaven, who have the highest seats and to whom 
 special honor is given, are those who have lived perfectly 
 virginal lives. The doctrine is that the celibate has superior 
 sanctity. It puts us in the position of thinking that God 
 has made us what we are, and then is ready to teach us that, 
 if we go against the laws of the natures he has given us, 
 and do something else, we shall gain his favor more certainly 
 than as though we carried out the laws that he himself has 
 made. The New Testament thus, it seems to me, contains 
 the germs of all European monasticism and asceticism and 
 justifies them, and therefore is no guide for the practical 
 morality of the world to-day in these respects. 
 
 There is another point. Let us take the teaching of the 
 New Testament concerning resistance to evil ; the doctrine 
 concerning the citizen's relation to government. What is 
 it? "Resist not evil." The Quaker is the only man that 
 attempts to carry out the doctrine of the New Testament in 
 this direction ; and, if all the world were Quakers, we might 
 possibly get along with it, though I question whether, even 
 then, it would not be a pretty tame, poor kind of a world. 
 Through resistance to injur}', resistance to tyrants, fighting 
 for liberty, fighting for right, has the civilization of the world 
 grown. Paul says : " He that resisteth the power resisteth the 
 ordinance of God." " The powers that be are ordained of 
 God." That is substantially the New Testament doctrine. 
 The powers that be are manifestations of the will of God, 
 and resistance to tyranny and injury of any kind is un- 
 christian. Yet look back down the pathway of the ages up 
 which our ancestors have trod, leading to the grand ideas 
 of freedom and civilization which we hold to-day. See the 
 barons at Runnymede demanding from King John the con- 
 cessions of the Magna Charta. The influence of the New 
 
172 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 Testament would have been on the side of the weak-minded, 
 vacillating, unscrupulous, tyrannous John. Come down to 
 the period of the Commonwealth, and see Cromwell with his 
 Roundheads fighting against King Charles. The old Eng- 
 lish Church was only logical when, after the death of the 
 king and the restoration, at the end of CromwelPs rule, it 
 inserted a special passage in the Book of Common Prayer 
 in memory of the blessed saint and martyr King Charles. 
 The Puritans,*according to the New Testament ethics, were 
 wrong in resisting the divine right and authority of the king. 
 We were wrong at the time of the Revolution. The French 
 were wrong when they threw off the mountainous tyranny 
 of ages, and stood up at last free men. Do you know the 
 world has come to the vantage-ground of civilization by not 
 being literally obedient to the Sermon on the Mount? Men 
 have reasoned, out of their own experience, laws of right 
 and truth which have been spoken of God through the 
 mouthpiece of the events of the time ; and these have super- 
 seded any teachings that preceded them. 
 
 I must touch one other point. The dominant teaching of 
 the New Testament was other-worldly. It cast slight and 
 contempt on this life, the flesh, and everything concerning 
 it. Of course, then, there was no place in it for anything 
 like that spirit of truth, that spirit of investigation into 
 natural phenomena and forces, such as have come to grand 
 embodiment in the modern science of the world. The 
 teaching of the New Testament is that faith is one of the 
 highest virtues. When Jesus reappeared to his disciples, 
 Thomas did what any one would do to-day : he asked proof 
 of a stupendous miracle. And — though Jesus forgives him, 
 forgives him for a virtue — he is represented as saying to 
 him, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have 
 believed." Blessed are those who shut their eyes, and 
 
The Morality of the Bible. 173 
 
 accept that which is given them as truth. We want no such 
 blessing in the modern world. The experience of the civ- 
 ilized world is crowning doubt among the virtues, placing it 
 as high as faith. It is just as much a duty to doubt a thing 
 that is not true or proved as to believe a thing that is 
 proved. This spirit, then, of modern investigation, of de- 
 manding credentials of that which claims to be truth, of 
 investigating nature, her laws and forces, recognizing the 
 fact that it is by knowing what these are and getting into 
 right relations with them that the noblest civilization of the 
 world is built up, — this whole scale of virtues, so to speak, 
 on which so large a part of the best things in the world 
 depend, are not New Testament virtues at all. This is some- 
 thing that the modern world has developed since that day, 
 something that could not have been known then because 
 the world had not then attained its majority, and was not 
 free to look over the universe for itself. 
 
 The New Testament, then, does not contain, it seems to 
 me, a final, perfectly developed system of ethical teaching. 
 I wish not to criticise it or to find fault with it. I have not 
 a word of fault to find with it, judged by the standard of the 
 age and time. Do not understand me as attempting to pick 
 flaws in the character and teachings of Jesus. I only say 
 that the first century is not the nineteenth ; that God is alive, 
 and has been alive for nineteen hundred years ; and, if the 
 world has made any progress, it is perfectly natural that we 
 should be in advance of the people who lived nearly two 
 thousand years ago. That is infidelity, that is lack of faith 
 in God, that takes the ground that the world is not making 
 any progress ; that in two thousand years we have done 
 nothing and come to nothing, but have been simply running 
 around in a little circle, ending where we began. I believe 
 in the theory of the divine Life and its relation to this 
 
174 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 world that teaches us that God is perpetually before us as 
 Leader ; that the new experiences which he gives us in each 
 generation of time give new conceptions of right and wrong, 
 higher views of God and man and duty, something nobler 
 and better than the world has ever seen until to-day. 
 
 Were it in the' line of my theme, and had I time, I should 
 love to dwell upon the other side, to point out what I regard 
 as original, grand, and permanent in the ethics of Jesus. 
 But I have had another object this morning, — that of test- 
 ing the perfection of the New Testament teachings. And I 
 ask that what I have said may be judged in the light of 
 that purpose. 
 
The Present Use and Worth of the Bible. 
 
 No one who is familiar with the results of modern criti- 
 cism, scientific investigation, and historic research, can pos- 
 sibly hereafter hold the same theory concerning the Bible 
 which has so long dominated the brain and the conscience 
 of the world. The Bible has come down, in one sense, from 
 that lofty pedestal of power and unique supremacy on which 
 it has stood ; and it must henceforth take its place, to be 
 judged by the same rules of criticism, along with all the 
 other sacred literatures of the world. That is not by any 
 means saying that the other sacred literatures of the world 
 are as good as the Bible. When I say that one of the Cali- 
 fornia big trees is to be studied in precisely the same way 
 as an ordinary pine-tree or wayside shrub, that it is just as 
 natural as they, that it has developed according to precisely 
 the same methods, and is to be studied after the same prin- 
 ciples of botany and of vegetable growth, I do not say that 
 the California tree is no higher, no grander, no more won- 
 drous than the wayside shrub. The Bible takes its place 
 alongside all the other literatures of the world ; and it will 
 demonstrate its fitness to stand above them, overlooking 
 them, grander, higher than they, provided it is fitted to 
 occupy this position. And this certainly is all that any be- 
 liever in it can rationally desire. The Bible can no longer 
 be regarded as an infallible inspiration concerning religious 
 
176 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 truth. It can no longer be regarded as an ultimate standard 
 of judgment concerning ethics. It is no longer scientific au- 
 thority. It is no longer unimpeachable as an historic record 
 of a people whose life it details through the course of so 
 many changing centuries. 
 
 What then ? Are we reduced to the alternative that has 
 been so many times held up for us, — the whole Bible ac- 
 cording to the old ideas of it, or nothing ? Are we to wor- 
 ship the Bible, or else fling it to the rubbish-heap ? Must we 
 read it as infallible all the way through, from cover to cover, 
 or else never read it at all ? Is it treating it as God's word in 
 «very sentence, phrase, and letter, or else as no longer worth 
 the attention of rational men ? I am perfectly well aware, 
 as are you, that this alternative is very commonly pointed 
 out to us, and we are expected to choose the one or the 
 other. For my part, I decline to be thrust through by either 
 iiorn of such an unreasonable dilemma. 
 
 There are two main questions that I want to ask you to 
 consider with me this morning. Has this change which has 
 come over the position and estimate of the Bible been pro- 
 ductive of loss or gain to the modern world ? This is the 
 first question. That is, are we richer or poorer than we 
 were as the result of criticism concerning the Bible ? 
 
 The next question is, Of what use and value is this Bible 
 to the man who looks upon it simply as human literature, 
 developed according to the laws of the other literatures of 
 the world ? 
 
 I. Take these two questions in their order. We are per- 
 petually told that, if we give up the Bible, — and by giving 
 up the Bible is meant giving up a particular theory about it 
 and a particular use of it, — we have lost all hope, all ground- 
 work for religion, ail basis for ethics, all reason for belief 
 and trust in God, all ground for hope in a future life. The 
 
Present Use and Worth. 177 
 
 warning cry is constantly rung in our ears that it must be the 
 old theory of the Bible in its entirety, or else blank religious 
 and moral darkness, "without God and without hope in the 
 world." So far from accepting this, I am one of those who 
 believe that the modern conception of the Bible is a distinct 
 and definite gain to the world ; and I propose to show you 
 why I think so in two or three simple particulars. 
 
 In the first place, he who holds this modern conception 
 of the book is relieved from the burden that the intellect 
 and the conscience of the enlightened modern world is find- 
 ing too heavy to bear. We are no longer under obligations 
 to defend that which is intellectually indefensible. We are 
 no longer under obligation to apologize for that which 
 certainly needs apology, if the rational intellect of the w r orld 
 is to be trusted. 
 
 Let me point out just what I mean in one or two directions. 
 He who holds to the infallibility of the Bible and holds his 
 conception of religion in that kind of framework is perpetu- 
 ally challenged in this direction or that. If he goes to a 
 man and says, " I want you to accept my religion, to become 
 religious according to my ideas," the man to whom he speaks 
 will be certain to say, if he be one who has doubted the 
 infallibility of the Bible, " Must I believe the Biblical account 
 of the creation of the world, which has been demonstrated 
 to be false ? " What answer can the old type of Bible apolo- 
 gist make to a challenge of this sort ? No answer, except to 
 say: "You must forego the use of your intellect; you must 
 give up the result of modern knowledge ; you must shut your 
 eyes, and accept that which the best knowledge of the world 
 declares to be untrue. You must do this, or you cannot be a 
 lover and follower of God. You cannot be, in the highest 
 and truest sense of the word, 'religious/" In other words, 
 the man occupying the old traditional stand-point must forego 
 
178 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 intellect, knowledge, and brain ; distrust them ; leave them 
 one side, wondering why God ever gave them to man. That 
 is only one illustration. 
 
 Again, the doubter who would be religious, and who would 
 also like to keep his brains, if he may, beginning with the 
 first chapter of Genesis, will run all the way through, and 
 will say: "What about the incredible story of the exodus of 
 the Israelites from Egypt, intellectually incredible, morally 
 indefensible? What about the conquest of Canaan; the 
 shaking down of city walls at the sound of a ram's horn 
 blown by the people ; the staying of the sun in the heavens 
 until the end of a battle can be reached? What about 
 human sacrifice ? What about the cruelty and immorality 
 of a man like David, still said to be a man after God's own 
 heart ? What about the genealogies of the New Testament ? 
 What about its stupendous miracles that no one can explain ? 
 What about the prophecies of the immediate coming of the 
 kingdom from the Master's own lips, and as yet unfulfilled ? " 
 I speak of these things to indicate the kind of intellectual 
 and moral burden, the load, that rests upon a man who 
 attaches his religion to the old conception of the Bible, who 
 must defend all these things ; for they cannot be defended 
 in the court of reason. He must either do this, or he must 
 forego the use of his intellect, shut his eyes, and accept 
 whatever is given. He must torture and twist texts out of 
 their natural meaning, until there is wrought into the very 
 fibre of his intellectual and moral nature the warp and woof 
 of uncertainty, of deception, of unreality, and he questions 
 whether words in their connections anywhere mean really 
 what they say, getting into a state of mind like that of the 
 clergyman who said to me the other day, " If my people 
 understood what I say as I understand it, they would not 
 listen to me for a week." I think it is a grand gain to be 
 
Present Use and Worth, 179 
 
 able to throw off this burden, which 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 obligation to shut 
 one's eyes or to stop one's thinking. 
 
 Akin to this is another point, in some respects sufficiently 
 important to make it worthy of separate mention. The 
 world is set intellectually free by this modern conception 
 of the Bible. He who holds the old ideas may claim to be 
 intellectually free; but it is only the claim of a man who, 
 shut within certain definite but very narrow limits, proclaims 
 that he is perfectly free, because he does not choose to step 
 outside of those limits. But, if the time ever comes when 
 he wishes to step outside, then the bondage becomes irksome 
 and unbearable. I remember my own experience, when I 
 was studying theology in the seminary. I was told to study 
 with perfect freedom, to make excursions through the uni- 
 verse wherever I would, through science, philosophy, criti- 
 cism, history ; but I knew all the while that there was a law, 
 unuttered, which made it perfectly certain that if, after my 
 excursions, I did not come back and settle down within these 
 definite narrow limits, I was banned, excluded from the 
 fellowship of those with whom I had been friends, whom I 
 had learned to love, and who, as I believed, and as I was 
 taught to believe, possessed the final and ultimate truth of 
 God. I say it is a grand gain to set the human intellect free 
 in this regard. 
 
 According to the old ideas, when Copernicus began to 
 study the nature of this universe, he was trespassing on 
 dangerous ground ; for the minute that he found out that it 
 did not accord with the Biblical story, that moment he was 
 infidel and outcast. His system of demonstrated truth was 
 opposed by all those who claimed officially to represent God 
 on earth. When Magellan, starting on his voyage of dis- 
 
l8o Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 covery around the world, declared that he believed the earth 
 was round, because he noticed that its shadow cast on the 
 face of the moon during an eclipse had a circular outline, he 
 was taking his stand on the reality of the universe that God 
 had made ; but he was a rebel against God's church, God's 
 book, God's infallible, revealed truth, according to all the 
 standards of the time. He was not free, except by making 
 himself outcast and infidel. And so, when Darwin, tracing 
 through long years the problem as to the origin and nature 
 of man, comes to the conclusion that the Eden story is not 
 true, what must he do ? He must either assert the liberty of 
 thought, and dare to look God's universe in the face, and 
 ask it questions, and listen to receive its answer, or he must 
 shut his eyes to what he knew was the truth, and bend his 
 intellectual hands and feet to the wearing of spiritual chains. 
 
 "There is no freedom, there can be no freedom, of intellect in 
 the face of a system that claims to be absolutely infallible, 
 unquestionably true. 
 
 /It is, then, a grand gain to set the mind of the world free. 
 For note you this : if the teaching of this claimed infallible 
 system be true, then God's universe must be in accord with 
 it ; and ultimate search, deepest investigation, can only con- 
 firm it. Why, then, any need of the claimed infallibility? 
 Here, then, is another distinct and definite and grand gain. 
 There is one more that I must mention, which is even 
 more magnificent, if possible, than either of these, because it 
 touches the heart, the life, the hope, of man. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the outlook over this world, 
 this changing scene of human history. One who occupies 
 the old stand-point, what must he believe ? He must believe 
 that the silent God sat in the heavens uttering never a word 
 or a warning for thousands of years ; that at the last he 
 selects one family, leaving all the rest of the world to wander 
 
 
Present Use and Worth, 181 
 
 and perish. He selects one little family, and reveals to the 
 founder of this family a hint of something to come in a far- 
 off time. Then, ages go by. This little family grows \ but 
 its light extends nowhere beyond its own limits. Age after 
 age goes by, and the great outlying thousands and millions of 
 the world are still perishing, and no word of warning is 
 uttered, no hand reached out to lift them up or help. By 
 and by there comes another who claims, or on whose behalf 
 the claim is made, that he is the very God of the universe, 
 himself come down to earth in the form of a man who lives 
 and dies. His church is founded, and Christian history 
 begins. Eighteen hundred years, and almost another cen- 
 tury, have gone by, and not a third of the wide world yet has 
 heard the message that God has spoken, or has felt the 
 touch of his hand thrilling with love and help. On this 
 
 (theory, it seems to me that God's dealing with this world, if 
 he was in earnest, and if he meant to save it, is the most 
 stupendous failure that human history has to record. But, 
 on this other theory, what ? 
 
 We are able to believe that this book is one among other 
 books \ our religion one among other religions, — all of them 
 equally natural, equally divine except in degree ; that, in 
 every case, all these people were God's children, and that, in 
 what little light they had, they were following after God, if 
 haply they might find him ; that, with stammering lip or not 
 fully uttered expression, they were giving vent to their 
 thoughts, their hopes, their feelings, their fears, reaching out 
 and up after the divine ; that God's light has flooded the 
 earth from the beginning, shining into the brains and the 
 hearts of men, just as fast and as far as those hearts and 
 those brains were capable of receiving it; that all men 
 thus are God's children, and that all of them have been 
 guided and led, — never for a moment forsaken, never for a 
 
1 82 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 moment forgotten ; each one in his own dialect uttering his 
 hopes and aspirations, and reaching out and finding God. 
 We are able to believe, on this theory, that Pope was right 
 when he wrote his grand universal prayer : — 
 
 "Father of all ! in every age, 
 In every clime adored, 
 By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! . . . 
 
 " To Thee, whose temple is all space, 
 Whose altar, earth, sea, skies, 
 One chorus let all beings raise, 
 All nature's incense rise ! " 
 
 We are able to believe, for the first time in human history, 
 that, when we utter the words, " Our Father, who art in 
 heaven," they have a world-wide, universal, all-humanity- 
 embracing meaning. They are a mockery on the other 
 theory. For, if that be true, God has chosen, as his children, 
 a few, no better than the rest, judged by human stand- 
 ards, and has left the others, like sheep without a shepherd, 
 to wander in the wilderness and be devoured by wild beasts 
 at their will. These seem to me some grand reasons why we 
 may count the modern change of theory concerning the 
 Bible a great gain instead of a loss. 
 
 II. But it is time for me to turn to my second question, 
 and indicate to you three or four of the uses which the Bible 
 may well have for us who have given up the old theories 
 concerning it. In the first place, curiously enough, it seems 
 to be imagined by those who have held to the old ideas that 
 a religious truth ceases to be truth at all, unless it is backed 
 up by an infallible inspiration. How do we find out what 
 is truth ? We find it out by experience, do we not ? If it 
 were infallibly revealed to men that corn is wholesome to 
 
Present Use and Worth. 183 
 
 eat, would it add anything to the fact discovered by human 
 experience ? Suppose it were recorded in a claimed infal- 
 lible inspiration that corn was poison, experience would 
 demonstrate that it was not. In either case, the revelation 
 would be worth nothing concerning such a thing. Any 
 revelation concerning the practical welfare of men would 
 mean nothing to us, until we had lived it out by practical 
 experience. We find out what is wholesome by testing 
 it: we find out poison by testing that. We find out all 
 the facts of human life in the same way. The methods by 
 which conduct ought to be ordered in the relations of man 
 with man, — social, political, commercial truths, — these are 
 discovered by experience. Those who reject these truths 
 ultimately go to the wall, crushed by them, because they are 
 a part of the eternal ongoing of the resistless universe that 
 has God's omnipotence at its heart. The truth, then, that 
 the Bible contains remains true on any theory, and it will 
 always be valuable as a part of the food and as part of the 
 mental and moral stimulus and inspiration of man. For 
 
 " Not all the critics can crush with their ban 
 One word that is true to the nature of man." 
 
 In the next place, for many centuries yet, I know not how 
 long, the Bible is going to have a grand advantage over all 
 the other books of the world by reason of the sacred memo- 
 ries, the splendid associations that have clustered about it 
 in the past, and will cluster about it for ages yet to come. 
 What do I mean by this ? Do you not know, as you look 
 over the past of your own lives, that many and many a time 
 a truth has been uttered in your ears that on some other 
 occasion, in the midst of other circumstances, would seem to 
 you commonplace enough, a simple truth, abstract as a 
 statement of a principle in algebra, perhaps, so far as it is 
 
184 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 concerned, one that you may have heard before and may 
 have heard many times since ; and yet, in your experience, 
 it is set quite apart, surrounded by a halo of sacred light, 
 having a meaning that it could not have had but for the fact 
 that it is linked in your memory with some of the sacred 
 associations of the past, with some epoch hour of your life? 
 It was the word, perhaps, that mother spoke to you when 
 you were a little boy at her knee ; the word that father 
 uttered when you left home for the last time ; the word that 
 some brother or sister may have spoken on their sick-bed, 
 just before they faded away into the silence, — some word that 
 comes to you with a power beyond itself, linked with mem- 
 ory, with experience, and that has for you all the added 
 weight of this sacred association. Now, the Bible, as no 
 other book, has this hold in our sympathies and on our 
 hearts. The Bible to most of us, whatever our creed may 
 be, is bound up with the memories of childhood and mother 
 and home. Some words from the Bible are connected with 
 them, or with that hour which we do not remember, but of 
 which we have been told, when we were consecrated by the 
 noble and well-intended aspirations of our parents. Some 
 words from the Bible are linked with the marriage service, 
 that has changed for better or worse the whole after years 
 of our life. Some words from the Bible are linked with 
 those last sad funeral hours in which we have laid away 
 those that we learned for so many years to love. The Bible 
 is bound up as is no other book with the sacred and tender 
 associations of our past. 
 
 Then, again, on a larger than a merely personal scale, what 
 other book is there that is so woven into that province of the 
 world's civilization to which we belong? We cannot read 
 of any of the great epochs of English achievement, of Amer- 
 ican advancement, without seeing that some words from the 
 
Present Use and Worth. 185 
 
 Eible played their part in the victory or the defeat. No one 
 can read of Cromwell, of the Puritans, of the development 
 of liberty in England, without seeing that the Bible was 
 there, some of its grand words being the mainspring and 
 inspiration of some of the noblest of all those movements. 
 
 Then, the Bible is associated with much of the grandest 
 art of the world, with its music, with all that is noblest and 
 finest in our civilization. Whatever theory we hold of it, 
 that makes no difference. These are the facts. It is pos- 
 sible, in a sense in which it is true and can be true of no 
 other book, that this is the book of Christendom ; and it 
 will always occupy a unique position and have a unique 
 and grand influence, — all the grander influence because we 
 will be able to sift out the gold, weaving it into beautiful 
 ornaments and implements of noble use, leaving the debris 
 and the worthless material to find its own place. 
 
 There is another point that seems to me of a good deal 
 of importance. You will notice, as I conduct these services 
 from Sunday to Sunday, that there are large parts of the 
 Bible that I do not read. I select chapters or parts of 
 chapters from both the Old Testament and the New, but I 
 cannot read it indiscriminately. Large parts of it I pass by. 
 For what reason? Simply because I wish to be perfectly- 
 frank and open as to what I believe, and because I do not 
 choose to spend half my morning, after I have read a 
 passage, in telling you that I do not believe it literally, and 
 in explaining to you in what sense I do take it. The time 
 will come, when we have passed through this transition hour, 
 when the results of the criticism of the Bible have been 
 settled, when the thoughts of men have found their place, — 
 the time will come, I say, when I shall be able to read any 
 part of this Bible from the pulpit, and not be misunderstood. 
 I shall not be understood to believe a miracle, because I read 
 
1 86 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 the account of it. I shall not be understood to accept as 
 history an Old Testament legend, because I read it as a 
 lesson. I can read from any other part of the literature of 
 the world, and people understand me. I can draw out the 
 lessons, beautiful and rich with human associations, from 
 any legendary lore of the world, outside of the Bible, and 
 never be misunderstood. The time will come when I can 
 use the Bible in the same way ; and, when I can, I shall find, 
 and you will find, that there is no book in the world so rich 
 in human instruction as is this book. Legend, allegory, 
 miracle, parable, — all wrought and woven through and through 
 with the texture and color of human experience, — I shall be 
 able to use them with a force that pertains to no abstract 
 truth. It requires a high order of intellect to deal with 
 abstract truth, pure and colorless. To illustrate in a concrete 
 way what I mean : I remember that Mr. Collyer was one 
 day telling me that he repeated a certain sermon to his 
 people ; and, as he was coming out, one of them said, " I 
 remember perfectly well that you have preached that sermon 
 before." Mr. Collyer replied, "I have no doubt of it; but, 
 if I had only happened to think to leave out the story of the 
 little dog, you never would have remembered it in the world." 
 This carries the principle that illustration or a story, some- 
 thing concrete, something that touches human life, something 
 that has the flavor of human experience about it, fixes itself 
 in the memory. It is carried where abstract truth is lost and 
 forgotten. 
 
 By and by, the time will come when I shall be able to read 
 you the story of the cruse of oil that was an inexhaustible 
 fountain from which the widow could pour and pour without 
 refilling it, and I shall be able out of that to deduce grand 
 lessons that are ideally true, whatever may be said concern- 
 ing the outer shell that encloses them. The miracle of turn- 
 
Present Use and Worth, 187 
 
 ing the water into wine at Cana of Galilee, — do you not see 
 how at the heart of it there is a great universal human truth? 
 Are there not experiences in the lives of us all, when the 
 presence of some superior man or woman, the word of some 
 superior wisdom, touches the commonplace of our lives, and 
 transmutes them into gold? The story of the transfigura- 
 tion, — do we not all climb up on heights of mountain out- 
 look where our faces are transfigured, where they shine with 
 a light they never knew before, and where we enter into 
 communion, as did the disciples with Moses and Elias, with 
 the great, the heroic of all the past, and where we enter into 
 a new range of experience, something higher than we should 
 be able to maintain as the ordinary level of life? These just 
 as hints of what a storehouse of wealth for human lessons 
 this old Bible will be, when we are able to read it with 
 untrammelled intellect, and without stopping to think of 
 critical questions of truth and untruth. 
 
 One thing more. The Bible must forever have one use 
 and meaning that is true concerning it in a sense that is true 
 of no other book. As far as my acquaintance with sacred 
 literature extends, the Bible contains the most complete and 
 finished religious biography in the world. That is, it traces, 
 from the very earliest forms of the religious life, the origin, 
 the birth, the growth, the development, the mistakes, the 
 faults, the failures, the decline and fall of a great race relig- 
 ion. What is the use of that ? 
 
 Let me illustrate a moment, to make it clear to you. A 
 physician, if he wishes to know how to treat a well man to 
 keep him well, or a sick man in order to cure his disease, 
 must know, as far as possible, all that pertains to the birth, 
 the growth, the disease, the health, the decay, and the death 
 of a man ; and so he starts with the little primal germ, and 
 traces the physical life of man all the way through, and 
 
1 88 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 this becomes to him a perpetual lesson, a storehouse of 
 knowledge, a guide in the practical experience of his every- 
 day life. We read the biography of a man ; and, if we are 
 wise, we extract from it lessons as to how to live. If the 
 man has been faulty, if he has made mistakes, if he has 
 wandered this way or that, all the better for us, as far 
 as the instructiveness of that biography is concerned. If 
 we are dealing with a chart that shows us the navigation 
 of a dangerous 'coast, we do not want simply to know that 
 here is an open channel : we want signals to indicate the 
 places where wrecks have gone down. And so again, in 
 regard to the religious books and biographies of the world, 
 we need to know the mistakes, the faults, the wanderings, 
 all that pertains to the religious experience of the race. We 
 want to know it as a part of our text-book. As one more 
 illustration, more commensurate with the theme, let me 
 ask, What is the use to-day of reading Gibbon, the decline 
 and fall of a great empire ? Of supplementing that with all 
 that can be known of the early times of Rome, of the time 
 when it was a dominant force on the earth? Why, the 
 history of that race is a perpetual storehouse of instruction 
 for statesmen, for politicians, for all those who are interested 
 for the social and political welfare of man. So, if you can 
 give us a complete text-book that shall teach us concerning 
 the origin of a great scheme of religious thought concern- 
 ing God and man, you have given us a book that at all times 
 shall act as warning, as instruction, as inspiration, as light, 
 as guidance. And so the Bible, being the completest biogra- 
 phy of the religious life of a race, must always, in the thought 
 of any intelligent and serious man, occupy a unique and 
 wonderful position, and maintain its influence as light and 
 guidance for centuries. 
 
 Is there to be a loss of reverence and real religiousness in 
 
Present Use and Worth, 189 
 
 the world springing out of and flowing from this change ? I 
 cannot believe it. It used to be supposed, and it was taught 
 for ages, that it was impossible to train and maintain a spirit 
 of loyalty on the part of a people, unless there was a visible 
 symbol of that loyalty in king and sceptre and throne. And 
 thousands of well-meaning men have fought for monarchy, 
 because they believed that these outward and visible symbols 
 were necessary to keep alive the spirit of loyalty and devo- 
 tion. But have we not proved that that fear was vain ? Has 
 there ever been in the history of the world a grander devel- 
 opment of loyalty, a more wide-spread devotion to it, a more 
 unselfish outpouring of life than we have shown without 
 either sceptre or throne or king ? Have we not learned, as 
 the result of human experience, that all the happiness of 
 man, his welfare, his prosperity, are bound up with law-keep- 
 ing and with order? We recognize all the great principles 
 that underlie these things. And, though it be only an ideal, 
 having no outward embodiment unless it be in a flag, still we 
 are ready to pay to it our utmost devotion of heart and life. 
 And so I believe concerning this Bible. Whatever theory 
 goes up or down, taken as a fact, religion is a part of the 
 experience of the world, it is the tidal wave which lifts the 
 aspiring heart of man toward the stars. 
 
 It is the result of human experience. And this demon- 
 strates its utility, its power, its grasp on the heart and the 
 brain of the world ; and, on the basis of this, we may expect 
 it will forever abide. 
 
 The Bible, then, may be left to hold its own place. The 
 religiousness, the reverence, the loyalty, the love, the aspira- 
 tion of man will not only remain, but will go on, and grow 
 and broaden till they become not only parts, but the very 
 heart and soul, of all that is noble in human civilization. 
 
THE ETERNAL BIBLE. 
 
 Whatever theory we may hold concerning the universe 
 of which we are a part and in which we live, it is still true 
 that, when we analyze the word to learn its most abstract and 
 general definition, we find that human life consists of a series 
 of actions and reactions between the individual and his 
 environment. You will find, if you will take the trouble to 
 think it out more particularly than I have time to illustrate 
 it this morning, that, in whatever direction you start, whether 
 you deal with man in his social relations, as a business man, 
 as an artist, or what not, that this abstract statement which 
 I have made covers the entire truth. Life consists in a 
 series of actions and reactions between man and the uni- 
 verse. And a successful life, as distinguished from any 
 other kind, depends entirely upon the question whether man 
 perceives the right relations in which he ought to stand to 
 these forces and powers all around him and with which he 
 deals. The commercial man, for example, if he rightly 
 apprehends the problem given him to solve, and is capable 
 of dealing with it, will be a successful merchant. The law- 
 yer, if he rightly apprehends the points of the case given him 
 to manage, and has intelligence and force to mould and 
 shape his case in accordance with what he perceives, will 
 succeed. And so in any other department of human life. 
 And this right relation, or the perception of this right rela- 
 tion, in which man stands, or ought to stand, to the forms 
 
The Eternal Bible. 191 
 
 and forces of the universe about him, is what we mean by 
 the word " truth." If you will analyze it carefully, you will 
 find that truth has just this meaning and no other. A truth 
 of thought is simply my way of stating the fact that the 
 external reality with which I am dealing corresponds to the 
 thought that I have already in my brain. If, for example, 
 I take a flower in my hand, it impresses me as possessing 
 a certain shape, a certain color, a certain fragrance. If my 
 perception is correct, — that is, if I see the real relation 
 between that flower and my brain, — I see the truth concern- 
 ing it. The truth, then, in any direction, so far as man's 
 thought is concerned, is only the establishment of perfect 
 correspondence between the thought and the thing. A prac- 
 tical truth, as apart from this abstract truth, is simply a per- 
 ception and establishment of right relations between man's 
 active faculties and the external world with which he deals. 
 Now, how does man discover this truth ? Is there more 
 than one way ? I believe that truth always, everywhere, in 
 all cases, has been discovered, is being discovered to-day, 
 and must be discovered forever, through the process of 
 human experience ; for truth pertains to the nature of 
 things. It is a part of our life, of the relationship in which 
 we stand to the forms and forces of the universe about us. 
 To talk of truth away off somewhere in the depths of the 
 universe, that does not touch us, that does not come into 
 relation with us in any way, that has nothing to do practi- 
 cally with our life or thinking, is to talk of nothing. There 
 is no truth for man apart from this truth of perception and 
 practical relationship in which he stands to the life of things 
 around him. Men talk of truth as if it were a sort of entity 
 stored up somewhere outside of the world, that could be 
 injected into it from without, as if it were something outside 
 of the nature of things that could be given to men, as 
 
192 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 though it were a commodity placed in their hands, as though 
 it were a light that could be shed abroad over the earth from 
 outside, as though it were a series of propositions that 
 could be put into men's brains and hearts from some exter- 
 nal source. 
 
 If I have made you apprehend clearly the very abstract 
 thought with which I began, that truth is simply a part of 
 the nature of things, that "t consists essentially in the 
 relation in which we stand to the forms and forces that 
 are around us, you will see the absurdity of supposing that 
 either God or man could bring truth from the outside, and 
 put it into the universe or into human life. The only way by 
 which men ever did apprehend or ever can apprehend truth 
 is as the result of their own experience in dealing with these 
 forms and forces with which we come into relation day by 
 day, year after year, and age after age. 
 
 Truth, then, always and everywhere, is the result of 
 human experience. There is no other method by which we 
 can possibly come into possession of it. The amount of 
 truth which any race, any people, will possess at any given 
 stage of their experience or progress, will depend, of course, 
 upon the character of that people, upon their intelligence, 
 and upon the range of their experience. It is also true, in 
 every race and in every period of the world's history, that 
 there is some one man or a group of men or a few men 
 scattered here and there, who possess a clearer insight, a 
 keener perception, a broader power of generalization, than is 
 possessed by the common mass of busy people engaged in 
 the practical concerns of life. And these keener, more 
 thoughtful men, those that have the clearer insight, what will 
 they do? They wfil not be able to discover or formulate 
 any truth that has not been experienced by the race to 
 which they belong, but they will be able to see more clearly 
 
The Eternal Bible. 193 
 
 that which others dimly feel. They will be able to interpret 
 in language that which the mass of the people have partially 
 apprehended, but to which they have never been able to 
 give expression. Just as you say, when you are listening 
 to a man, " He is giving expression to what I have been 
 '""feeling after, and half-perceived, for years, but have never 
 been able to put into words " ; so precisely these seers, these 
 prophets, these leading men of the world, are able to 
 condense, to crystallize, so to speak, to give outline and 
 form and expression to that which the mass of their fellow- 
 men have experienced and dimly felt. And because this 
 truth that the seers of the world have perceived and 
 expressed seems to the mass of the people so wonderful, 
 so much above what they themselves feel capable of saying 
 or clearly apprehending or expressing, we find — and this is 
 true all over the world, in every clime, among every people 
 — that, when these truths of human experience have thus 
 been formulated and expressed, the mass of the people have 
 looked upon them with so much wonder and reverence that 
 they have come to believe that they are a divine revelation, 
 something let down from above, something coming out of 
 the sky. They have not been able to understand that such 
 marvellous truths concerning the universe and human life, 
 such wonderful speculations concerning God and the future, 
 could possibly have sprung out of the common experience of 
 common men. So they have told themselves stories and 
 invented fairy tales of how these seers and prophets have 
 had special ways of access to and intercourse with teachers 
 higher than human. In this way have grown up stories of 
 divine and supernatural revelations of systems of truth. 
 In each case, this supposed divine and supernatural system 
 has only been the fragment of truth which this particular 
 people, up to this particular point in the line of its develop- 
 
194 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 ment, has experienced or been able to put into formal 
 expression. 
 
 Two or three results which have been repeated over and 
 over again in the history of the world now come into view. 
 When any particular people has made up its mind that it has 
 received from the gods, or their god, a special, supernatural 
 revelation of truth, then what ? Two results in almost every 
 case have followed, — results perfectly natural and springing 
 out of the circumstances in which they found themselves 
 placed. They have received, they think, a divine, super- 
 natural revelation of truth. The next step is that they per- 
 suade themselves that they have all the truth there is, — all 
 the truth, at any rate, that men need or ever will need ; and 
 so they close their book, their Bible, or revelation, and say, 
 Here, we have a sure and complete compendium of divine 
 truth concerning the origin of this universe, of nature, of 
 God, his purposes toward man, and all that pertains to the 
 future of human destiny. The Mohammedan caliph is re- 
 ported to have said concerning the Alexandrian Library : " If 
 these books agree with the Koran, we do not need them ; if 
 not, they are false. So, in any case, let them be destroyed. ,, 
 
 Along with this there always comes a certain spiritual 
 pride, a certain religious self-conceit j and the people fancy 
 that they must be special favorites of heaven, — and why 
 not ? If God has singled me out from all the thousands 
 and millions of the world, if he has come in person to me, 
 or sent a special messenger to me to tell me his secret, why 
 should I not feel lifted up above the level of the ordinary 
 run of my fellow-men ? If, instead of its being one person, 
 it is a race, precisely the same effect will follow ; and so we 
 do find, as a matter of history, that one race after another, 
 in the past, has fancied that it has received this divine reve- 
 lation, that it possesses a complete system of eternal truth j 
 
The Eternal Bible, 195 
 
 and, as the next step, it fancies that it is the favorite of God, 
 a chosen people, set apart, selected out of all the nations, 
 and made the depositary of the divine truth. 
 
 And then what ? Another natural step follows upon the 
 heels of this. One of two things this people will do in such 
 circumstances. They will either build a Chinese wall of 
 exclusiveness around themselves, and look over the rest 
 of the world and down upon it with scorn and contempt, 
 neglect it, fold their arms in a sort of conceited content, and 
 leave it to go its own way to destruction, regarding everybody 
 but their own people as outside barbarians, while they live in 
 the centre of the world and under the very dome of heaven; 
 or else they will regard themselves as a missionary people, 
 to whom this truth has been committed and upon whom has 
 been imposed the duty of bringing all the rest of the world, 
 either by persuasion or force, into subjugation to their ideas. 
 We find that different religions have illustrated both types. 
 Take the Chinese, for example. They occupy the Central 
 Flowery Kingdom, and all the rest of the world are outside 
 barbarians. They never think of sending out missionaries. 
 It seems to them a matter of slight importance whether the 
 rest possess the truth or not, or what their destiny in the 
 future may be. 
 
 On the other hand, take the Buddhists, the Christians, 
 the Mohammedans. They have considered themselves as 
 divinely commissioned to proselyte all the rest of the world. 
 They have sent out missionaries to compel them to come in. 
 If they would not come in as the result of persuasion, they 
 felt they must force them ; as the Mohammedans wrote their 
 short creed — Allah is Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet 
 — on the point of the sword ; thus, if in no other way, thrust- 
 ing it down the throat or into the hearts of their enemies. 
 
 Thus, each people has taken its fragment of truth, and 
 
196 Beliefs about the Bible, 
 
 supposed it to be the divine and complete system of religion. 
 It has written its Bible, and supposed that here was the 
 closed canon of the revelation of God, that they and they 
 alone were the depositaries of eternal truth. This belief 
 could very easily be held by any nation, as long as it was 
 isolated, as long as the nations knew very little of each 
 other, as long as there was no possibility of frequent com- 
 munication all-over the world. It is only within fifty years, 
 perhaps, that some of these great systems of religion have 
 been opened up to the thought and life of the modern world. 
 As long as each people stayed at home and knew very little 
 about its neighbors, it could very comfortably maintain its 
 self-conceit, and suppose that it was the only civilized people, 
 the only one that had any respectable religious ideas, the 
 only one that had any noble principles of ethics, the only 
 one that had ever received any light from heaven or under- 
 stood the mysteries of God. But a change must come to 
 any state like this. How does it come ? As I have indi- 
 cated. The one source of truth is experience, and the new 
 movement comes as the result of deepened, broadened, 
 enlarged human experience. These nations living quietly 
 by themselves, so exclusive in their selfish content, have been 
 compelled to become acquainted with each other. 
 
 War has done something toward this larger civilization. 
 For, when nations fight with each other and come into the 
 rough shock of conflict, they learn the stuff of which this 
 other people is made ; and there comes to them a larger 
 sympathy of humanity, a larger feeling of the common ele- 
 ments of greatness, a larger appreciation of the fact that 
 they are not the only people in the world, but that there are 
 others, wise and mighty and strong as they. 
 
 Commerce has done more even than war ; for it has cov- 
 ered all the seas with ships, and men have gone to and fro, 
 
The Eternal Bible. 197 
 
 discovering the common brotherhood of humanity, finding 
 similar religious and intellectual ideas, similar ethical prin- 
 ciples. They have brought home the story; and so these 
 ideas have been scattered from one nation to another, thus 
 becoming the common property of civilization. 
 
 Discovery and scientific investigation have done something, 
 for they have sent their explorers all over the world to study 
 the history of these alien civilizations, their literature, their 
 religious and moral ideas ; and, thus, they have given us a 
 grander and broader conception of men, nature, and life. 
 So these various influences have been at work, and men 
 have taken a higher position as the result of the growing 
 experience of the world and of human life ; and this growing 
 experience has written a new chapter in the perception of . 
 truth, that the wise and thoughtful of all the world may read. 
 
 What has been the result ? This old belief, on the part of 
 these separated nationalities and religions, that they had all 
 the truth, and that they were the only ones that had, is 
 passing away. It has become impossible for an intelligent 
 man any longer to believe it. Two grand objections face us, 
 — and either one of them is strong enough to overthrow com- 
 pletely this theory, — an intellectual objection and a moral 
 objection. 
 
 The intellectual objection I have already hinted and partly 
 outlined. What have men learned, what have we Chris- 
 tians learned concerning some of the other religions of the 
 world ? We have learned that our experience has not been 
 unique, but that it has been the universal experience of the 
 world. We have learned also that our system of truth is 
 only a fragment of the universal truth. We have learned 
 that other people, other nations, have passed through similar 
 experiences, and consequently have arrived at similar con- 
 clusions ; that they have discovered similar truths, similar 
 
198 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 ideas concerning the universe, God, and man, similar prin- 
 ciples of morals, or ideas of right and wrong. We have 
 learned that they have Bibles of their own, and that they 
 think they came by divine revelation, as we have thought 
 ours did ; that they have set themselves up as the exclusive 
 possessors of divine truth, just as we have ; that they have 
 had the same kind of conceit that we have had ; that they 
 have supposed they were favorites of God, as we have sup- 
 posed we were4 and that they have started out to convert the 
 world, just as we have, and for precisely the same reasons. 
 /^Furthermore, we have found that they have just as much 
 \ reason for holding these opinions as we have had, no more 
 \ and no less. 
 
 What is the next step ? We are forced to the conclusion 
 that one of two things is true. Either there were half a 
 dozen divine revelations and half a dozen infallible Bibles, — 
 in which case, we wonder why it would not have been just as 
 well to give one universal, complete one in the first place ; 
 or to the conviction that there is not any universal religion in 
 existence or any universal and infallible truth or any infalli- 
 ble Bible, but that we all have passed through similar stages, 
 and by similar steps of human experience have arrived at 
 similar conclusions. The result is irresistible that the truth 
 we have reached has come to us — no less from God than on 
 the other theory — through the process and by the method of 
 our human experience in living out our life and dealing with 
 these great principles and forces of the universe that touch 
 us on every hand. 
 
 The moral objection is quite as strong as the intellectual 
 one. As men grow wiser, as they grow better, as they have 
 a larger conception of human brotherhood, broader ideas of 
 justice, a deeper thought of truth, a wider sympathy and 
 more care for human welfare, it ceases to be possible for 
 
The Eternal Bible. 199 
 
 them to believe that the infinite God of this universe cares 
 any more about one part of his children than he does about 
 the rest. It ceases to be possible for man with a grandly- 
 developed and sympathetic moral nature to feel that the God 
 of the whole earth is capable of being partial, of having his 
 pets, of selecting either individuals or nations and giving 
 them his special care, and leaving all the rest to wander in 
 darkness, or fall into pits of destruction. The highest and 
 noblest moral natures of the world would find it impossible 
 to worship, or even to respect, a God who was capable of 
 a partiality like that. It ceases then to be morally possible 
 for men to hold this old exclusive, partial, selfish conception 
 of God, of religion, of the Bible, of divine and infallible 
 truth. 
 
 What then ? What is the next step to which we are 
 forced ? This, plain and inevitable : a recognition of the 
 fact that these separate and distinct religions are only parts 
 of the universal religion yet to come ; that these separate 
 and closed Biblical canons are only chapters in the universal 
 and eternal Bible, as yet only partially written. 
 
 I want now to note two main characteristics of this eternal 
 Bible. 
 
 In the first place, it must cover and include all truth that 
 touches the concerns of life and the welfare of man. In the 
 second place, it must be forever being written and never 
 done. These are the two tests by which you may judge the 
 universal and eternal Bible of God. 
 
 Religion in its conception as it has hitherto prevailed in 
 the world has been narrow. It has concerned itself only 
 with a little fragment of human life. We talk about religion 
 and business, religion and politics, religion and science, relig- 
 ion and art, religion and morality. The coming grander and 
 truer conception of religion will, of necessity, sweep all 
 
200 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 these particulars under its one grand generalization. A 
 man must be religious in business, religious in politics, relig- 
 ious in science, religious in art, religious in everything. It 
 must be the quality that permeates all life, the atmosphere 
 that men breathe everywhere. Religion is the secret of the 
 highest, truest life of man. Religion is the expression we 
 give to the relation in which we stand to the universe, — that 
 is, to God. It is our dealing with him. It is our dealing 
 with the totality of life. No man can be in the broadest and 
 truest and deepest sense of the word religious, except as 
 he is a complete man, in right relations to all the forms and 
 forces of the universe about him. And, if he is a complete 
 and true man, he gives utterance to the truest and deepest 
 conception of the religious life; for that is what religion 
 means. 
 
 Religion, then, must deal with the physical nature of man. 
 And here is one particular in which the Old Testament is 
 far ahead of the New. Moses places sanitary laws side by 
 side with the command to worship one God and no more, 
 making one of equal importance with the other. The New 
 Testament throws contempt upon this world, and speaks 
 slightingly of the body, "this vile body/' "Bodily exercise 
 profiteth little," etc. It is sprinkled all over with passages 
 expressing contempt for this world, the material side of 
 things ; and yet there never was a sane or true religion except 
 as it based itself on a sound and healthy physical life. We 
 must begin with our religion right here. Cleanliness is not 
 next to godliness merely. It is a part of godliness ; and so 
 is every other sanitary regulation that touches the welfare 
 and health of the physical man. 
 
 This eternal Bible must go over the whole realm of truth. 
 It must include all man's social relations, all political 
 relations, all international relations, all science, all art. It 
 
The Eternal Bible, 20 r 
 
 must include everything that touches the life and happiness 
 of man. The eternal Bible, then, will cover and include all 
 truth, so far as it is developed and wrought out as the result 
 of the experience of the world. 
 
 I said that its second characteristic was that it was always 
 being written and never finished. This, you will see, springs 
 naturally out of the principles thus far developed. Truth, 
 as far as it appertains to the welfare of man, being the 
 result of human experience, developed by it, presented as 
 the result of it, must of course keep step with human 
 experience, and can never transcend it, so that humanity 
 writes a new sentence in its Bible with every new step of 
 human experience, with every new and larger contact with 
 the universe in which it lives. The boy has the truth which 
 pertains to the boyish nature; but, as he grows up and 
 becomes a young man, he comes into new experiences, which 
 enlarge and broaden his ideas. He has new and wider 
 conceptions of life, that enable him to live the true life of a 
 young man. The middle-aged man and the old man come 
 into new experiences as they advance ; and, thus, truth keeps 
 step with human life. 
 
 This Bible, then, is not done. It never will be done, until 
 the last thinking being is weary of thought, and fallen asleep. 
 
 There is one other phase of my subject, carrying it on and 
 rounding it out, that I wish to bring to your thought, and 
 which may seem somewhat new to you, put in just the way 
 in which I propose to state it. Is there any reason in the 
 nature of things why we should forever look at God, the 
 universe, the great truths of religion, through Hebrew eyes 
 and none other ? Let us be glad and thankful for all the 
 Hebrews saw. Let us rejoice for the depth and breadth 
 of their religious experience, and take it as our light and 
 guidance, as far as it extends ; but is there any reason why 
 
202 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 Americans should not come into contact, first hand, with the 
 divine, as well as Hebrews, Egyptians, Buddhists, and Mo- 
 hammedans ? Is it not the same God above us ? Are not 
 the same heavens over us as bright with stars as were those 
 that shone over the Judean hills? Are there not now 
 as fair flowers, as fresh grasses, as those from which Jesus 
 drew his lessons of religion and life? Are not as noble 
 hearts, as unselfish devotion manifested to-day, as high quali- 
 ties of manhood and womanhood in society as in olden 
 times ? Reversing and changing the purpose of those ques- 
 tions of Shylock, may we not say instead : Hath not an 
 American eyes ? Hath not an American a heart, brain, soul, 
 religious faculties, moral perceptions, as well as a Jew or a 
 Buddhist or a Mohammedan ? Do we not stand in as inti- 
 mate and close relations with the father-heart of God in the 
 nineteenth century as men stood five hundred, a thousand, 
 two, three thousand years ago ? Has God moved farther 
 off ? Are the heavens more distant ? Are we less wise, less 
 capable of thinking, less capable of feeling than they were 
 in the olden time ? 
 
 I appeal to your consciousness, to your clearer thought, as 
 to what are the ideals, the forces, and the methods that 
 govern your own life to-day ? Are you not guided by the 
 Bible of the ages instead of the Bible of the Hebrews and 
 the Christians ? What are the doctrines, the ideas, the beliefs 
 that are moulding and shaping your life to-day ? They are a 
 part of the life of to-day and not those of two thousand or 
 five thousand years ago. 
 
 Where is our book of Genesis ? It is not in the Bible. 
 The book of Genesis that we believe in and that we are 
 guided by was written by Copernicus, by Galileo, by Newton, 
 by Laplace, by Lyell, by Spencer, by Darwin. And, if we 
 profess to believe in the old Genesis, we are perpetually re- 
 
The Eternal Bible. 203 
 
 interpreting and retranslating its ideas, so that they shall 
 echo Copernicus and these other men. Where is our book 
 of the Law ? Do we really go to the Pentateuch to find out 
 the principles by which we shall guide and govern our daily 
 lives ? No. We go to those men and to a hundred others 
 who have studied for us and laid down the laws of this actual 
 universe of which we are a part. We go to men like Dr. 
 Carpenter, of London, to find out how this marvellous body 
 of ours is made. Servetus and Harvey wrote some sentences 
 in this wondrous book of the Law. Ferrier in his studies 
 of the brain, Bain and his co-workers and compeers in out- 
 lining the marvellous nature and functions of our nervous 
 system, — these men who have studied the real laws of the 
 universe and human life, and have written them for us, they, 
 not the Pentateuch, are the real book of the Law by which 
 the modern world is being guided, whatever men may say or 
 profess about it. Where are our divine histories, those that 
 really move and control the world ? They are not the Kings, 
 Samuel, Judges, and the Chronicles of the Old Testament. 
 They are the histories of Greece, of Rome, of the Middle 
 Ages, of Germany, of the rise and progress of modern civ- 
 ilization, Green's history of the English people, Bancroft's 
 history of America, all those that have given us the sources 
 of that stream of national life of which we are a part. 
 These are the histories that are moving the modern world. 
 
 Who are our heroes ? Are they any longer Samuel, Jeph- 
 thah, Gideon, and David, and the grand names of the old 
 book that are a part of our childhood thought ? No : they 
 are the men that have fought for truth and for freedom and 
 for human advancement. Our heroes are Winkelried, the 
 barons that met King John at Runnymede, Cromwell of the 
 Commonwealth, that grand group allied to Washington that 
 figured in our Revolution, other men like Lincoln and Gar- 
 
204 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 rison, men that have stood for truth and human right. 
 These are the heroes that shine like stars in our moral and 
 intellectual firmament, that give us the light by which we are 
 guided and the inspiration for our every-day life. 
 
 Where are our ideal women? Are they Miriam and 
 Deborah and Ruth and Esther and Mary and Dorcas, those 
 that are simply names to us in the olden book ? Are they 
 not rather Mary Carpenter and Florence Nightingale and 
 Frances Power Cobbe and Marian Evans of England, 
 Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Thompson, Mary A. Livermore, 
 and a hundred others I might name, that are making and 
 shaping the life of these modern times ? If women like these 
 had lived in the ancient days, they would have towered so 
 much above the noblest of them all that either they would 
 have been persecuted and put to death as ahead of their time, 
 or idealized and worshipped as divine. 
 
 Who are the prophets arid seers that lead and inspire 
 us now ? They will still continue to be in part those who 
 have written the noble, burning words that have led on the 
 world for so many centuries ; but added to these are all the 
 great religious leaders, — Zoroaster, Gautama, Confucius, 
 Socrates, — the great men of more recent times, — Savon- 
 arola, Wickliff, Luther, Wesley, Swedenborg, Channing, 
 Theodore Parker, these great seers, utterers of divine 
 truth, those that have lifted up and led on the life of the 
 world. 
 
 And what are really the Gospels that fire us, that come to 
 us whispering their good news ? They are in part those that 
 have been written in the days of old. They include the 
 Gospels of our New Testament, the light and life that came 
 through Jesus of Nazareth ; but they include also those 
 other flashes of light that have come out of the inner heav- 
 ens of human thought and life, and are streaming out of 
 
The Eternal Bible. 205 
 
 them still. They are to be found very largely in the ranks 
 of those men that have been thought to be opposed to 
 gospel and to God, in the ranks of men doing the work of 
 science. These are bringing to us the good news that 
 man is mighty, that there are secret forces and powers in 
 this universe that man can discover, that he can harness as 
 his servants and compel to do his work. They are discov- 
 ering that man may control and mould all the forces of 
 the universe around him, and lift himself up from drudgery 
 and slavery to that nature that has dominated him so long. 
 
 Where are the apocalypses, those that unfold the future and 
 teach us what it is that is coming ? They are not like that 
 wonderful phantasmagorical dream of John that closes the 
 New Testament. They are again these same men of science ; 
 for, as Patrick Henry said, there is no w r ay of foretelling the 
 future except by the past. And it is the study of this past, 
 the study of the principles that underlie and control the 
 development of civilization up to this hour, that are indicating 
 the possibilities of future growth and progress. And, look- 
 ing along the line of these up the ages, by a faith that is not 
 credulity, a faith forever springing out of human experience, 
 a faith based in the nature of things, we see man sceptred 
 and crowned controlling the world, with its forces at his feet, 
 its mightiest powers his ministers, himself master henceforth 
 of the world and of his destiny. 
 
 These, then, I say, are the real chapters of the eternal 
 Eible that are being written age after age as the result of 
 human discovery and experience, — a Bible not yet complete, 
 a Bible in which each new truth is a sentence, and each new 
 grand discovery a chapter or a book, and that shall go on 
 being written by the finger of God in human life forever. 
 And, as it progresses, it shall cease to be a book whose every 
 page is blood-spattered, as were the Old Testament books of 
 
206 Beliefs about the Bible. 
 
 the past. No longer shall its pages be defaced with so 
 copious a rain of human tears. It shall not be so largely 
 made up of groans at the world's injustice or with human 
 cries for help. For the time shall come, it is coming pro- 
 gressively, when this truth of God shall be more and more 
 written in the hearts and lives of men, and when it shall be 
 no longer necessary to say to one another, know thou the 
 Lord, know thou the truth, know thou the perfect relig- 
 ious life ; for all shall know and live in the harmony of this 
 truth and life the wide world over forevermore. 
 

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