Understanding the Scriptures.
by Francis McConnell.
FOREWORD
The Mendenhall Lectures, founded by Rev. Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D., of the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, are delivered annually in De Pauw University to the public without any charge for admission. The object of the donor was "to found a perpetual lectureship on the evidences of the Divine Origin of Christianity and the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures. The lecturers must be persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian faith. The selection of lecturers may be made from the world of Christian scholarship, without regard to denominational divisions. Each course of lectures is to be published in book form by an eminent publishing house and sold at cost to the faculty and students of the University."
Lectures previously published: 1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt Hughes; 1914, The Literary Primacy of the Bible, George Peck Eckman.
GEORGE R. GROSE,
President De Pauw University.
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY
The problem as to the understanding of the Scriptures is with some no problem at all. All we have to do is to take the narratives at their face meaning. The Book is written in plain English, and all that is necessary for its comprehension is a knowledge of what the words mean.
If we have any doubts, we can consult the dictionary. The plain man ought to have no difficulty in understanding the Bible.
n.o.body can deny the clearness of the English of the Scriptures.
Nevertheless, the plain man does have trouble. How far would the ordinary intelligence have to read from the first chapter of Genesis before finding itself in difficulties? There are accounts of events utterly unlike anything which we see happening in the life around us, events which seem to us to contradict the course of nature"s procedure.
There are points of view foreign to our way of looking at things. More than that, there seem to be actual contradictions between various portions of the books. And, above all, the way of life marked out in the Book seems to lead off toward mystery. To save our lives we have to lose them. All the precepts of common sense seem set at defiance by some pa.s.sages of the Book. How can we explain the hold of such a book on the world"s life?
When once the problem of the understanding of the Scriptures is raised, various solutions are offered, all of which contribute a measure of help, but most of which do not greatly get us ahead. For example, we are told that the Book is translated literature, and that if we could get back to the original narratives in the original languages, we would find our perplexities vanishing. There is no question that a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew does aid us in an understanding of the Scriptures, but this aid commonly extends only to the meaning of particular words. One who knows enough of Greek or Hebrew to enter sympathetically into the life of which those languages were the expression is prepared to sense the scriptural atmosphere better than one who has not such equipment.
Very few Scripture readers, however, are thus qualified to understand Greek and Hebrew. Very few ministers of the gospel are so trained as to be able to pa.s.s upon shades of meaning of Greek or Hebrew words against the judgment of those who teach these languages in the schools. With graduation from theological school most ministers put Hebrew to one side; and many pay no further attention to Greek. Even a trained biblical student is very careful not to question the authority of the professional linguistic experts. Apart from sidelights upon the meaning of this or that pa.s.sage, there is very little that the biblical student can get from Greek or Hebrew which is not available in important translations. We cannot solve the greater difficulties in biblical study by carrying our investigations back to the study of the original languages as such. The fact is that emphasis upon the importance of mastery of Greek and Hebrew for an insight into scriptural meanings rests largely upon a theory of literal inspiration of the biblical narratives. It requires only a cursory reading to see that the narratives in English cannot claim to be strictly inerrant, so that the upholder of inerrancy is driven to the position that the inerrancy is in the doc.u.ments as originally written. No doctrine of inerrancy, however, can explain away the puzzles which confront us, for example, in the accounts of the creation as given us in the early chapters of Genesis, or throw light upon the possibility of a soul"s pa.s.sing from moral death to life.
Great help is promised us by those who maintain that the modern methods of critical biblical study give us the key to scriptural meanings. There is no doubt that many doors have been opened by critical methods. Now that the flurries of misunderstanding which attended the first application of such methods to biblical study have pa.s.sed on, we see that some solid results have been gained. In so far as our difficulties arise from questions of authorship and date of writing, the critical methods have brought much relief. Even very orthodox biblicists no longer insist that it is necessary to oppose the teaching that the first five books of the Bible were written at different times and by different men. In fact, there is no reason to quarrel with the theory that many parts of these books are not merely anonymous, but are doc.u.ments produced by the united effort of narrators and correlators reaching through generations--the narratives often being transmitted orally from fathers to sons. There is no reason for longer arguing against the claim that the book of Isaiah as it stands in our Scriptures is composed of doc.u.ments written at widely separated periods. It is permissible even from the standpoint of orthodoxy to a.s.sign a late date to the book of Daniel. No harm is wrought when we insist that the book of Mark must have priority in date among the Gospels, and that Matthew and Luke are built in part from Mark as a foundation. It is not dangerous to face the facts which cause the prolonged debate over the authorship of the fourth Gospel. It is not heresy to teach that the dates of the epistles must be rearranged through the findings of modern scholarship. There is not only no danger in a hospitable att.i.tude toward modern scholarship, but many difficulties disappear through adjusting ourselves to present-day methods. If contradictions appear in a doc.u.ment hitherto considered a unit, the contradictions are at least measurably done away with when the doc.u.ment is seen to be a composite report from the points of view of different authors. The critical method has been of immense value in enforcing upon us that the scriptural books were written each with a distinctive intention, apart from the purpose to represent the facts in the method of a newspaper reporter or of a scientific investigator. In a sense many of the more important scriptural doc.u.ments were of the nature of pamphlets or tracts for the times in which they were written. The author was combating a heresy, or supplementing a previous statement which seemed to him to be inadequate, or seeking to adjust a religious conception to enlarging demands. The biblical writers are commentators on or interpreters of the truth which they conceive to be essential.
Making most generous allowances, however, for the advantages of the critical methods, we must use them with considerable care. Results like those suggested above seem to be well established, but there is always possibility of the critic"s becoming a mere specialist with the purely technical point of view. Suppose the critic holds so to the pa.s.sion for a.n.a.lysis that for him a.n.a.lysis becomes everything. We may then have a single verse cut into three or four pieces, each a.s.signed to a different author, the authors separated by long periods. Even if the older narratives are composite, the process of welding or compression was so thorough that detailed a.n.a.lyses are now out of the question. Apart from its broader contentions, the method of the critical school must be used tentatively and without dogmatism. Moreover, we must always remember that the critical student comes to his task with a.s.sumptions which are oftentimes more potent with him from his very blindness to their existence. a.s.sumption in scientific investigation is inevitable. Suppose a critic to be markedly under the influence of some evolutionary hypothesis. Suppose him to believe that the formula which makes progress a movement from the simple to the complex can be traced in detail in the advance of society. He is prepared to believe that in practically every case the simple has preceded the complex. He will forthwith untangle the biblical narrative to get at the ideal evolutionary arrangement, ignoring the truth that except in the most general fashion progress cannot thus be traced. In the actual life of societies the progress, especially of ideas, is often from the complex to the simple. Many evolutionists maintain that movement is now forward, now backward, now diagonal, and now by a "short cut"; but if the evolutionary critic sticks closely to his preconceived formula about progress as always from the simple to the complex, he can lead us astray. Again, almost all great prophetic announcements are ahead of their time. They seem out of place at the date of their first utterance--interruptions, interjections hard to fit into an orderly historic scheme. Or suppose the critic to be a student of the scientific school which will not allow for the play of any forces excepting as they openly reveal themselves, the school that will not allow for backgrounds of thought or for atmospheres which surround conceptions. Such a student is very apt to maintain, for example, that Paul knew only so much of the life of Jesus as he mentions in the epistles. Such a student cannot a.s.sume that Paul ever took anything for granted. We can see at once that a method so professedly exact as this may be dangerously out of touch with the human processes of the life of individuals and of societies. Or suppose still further that the biblical student holds a set of scientific a.s.sumptions which are extremely naturalistic; that is to say, suppose that he a.s.sumes that nothing has ever happened which in any way departs from the natural order. We have only to remind ourselves that the natural order of a particular time is the order as that time conceives it; but it is manifestly hazardous to limit events in the world of matter to the scientific conceptions of any one day. To take a single ill.u.s.tration, the radical student of the life of Jesus of a generation ago cast out forthwith from the Gospel accounts everything which suggested the miraculous. The conceptions of the order of nature which obtained a generation ago did not allow even for works of healing of the sort recorded in the Gospels. At the present time radical biblical criticism makes considerable allowance for such works. Discovery of the power of mental suggestion and of the influence of mind over body has opened the door to the return of some of the wonders wrought by Jesus to a place among historic facts. This does not mean that the radical student is any more friendly to miracles than before. We are not here raising the question of miracles as such, but we do insist that an a.s.sumption as to what the natural order may or may not allow can be fraught with peril in the hands of critical students of the Scriptures. We say again that while, in general, the larger contentions of the biblical school can be looked upon as established beyond reasonable doubt; and while, in general, the methods of the school are productive of good, yet, because of the part that a.s.sumption plays in the fashioning of all critical tools, the a.s.sumptions must be scrutinized with all possible care. A good practical rule is to read widely from the critics, to accept what they generally agree upon, to hold very loosely anything that seems "striking" or "brilliant." This is a field in which originality must be discounted. There is so little check upon the imagination.
It is but a step from the consideration of the critical methods in biblical study to that of the historical methods in the broader sense.
Many students who are out of patience with the more narrowly critical processes maintain that the broader historical methods are of vast value in biblical discussion. Here, again, we must admit the large measure of justice in the claim. We can see at once that the same reservations must be made as in the case of the critical methods. The a.s.sumptions play a determining part. If we are on our guard against any tricks that a.s.sumptions may play, we can eagerly expect the historical methods to aid us greatly.
We have come to see that any revelation to be really a revelation must speak in the language of a particular time. But speaking in the language of a particular time implies at the outset very decided limitations. The prophets who arise to proclaim any kind of truth must clothe their ideas in the thought terms of a particular day and can accomplish their aims only as they succeed in leading the spiritual life of their day onward and upward. Such a prophet will accommodate himself to the mental and moral and religious limitations of the time in which he speaks. Only thus can he get a start. It is inevitable, then, that along with the higher truth of his message there will appear the marks of the limitations of the mold in which the message is cast. The prophet must take what materials he finds at hand, and with these materials direct the people to something higher and better. Furthermore, in the successive stages through which the idea grows we must expect to find it affected by all the important factors which in any degree determine its unfolding. The first stage in understanding the Scriptures is to learn what a writer intended to say, what he meant for the people of his day.
To do this we must rely upon the methods which we use in any historical investigation. The Christian student of the Scriptures believes that the Bible contains eternal truths for all time, truths which are above time in their spiritual values. Even so, however, the truth must first be written for a particular time and that time the period in which the prophet lived. When the Christian speaks of the Scriptures as containing a revelation for all time, he refers to their essential spiritual value.
The best way to make that essential spiritual value effective for the after times is to sink it deep into the consciousness of a particular time. This gives it leverage, or focus for the outworking of its forces.
No matter how limited the conceptions in which the spiritual richness first took form, those conceptions can be understood by the students who look back through the ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out with perennial freshness. Paradoxical as it may sound, the truths which are of most value for all time are those which first get themselves most thoroughly into the thought and feeling of some one particular time. Let us look at the opening chapters of Genesis for ill.u.s.tration. The historical student points out to us that the science of the first chapters of Genesis is not peculiar to the Hebrew people, that substantially similar views of the stages through which creation moved are to be found in the literatures of surrounding peoples. A well-known type of student would therefore seek at one stroke to bring the first chapters of Genesis down to the level of the scriptures of the neighbors of the Hebrews. He would then discount all these narratives alike by reference to modern astronomy, geology, and biology. But the difference between the Hebrew account and the other accounts lies in this, that in the Hebrew statement the science of a particular time is made the vehicle of eternally superb moral and spiritual conceptions concerning man and concerning man"s relation to the Power that brought him into being. The worth of these conceptions even in that early statement few of us would be inclined to question. a.s.suming that any man or set of men became in the old days alive to the value of such religious ideas, how could they speak them forth except in the language of their own day?
They had to speak in their own tongue, and speaking in that tongue they had to use the thought terms expressed by that tongue. They accepted the science of their day as true, and they utilized that science for the sake of bodying forth the moral and spiritual insights to which they had attained. The inadequacy of early Hebrew science and its likeness to Babylonian and Chaldean science do not invalidate the worth of the spiritual conceptions of Genesis. This ought to be apparent even to the proverbial wayfaring man. The loftiest spiritual utterances are often clad in the poorest scientific draperies. Who would dare deny the worth of the great moral insights of Dante? And who, on the other hand, would insist upon the lasting value of the science in which his deep penetrations are uttered? And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has shown the nature of the material universe as pictured in Milton"s "Paradise Lost." In pa.s.sing from heaven to h.e.l.l one would descend from an upper to a lower region of a sphere, pa.s.sing through openings at the centers of other concentric spheres on the way down. Nothing more foreign to modern science can be imagined; yet we do not cast aside "Paradise Lost"
because of the crudity of its view of the physical system.
a.s.suming that the biblical prophets were to have any effect whatever, in what language could they speak except that of their own time? Their position was very similar to that of the modern preacher who uses present-day ideas of the physical universe as instruments to proclaim moral and spiritual values. n.o.body can claim that modern scientific theories are ultimate, and n.o.body can deny, on the other hand, that vast good is done in the utilization of these conceptions for high religious purposes.
A minister once sought in a sermon on the marvels of man"s const.i.tution to enforce his conceptions by speaking of the instantaneousness with which a message flashed to the brain through the nervous system is heeded and acted upon. He said that the touch of red-hot iron upon a finger-tip makes a disturbance which is instantly reported to the brain for action. A scientific hearer was infinitely disgusted. He said that all such disturbances are acted upon in the spinal cord. He could see no value, therefore, even in the main point of the minister"s sermon because of the minister"s mistaken conception of nervous processes. I suppose very few of us know whether this scientific objection was well taken or not. Very few of us, however, would reject the entire sermon because of an erroneous ill.u.s.tration; and yet sometimes all the essentials of the Scriptures are discounted because of flaws no more consequential than that suggested in this ill.u.s.tration. The Scriptures aim to declare a certain idea of G.o.d, a certain idea of man, and a certain idea of the relations between G.o.d and man. Those ideas are clothed in the garments of successive ages. The change in the fashions and adequacy of the garments does not make worthless the living truth which the garments clothe. Jesus himself lived deeply in his own time and spoke his own language and worked through the thought terms which were part of the life of his time. Some biblical readers have been greatly disturbed in recent years by the discovery of the part which so-called apocalyptic thought-forms play in the teaching of Jesus. The fact is that these conceptions were the commonest element in all later Jewish thinking. Jesus could not have lived when he did without making apocalyptic terms the vehicle for his doctrines. We have come to see that the manner of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus is not so important as the character of that kingdom.
Not only must a prophet speak in the language of a definite time, but he must speak to men as he finds them. This being so, we must expect that revelations will in a sense be accommodated to the apprehension of the day of their utterance. The minds of men are in constant movement. If the prophet were to have before him minds altogether at a standstill, he might well despair of accomplishing great results by his message. He would be forced to think of the intelligence of this day as a sort of vessel which he could fill with so much and no more. But whether the prophets have through the ages had any theoretic understanding of human intelligence as an organism or not, they have acted upon the a.s.sumption that they were dealing with such organisms. So they have conceived of their truth as a seed cast into the ground, pa.s.sing through successive stages. Jesus himself spoke of the kingdom of G.o.d as moving out of the stage of the blade into that of the ear and finally into that of the full corn in the ear. This ill.u.s.tration is our warrant for insisting that in the enforcing of truth all manner of factors come into play and that the truth pa.s.ses through successive epochs, some of which may seem to later believers very unpromising and unworthy. The test of the worth of an idea is not so much any opinion as to the unseemliness of the stages through which it has pa.s.sed as it is the value of the idea when once it has come to ripeness. The test of the grain is its final value for food. The scriptural truths are to be judged by no other test than that of their worth for life.
In the light of the teaching of Jesus himself there is no reason why we should shrink from stating that the revelation of biblical truth is influenced by even the moral limitations of men. Jesus said that an important revelation to man was halted at an imperfect stage because of the hardness of men"s hearts. The Mosaic law of divorce was looked upon by Jesus as inadequate. The law represented the best that could be done with hardened hearts. The author of the Practice of Christianity, a book published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how the hardness of men"s hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the "tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness and unresponsiveness which the prophet must meet, we can see how such an element would condition and limit the prophet.
Again, Jesus said to his disciples that he had many things to say to them, but that they could not bear them at the time at which he spoke.
Some revelations must wait for moral strength on the part of the people to whom they are to come. Suppose, for example, in this year of our Lord 1917, some scientist should discover a method of touching off explosives from a great distance by wireless telegraphy without the need of a specially prepared receiver at the end where the explosion is desired.
Suppose it were possible for him simply to press a b.u.t.ton and blow up all the ships of the British Navy, or all the stores of munitions in Germany. What would be the first duty of such an inventor? Very likely it would be his immediate duty to keep the secret closely locked in his own mind. If such a discovery were made known to European combatants in their present temper, it is a question what would he left on earth at the end of the next twenty-four hours. With European minds in their present moral and spiritual plight it would not be safe to trust them with any such revelation. And this ill.u.s.tration has significance for more than the physical order of revelation. There are principles for individual and social conduct that may well be put into effect one hundred years from now. Men are not now morally fit to receive some revelations. All of which means that any revealing movement is a progressive movement in that it depends upon not merely the utterances of the revealing mind, but upon the response of the receiving mind. In the play back and forth between giver and receiver all sorts of factors come into power. The study of the interplay of these factors is entirely worthy as an object of Christian research. We may well be thankful for any advance thus far made in such study and we may look for greater advances in the future. For example, the historic students thus far have put in most of their effort laying stress upon similarities between the biblical conceptions and the conceptions of the peoples outside the current of biblical revelation. The work has been of great value.
Nevertheless it would seem to be about time for larger emphasis on the differences between the biblical revelations and the conceptions outside.
Still when all is said the mastery of historical methods of study is but preliminary to the real understanding of the Scriptures. If we come close to the revealing movement itself, we find that before we get far into the stream there must be sympathetic responsiveness to biblical teaching. The difficulties in understanding the Scriptures are, as of old, not so much of the intellect as they are of conscience and will-- the difficulties, in a word, that arise from the hardness of men"s hearts.
CHAPTER II
THE BOOK OF LIFE
The approaches to an understanding of the Scriptures which we suggested in the first chapter are those which have to do merely with intellectual investigation. Any student with normal intelligence can appreciate the methods and results of the critical scrutiny of the biblical doc.u.ments, but will require something more for an adequate mastery of the scriptural revelations. There is need of sympathetic realization that the Book itself did not in any large degree come out of the exercise of the merely intellectual faculties. In the scriptural revelation we are dealing with a current of life which flowed for centuries through the minds of ma.s.ses of people. To be sure of insight into the meanings of this revelation there must be an approach to the Bible as a Book of Life in the sense that its teachings came out of life and that they were perennially used to play back into life. Its hold on life to-day can be explained only by the fact that it was thus born out of life, and has its chief significance for the experiences of actual life.
Even the most superficial perusal of the Scriptures shows that they came of practical contact with men and things. There is comparatively little in the entire content of our Sacred Book to suggest the speculations of abstract philosophy. The writers deal with the concrete. They tell of men and of peoples who had to face facts and who achieved comprehensions and convictions through grappling with facts. There is about the Scriptures what some one has called a sort of "out-of-doors-ness." There is very little hint of withdrawal from the push and pressure of daily living. If the prophets ever withdrew to solitude, they did not retire to closets, but rather to deserts or to mountains. We must not allow our modern familiarity with bookmaking as an affair of library research and tranquil meditation in seclusion to mislead us into thinking that the Christian Bible was wrought out in similar fashion. The Book is full of the tingle and even the roar of the life out of which it was born. Jesus gathered up in a single sentence the process by which the scriptural revelation can be apprehended by man when he said, "He that doeth the will shall know of the truth." The entire scriptural unfolding is one vast commentary on this utterance of Jesus.
It is impossible for us in this series of studies to attempt any detailed survey of the revealing movement of which our Scriptures are the outcome. It is important, however, that we should see clearly that the revelation came to those who opened themselves to the light in an obedient spirit. While it is not in accord with our modern knowledge of psychology to a.s.sort and divide human activities too sharply, it is nevertheless permissible to insist that the biblical revelation was in a sense primarily to the will. As Frederick W. Robertson used to say, obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge. The first men to whom illuminations came evidently received these gifts out of some purity of intention and moral excellence. These early leaders gathered others around them and set them on the path of determined striving toward a definite goal. As the idea of the seer or the prophet found general acceptance it gradually hardened into law, law meant for scrupulous observance. If a singer felt stirred to write a psalm, he voiced his experiences or his aspirations in the midst of a throbbing world. If a statesman drew a wide survey of G.o.d"s dealings with the nations of the earth, he did so at some mighty crisis in Israel"s relations to Egypt or a.s.syria or Babylon. When we reach New Testament times we find that even the Gospels seem to have been books struck out of immediate practical urgencies rather than composed tranquilly with a scholar"s interest merely in doing a fine piece of professional work. The early Christians were anxious to hold the believers to the strait and narrow way. To do this they repeated often the words of the Lord Jesus. When, however, the older members of the first circles began to fall away, the words were written down, not because some scholar felt moved thus to improve his leisure, but because it was absolutely necessary to preserve the words.
Moreover, conflicts were arising between the growing church and the forces of the world round about. Some scriptures were written to supply instruments with which to carry on the warfare. Always the fundamental aim was to keep the people acting according to the teachings which lay at the heart of the Christian system. The object of the biblical revelation was from the beginning just what it is to-day in the hands of Christian believers--the object of using the Scriptures as an instrument for practicing the Christian spirit into all the phases of life.
We would by no means deny that there are imposing philosophies or, rather, hints toward such philosophies, in the Scriptures, but we insist that these did not come out of a purely philosophizing temper. They came as men tried to put into some form or order the understandings at which they had arrived as they wrestled with the tough facts of a world which they were trying to subject to the rule of their religion. As we have said in the previous chapter, the Scriptures bear scars of all such conflicts. The revelation was knocked into its shape in the rough-and- tumble of an attempt to convert the world. And this is not to claim for the Bible any difference in method of creation from that which obtains in the shaping of any vitally effective piece of literature. The world- shaking conceptions have always been won in profound experience. This chapter is not written with the principles of the modern school of pragmatism as a guide, and yet pragmatism can be so stated as to phrase an essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual ideas result from spiritual practices and are of worth as they prove themselves aids in further experience. Take some of the expressions of Paul. The fundamental fact in Paul"s experience was his vision on the Damascus road and his determination to be obedient to that vision. To make his own view of the Christian religion attractive to those whom he was trying to win, it became necessary for him to speak in terms of the Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not have spoken in any other terms, though some of his reasonings seem to us to be remote from actual life. But when he left argument and came back to experience he was most effective. His terribly compelling utterances are those which were born of driving necessity. The theology started with the vision and unfolded in obedience to the vision, "What wilt thou have me to do?" Everywhere upon Paul"s epistles there are the marks of practical compulsion. A letter was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews in Galatia or to persuade questioning Gentiles in Rome. Some of the profoundest phrasings of Pauline belief were uttered first as appeals for generous collections to starving saints.
The example of Paul as a receiver and giver of spiritual light is very significant. Even if we should make the largest allowances to the biblical critics who would cut down the number of epistles known to be genuinely Pauline, we would have enough left to make on our minds the impression of enormous personal activity. One pa.s.sage does, indeed, tell us of a period of months of withdrawal for reflection in Arabia. For the most part, however, Paul"s life was spent in ceaselessly going to and fro throughout the Roman empire; even in the days of imprisonment he seems to have been burdened with the administration of churches. It was out of such multifarious activities that the theology of Paul was born, and therein lies its value. No interpretation is likely to bring the separate deliverances into anything like formal, logical consistency.
Very likely Paul was of a markedly logical frame of mind, but he did not attempt to rid his message of contradictions in detail. The unity and consistency are found in the fundamental life purpose to get men to accept Jesus Christ as the Chosen of G.o.d. If Paul had ever heard that much of his theology might be out-dated with the pa.s.sage of the years, he would probably have responded that he was perfectly willing that the instrument should be cast aside if it had served its spiritual purpose of bringing men to obedience to the law of G.o.d.
It is not intended to make this a book of sermons or exhortations. We must say, however, that in a series of studies on how to understand the Scriptures stress must be laid upon the maxim that the Scriptures can be understood only by those who seek to recognize and obey the spirit of life breathing from the Scriptures. Nothing could be more hopeless than to attempt to get to the heart of Christian truth without attempting to build that truth into life. The formal reasonings of the theologian are no doubt of value, but they throw little light upon the essentials of Christianity except as they deal with data which have been supplied by Christian experience. It would, indeed, be well for any study of the Bible to begin with a recognition of the part played by distinctly scholarly research. We cannot go far, however, until we recognize that sympathy with Christian truth is necessary before we can come upon vital knowledge. And this, after all, is but the way we learn to understand any piece of life-literature. A vast amount of material is at hand in the form of commentaries upon the work of Shakespeare. We know much about the circ.u.mstances under which the plays of Shakespeare were written; we know somewhat of the sources from which Shakespeare drew his historical materials; we are familiar with the chronology of the plays; but all this is knowledge about Shakespeare. To know Shakespeare there must be something of a deliberate attempt to surrender sympathetically to the Shakespearean point of view. We get "inside of" any cla.s.sic work of literature only by this spirit of surrender. The aim of Shakespeare is simply to picture life as he sees it, but even to appreciate the picture men must enter into sympathy with the painter. The Scriptures aim not merely to paint life, but to quicken and reproduce life. How much more, then, is needed a surrender of the will before there can be adequate appreciation of the Scriptures? If the Scriptures are the results primarily of will-activities, how can they finally be mastered except by minds quickened by doing the will revealed in the Scriptures?
The book of Christianity must be interpreted by the disciples of Christianity. Judged merely by bookish standards, there is no satisfactory explanation of the power of the Bible. But lift the whole problem out of the realm of books as such! The glimpses into any high truth that are worth while--how do they come? They come out of experience. Even when they are repeated from one mind to another they become the property of that second mind only as they reproduce themselves in experience. Otherwise the whole transaction is of words, words, words. The Scriptures have to do with deeds, not words.
All this is offensive to the dogmatic reasoner. For him the intellect as such is the organ of religious truth. He insists on speaking of the Scriptures in formally theological terms. That the Scripture writers employed theological terms there can be no doubt, but they did not speak as systematic theologians. And always they brought their theology to the test of actual life. The writer of these lines once knew a student who had read enough of psychology to enable him to reason himself into a belief that he was the only person in existence; that is to say, he declared that he himself was the only one of whose existence he was infallibly certain. Does not all knowledge of an external world come as a report through a sensation aroused by stimulus? If the appropriate stimulus could be kept up an external world might fall away and I would still think it was there. The bell might ring at the door and might be n.o.body there. And so on and on, through steps familiar enough to the student of philosophy. When a friend made a quick appeal to life with the question: "If you are the only one alive, why do you bring your troubles to me?" the amateur philosopher came to earth with a sense of jar. But the jar is no greater than that when we pa.s.s from the plane of dogmatic theology to that of reading the Scriptures for their own sake.
The old scholastics said that in G.o.d there are three substances, one essence, and two processions. How does this sound as compared with the statement of Jesus that he and his Father are one, and that he would send the Comforter? This is not to decry theology; but is nevertheless to discriminate between theology and scripture.
Some one will object, however, that the scriptural truths take their start in large part from the visions of mystics--of men who brood long and patiently until they behold realities not otherwise discernible.
Some students will urge upon us that such mystic revelations are granted peculiarly to the mystic temperament as such, and they often come regardless of the quality of life that the seers themselves may be living.
There have, indeed, been in all ages of the world temperaments of supernormal or abnormal responsiveness to influences which seem to make little or no impression upon the ordinary mind. In all periods natures of this type have been looked upon as organs of religious revelation. So valuable have abnormal experiences seemed that all manner of expedients have been utilized to beget unusual mental states. A certain tribe of Indians, for example, in the southwest of our country are accustomed at set times to send their religious leaders into the desert to find and partake of a peculiar plant which has an opiate or narcotic effect. In the belief of the Indians this plant opens the door to visions. The visions, as reported by those who have recovered from the influence of the narcotic, are not of any considerable value. Similar attempts have been made by hypnotic experimenters among other peoples, the hypnosis sometimes being self-induced. From some Old Testament pa.s.sages especially we may well believe that this sort of extraordinary mental condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the prophets in the olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the Scriptures, however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures were the expression of a people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences.
Granting all allowances for mental states induced by eating an opiate, or by whirling like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu, the fact remains that in the main, the visions of the writers of our Scriptures came out of attempts to realize in conduct the moral will of G.o.d. When we think of the surroundings even of the early church; when we reflect upon the force of suggestion for uncritical minds; when we consider the sway of superst.i.tion at all periods during the Hebrew revealing movement, the wonder is that the Scriptures lay such stress as they do upon the type of vision which arises from faithfulness in doing the revealed will.
If we may characterize scriptural mysticism, it seems very much akin to mental abilities which we meet frequently in our ordinary intercourse.
Take, for example, the prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing is more inadequate than the rules for success laid down by many a man who has himself succeeded in business. Mastery of his rules will not help another to win business success. The reason is that there comes out of prolonged business practice a keen sense of what is likely to happen in the industrial or financial world. The sharpened wits foresee without being able to a.s.sign reasons or grounds for the prophecies. So it is with intellects trained to any superior skill. The Duke of Wellington once remarked that he had spent all his life wondering what was on the other side of the hills in front of him, yet the Duke himself came to marvelous skill in guessing what was on the other side. There is also a variety of scientific mysticism, if such an expression may be permitted.
The man long trained to the reading of scientific processes develops a quick insight which runs far ahead of reason or proof. The transcendent scientific discoveries have been glimpsed or, rather, sensed before they so reported themselves that they could be seized by formal proof. Now it is a far cry from business men, generals, and scientists to the mysticism of the Scriptures, but when we see the emphasis which the Scriptures place upon constancy in keeping the law and in acting according to divine commandments, we cannot help feeling that biblical mysticism was and is an awareness developed as the life becomes practiced to the doing of religious duty. Think too of the emphasis placed in the Scriptures upon the consecration of the whole life to the truth as cleansing the heart from evil. All this makes for a power to seize truth beyond that possible to formal and systematic reason.
Mysticism of this sort is the very height of spiritual power. The Master"s word: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see G.o.d,"
does not refer to merely negative virtue. It means also the power of soul acc.u.mulated in the positive doing of good. It means entrance into the life of quick spiritual awareness through the adjustment of the whole nature to the single moral purpose.
In all promise of revelation the Scriptures insist upon the importance of keeping upon the basis of solid obedience. The finer the instrument is to be, the more ma.s.sive must be the foundation. Professor Hocking, of Harvard University, has used a remarkable ill.u.s.tration to enforce this very conception. The scientific instrument, he says, which must be kept freest from distracting influences so that it may make the finest registries must rest upon a foundation broad and deep. So the soul that is to catch the finest stirrings of the divine must rest upon the solidest stones of hard work for the moral purposes of the scriptural Kingdom.