The Bible and Life Part 2

A still deeper objection is sometimes offered against the scriptural theory of human nature. It is charged that the doctrine of the Fall, together with the constant emphasis of man's "exceeding sinfulness,"

deprives man of special dignity. Without doubt the theory of the Fall has sometimes been presented in such a manner as to cancel all human claims to greatness. Whenever a religious teacher carries his doctrine of the Fall to unjust lengths, we must all be tempted to declare that we can readily prove an alibi! And if he shall employ that doctrine as a vast slur on humanity, we shall insist that the length of the fall must be the length of the possible rise! In harmony with this idea a great preacher has given the world a sermon on "The Dignity of Humanity as Evidenced by its Ruins."

Much of the glory of the Coliseum at Rome has departed, but even its ruins are a testimony to its greatness. Seeing its gaunt grandeur in the sunlight, or viewing its impressive shadows in the moonlight, the tourist gets the shock of its glory. The simple truth is that a doctrine of the Fall is possible only when you start with human greatness. G.o.d made one creature strong enough to resist Himself--one creature with sufficient self-determination to make mutiny in the world. We would not torture the doctrine of the Fall into a mere compliment for humanity; but we would insist that the possibility of a Fall implies a height to fall from, and that responsibility for a Fall implies a nature great enough and free enough to make far-reaching choices. The evidence of the dignity is still found among the ruins.

We must always supplement any doctrine of the Fall with a doctrine of human responsibility. The Bible is most explicit in this insistence. Its pages are crowded with the moral imperative for man. The thorn and the brier are on the earth; but they are not blamed, because they wait for the era of the good people. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain; but the creation is not blamed, because it waits for the revealing of the sons of G.o.d. The lion and the lamb do not lie down together; but they are not blamed, because they wait for the age of peace that can issue only from the hearts of men. The coin rolls into dust and shadow and is lost; we do not blame the coin. The sheep wanders into desert and darkness and is lost; we do not blame the sheep. The son goes off into the swine field and is lost; and we do blame the son. The coin and the sheep have no communings with self, no sense of guilt, no road of repentant return; but the son has all these. The Bible does utter its vigorous charge against man's sin; it is the ever-open court room into which the human conscience is summoned for judgment. The Book does not treat man as a machine whose cogs and wheels are moved only by outside force; nor does it treat him as a manikin, jerked hither and yon by irresponsible sensations; it rather dignifies him with personal responsibility. The Fall does not prevent climbing, if only man will take advantage of those gracious powers that are offered for his help. Emerson saw the meaning of this when he wrote his tribute to mankind based on its ability to respond to the moral order:

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is G.o.d to man, When Duty whispers low, "Thou must,"

The youth replies, "I can!"

Words like "ought" and "should" and "must" have gone forth from the Bible and have fairly penetrated the moral consciousness of the race. No other book so honors human nature with a sublime call to responsibility.

We now leave these general considerations and take up the several portions of the Scriptures with a view to ascertaining their contributions to a doctrine of man. The foundation of that doctrine is seen in the account of the creation. Whether that account be poem, parable, allegory, or history, its meaning for this special point is the same. The climax of the creation is man. G.o.d is represented as changing chaos into cosmos, separating waters and land, fixing sun and moon in their places, bringing verdure to the surface of the earth, a.s.signing birds and beasts and fishes to their spheres, and then as giving to man a wide rulership. "G.o.d made man to have dominion"--that is the biblical word; and the ages have been telling how true that word is. The Bible theory and the facts of life join in a coronation of man.

The account of the creation goes deeper than this in its estimate of mankind. Its conferring of power on man is explained by its conferring a nature on man. Man is made in the divine image. The Word was not content with one statement of that fact; it must needs give it double emphasis.

"So G.o.d created man in his own image"--that would seem simple and strong enough. But the statement is strengthened by repet.i.tion, "In the image of G.o.d created he him." These twice-repeated words are the real charter of man's greatness. The atheist must admit that man has the dominion, but the believer holds that man has the dominion because he has the birthright.

Man is not only G.o.d's submonarch, he is G.o.d's image.

It is interesting and convincing to note how soon that primary truth about man's nature began to work. In the persecution under Diocletian the precious parchments of the Bible had been secretly carried from house to house. The charge that a Christian had given up the sacred Book in order to save himself from death was one of the most serious that could be presented. Many martyrdoms occurred because men preferred the Bible above their own lives. Though circulated under such difficulty, and though made into readable parchments at such expense of labor and money, the Bible was slowly impressing its doctrine of man upon the stubborn period. We are often smitten with horror as we read stories which show how lightly human life was regarded by the Romans. Those dreadful scenes in the arena, where thumbs so often declined to turn down as a sign of mercy, are dire mysteries to men who have gotten the biblical standpoint. We are distant from that heartless mood because we are near to the Bible. The Book and the gladiator could not live together in peace. The Book at once began to call men from the tiers of b.l.o.o.d.y pleasure. With the conversion of Constantine, superficial as it may have been, the change began. The emperor ordered many splendid copies of the Bible for the churches of his capital. He himself came under the spell of its human doctrine. Zealous Christian teachers may sometimes overstate the influence which the Bible exercised over later Roman law. Still there are some undoubted evidences of that influence. Constantine made a law forbidding that a criminal should be branded on the face, and he gave as his reason for the law that the image of G.o.d should not be marred! This leaves us in no doubt as to what had inspired the legislation. It was the simple beginning of a program that has not yet come to its consummation. The biblical idea of man routed one form of slavery, and it will yet rout all other forms. When men come to believe that man is made in the divine image all good movements for the betterment of life are set in the way to victory.

The legal portions of the Bible give us the like lesson, even though the approach to the lesson is different. Here we discover that humanity is worthy enough to call for conservation and protection. The legislation reaches to hygienic and sanitary details of minute character. The whole effort is to build a protecting fence about men. The Ten Commandments, studied in this light, become a very human doc.u.ment. Their harsh and negative quality is softened into gentleness. They guard the goods of man--his property, his wife and children, his body, his good name. It would be possible to regard the Decalogue as a series of prohibitions in which the word "not" occurs with forbidding frequency. In this case the appropriate accompaniment is thunder and lightning, and the appropriate scroll for the writing is stone. This viewpoint is one sided and unfair.

The Ten Commandments are prohibitions only because they are protections.

They have been through many ages the kindly sentinels of society. They have taken the side of G.o.d, of his dumb creatures, and of men and women and little children. Considered in any just way, the legal portions of the Bible are a tribute not merely to divine authority, but to human worth.

The prophetical books add their lesson, and from a still different angle.

They are filled with protests against man's conduct, with wrath against his insincerities, and with predictions of his coming woe. The mouths of the prophets were not filled with compliments. Those stern men were not the flatterers of their own generations. Their sayings could be so elected as to make a degrading estimate of men. But here again we must get the full meaning of the message. In their last a.n.a.lysis the prophecies are a marked tribute to potential man. Beyond the disturbed present they see the peaceful future. Beyond the clash of swords and the swish of spears they see the mild and productive era of the plowshare and the pruning hook.

Beyond the unreal altars they see the incense of true worship arising to G.o.d. The prophets were, in the best sense, optimists, and they were optimists because they believed that all men would some day yield to the Lord. They beheld the whole earth filled with righteousness. They saw the stone cut loose from the mountain and filling the wide world. The healing river was to flow to all peoples. Jerusalem was to be the universal joy.

The day would dawn when it would be unnecessary to say to any man, "Know thou the Lord." The most dismal of the prophets foretold the perfect day.

But all this means that the prophets foretold the perfect man and the perfect race. To proclaim that humanity, under the guidance of G.o.d, is so capable is to dignify human life beyond measure.

Nor are we lacking among the prophets an individual example of the power of self-respect. Nehemiah may not be the premier among his fellows, but he talks with a royal self-consciousness. When messengers come, desiring that he shall go down into the plain for a parley with Sanballat, he declines by saying, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down."

Again he is told that the enemy is coming, and he is counseled to go into the temple and cling to the altar for protection. Once more self-respect comes to the rescue; the reply is, "Should such a man as I flee? and who is there, that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life?

I will not go in." Here the potential man, foretold by the prophet, was the actual man. He had reached such a high doctrine of his own nature that the doctrine itself became the prevention of triviality and of cowardice.

The rebuilded walls of Jerusalem arose from that spirit. Those walls were likewise an expression of the prophet's faith in the future of his people.

The prophetic confidence in man was second only to the prophetic confidence in G.o.d. This form of tribute to humanity is preeminent in the books of the prophets.

In the devotional part of the Bible we should not naturally expect that tribute would turn manward. The tendency is seen in those sections of prophecy where the prophet himself has close dealings with G.o.d. When the greatest of the prophets sees the ineffable One and hears the awful trisagion of the seraphim, the prime confession is that his own lips are unclean and that he dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

Inasmuch as the Psalms are in large measure a liturgy of worship, their emphasis is on the greatness of Jehovah. Yet sometimes the emphasis turns toward man. The most striking ill.u.s.tration occurs in the eighth psalm. The writer there utters the feeling that we have all shared. The limitless expanse of the heavens, the shining of moon and stars in the far heights, the workmanship of the Lord in the vast universe--all this makes the psalmist feel that he is a mere speck in the scheme. Tried by those celestial measurements, he drops into insignificance. He is rescued from self-contempt only by a return to the message of Genesis. His despairing cry issues in a shout of personal triumph. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" If materialism should conquer the Bible there is but one answer. The psalmist is saved by the Scripture, "Thou hast made him a little lower than G.o.d, and hast crowned him with glory and honor." It is no marvel that the first translators lowered the tribute and subst.i.tuted "the angels" for G.o.d. The reverence that so often used a sign for the divine name trembled on the verge of such a human tribute. Still that tribute was a return to the doctrine that G.o.d had made man in his own image and had given him dominion over the works of his hand. In addition to all this, the Psalms are girded with the consciousness that man can enter into the august presence of the Lord. The mutual element in worship is an exaltation of man. The greatness of Jacob is greater when he meets with the heavenly visitant by the Jabbok brook. He becomes a prince. In the devotional books man claims his princely heritage. He treads the courts of the infinite King.

Moving forward into the New Testament, we find that the doctrine of man gathers more impressiveness. Jesus never cast any doubt upon the supreme place of man in the program of G.o.d. He put his harshest blame upon those who wickedly misled the children of the Father. He himself was chided because he sought the lowliest and the worst among men and women. He ate with the publican and gave his choicest lesson to the harlot. He was willing to exchange his social reputation for the privilege of a.s.sociating with the humblest people. For a woman with a dark past he delocalized worship. From another he accepted the offering of grateful tears and put her conduct in contrast with that of the lordly Pharisee. He was the Prophet for the soul as such. He was the Priest who mediated gladly between the least one and the greatest One. We search his words in vain for anything that put contempt on man as man.

When he compared men to the rest of creation it was always to human advantage. He told of the care of the shepherd for the sheep, and then he asked, "How much is a man better than a sheep?" He declared that G.o.d noted the fall of sparrows, though they brought small price in the market place, and then, speaking to ordinary men and women, nearly all of them ignorant and more than half of them slaves, he said, "Are ye not much better than they?" Nor were these sayings really interrogative; they were exclamatory.

Jesus knew that every normal man would feel the answer in his own soul.

The worth of man was, in the teaching of Jesus, beyond debate.

He moved, also, from inanimate things to the a.s.sertion of man's worth. The lilies and gra.s.ses were in the care of G.o.d and waited on him for their vesture. "Will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" He made the worth of man the warrant of the care of G.o.d. At last he put man on one side of the scale and the whole world on the other side, and he affirmed that man outweighed the world. Men may barter themselves for half a township; but Jesus declared that it would be a disastrous bargain, if a man should accept the world in exchange for himself. "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the world and lose himself? Or what will a man give in exchange for himself?" This is the final answer to any paltry teaching about the worth of man.

When choice had to be made between man's interests and sacred laws and ordinances, Jesus gave preference to man. The shewbread was consecrated, but he approved the taking of it to satisfy human hunger. The Sabbath day was holy, but the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; so the plucked ears of corn were a testimonial to men.

The att.i.tude of Jesus toward childhood is tender evidence of his thought of humanity. The child has not yet won any achievement, save the loving a.s.sertion of its own dependency. The child in the midst represented humanity in its freshest and most natural form. It is said that some ancient religionists were accustomed to debate whether or not a child had a soul. Jesus would have scorned such a debate. He made the child the model of the kingdom. Human life unspoiled was lifted up as an example. To offend a little one was worse than being sunk by a millstone into the sea. A cup of cold water given to a child would win a special reward. The angels of the children behold ever the face of the Father. Thus the child, in all the teaching of Jesus, was made the creditor of the race.

Jesus carried this doctrine of man on to the uttermost issue. We have never yet secured the full meaning of that "inasmuch" in the account of the final judgment. The Lord lives beyond the need of man's overt aid. But human beings are his representatives. The righteous had so far overlooked this fact, that they were forgetful of any ministry to him; and what had been the unconscious glory of the righteous was the unconscious tragedy of the wicked. The judgment day will be filled with human tests. He who has not acted as if human beings stood for G.o.d cannot meet the final standards. Jesus's picture of the judgment is a statement of divine authority; and it is an apprais.e.m.e.nt of human worth.

Thus do we see that from whatever side we come to the teaching of Christ, we find an exalted doctrine of man. The incarnation itself is a contribution to that doctrine. If we call it "the human life of G.o.d" it was a life lived for the sake of man. The Word became flesh and dwelt among men, full of grace and truth, because men needed the message of that Word. The whole life of Jesus was lived for man. He himself said, "For their sakes I sanctify myself." All those sacrificial phrases that describe the purpose of his coming add glory to human life. The joy that was set before him was the goal of a redeemed humanity. His living for men was simply his teaching about men, made over into concrete terms. In the Parable of the Good Shepherd he gives the revelation of his own att.i.tude toward men. One soul, brought back into right relations with G.o.d, makes joy in heaven. It is the Eternal One who is represented as saying, "Rejoice with me." Men may deny the doctrine of the only begotten Son, but they can scarcely deny that that doctrine leads on to a wondrous doctrine of human worth.

The Cross, viewed in one light, becomes the very climax of the doctrine of man. Theologians have often laid their stress upon some single purpose of the divine sacrifice. One has said that the Cross appeases the anger of G.o.d; another that the Cross maintains the majesty of the law; another that the Cross is a moral influence wooing and winning the heart of man to G.o.d; another that the Cross is the expression of the Father's sorrow with the sins and sorrows of his children. But we may surely take one meaning of the Cross to be the divine estimate of man. G.o.d's sense of values must be preserved. He did not send his Son to die for worms of the dust. That idea may fit an extreme mood of spiritual abas.e.m.e.nt. We may grant all possible condescension in the atoning act of G.o.d, but we cannot grant a condescension that dedicates infinite worth to finite worthlessness. Jesus died for men just because men were far more than worms of the dust. If we are to keep that theory of atonement that has long held the heart of the church, we are driven to affirm that the Cross gives us a divine estimate of mankind. No man ever appreciates the worth of himself until he gets the appraisal of Calvary. The dying of Jesus is not out of harmony with his teaching and his living. The whole program is like the garment taken from him on the day of crucifixion; it is woven throughout without seam. Men may decry a doctrine of subst.i.tution, but they cannot say that such a doctrine is a slight tribute to human worth. In such a doctrine thorns and nails and spears and all the drama of the Cross are made into tributes to the soul of man.

This carries us on to the biblical teaching of man's permanent worth. The doctrine of immortality makes its incalculable addition to the doctrine of man. There is a story, for which the writer cannot vouch, that Thomas Carlyle in a mood of pessimism one day wrote this peevish estimate of man:

What is man? A foolish baby!

Vainly strives and fumes and frets!

Demanding all, deserving nothing, One small grave is all he gets!

Language like this is certainly no contribution to the literature of self-respect. The story proceeds to relate that Carlyle's wife found this poetic depreciation lying on the table, and that she wrote the following confession and correction:

And man? O hate not, nor despise The fairest, lordliest work of G.o.d!

Think not he made thee good and wise Only to sleep beneath the sod!

Doubtless the tale is apocryphal. In any case the latter estimate is far nearer to the biblical conception, and it is altogether worthy of a woman's moral instinct. If man is to live forever, as the climax of Revelation insists, it is quite impossible for him to "think too much" of himself, unless he indulges in comparison of himself with others. An argument for immortality does not fall within the scope of this lecture; but the bearing of immortality, as declared in the Holy Scriptures, on the view that men must take of human nature, touches our purpose in a radical way. A deathless person must respect himself. A deathless person must command the respect of a world--and of G.o.d. The doctrine of immortality adds an infinite measure to the doctrine of human worth.

Even the biblical representation of heaven secures a relation to this subject. The abode for immortal life, as well as immortal life itself, may be turned into a human estimate. The book of Revelation declares that the nations shall bring "their glory and honor" into the Eternal City. This can only mean that men shall make some contribution to the eternal life.

What they are and what they have done shall fill heaven with added value.

The cities of earth shall transport treasures to the Heavenly City. Here, again, we come upon a reason based on the divine sense of values. G.o.d will not provide an Eternal Home that is any better than the Eternal Beings for whom he makes it ready. The gem is to be better than the setting. In a certain sense, therefore, jasper walls and pearl gates and gold streets, as seen in the descriptions of heaven, are tributes to human souls. The Bible tells us that "greater than the house is he that built it," and the Bible would tell us, also, that the occupant of the house is greater than the house. G.o.d will provide no everlasting dwelling that is better than the everlasting dwellers. Heaven is made for man, and not man for heaven.

The many mansions are tributes to the people that shall live in the Father's house. The Scriptures are reserved in their revealings of the other land; but their descriptions of celestial glories may be united with those other portions of the Bible that dignify the human spirit and may be taken as standing for the divine valuation of the essential selves of men.

This review of the teaching of the several sections of the Bible has confessedly sought for the words and ideas that exalt the doctrine of man.

Allowing all possible discounts, and admitting all possible offsets, the residuum of instruction tending to glorify human nature is significant. We need not wonder that some thoughtful men have affirmed that the chief characteristic of Christianity is the value that it places on man. If we do not accept this statement, we can still declare that the Bible is the supreme Book when judged by its emphasis on human values.

Nor can there be any doubt of the need of this emphasis in our own age. As men crowd more and more into the great centers of population, the tendency will be to hold men cheaply. In former times man was often highly valued because of his rarity. On the far Eastern plains a new face, not being often seen, was regarded with curious interest. Thus Abraham stood in the door of his tent in the heat of the day and welcomed the stranger, because the stranger was an event. But in the modern city the stranger is no longer an event; he is only an episode, or perhaps an incident. We pa.s.s him on the dense street, and we do not notice him at all. There are so many of him that, unless we are heedful, we shall come to regard him lightly just because he is hidden by the crowd. When factories grow so huge that men are known, not by their names, but by their numbers, only the scriptural emphasis upon men as such can save human beings from being deemed "hands" rather than souls. If the sin of the countryside is an excessive social interest that makes for gossip, the sin of the city is a social carelessness that makes for indifference. The various problems of our social life wait for their solution upon the Christian doctrine of man. When that doctrine has done its full service, race problems, labor problems, liquor problems, and all their dreadful accompaniments will issue into a righteous and intelligent peace. An immortal son of G.o.d, knowing himself, cannot be unjust to another immortal son of G.o.d, when once he knows his Brother.

This hints at the personal bearing of the doctrine. As men grow in moral and spiritual experience, they find themselves using more and more the test of self-respect. Knowing that the reaction of certain behaviors makes them feel that a fragment of the soul has slipped away from them, so that they have the sense of smallness, they guard their natures lest legitimate pride should be destroyed. Andrews Norton once wrote to his son, Charles Eliot Norton, who was about to go abroad for an important service, telling the young man that his family and friends recognized that he had special powers for doing large and worthy things. Then he added that "this ought not to make one vain. On the contrary, their true tendency is to produce that deep sense of responsibility--of what we owe to G.o.d, to our friends, and to our fellowmen--which is wholly inconsistent with presumption or vanity." It was a wise father who wrote thus to his son. If the Christian doctrine of man be true, no man can think too much of himself. There is a type of saving pride. Clough stated it in his well-known lines:

Then welcome, Pride! and I shall find In thee a power to lift the mind This low and groveling joy above-- 'Tis but the proud can truly love.

The pride that comes from the consciousness of the divine image has power to restrain from sins and trivialities, and it has power likewise to constrain toward holiness of character and largeness of service. One who has come to believe that he is made in the divine image, that he is one of the divinely appointed rulers of the world, that the great laws are designed for his protection, that the alluring prophecies of the future are declarations of his coming power, that his worship is the symbol of his partnership with the Most High, that the incarnation is in his interest, that the Infinite Teacher brought him matchless tributes, that the Cross of Calvary is an expression of his own valuation, that immortal life is his destiny, and that a glorious heaven is the fitting place for his final dwelling--such a one has gained all the preventions and all the inspirations of the Christian doctrine of self-respect. Sins and trivialities cannot flourish when one thinks so much of oneself; great affections and lasting consecrations seem natural to one so highly endowed. The conception that makes for the dignity of self makes also for the consideration of others. He who entertains this view begins to

Find man's veritable stature out, Erect, sublime, the measure of a man, And that's the measure of an angel, Says the apostle.

To such a one life becomes solemn and beautiful. He is now the son of G.o.d.

While he knows not yet what he shall be, he sees the vision of the Elder Brother and so purifies himself even as he is pure. The world needs the gospel of the Son of G.o.d in order that it may learn the gospel of the sons of G.o.d.

CHAPTER III

THE BIBLE AND HOME

The significance of the home is seen in the fact that every human being is a son or a daughter. This ordinary statement at once insists on becoming extraordinary. It is difficult to think what life would have been, or even how it could have been, if children had been pushed upon the earth from some mysterious void and had been nurtured without the providential agency of fathers and mothers. So much do we realize the importance of the home that where it is impossible to maintain one, owing to the death, or inability, or worthlessness of parents, we still make provision for an inst.i.tution that shall provide as many domestic features as can be won for the orphaned. This we call an Orphans' Home. It is significant that the sociological tendency of the period drifts away from even this inst.i.tution. The effort now is to bring the childless and the parentless together. Goldsmith said that the nakedness of the indigent world might be clothed with the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the vain. There are those who affirm that, if the parentless and the childless could be brought into the company of homes, the Orphan Asylum would be no longer needed.