The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible Part 21

I was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading the Bible.

(d.) _Train the children to commit to memory the choicest pa.s.sages of the Bible._

John Ruskin doubtless, at the time, rebelled against the strict rule of his good aunt, which kept him busy on the Sundays memorizing the Scriptures; but he is thankful now, as he has owned, for the discipline which stored his mind with their creative words. What a treasury of holy thoughts and influences does he carry within him who has written on his mind such pa.s.sages as the nineteenth, twenty-third, ninety-first, one hundred and third, and one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalms; the third and eighth chapters of Proverbs; the fortieth chapter of Isaiah; the sermon on the mount, the parable of the prodigal son, and the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians. Happy he who, like the palm tree in the desert, can strike his roots below the arid surface of the world into fresh and living waters, and thus keep life green amid the droughts of earth. The parable of the temptation of Christ should teach us how to arm our children against the wiles of the Evil One, whom they must surely meet: "And he said, It is written." In the stress and strain of conflict, when the air is dimmed with the dust of the contending forces and the vision grows confused, it is a saving sound to hear the ringing call of Duty, from the hills where One watcheth over the battlefield. When sore pressed by the foe, it may prove our victory to fall back against the strong stone wall of an external authority, that can hold our lines unbroken. It is no wonder that the tempting sailors could do nothing with the cabin-boy who was "chock full of the Bible."

(e.) _Teach your children, as you teach yourselves, to hearken through these voices of the human writers to the voice of G.o.d._

Bother then with no theories of inspiration. Never deny nor conceal the true human voices of these men who spake of old, but never fail to affirm the true Divine breath in these men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And, since this is the power of the Bible, emphasize the Divine speaking; make every G.o.d-breathed word sound to the children's souls as the very voice of G.o.d; until, in simple faith and reverent docility, they shall each answer--Speak, Lord: Thy servant heareth!

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, And a light unto my path.

Such is the holy office of the Bible: such be its blessed service to our souls, and to the souls of our dear children! May we walk in its light through life; that in the valley of the shadow of death that light may still fall upon us.

It is not many months since I was called to the house where, in a ripe and honored age, lay a warden of this church, stricken suddenly by death.

On the table in his room, as he had left it open after reading in it that morning, I saw a Bible.

I can ask for my funeral no better symbol of the aim and effort of my poor erring life, if so be it shame me not too much, than that which told the story of an humble servant of the Lord. Upon his coffin, with the book-mark between the pages where he last had read, was--his Bible!

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy Holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou has given us in our Saviour, Jesus Christ. _Amen._

The End.

Footnotes

[1] The Second Sunday in Advent.

[2] 1 Cor. vii. 10.

[3] 1 Cor. vii. 12.

[4] 1 Cor. vii. 40.

[5] 1 Cor. vii. 25.

[6] Hebrews i. 1.

[7] 2 Peter i. 21.

[8] 1 Peter i. 10, 11.

[9] 2 Timothy iii. 16.

[10] Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. xiii.

[11] 2 Maccabees, ii. 13.

[12] "The Jews and the priests have found it good that Simon shall be their leader and high priest forever until there shall arise a trustworthy prophet."--1 Macc. xiv. 41.

[13] Introduction to the New Testament. Samuel Davidson, I.:279.

[14] Introduction to the New Testament. Samuel Davidson, I.:384.

[15] The contrast between the fifteenth and sixteenth century Confessions of Faith reveals this process, and explains the prevalent Protestant theory.

[16] About 600 A.D.

[17] 2 Maccabees ii. 13.

[18] The Dial: October, 1840.

[19] Ewald: History of Israel, i. 4.

[20] Esther is the most notable apparent exception, but this it only apparent.

[21] In speaking of the book of Esther, Dean Stanley observes that "it never names the name of G.o.d from first to last," and remarks "It is necessary for us that in the rest of the sacred volume the name of G.o.d should constantly be brought before us, to show that He is all in all to our moral perfection. But it is expedient for us no less that there should be one book which omits it altogether, to prevent us from attaching to the mere name a reverence which belongs only to the reality.... The name of G.o.d is _not_ there, but the work of G.o.d _is_.... When Esther nerved herself to enter, at the risk of her life, the presence of Ahasuerus--'I will go in unto the king, and if I perish I perish'--when her patriotic feeling vented itself in that n.o.ble cry, 'How can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people? or can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?'--she expressed, although she never named the name of G.o.d, a religious devotion as acceptable to Him as that of Moses and David, who, no less sincerely, had the sacred name always on their lips."--_History of the Jewish Church_, iii. 301.

[22] Ewald: History of Israel, i. 4.

[23] The Old Testament is a record of the growth of human intelligence in relation to the Deity--of the revelation made by Spirit to spirit. When therefore G.o.d is described as _speaking_ to man, he does so in the only way in which He who is a Spirit can speak to one encompa.s.sed with flesh and blood; not to the outward organs of sensation, but to that intelligence which is kindred to Himself the great Fountain of knowledge.--Davidson: _Introduction to the Old Testament_, i. 233.

[24] Emerson: Miscellanies, p. 200.

[25] "To hear people speak," said Goethe, "one would almost believe that they were of opinion that G.o.d had withdrawn into silence since those old times, and that man was now placed quite upon his own feet, and had to see how he could get on without G.o.d and his daily invisible breath."--Conversations, _March 11, 1832_.

[26] Our advancing knowledge of the early portions of the Bible is clearing its offensive portions of the grossness which characterized them as literal histories, by resolving them into nature-myths, or into social traditions, symbolical stories of casuistry, "token-tales," whose original meaning had been lost by the time they were committed to writing.

Every school-boy knows how the worst stories of the Greek G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses lose their immorality as seen to be parables of nature's processes, myths, whose poetry had exhaled in the course of time.

Goldziher's "Mythology Among the Hebrews," shows the mythic character of many of these revolting Jewish stories, though his theory carries him off his feet. Fenton's "Early Hebrew Life," brings out the social and casuistical origin of many of these traditions as decisions, "Judgments,"

of the village elders and priests upon cases of conduct, thrown into the form of imaginary stories to make them realistic and ensure their preservation. "In this way, various dubious points of primitive morality and politics were governed; and the stories which enshrine them stand to primitive life in much the same relation as do collections of precedents to modern lawyers, and dictionaries of cases of conscience to father confessors." (p. 81)

But, as these aspects of such traditions as Lot and his daughters, Judah and Tamar, &c., cannot be divined without interpretation, they should be omitted from our children's Bibles.

My suggestion of an expurgated Bible, on which so many hard criticisms have been pa.s.sed, seemed to me innocent enough, since most sensible people have been in the habit of expurgating the Bible for themselves in home readings and in the readings in the churches. This is what Plato thought of such stories in the sacred book of the Grecians:

"Whatever beautiful fable they may invent, we should select, and what is not so, we should reject: and we are to prevail on nurses and mothers to repeat to the children such fables as are selected, and fashion their minds by fables * * * For though these things were true, yet I think they should not be so readily told to the unwise and the young, but rather concealed from them. As little ought we to describe in fables, the battles of the giants and other many and various feuds, both of G.o.ds and heroes, with their own kindred and relatives; but if we would persuade them that never at all should one citizen hate another, and that it is not holy, such things as these are rather to be told them in early childhood; and the poets should be obliged to compose consistently with these views * * *

Young persons are not able to judge what is allegory and what is not, but whatever opinions they receive at such an age are wont to be obliterated with difficulty, and immovable. Hence one would think, we should of all things endeavor, that what they should first hear be composed in the best manner for exciting them to virtue."