Wisely speaks the finest Biblical critic of England in our day:

No one knows the truth about the Bible who does not know how to enjoy the Bible; and he who takes legend for history, and who imagines Moses, or Isaiah, or David, or Paul, or Peter, or John, to have written Bible-books which they did not write, but who knows how to enjoy the Bible deeply, is nearer the truth about the Bible than the man who can pick it all to pieces but who cannot enjoy it.... His work is to learn to enjoy and turn to his benefit the Bible, as the Word of the Eternal,[55]

The right use of the Bible is to feed religion.

Coleridge said:

Religion, in its widest sense, signifies the act and the habits of reverencing the invisible, as the highest both in ours Ives and in nature.[56]

The use of the Bible then is to ennoble our ideals, to quicken our aspirations, to clear the illusions of the senses, to dissipate the glamor of the world, to purify our passions, to bring our powers well in hand to a firm will; and, through the mystic laws of nature and of conscience which we thus endeavor to obey, to breathe within our souls a sacred sense of the Presence of a Power, infinite and eternal and loving righteousness—whom to know "is life eternal."

De Quincey classified all writings as belonging either to the literature of knowledge, or the literature of power. There are books to which we go for information. They give us facts and ideas. They constitute the literature of knowledge. They teach us. There are books to which we go for inspiration; to which we turn for joy and pleasure, for strength and courage, for patience and endurance, for purity and peace. They constitute the literature of power. They move us. Herbert Spencer's books belong to the literature of knowledge The "Imitation of Christ" belongs to the literature of power.

The literature of knowledge needs to be reissued every century or generation or decade, corrected up to date. The literature of power is immortal; fresh to-day though born milleniums ago. The problems of character and conduct face us much as they faced the Romans and Greeks, the Egyptians and Hindus. The invisible in nature and in man touches us with the same feelings that it stirred in Persians, Chaldeans and Akkadians Even though the Spirit's voice spake once in a language of the intellect which has now become obsolete, its utterances are not therefore obsolete. How archaic is much of the thought of the "Imitation of Christ;" shot through and through as it is with the tissue of mediaeval Catholicism! But we forget these archaisms in the spell of a holy soul, in love with wisdom, "intoxicated with God." No archaisms in Biblical thought destroy its spiritual power over us. Nay, rather do they strengthen that power: as in our devotions we naturally seek old and quaint forms, buildings unlike other structures, music which sounds from out the past, words that are mellow with the rich hues of age; as the archaisms of the language of our English Bible hold a power that is lost in the raw correctness of the revised version.

* * * * *

In the literature of power the Bible ranks first. Whatever in Christian literature has most searching ethical and spiritual energy radiates the reflected light of the Bible. Augustine's Confessions, The Imitation of Christ, Fenelon's Spiritual Letters, The Saints' Rest, The Pilgrim's Progress, in their most appealing tones echo the voices of the Bible. The hymns that feed the inner life are aromatic with the rich thoughts and feelings of this holy book. Our poets betray, in the passages which are the favorites of earnest minds, the influence of these Scriptures. From Paradise Lost to In Memoriam, from The Temple to the Christian Year, the poems which the devout delight in are either Biblical paraphrases or Biblical distillations. Our masters of fiction could not have written the scenes which most rouse our moral nature, could not have conceived the characters which most inspire our devotional nature, without the Bible. Take the Bible out of Adam Bede and Dinah Morris, out of Robert Falconer and M. Myriel the blessed Bishop of D., and what would be left of them? The vibratory quality which most thrills our souls in the strains of Christian literature is due to the Bible material in it. The Bible holds stored the ethical electricity on which Christendom has drawn, through centuries, exhaustless energy.

Outside of Christendom, while there are many books which we can thankfully and reverently place by the side of the Bible, as ethical and spiritual motors, there are none which any of us would think of substituting for it. The Discourses and the Manual of Epictetus, the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, the Dialogues of Plato, and the kindred words of wisdom of the ancients, are indeed full of inspiration to earnest natures. To dip into these writings for a few minutes, amid the duties of the day, is a soul bath, most cleansing and invigorating. The Sacred Books of the East may well be sacred to us Westerns. A sense of grateful awe steals over me as, looking on these volumes, I think of the generations which they have fed with spiritual sustenance and have guided in the way of life. The light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world shines through these pages. The All-Father has drawn nigh to the souls of His children, through the holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. It is an inestimable privilege to have these Bibles of Humanity ranged along our shelves, and to have their choicest words at hand upon our tables, in some apt anthology. It would be well if their great sayings could be read in our churches, in connection with our Old Testament lessons, as the voices of the ethnic prophets of the Son of Man. But if we have allowed the thought that any of these sacred books might become a substitute for our fathers' Bible, we may correct our crude enthusiasms by the authority of the greatest living master in Comparative Religion. In the preface to the edition of the Sacred Books of the East that noble monument of our generation's scholarship Max Mueller, writes:

Readers who have been led to believe that the Vedas of the ancient Brahmans, the Avesta of the Zoroastrians, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the Kings of Confucius, or the Koran of Mohammed are books full of primeval wisdom and religious enthusiasm or at least of sound and simple moral teaching, will be disappointed on consulting these volumes.... I cannot help calling attention to the real mischief that has been done, and is still being done, by the enthusiasm of those pioneers who have opened the first avenues through the bewildering forest of the sacred literature of the East. They have raised expectations that cannot be fulfilled, fears also that, as will be easily seen, are unfounded.... I confess it has been for many years a problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the Sacred Books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful and true, contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous and repellant.[57]

Our own Bible, as I have frankly owned, holds the truth as the gold is held in the ore. Truth nowhere exists "native" in human writings; but the proportions of the "mineralizer" are vastly greater in all other Bibles than in our own. There is no book known that can take its place on the lecterns in our churches, or on the tables by which, in quiet hours, we seat ourselves, a-hungered for the bread of life.

The pre-eminent excellence of Israel's writings in the literature of power, is natural and necessary. Israel had little originality in any science or art save the science and art of the soul, the knowledge and the love of God. Nature is economic in her dowries. She does not shower all the gifts of the fairies on any one race. She dowered Israel with the highest of human powers, conscience, in an unequalled measure. Providence nurtured and trained this faculty. This little nation became as pre-eminently the people of ethical and spiritual religion as the states of Greece became the people of art. Because of the natural aptitudes of Israel, and of her providential education, we should turn to her literature for our highest inspirations in ethical culture and religion.



I.



Wherein lies this commanding rank of the Bible in the literature of ethical and spiritual power?

Speaking generally, I should say that the superiority of the Bible lies in the fact that it is at once a literature of ethical power and a literature of spiritual power. We have books of high ethical power that are weak religiously. We have books of high religious power that are weak ethically The Bible is strong in both directions. Hence its power. Either ethical or spiritual power alone is defective. Morality without spirituality is principle without passion. Spirituality without morality is passion without principle. Union supplements the defectiveness of each alone, and develops its full forcefulness. The Bible marries morality and spirituality, and these twain become one. The secularities become sacred, and the sanctities become sound.

According to the Bible, he who keeps the Ten Words obeys God. The "merely moral" man is a worshipper of God, though the worship may be silent. In Kant's great saying, They are always in the service of God whose actions are moral. Virtue becomes consciously religious, as she learns to recognize what she is in love with in loving goodness. As the love of goodness rises into a passion for the ideal forms of Justice, Purity and Truth, it takes on a real religiousness. It may think to stop short in an ethical culture, but it cannot. To feed its own aspirations it must worship the Ideal Righteousness as a reality. Its desires become prayers, its hopes become praises. Even though in mute longings, it pleads

O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.

Reversing the identification of religion with morality that is wrought by the Bible, its influence is equally impressive. Religion is not the emotion of man in the presence of the invisible in nature, unless that invisible is felt to be essentially moral. Religion is not the finest of feelings before the invisible in man, unless that unseen is also felt to be ethical. The Natural Religion, however nobly stated, which accepts any form of poetic ideals as religion, is very imperfect and not at all Biblical. Shelley's feelings for the spirit of Beauty are exquisitely fine, but under the light of the Bible they are seen to be only latently religious. A more penetrating-vision will see in the Ideal Beauty a Moral Form, and then aesthetics will translate itself into ethics. The unmoral sentiment of a Shelley for Beauty may issue in another generation in the immoral sentiment of a Swinburne. Even thus the vision of the Aphrodite sank into the dream of a Venus. An Oscar Wilde's maunderings over an art which has no reference to morality may possibly be poetry, but they certainly are not religion according to the Bible, for all his blasphemous apostrophes to Christ between his praises of licentious love. Hard as the granitic core of earth is the core of religion in the Bible.

The "stern law-giver" of Israel was Duty. Her supreme authority, which enjoined with absolute command the most unpleasant action, was—"I ought." She saw that "laws mighty and brazen" bind man to a right, which he may distort or deny, but cannot destroy—his Saviour or his Judge. Mystic in its sacredness, Conscience sat shrined within the soul of the holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost; her voice the very voice of God. The Power in whom we live and move and have our being is revealed in these books as the Eternal Righteousness. The moral law is seen to be the throne of the Most High.

In Emerson's phrase:

Virtue is the adopting of this dictate of the Universal Mind by the individual will.

"What do I love when I love Thee?" sighed Augustine. Israel might have answered that question in Augustine's own words:

Not the beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices, not manna and honey. None of these do I love when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, a kind of melody, a kind of fragrance, a kind of food, when I love my God,—the light, the melody, the fragrance, the food of the inner man. This it is which I love when I love my God.[58]

But the Bible answer would be much more simple and pungent:

O ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate the thing which is evil.... If a man say I love God and hateth His brother he is a liar.

This is the fundamental secret of the power of the Bible. The love of goodness and the love of God are one. Aspiration is unconscious worship, and worship is aspiration conscious of its object.

Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

But this noble conception of the unity of ethical and spiritual life has many aspects in the Bible. The Bible turns upon us every phase in which Wisdom reveals herself to the sons of men, so that no ray of her light is lost, and that every one, however he may stand related to her, receives her heavenly beams.



1. We have here the simple, homely, prudential aspects of virtue, which have always been particularly powerful on certain ages and classes.

The maxims of a Poor Richard are anticipated here, as quaint, as terse, and as sagacious in the ancient Jew as in the modern American. Our scientific teachers would replace eloquent declamation concerning vices, such as drunkenness and debauchery, by illustrated lectures upon the physiological effects of violations of nature's laws. They would teach men that the laws of health are found in the laws of temperance and purity. The Hebrew sages had this vision of Wisdom. Their proverbial sayings abound with graphic pen-pictures of the folly of vice. No illustration of the physical consequences of debauchery could be more impressive than the vivid sketch of the foolish young man, going after the strange woman as an "ox goeth to the slaughter," knowing not that

Her house is the way to hell, Going down to the chambers of death.

The favorite name for sin in these proverbs is Folly. Wisdom crieth to the sons of men, in that noblest writing of the sages:

Blessed is the man that heareth me, Watching daily at my gates, Waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, And shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death.



2. These laws of life that work for our health and wealth loom, however, into mystic and sacred forms, as of the laws heavenly and eternal, whose "seat is the bosom of God."

When Crito urges his beloved master to escape from the death that had been unjustly decreed for him, Socrates replies in a noble personification of the Laws, as rebuking him for the thought of such an attempt to evade them; and he must be dim-sighted, indeed, who does not see in the forms of the State Laws, the shadows of the Eternal Laws, august and awful, whose constraint was round about his will. That is the vision which we catch through every form of law, sanitary, social, or ecclesiastical, in the Bible. In the earliest code of the Hebrew statutes known to us, a collection of tribal "Judgments" or "dooms," this high and mystic sense of obligation steals over us. Amid the quaint enactments recorded in the Book of Covenants, whose language carries us back to times of extreme simplicity, we hear the words

Ye shall be holy men unto me.[59]

Our new critics may tell you that the late poet, who wrote that long-drawn sigh of desire for the Law which is bodied in the One hundred and nineteenth Psalm, was thinking of the "Thorah"—the ritual law of the temple and the counsels of the priests. They are doubtless right, if so be that they do not lead you to infer that this devout soul was thinking only of the ecclesiastical law. Through it, there was rising upon his spirit the vision of the Law Eternal and Heavenly, the norm and pattern of the law that on earth binds men to purity and righteousness.

Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way, Who walk in the law of the Lord. Make me to understand the way of thy commandments; And so shall I talk of thy wondrous works. Thy statutes have been my songs In the house of my pilgrimage. The earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy: O teach me thy statutes! Thy hands have made me and fashioned me: O give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments. Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. They continue this day, according to thy ordinances. Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, And thy law is the truth. Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant, And teach me thy statutes.

This is none other than that law of which a far later ecclesiastic, writing also of ecclesiastical law, discoursed in this wise:

There can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.[60]

This law is none other than that holy form which a modern poet thus apostrophizes:

Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face. Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.



3. The Law thus mystic and sacred is seen to be both the law of nature and the law of the human soul.

The Bible recognizes no duality of natural law and revealed law. All divine law is natural, and, as such, is a revelation. Physical and moral laws are but different forms of one and the same order. The same Power is working in the world around man and in the world within man. The lower forms of Its action are to be interpreted by Its higher forms. Nature is to be resolved by Man. The Ten Words were given as the statutes of Jehovah himself the personification of some form of nature's force. Out of this simple germ grew, the noble thought which anticipated the knowledge of our savans and the intuitions of our seers; who unite in showing us one order in the starry heavens and in the mysteries of mind. Thus it is that the Bible feeds so richly, when read aright, that awe which steals upon us as we face nature and see ourselves mirrored there in shadowy outline; and realize the One in all things—God.

There is a beautiful illustration of this in a noble poem that our later critics have handled with a strange lack of perceptiveness. The Nineteenth Psalm opens with a lofty apostrophe to Nature, commencing:

The heavens declare the glory of God, And the firmament sheweth His handywork.

At the seventh verse the Psalm abruptly passes to a eulogy of "The Law"—the moral law shrined in the priestly Thorah:

The law of the Lord is an undefiled law, Converting the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, And giveth wisdom unto the simple.

Here we have, say our learned critics, two psalms welded into one, a song of nature and a song of the soul. As though nature and man did not form one divine poem in two cantos! As though the system of the world around us did not type the world within us! As though it were not always the most instinctive action to pass from the sense of an Order in the starry heavens, and the awe thus awakened, to the sense of an Order in the soul of man, and the deeper awe thus roused!

We know that the Hindus and Egyptians made use, each, of one word to express the law of nature and the law of conscience. The physical order interpreted the sense of a moral order.

The Egyptian maat, derived like the Sanskrit rita, from merely sensuous impressions, became the name for moral order and righteousness.[61]

The Nineteenth Psalm is only the expression among the Hebrews of this wide-spread instinct; an instinct which learned critics may lack, but which the poet still inherits; as the Sphynx whispers to him of the double life of nature and of man, that yet are

By one music enchanted, One Deity stirred.



4. The Bible leads us on to that sense of sin, in the presence of this "Law," which no lower thought of law can quicken.

Violations of physiological law Nature stamps as folly. Offences against social laws the State brands as crime. Transgressions of Ideal and Eternal Law become sin. It is not only foolish or disgraceful to break the moral law, it is wrong. This is the sense of guilt in disobedience that is roused in each of us by the Bible, as by no other book; that has been quickened in Europe, historically, by these sacred Scriptures, as by no other writings. The Bible has given to humanity a new and intense ethical perception of evil.

The strenuous moral earnestness of the Puritan and the Methodist is vitalized from these books. The very type of saintship in Christendom is unique. It is no mere ceremonial correctness for which the priestly Ezekiel pleads with tender pathos:

Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed, and make you a clean heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?

It is this intense sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin which oppressed the great-hearted Paul, and wrung from him the bitter cry:

O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death.

How vividly this sense of sin expresses itself in the Fifty-first Psalm! There is here a plaint infinitely deeper than the chagrin and remorse of the man who has committed an "indiscretion," or become entangled in an "intrigue;" there is the cry of a soul that has betrayed its highest, holiest fidelities, and lies low in the dust before the Heavenly purity:

Wash me throughly from my wickedness, And cleanse me from my sin. Cast me not away from Thy presence, And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.

To enter into the spirit of this sigh of penitence is a new knowledge of the human heart. The Bible thus leads men to live as in the presence of an awful Power of Holiness, which is searching through and through our beings. We cannot understand the Biblical "salvation" unless we have fathomed, at least, the shoaler experiences of these saintly souls of old, and know some little of the depths of sin.



5. The Bible wakens in the breast of man an ethical passion for the ideal and eternal law, which, apart from early Buddhism, has no parallel in history.

The prophets are aflame with the ardors of this sacred enthusiasm. The ordinary passions of mankind are rivaled in intensity by the mystic passion of their souls for the Heavenly Wisdom. They stand amid the wild whirl of selfish strife in the society of their day, and lift on high the holy forms of Justice and Brotherhood, as though expecting their commonplace cotemporaries to turn aside from practical affairs, and seek for them; and, so subtle and searching are the appeals of these heavenly visions, men do actually turn from mammon to worship these impoverishing divinities; and a great movement arises, looking to the bringing down of these ideals upon the earth, as the ruling powers in the court and the exchange. The regenerating force of Christendom has lain in the coming of these prophets, generation after generation, to the children of men, to lead them upon the mount where they should clearly see those lofty shapes, commanding instant loyalty from honest souls. The ominous travail-throes of society to-day await one stimulus to free the new order that is struggling to the birth—the passion for ethical and social ideals, which the Bible, rightly administered, would inspire.

The prophetic spirit is the vital force of the Bible. Its insistent power reappears in Paul; a man consuming in the fires of this holy passion, and kindling its ardors in the souls of untold myriads. His great letter to the Romans, so strangely misread as a mere dogmatic treatise, breathes and burns with this lofty enthusiasm. Its central thought, its threading motif, heard anew in every critical movement of the argument, is—Righteousness. The Master in whom the Bible centres, enriches earth with a new benediction:

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.

This highest passion of mankind is wakened by the Bible as by no other book. Through it, the mystic Forerunners reveal themselves to the human soul most alluringly; enthralling it with their pure charms, dispelling the illusions of the senses and the glamor of the world, in the light of their holy loveliness. The Eternal Wisdom calls from out these pages to the sons of men:

Hearken unto me ye that follow after righteousness.



6. The Bible reveals these ethical ideals as no mere alluring visions, but as the substantial realities of being.

Men say to those who speak of these high conceptions—"They are the dreams of sentimentalists, the will-'o-the-wisp lights that beguile men away from the terra firma; to be trusted and followed by no practical man." "Idealist" is a term of reproach. And justly, from any other point of view than that which the Bible, true to the most penetrating discernment of humanity, opens to us. These ideal forms are not the empty conceits of man's brain, bred from the fumes of his boundless egotism. They are not the clouds that gather and form and break into airy unreality in the atmosphere of earth. They are the shadows falling upon the soul of man from the unseen Realities, which alone have substantial and abiding being. The laws of nature are surely not the baseless fabric of a dream. These ideals are simply those laws, transfigured into their spiritual substances. Whatever in our blindness we may persuade ourselves elsewhere, over the Bible we recognize the true character of the visions which so strangely stir us. This is the power of the Bible. Christian seemed to Mr. Worldly Wiseman a fool. But he saw the heavenly city, and trudged along, sure that time would prove him in the right. Christian carried in his hand this Book. With this Book in our hands, we, too, are sure that the visions of Purity and Justice, which we dimly see afar, are substantial and real, and that man will win at the last to the land where they are the light thereof.

Whereupon I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.



7. The Bible thus inspires a buoyancy and exhilaration which feed the fresh forces of all noble life.

No poet is needed to tell us that

Virtue kindles at the touch of joy.

We know it in our own experience. We notice it in every great revival of religion. We trace it through the history of Christianity. The story of the early days of Jesus is, as Renan called it, "a delightful pastoral." In the person of humanity's greatest idealist, the highest joy of the soul was set in the framing of one of nature's brightest scenes. Even from the shadows of the garden of Gethsemane, He bequeaths to his little flock the legacy of his free spirit: My joy I leave with you. The Christian Society entered into that bequest, and in its first exhilaration overflowed the hard coast lines of property, and realized a happy brotherhood.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as any man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home did take their food with gladness.

The prophets were filled with a buoyancy of spirit that scarce would let them keep down to the plodding steps of social progress; that constantly rapt them away into the future, whence their voices echo back the gladness of their visions. The good time is coming on the earth. The longings of man's soul are to be realized. Crushed by no disappointments, wearied out by no delays, the prophets maintain an indomitable hopefulness; their voices the carollings of the birds that greet the dawn of day:

Sing, O Heavens; and be joyful, O earth; And break forth into singing, O mountains. For the Lord hath comforted his people; And will have mercy upon his afflicted.

One treads here the upper zones, where the air is rare and every draught an inspiration; where the Laws are seen majestically sweeping every force into the measured movement which is making all things work together for good to them that love God.

With a tact truer than any theory, our canon of scripture has been closed in the Book of the Revelation; whose visions look beyond the break-up of Jerusalem and shadow on the far horizon, where earth and heaven melt in one, the fair form of the City of God, coming down from out the skies upon the new world wherein dwelleth righteousness.

In these days, when "joy is withered from the sons of men," it is like drinking from the Castalian springs to draw within our souls from the Bible the sense of that kingdom of God which is joy in the Holy Ghost; into which men are to come

With everlasting joy upon their heads: They shall obtain joy and gladness And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

You learn the power of the Bible as you find how the joy of the Lord is your strength.



8. The Bible leads this sense of Law into that awful vision wherein "Conscious Law is King of kings."

The Laws appear substantial and real inasmuch as they are seen to be but phases of the Infinite and Eternal Being, the Righteous Lord who loveth righteousness. It is a conscious, intelligent, holy Being, whom Israel worships through these ideal forms of goodness. However He transcended their poor personalities, as transcend them they knew He must, God was yet best expressed in the form of the human, conscious personality. Man, the highest creature, must be, they said, most nearly in the form of God. As man takes up the noblest characteristics of the life below him, so his own noblest characteristics must be taken up into the Lord of Life. God cannot be less than personal, however much more than personal He may be. He is to be thought of by us, in lack of nobler imagination, as personal. Israel thus grew into the conception of the Infinite Power, manifest in the order of nature and in the order of conscience as conscious Power; One in whose image man was made, the Father of the mystic "I"; whose nature is the law of creation, whose purpose is its plan, whose will is its exhaustless energy.

This is the secret which has kept the religions inspired by the Bible from lapsing, as other religions have done, into lifelessness.

Egypt was the land of a religion which had won a high conception of the Divine unity; a religion which was scientific in its forms of thought, and earnestly moral in its spirit; but which failed to keep distinct in mind the order of nature from the Being on whom it reposes, and thus sank into the dreamy pantheism of its cultured classes, and the poetic polytheisms of its people. Of this lapse, Renouf writes:

All gods were in fact but names of the One who resided in them all. But this God is no other than Nature. Both individuals and entire nations may long continue to hold this view, without drawing the inevitable conclusion, that if there is no other God than this, the world is really without a God. But the fate of a religion which involves such a conclusion, and with that conclusion the loss of faith in immortality, and even in the distinction of Right and Wrong, except so far as they are connected with ritual prescriptions, is inevitably sealed.[62]

Neither Judaism, nor Mohammedanism, nor Christianity, the religions fed directly or indirectly from the Bible, have run, or can well run into this fatal error. The Divine Being who is mirrored in the Bible is the Conscious Intelligence to whom alone of right belongs that ineffable name—GOD. This is the thought and this is the word which hold the spell of the Bible power over the human soul. Nowhere else is the sense of God so alive, nowhere else does it so thrill the whole being of man. It was this living God whom these holy men of old were seeking; not simply the august ideals of the soul, but the Eternal Being who casts them as his shadows upon man:

Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens.

* * * * *

My soul truly waiteth still upon God, For of Him cometh my salvation.

* * * * *

Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, So longeth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the Living God; When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

It is God whom these holy men find. The Ineffable Presence rejoices their souls, and as we keep company with them rejoices our souls also:

Lord, Thou hast been our home From one generation to another.

* * * * *

Whoso dwelleth in the secret-place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

* * * * *

O Lord, Thou hast searched me out and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou art about my path and about my bed, And spiest out all my ways. For lo, there is not a word in my tongue But Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether.

The inspirations which we feel from the Bible-words are the breathings of the Eternal Spirit. The Divine whispers, which are too often inarticulate in nature and even in our souls, are articulate in the great Bible-words—the words proceeding from out of the mouth of God, on which man liveth. The power of the Bible is that the deafest souls can therein hear—GOD.



9. God speaks in A MAN.

The Bible centres in the story of a life which was so filled with the Holy Ghost that this Man became the symbol of the Most High, the sacrament of His Being and Presence, the sacred shrine of Deity. As when the long-drawn travail of instrumentation labors through the opening movements of the ninth symphony, with a strain too fine for any voicing save by man, there bursts at length upon the tumultuous storm of sound the clear, high, song of joy from human lips; so from the mounting efforts of a nation's insufficient utterance there rises at last a voice, which takes up every groaning of the Spirit in humanity into the perfect beauty of a human life divine.

And so the Word hath breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds, In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought.

The light of the Son of Man is the life of men; the light for our minds and the warmth for our hearts. In the Power in whom we live and move and have our being, we see "Our Father who art in Heaven." In the laws of life we read the methods of His schooling of our souls. In the sorrows of life we receive His disciplinings. In the sins that cling so hard upon us we feel the evils of our imperfection, from which He is seeking to deliver us through His training of our spirits. In the shame of sin we are conscious of the guilt that His free forgiveness wipes away, when we turn saying, Father, I have sinned. In death we face the door-way to some other room of the Father's house, where, it may be, just beyond the threshold our dear ones wait for us! In Christ himself we own our heaven-sent Teacher, Master, Saviour, Friend; our elder Brother, who in our sinful flesh lives our holy aspirations, and, smiling, beckons us to follow Him, whispering in our ears—To them that receive me I give "power to become the sons of God."

The power of the Bible is—CHRIST.



II.



When Sir Walter Scott lay in his last illness, he asked Lockhart one day to read to him. "From what book shall I read?" said Lockhart. "There is but one book," was Scott's answer. Those who have sought the "power to become the sons of God" will understand this hyperbole of the most healthy human mind in modern English literature. Tested by experience there is indeed, in the wide range of the literature of power, no book to be mentioned with the Bible for feeding the life of God in man. Our fathers found this true, and their children cannot correct their judgment. The substitute for the Bible, as an ethical and spiritual instructor, is not out.

I speak to those who are in earnest in the building of a man. You need this book, my brothers. Luther's higher life dated from his discovery of the Bible. Have you discovered the Bible? Within the body of human "letters" have you found out the divine soul of the Bible? Through the chorus of human voices have you heard the voice of the Eternal Power? If not, life holds one more rich "find" for you—a treasure hidden in the field over which you have so lightly strayed.

Buy a Bible, my brothers! The current coin of the land, in the shops of our best booksellers, may have failed to buy for you a real Bible. No noble book is ever to be made your own in this easy fashion. Ruskin tells us that the great picture will not give itself to us unless we give ourselves to it. The Bible must have its price. The best comes dearest. If you will not pay you cannot buy. Pay for the real Bible your costliest offering of mind and heart. Spend upon it, day by day, your careful, reverent study, until beneath your love the Book warms into life; and, having proven well your loyalty, this teacher of the soul opens its soul to you and whispers—Henceforth I call you not servant but friend. Wait in these courts until the Eternal Wisdom, who walks within this temple, turns her face upon you, "mystic, wonderful;" and the common places grow refulgent with a new and heavenly beauty, and you humbly say—This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

* * * * *

How shall we thus rightly read the Bible, for ethical and spiritual upbuilding? Let me offer some plain and practical suggestions to this end.

(1.) Read it daily.

Your soul needs its daily bread. Do not starve your soul. Do not try to fatten it on chaff. Get the best soul-food, the long tried manna that forms upon these pages day by day, for him who will be at pains to gather it. He must be busy, indeed, who cannot find time to keep himself alive.

(2.) Read it in the choicest moments of the day.

The best picture should have the best setting. Our fathers' symbol of the opening of a new day was the opening of the Bible. Their symbol of the closing of another day's duties was the closing of the Bible. Can we improve upon their ritual? John Quincy Adams noted in his journal his custom of reading in the Bible each morning, of which he well observed:

It seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day.

Pitch the day aright with this tuning-fork, and hush the babel-voices of the world to its tones of peace at night.

(3.) Read the Bible whenever you need some special influence of strength or cheer, amid the temptations and trials of the day.

It holds the unfailing corrective for the manifold disorders of our busy lives. To think its thoughts and breathe its desires, even for a few moments, is to have the horizon of the senses open, the heavy atmosphere of earth clear, the illusions of the world evanish, the fever of business cool and calm, the tempting appetites and passions slink down shamed into their kennels. It is to have the dark look of life lighten, the sting of disappointment lose its venom, the weariness of sickness forget itself, and the sorrow of the stricken heart sob itself asleep within the everlasting arms of One who, like a mother, comforteth his children, and who with his own hand wipes away the tears from our eyes.

A few days after one of the battles before Richmond a Southern soldier was found unburied. His right hand still clasped a Bible, and his stiff fingers pressed upon the words of the Twenty-third Psalm:

I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

(4.) In the choice of these daily readings, follow the guidance of the soul's sure instinct.

You need no critical knowledge to teach you what parts of the Bible are the most highly inspired. The spiritual sense will appraise these books aright. As the beasts are led instinctively to the herbs that hold healing for their ailments so you shall find the tonic and the balm that you need. You will naturally pasture for the most part in the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, the great Epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of John, and kindred writings. You may, dip into these books as the bees dip into the flowers, now burying themselves in the luscious honey-suckle and now lingering on the rich rose, if so be that you only suck sweetness into your soul.

(5.) Wheresoever you read, read in the spirit.

"I was in the spirit on the Lord's day," wrote the seer. If he had been in the understanding merely, he would not have had many visions. The Spirit must interpret the Spirit's words. The Bible requires, as Bushnell wrote:

Divine inbreathings and exaltations in us, that we may asscend into their meanings.[63]

In his last sickness Archbishop Usher was observed one day, sitting in his wheel-chair, with a Bible in his lap, and moving his position as the sun stole round to the westward, so as to let the light fall on the sacred page. That is a symbol of the right use of the Bible.

I picked up lately the choice Bible which I selected for myself as a boy, and on the fly-leaf, in my boyish hand, I read the words:

Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.

I still find that the best commentator, for the ethical and spiritual use of the Bible, is one Master Praying Always.

As the bard with the Muse, so the critic in the presence of Wisdom, must forget his skill; "must be, with good intent, no more his, but hers:"

Must throw away his pen and paint, Kneel with worshipers.

Then, perchance, a sunny ray, From the heaven of fire, His lost tools may overpay, And better his desire.

Thus buying Bibles for yourselves, my friends, see that your children buy themselves the Bible in the same good coin.

(a.) Read with them the tales of its noble men.

Do not hesitate to read with them these stories of the ancients, because there may be the commingling of legend with history, of myth with fact. You do not hesitate to read them the story of William Tell, although there are woven into it the elements of a very old and wide-spread sun-myth. These mythic elements have been woven around some real historic hero, and the spirit of his heroism breathes through every fold of the drapery. How charmingly Kingsley tells the tales of the Grecian heroes! Through his crystalline language we seem to inhale the crisp, clear air of the morning of Greece, in which the simple souls of child-men thus shaped their dreams of duty around their older dreams of nature. Conscience fashioned these primitive fancies upon its form, and pulses through them its quickening life; the touch of which makes our children buoyant with aspiration, so that they mount on high, like Perseus of the winged feet.

Thus read the matchless stories of the Hebrews, mindless of legend or of myth. The Spirit of Holiness breathing through these tales will inspire the souls of the children, without restraint from the questions that the reason may raise. Tell them no lies if they ask you questions. Read these ancient stories as stories, of good and noble men; stories written down long ago, and told from father to son through longer ages before they were thus written out. Leave the children to detect the legendary elements. I find them quick enough at that work without parental help. The bright child feels the unreal in the tales that he most loves; but he loves them none the less, perhaps all the more, because of the spell upon his imagination that he would not break; while through them, upon his open soul, streams in the holy power of these sacred stories. Do you concern yourselves with impressing the moral of these God-breathed tales.

Read with your children the stories of the dear Master, and make His life grow real to them, till He shall draw them after Him, in the steps of His most holy life.

(b.) Form in the children the habit of daily reading in the Bible.

Say to each of them, in your own way, that which Sir Matthew Hale wrote to his child:

Every morning read seriously and reverently a portion of the Holy Scriptures. It is a book full of light and wisdom, and will make you wise to eternal life.

(c.) Cultivate in them a genuine interest in the Bible.

The aids to an intelligent interest in the Bible-books are now so plentiful, and the human charm of them is so great, that it ought to be an easy thing for a parent to awaken a real fondness for these immortal writings. The best safeguard against bad taste in literature or life is the formation of a good taste. These are books, to learn to love which is the making of a man. Our children may not grow into the genius, but they will grow into somewhat of the goodness of the illustrious and saintly John Henry Newman, if, in after years, they can write the first lines of their autobiographies in the words which open the biographical part of the Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

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 passages 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 passages 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 God.

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 God-breathed word sound to the children's souls as the very voice of God; 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 God from first to last," and remarks "It is necessary for us that in the rest of the sacred volume the name of God 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 God is not there, but the work of God 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 noble 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 God, 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 God is described as speaking to man, he does so in the only way in which He who is a Spirit can speak to one encompassed 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 God 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 God 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 gods and goddesses 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 passed, 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 gods 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."

"Republic," Book II.

[27] How then are we to know what words and deeds express the mind of God, are words of the Lord, examples He presents for our imitation? By the mind of God manifest in 'the express image of His person?' All morality and religion is to be tried by 'the mind which was in Christ,' 'the spirit of Christ which dwelleth in us.'

[28] In what is said above there la no positive denial intended of the Old Testament miracles. We are in no position to deny them. The point is simply that they are not bounden on us in any reasonable and reverent recognition of a real historical revelation in the Old Testament, and need trouble no one who cannot receive them. The miracles of Christ, when reduced to the wonders reported by the conjoint testimony of the synoptics,—i.e., to the common tradition of the early church, stand apart from all other Scripture miracles; having a reasonable and natural character as the powers of such a personality, and coming within the ken of our visions of possibility. They are imaged In the well attested powers of rare men. They appear as in no wise violations of law, but as the manifestations of nature's laws and forces worked by the normal man, having 'dominion' over the earth. "The wise soul expels disease."

[29] So judicious a commentator as Dean Alford, in his introduction to the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, discussing the vexed question of the Daniel-like section in the third chapter, so wholly unlike Paul observes:

"If we have" (in any sense, God speaking in the Bible) "then, of all passages, it is in these, which treat so confidently of futurity, that we must recognize His voice; if we have it not in these passages, then, where are we to listen for it at all?"—Greek Testament III:64.

[30] "History of American Socialisms,"—Noyes.—p. 608.

[31] "To understand that the language of the Bible is fluid, passing and literary, not rigid, fixed and scientific, is the first step towards a right understanding of the Bible."—Literature and Dogma.—p. xii.

[32] The revised version calls the attention of English readers to this latter influence, in the marginal rendering of "Tartarus" for "Hell" in 2 Peter, 11: 4.

[33] Luther's strong sense detected his unevangelicalness.

[34] Ewald says the tenth century, and Kuenen the eighth century.

[35] Ask at Abel and at Dan whether the genuine old statutes of Israel have lost their force?—2 Samuel, xx. 18. Restored by Ewald from the LXX.

[36] Such a late codification is no more inconceivable than Justinian's codification of Roman law.

[37] Brook Foss Westcott. Smith's Bible Dictionary: article on Daniel.

[38] "The Bible of To-day," Chadwick, p. 50.

[39] Of this process we see hints in the various references to the consecration of great trees and stones to Jehovah.

[40] The indications of this nature-worship lie scattered on the surface of the Old Testament so plainly that no one can fail to notice them.

[41] "Among the Edomites, Ishmaelites, Ammonites and Moabites—the tribes with which Israel felt itself most nearly related—the service of the rigorous and destroying god was most prominent The very names for God which are most common among them—Baal, El, Molech, Milcom, Chemosh—are enough to show this. These names denote the mighty, violent, death-dealing God." "The Religion of Israel," Knappert, p. 29. These names constantly recur in the early history of Israel. Jephthah's vow is a familiar instance of this abhorrent rite. Circumcision is supposed to mark a merciful compromise with this blood-gift; in addition to its sanitary character.

[42] We know from general history how among other people the homage paid to the productive powers of nature led to systematized prostitution, in the name of the personification of this force of nature. Tradition records how early in this period the Midianites seduced Israel temporarily from Jehovah, by the licentious pleasures of their worship of Baal-Peor. Later on in history we find that it is these impure rites that especially provoke the anger of the prophets.

[43] The sun symbols may not have been permanent features of the Temple-worship at this period, though, from the probable identification of the early Jehovah with the sun, it seems likely that their presence there was no casual fact.

[44] 2 Kings, xxiii. 6, 7.

[45] Isaiah, i. 11-17.

[46] Micah, vi. 6-8.

[47] Isaiah, xi. 2-5.

[48] Isaiah, v. 8; iii. 14, 15.

[49] Cf. Exodus, xxiii, 10, 11 (the earliest code) with Deuteronomy, xv. 1-18.

[50] The latter seems the probable influence of Persia. At all events, from this time Hebrew literature shows the gradual development of an angelic hierarchy.

[51] The comparison of the earlier prophetic writings with the exilic prophecies, and with the later writings, such as Jonah, Ecclesiastes, &c., will illustrate this change.

[52] Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones is the earliest appearance of this thought in any writing of whose date we are certain.

[53] And thou shalt-number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of the vine undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession. And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbor, or buyest ought of thy neighbor's hand, ye shall not oppress one another: According to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee: According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee. Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the Lord your God.

* * * * *

The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land.

* * * * *

And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee: And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor; but shalt fear thy God.—Leviticus xxv. 8 et seq.

Fenton, "Early Hebrew Life," has, I think, given the clue through the difficulties of the jubilee-year legislation. He traces the early communal character of Hebrew society, its gradual break-up under the encroachments of manorial lords, and the natural efforts of the people to regain their communal rights. "But how remedy the evil? How restore to the communities their old rights and privileges, without unduly trenching upon rights and possessions that had since been acquired? The year of Jubilee is the Hebrew solution of the problem," (p 71). It was a compromise; the old seventh year communal right adjourned to seven times seven years, and enlarged. Fenton quotes a curious survival, in the borough of Newtown-upon-Ayr, of this very compromise between the old and the new social systems—a Scottish Jubilee.

It is a queer sign of the disproportionate development of individual religion in our current Christianity, that this social and economic legislation should have been so spiritualized away as to leave no consciousness of its original character in the minds of those who sing in our prayer-meetings that "The year of Jubilee is come."

[54] The Dialogues of Plato: Jowett's edition, II. 106.

[55] Matthew Arnold in Contemporary Review, xxiv. 800; xxv. 508.

[56] The Friend: Essay x.

[57] Sacred Books of the East: I. ix. et seq.

[58] Confessions of Augustine: Book X. Sec. vi.

[59] Exodus, xx. 31.

[60] Richard Hooker: Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I., ch. xvi. Sec. 8.

[61] Le Page Renouf: Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 250.

[62] Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 279.

[63] God in Christ, p. 93.

THE END