_It is a wrong use of the Bible, for the purposes of theology or religion,
to give its language any other meaning than that which similar language
would have under similar circumstances._
People of sound minds do not read poetic language in other books as though
it were prose. They do not take words thrown off at white heat; crowd
them, all molten with feeling, into the mould of a Gradgrind
understanding; force them to take the form of such matter-of-fact minds;
and then, when the emotion is cooled down, and the fluent fancies are
reduced to stiff, hard prose, say--"there, that is the exact meaning of
this language!" Fancy Shakespeare's impetuous, tumultuous riotous imagery
treated by such 'criticism!'
Yet that is the sort of treatment which many learned pedants call
'expounding the Bible!' It is with the greatest difficulty that the
Western mind can rightly read the Eastern's language. We miss the rich
aroma of their nectared speech, and find only the grounds left. And we
take these grounds for the true original beverage of the gods! Out of such
residuum of poetry, when the poesy has exhaled, we make our spiritual
food! Poetry petrified into prose--is the real explanation to be offered
of many an absurdity of Bible-reading.
A visitor to one of the Shaker communities describes the men and women as
engaging in the most preposterous play of making-believe; performing upon
imaginary instruments as they marched in procession; going through the
motions of washing their faces and hands as they surrounded an imaginary
fountain; and, finally, plunging bodily into this spiritual fountain, by
rolling over on the grass! To an exclamation of surprise at such childish
doings, answer was made that thus they were becoming as little children,
in order to enter the kingdom of heaven![30]
Luther sat disputing with Zwinglius the doctrine of trans-substantiation,
and to every argument of his rational opponent answered by laying his
sturdy finger on the words, "This _is_ my body." The most powerful Church
of Christendom bases itself upon this prosaic reading of a poetic saying.
Many a mysterious dogma would simplify itself at once by remembering that,
in the language of the imagination, "the letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth it life."[31]
We are not to rush from this extreme into the opposite error and turn into
mystical and marvellous meanings the plain sense of the Biblical writers.
Imagine the result of putting all sorts of mystic glosses on the
straight-forward accounts of men and things in ordinary writings. Such is
in reality the folly of turning the sober statements of Biblical prose
writers into allegories, parables, symbols, types; and of finding
underneath the plainest meanings a double, triple and quadruple sense.
In the hour of Christ's approaching arrest he warns his disciples, in His
usual figurative manner, that they must now learn to provide for
themselves; since he would shortly be taken from them. "He that hath a
purse let him take it; and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment
and buy one." And his disciples, being very unimaginative folk, or being
perhaps stupefied with wonder and anxiety by His strange words and actions
on that night of sad surprises said--"Lord, behold here are two swords."
The Master answered, with a weariness of their obtuseness that we can feel
in the curt reply, "It is enough." And the wisdom of the Roman Church sees
herein a type of the temporal and spiritual power of the Papacy!
I am solemnly warned against such learned puerilities every time I turn to
my shelves and encounter Swedenborg's "Arcana Coelestia." In ten goodly
volumes he interprets Scripture history after this fashion:
"'And Rebecca arose'--hereby is signified an elevation of the affection
of truth: 'And her damsels'--hereby are signified subservient
affections: 'And they rode upon camels'--hereby is signified the
intellectual principle elevated above natural scientifics."!