THE BOOK OF LIFE
The approaches to an understanding of the Scriptures which we suggested
in the first chapter are those which have to do merely with
intellectual investigation. Any student with normal intelligence can
appreciate the methods and results of the critical scrutiny of the
biblical documents, but will require something more for an adequate
mastery of the scriptural revelations. There is need of sympathetic
realization that the Book itself did not in any large degree come out
of the exercise of the merely intellectual faculties. In the scriptural
revelation we are dealing with a current of life which flowed for
centuries through the minds of masses of people. To be sure of insight
into the meanings of this revelation there must be an approach to the
Bible as a Book of Life in the sense that its teachings came out of
life and that they were perennially used to play back into life. Its
hold on life to-day can be explained only by the fact that it was thus
born out of life, and has its chief significance for the experiences of
actual life.
Even the most superficial perusal of the Scriptures shows that they
came of practical contact with men and things. There is comparatively
little in the entire content of our Sacred Book to suggest the
speculations of abstract philosophy. The writers deal with the
concrete. They tell of men and of peoples who had to face facts and who
achieved comprehensions and convictions through grappling with facts.
There is about the Scriptures what some one has called a sort of
"out-of-doors-ness." There is very little hint of withdrawal from the
push and pressure of daily living. If the prophets ever withdrew to
solitude, they did not retire to closets, but rather to deserts or to
mountains. We must not allow our modern familiarity with bookmaking as
an affair of library research and tranquil meditation in seclusion to
mislead us into thinking that the Christian Bible was wrought out in
similar fashion. The Book is full of the tingle and even the roar of
the life out of which it was born. Jesus gathered up in a single
sentence the process by which the scriptural revelation can be
apprehended by man when he said, "He that doeth the will shall know of
the truth." The entire scriptural unfolding is one vast commentary on
this utterance of Jesus.
It is impossible for us in this series of studies to attempt any
detailed survey of the revealing movement of which our Scriptures are
the outcome. It is important, however, that we should see clearly that
the revelation came to those who opened themselves to the light in an
obedient spirit. While it is not in accord with our modern knowledge of
psychology to assort and divide human activities too sharply, it is
nevertheless permissible to insist that the biblical revelation was in
a sense primarily to the will. As Frederick W. Robertson used to say,
obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge. The first men to whom
illuminations came evidently received these gifts out of some purity of
intention and moral excellence. These early leaders gathered others
around them and set them on the path of determined striving toward a
definite goal. As the idea of the seer or the prophet found general
acceptance it gradually hardened into law, law meant for scrupulous
observance. If a singer felt stirred to write a psalm, he voiced his
experiences or his aspirations in the midst of a throbbing world. If a
statesman drew a wide survey of God's dealings with the nations of the
earth, he did so at some mighty crisis in Israel's relations to Egypt
or Assyria or Babylon. When we reach New Testament times we find that
even the Gospels seem to have been books struck out of immediate
practical urgencies rather than composed tranquilly with a scholar's
interest merely in doing a fine piece of professional work. The early
Christians were anxious to hold the believers to the strait and narrow
way. To do this they repeated often the words of the Lord Jesus. When,
however, the older members of the first circles began to fall away, the
words were written down, not because some scholar felt moved thus to
improve his leisure, but because it was absolutely necessary to
preserve the words. Moreover, conflicts were arising between the
growing church and the forces of the world round about. Some scriptures
were written to supply instruments with which to carry on the warfare.
Always the fundamental aim was to keep the people acting according to
the teachings which lay at the heart of the Christian system. The
object of the biblical revelation was from the beginning just what it
is to-day in the hands of Christian believers--the object of using the
Scriptures as an instrument for practicing the Christian spirit into
all the phases of life.
We would by no means deny that there are imposing philosophies or,
rather, hints toward such philosophies, in the Scriptures, but we
insist that these did not come out of a purely philosophizing temper.
They came as men tried to put into some form or order the
understandings at which they had arrived as they wrestled with the
tough facts of a world which they were trying to subject to the rule of
their religion. As we have said in the previous chapter, the Scriptures
bear scars of all such conflicts. The revelation was knocked into its
shape in the rough-and-tumble of an attempt to convert the world. And
this is not to claim for the Bible any difference in method of creation
from that which obtains in the shaping of any vitally effective piece
of literature. The world-shaking conceptions have always been won in
profound experience. This chapter is not written with the principles of
the modern school of pragmatism as a guide, and yet pragmatism can be
so stated as to phrase an essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual
ideas result from spiritual practices and are of worth as they prove
themselves aids in further experience. Take some of the expressions of
Paul. The fundamental fact in Paul's experience was his vision on the
Damascus road and his determination to be obedient to that vision. To
make his own view of the Christian religion attractive to those whom he
was trying to win, it became necessary for him to speak in terms of the
Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not have spoken in any other
terms, though some of his reasonings seem to us to be remote from
actual life. But when he left argument and came back to experience he
was most effective. His terribly compelling utterances are those which
were born of driving necessity. The theology started with the vision
and unfolded in obedience to the vision, "What wilt thou have me to
do?" Everywhere upon Paul's epistles there are the marks of practical
compulsion. A letter was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews in
Galatia or to persuade questioning Gentiles in Rome. Some of the
profoundest phrasings of Pauline belief were uttered first as appeals
for generous collections to starving saints.
The example of Paul as a receiver and giver of spiritual light is very
significant. Even if we should make the largest allowances to the
biblical critics who would cut down the number of epistles known to be
genuinely Pauline, we would have enough left to make on our minds the
impression of enormous personal activity. One passage does, indeed,
tell us of a period of months of withdrawal for reflection in Arabia.
For the most part, however, Paul's life was spent in ceaselessly going
to and fro throughout the Roman empire; even in the days of
imprisonment he seems to have been burdened with the administration of
churches. It was out of such multifarious activities that the theology
of Paul was born, and therein lies its value. No interpretation is
likely to bring the separate deliverances into anything like formal,
logical consistency. Very likely Paul was of a markedly logical frame
of mind, but he did not attempt to rid his message of contradictions in
detail. The unity and consistency are found in the fundamental life
purpose to get men to accept Jesus Christ as the Chosen of God. If Paul
had ever heard that much of his theology might be out-dated with the
passage of the years, he would probably have responded that he was
perfectly willing that the instrument should be cast aside if it had
served its spiritual purpose of bringing men to obedience to the law of
God.
It is not intended to make this a book of sermons or exhortations. We
must say, however, that in a series of studies on how to understand the
Scriptures stress must be laid upon the maxim that the Scriptures can
be understood only by those who seek to recognize and obey the spirit
of life breathing from the Scriptures. Nothing could be more hopeless
than to attempt to get to the heart of Christian truth without
attempting to build that truth into life. The formal reasonings of the
theologian are no doubt of value, but they throw little light upon the
essentials of Christianity except as they deal with data which have
been supplied by Christian experience. It would, indeed, be well for
any study of the Bible to begin with a recognition of the part played
by distinctly scholarly research. We cannot go far, however, until we
recognize that sympathy with Christian truth is necessary before we can
come upon vital knowledge. And this, after all, is but the way we learn
to understand any piece of life-literature. A vast amount of material
is at hand in the form of commentaries upon the work of Shakespeare. We
know much about the circumstances under which the plays of Shakespeare
were written; we know somewhat of the sources from which Shakespeare
drew his historical materials; we are familiar with the chronology of
the plays; but all this is knowledge about Shakespeare. To know
Shakespeare there must be something of a deliberate attempt to
surrender sympathetically to the Shakespearean point of view. We get
"inside of" any classic work of literature only by this spirit of
surrender. The aim of Shakespeare is simply to picture life as he sees
it, but even to appreciate the picture men must enter into sympathy
with the painter. The Scriptures aim not merely to paint life, but to
quicken and reproduce life. How much more, then, is needed a surrender
of the will before there can be adequate appreciation of the
Scriptures? If the Scriptures are the results primarily of
will-activities, how can they finally be mastered except by minds
quickened by doing the will revealed in the Scriptures? The book of
Christianity must be interpreted by the disciples of Christianity.
Judged merely by bookish standards, there is no satisfactory
explanation of the power of the Bible. But lift the whole problem out
of the realm of books as such! The glimpses into any high truth that
are worth while--how do they come? They come out of experience. Even
when they are repeated from one mind to another they become the
property of that second mind only as they reproduce themselves in
experience. Otherwise the whole transaction is of words, words, words.
The Scriptures have to do with deeds, not words.
All this is offensive to the dogmatic reasoner. For him the intellect
as such is the organ of religious truth. He insists on speaking of the
Scriptures in formally theological terms. That the Scripture writers
employed theological terms there can be no doubt, but they did not
speak as systematic theologians. And always they brought their theology
to the test of actual life. The writer of these lines once knew a
student who had read enough of psychology to enable him to reason
himself into a belief that he was the only person in existence; that is
to say, he declared that he himself was the only one of whose existence
he was infallibly certain. Does not all knowledge of an external world
come as a report through a sensation aroused by stimulus? If the
appropriate stimulus could be kept up an external world might fall away
and I would still think it was there. The bell might ring at the door
and might be nobody there. And so on and on, through steps familiar
enough to the student of philosophy. When a friend made a quick appeal
to life with the question: "If you are the only one alive, why do you
bring your troubles to me?" the amateur philosopher came to earth with
a sense of jar. But the jar is no greater than that when we pass from
the plane of dogmatic theology to that of reading the Scriptures for
their own sake. The old scholastics said that in God there are three
substances, one essence, and two processions. How does this sound as
compared with the statement of Jesus that he and his Father are one,
and that he would send the Comforter? This is not to decry theology;
but is nevertheless to discriminate between theology and scripture.
Some one will object, however, that the scriptural truths take their
start in large part from the visions of mystics--of men who brood long
and patiently until they behold realities not otherwise discernible.
Some students will urge upon us that such mystic revelations are
granted peculiarly to the mystic temperament as such, and they often
come regardless of the quality of life that the seers themselves may be
living.
There have, indeed, been in all ages of the world temperaments of
supernormal or abnormal responsiveness to influences which seem to make
little or no impression upon the ordinary mind. In all periods natures
of this type have been looked upon as organs of religious revelation.
So valuable have abnormal experiences seemed that all manner of
expedients have been utilized to beget unusual mental states. A certain
tribe of Indians, for example, in the southwest of our country are
accustomed at set times to send their religious leaders into the desert
to find and partake of a peculiar plant which has an opiate or narcotic
effect. In the belief of the Indians this plant opens the door to
visions. The visions, as reported by those who have recovered from the
influence of the narcotic, are not of any considerable value. Similar
attempts have been made by hypnotic experimenters among other peoples,
the hypnosis sometimes being self-induced. From some Old Testament
passages especially we may well believe that this sort of extraordinary
mental condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the
prophets in the olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about
the Scriptures, however, is not that there is so much reliance on this
trance experience as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures
were the expression of a people living in the midst of heathen
surroundings; and heathenism always has laid stress upon the virtue of
these abnormal experiences. Granting all allowances for mental states
induced by eating an opiate, or by whirling like the dervish, or by
fasting like the Hindu, the fact remains that in the main, the visions
of the writers of our Scriptures came out of attempts to realize in
conduct the moral will of God. When we think of the surroundings even
of the early church; when we reflect upon the force of suggestion for
uncritical minds; when we consider the sway of superstition at all
periods during the Hebrew revealing movement, the wonder is that the
Scriptures lay such stress as they do upon the type of vision which
arises from faithfulness in doing the revealed will.
If we may characterize scriptural mysticism, it seems very much akin to
mental abilities which we meet frequently in our ordinary intercourse.
Take, for example, the prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing is
more inadequate than the rules for success laid down by many a man who
has himself succeeded in business. Mastery of his rules will not help
another to win business success. The reason is that there comes out of
prolonged business practice a keen sense of what is likely to happen in
the industrial or financial world. The sharpened wits foresee without
being able to assign reasons or grounds for the prophecies. So it is
with intellects trained to any superior skill. The Duke of Wellington
once remarked that he had spent all his life wondering what was on the
other side of the hills in front of him, yet the Duke himself came to
marvelous skill in guessing what was on the other side. There is also a
variety of scientific mysticism, if such an expression may be
permitted. The man long trained to the reading of scientific processes
develops a quick insight which runs far ahead of reason or proof. The
transcendent scientific discoveries have been glimpsed or, rather,
sensed before they so reported themselves that they could be seized by
formal proof. Now it is a far cry from business men, generals, and
scientists to the mysticism of the Scriptures, but when we see the
emphasis which the Scriptures place upon constancy in keeping the law
and in acting according to divine commandments, we cannot help feeling
that biblical mysticism was and is an awareness developed as the life
becomes practiced to the doing of religious duty. Think too of the
emphasis placed in the Scriptures upon the consecration of the whole
life to the truth as cleansing the heart from evil. All this makes for
a power to seize truth beyond that possible to formal and systematic
reason. Mysticism of this sort is the very height of spiritual power.
The Master's word: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God," does not refer to merely negative virtue. It means also the power
of soul accumulated in the positive doing of good. It means entrance
into the life of quick spiritual awareness through the adjustment of
the whole nature to the single moral purpose.
In all promise of revelation the Scriptures insist upon the importance
of keeping upon the basis of solid obedience. The finer the instrument
is to be, the more massive must be the foundation. Professor Hocking,
of Harvard University, has used a remarkable illustration to enforce
this very conception. The scientific instrument, he says, which must be
kept freest from distracting influences so that it may make the finest
registries must rest upon a foundation broad and deep. So the soul that
is to catch the finest stirrings of the divine must rest upon the
solidest stones of hard work for the moral purposes of the scriptural
Kingdom.
Still some one will insist that the Bible is a book built around great
crises in human experience; that it is a record of these crises; that
the people in whose history the crises occurred were a peculiar people,
apparently arbitrarily chosen as a medium for religious
world-instruction; that the crises cast sudden bursts of intense light
upon the meaning of human life, but that they themselves are far apart
from ordinary experience. Here, again, we must insist that the
scriptural stress is always upon obedience to what is conceived of as
revealed truth. We have already said that Jesus regarded revelation as
organic. In everything organic we find instances of quick crisis
following long and slow periods of growth. The crisis or the climax of
the sudden flowering-out would never be possible were it not for the
antecedent growth. The Hebrew nation, developed through workaday
righteousness, manifested wonderful power in sudden crises. The inner
forces of moral purpose which at times seemed hidden or dead because of
the riot of wickedness suddenly blossomed forth in mighty bursts of
prophecy; but the all-essential was the long-continued practice of
righteousness which made possible the sudden crisis; and this is in
keeping with the teachings of most commonplace human experience. The
daily struggle prepares for the sharp, quick strain or for the swift
unfolding of a new moral purpose. There is nothing more arbitrary in
the crises in the scriptural movement than in the ordinary ongoings of
our lives. The student who has long been wrestling with a problem finds
the solution instantaneously bursting upon him in the midst of untoward
circumstances. The most insignificant trifle may finally turn the lock
which opens to the glorious revelation after prolonged brooding. The
daily practice may make men ready for the shock which leaps upon them
altogether unexpected.
We summarize by saying that the essentials of biblical truth came in
progressive revelations to men who were putting forth their energies to
live up to the largest ideals they could reach; and that they sought
these larger ideals for use in their lives. It must be understood in
all that we have said about acting the revelation out into life that we
do not mean merely the more matter-of-fact activities. It should be
noticed that whenever men speak of will-activities they are apt to give
the impression that they mean some putting forth of bodily energy. The
will to do scriptural righteousness did not manifest itself merely in
outside actions. It manifested itself just as thoroughly in bearings
and attitudes of the inner spirit; and the appeal was always to the
will to hold itself fast in the direction of the highest life, whatever
the form of the activity.
After this emphasis upon obedience as the organ of spiritual knowledge
some one may ask what provision we are making for infallibility and for
inspiration. We can only say that we are dealing with a Book which has
come out of concrete life, and that in concrete life not much
consideration is given to abstract infallibility. In daily experience
the righteous soul becomes increasingly sure of itself. To return for
the moment to Paul, we may think of the certainty with which he grasped
the thought of the reward which would be his. The time of his
departure, or, of his unmooring, was at hand. He was perfectly
confident that he was to go on longer voyages of spiritual discovery
and exploration. Can we say that this splendid outburst came from
devotion to an abstract formula? Did it not, rather, spring from the
sources of life within him-sources opened and developed by the
experiences through which he passed? The biblical heroes wrought and
suffered through living confidence in the forces which were bearing
them on and up. They would have answered questions about abstract
infallibility with emphatic avowals as to the firmness of their own
belief. In other words, they could have relied upon their life itself
as its own best witness to itself. They felt alive and ready to go
whithersoever life might lead.
And so with inspiration. It is the merest commonplace to repeat that
the inspiration of the Scriptures must show itself in their power to
inspire those who partake of their life. Does a fresh moral and
spiritual air blow through them? Is there in them anything that men can
breathe? Anything upon which men can build themselves into moral
strength? This is the final test of inspiration. Physical breathing is
in itself a mystery, but we know when the air invigorates us. Abstract
doctrine of inspiration apart from life and experience is a very
stifling affair compared with inspiration conceived of as a breath of
life. The scriptural doctrine is that the man who does the will finds
himself able to breathe more deeply of the truth of God; and that the
very breath itself will satisfy him, and by satisfying him convince him
that it is the breath of life.
There is an old story of a student who decided to learn the meaning of
a strange religion which was taught and practiced by priests in a
far-away corner of India. The student thought to disguise himself, to
go close to the doors of the temple and to listen there for what he
might overhear of the principles taught by the priests. One day he was
detected and captured by the priests and made their slave. He was set
to work performing to the utmost the duties for which the temple
called. His response was at first rebellious. In the long years that
followed the spell of the strange religion was cast upon him. He began
to learn not as an outsider, not as one merely studying writings and
rituals, but as one enthralled by the system itself. In this old story,
inadequate as it is, we have a suggestion of the way in which the
biblical revelation lays its spell upon man. The outside study is,
indeed, worth much, but the true understanding comes inside the temple
to him who carries forward the work of the temple.