chapter the second verse reads: "Ye lust, and have not; ye kill, and
desire to have, and cannot obtain; ye fight and war, yet ye have not,
because ye ask not." Now there is no commentator nor thoughtful reader who
is not arrested by that word "kill." It does not seem to belong there. It
is far more violent than anything else in the whole text, and it is
difficult to understand in what sense the persons to whom James was
writing could be said to kill. Yet there is no Greek manuscript which does
not have that word. Well, it is in the field of lower criticism to observe
that there is a Greek word which sounds very much like this word "kill,"
which means to envy; that would fit exactly into the whole text here. All
that lower criticism can do is to point out such a probability.
When this form of criticism has done its part, and careful study has
yielded a text which holds together and which represents the very best
which scholarship can find for the original, there is still a field more
difficult than that, higher in the sense that it demands a larger and
broader view of the whole subject. Here one studies the meaning of the
whole, the ideas in it, seeks to find how the revelation of God has
progressed according to the capacities of men to receive it. Higher
criticism is the careful study of the historical and original meanings of
Scripture, the effort to determine dates and times and, so far as may be,
the author of each writing, analyzing its ideas, the general Greek or
Hebrew style, the relation of part to part. That is not a thing to be
afraid of. It is a method of study used in every realm. It is true that
some of the men who have followed that method have made others afraid of
it, because they were afraid of these men themselves. It is possible to
claim far too much for such study. But if the result of higher criticism
should be to show that the latter half of the prophecy of Isaiah is much
later than the earlier half, that is not a destruction of the Word of God.
It is not an irreverent result of study. If the result of higher criticism
is to show that by reason of its content, and the lessons which it
especially urges, the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by the
Apostle Paul, as it does not at any point claim to have been, why, that is
not irreverent, that is not destructive. There is a destructive form of
higher criticism; against that there is reason to set up bulwarks. But
there is a constructive form of it also. Scholarly opinion will tell any
one who asks that criticism has not affected the fundamental values of the
Bible. In the studies which have just now been made we have not instanced
anything in the Bible that is subject to change. No matter what the result
of critical study may be, the fundamental democracy of the Scripture
remains. It continues to make its persistent moral appeal on any terms.
Both those great facts continue. Other great facts abide with them. And on
their account it is to our interest to know as much as we can learn about
it. The Bible has not been lessened in its value, has not been weakened in
itself, by anything that has taken place in critical study. On the other
hand, the net result of such studies as archaeology has been the
confirmation of much that was once disputed. Sir William Ramsay is the
authority for saying that the spade of the excavator is to-day digging the
grave of many enemies of the Bible.
Take the second question, whether these times have not in them elements
that weaken the hold of the Bible. There again we must distinguish between
facts and judgments. There are certain things in these times which relax
the hold of any authoritative book. There is a general relaxing of the
sense of authority. It does not come alone from the intellectual
awakening, because so far as that awakening is concerned, it has affected
quite as much men who continue loyal to the authority of the Bible as
others. No, this relaxing of the sense of authority is the result of the
first feeling of democracy which does not know law. Democracy ought to
mean that men are left independent of the control of other individuals
because they realize and wish to obey the control of God or of the whole
equally with their fellows. When, instead, one feels independent of
others, and adds to that no sense of a higher control which he must be
free to obey, the result is not democracy, but individualism. Democracy
involves control; individualism does not. A vast number of people in
passing from any sense of the right of another individual to control them
have also passed out of the sense of the right of God or of the whole to
control them. So that from a good many all sense of authority has passed.
It is characteristic of our age. And it is a stage in our progress toward
real democracy, toward true human liberty.
Observe that relaxed sense of authority in the common attitude toward law.
Most men feel it right to disregard a law of the community which they do
not like. It appears in trivial things. If the community requires that
ashes be kept in a metal receptacle, citizens approve it in general, but
reserve to themselves the right to consider it a foolish law and to do
something else if that is not entirely convenient. If the law says that
paper must not be thrown on the sidewalk, it means little that it is the
law. Those who are inclined to be clean and neat and do not like to see
paper lying around will keep the law; those who are otherwise will be
indifferent to it. That is at the root of the matter-of-course saying that
a law cannot be enforced unless public opinion sustains it. Under any
democratic system laws virtually always have the majority opinion back of
them; but the minority reserve the right to disregard them if they choose,
and the minority will be more aggressive. Rising from those relaxations of
law into far more important ones, it appears that men in business life,
feeling themselves hampered by legislation, set themselves to find a way
to evade it, justifying themselves in doing so. The mere fact that it is
the law does not weigh heavily. This is, however, only an inevitable stage
in progress from the earliest periods of democracy to later and more
substantial periods. It is a stage which will pass. There will come a
democracy where the rule of the whole is frankly recognized, and where
each man holds himself independent of his fellows only in the sense that
he will claim the right to hold such relation to God and his duty as he
himself may apprehend.
In these times, also, the development of temporal and material prosperity
with the intellectual mood which is involved in that affects the attitude
of the age toward the Bible. Sometimes it is spoken of as a scientific age
over against the earlier philosophical ages. Perhaps that will do for a
rough statement of the facts. It is the age of experiment, of trying
things out, and there naturally works into men a feeling that the things
that will yield to the most material scientific experimentation are the
things about which they can be certain and which are of real value. That
naturally involves a good deal of appreciation of the present, and calls
for the improvement of the conditions of present life first of all. It
looks more important to see that a man is well fed, well housed, well
clothed, and well educated than that he should have the interests of
eternity pressed on his attention. That is a comparatively late feeling.
It issues partly from the fact that this is a scientific age, when science
has had its attention turned to the needs of humanity.
Another result of our scientific age is the magnifying of the natural,
while the Bible frankly asserts the supernatural. No effort to get the
supernatural out of the Bible, in order to make it entirely acceptable to
the man who scouts the supernatural, has thus far proved successful. Of
course, the supernatural can be taken out of the Bible; but it will
destroy the Bible. Nor is there much gain in playing with words and
insisting that everything is supernatural or that everything is natural.
There is a difference between the two, and in an age which insists upon
nature or natural laws or forces or events as all-sufficient it is almost
inevitable that the Bible should lose its hold, at least temporarily.
Regarding all this there are some things that need to be said. For one
thing, this, too, is a passing condition. As a matter of fact, men are not
creatures of time. They actually have eternal connections, and the great
outstanding facts which have always made eternity of importance continue.
The fact is that men continue to die, and that the men who are left
behind cannot avoid the sense of mystery and awe which is involved in
that fact. The fact also is that the human emotions cannot be explained on
the lower basis, and the only reason men think they can be is because they
have in the back of their minds the old explanations which they cast into
the lower forms, deceiving themselves into thinking they are new ideas
when they are not.
It ought to be added that the Bible has greatly suffered in all its
history at the hands of men who have believed in it and have fought in its
behalf. Many of the controversies which were hottest were needless and
injurious. All the folly has not been on one side. Some one referred the
other day to a list of more than a hundred scientific theories which were
proposed at the beginning of the last century and abandoned at the end of
it. Scientific men are feeling their way, many of them reverently and
devoutly, some of them rather blatantly and with a readiness for
publication, which hastens them into notoriety. But there has been enough
folly on both sides to make every one go cautiously. It has been remarked
that in Dr. Draper's book _The Conflict Between Science and Religion_ he
makes science appear as a strong-limbed angel of God whereas religion is
always a great ass. The title of the book itself is not fair. In no
proper understanding of the words can there be any conflict between
science and religion. There can be a conflict, as Dr. Andrew D. White puts
it, between science and theology. There can certainly be contest between
scientists and religionists. Science and religion have no conflict.
It is interesting to observe how far back most of the supposed conflicts
actually lie. There is no warfare now; and, while our fathers one or two
generations ago felt that they must fly to the defense of religion against
the attacks of science, no man wastes his strength doing that to-day. That
period has passed. The trouble is that some good people do not know it,
and are just fond enough of a bit of a tussle to keep up the fighting in
the mountain-passes while out in the plain the main armies have laid down
their arms and are busy tilling the soil.
The period of conflict is past, partly because we are learning to
distinguish between the Bible as it really is and certain long-established
ideas about the Bible which came from other sources and have become
attached to it until it seemed to sustain them. The proper doctrine of
evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible. The great Dr. Hodge
declared that the consistent Darwinian must be an atheist. For that
matter, Shelley defended himself by saying that, of course, "the
consistent Newtonian must necessarily be an atheist." But fifty years have
made great changes in the doctrine of evolution, and the old scare has
been over for some time. Newton is honored in the church quite as much as
in the university, and Darwin is not a name to frighten anybody.
Understanding evolution better and knowing the Bible better, the two do
not jangle out of tune so badly but that harmony is promised.
The doctrine of the antiquity of the world is entirely compatible with the
Bible, though it is not compatible with the dates which Archbishop Ussher,
in the time of King James, put at the head of the columns. That is so with
other scientific theories. Any one who has read much of history has
attended the obsequies of so many theories in the realm of science that he
ought to know that he is wasting his strength in trying to bring about a
constant reconciliation between scientific and religious theories. It is
his part to keep an open mind in assurance of the unity of truth, an
assurance that there is no fact which can possibly come to light and no
true theory of facts which can possibly be formed which does not serve the
interest of the truth, which the Bible also presents. The Bible does not
concern itself with all departments of knowledge. So far as mistakes have
been made on the side of those who believe it, they have issued from
forgetting that fact more than from any other one cause.
On the other hand, it has sometimes occurred that believers in the Bible
have been quite too eager to accommodate themselves to purely passing
phases of objection to it. The matter mentioned a moment ago, the excision
of the supernatural, is a case in point. The easy and glib way in which
some have sought to get around difficulties, by talking in large terms
about the progressiveness of the revelation, as though the progress were
from error to truth, instead of from half light to full light, is another
illustration. The nimble way in which we have turned what is given as
history into fiction, and allowed imagination to roam through the Bible,
is another illustration. One of our later writers tells the story of
Jonah, and says it sounds like fiction; why not call it fiction? Another
tells the story of the exodus from Egypt, and says it sounds like fiction;
why not call it fiction? Well, certainly the objection is not to the
presence of fiction in the Bible. It is there, openly, confessedly,
unashamed. Fiction can be used with great profit in teaching religious
truth. But fiction may not masquerade in the guise of history, if men are
to be led by it or mastered by it. If the way to be rid of difficulties in
a narrative is to turn it into pious fiction, there are other instances
where it might be used for relief in emergencies. The story of the
crucifixion of Christ can be told so that it sounds like fiction; why not
call it fiction? Certainly the story of the conversion of Paul can be made
to sound like fiction; why not call it fiction? And there is hardly any
bit of narrative that can be made to sound so like fiction as the landing
of the Pilgrims; why not call that fiction? It is the easy way out; the
difficulties are all gone like Alice's cat, and there is left only the
broad smile of some moral lesson to be learned from the fiction. It is
not, however, the courageous nor the perfectly square way out. Violence
has to be done to the plain narrative; historical statement has to be made
only a mask. And the only reason for it is that there are difficulties not
yet cleared. As for the characters involved, Charles Reade, the novelist,
calling himself "a veteran writer of fiction," declares that the
explanation of these characters, Jonah being one of them, by invention is
incredible and absurd: "Such a man [as himself] knows the artifices and
the elements of art. Here the artifices are absent, and the elements
surpassed." It is not uncommon for one who has found this easy way out of
difficulties to declare with a wave of his hand, that everybody now knows
that this or that book in the Bible is fiction, when, as a matter of fact,
that is not at all an admitted opinion. The Bible will never gain its
place and retain its authority while those who believe in it are spineless
and topple over at the first touch of some one's objection. It could not
be a great Book; it could not serve the purposes of a race if it presented
no problems of understanding and of belief, and all short and easy methods
of getting rid of those problems are certain to leave important elements
of them out of sight.
All this means that the changes of these times rather present additional
reason for a renewed hold on the Bible. It presents what the times
peculiarly need. Instead of making the influence of the Bible impossible,
these changes make the need for the Bible the greater and give it greater
opportunity.
* * * * *
Add three notable points at which these times feel and still need the
influence of the Bible. First, they have and still need its literary
influence. So far as its ideas and forces and words are interwoven in the
great literature of the past, it is essential still to the understanding
of that literature. It remains true that English literature, certainly of
the past and also of the present, cannot be understood without knowledge
of the Bible. The Yale professor of literature, quoted so often, says: "It
would be worth while to read the Bible carefully and repeatedly, if only
as a key to modern culture, for to those who are unfamiliar with its
teachings and its diction all that is best in English literature of the
present century is as a sealed book."
From time to time there occur painful reminders of the fact that men
supposed to know literature do not understand it because they are not
familiar with the Bible. Some years ago a college president tested a class
of thirty-four men with a score of extracts from Tennyson, each of which
contained a Scriptural allusion, none of them obscure. The replies were
suggestive and quite appalling. Tennyson wrote, in the "Supposed
Confessions":
"My sin was a thorn among the thorns that girt Thy brow."
Of these thirty-four young men nine of them did not understand that
quotation. Tennyson wrote:
"Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
The shadow of my days."
Thirty-two of the thirty-four did not know what that meant. The meaning of
the line,
"For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine,"
was utterly obscure to twenty-two of the thirty-four. One of them said it
was a reference to "good opportunities given but not improved." Another
said it was equivalent to the counsel "not to expect to find gold in a
hay-stack." Even the line,
"A Jonah's gourd
Up in one night, and due to sudden sun,"
was utterly baffling to twenty-eight of the thirty-four. One of them spoke
of it as an "allusion to the uncertainty of the length of life." Another
thought it was a reference to "the occasion of Jonah's being preserved by
the whale." Another counted it "an allusion to the emesis of Jonah by the
whale." Another considered it a reference to "the swallowing of Jonah by a
whale," and yet another considered that it referred to "things grand, but
not worthy of worship because they are perishable." It is amazing to read
that in response to Tennyson's lines,
"Follow Light and do the Right--for man can half control his doom--
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb,"
only sixteen were able to give an explanation of its meaning! The lines
from the "Holy Grail" were equally baffling:
"Perhaps like Him of Cana in Holy Writ,
Our Arthur kept his best until the last."
Twenty-four of these thirty-four young men could not recall what that
meant. One said that the keeping of the best wine until the last meant
"waiting till the last moment to be baptized!"
All that may be solely the fault of these young men. Professor Lounsbury
once said that his experience in the class-room had taught him the
infinite capacity of the human mind to withstand the introduction of
knowledge. Very likely earnest effort had been made to teach these young
men the Bible; but it is manifest that they had successfully resisted the
efforts. If Tennyson were the only poet who could not be understood
without knowledge of the Bible, it might not matter so much, but no one
can read Browning nor Carlyle nor Macaulay nor Huxley with entire
intelligence without knowledge of the greater facts and forces of
Scripture. The value of the allusions can be shown by comparing them with
those of mythology. No one can read most of Shelley with entire
satisfaction without a knowledge of Greek mythology. That is one reason
why Shelley has so much passed out of popularity. We do not know Greek
mythology, and we have very largely lost Shelley from our literary
possession. The chief power of these other great writers will go from us
when our knowledge of the Scripture goes.
The danger is not simply with reference to the great literature of the
past. There is danger of losing appreciation of the more delicate touches
of current literature, sometimes of a complete missing of the meaning. An
orator describing present political and social conditions used a fine
phrase, that "it is time the nation camped for a season at the foot of the
mount." Only a knowledge of Bible history will bring as a flash before one
the nation in the desert at Sinai learning the meaning and power of law.
Yet an intelligent man, hearing that remark, said that he counted it a
fine figure, that he thought there did come in the life of every nation a
time before it began its ascent to the heights when it ought to pause and
camp at the foot of the mountain to get its breath! After Lincoln's
assassination Garfield stood on the steps in New York, and said: "Clouds
and darkness are around about him! God reigns and the government at
Washington still lives!" Years after, some one referring to that, said
that it was a beautiful sentence, that the reference to "clouds and
darkness" was a beautiful symbolism, but that Garfield had a great knack
in the building-up of fine phrases! He lacked utterly the background of
the great Psalm which was in Garfield's mind, and which gives that phrase
double meaning. If we go back to Tennyson again, some one has proposed the
inquiry why he should have called one of his poems "Rizpah," since there
was no one of that name mentioned in the whole poem! When, some years ago,
a book was published, _The Children of Gideon_, one of the reviewers could
not understand why that title was used, since no one of that name appeared
in the entire volume. And when Mrs. Wharton's book, _The House of Mirth_,
came out some one spoke of the irony of the title; but it is the irony of
the Scriptures and the book calls for a Scriptural knowledge for its
entire understanding.
Take even an encyclopedia article. Who can understand these two sentences
without instant knowledge of Scripture? "Marlowe and Shakespeare, the
young Davids of the day, tried the armor of Saul before they went out to
battle, then wisely laid it off." "Arnold, like Aaron of old, stands
between the dead and the living; but, unlike Aaron, he holds no smoking
censor of propitiation to stay the plague which he feels to be devouring
his generation."[53] That is in an encyclopedia to which young people are
often referred. What will they make out of it without the Bible? In a
widely distributed school paper, in the question-and-answer department,
occurs the inquiry: "Who composed the inscription on the Liberty Bell?"
The inscription is, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the
inhabitants thereof."[54] It is to be hoped it was a very young person who
needed to ask who "composed" that expression!
This applies to all the great classics. There has come about a "decay of
literary allusions," as one of our papers editorially says. In much of our
writing, either the transient or the permanent, men can no longer risk
easy reference to classical literature. "Readers of American biography
must often be struck with the important part which literary recollection
played in the life of a cultured person a generation or two ago. These men
had read Homer, Xenophon and Virgil, Shakespeare, Byron and Wordsworth,
Lamb, De Quincey and Coleridge. They were not afraid of being called
pedants because they occasionally used a Latin phrase or referred to some
great name of Greece or Rome." That is not so commonly true to-day.
Especially is there danger of losing easy acquaintance with the great
Bible references.