Clues #31-40

Clues of the Maze: Honest Faith - #31-40 31. Style of the Bible

He who should begin to read the Bible at the Gospel according to John would be met by such words as these, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." If candid in spirit and cultured in mind, he would be exceedingly struck with the sublime simplicity of the language, and the fathomless depth of the meaning. There is a case on record of an instantaneous conversion to faith in God by the first hearing of these wondrous words. Nor do we wonder.

It little matters where the perusal begins: let the volume fall open as if by chance, and the reader will still discover the same singular majesty of manner. It is unique. Although the many books, which compose the library, called the Bible, were written by some forty or more authors, and each writer has his own idiosyncracy of utterance, yet the style of the entire volume is one. It is indeed singular that the unity of tone should be so eminently preserved amid the plurality of voices. The Bible style, we venture to say, is per se, and altogether inimitable. It would be impossible for any man to compose a supplement to the Pentateuch, or to dictate another Gospel, or even to write another Epistle. The fabrication has been tried, but there has been no chance of palming it off upon readers of the Scriptures. Forgeries of great authors have been common, and some of them have well-nigh succeeded. The church has disposed of all attempts to force apocryphal books upon her with far less difficulty than the literary world has been able to dispose of forgeries of Shakespeare. Neither the honesty nor the religiousness of men would have prevented the crime of adding vile inventions to the sacred books of the Old and New Testaments; but the attempt itself must for ever be futile, because of the impossibility of an impostor's imitating that style of perfect truth, which is the peculiarity of the Word of God. We cannot imagine a mere man speaking after the manner of God; assuredly no uninspired person has yet spoken after the style of the Holy Spirit.

We would trust an ordinary schoolboy to detect the wide difference between any apocryphal or pretendedly sacred book, and the writings of an inspired psalmist, prophet, or apostle. The notion that the Vedas of the Brahmins, the Avesta of Zoroaster, and the Koran of Mahomet, are comparable in style or manner to the Word of God is ridiculous. Max Müller tells us that those who believe "that these are books of primeval wisdom and religious enthusiasm, or, at least, of sound and simple moral teaching, will be disappointed on consulting them." As well might the uncouth rhyme of a clown be mistaken for the stately verse of Milton, as the noblest language of man be thought by an instructed mind to be the utterance of God. The style of Scripture is never stilted nor bombastic, yet it has a quiet, unostentatious royalty, all its own; and this sets the Bible altogether apart, and marks it as the king of books. Far from being fettered by conventionalities, it is as free as the air, and yet its music is ever tuned to the same harmonies. It is varied,—joyous, denunciatory, plaintive, descriptive, simple, intricate; and yet it remains in every phase true to its own manner: ever human, and yet at the same moment always divine.

32. Fulness of the Book

One of the marvels of the Bible is its singular fulness. It is not a book of gold-leaf beaten thin, as most books are as to thought; but its sentences are nuggets of unalloyed truth. The Book of God is clearly the god of books, for it is infinite. Well said a German author, "In this little book is contained all the wisdom of the world."

"We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful From graven stone and written scroll, From all old flower-fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from the quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read."

Two literati held a brief discussion as to which of all books they would prefer in prison if they were shut up to the choice of one, and could not obtain another for twelve months. The first made a sensible selection when he proposed to take Shakespeare as his companion; for that great author's works are brimming with fresh thought and masterly expression: but we think the second man gave an unanswerable reason for preferring the Bible. "Why," said his friend, "you do not believe in it!" "No," said he, "but whether I believe in it or not, it is no end of a book."

We thank him for that word: it is indeed "no end of a book." Its range of subjects is boundless, and its variety of treatment is indescribable. Its depth of thought and height of expression are immeasurable. It is altogether inexhaustible. It is a million-times magnified Bodleian of teaching, and its Bibline or book-essence, is of the most concentrated kind. The Scripture has incidentally suggested masses of human literature; and it is the actual material of books to an extent that few would credit. It contains vast stores of what we may call mother-of-thought.

After having been catechized, criticized, caricatured, and crucified, for all these centuries, it still remains a new book, commencing its circulation rather than ending it. When the world grows older and wiser, and attains to the sixth form of its school, the sacred volume will be its final classic, just as it was its first handbook when the new-born Hebrew nation began to spell out the rudiments of truth and righteousness.

33. The Bible to be tested

Let the Book be tried by its internal evidences, and let its undesigned coincidences be thoroughly studied. It is rich in them, and they are deeply interesting: some readers prefer the observation of them to the perusal of the last new novel.

Let it be tried by ancient records and memorials. Is it correct in historical matters wherein it would have surely failed had it been of human concoction? Providence has arranged for frequently testing it by this process; for away there in Egypt, Palestine, Moab, Bashan, Nineveh, fresh inscriptions and monumental sculptures are being found, and all of these, as they are brought to the surface, cry out as witnesses for Scripture history. With what delight would a slab have been welcomed, from any mound or catacomb, which would have contradicted Moses or the Prophets; but hitherto the sacred record has been vindicated. Of late years certain of its bitter opponents have strung together a number of its supposed blunders. The work has been performed with the most acrid hate, and with magnifying glasses of a high power, and the result is nil. Reading with fairness, the mind is annoyed by the recklessness of the objections, the arrogance of the objector, and the ignorance which he imputes to his audience. It would be easy to refute the charges laid against the historical accuracy of Scripture; but it is an endless work where men do not desire to know the facts, but amuse themselves with quibbling.

34. Influence an excellent Test The better test is that which believers alone are able to describe. How has the Scripture influenced them? Has it flattered their conceit, lowered their ideal of virtue, nourished their selfishness, or dispirited their hopes of better things? No. They find God as revealed in the Book to be their Father and their Friend, and his methods of righteousness to be most elevating and purifying, so that they are enabled to trust him in their struggles after that which is good and noble, and always find their faith abundantly justified. Day by day they see for themselves that God's declarations are true, and that they are attended with power. The words of God awaken echoes in our hearts. The Book is omniscient and omnipresent, like the Spirit that inspired it; it knows all about us, and tells us our secret thoughts. It must be divine, for it touches secret springs known only to him who fashioned the heart at first. He has watched the fouling of its machinery so closely that its present movements cannot deceive him; and he speaks of it as only such an Observer could do. The Bible revelation exactly meets our needs, and allays our fears: we mean not the shallow wants and dreads of worldly frivolity, but the deep and terrible necessities of a mind ready to despair through a crushing sense of past failure. This Book is a salvation for men doing business on great waters, where trifles are out of the question. It is a guiding star to minds around whom the midnight of despair is gathering. O matchless revelation of truth, if thou didst not come from God, whence didst thou come? If all thou tellest us be a dream; fain would we dream again, or die in our sleep! Hitherto we have found all thy teaching true to our inner life, and we cannot but bear witness to the fact!

35. The Sinless One A clear proof of the divine origin of Scripture is afforded by its portrait of the perfect Man. Jesus is sinless in thought, and word, and deed; his enemies are unable to find a fault in him either of excess or defect. Nowhere else in the world have we such another portrait of a man; it would be superfluous to say that nowhere have we such another man. Jesus is unique: he is original, with peculiarities all his own, but without any divergence from the straight line of rectitude. He is not a recluse, whose character would have few relationships, and therefore few tests; but one living in the fierce light of a King among men, coming into relation with the world in a thousand ways; a great ethical Teacher, inculcating a system far surpassing any other, and embodying it in his own life; above all, crowning the edifice of a perfect life with the surrender of himself to death for his enemies. Whence came this portrait if the man never existed? No painter goes beyond his own ideal; no imperfect mind could have invented the perfect mind of Christ. The record is divine.

36. Science and the Book at one

Between the revelation of God in his Word, and that in his Works, there can be no actual discrepancy. The one may go further than the other, but the revelation must be harmonious. Between the interpretation of the Works and the interpretation of the Word, there may be very great differences. It must be frankly admitted that the men of the Book have sometimes missed its meaning: we have never held the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripturists. Nay more, it is certain that, in their desire to defend their Bible, devout persons have been unwise enough to twist its words, or, at least, to set them in an unnatural light, in order to make the Book agree with the teachings of scientific men. Herein has lain their weakness. If they had always laboured to understand what God said in his Book, and had steadfastly adhered to its meaning, whatever might be advanced by the scientific, they would have been wise; and as professed science advanced towards real science, the fact that the old Book is right would have become more and more apparent.

37. Scientific Statements not infallible

Those who have addicted themselves to the study of Nature, and have despised the Word, certainly cannot claim such immunity from mistake as to demand a revision of Scripture interpretation every time they enthrone a new hypothesis. The history of philosophy, from the beginning until now, reads very like a Comedy of Errors. Each generation of learned men has been eminently successful in refuting all its predecessors, and there is every probability that much of what is now endorsed as orthodox scientific doctrine will be entirely upset in a few years' time. When we remember that one coterie of savants has proved to a demonstration that there is no such thing as mind, and that another has been equally successful in proving that there is no such thing as matter, we are led to ask the question, "When doctors differ, who is to decide?"

38. Little settled in Science

There are many voices in the world, some powerful, and others weak; but there is not yet a consensus of thoughtful observers sufficiently strong to demonstrate any one system of science to be absolutely true. The inductive process of Bacon, no doubt, yields the nearest approach to certainty; but even this cannot raise a deduction beyond question, for no man of science knows all the instances that can be adduced, and his deduction from what he knows may be upset by equally sure inferences from what he does not know. The time over which scientific observations can travel, even if it be extended into ages, is but as a watch in the night compared with the eternity of God; and the range of human observation is but as a drop of the bucket compared with the circle of the heavens; and, therefore, it may turn out, in a thousand instances, that there are more things in heaven and earth than were ever dreamed of in the most accurate philosophy of scientists. These good people have done their best, from Aristotle downwards, but they have hardly accomplished more than to prove us all dunces, and themselves scarcely a fig better than the rest of us.

39. Where Alteration is easiest

Instead of altering the Bible, or allowing that it may be mistaken upon mundane matters, it is a far safer course to continue the long-ago-begun process of amending science, which is made of a substance so plastic that no great effort is required to change its fashion to the reverse of its present shape. From the first doctor in the school of science down to the last, error has not only been possible, but almost unavoidable, from the limitation of human faculties and the mystery of phenomena. Even the interpreters of Scripture have been less absurd than the interpreters of Nature; though certain of these have gone to grievous lengths. Yet The Book retains its impregnable position. If it ever comes to a matter of decision whether we shall believe God's revelation or man's science, we shall unhesitatingly cry, "Let God be true, and every man a liar."

40. No remarkable present Difficulty At the present moment we see no considerable difficulty. Scripture may not square with proposed hypotheses, but it agrees with known facts. Scripture, interpreted in an intelligent manner, displays as clear an agreement with Nature and Providence as Words can show with "Works. An article in the Illustrated London News may describe in words a scene which, on the opposite page, is depicted by the pencil of an accurate artist: the two forms of instruction may fully coincide, and yet the impression upon the reader, who fails to see the engraving, may not be the same as that produced upon an observer who only notices the sketch, and neglects the letter-press. The man who cared only for the typography might quarrel with the votary of the wood-block, while the picture-observer might equally well retort upon the reader: but if the two could be combined, the intent of the author would more surely be understood. Let him that readeth the Word consider the Work, and let him that observeth Nature attend to Revelation, and growing wisdom shall be the reward of both.