WTY-2 General Characteristics of the Bible

CHAPTER II GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE

It has been said that the Bible lives by its peculiarities. There is much truth in this. Individuality elbows itself through the commonplace—it stands apart; it forces the attention; it is a matter of specialty. This is what the Bible does. When all other books have made their speeches, the Bible rises as though no voice had been heard, clears away a space for itself, and by uniqueness of majesty, and sympathy, and singularity it forthwith claims the foremost place. A Book for Everybody The Bible is the people’s book! Some men labor under the mistake that the Bible is a textbook for preachers, and nothing more. No conception is more erroneous—more contrary to all the Scriptures testify of themselves. Was the revelation of God made to mankind, or was it made to a few chosen individuals that towered intellectually above the ‘‘common herd?” We read in the gospels that Jesus says, “Father, I thank Thee, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes!” And again we are assured at another place that “the common people heard Him gladly.” No sophism is more subversive than the assertion that the Bible be­longs to a professional class. A thou­sand times No! It belongs to human­ity—to the poor man, the working man, the sorrowing man, the suffer­ing woman, the little child; no human being on earth is excluded; like the sun in the sky it wishes to warm and bless and guide them all. In this the Bible differs from all other sacred books. Neither the Ko­ran nor the Bhagavad Gita, neither the Veda nor the Tripitaka, addresses itself to the entire human race. They speak rather to the wise and the pru­dent, or to the courageous and strong. Thus slaves and serfs, soldiers, public officials, criminals, and children un­der twelve years of age are expressly excluded from the Sangha, that is the holy communion of Buddha.

How different the Bible! Christ’s invitation is as wide as the world: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden; I will give you rest.” And He has kept His promise. His Gospel has comforted the poor sick mother, as well as Isaac Newton, prince among the scientists; the blind beggar to whom it was read, as well as king Charles I, before his execu­tion; the negro in Africa, as well as the cultured European.

Let no man say that the Bible can be understood only by a certain kind of men to whom exceptional privi­leges have been granted. That is equal to robbing the common people of their God-given birthright!

There is nothing in the Bible, nec­essary to salvation, which the people cannot find out for themselves. Priests who take away the Bible from the laity under the holy pretense that its perusal would confuse and poison their minds, are thieves and knaves! More Bible is what is wanted; a fuller reading of the Book itself. Now that we have the Bible in our mother tongue, let no one dare to say, “Touch not; read not; handle not!” The fire will proceed from out of the sanctu­ary and burn him!

Too long has the Bible been consid­ered as belonging to a ministerial class. It is an open book for every­one—for all the world. Those who prevent, or try to prevent, the read­ing of the Scriptures, are the foes of Christ—the enemies of the truth. Nothing can exceed the egotism and impudence of the man who claims the right to investigate for himself and denies the same right to others. “Search the Scriptures!” says Jesus Christ. The words are addressed to the whole world. No Other Book Cares so Much for Man

There are people who neglect the Bible. There are millions of people in so-called Christian countries who never have read the Bible. It is not in the power of any man to do them a greater injustice than they inflict upon themselves. The man who says of the Bible, “I can do without it!” may be speaking sincerely, but he is speaking ignorantly. There is no man on earth who can afford to pass the Bible by.

Says J. Q. Adams: “I speak as a man of the world to men of the world; and I say to you, Search the Scrip­tures! The Bible is the Book of all others, to be read at all ages, and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice or thrice through, and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermit­ted, unless by some overruling neces­sity.”

There are men who oppose the Bible. They ought to be ashamed of themselves! There is no other book whose beneficent influence ap­proaches even approximately that of the Bible. Read in our families, it will keep the father in his place, and the child in his place. It will speak to the employer and the employed, to the mother and to the servant, and impart a blessing to each. Carried into our politics, it will teach men to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. Kept in our business, it will burn our false meas­uring rod and destroy our unequal balances—it will be just to persons on both sides of the counter. It is the Magna Charta of the civilized world.

“There is not in the whole compass of human literature a book like the Bible, which deals with such pro­found topics, which touches human nature on so many sides of experi­ence, which relates so especially to its duties and sorrows and tempta­tions, and yet which looks over the whole field of life with such sympathy and cheerfulness of spirit.” (H. W. Beecher.)

“The doctrine of the golden rule, the interpretation of the law as love to God and man, and the specific directions in it to husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, rulers and citizens, and the warnings against covetousness and sin are the best preventives and cure of all political diseases.” (F. C. Monfort.) The Bible is Full of the Spirit of Justice

Let me show this by an example. We read in Numbers 27 : “Then drew near the daughters of Zelophehad . . saying, Our father died in the wilder­ness. . . . and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from among his family, because he had no son? Give us possession among the brethren of our father.” The man who had died left five girls, but no boys. According to the existing law the girls could not in­herit their father’s possession. So far no provisions had been made for a situation in which the five women found themselves. They were per­plexed. They were greatly disturbed. One day they put their heads together and deliberated. They resolved to make a public speech. Now Moses might have pointed to all the prece­dents of Israel as the answer to their appeal, but he did not. Here was a special case. “He brought their cause before Jehovah.” “And Jehovah spake unto Moses, The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them.”

Justice! We like the decision! “Give any nation the Bible, and let that nation make the Bible its statute book, and every class in the commu­nity will have justice; masters will be just to their servants; servants will be just to their masters: family peace will be protected; social relations will be purified; common progress will be guaranteed. This spirit of justice is the social strength of the Bible. No life is to be tampered with; the small cause as well as the great is to be heard; no kid is to seethe in its mother’s milk; no fruit tree is to be cut down even in time of war; no bird’s nest to be wantonly destroyed; all men are to be honored, helped and saved. A book with a tone like this should be protected from the sneers of persons who have never actually studied its ennobling pages." (Joseph Parker.) The Bible is Woman’s Friend and the Child’s

There are men who assert that the Bible has been the means of enslaving woman. That is one of Ingersoll’s hobbies. He affirms it everlastingly. It appears in every disquisition of his. Nothing is farther from the truth. The Bible is woman’s greatest friend! Never forget it—the appli­cants in Numbers were women; nay, they were orphans! Their father was dead. No brother was there to take their part. Nevertheless they re­ceived justice. God said, “They are right!” In no history, beside the Bible, can there be found an equal number of charming female portraits. Why not? Because the Bible recognizes the dignity and worth of woman beyond all other books. Everywhere woman ap­pears as the helpmeet, the companion and friend of man. She is more than a bearer of children—more than a mere toy. She is “man’s glory” (1 Corinthians 11:7), not his slave; she is the queen of the home, not a beast of burden—the tool and play­thing of man. In China, woman is regarded as a necessary evil — men must have mothers. She has no rights the supe­rior sex is under obligation to respect. Young maidens are daily sold into domestic servitude. Girls are bought to be trained for the stage by theatre-managers who acquire with each unfortunate the power to put her to death. Woman has no right what­ever to fraternal consideration. That is Confucianism. The Buddhism of India is no better. Buddha was a hater of woman— a selfish deserter of wife and child; and today, any Buddhist who desires to make trial of a new mistress, has only to enter a retreat and remain celibate for a month. In this way he secures a legal separation from all female companions and is free to marry whom he pleases. For woman Buddhism has prepared eighteen hells; only if she lives virtuously through fifteen hundred incarna­tions, she may be born once more as an infant boy and thus attain Nir- wana. The climax curse of India is child marriage. Matrimony is en­joined as a religious obligation at the age of five or six. Babes are born to children of twelve. There are mil­lions of widows under ten years of age. Widowhood is regarded as a punishment for crimes committed in a pre-existent state; hence these child-widows are treated worse than beasts—they are held responsible for their husband’s death. Their lot is one of helpless, hopeless misery. That is Hinduism! As to Muhammedanism, it is just as bad. Muhammed was an unbridled libertine. He tempted his followers to war by promising them maiden captives. He encouraged the slave trade so that his devotees might find it easy to obtain mistresses for them­selves. He married seventeen wives himself, and was the owner of hun­dreds of concubines. Marriage among the Muhammedans is nothing more than a business transaction. The price of a woman ranges from two to sixty dollars. A wife that cloys the appetite or taste may be divorced by the husband on the instant. He needs only to say, in the presence of a third party, “I divorce you; be gone!” That is Muhammedanism.

How different are the teachings of Jesus Christ! There is no system of religion, ethics, or philosophy, that promulgates a conception of the mar­riage relation approaching in nobility that taught in the New Testament. In all the teachings of Jesus Christ there is not the slightest intimation of woman’s inferiority to her hus­band; there is one moral code for both; the marriage tie is as binding upon the one as upon the other. These teachings have revolutionized the world; they have ennobled woman; they have procured her social recogni­tion. In Christian countries woman is a new being. No wonder that Jesus won the warm and gentle hearts of Jewish women—no wonder that He con­tinues to win the hearts of women everywhere. Every woman instinct­ively feels that a man like Jesus must be her friend. Yet Mr. Ingersoll says time and again that Jesus not only failed to elevate her position, but on the contrary, with word and example, forged chains for her! It is passing strange that in spite of this Jesus Christ should have the noblest women for an inheritance! The Bible is also the friend of the child. Jesus alone has taught us to treat children as though they were “little majesties.” Confucianism gives the father absolute authority over the child; the child must bend or break; the New Testament says, “Parents, provoke not your children unto wrath!” Hinduism excludes the child from the holy communion of Buddha; it is ignored, regarded as unfit for salvation, looked upon as a negligible quantity: Jesus says, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Thus we might enumerate passages and draw comparisons ad infinitum. We know of no other religion that makes so much of the child, irrespect­ive of sex—that speaks so highly of woman—as does Christianty. The Bible is Adapted to all the Cir­cumstances and Necessities of Human Life Look at the range, the compass, the circuit, of the Bible! Is there a single aspect of life which lies beyond the circumference of the divine testi­monies? Has not God anticipated everything, provided for everything? God has special messages for those who rule: He speaks of righteous­ness, equity, oppression, wisdom. God has special messages for those who are afflicted some of the richest and tenderest testimonies of the divine revelation are addressed to those whose eyes are blinded with tears, and in whose breast there is the anguish of a great sorrow—the tu­mult of a great woe. In the family circle, God calls Himself Father, and tells us of a love more enduring than all the affections of human kind. As to wickedness, God’s testimonies burn unquenchably against all wrong: in short, the Bible provides for every exigency of human life, for every aspect of human experience, for every anticipation of human love and hope. Nothing has been forgotten; in this book every circumstance of life has been met. Here we find precepts for kings, and rules for the lowliest sub­ject. Here we find psalms of joy, and dirges of woe; rest for the weary, and stimuli for the indolent; prescriptions for health, and balm for sick­ness ; words for the hoary, and hymns for little children; great trees are here and little flowers, mighty rivers and threading rills, great lights and glimmering sparks. This wealth of provision amounts to an argument! The Bible Shirks no Great Questions The Bible is not a book that con­tents itself with trifles; it is not a book that offers little mincing guesses to little riddles. No, it grapples with the highest subjects; it faces the highest lines of spiritual inquiry, and gives an answer—not a halting, un­certain, timid, subjunctive answer, but an answer that is final, an answer that admits of no appeal, an answer that is precise and imperative.

I do not wish here and now to decide whether the answer it gives to every question is right or wrong; I only desire to point out the fact that the Bible is the boldest book in the world as to its tone. No matter what the question—God, creation, invisible worlds, sin, death, immortality, hell or life eternal, the Bible speaks posi­tively and authoritatively. It never suggests; it always declares! “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth!” “The things that are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” “Sin is the destruction of any people.” “Death is the wages of sin.” “The hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” Is it possible for God Himself to speak more emphatic? After reading the works of Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle, we feel that the specific differ­ence between their words and the declarations of the Bible is that be­tween an inquiry and a revelation. The Bible Bold in Many Other Respects

It never flatters or courts any reader. It never extols the achieve­ments of man. It never tries to make itself popular. On the contrary. It announces that sin infests the whole human family to such a degree that all are unclean, that all have come short, that there is none that doeth good in the sight of God,—no, not one! To the proud it says, “God will have nothing of you; He abases those who exalt themselves.” The rich man it warns, “Woe to you who trust in wealth; it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The self-righteous Phari­sees are denounced as “a generation of vipers.”

It never begs or entreats to be read, it never appeals to the mighty and distinguished to give it a kindly hear­ing. The wise it takes in their own craftiness, and human wisdom it esteems foolishness. Where is a book like unto this? This book writes the history of the wicked as graphically as it writes the history of the godly. The Bible hides nothing, covers nothing up, does not call darkness light, or sour sweet. It makes no pretense whatever to be re­strained by what is called taste or del­icacy. It uses words which make the cheek burn. There are many things in it which no man dare read aloud. Calmly and without shame it moves right on, amid the miscellaneousness of our life. It makes no apology, draws no curtain, makes no excuse, never turns aside to stammer or blush; on it goes; taking life as it is, and describing it without flattery or fear. In this we see the dazzling honesty of the book!

“The Bible is true to the very root and reality of things. The book does not ignore facts with a goody-goody blindness, but faces them, names them, proposes remedies for them, and searches into the root and core of the whole of them. No man in this country dare publish certain separate chapters of the Bible, and show them in his window. How then ? They are right in their setting. Pick them out with a foul spirit, and they are foul; let them alone in the order and rhythm which God has appointed, and we cannot do without them. Evil be to him that evil thinks. These things belong to a greater whole; they must not be detached; the part that would be intolerable is essential to the whole that is beautiful.” Who are the men and women of the Bible? Are they a galaxy of artistic figures — dramatic characters, put up, painted, and arrayed for the pur­pose to play their part aesthetically, without fault and beyond criticism? That is what many think. It is for this reason they cover their holy faces with their holy hands when they come upon chapters in which the Bible describes moral depravity, beastly lasciviousness, satanic wickedness.

No. The men and women of the Bible are no puppets—they are living men and women! As the Bible paints them, so they were—and we are not one whit better!

“That the open enunciation of truth is repulsive to us, ought to make us ashamed; for it proves how little we are in the truth, and how little we can bear the truth. We are a poor, proud, hypocritical, virtue-dissem­bling generation, which is ever trying to cover its nakedness and leprosy with beautiful rags; is ever adorning and painting itself, in order to play its part on the stage of life and so­ciety, and whose members are ever complimenting one another on their beautiful, flourishing, and healthy appearance. Our incessant endeavor is toward appearing better than we are, toward making as favorable an impression as possible on others, and toward avoiding at all events to let others see the filthy dregs of our hearts. There is no person, the his­tory of whose life and soul is not im­moral, and this true history will some day come to light. ‘We must all ap­pear before the judgment-seat of Christ.’ Of our revelation before the judgment-seat of Christ the Bible gives us a prelude, and says sternly and coldly, ‘Such are you, even the best among you’.” (Bettex.) The imperfections which we notice in Bible characters enable us to take heart—they become a source of com­fort when we ourselves have stumbled and fallen. The Bible as the Best Antidote for Race Prejudice At this hour we find the nations of the earth divided into opposing camps. One division flings at the other division epithets of bitter hate and scorn. One people denounces the other people as beasts and savages. One race exalts itself above the other with unbecoming pride.

Race hatred is as old as races. Race prejudice antedates the deluge—it is as old as unregenerated human nature. It is wrong! It must be stamped out! It must be overcome! We should recognize in all the na­tions of the world one common human nature—one vast family. This the Bible does—the Bible alone of all the sacred books! It is free from race prejudice—the Old Testament as well as the new. It says, “God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth.” A great truth! It prevents us from limiting our life to families, clans and sects. It joins us all together. It broadens our sympathies, enlarges our ideas, corrects our conceptions. We begin to see that mankind is one —derived from a common source. “This conception is both humbling and elevating. It is humbling to think that the cannibal is a relative of ours; that the slave couching in an African wood is bone of our bone; and that the meanest scum of all the earth started from the same founda­tion as ourselves! On the other hand, it is elevating to think that all kings and mighty men, all soldiers renow­ned in song, all heroes canonized in history, the wise, the strong, the good, are our elder brothers and immortal friends.”

We learn from the Bible that the people of every race have distinctive qualities which we ourselves lack, and which will make valuable contribu­tions to the kingdom of God. One race supplements the other. This is confirmed by experience. We lack the stability and reverence of the China­men; the alertness and loyalty of the Japanese; the devotion and contem­plativeness of the Hindu; the sunny optimism of the negro. Each of these virtues is a stone in a great arch. The arch is the kingdom of God; and it is not completed until every 6tone is contributed. If people anywhere are inclined to look down upon the peoples of other races, it is an unhealthy symptom. They need the Bible! Its Language With reference to its literary quali­ties, and in its relation to other books, the Bible has not only no superior, but no peer. Everywhere do we find sin­ewy language—unequalled nobleness of speech, great massiveness, incal­culable solidity, ineffable dignity. This Bible is not afraid of critics— it asks that the earth may hear, and the heavens may listen!

Men of letters on every hand have praised the literary beauties of the Bible. Many of its compositions are bold, grand, sublime, thrilling; some of them have never been excelled in simple pathos and profound sym­pathy. Notwithstanding the fact that language is thousands of years older now; that is has grown upon every hand; that its power of expression has been carried to its very highest point,—still the eloquent strains of Hebrew speech and song make up the best parts of our sermons and dis­course today.’ I report this as a fact.

Those who are fond of literature I refer to chapters 24-27 in the Prophet Isaiah. I advise them to read this specimen in one sitting. I assure them that they will come across elo­quence than which there is none more exalted on earth. This book was written by some thirty or forty people who, speaking generally, never saw one another. Those men were probably unaware of the fact that other people were writ­ing parts of the book! They were not children of the same age—the same country. Some of them lived a thou­sand or more years apart—some of them were separated by thousands of miles. Few of them had what we now call schooling or education. Some were statesmen, some were shepherds, some were fishers; one was a physi­cian, one a tax-collector. Now these men, differing vastly in gifts, in talents, in education, in accomplish­ments, have put their contributions together in one book—all within the same canvas! What is the result? Chaos? Confusion? Disorder?—No! Matchless harmony! Sublime unity!

Collect the writings of any thirty or forty writers on any subject. I do not even ask you to separate them by distance and time. Collect, I say, their disquisitions on any subject and your result is bedlam! a veritable Babel! But the Biblical writers speak upon every question that ever en­gaged the attention of man—and agree!

Says Peter: “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower falleth: but the word of the Lord abideth forever.” So be it! Other books come and go; this book stands forever. It endures forever, because the world forever needs it.