03.07. CHAPTER VII.THE MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE

CHAPTER VII. THE MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE.

"I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad." Psalms 119:96.

Everything human has a limit to its apparent perfection. Trace it far enough, or examine it thoroughly enough, and you will find defects if not deformities. Everything born of man or produced by him is faulty, mixed up with error. Our watches we correct by the chronometer and the chronometer must be regulated by the sun; for "beneath the stars nothing goes right." But God’s law reveals no defects. It has no limit to its perfection.

There was in the Roman Forum, a gilt pillar erected by Augustus, and known as "Milliarium Aureum" or "the golden milestone." There, all the principal Roman roads centered and terminated; and thence radiated to the remotest verge of civilization, running in all directions, as far as the silver eagles had triumphantly borne the standards of the empire! The Bible is the Golden Milestone of the ages. It has been for thousands of years the grand center of all the noblest thought, purest love, and holiest life of the world. All roads converge here. The great highways of human progress radiate from this shining center. From this great book proceeds the inspiration of the best literature, the most unselfish philanthropy, the most faultless morality, which the world has ever known. Whence came the Bible? Is this the accidental point of all this convergence; or is it the designed focus of all this light, love and life? Was this golden pillar erected by one infinitely more august than the foremost of the Caesars, to be the center and source of all human progress? Did God put the Bible in the very Forum of the nations, that by all paths men might, in the honest search after truth, find in this their goal; and that, from this, as a starting point, every true lover of God and man might proceed in his noble career of service? This is the decisive test. No literary excellence, no scientific accuracy, no perfection, as a book, could atone for one vital error in ethical teaching or moral precept, in a volume which claims the high dignity of being a guide to the human soul, in matters of faith and life, doctrine and duty!

Suppose that no revelation of God’s will had ever been made to man, through any such channel; but that, in some way, we were led to look for a written communication from God. What sort of a book would we expect? We would surely be warranted in anticipating in such a volume, the following characteristics:

1. It would be intelligible, a clear revelation, and capable of being understood by the average man.

2. It would be consistent, that is, its testimony would be essentially one, united, harmonious witness.

3. It would be transcendent, far surpassing all human teachings in the tone of its precepts, and bearing the impress of a divine mind and heart in its whole structure.

4. It would be practical, touching the actual needs of man, at the most vital points of contact.

We cannot imagine even the human channel of the divine communication as seriously affecting the result. After making liberal allowance for human imperfection, and the imperfection of human language, we insist, on God’s behalf, that whatever claims to represent his will shall in all these particulars correspond with the high claim. If the Holy Ghost shall pour the light of heaven into the dark chambers of this world, no necessary imperfection in the window panes through which it streams, can essentially diminish its glory. It may suffer some absorption or refraction or take some hue or tint in its passage, but it will still be recognized as light from above.

I. The Unity or consistency of the Bible is a grand argument in its favor. It is a collection of books, written at different times, and by different persons, at intervals through some sixteen centuries. In the style and character of these books, there is surprising variety and diversity; some are historical, others poetical; some contain laws, others lyrics; some are prophetic, some symbolic: in the New Testament we have four gospels, one historic narrative, and twenty-one epistles followed by a symbolic poem in the most oriental imagery. And yet this is no artificial arrangement of fragments. We find "the Old Testament patent in the new; the new latent in the old!" The various books of the Bible are entirely at agreement. There is diversity in unity and unity in diversity; "e pluribus unum." There is some times apparent divergence, at first; but further search shows real harmony. As in a stereoscope, the two pictures sometimes will not come together, but as we continue to look, and the eye rests on some particular point, one view is seen; so in the Word of God. The more we study it, the more its unity and harmony appear. Even the law and the gospel are not in conflict. They stand like the cherubim, facing different ways, but toward each other; and the four gospels, like the cherubic creature in Ezekiel’s vision, facing in four different directions, move in one. All the criticism of more than three thousand years has failed to point out one important or irreconcilable contradiction in the testimony and teachings of those who are farthest separated there is no collision, yet there could be no collusion. In such a book there would not be likely to be unity; for all the human conditions were unfavorable. No other book was ever composed or compiled in circumstances so disadvantageous to a harmonious moral testimony and teaching. Here are some sixty or more separate documents, written by some forty different persons, scattered over wide intervals of space and time, strangers to each other; these documents are written in three different languages, in different lands, with marked diversities of literary style, and by men of all grades of culture and mental capacity from Moses to Malachi; and there is in them great unlikeness both in matter and manner of statement; and yet in not one respect are their doctrinal and ethical teachings in conflict; from beginning to end, we find in them a positive oneness of doctrine, which amazes us. Even where, at first glance, there appears to be conflict, as between Paul and James, we find, on closer examination that, instead of standing face to face, beating each other, they stand back to back, beating off common foes. And, most wonderful of all, this moral unity could not be fully under stood till the book was completed. The process of preparation, like a scaffolding about a building, obscured its beauty. Even the workmen upon it could not appreciate its harmony but, when John added the capstone and declared that nothing further should be added, the scaffolding fell, and a grand cathedral was revealed. To appreciate this strong argument for the divine origin of the Bible, try this test in a supposed case. Imagine another book, compiled by as many authors, scattered over as many centuries! Herodotus contributes a historic fragment on the origin of all things, in the fifth century before Christ; a century later Aristotle adds a book on moral philosophy; two centuries pass and Cicero adds a work on law and government; still another hundred years and Virgil furnishes a grand poem on ethics; in the next century Plutarch supplies some biographical sketches; two hundred years after, Origen adds essays on religious creeds and conduct; a century and a half later, Augustine writes a treatise on theology, and Chrysostom a book of sermons; then seven centuries pass away and Abelard completes the compilation by a magnificent series of essays on rhetoric and scholastic philosophy. And between these extremes, which, like the Bible, span fifteen centuries, let us imagine all along from Herodotus to Abelard thirty or forty other contributors whose works enter into the final result, men of different nations, periods, habits, languages, and education; under the best conditions, how much moral unity could be expected, even if each successive contributor had read all that preceded his own fragment? Have you heard Thomas grand orchestra? See how, as that baton rises and falls in the hand of the Conductor, from violin and bass viol, cornet and flute, trombone and trumpet, flageolet and clarinet, bugle and French horn, cymbals and drum, there comes one grand harmony! You have no doubt, though the conductor were screened from view, that one master mind controls all the instrumental performers. But God makes His oratorio to play for more than a thousand years, and where one musician becomes silent another takes up the strain, and yet it is all one grand symphony the key is never lost and never changes, except by those exquisite modulations that show the composer; and when the last strain dies away you see that all these glorious movements and melodies have been variations of one grand theme! Did each musician compose as he played, or was there one composer back of the many players? "one supreme and regulating mind" in this Oratorio of the Ages? If God was the master musician, planning the whole and arranging the parts, appointing player to succeed player, and one strain to modulate or melt into another, then we can understand how Moses grand anthem of Creation glides into Isaiah’s oratorio of the Messiah, by and by sinks into Jeremiah’s plaintive wail, swells into Ezekiel’s awful chorus, changes into Daniel’s rapturous lyric, and after the quartette of the Evangelists, closes with John’s full choir of Saints and Angels!

How can it be accounted for? There is no answer which can be given unless you admit the supernatural element. If God actually superintended the production of this book, so that all who contributed to it were guided by Him, then its unity is the unity of a divine plan and its harmony the harmony of a supreme intelligence and will!

We are told of the temple, first built upon Mt. Moriah, that it was built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither, so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building. The stone was cut, squared, polished and fitted to its place in the quarry, before it was brought to the temple platform. The beams and boards, were all wrought into the desired form and shape in the shops; and when the material for the temple was on the ground nothing was necessary but to put it together. What was it which insured symmetry in the temple when constructed, and harmony between the workmen in the quarries and the shops, and the builders on the hill? There must have been one presiding mind that planned the whole. There was one brain or intelligence that built that whole structure in ideal before it was in fact. The builders built wiser than they knew; they were putting together the ideas of the architect wrought in stone, and not their own ideas! In some such way alone can we account for the singular unity of the Word of God. The Bible is a structure planned and wrought out in the mind of a divine Architect, who, through the ages, superintended His own workmen and work. Moses laid its foundations, not knowing who should build up after him, or what form the structure should assume. Workman after workman followed; he might see that there was agreement with what went before, but he could not foresee that what should come after would be only the sublime carrying out of the grand plan. And yet what is the case? No one disputes the singular unity of the structure; and yet, during all those sixteen centuries, through which the building rose toward completion, there was no sound of axe or hammer, no chipping or hacking to make one part fit its fellow. Everything is in agreement with everything else, because the whole Bible was built in the thought of God before one book was laid in the order of its construction!

You cannot look on that cathedral at Milan, whose first stone was laid March 15, 1386, and which, after these five centuries, is yet incomplete, without instinctively knowing that it must have been the product of one mind, however many workmen may have helped to rear its marble walls and pinnacles. Its unity of design cannot be the result of accident. No, the workmen were not the architect. Every stone was shaped and polished to fit its place in the plan. And so of the Bible: that cathedral of the ages! Whoever the work men were, the Architect was God! This unity appears the more marvelous when we observe the progressive development of revelation. One of the finest scholars of Britain, in one of the grandest books of the century, has devoted the powers of his master-mind to tracing the "Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament." He shows that, although there could have been no such intent or intelligence in the writers’ minds, and although the books of the New Testament are not even arranged in the order of their production, that order could not, in one instance, be changed without impairing or destroying the symmetry of the book, and that there is a regular progress in the unfolding of doctrine, from the Gospel according to Matthew to the Revelation. A wider examination will show the very same progress of doctrine from corner-stone to capstone; from foundations first, then story after story, pillars on pedestals and capitals on pillars, and arches on capitals, till, like a dome, flashing back the splendors of the noonday, the Apocalypse spans and crowns and completes the whole, glorious with celestial visions. The unity of the Bible is organic. Now the unity of a building is not organic. It is a unity of plan, of construction, of material, but you may take down the spire of a church and put up another; replace the windows by memorial windows making each a crystal monument of some departed friend; and change all the wood work in its interior; and yet the unity and completeness of the building are not affected. But if a human body loses an eye, a finger, or a joint, it is maimed; its completeness is gone; its unity violated; and nothing can ever supply the lack of that lost portion, however insignificant. The Bible is a unity in this, that not one of all its books could be lost without maiming the body of truth here contained. Every book has a place which it fills. You may not at a single glance discover its use, or see why it is necessary to the plan of the book, but it is the fault of your ignorance; each book fills a place in the great plan; God’s stamp is on this organic unity.

Take one example. The book of Esther been thought by some unnecessary to the completeness of the canon. Why, it is said, "It does not even contain the name of God." But that book critically studied proves a singularly complete exhibition of the Providence of God. It teaches an unseen hand behind human affairs; certain ultimate awards to the evil and the good; it exhibits this providential rule in the uncertainty and unsatisfactoriness of the prosperity of the wicked, and in the prosperity that ultimately comes to the good even out of their adversities; it shows how retribution is sometimes poetically exact in the very forms of punishment. And that we may not confound God’s Providence with a bald fatalism that takes away human freedom and responsibility, it shows us how the prayerful resolution and action of God’s servants and the unbiased freedom of His enemies, are consistent with His overruling sovereignty; and how all things work together to produce all grand results. We see the ministry of most minute matters in furthering Providential plans. The book that thus exhibits God’s Providence, His universal sovereignty, the universal harmony, divine retribution and human responsibility, does not once contain the name of God; for it is meant to teach us of the Hidden Hand that, behind the scenes, unseen, moves and controls all things.

Cuvier has brought out into grand scientific statement the unity of organized being. He finds that, in every case, it forms a whole a complete system, all the parts of which mutually correspond. None of these parts can change without the others also changing; and consequently each taken separately indicates and gives all the others. For instance, the sharp-pointed tooth of the lion requires a strong jaw; these demand a skull, fitted for the attachment of powerful muscles, both for moving the jaw and raising the head; a broad, well-developed shoulder-blade must accompany such a head; and there must be an arrangement of bones of the leg which admits of the leg-paw being rotated and turned upward, in order to be used as an instrument to seize and tear the prey; and, of course, there must be strong claws arming the paw. Hence, from one tooth the entire animal could be modeled, though the species had perished. So the unity of the Bible is the unity of one organism, where each part demands all the others. The Decalogue demands the Sermon on the Mount. Isaiah’s prophecy makes necessary the narrative of the Evangelists. Daniel fits into the Revelation as bone fits socket, or as those strange bones in the vertebral column naturally form the axis of the neck. You cannot understand Leviticus without the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Psalms express the highest morality and spirituality of the Old Testament and anticipate the clearer beauty of the New; they link the Mosaic code with the divine ethics of the gospels and the epistles. The Passover foreshadowed the Lord’s Supper, and the Lord’s Supper interprets and fulfils the Passover. Even the little book of Jonah makes more complete the sublime Gospel according to John; and Ruth and Esther prophetically hint the Acts of the Apostles. Nay, look more closely, and after following the course of history, gospels and epistles, when you come to the last chapter of Revelation, you find yourself mysteriously touching the first chapters of Genesis; and lo, as you survey the whole track of your thought, you find you have been following the perimeter of a golden ring; the extremities actually bend around, touch and so blend that no point of contact is detected. You read in the first of Genesis of the first creation; in the last of Revelation, of the new creation the new heavens and the new earth; there, of the rivers that watered the garden: here, of the pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal; there, of the Tree of Life in the first Eden: here, of the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God; there, of the God who came down to talk and walk with man: here, that the Tabernacle of God is with men. There we read of the curse that came by sin of the serpent whose trail is over all human joys; here we read, "and there shall be no more curse" "nothing shall enter that defileth or maketh a lie."

II. If the Bible be the Word of God, it will be clear and intelligible; else were it no Revelation. It must be clear to the average man nay, to the lowest level of a complete manhood must a revelation from God descend. The Bible claims to be God’s message to man as man. It unfolds a plan of redemption which reaches just as far and wide as the condemnation. The rescue must be as complete as the ruin; the salvation must touch at every point the sin. That is no restoration which cannot repair the whole ruin. And, inasmuch as all men are in sin and need salvation, the gospel must be so simple, plain, that anyone who is capable of sinning may be capable of understanding and appropriating salvation. Now, we find that wherever there is a human being who has passed the first stages of infancy and childhood, and is not imbecile or idiotic; wherever there is a complete set of faculties, however undeveloped, there may be voluntary sin, and so responsibility. But if there be one human being who can sin and yet cannot receive the saving gospel, by sheer incapacity to understand it, there is ground for doubt that the gospel is of God. The world has had many wise and good teachers of morals, and some of them have been centers of grand influence. But every one of them has spoken to. a class of men. The great masses have been shut out from their select circle by the very character of their teachings. The word mystery is of Greek origin, and means "a revealed secret" which only the initiated could understand; and these were mysteries to the common people, and remained such because they demanded a measure of intelligence and capacity not possessed by the average man. By necessity, the philosopher addressed the few. Aristotle originated the word metaphysics. He wrote first on "physics," then "metataphysica," "after the physics;" and what better expresses those subtleties which lie beyond the common mind? Suppose Aristotle’s "Organon" contained the secret of salvation, how many sinners could from that find out the secret? Pythagoras was a great teacher; but he did not attempt to get a hold upon the masses. He welcomed those who desired to be taught his mysteries, and held them on probation till he should discover who were able and worthy to be pupils; and they were the only ones to whom he attempted to reveal the hidden things of his philosophy. Hence came the distinction between the exoteric and esoteric schools. These facts hint the drift of all merely human teaching upon moral and spiritual truths. Had it been complete in all other respects, here was a fundamental fatal lack: it did not reach and touch, it could not move and mould all men; it was not fit for man as man.

We open the blessed Book, and one of the first things which arrests our attention is the divine simplicity that is mingled with its awful sublimity. The way of holiness is a plain and straight highway, not a narrow, obscure, crooked byway; "the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." The vision is written plain upon the tablets, so that he may run that reads it. A child in years and understanding can understand all that is necessary to salvation. One of the first things which childhood shows is "trust," and trust is the soul of faith. Any child who can understand what it is, upon a dark and stormy night, when he had lost his way, to give up to a stronger arm a burden which he cannot longer carry, and give his hand to another hand, to be led to a home which he can no longer find, can understand what it is to let Christ bear his sins and guide him to heaven. Well might the Savior of sinners set a child in the midst of men and bid them become as little children, for the learned and wise in this world of sin scorn and scout the gospel for its simplicity. And yet is it no sign that the true salvation is here, that we need not go up to heaven in order to bring a Savior down, nor into Hades to bring a Savior up from the dead? God asks of us no such practical impossibilities, but only to believe in the heart and confess with the mouth. But, you ask, are there no mysteries in the Bible no things "hard to be understood," high as heaven, deep as the abyss? Certainly there are; and were there not, would that not argue against the Bible? Does not the power wholly to comprehend the work of another hand or brain imply a certain equality? The very fact that there is about the product of another’s genius what you and I cannot understand is a proof of genius i.e., of a superior order of faculties. I need do no more than hear Edison’s phonograph repeat my sentences, to be convinced that the man who invented that ma chine is no ordinary man. And a glance at the statues of Michaelangelo is enough to show me that that man was a prince even among artists! So the very mystery of God’s works shows that they proceeded from no human hand. Let any man explain how a blade of grass grows, taking from earth, air, light and dew, just what it needs for its own structure, and building these elements into itself! The Word of God must show the God who inspired it. There must be thoughts above our thoughts, and ways above our ways, or it may be after all only a man’s work!

How can God’s Word be at once intelligible and unintelligible, within our capacity and above it, clear and yet obscure?

We need not stop to draw such subtle lines of distinction as that of Coleridge, between "apprehension" and "comprehension." A thing may at the same time be sublime and simple. The pillar of cloud and of fire was a mystery. Who can tell, even now, how a cloud can move with a supreme intelligence now going before to lead the way, now resting to indicate a halt, and again going behind to hide God’s host from the pursuing foe? How can a cloud herald the night-shade by burning with a glory that midnight cannot quench? And yet the cloud led Israel, and nothing could be more simple than to go where it went, and stay where it stayed. Whatever was mysterious about the cloud did not interfere with its office as a guide. The "secret things" belong to the Lord our God, but the "revealed things" belong to us and our children, even all the words of this law! There are mysteries, but they are speculative; there are revealed things, and they are regulative; i.e., while God does not answer our questions, "how?" and "why?" he does answer "what?" We never ask; Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? without a plain, prompt answer, not clouded by mystery or shadowed by obscurity.

Mystery? Yes; and it would be a greater mystery if in a revelation from God there were not. Edward Irving compares the man who, with his finite knowledge, expects to understand all the deep things of God, to the little blind mole, running his tiny galleries underground, undertaking to interpret the marchings and countermarchings of mighty armies overhead! There are deep things about God, but none of them touch duty! You know not the mystery of motion how the will is linked to the nerve, nerve to muscle, muscle to bone; and yet you can lift your arm and move your leg at will. And so, whatever mystery is in the Word, it does not becloud duty, or prevent us from walking in the path of obedience. This blessed Book acknowledges clouds and darkness to be round about Him; yet it never admits that clouds and darkness are round about the way that leads to Him.

You gaze up at Mont Blanc; it is dim with the distance, and clouds wrap its summit as in a white shroud. But the clouds belong about lofty peaks; that is their natural home, and they make the mountain look grand and sublime. They are fitted to catch a thousand hues from the sunbeam, and wrap the awful peak in rainbow colors; they leave the snow and ice far up toward heaven, which, as they melt, distil pure, cool water for the springs far below. But, though clouds invest these summits thousands of feet above, there are no clouds about your pathway at the mountain’s foot; here your path is plain and clear. And all this shows that you were not meant to live on that higher level. Those grand peaks are, like the stars they seem to touch, meant to look at and admire to strike awe into your soul; but you could not abide up there; you would get lost. Those are slippery heights, whence many an ambitious climber falls to his own hurt. The air is too rare up there; you breathe with difficulty, and the cold is too intense. But here you walk safely, and your feet do not stumble. At this level everything is fitted to feed and nourish your life. Is it not so with the Bible? It is like some tall peak whose awful form, resting on the earth, reaches the stars. Its heights are infinite, distant, dim, enveloped in clouds, but glorious in their obscurity and mystery. Those heights were not meant for mortal feet to tread. Only angels can breathe that ethereal atmosphere, or venture to explore the high and deep things of God. For you and me, those sublime heights are meant only that we may gaze, admire, adore. That is where the Bible touches God and heaven; we must only look and be lost in the glory. But where the Bible touches the earth it touches our level; here are no clouds or darkness; all is light and plain and clear, because here lies the path of duty. True, we may, as we become more and more familiar with God’s truth, climb higher, get more extended prospects, truer views of the relation between the here and the hereafter; but even then we shall only be overwhelmed with the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, and exclaim, "How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" When we get as high as mortal can tread, we shall only say with Paul that there is a height and depth, a breadth and length, which pass knowledge.

Blessed is he who is content to understand the way of duty, and who, in these divine mysteries which have to do with the higher things and deeper things of God, sees only an additional evidence that the Bible is of God. Because it is of God, therefore does it rise so high above the earthly level as that its shining summit is shrouded in the clouds, and too glorious for our eyes to behold!