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Understanding the Scriptures

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Still when all is said the mastery of historical methods of study is but
preliminary to the real understanding of the Scriptures. If we come
close to the revealing movement itself, we find that before we get far
into the stream there must be sympathetic responsiveness to biblical
teaching. The difficulties in understanding the Scriptures are, as of
old, not so much of the intellect as they are of conscience and will--
the difficulties, in a word, that arise from the hardness of men's
hearts.




CHAPTER II

THE BOOK OF LIFE

The approaches to an understanding of the Scriptures which we suggested
in the first chapter are those which have to do merely with intellectual
investigation. Any student with normal intelligence can appreciate the
methods and results of the critical scrutiny of the biblical documents,
but will require something more for an adequate mastery of the
scriptural revelations. There is need of sympathetic realization that
the Book itself did not in any large degree come out of the exercise of
the merely intellectual faculties. In the scriptural revelation we are
dealing with a current of life which flowed for centuries through the
minds of masses of people. To be sure of insight into the meanings of
this revelation there must be an approach to the Bible as a Book of Life
in the sense that its teachings came out of life and that they were
perennially used to play back into life. Its hold on life to-day can be
explained only by the fact that it was thus born out of life, and has
its chief significance for the experiences of actual life.

Even the most superficial perusal of the Scriptures shows that they came
of practical contact with men and things. There is comparatively little
in the entire content of our Sacred Book to suggest the speculations of
abstract philosophy. The writers deal with the concrete. They tell of
men and of peoples who had to face facts and who achieved comprehensions
and convictions through grappling with facts. There is about the
Scriptures what some one has called a sort of "out-of-doors-ness." There
is very little hint of withdrawal from the push and pressure of daily
living. If the prophets ever withdrew to solitude, they did not retire
to closets, but rather to deserts or to mountains. We must not allow our
modern familiarity with bookmaking as an affair of library research and
tranquil meditation in seclusion to mislead us into thinking that the
Christian Bible was wrought out in similar fashion. The Book is full of
the tingle and even the roar of the life out of which it was born. Jesus
gathered up in a single sentence the process by which the scriptural
revelation can be apprehended by man when he said, "He that doeth the
will shall know of the truth." The entire scriptural unfolding is one
vast commentary on this utterance of Jesus.

It is impossible for us in this series of studies to attempt any
detailed survey of the revealing movement of which our Scriptures are
the outcome. It is important, however, that we should see clearly that
the revelation came to those who opened themselves to the light in an
obedient spirit. While it is not in accord with our modern knowledge of
psychology to assort and divide human activities too sharply, it is
nevertheless permissible to insist that the biblical revelation was in a
sense primarily to the will. As Frederick W. Robertson used to say,
obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge. The first men to whom
illuminations came evidently received these gifts out of some purity of
intention and moral excellence. These early leaders gathered others
around them and set them on the path of determined striving toward a
definite goal. As the idea of the seer or the prophet found general
acceptance it gradually hardened into law, law meant for scrupulous
observance. If a singer felt stirred to write a psalm, he voiced his
experiences or his aspirations in the midst of a throbbing world. If a
statesman drew a wide survey of God's dealings with the nations of the
earth, he did so at some mighty crisis in Israel's relations to Egypt or
Assyria or Babylon. When we reach New Testament times we find that even
the Gospels seem to have been books struck out of immediate practical
urgencies rather than composed tranquilly with a scholar's interest
merely in doing a fine piece of professional work. The early Christians
were anxious to hold the believers to the strait and narrow way. To do
this they repeated often the words of the Lord Jesus. When, however, the
older members of the first circles began to fall away, the words were
written down, not because some scholar felt moved thus to improve his
leisure, but because it was absolutely necessary to preserve the words.
Moreover, conflicts were arising between the growing church and the
forces of the world round about. Some scriptures were written to supply
instruments with which to carry on the warfare. Always the fundamental
aim was to keep the people acting according to the teachings which lay
at the heart of the Christian system. The object of the biblical
revelation was from the beginning just what it is to-day in the hands of
Christian believers--the object of using the Scriptures as an instrument
for practicing the Christian spirit into all the phases of life.

We would by no means deny that there are imposing philosophies or,
rather, hints toward such philosophies, in the Scriptures, but we insist
that these did not come out of a purely philosophizing temper. They came
as men tried to put into some form or order the understandings at which
they had arrived as they wrestled with the tough facts of a world which
they were trying to subject to the rule of their religion. As we have
said in the previous chapter, the Scriptures bear scars of all such
conflicts. The revelation was knocked into its shape in the rough-and-
tumble of an attempt to convert the world. And this is not to claim for
the Bible any difference in method of creation from that which obtains
in the shaping of any vitally effective piece of literature. The world-
shaking conceptions have always been won in profound experience. This
chapter is not written with the principles of the modern school of
pragmatism as a guide, and yet pragmatism can be so stated as to phrase
an essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual ideas result from
spiritual practices and are of worth as they prove themselves aids in
further experience. Take some of the expressions of Paul. The
fundamental fact in Paul's experience was his vision on the Damascus
road and his determination to be obedient to that vision. To make his
own view of the Christian religion attractive to those whom he was
trying to win, it became necessary for him to speak in terms of the
Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not have spoken in any other
terms, though some of his reasonings seem to us to be remote from actual
life. But when he left argument and came back to experience he was most
effective. His terribly compelling utterances are those which were born
of driving necessity. The theology started with the vision and unfolded
in obedience to the vision, "What wilt thou have me to do?" Everywhere
upon Paul's epistles there are the marks of practical compulsion. A
letter was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews in Galatia or to
persuade questioning Gentiles in Rome. Some of the profoundest phrasings
of Pauline belief were uttered first as appeals for generous collections
to starving saints.

The example of Paul as a receiver and giver of spiritual light is very
significant. Even if we should make the largest allowances to the
biblical critics who would cut down the number of epistles known to be
genuinely Pauline, we would have enough left to make on our minds the
impression of enormous personal activity. One passage does, indeed, tell
us of a period of months of withdrawal for reflection in Arabia. For the
most part, however, Paul's life was spent in ceaselessly going to and
fro throughout the Roman empire; even in the days of imprisonment he
seems to have been burdened with the administration of churches. It was
out of such multifarious activities that the theology of Paul was born,
and therein lies its value. No interpretation is likely to bring the
separate deliverances into anything like formal, logical consistency.
Very likely Paul was of a markedly logical frame of mind, but he did not
attempt to rid his message of contradictions in detail. The unity and
consistency are found in the fundamental life purpose to get men to
accept Jesus Christ as the Chosen of God. If Paul had ever heard that
much of his theology might be out-dated with the passage of the years,
he would probably have responded that he was perfectly willing that the
instrument should be cast aside if it had served its spiritual purpose
of bringing men to obedience to the law of God.

It is not intended to make this a book of sermons or exhortations. We
must say, however, that in a series of studies on how to understand the
Scriptures stress must be laid upon the maxim that the Scriptures can be
understood only by those who seek to recognize and obey the spirit of
life breathing from the Scriptures. Nothing could be more hopeless than
to attempt to get to the heart of Christian truth without attempting to
build that truth into life. The formal reasonings of the theologian are
no doubt of value, but they throw little light upon the essentials of
Christianity except as they deal with data which have been supplied by
Christian experience. It would, indeed, be well for any study of the
Bible to begin with a recognition of the part played by distinctly
scholarly research. We cannot go far, however, until we recognize that
sympathy with Christian truth is necessary before we can come upon vital
knowledge. And this, after all, is but the way we learn to understand
any piece of life-literature. A vast amount of material is at hand in
the form of commentaries upon the work of Shakespeare. We know much
about the circumstances under which the plays of Shakespeare were
written; we know somewhat of the sources from which Shakespeare drew his
historical materials; we are familiar with the chronology of the plays;
but all this is knowledge about Shakespeare. To know Shakespeare there
must be something of a deliberate attempt to surrender sympathetically
to the Shakespearean point of view. We get "inside of" any classic work
of literature only by this spirit of surrender. The aim of Shakespeare
is simply to picture life as he sees it, but even to appreciate the
picture men must enter into sympathy with the painter. The Scriptures
aim not merely to paint life, but to quicken and reproduce life. How
much more, then, is needed a surrender of the will before there can be
adequate appreciation of the Scriptures? If the Scriptures are the
results primarily of will-activities, how can they finally be mastered
except by minds quickened by doing the will revealed in the Scriptures?
The book of Christianity must be interpreted by the disciples of
Christianity. Judged merely by bookish standards, there is no
satisfactory explanation of the power of the Bible. But lift the whole
problem out of the realm of books as such! The glimpses into any high
truth that are worth while--how do they come? They come out of
experience. Even when they are repeated from one mind to another they
become the property of that second mind only as they reproduce
themselves in experience. Otherwise the whole transaction is of words,
words, words. The Scriptures have to do with deeds, not words.

All this is offensive to the dogmatic reasoner. For him the intellect as
such is the organ of religious truth. He insists on speaking of the
Scriptures in formally theological terms. That the Scripture writers
employed theological terms there can be no doubt, but they did not speak
as systematic theologians. And always they brought their theology to the
test of actual life. The writer of these lines once knew a student who
had read enough of psychology to enable him to reason himself into a
belief that he was the only person in existence; that is to say, he
declared that he himself was the only one of whose existence he was
infallibly certain. Does not all knowledge of an external world come as
a report through a sensation aroused by stimulus? If the appropriate
stimulus could be kept up an external world might fall away and I would
still think it was there. The bell might ring at the door and might be
nobody there. And so on and on, through steps familiar enough to the
student of philosophy. When a friend made a quick appeal to life with
the question: "If you are the only one alive, why do you bring your
troubles to me?" the amateur philosopher came to earth with a sense of
jar. But the jar is no greater than that when we pass from the plane of
dogmatic theology to that of reading the Scriptures for their own sake.
The old scholastics said that in God there are three substances, one
essence, and two processions. How does this sound as compared with the
statement of Jesus that he and his Father are one, and that he would
send the Comforter? This is not to decry theology; but is nevertheless
to discriminate between theology and scripture.

Some one will object, however, that the scriptural truths take their
start in large part from the visions of mystics--of men who brood long
and patiently until they behold realities not otherwise discernible.
Some students will urge upon us that such mystic revelations are granted
peculiarly to the mystic temperament as such, and they often come
regardless of the quality of life that the seers themselves may be
living.

There have, indeed, been in all ages of the world temperaments of
supernormal or abnormal responsiveness to influences which seem to make
little or no impression upon the ordinary mind. In all periods natures
of this type have been looked upon as organs of religious revelation. So
valuable have abnormal experiences seemed that all manner of expedients
have been utilized to beget unusual mental states. A certain tribe of
Indians, for example, in the southwest of our country are accustomed at
set times to send their religious leaders into the desert to find and
partake of a peculiar plant which has an opiate or narcotic effect. In
the belief of the Indians this plant opens the door to visions. The
visions, as reported by those who have recovered from the influence of
the narcotic, are not of any considerable value. Similar attempts have
been made by hypnotic experimenters among other peoples, the hypnosis
sometimes being self-induced. From some Old Testament passages
especially we may well believe that this sort of extraordinary mental
condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the prophets in the
olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the Scriptures,
however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience
as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures were the expression of
a people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism
always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences.
Granting all allowances for mental states induced by eating an opiate,
or by whirling like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu, the fact
remains that in the main, the visions of the writers of our Scriptures
came out of attempts to realize in conduct the moral will of God. When
we think of the surroundings even of the early church; when we reflect
upon the force of suggestion for uncritical minds; when we consider the
sway of superstition at all periods during the Hebrew revealing
movement, the wonder is that the Scriptures lay such stress as they do
upon the type of vision which arises from faithfulness in doing the
revealed will.

If we may characterize scriptural mysticism, it seems very much akin to
mental abilities which we meet frequently in our ordinary intercourse.
Take, for example, the prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing is
more inadequate than the rules for success laid down by many a man who
has himself succeeded in business. Mastery of his rules will not help
another to win business success. The reason is that there comes out of
prolonged business practice a keen sense of what is likely to happen in
the industrial or financial world. The sharpened wits foresee without
being able to assign reasons or grounds for the prophecies. So it is
with intellects trained to any superior skill. The Duke of Wellington
once remarked that he had spent all his life wondering what was on the
other side of the hills in front of him, yet the Duke himself came to
marvelous skill in guessing what was on the other side. There is also a
variety of scientific mysticism, if such an expression may be permitted.
The man long trained to the reading of scientific processes develops a
quick insight which runs far ahead of reason or proof. The transcendent
scientific discoveries have been glimpsed or, rather, sensed before they
so reported themselves that they could be seized by formal proof. Now it
is a far cry from business men, generals, and scientists to the
mysticism of the Scriptures, but when we see the emphasis which the
Scriptures place upon constancy in keeping the law and in acting
according to divine commandments, we cannot help feeling that biblical
mysticism was and is an awareness developed as the life becomes
practiced to the doing of religious duty. Think too of the emphasis
placed in the Scriptures upon the consecration of the whole life to the
truth as cleansing the heart from evil. All this makes for a power to
seize truth beyond that possible to formal and systematic reason.
Mysticism of this sort is the very height of spiritual power. The
Master's word: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,"
does not refer to merely negative virtue. It means also the power of
soul accumulated in the positive doing of good. It means entrance into
the life of quick spiritual awareness through the adjustment of the
whole nature to the single moral purpose.

In all promise of revelation the Scriptures insist upon the importance
of keeping upon the basis of solid obedience. The finer the instrument
is to be, the more massive must be the foundation. Professor Hocking, of
Harvard University, has used a remarkable illustration to enforce this
very conception. The scientific instrument, he says, which must be kept
freest from distracting influences so that it may make the finest
registries must rest upon a foundation broad and deep. So the soul that
is to catch the finest stirrings of the divine must rest upon the
solidest stones of hard work for the moral purposes of the scriptural
Kingdom.

Still some one will insist that the Bible is a book built around great
crises in human experience; that it is a record of these crises; that
the people in whose history the crises occurred were a peculiar people,
apparently arbitrarily chosen as a medium for religious world-
instruction; that the crises cast sudden bursts of intense light upon
the meaning of human life, but that they themselves are far apart from
ordinary experience. Here, again, we must insist that the scriptural
stress is always upon obedience to what is conceived of as revealed
truth. We have already said that Jesus regarded revelation as organic.
In everything organic we find instances of quick crisis following long
and slow periods of growth. The crisis or the climax of the sudden
flowering-out would never be possible were it not for the antecedent
growth. The Hebrew nation, developed through workaday righteousness,
manifested wonderful power in sudden crises. The inner forces of moral
purpose which at times seemed hidden or dead because of the riot of
wickedness suddenly blossomed forth in mighty bursts of prophecy; but
the all-essential was the long-continued practice of righteousness which
made possible the sudden crisis; and this is in keeping with the
teachings of most commonplace human experience. The daily struggle
prepares for the sharp, quick strain or for the swift unfolding of a new
moral purpose. There is nothing more arbitrary in the crises in the
scriptural movement than in the ordinary ongoings of our lives. The
student who has long been wrestling with a problem finds the solution
instantaneously bursting upon him in the midst of untoward
circumstances. The most insignificant trifle may finally turn the lock
which opens to the glorious revelation after prolonged brooding. The
daily practice may make men ready for the shock which leaps upon them
altogether unexpected.

We summarize by saying that the essentials of biblical truth came in
progressive revelations to men who were putting forth their energies to
live up to the largest ideals they could reach; and that they sought
these larger ideals for use in their lives. It must be understood in all
that we have said about acting the revelation out into life that we do
not mean merely the more matter-of-fact activities. It should be noticed
that whenever men speak of will-activities they are apt to give the
impression that they mean some putting forth of bodily energy. The will
to do scriptural righteousness did not manifest itself merely in outside
actions. It manifested itself just as thoroughly in bearings and
attitudes of the inner spirit; and the appeal was always to the will to
hold itself fast in the direction of the highest life, whatever the form
of the activity.

After this emphasis upon obedience as the organ of spiritual knowledge
some one may ask what provision we are making for infallibility and for
inspiration. We can only say that we are dealing with a Book which has
come out of concrete life, and that in concrete life not much
consideration is given to abstract infallibility. In daily experience
the righteous soul becomes increasingly sure of itself. To return for
the moment to Paul, we may think of the certainty with which he grasped
the thought of the reward which would be his. The time of his
departure, or, of his unmooring, was at hand. He was perfectly confident
that he was to go on longer voyages of spiritual discovery and
exploration. Can we say that this splendid outburst came from devotion
to an abstract formula? Did it not, rather, spring from the sources of
life within him-sources opened and developed by the experiences through
which he passed? The biblical heroes wrought and suffered through living
confidence in the forces which were bearing them on and up. They would
have answered questions about abstract infallibility with emphatic
avowals as to the firmness of their own belief. In other words, they
could have relied upon their life itself as its own best witness to
itself. They felt alive and ready to go whithersoever life might lead.

And so with inspiration. It is the merest commonplace to repeat that the
inspiration of the Scriptures must show itself in their power to inspire
those who partake of their life. Does a fresh moral and spiritual air
blow through them? Is there in them anything that men can breathe?
Anything upon which men can build themselves into moral strength? This
is the final test of inspiration. Physical breathing is in itself a
mystery, but we know when the air invigorates us. Abstract doctrine of
inspiration apart from life and experience is a very stifling affair
compared with inspiration conceived of as a breath of life. The
scriptural doctrine is that the man who does the will finds himself able
to breathe more deeply of the truth of God; and that the very breath
itself will satisfy him, and by satisfying him convince him that it is
the breath of life.

There is an old story of a student who decided to learn the meaning of a
strange religion which was taught and practiced by priests in a far-away
corner of India. The student thought to disguise himself, to go close to
the doors of the temple and to listen there for what he might overhear
of the principles taught by the priests. One day he was detected and
captured by the priests and made their slave. He was set to work
performing to the utmost the duties for which the temple called. His
response was at first rebellious. In the long years that followed the
spell of the strange religion was cast upon him. He began to learn not
as an outsider, not as one merely studying writings and rituals, but as
one enthralled by the system itself. In this old story, inadequate as it
is, we have a suggestion of the way in which the biblical revelation
lays its spell upon man. The outside study is, indeed, worth much, but
the true understanding comes inside the temple to him who carries
forward the work of the temple.




CHAPTER III

THE BOOK OF HUMANITY

We have seen that the understanding of the Scriptures presupposes at
least a sympathy with the rule of life contained in the Scriptures, and
implies for its largest results a practical surrender to that rule of
life. He that doeth the will revealed in the Scriptures cometh to a
knowledge of the truth revealed in the Scriptures. We must next note
that an understanding of the Bible cannot advance far until it realizes
the emphasis on the human values set before us in the scriptural books.
We are to approach the distinctively religious teachings of the Bible
somewhat later. It is now in order to call attention to the truth that
the biblical movement is throughout the ages in the direction of
increasing regard for the distinctively human. The human ideal is not so
much absolutely stated as imposed in laws, in prophecies, in the
policies of statesmen, in the types of ideal erected on high before the
chosen people as worthy of supreme regard. And the place of the human
ideal in the Bible helps determine the place of the Bible in human life.
Mankind makes much of the Book because the Book makes much of mankind.

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