Moving forward into the New Testament, we find that the doctrine of man gathers more impressiveness. Jesus never cast any doubt upon the supreme place of man in the program of God. He put his harshest blame upon those who wickedly misled the children of the Father. He himself was chided because he sought the lowliest and the worst among men and women. He ate with the publican and gave his choicest lesson to the harlot. He was willing to exchange his social reputation for the privilege of associating with the humblest people. For a woman with a dark past he delocalized worship. From another he accepted the offering of grateful tears and put her conduct in contrast with that of the lordlyPharisee. He was the Prophet for the soul as such. He was the Priest who mediated gladly between the least one and the greatest One. We search his words in vain for anything that put contempt on man as man.
When he compared men to the rest of creation it was always to human advantage. He told of the care of the shepherd for the sheep, and then he asked, “How much is a man better than a sheep?” He declared that God noted the fall of sparrows, though they brought small price in the market place, and then, speaking to ordinary men and women, nearly all of them ignorant and more than half of them slaves, he said, “Are ye not much better than they?” Nor were these sayings really interrogative; they were exclamatory. Jesus knew that every normal man would feel the answer in his own soul. The worth of man was, in the teaching of Jesus, beyond debate.
He moved, also, from inanimate things to the assertion of man’s worth. The lilies and grasses were in the care of God and waited on him for their vesture. “Will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” He made the worth of man the warrant of the care of God. At last he put man on one side of the scale and the whole world on the other side, and he affirmed that man outweighed the world. Men may barter themselves for halfa township; but Jesus declared that it would be a disastrous bargain, if a man should accept the world in exchange for himself. “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the world and lose himself? Or what will a man give in exchange for himself?” This is the final answer to any paltry teaching about the worth of man.
When choice had to be made between man’s interests and sacred laws and ordinances, Jesus gave preference to man. The shewbread was consecrated, but he approved the taking of it to satisfy human hunger. The Sabbath day was holy, but the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; so the plucked ears of corn were a testimonial to men.
The attitude of Jesus toward childhood is tender evidence of his thought of humanity. The child has not yet won any achievement, save the loving assertion of its own dependency. The child in the midst represented humanity in its freshest and most natural form. It is said that some ancient religionists were accustomed to debate whether or not a child had a soul. Jesus would have scorned such a debate. He made the child the model of the kingdom. Human life unspoiled was lifted up as an example. To offend a little one was worse than being sunk by a millstoneinto the sea. A cup of cold water given to a child would win a special reward. The angels of the children behold ever the face of the Father. Thus the child, in all the teaching of Jesus, was made the creditor of the race.
Jesus carried this doctrine of man on to the uttermost issue. We have never yet secured the full meaning of that “inasmuch” in the account of the final judgment. The Lord lives beyond the need of man’s overt aid. But human beings are his representatives. The righteous had so far overlooked this fact, that they were forgetful of any ministry to him; and what had been the unconscious glory of the righteous was the unconscious tragedy of the wicked. The judgment day will be filled with human tests. He who has not acted as if human beings stood for God cannot meet the final standards. Jesus’s picture of the judgment is a statement of divine authority; and it is an appraisement of human worth.
Thus do we see that from whatever side we come to the teaching of Christ, we find an exalted doctrine of man. The incarnation itself is a contribution to that doctrine. If we call it “the human life of God” it was a life lived for the sake of man. The Word became flesh and dwelt among men, full of grace and truth, because men needed the message of thatWord. The whole life of Jesus was lived for man. He himself said, “For their sakes I sanctify myself.” All those sacrificial phrases that describe the purpose of his coming add glory to human life. The joy that was set before him was the goal of a redeemed humanity. His living for men was simply his teaching about men, made over into concrete terms. In the Parable of the Good Shepherd he gives the revelation of his own attitude toward men. One soul, brought back into right relations with God, makes joy in heaven. It is the Eternal One who is represented as saying, “Rejoice with me.” Men may deny the doctrine of the only begotten Son, but they can scarcely deny that that doctrine leads on to a wondrous doctrine of human worth.
The Cross, viewed in one light, becomes the very climax of the doctrine of man. Theologians have often laid their stress upon some single purpose of the divine sacrifice. One has said that the Cross appeases the anger of God; another that the Cross maintains the majesty of the law; another that the Cross is a moral influence wooing and winning the heart of man to God; another that the Cross is the expression of the Father’s sorrow with the sins and sorrows of his children. But we may surely take one meaning of the Cross tobe the divine estimate of man. God’s sense of values must be preserved. He did not send his Son to die for worms of the dust. That idea may fit an extreme mood of spiritual abasement. We may grant all possible condescension in the atoning act of God, but we cannot grant a condescension that dedicates infinite worth to finite worthlessness. Jesus died for men just because men were far more than worms of the dust. If we are to keep that theory of atonement that has long held the heart of the church, we are driven to affirm that the Cross gives us a divine estimate of mankind. No man ever appreciates the worth of himself until he gets the appraisal of Calvary. The dying of Jesus is not out of harmony with his teaching and his living. The whole program is like the garment taken from him on the day of crucifixion; it is woven throughout without seam. Men may decry a doctrine of substitution, but they cannot say that such a doctrine is a slight tribute to human worth. In such a doctrine thorns and nails and spears and all the drama of the Cross are made into tributes to the soul of man.
This carries us on to the biblical teaching of man’s permanent worth. The doctrine of immortality makes its incalculable addition to the doctrine of man. There is a story, forwhich the writer cannot vouch, that Thomas Carlyle in a mood of pessimism one day wrote this peevish estimate of man:
What is man? A foolish baby!Vainly strives and fumes and frets!Demanding all, deserving nothing,One small grave is all he gets!
Language like this is certainly no contribution to the literature of self-respect. The story proceeds to relate that Carlyle’s wife found this poetic depreciation lying on the table, and that she wrote the following confession and correction:
And man? O hate not, nor despiseThe fairest, lordliest work of God!Think not he made thee good and wiseOnly to sleep beneath the sod!
Doubtless the tale is apocryphal. In any case the latter estimate is far nearer to the biblical conception, and it is altogether worthy of a woman’s moral instinct. If man is to live forever, as the climax of Revelation insists, it is quite impossible for him to “think too much” of himself, unless he indulges in comparison of himself with others. An argument for immortality does not fall within the scope of this lecture; but the bearing of immortality, as declared in the Holy Scriptures, on the view that men must take of human nature,touches our purpose in a radical way. A deathless person must respect himself. A deathless person must command the respect of a world—and of God. The doctrine of immortality adds an infinite measure to the doctrine of human worth.
Even the biblical representation of heaven secures a relation to this subject. The abode for immortal life, as well as immortal life itself, may be turned into a human estimate. The book of Revelation declares that the nations shall bring “their glory and honor” into the Eternal City. This can only mean that men shall make some contribution to the eternal life. What they are and what they have done shall fill heaven with added value. The cities of earth shall transport treasures to the Heavenly City. Here, again, we come upon a reason based on the divine sense of values. God will not provide an Eternal Home that is any better than the Eternal Beings for whom he makes it ready. The gem is to be better than the setting. In a certain sense, therefore, jasper walls and pearl gates and gold streets, as seen in the descriptions of heaven, are tributes to human souls. The Bible tells us that “greater than the house is he that built it,” and the Bible would tell us, also, that the occupant of the house is greater than the house. God will provide noeverlasting dwelling that is better than the everlasting dwellers. Heaven is made for man, and not man for heaven. The many mansions are tributes to the people that shall live in the Father’s house. The Scriptures are reserved in their revealings of the other land; but their descriptions of celestial glories may be united with those other portions of the Bible that dignify the human spirit and may be taken as standing for the divine valuation of the essential selves of men.
This review of the teaching of the several sections of the Bible has confessedly sought for the words and ideas that exalt the doctrine of man. Allowing all possible discounts, and admitting all possible offsets, the residuum of instruction tending to glorify human nature is significant. We need not wonder that some thoughtful men have affirmed that the chief characteristic of Christianity is the value that it places on man. If we do not accept this statement, we can still declare that the Bible is the supreme Book when judged by its emphasis on human values.
Nor can there be any doubt of the need of this emphasis in our own age. As men crowd more and more into the great centers of population, the tendency will be to hold men cheaply. In former times man was often highly valued because of his rarity. On thefar Eastern plains a new face, not being often seen, was regarded with curious interest. Thus Abraham stood in the door of his tent in the heat of the day and welcomed the stranger, because the stranger was an event. But in the modern city the stranger is no longer an event; he is only an episode, or perhaps an incident. We pass him on the dense street, and we do not notice him at all. There are so many of him that, unless we are heedful, we shall come to regard him lightly just because he is hidden by the crowd. When factories grow so huge that men are known, not by their names, but by their numbers, only the scriptural emphasis upon men as such can save human beings from being deemed “hands” rather than souls. If the sin of the countryside is an excessive social interest that makes for gossip, the sin of the city is a social carelessness that makes for indifference. The various problems of our social life wait for their solution upon the Christian doctrine of man. When that doctrine has done its full service, race problems, labor problems, liquor problems, and all their dreadful accompaniments will issue into a righteous and intelligent peace. An immortal son of God, knowing himself, cannot be unjust to another immortal son of God, when once he knows his Brother.
This hints at the personal bearing of thedoctrine. As men grow in moral and spiritual experience, they find themselves using more and more the test of self-respect. Knowing that the reaction of certain behaviors makes them feel that a fragment of the soul has slipped away from them, so that they have the sense of smallness, they guard their natures lest legitimate pride should be destroyed. Andrews Norton once wrote to his son, Charles Eliot Norton, who was about to go abroad for an important service, telling the young man that his family and friends recognized that he had special powers for doing large and worthy things. Then he added that “this ought not to make one vain. On the contrary, their true tendency is to produce that deep sense of responsibility—of what we owe to God, to our friends, and to our fellowmen—which is wholly inconsistent with presumption or vanity.” It was a wise father who wrote thus to his son. If the Christian doctrine of man be true, no man can think too much of himself. There is a type of saving pride. Clough stated it in his well-known lines:
Then welcome, Pride! and I shall findIn thee a power to lift the mindThis low and groveling joy above—’Tis but the proud can truly love.
The pride that comes from the consciousnessof the divine image has power to restrain from sins and trivialities, and it has power likewise to constrain toward holiness of character and largeness of service. One who has come to believe that he is made in the divine image, that he is one of the divinely appointed rulers of the world, that the great laws are designed for his protection, that the alluring prophecies of the future are declarations of his coming power, that his worship is the symbol of his partnership with the Most High, that the incarnation is in his interest, that the Infinite Teacher brought him matchless tributes, that the Cross of Calvary is an expression of his own valuation, that immortal life is his destiny, and that a glorious heaven is the fitting place for his final dwelling—such a one has gained all the preventions and all the inspirations of the Christian doctrine of self-respect. Sins and trivialities cannot flourish when one thinks so much of oneself; great affections and lasting consecrations seem natural to one so highly endowed. The conception that makes for the dignity of self makes also for the consideration of others. He who entertains this view begins to
Find man’s veritable stature out,Erect, sublime, the measure of a man,And that’s the measure of an angel,Says the apostle.
To such a one life becomes solemn and beautiful. He is now the son of God. While he knows not yet what he shall be, he sees the vision of the Elder Brother and so purifies himself even as he is pure. The world needs the gospel of the Son of God in order that it may learn the gospel of the sons of God.
The Bible and Home
The significance of the home is seen in the fact that every human being is a son or a daughter. This ordinary statement at once insists on becoming extraordinary. It is difficult to think what life would have been, or even how it could have been, if children had been pushed upon the earth from some mysterious void and had been nurtured without the providential agency of fathers and mothers. So much do we realize the importance of the home that where it is impossible to maintain one, owing to the death, or inability, or worthlessness of parents, we still make provision for an institution that shall provide as many domestic features as can be won for the orphaned. This we call an Orphans’ Home. It is significant that the sociological tendency of the period drifts away from even this institution. The effort now is to bring the childless and the parentless together. Goldsmith said that the nakedness of the indigent world might be clothed with the trimmings of the vain. There are those who affirm that, if theparentless and the childless could be brought into the company of homes, the Orphan Asylum would be no longer needed.
Our imaginations may make an easy test. Let an authoritative edict go forth that after the approaching midnight the home would be banished, and that each community must adjust itself to some other form of social life. What would such an edict mean? The homes from which students have come are no more responsible for them. They constitute no longer the bases of supplies on which they can draw, nor the alluring hearthstones to which they can return. The workman turns no more his eager feet toward the lights of his cottage. The prince finds his palace removed and all its splendor ceases to invite him. Little children are herded into impersonal surroundings and become public rather than domestic charges. The scene of disaster could be described without merciful stint. These suggestions are enough to show that society could scarcely escape chaos if the home were to be destroyed. How much do the words father, mother, brother, sister, wife, husband, son, daughter mean? Empty out their closer significance, and you vacate much of life’s meaning.
Nor is this the narrow word of an ecclesiastic or theologian. Drummond in TheAscent of Man claims that the evolution of a father and mother was the final effort of nature. John Fiske, as scientist and historian, points out the helplessness of infant life as binding parents into unity that grows out of responsibility. Soon after its birth the wee animal runs and leaps, while the wee bird does not wait long ere it flies from limb to limb; but the human babe in the ancient forest lies helpless in its log cradle for many months. Both Drummond and Fiske agree that by this program the God of nature was introducing patience, devotion, and sacrifice into the world and was making ready for the kingdom of heaven. It is plain that Drummond does not state it too strongly when he says that “the goal of the whole plant and animal life seems to have been the creation of a family which the very naturalist had to call Mammals,” or Mothers.
This represents somewhat the divine history of the home. The prophecy of the home likewise does some convincing work. The truth is that the home as an institution plants itself squarely in the path of some modern social theories. Some of those theories have begun by boldly demanding that the home be abolished because it has been made a buttress of private life and property. Not only has this suggestion been met with a horror that initself expresses the instinctive conviction of the sacredness of the home, but it has been met with the insistence that the prophets should name their substitute for the hearthstone. This insistence has received nothing more than hazy and vague replies. The prophet stammers out some dark saying about “something better” or about the home as having fulfilled its mission in “the evolution of society”; and by the very helplessness of his speech he really becomes an advocate of closer domestic relations! It is interesting to note how these reformers seek to find a good path back from their social desert! They soon declare that the new regime must keep the home intact, and that only sporadic and irresponsible voices from their camp are lifted against the home’s sanctity! The antihome prophet always has a hard task. He collides with one of the granite convictions of humanity. If he would save the rest of his theory he must save the home from the proposed destruction. God has set the solitary in families. Men look in vain for a better setting for the jewel of life. From all their seeking they come back in due season to the truth that, imperfect as the home may often be, it is still rooted and grounded in outer life and in inner instinct, and that it is futile to try to make better what God has made best.
All this will serve for emphasizing the importance of the home, though much more might be added. When the man awakes in the morning, becomes aware of himself, and then hears the voices of his wife and children, he is immediately related to one of the fundamental institutions of society. If the Bible be, as we have claimed, preeminently the Book of Life, it must relate itself vitally to the home. Our inquiry, therefore, is, What bearing does the Book have upon the home? The answer must necessarily be sketchy and incomplete; but we can soon gather an answer that will establish the biblical drift of teaching.
The Bible begins with an impressive lesson of monogamy. In the Eden life one man and one woman join hands as partners in joy and work. Let the account be poetry, allegory, parable, the lesson is the same. In that intimate communion with God that found him in the garden in the cool of the day, bigamy and polygamy are not represented as being at home. Even the Fall is not described as quickly dropping man low enough to reach the dreadful level of promiscuity or of any of the approaches to so-called free love. It required time ere that downward journey could be made. Humanity in its innocence is not described as starting from the dens of polygamy.
But in season the Bible gives us some disconcerting facts. Bigamy and polygamy confront us in the lives of some worthies. Let it be allowed that sometimes the motive is the perpetuation of the home itself. Provision is sought against the curse of barrenness. Let it be allowed, also, that the Bible does not represent bigamy as working well. It brought discord into Abraham’s tent. The peevish wife drives her own wretched substitute from the door, until the desolate Hagar stands in her loneliness and repeats the comforting ritual of the seeing God. The son of bigamy goes off into his wild life, with his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him. The admirable thing about the second patriarch is his devotion to one woman. Neutral and characterless as Isaac seems to be, he still won a mention in the marriage service of the ages by his faithfulness to Rebecca alone. Upon the third patriarch bigamy was forced by a cruel deception. In truth a review of the Old Testament will show that any departure from the unity of the home made for trouble. It filled the moving tabernacles of the patriarchs with quarrels. It led David on to murder. It drenched Solomon in debauchery. It degraded the successive kings until it destroyed their power and ruined the nation. Itsinevitable end was the loss of the land and the sadness of captivity.
The Old Testament records polygamy, but it does not applaud polygamy. When once a polygamist stood in the halls of Congress and defended his right to a seat by quoting the examples of the patriarchs, his plea did not avail. Not only was the conviction of the nineteenth century against his contention, but the mood of the very Book from which he quoted was his enemy. So far as we can judge, monogamy was the general rule among the Jewish people. The exemplars of bigamy and polygamy were mainly those whose position enabled them to flaunt the public sentiment of their day. The history of Old Testament polygamy is so sorrowful that the Hebrew people have reacted from it into a stanch defense for the monogamic home. The seduction of Tamar, the murder of Amnon, the unfilial licentiousness of Absalom, the sordid road of impurity trod by the later monarchs of Israel, and the despair of the Babylonish captivity, make a piercing case against polygamy. On the other hand, the unwavering faithfulness of the maid in the Song of Solomon, the patience of Hosea with his prodigal wife, the idyllic story of Ruth, all these became persuasive pleas for a home wherein one man and one woman should live together inloyal love even until death. When Jesus came to give his message contemporaneous polygamy had all but ceased in Palestine. But easy divorce, sometimes called “consecutive polygamy,” had become prevalent. The world was waiting for the voice of authority, and it heard that voice when Christ began to teach.
The teaching of Jesus in reference to marriage is unmistakable. It may impress many as severe; it cannot impress any as doubtful. If we accept him as the Supreme Teacher we receive a decision given with no equivocal terms. It is often said that the method of the Lord was to offer general principles and to leave his followers to carry out these principles in the spirit of loving discipleship. Thus he declined to give detailed rules for the observance of the Sabbath, explicit instructions for the division of estates, definite laws for prayer and worship and almsgiving. Yet when he discussed marriage he gave both general principles and specific rules. If this was not the only case where he became sponsor for a rule it was surely the most emphatic case. He seemed to feel that concerning marriage and the home he must give a mass of distinct precepts. It was as if he deemed the home so sacred and its enemies so subtle and powerful as to make necessary some particular instruction.
Perhaps we shall not err in saying that Jesus found in his time urgent reasons for specific and strong teaching about marriage. The Jews, who went to a mechanical extreme in their observance of the Sabbath law, had gone to an opposite extreme in their attitude toward the law of the home. In this regard the period was worse than our own, but it was not unlike our own. The domestic conscience of the Jews had been more or less weakened. Mere trifles were made excuses for the breaking up of home. Doubtless the influence of the Romans was making itself felt among the Hebrews. Professor Sheldon quotes Dorner as showing the reckless ease of divorce among leading Romans. One man divorced his wife because she went unveiled on the street; another because she spoke familiarly to a freedwoman; another because she went to a play without his knowledge. Even Cicero, proclaimed a very noble Roman, divorced his first wife that he might marry a wealthier woman, and his second wife because she did not seem to be sufficiently afflicted over the death of his daughter! “In fine,” says Professor Sheldon, “it was not altogether hyperbole when Seneca spoke of noble women as reckoning their years by their successive husbands rather than by the Consuls” (History of the Early Church, pages 29, 30).
The records of this same period among the Romans will rout the claim that easy divorce tends to purity. Faithlessness to marriage vows was not seriously regarded, and there were instances of so-called noble women registering as public prostitutes in order that they might thus avoid the penalties of the laws! Easy divorce seemed to be accompanied by easy virtue, as if, indeed, both evils grew naturally out of the same soil. The Roman fashions were having their influence on the Jews. The sacred law was searched and was explained away with evil subtlety in order that men might be religiously released from the marriage bond.
Evidently, then, the times demanded that Jesus should save the marriage law from looseness. The ease of divorce was not unlike that in our own land to-day. If the teaching of Jesus was needed then it is needed now in order that marriage may recover its binding solemnity. On general principles we must all rejoice that Jesus did not give a dubious word on this sacred matter. It may be doubted whether any man who did not have the cause of his own pleasure to serve and who was not willing to subordinate a social law to the superficial joy of his own life, would be willing to modify the Saviour’s teaching. Certainly that teaching has long been the firmbulwark of the married life. Had Jesus spoken with doubt, or had he given sanction to easy divorce, what would the results have been? Our homes would have been builded upon the sands of freakish impulses and of hasty tempers. But Jesus’s word puts rock into the domestic foundation. When it was given it was met by all of the objections which it still evokes. Some said that the teaching was extreme in its severity, quite outdoing the law of Moses in its demands. Others said that rather than to submit to a bond so unbreakable, it would be better not to marry at all. Still Jesus did not lower his teaching. God was the author of marriage; man must not assume to be its destroyer. God takes two persons and makes them one flesh; man must not cut that vital bond.
Plainly, then, Jesus felt that marriage established a family relationship which was to resemble other family relationships in its indissolubleness. How can a man get rid of his brother, or his sister, or his father or mother, when God has decreed a relation in the flesh that cannot be severed? One may live apart from brother or sister, or father or mother, as a matter of convenience or peace; but how can one destroy the relationship? In spite of angry decrees, is not the brother still a brother, and do not father and motherremain father and mother in defiance of all unfilial pronouncements of divorce? In Jesus’s view the second family relationship was as indissoluble as the first. If one were to argue from a certain standpoint it might be easy to claim that it must be even more indissoluble. A man does not choose his first home. It represents a necessity against which he may not strive. But he does choose his second home, and it represents a union for which he is himself distinctly responsible. Why should a man be allowed to divorce himself from the home which is founded by his liberty while still being inexorably bound to the home which was founded without his choice? Jesus taught that the very constitution of society, as resting on the word of God, demanded that the second home be as sacredly unbreakable as the first. The “one flesh” must not be severed in either case.
Hence it comes about that, while the law of Jesus does not allow divorce, unless for the one reason mentioned later, it does not forbid separation. The sin does not consist in putting away the wife when conditions are unbearable; it does consist in marrying another. He does not insist that the quarrelsome shall live amid their brawls; but he does insist that they shall not go into another experiment that degrades a sacred covenant. We do not longlisten to the specious arguments for easy divorce, with the privilege of remarriage, without discovering that these arguments affirm either that personal purity is impossible or that personal convenience and pleasure are the primary demands of life. Jesus did not so teach. Dr. Peabody, in his matchless discussion of Jesus’s teaching about the family, well says: “The family is, to Jesus, not a temporary arrangement at the mercy of uncontrolled temper or shifting desire; it is ordained for that very discipline in forbearance and restraint which are precisely what many people would avoid, and the easy rupture of its union blights these virtues in their bud. Why should one concern himself in marriage to be considerate and forgiving, if it is easier to be divorced than it is to be good?” (Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 159.) That these words touch the evil heart of many modern divorces there can be no doubt. The emphatic teaching of Jesus was that marriage should not be regarded as a breakable agreement of convenience, but rather as an indissoluble pledge of permanent union.
Whether Jesus allowed any exception to this law remains a debatable matter among the scholars. Some contend that the “save for fornication” clause is an interpolation, and that the teaching of Jesus admitted nodivorce whatsoever. Others contend that the gospel writers who omit this clause regarded the one reason for divorce as so certain that it was not deemed necessary to mention its legitimacy. It may be claimed with a show of reason that the regarding of adultery as an exceptional sin against the married life stands for something instinctive in human nature. Notwithstanding all statements that desertion and abuse and drunkenness may be so aggravated as to constitute offenses worse than fornication, normal men and women continue to assign a lonely infamy to the sin of carnal unfaithfulness. If Jesus did use the exceptional clause there is not wanting evidence that his word is confirmed by an all but universal feeling. Many races have been disposed to decree that the sin of adultery is the one iniquity sharp and incisive enough to sever the “one flesh.” Perhaps it is safe to affirm that the great majority of good men and women do not shrink from the exception as being unworthy of Jesus’s teaching. But, the exception being granted, that teaching is clear and uncompromising. When that teaching becomes the law of the world divorce courts will be largely emptied and the marriage vows will be assumed with less haste and with more solemnity.
The New Testament is thus seen to be theheadquarters of that conception of marriage that alone gives a firm foundation to the home. It is impossible to conceive what would have been the dismal statistics of divorce, if Jesus had made the marriage bond of slender strength. Truly the situation is bad enough as it is. Often the causes for divorce are trivial; sometimes they are deliberately arranged by the separating parties! and occasionally the much-married comedian is hailed on the stage with a joking tolerance. But when more than ninety per cent of the marriages of the land stand the tests of time and are kept in fidelity until the “one flesh” is severed by death, it is evident that some strong force still guards the home from desecration.
We need not inquire what that force is; it is the Word of Christ. Among those who follow him least, he has made divorce “bad form”; among those who follow him somewhat, he has made it doubtful morals; while among those who accept him as Lord and Master, he has made it sacrilege and blasphemy. The devotees of pleasure and convenience and lust may well quarrel with the decree of Christ. The devotees of compromise may seek to refine and discount his explicit law. Yet all those who see in the home the very center and heart of a properly organized society, as well as the very ordination of theLord God Almighty, will not cease to be grateful that Christ spoke so unmistakably concerning its solemn sanction. He fixed forever the difference between the civil marriage and the Christian marriage. He filled the marriage service with religious terms. “The sight of God,” “instituted of God,” “mystical union,” “holy estate,” “Cana of Galilee,” “reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of God,” “God’s ordinance,” “forsaking all other,” “so long as ye both shall live,” “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,” “the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” “God hath joined together,” “in holy love until their lives’ end”—all these words are Christ’s words, his Spirit confirmed them in the service of his church. That service may well close with the prayer which declares that his is “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.”
More and more careful students of both sociology and Christianity will see that no safe conception of marriage can be found save in the words of the Lord. The civil contract idea is full of peril. The case of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the English poet, is in evidence. The illustration may be extreme, but it will the better show the sure goal of that theory of marriage that forgets God. Shelley, for atime at least, was an outright atheist. Bowing God out of the universe, he could not consistently leave God in his theory of marriage. His college thesis was an argument for atheism. Given sufficient provocation and motive, Shelley was sure to reach the limit of a godless idea of marriage. It seems almost impossible for men with a literary mania to see social or moral fault in their heroes, and their tendency often is to absolve writers of genius from the usual laws. Shelley married the daughter of a retired innkeeper. In two years he separated from his wife and two children. Three years later the wife drowned herself, meeting voluntarily a fate which Shelley was to meet involuntarily. An apologist for Shelley says, “The refinements of intellectual sympathy which poets desiderate in their spouses Shelley failed to find in his wife, but for a time he lived with her not unhappily; nor to the last had he any fault to allege against her, except such negative ones as might be implied in his meeting a woman he liked better.” The more we study this language the more does its superficiality impress us. Let it be said that Shelley was young and heedless when he first married; let it be said, also, that he was in general strangely lovable and warmly philanthropic; and let it be said, even, that he was in hislifetime execrated beyond his deserts. But it would not be so easy to palliate his conduct if one’s own daughter had drowned herself to end her sorrow, or if one’s own daughter had traveled with him, unmarried, over France and Switzerland! Somehow literary admiration plays tricks on moral natures. Doubtless the judgment of Shelley on the basis of his boyish poem “Queen Mab” was unfair, even as its surreptitious publication without his consent was unfair. None the less one may trace a connection between his college production in defense of atheism and his later domestic conduct. No marriage has a sure foundation apart from a religious sanction. The more we consider the possibilities suggested by this confessedly extreme illustration, the more will we cling to the strict theory of Jesus as against the limping logic of any loose sociologist.
We have thus seen that the foundation of the home comes to the Bible, and particularly to the goal of the Bible’s revelation in Christ, for its solidity. Other foundations are fashioned of yielding sand. The marriage ceremony might well be modified in some minor regards; but the word of Christ will insist that the ceremony shall represent no flimsy contract. While he rules the pronouncement will be, “God hath joined together”;and the human response will remain, “till death us do part.”
The relation of Jesus to the home goes farther than his word about marriage, deep and far-reaching as that is. His life emphasized the sacredness of the family relation. He went back from the scene in the Temple to be “subject unto his parents.” He wrought his first miracle on the occasion of a marriage. Many of his miracles of mercy were performed in answer to a family plea. He heard the cry of a mother when he healed the daughter of the Syrophœnician woman, and again when he raised up the son of the widow of Nain. He heard the cry of a father when he cast out the evil spirit and restored a stricken son, clothed and in his right mind. He heard the cry of sisters when he stood weeping at the grave of Lazarus. The domestic plea quickly reached his heart and summoned his aid. It was so even in the personal sense. In the agony of the crucifixion he did not fail to commend his mother to the care of his best-to-do disciple, and to cause the writing of that simple statement, “From that day that disciple took her into his own home.”
Indeed, through all the life of Jesus he glorified the family, unless the family stood in the way of his truth or work. Emerson said once, “I will hate my father and mymother when my genius calls me.” We all know where Emerson got those words; they were not written on his own authority. Jesus made our human ancestry subject to our divine ancestry. Above the earthly parents he saw the heavenly Father. The God who ordained the home was above the home. But Jesus would allow no other exception. He himself lived by that supreme law. He was homeless in obedience to his own divine mission. There is a peculiar illustration of this, hidden somewhat by our awkward distribution of the Bible into chapters and verses. The seventh chapter of John ends with the words, “They went every man to his own house.” It is not difficult for us to reproduce the scene, even with its Oriental touches. The discussion of the day is over. The hearers did what men and women have been doing ever since—they turned to the twinkling lights of their homes. Soon the crowds had disappeared and the various persons had joined themselves to their family groups. The homeless One was left alone. The first verse of the eighth chapter of John says, “Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.” It was just an instance of his tragedy, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” The homelessness of Jesus was vicarious. Sometimes still hecalls his own into the same vicariousness. He separates sons and daughters from their fathers and mothers and sends them afar to preach his kingdom. Wherever those homeless ones may go, the meaning of home takes on a new and sacred meaning. They carry with them the Word and Spirit of him who, being weary, invited the weary ones to come to him for rest; being thirsty, invited the thirsty ones to drink of the water of life; being poor, invited the poor to come to him for riches; being dead, invited the dying ones to look to him for eternal life; and, being homeless, still commands the world to look to him for the spirit of home. Even though he himself went down into the darkness of the Mount of Olives, ever since his day the people that have heard and heeded his word have found the lights of home more inviting and the mission of the home more divine.
There is yet another consideration which must be noted ere we receive the full message of Jesus about the home. The teaching of Jesus concerning God was almost wholly based on a figure of speech derived from the home. In the Old Testament God is mentioned under the title of fatherhood but seven times. Five times he is spoken of as the father of the Jewish people; twice he is spoken of as the father of individual men. Only oncein the sweep of the ancient Scriptures is there found a prayer addressed to God as Father. God was the King of kings, and the Lord of hosts; he was Creator and Lawgiver. But in the knowledge of the people he was not yet Father. The world waited long ere men found an Elder Brother who could break the spell of their orphanhood and reveal to them a Father. When Jesus desired to tell men what God was like he went to their homes and found therein the form of his teaching. He sprinkled the New Testament with the domestic name of God. Two hundred and sixty-five times God is spoken of under the title of Fatherhood. The sacredness of the home relation could not receive holier emphasis.
Thus the homes which are founded by the Lord become revelations of the Lord. Domestic relations are teachers of theology. Well may we speak of a Family Bible! There is such a Bible. The illustration of theology is the family illustration. Some day we shall recover that theology, and we shall place the theologies that have superseded it in their secondary place. Jesus was the final Teacher of theology, and we must give him the primacy. Under his teaching every true home is a symbol of the divine household; every true parent is a limited representative of God; every true son is an example of the filial spirit that isreligion. The path of prayer starts with the word Father. The doctrine of providential care is explained by the word Father. The call to obedience refers to the will of the Father. The deeper tragedy of sin comes from the fact that the offense is against the Father. Conversion is a return to the Father.
Taking, then, the direct teaching of Jesus with reference to marriage as the founding of the home, taking his life in its merciful relation to the home, and taking his teaching about God as based on the home, we are justified in saying that Jesus was the Prophet and Saviour of the Family. The vision that he gave of the other life took on that form again. He declared that he was preparing a place for his own, and he called that place the “Father’s house.” He was likewise preparing a home this side of the many mansions. A Carpenter he was. He has builded many sanctuaries, some for worship, and some for the mercy that we show to the sick, and aged, and destitute. But the Carpenter of Nazareth is the builder of the true home. His word lays its foundations, raises its walls, places its capstone, and furnishes its atmosphere of peace and love. The home that is placed on any other word cannot stand the shock of the tempest. It is based on sand; and when the winds and rains and storms of passion come,the home will fall, and great will be the fall thereof. The world needs to-day the lesson of Jesus about the home; and it needs, also, the spirit of Jesus in the home. When men and women yield to that spirit, extravagance will be checked, forbearance will be increased, love will be promoted, peace will be established. Husband and wife will not then plead that Jesus’s strict decree concerning marriage may be annulled. Earthly homes will be like vestibules of the Father’s House.
There remains for brief discussion the relation of the Epistles of the New Testament to the home life of the people. The tendency here has been to give undue emphasis to certain phases of Paul’s teaching. Some reformers, especially some radical feminists, have spoken of the great apostle’s teaching with scant respect. The command to wives to obey their husbands has been kept apart from the command to husbands to love their wives even as Christ loved the church. Christ loved the church so that he gave his life for it; and when husbands love their wives to that sublime extent, obedience is no longer demanded for tyranny. All technical matters aside, it will be seen that the apostolic treatment of the domestic relations, touching the relative duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants, showsa marked balance. When each party keeps his portion of the precepts, and is strictly minded to fulfill precisely his part of the apostolic contract, debates about primacy and authority find their gracious solution in mutual love. Unless we should wish to make undue account of Saint Paul’s doctrine of the husband’s primacy, we cannot say that his attitude toward womankind was marked by anything other than utmost respect. Just what his own domestic experiences were is a question of age-long doubt. If we study his actual references to women we shall find a series of compliments too deep to serve as the expression of a superficial gallantry and too genuine to allow the author to be classed as a hater of the mothers and sisters and wives of the race. Near the end of his life Paul caught the vision of his Master. Beyond his wanderings he saw a destination; above his imprisonments he saw a freedom; after his shipwrecks he saw a haven; and the destination and freedom and haven were all expressed in the words “at home.” “At home,” “at home with the Lord,” this was Paul’s conception of the waiting heaven. He, too, exalted the home by making it the forefigure of heaven.
We have now presented enough to justify the statement that the Bible is the stanch friend of the home. As long as men andwomen read and obey the Book, and love and follow the Lord of the Book, their feet will turn reverently homeward as to the place of God’s appointing, as to the school of God’s own discipline, as to the place of God’s own joy, and as to the anteroom of God’s own heaven.
The Bible and Education
The man whose program of daily life suggests the outline of these chapters awakes in the morning to the consciousness of himself. He is soon aware of the presence of his family and catches the sense of home. Directly the children are made ready for school and join that romping procession that moves each day at the joint command of parents and teachers. In the normal Christian community this fact of school-going is all but universal. In such a community the illiterate person is so exceptional as to be a curiosity; he is marked by separateness if not by distinction. All of us have marched to school; all of us have had teachers.
The fact is still more significant. School-going is not merely a general experience; it is a long experience. It controls about one fourth of life. Indeed, if we figure the average span of life, the school claims more than one fourth of the individual career. Many persons continue formal school work into the third decade, while many give a score and a half ofyears in making educational preparation for the remaining twoscore years of the allotment.
Beyond this, the whole educational scheme involves countless millions of dollars. Our bookkeeping is scarcely rapid enough to keep up with the finances of the system. In our own country it really seems as if education had become a primary passion. Our school buildings yearly become more imposing and more costly. Our college endowments annually leap to more generous figures. Our largest philanthropies seek the privilege of enlarging educational opportunity. It thus requires no long observation to convince any thoughtful man that our educational program, involving every young life in the nation and ideally every young life on the planet, is of incalculable meaning. Each morning an army of many millions, ranging from wee kindergartners up to adult postgraduates, moves to the schoolroom door. The whole scene is as impressive as it is human. The question naturally comes, What started that procession? What inspiration keeps it moving through the years? Is there one Book that leads in some forceful way to the study of many books? Does the Bible have any sure relation either to the enthusiasm or to the efficiency of our educational life? If our friend of the day’s program could discover theintricate influences that unite in sending his children to the school, would he find that any large credit must be assigned to the Book?
The aim now is not to show the place that the Bible has had in the curriculum of the world’s education; nor yet is it to show the direct effect that the Bible has had upon the world’s instruction. The Bible has been the supreme text-book, even as it has been the supreme force, in the schools of nearly two millenniums. These facts have been well set forth in many treatises. The purpose now is simpler and more meaningful: to trace to its main sources the influence which the great Book has had upon the intellectual life of the race.
We are met at the outset by the singular fact that the Bible has little to say specifically concerning education. Nowhere in its pages do we read the command, “Thou shalt found schools.” The literalist who started out to find a biblical order for education, as such, would come back from an unrewarded search. But we have long ago discovered that the silence of the Bible does not constitute a commandment. There are some things that are stronger than detailed orders. An outer law that has fought an inner sanction has usually fared badly in history. On the other hand, the inner sanction, unenforced by any objectiveform of obligation, has won some big victories. An explicit command to act as an immortal is not so powerful as the implicit conviction that we are immortal. It is safe to declare that the implications of Scripture are often as deep and influential as its explications. If, then, the flowers of knowledge bloom not by command in the fields of the Bible, may we still find there the seeds out of which such flowers inevitably grow? If the school building is not definitely prescribed, as was the Temple of Solomon, does the Book yield in a deeper sense the wood and stone and mortar by which the building must surely rise? Answers to these figurative questions will go far toward determining the relation of the Bible to education. The contention now is that the Bible has been the fountain whence streams of intellectual life have flowed, and that, minor influences being freely admitted, these streams may be traced to the Scripture’s implicit doctrine of human responsibility.
In discussing the bearing of the Bible on learning much has been made of the example of the Bible’s mightiest characters. This fact is striking, and it lends itself to popular treatment. The average man takes a truth more readily when it is offered to him in a human setting. Hence it may be granted that the spirit of the Book in its influence on educationhas been supplemented by its concrete examples. In the patriarchal era the majestic figure is that of Abraham. Whatever the critics may say about the historicity of his person, they can hardly doubt the historicity of the intellectual process by which some “Father of the Multitude” must have reached the creed of the divine unity and spirituality. We could not expect, of course, to find organized education in the primitive days of religious history. But, after all, education is relative. An eminent American graduated from Harvard in 1836 when he was sixteen years of age. In this day his sixteen years and his completed course of study would barely admit him to the Freshman class. So Abraham’s education must be graded by the standard of his dim and far day. Tradition represents him as reaching the central doctrine of the Jewish, Mohammedan, and Christian faith by a method of reasoning. You may say of his physical journey that he went out, not knowing whither he went, but you cannot say that of his intellectual journey. While his feet pressed an unknown way, his mind and heart traveled straight toward the discovered God. If the best educated man of a period is he who sees most deeply and clearly into its essential truths and problems, then the “Father of the Faithful,” whoever he wasand whenever he came, was the supreme scholar of his generation.
As the life of the chosen people reaches more definite form, the place of education is more plainly seen. Doubtless most men would agree that Moses was the arch figure of the Old Testament. He is represented, both by the Scripture and by the tradition given among the Jewish historians, as having the best mental furnishing of his day. The book of the Acts says of him that he “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Clemens Alexandrinus records that Moses had the finest teachers in Egypt, and that the choicest scholars were imported from Greece and Assyria to instruct the adopted prince in the arts and sciences of their respective countries. Perhaps we must allow something for the idealizing habit here; but it is significant that both sacred and secular history unite in declaring that the Lawgiver was learned.
In the era of Prophecy we find the same development, only it is more speedy. Elijah may have been the crude and forceful son of mountain and rock, but his successor is the product of one of the numerous “schools of the prophets.” Although intellectual training might be presumed to have little to do with the stern function of Old Testament prophesying, the “school” arrived quickly and beganthe training of the young men. Criticism has not attacked the view that the book of Isaiah bears marks of high culture. If that book had two authors, the ancient world is entitled to the credit of a second scholar. When the radical is done with the story of Daniel we have left at least the schoolroom in which the youthful prophet gained his superior wisdom. It would appear that the examples of the worthies of the Old Testament give slight encouragement to the idea that any type of selection or any mood of afflatus may not be supplemented by trained intellect in the kingdom of God.
We need not halt long with the like lesson from the New Testament. Much has been made of the fact that the twelve apostles were uneducated men. Doubtless we often do their intellectual life scant justice. Desiring to score in an argument, we give it out as an evidence of the divinity of the faith that it conquered in spite of the disciples’ lack of education. The truth is that the New Testament does not warrant the application to the apostles of such words as “illiterate.” Some of them wrote books that have moved the ages. But, whatever the fact be here, he would be wild indeed who would find in ignorance any explanation of the gospel’s victory. Let us remember, moreover, that, when the“unlettered” Twelve were cramping the universal faith into a local religion, the corrector of their blunder was the “lettered” Paul. In his statement of experience he was ever ready to say that he had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the greatest Jewish teacher of the day. After Christ Paul is the colossal figure of the New Testament; and there are those who would confidently declare him the greatest man who has walked the earth since Calvary. For a review of his education, let anyone read a standard Life of the Apostle. We thus gather the one result from both the Old and the New Testament. Moses was the mightiest personality of the one, and Paul was the mightiest human personality of the other; and both were highly educated. The signal examples of the Bible range themselves on the side of education.
As in all things else, so in the relation of the Bible to the intellectual life we reach the climax only when we come to Christ. Here, too, we find in the life of Christ that same element of paradox that we often find in his words. That saving was losing, giving was getting, and dying was living were apparently contradictory statements that real life proved to be true. Where words seemed to fight each other, the deeper facts were found to live in peace. So Jesus in his personalinfluence was ever reaching goals of which the paths did not give promise. This is seen peculiarly in his relation to the intellectual life. He left no manuscripts. The only time he is represented as writing was when he wrote the sentence of the sinning woman on the forgetful sands of the earth. Yet he who wrote no books has filled the world with books. Something in him quickly evoked Gospels and Epistles which were forerunners of a marvelous literature. Even this moment thousands of pens are being moved by him. He wrote no books, and still he writes books evermore.
It was so with his relation to the schools. Men tell us that the incarnation imposed a limitation on intellect—that it involved a kenosis, an emptying of knowledge even as of power. Be that as it may, our human explanations do not easily reach the mystery of his influence on the schools of the world. Did the boy Jesus go to school in Nazareth? Was his mother his only earthly teacher? Did his neighbors speak literal truth in the question, “Whence hath this man wisdom, having never learned”? The silent years give no answer to the questions. But this we do know: He who went to school slightly or not at all has sent a world to school. He who founded no immediate institution of learning has dotted theplanet with colleges. His schoolroom was itinerant and unroofed. It moved quickly from town to city, from capital to desert, from mountain to seashore. We have dignified it with a great name. The school of Jesus, whose plant and endowment and faculty all centered in one life, is named “the College of Apostles.”
He said to them, “Go, teach.” They went and they taught. They were not deliberate founders of schools. But the heart of Jesus contained schools, and they, having gotten their hearts from him, carried schools with them. When the gospel reached England and Germany, education reached those countries and began to thrive. The vast majority of the first one hundred colleges founded in America were builded by the followers of the Great Teacher.
Now, this unique relation of Jesus to the educational life of men is not accidental. Subtle as are the laws which determine it, those laws work effectively. They are elusive, but once in a while we glimpse their ways and meanings. The New Testament seems to feel their presence. It calls Christ a Teacher. Forty-three times it uses his name in connection with the word “teach” in its various forms. The world gets the same impression. It persists in calling Jesus the Greatest Teacher. It must note the schoolroom phraseswith which the account of his life is filled. The prologue of his wonderful message on the Mount illustrates this. “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him; and he opened his mouth, and taught them.” The posture of Jesus was that of the teacher. His audience was made up of “disciples,” that is, of pupils. He “taught” them. All this might be called a superficial play upon mere words. But we may go further and discover that the method of Jesus was the method of the teacher. He put his effort into other lives in order that these lives might, within their various limitations, duplicate his own. His work was largely devoted to the preparation of a select few. Often he left hundreds and thousands that he might be alone with Twelve. He poured himself into his disciples, his scholars. He thus did what every true teacher must do: He committed the cause of his life to those whom he schooled into faith and character and power.
Nor did the teaching method halt here. The good teacher makes the things of the earth serve as approaches to the highest developments. This Jesus did supremely. Long before men made “nature study” an educational fad, Jesus made it an ethical and spiritual service. He pressed flowers,mustard seeds, grapes, wine, thistles, corn, figs, into the lessons of his roving school. He made nature study so effective that along a path of lilies men walked to God. When it was necessary to individualize in order to come to this high result, Jesus took up that burden of teaching. His school, like all other schools since its day, enrolled “a son of thunder.” It took the love that suffered long to make John, the son of thunder and lightning and vaulting ambition, into the son of tender love. It took the patience that knows no failure to change the shifting sand of Simon’s nature into the rock of Peter’s character. All these considerations will convince us that we may go to Christ with the pedagogical, as well as with the religious motive. We do not wonder that a man should have crept to him in the darkness and should have said, “We know that thou art a teacher.”
There is yet another side of the subject that calls for emphasis. The Bible and Jesus give the ideal of the intellectual life, an omniscient God. The God who is perfect in character is often lifted before us. We hear the voice saying, “Be ye holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.” Yet we interpret the call narrowly. Christ has come to us with the call to purity. To the attentive he comes just as truly with the call to knowledge. He has given us agospel for the body, and that gospel teaches that drunkards and other defilers of the human temple of God cannot inherit his kingdom. He has given us a gospel for the spirit, and that gospel commands that the inmost realm of life be given to his sway. He has likewise given us a gospel of the mind, and that gospel cannot be omitted from the fullness of the blessing of Christ. The God revealed in Christ knows all things. He counts the hairs of our heads. He marks the petals of the flowers. He notes the fall of the sparrows. He is all-knowing and all-wise.
Even though the ideal be a staggering one, we are still told to be like God. Some day we shall appreciate more the duty that speaks to us in Jesus’s revelation of an omniscient God. As yet we hardly dare press to its full meaning the call implied in that revelation. We have said that the man who neglects and stunts and poisons his body is a sinner. We have said that the man who dwarfs and represses his spirit is a sinner. Are we ready to say that the man who gives his mind no chance, the man who fails to move on to the ideal of an omniscient God, is likewise a sinner? Is God’s perfect spirit a goal for his children, and is God’s perfect mind removed from our vision of duty? If we are to start on the endless march that leads to the purityof God, are we freed from the obligation of starting on the endless march that leads to his knowledge? We may shrink from the conclusion that is here involved; and our shrinking may be only an added evidence that we have omitted one element from the divine ideal.
Just here we are struck with the consciousness that we shall need some great dynamic, if we are ever to start toward this unspeakable goal. Evidently we have not reached the last thing in Christ’s relation to education. Confucius was a great teacher, but his system has not produced schools. Mohammed was a great teacher, but his system has left his followers wallowing in ignorance. Though Mohammedanism has proclaimed an omniscient God, somehow that beacon on the infinite height has not coaxed the Turk on to its shining. Mohammedanism has offered the ideal, but it has lacked the power. On the contrary the system of Jesus seems to have had a genius for diffusing education. It has been a vast normal school. The purer and freer and more spiritual its form, the mightier has it been as an educational force. If we list the nations of the earth in classes with reference to literacy and illiteracy, we shall find that the farther the nations are from the Bible, the more dense is their ignorance. We shall find,too, that where the people are the freest in their relation to the Bible, there the ignorance is least. Plainly the Bible with its crowning revelation in Christ does furnish something of a dynamic toward education. The school has been the inevitable companion of the church. This is because the church, in addition to giving a list of inspiring examples, and in addition to lifting up the uttermost ideal, has also emphasized an obligation under the leadership of the ever-present Spirit. It remains to show the nature of the obligation which the Spirit has enforced with reference to knowledge. Perhaps this can be done more clearly by taking the attitude of the Scriptures toward slavery as illustrating their attitude toward ignorance.
When Jesus faced his audiences he looked upon men who were in bondage as well as upon men who were in ignorance. It is frequently said that Christ did not attack slavery. In the days before the war the biblical literalist, who believed in freedom, had a hard time with his Bible. He found that the Bible did not condemn slavery, but that the Bible did give concerning it certain regulations. The pro-slavery orators made good use of the letter to Philemon. The people who believed in human liberty, and who likewise believed in a mechanical and verbal theory of biblicalinspiration, passed through intellectual agony in the period of anti-slavery agitation. If human bondage was the sum of all villainies, why did not Jesus condemn it with unsparing invective? Why did not the apostles enter upon an immediate crusade for its downfall?
The answer is that Christ in the deepest way did condemn slavery, and that the apostles in the realest way did begin their crusade. They gathered no visible army, and they enforced no written statute, but Christ stated and his followers promulgated a conception of humanity that prophesied the melting of all chains. Usually the claim is that the Golden Rule was the primary foe of slavery, but the Golden Rule is of little force, apart from that doctrine of human personality that pervades the New Testament. Give that doctrine power, and it would refuse to live in the same world with slavery. That doctrine, under a Captain, was a delivering army. That doctrine, under a King, was an Emancipation Proclamation. The Golden Rule had been given in negative form by Confucius, and it went to sleep in his maxims. That rule had been uttered negatively by Plato, but it nestled quietly in his poetry. Hillel approached the positive statement of the rule, but he does not get credit for being its author. The glory of a truth lies with the one who gives it power.Jesus made the Golden Rule leap to its feet. He turned it into a most effective traveler. It praised God on its wide journeys. It began to work wonders.
That work was slow, but it was both sure and thorough. The Rule had power behind its saying. At length the Spirit carried that gracious weapon over the seas and laid it in the hearts of Clarkson and Wilberforce. Soon the English flag floated over freemen everywhere. Again the Spirit carried the doctrine over other seas and lodged it in the hearts of Lovejoy, Phillips, and Garrison. Directly four million sable faces were glowing with the light of liberty. Jesus had said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” The word had essentially a spiritual meaning, but it was worked out, also, in a splendid literalness. The Son made men free, not primarily by the force of law, nor yet primarily by the violence of armies, but rather by the conquest of disposition. The honor of the victory is with the Bible theory of humanity, made strong with the power of Christ.
Now what the truth of the Bible did in tearing down slavery, it is continually doing in routing ignorance. The connection is subtle, but it is vitally real. The doctrine of personal responsibility is atmospheric in the Bible. It is equally comprehensive. Men areheld responsible for their bodies. Drunkenness, adultery, and all forms of sensuality are condemned. This is at the bottom of life. But at the top of life firmer stress is placed. The spirit of man is made a field of reckoning. The divine dominion over motive is strongly asserted. And that comprehensive responsibility claims the mind. The first great commandment of the new dispensation is that we must “love God with all the strength, with all the soul, with all themind.” Men may differ about the precise meaning of the mind’s love for the Lord, but the Christian sense of duty has asserted it in strange fashions. From vast revivals young men and women have gone forward intellectually and have sought the higher education. Conversion has set free their intellects and has made them feel the duty of intellectual development. The pressure of the Christian ideal has been on them. They have answered the call of the God who is infinitely good, and they must now answer the call of the God who is infinitely wise. An elusive intellectual law is written sure and large in the code of the Great Kingdom. It is as certainly a commandment of God as if it had been thundered among the crags and lightnings of a new Sinai.
The conviction of the church at this point has not always come to definition; nor has italways risen even to consciousness. For all that, it has risen to practical life and has struggled always for outward expression. Feeling that the empire of God is over all of life, man must submit his mind to the divine rule. Hence it follows that the man who is intellectually lazy, as well as the man who is intellectually dishonest, is a sinner. This statement may shock those who have a surplus of caution, but these may reassure themselves with the conviction that any theory may be fearlessly accepted, if it brings us face to face with God at any point of our total life. The failure to follow this biblical idea has brought a penalty always. No denomination that has fought or slurred education has led a large and victorious life; on the contrary it has invariably become one of the fading and dwindling forces of God’s work. The God of wisdom is evermore against the promoters of ignorance. So do we find that, by the examples of its greatest characters, by the life of its Greatest Teacher and its ruling Lord, by the vision of its supreme ideal, by the assertion of its inclusive theory of consecration, and by the divine dynamic which it brings to bear upon the mind, the Bible has become the steadfast friend of proper education. It has opened the doors of countless schools and has bidden the children of men to enter the portalsof learning with the assurance that all truth is of God.