We now face the utterance of Christ with reference to a double mastery over life. He asserts that “no man can serve two masters,” without love for the one and hatred for the other. When he seeks for the power that is most likely to contest with God for the allegiance of man he selects Mammon. Hence he states the dilemma without modification, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” He did not select Pleasure as the opponent of God, nor Ambition, nor Impurity, nor Dishonesty. He saw clearly that Mammon had the greatest power to draw men into life-long “service.” Other sins might be occasional contestants, but the sin of greed was the constant foe seeking to cleave the loyalty of men. Jesus did not say that we could not serve God with Mammon. Elsewhere he says the very opposite of that. But he did say unequivocally, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” Perhaps these six words, more nearly than any other, give us the heart of Jesus’s teaching about wealth. They state in simple and direct form the alternatives for many lives. We can serve GodwithMammon. We canserve GodorMammon. We cannot serve GodandMammon. What Christ states as an impossibility many men try to accomplish. We see the vain efforts daily—men putting their greatest diligence into the market place as an end, with an occasional tribute to the temple. This is the most frequent form of the “double life.” It is the poor compromise of a half-hearted or tenth-hearted service. Jesus said that God or Mammon must win the whole man. The God and the god cannot dwell in the same heart. Jesus here thrusts us back to the original biblical principle: God is the Absolute Owner. He will not share his rule. He will not partition his empire. Mammon must yield to God. Thus Jesus enters all markets and counting rooms and banks with his demand for undivided hearts and undivided lives.
There is another saying of Jesus which is more frequently quoted, both because it is in itself so radical and because it is accompanied by a vigorous figure of speech. Besides these two attractions, the words have an appealing setting in a human life. The young ruler comes to Jesus with his eager question. He stands before the Lord as a fine type of promising manhood—fresh, alert, clean, and even reverent. He is able to say, without rebuke, that from his youth up he has kept thecommandments and that his life has moved on a high grade of morals. The record tells us that “Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.” But in this instance, instead of meeting the young man’s question with the demand for a new birth, as Jesus did with Nicodemus, or with the acceptance of hospitality, as Jesus did with Zaccheus, Jesus asked that he sell all his goods and give to the poor, and that then he should follow the Lord in his homeless life. Often the comment omits this last demand. It may be that it is the more important demand, and that it is the reason for the minor requirement. Other disciples had left all in order to follow Jesus; and this man was now asked to do likewise. Evidently the teaching here has the individual quality. Christ knew that the young man had set his heart on his riches, and that the only way to a true discipleship was through utter surrender.
We cannot read the story without feeling a measure of sympathy for the young ruler; and we may confess that we ourselves would scarcely have been equal to the severe test. The situation, however, can be estimated in another way—not by our imagination, but by our admiration. Certain men in Christian history have done exactly what Jesus asked this young man to do. John Wesley did it;making much money, he continued to live on his allowance of twenty-eight pounds a year and gave the rest to a needy world. When he was an old man he wrote to the assessor that his taxable property consisted of two silver spoons at Bristol! Saint Francis of Assisi gave up all his earthly possessions. At the altar of the church he deliberately took poverty as his bride. The heroes of complete renunciation have been many; and the world’s verdict has not been that they were fanatics. They heard the call of God that they should surrender all and give to the various kinds of poor; they heeded the command, and they won their fame by their surrender. We can make a more direct test than this. If this young man had heeded Christ’s word, and had given all that he had to the poor, and had followed the Lord—what would have been the result? Would he have won the world’s admiration by his self-renunciation? Would he now be known only by the virtually anonymous title of “a certain ruler”? We can see that he was offered a wonderful opportunity. He would have been enrolled among the saints of the early church, if he had risen to the higher choice. An English writer has pointed out that the young man was not angered by the word of Christ; he was “saddened.” He went away “sorrowful,” and his sorrow was forhimself. He went back to his riches and was lost to the sight of the world. He is now known even anonymously only because he had a brief conversation with One who had not where to lay his head.
Jesus saw the young man’s retreating figure and then spoke his own “sorrowful” exclamation, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” The account in the Gospel of Mark indicates that the disciples were “amazed” by the saying, just as the men of the world have wondered ever since. Seeing this amazement, Jesus added, “Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” It was a startling figure of speech—an hyperbole, as the later conversation with the disciples would show, unless, indeed, the saying refers to a certain gate of the city through which only the unburdened camel could enter. This figure of speech has held the attention of the world for centuries. Strangely enough, the nineteenth century had a peculiar illustration of an accommodated meaning of the word “needle.” We cannot help wondering what the people of many generations hence would think if they were to read in ancient history that in thelatter part of the nineteenth century a certain millionaire paid more than one hundred thousand dollars for bringing Cleopatra’s “needle” to America. Superficial as the suggestion is, it illustrates the manner in which a figure of speech could easily be pulled off into a path of false literalism.
But if we take the view that the expression was either a vivid hyperbole or the description of a local gate, the warning still abides in strength. It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. It is sometimes very hard for him to remain there when his entrance into the kingdom preceded his entrance into wealth. Experienced pastors will tell us that not many wealthy are called. Yet Jesus distinctly declared that the rich could enter into the Kingdom. The disciples, “astonished out of measure,” said, “Who, then, can be saved?” Jesus replied, “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.” It is not right that the man who clamors against the rich should omit this assurance from the teaching. Jesus says that a rich man can be brought into the Kingdom. He offers this as one of the evidences of the divine omnipotence—that the power of God can break through the complacency, the self-content, the tangle of materialism, and can win men from theidolatry of gold to the love and worship of God.
This message of Jesus to the young ruler, and through him to the world, is not always welcome to the ears of the rich. The religious teacher may be tempted to discount its meaning and to relieve in some way the severity of the words. Yet an age of growing wealth needs this lesson, and needs it with an increased emphasis. The trend of the Bible serves as a commentary on the same lesson. If the Bible is to serve as the book of guidance, then we are justified in saying that the path of material wealth is the path of spiritual peril.
If we halted our lesson here, we should be guilty of a partial use of the Bible. The fourth principle of the great Book is that the stewardship of wealth offers glorious opportunities. It offers the opportunity of aiding the poor. John wrote, “Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” It offers the opportunity of caring for the unfortunate, as illustrated in the parable of the good Samaritan. When Jesus uttered this parable, he laid the foundations of many hospitals. It offers the opportunity of paying personal tributes of affection, asexemplified in the offering to the Lord of the precious ointment. It offers the opportunity of furnishing honest employment as a field of personal fidelity, as taught in the parables of the talents and the pounds. It offers the opportunity of projecting our influence to the ends of the world, as taught by those who aided Paul on his missionary journeys and by those who sent gifts whereby the gospel should be promoted in all the earth. But the Bible does not give any set of rules for the use of wealth. It asserts the primacy of God. It commands the spirit of love. It stresses the probationary character of possessions. It declares in the word of Christ that any man makes a disastrous bargain who gains the whole world and in the transaction loses himself.
Finally Jesus relates our use of money to the eternal issues. He does this in a very simple and direct way, and in the form of an imperative. In the more skilled translation of the Revised Version we read, “Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when it shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.” It appears here that worldly possessions may be either “the mammon of unrighteousness” or the maker of everlasting friendships. By the right use of gold andsilver men can people the gates of heaven with welcomers. “It shall fail,” says Christ, referring to wealth. “They may receive you,” he says, referring to those human lives that are our only permanent investments. The final emphasis of Jesus in giving the very crown of the Bible teaching concerning wealth, great or small, is that his followers shall so use the coin stamped with the image of some earthly Cæsar as to produce in men and women and children the image of the heavenly Lord. The lower commerce is to serve the higher commerce. Faneuil Hall may keep its market place, but it must be subordinated to that upper room wherein men learn the lessons of truth and liberty and righteousness. The Age of Gold can help to make the Golden Age. The problem of wealth will not be solved until all men hold their riches as willing trustees of Him who himself was rich and who for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.
The Bible and Sorrow
One who is jealous for the reputation of the Bible as a complete Book of life must sometimes feel that undue emphasis has been placed upon its messages for the sorrowing. If the jealousy does not entertain just this feeling, it has the resembling fear—that the biblical message for sorrow has been emphasized until it has hidden the message for gladness. As a necessary prelude to a discussion of the Bible’s relation to the sorrow of the world, we shall treat its meaning for the world’s gladness. We are willing to use the word “pleasure” in this connection, though pleasure is classed as representing a mood less deep than the mood of joy. Some of us can recall the surprise we experienced in reading Lubbock’s The Pleasures of Life. One chapter dealt with “The Pleasure of Duty.” This title caused us no wonder. But the next chapter astonished us with the heading, “The Duty of Pleasure.” We quickly found ourselves asking whether there was such a duty. Is it an obligation laid on men andwomen to seek for a proportion of pleasure? Are the light joys of life to be classed with our duties? Lubbock answered these questions in the affirmative. What reply does the Bible give?
Certainly we can say in the beginning that, if we take a review of its pages, the Bible does not impress us as being a mournful book. This is significant when we note the fact that its pages were all written by mature and serious persons. Even more, the pages were written with reference to some of the most serious and sacred elements and events in life. Vast solemnities evoked many sections of the Bible. We should expect that the seriousness of the authors and the critical importance of the events would touch the Book and would dominate its spirit. It is even so. Our worthier thought would not have it otherwise. If the Bible had been simply the inspiration and guide for the world’s playgrounds, it would have lost the most of its soul.
For a volume whose materials were jokes and whose primary purpose was laughter might have a legitimate mission, but it would have difficulty in being rated as redemptive literature. The real humorist is doubtless one of God’s agents in lifting the troubles of mankind; but Providence sees to it that humorists are not so plentiful as to destroyour sense of proportion. Each generation is granted a small group of men who set the world aglee and become the distributors of smiles and laughter. The appreciation of humor, also, is placed in the nature of each normal person; but the continual demand for humor becomes a plague. Men know instinctively that for the greatest things it will not suffice. There is a story to the effect that one of the most renowned Americans was not allowed to write the Declaration of Independence because it was feared that he might work a joke into the historic document. True or false, the story stands for a fact—that humor is a secondary form of service and that the big crises insist that humor shall stay in its own realm.
None the less the Bible is not a stranger to the play element. As we march through its life we see smiles and hear laughter. Children are there in their careless gladness. Young men and maidens are there in their innocent pleasures. Games are there with their delight of striving. Parties are there with their gayety and music. We pass through pages of darkness only to emerge into pages of sunshine. We sit down at Marah and find the brackish and bitter waters and hear the murmuring of the Israelites. But the next day we come to Elim, with its twelve pure andgushing wells and its threescore and ten palm trees. This transition is what we would anticipate in a Book of real life, and it is what fits the Bible to be the guide of total life. A joyless book could not control a joyful world; neither could a sorrowless book control a sorrowful world. The Bible must have a message for both types of experience.
There is a theological reason for this twofold message. We have been told by our religious teachers that Christ, being tempted, can succor those that are tempted. The Man of Sorrows can save the people of sorrows. The High Priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. The Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering. He learned obedience through the things he suffered. The world is made acquainted with the sorrowing Saviour of the sorrowing world. Still we have been slow to apply our theology to the other side of life. The forged letter of Publius Lentulus stated that Jesus had often been seen to weep, but never to smile! The mischief of such a misconception is apparent. It provides for a mutilated theology. It gives the world a fractional Christ. It leaves the hour of gladness without its Exemplar. It gives comfort for a funeral, but no companionship for a feast. In the average life the realm of joy is larger than the realm of sorrow.Few people would declare that with them sadness had exceeded gladness. The world needs to-day the Saviour of the joyful, even as it needs the Saviour of the sorrowful. Joy that refuses to be curbed needs saving power just as does sorrow that refuses to be comforted. We need not enter into any needless comparison and try to state which has the more need. It is sufficient to affirm that a complete Bible must take account of pleasures and joys, if these are to be counted among the divinely appointed experiences of life.
We do not long study the Bible without becoming aware of its law of proportion. It gives the word in season, and it gives the word in measure. Hence its aim is to cultivate proportion in human lives. Its ideal is the ideal of a holy God, that is, of One with a perfect balance of the infinite nature. Its ideal for man must, therefore, be that man shall gain for himself that balance in the human realm that God has in his divine realm. For this reason the Bible is a curber of excesses, a restorer of proportions. It gives here its largest lesson for pleasure. Recognizing its legitimacy, it recognizes its limits as well. As an example from both Testaments we may give a statement of conduct that receives rebuke from Moses and from Paul. It is recorded in Exodus that, after their riotingswith the golden calf, the Israelites proceeded to engage in riotings of pleasure. The ancient account puts it, “The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” Saint Paul quotes it in First Corinthians in precisely its original form. In the early account the rebuke of the Lord awaits the people. In the later account the apostle makes the conduct the natural accompaniment of idolatry, as if indeed the worship of an image would issue into the idolatry of the table and the playground. Now eating and drinking are not only good; they are necessary. Play is not only good; it is necessary. The Bible declares that food and water are the gifts of God, and it makes them symbols of God’s deeper benevolence. Nor does the Bible ever condemn play. On the contrary, it represents the streets of the Holy City as filled with playing children. The trouble, then, must have been in the lack of proportion as well as in the lack of a good motive. The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play. This is to say that the two constant movements of life were monopolized by appetite and sport. The Israelites ate to play, and they played to eat. Two things intended to be legitimate portions of life became its illegitimate entirety. Designed to be preludes, eating and drinking and playing became thewhole program. Life consisted in the satisfaction of two ranges of desire. The demand of Moses and Paul was not that eating and drinking and playing should be abolished, but that they should be pushed back into their just proportions as worthy departments of living. The glutton of food and the glutton of play are both condemned by the Bible.
There are those who say that one of the crying evils of our own day is that the people are appetite-mad and pleasure-mad. Probably some men in every age have brought this charge against their time; and the charge is true as applied to some persons in each period. For such the Bible has its repeated warning. They who are lovers of pleasure more than of God fall under condemnation. Mankind has never long admired the eaters and players of history. If it remembers Beau Brummel and Beau Nash at all, it enrolls them in its lists of ridicule. An epitaph which recorded that “He ate much of the time and played the rest of the time,” would not serve to enroll a man among the earth’s heroes! The Bible and humanity are against the unbalanced devotees of the table and the parlor and the field of sports.
But the Bible and humanity unite again in their estimate of the other extreme. The mere ascetic secures curiosity rather thanadmiration. He has not learned how to follow Him who often went to feasts and who sat down with his friends at the supper which they gave him at Bethany. It is said of him that “he was anointed with the oil of joy above his fellows.” Jesus entered into the normal joys of life. He came eating and drinking, until his enemies seized upon his conduct and exaggerated it into a charge against him. He was present at weddings where joy reigned supreme. In all his teaching and by all his example he never proved himself an enemy to the normal pleasures of life. This particular emphasis is occasionally needed. It may not have as large a mission as has the warning against overdone appetite and play; but it has its message to that smaller circle of the deceived who would drive joy from the world in the name of Christ. One of the hymns declares:
The brightest things below the skyYield but a flattering light;We should suspect some danger nighWhere we possess delight.
There is something morbid in this conception. The invitation to the religious life becomes gruesome. The sister of Pascal cared for him through a long and serious illness. Pascal came to love her so much that he feared that his affection was wicked. In a gloomy hourhe wrote in his diary these words, “Lord, forgive me for loving my dear sister so much!” Afterward his abnormal conscience worked again, and Pascal actually erased the word “dear.” For such moods the Bible has a lesson. God “giveth us richly all things to enjoy.” We would think it small glory for ourselves if our children should push our gifts away from their little hands with the idea that those selected gifts were perilous. God fills the world with possibilities of pleasure. Food and drink are not negative and tasteless. The paths of earth are not flowerless. Voices are not without music. Companionship is not lifeless. The Bible is the foe of wicked pleasure. The Bible is the foe of excessive pleasure. The Bible is the friend of legitimate and proportionate pleasure.
But while pleasure needs to be guarded and curbed, it is not either a burden to be lifted or a pain to be endured. Sorrow is both. Therefore sorrow demands some positive services from the Bible. We may be impatient with those doleful folks who speak of this world as a vale of tears or as a wilderness of woe! We may be inclined to quote the lines:
I think we are too ready with complaintIn this fair world of God’s.
On the other hand, it is well to rememberthat the young, especially, see life almost exclusively from the standpoint of hope and courage. The minister of the gospel begins to feel, when he reaches the age of forty, that he has not given enough comfort to his people. As he identifies himself closely with their lives he finds that most homes carry some secret sorrow and that most men and women have their own personal tragedies. You will recall the myth about the boatman whose duty it was to carry over the Styx the souls who departed from earth. He noticed that these souls mourned much and took the voyage unwillingly. He thought that it must be a very beautiful and joyful land that laid such hold on their hearts. So he secured leave of absence from his post of duty and made an excursion into the world. He discovered that for every birth there must eventually be a death; that every home that was made must in due season be broken; that men and women were troubled and maimed and sick. On all sides he saw the evidences of sorrow. He went back to his ferry greatly wondering why people should be sad because they left a sad world. This mythical picture is overdrawn, but it has its suggestion of truth. Earth does have its manifold sorrows. If all the burdens and pains and problems and anguishes of a single day could focus their influence uponany single life, the result would be either a broken heart or an insane mind.
The Bible does not make light of sorrows. Its heroes have their troubles. Call the roll of its sons and daughters and you will find that at some time each one of them was a child of grief. The Book does not assign burden and pain and sorrow to the class of unrealities. Neither does it assign them to the class of negations. In the Bible sorrow is real and sorrow is positive. When Rachel weeps for her children, the scene is real. When David goes into the room in the tower over the gate and utters his pitiful lament over Absalom, the Book does not describe his anguish as an illusion. Paul’s hunger and thirst, and stripes and shipwrecks, and perils and imprisonments were not the vain froth of a mortal mind. Jesus’s cross, and the thorns and the nails and the spear, and the tauntings of the passers-by, and the thirst, and the darkened face of the Father were not swept into the void by reciting a formula about the All. Jesus gave a promise to his disciples, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” He kept that promise. They walked the ways of martyrdom. Their spirits won victories over their flesh. Yet there is no hint that their persecutions and deaths were the fictions of error or the dreams of a night that did not exist. TheBible, being real, ministers to sorrow that is real.
The Book, too, touches on all the phases of comfort that we may gather from the surface of life, only it does not make them either a full gospel of consolation or a large part of that gospel. Sometimes a word of Scripture will suggest the method of comparison implied in the statement, “It might be worse.” Paul does this with one quick word. “Ourlightaffliction,” he puts it. We have lost one hand; we might have lost two! We have lost one eye; we might have lost both! We have been sick one week; it might have been a year! Sometimes this method carries us off into rather graceless comparisons of ourselves with other people as if, indeed, we were divine favorites. Can a man prove more divine providence for himself by assuming that there is less for another person? This road of comparison leads to phariseeism unless we watch carefully against a despicable by-path. Tennyson in his “In Memoriam,” which is a poem of comfort, shows much impatience with this false form of consolation:
One writes, “that other friends remain,”That loss is common to the race;And common is the commonplace,And vacant chaff well meant for grain.That loss is common would not makeMy own less bitter, rather more;Too common! Never morning woreTo evening but some heart did break.
This method of comparison is inadequate. Whether the word “light” makes our imagination furnish the details of the worse affliction, or whether it contrasts our sorrows with the greater sorrows of others, it does not do enough for our smitten hearts.
Nor are we fully satisfied with the plea that sorrow is but “for a moment” and that we can be thankful for its brevity. There is comfort here, to be sure, but it has no final quality. Paul knew that, and so he gave the idea an incidental part of a sentence, and then went on to the deeper consolation. One poet puts it:
Since the scopeMust widen early, is it well to droopFor a few days consumed in loss and taint?O pusillanimous heart! be comforted;And like a cheerful traveler, take the road,Singing beside the hedge. What if the breadBe bitter in thine inn, and thou unshodTo meet the flints? At least it may be said,“Because the way is short, I thank thee, God.”
The truth is that there is real comfort in all this only when pain’s brevity contributes something to the good of the years and even to eternity. Thus the Bible does not give muchspace to the slight comforts of either comparison or brevity. These have their function, but they are the small helpers of the larger consolations.
The Bible likewise gives as one of the comforts of sorrow that sorrow prepares us to console others’ sorrows. Saint Paul uses this in his message to the Corinthians: “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” Here we are pushed back to the deepest sources of comfort. God comforts the sorrowful in order that other sorrowful ones may have comfort. The consolers are delegated by the great Consoler. It requires this reach clear back to the heart of God to rescue this suggestion from the superficial. One man has sorrow. He consoles others who have sorrow. Then you have two sorrows in your problem. In this way you would keep playing off sorrow against sorrow, without any fundamental explanation of any sorrow. The question is, Why any sorrow at all? If one of the by-products of sorrow is the power to comfort the sorrowing, we must still find some main product that will put the two sorrowstogether in a meaning of good. The God of comfort must preside over both sorrows ere either sorrow shall yield its contribution to the sufferer. Paul saw this, and so he related our power to comfort others to the fact that we had gotten our comfort from the Father of all consolation.
It is thus clear that the Scriptures give place to all the minor elements in the ministry of sorrow. Its comparative lightness, its sure brevity, and its tuition for sympathy have their part in the Bible curriculum. The Scriptures also move onward to the vision of a God who cares. “Like as a father pitieth”—this is the message even of the Old Testament. It gives an answer to that piercing cry:
What can it mean? Is it aught to HimThat the nights are long and the sun is dim?Can he be touched by the griefs I bearWhich sadden the heart and whiten the hair?Around his throne are eternal calms,And glad, strong music of happy psalms,And bliss unruled by any strife!How can he care for my little life?
The answer of the Bible is the vision of the pitying God. Our earthly friends have helped us in our sorrows by simply caring. They have come to us in the shadows, and their words and faces have told us that they cared. It is a strange feature of human psychologythat just this gives us comfort. Our friends do not solve the problem for us. They do not remove the cause of our pain. But they feel with us, and this is aid. Every sympathizer seems to lift a bit of the weight from our own hearts. When the Bible gives us the revelation of One who pitieth “like as a father pitieth,” it brings God into that circle of helpfulness.
The lesson goes farther and deeper than this. Though we have not here used the words technically, the soul’s dictionary draws a distinction between pity and sympathy. The pitier may never have walked the way that allows him to understand our grief; the sympathizer comes to us from some experience that permits him to remember those that are in bonds as bound with them. We cannot read the Bible long ere we discover that there is in God the capability of joy and sorrow. The passages are abundant that justify this statement. God can be pleased. God can be grieved. If men and women have been made in his image, and if we find in them the capability of pain and sorrow, we are driven to the conclusion that something corresponding thereto must be in the divine nature. The father in the parable of the prodigal son, sitting lonely and mournful in his home, represents God. The father in that sameparable meeting his son in the roadway and giving him glad welcome, and calling to his neighbors, “Rejoice with me,” likewise represents God. The truth seems to be that the farther up we go in the grade of being, the more capability of pain and of pleasure do we find. The polyp can neither suffer much nor enjoy much. The oyster can enjoy more and suffer more. The bird has its note of joy and its note of pain. Human beings have exquisite powers of enjoyment and equally exquisite powers of suffering. We may well believe that when we reach the perfect being of God both of these capabilities come to their highest. This is the meaning of that verse:
Can it be, O Christ Eternal,That the wisest suffer most?That the mark of rank in natureIs capacity for pain?That the anguish of the singerMakes the sweetness of the strain?
We are allowed to believe, then, that the pity of God passes over into sympathy. We are visited in our sorrows not by a God whose mood toward us is abstract, but whose own infinite heart knows grief. “The human life of God” is a phrase that has been used to describe the incarnation. That phrase enters into our problem here. If Jesus shows us what God is like, then the Christ who weptover Jerusalem brings us one revelation of the divine life. The pitying God becomes the sympathizing God.
The biblical lesson of comfort does not halt even here. It is given a closer and more personal quality. A pitier and sympathizer may be very distant, and his aid may reach us over the abysses. If the Bible gives us the vision of a pitying father, it gives us also the vision of the God who comforteth even as a mother comforteth. In the various kinds of trouble men become aware of reserve forces in their nature. They endure what they thought they could not endure. In crisis times the muscles secure extra strength, the mind secures extra alertness, and the spirit secures extra power either to do or to bear. These reserves must be of God’s giving, whether they lie ready in the nature always, or are special gifts sent direct to help us in the troublous hours. There is, however, a still more personal interpretation that the Bible offers for these experiences. They are the special visits of God to the afflicted. If the creed of the divine sympathy gets its meaning from “the human life of God” as seen in the incarnation of Christ, this part of the creed gets its meaning from the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is true that the Greek word which is translated “Comforter” might be given other meaningssuch as Adviser or Helper. But this does not change the point for the present discussion. An Adviser in sorrow is a Comforter, and a Helper in sorrow is a Comforter. It is significant that the consciousness of the church followed the translators eagerly and adopted the word Comforter as if it met some need of life and as if it answered to some deep experience of life. We may not go into a labored discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. We may affirm that a humanity that sorrows is glad for a doctrine of the Godhead that magnifies the office of consolation. The comforting quality in Barnabas led the early disciples to change his name from Joses to Barnabas because he was a “son of consolation.” They rejoiced in their human comforter. The church has ever found satisfaction in the revelation of a divine Comforter. In this revelation it sees the pitying God and the sympathizing God become the Comforting God.
Related to this is the scriptural idea that God conquers our sorrow not by removing it but by making us equal to its burden. The clearest concrete illustration of this is seen in Paul’s words about his “thorn in the flesh.” His thrice-repeated prayer was that the thorn might be removed; his answer was that, while the difficulty would not be taken away, hewould be given grace sufficient for his trial. Paul’s experience has impressed men as being typical of the inner kind of divine aid. The sorrow may be of many kinds; but the powers of resistance are strengthened by the grace of God and the sorrows are borne in a brave and patient spirit. Although the idea be trite, it claims a place in the discussion, as indeed it was worthy of a place in the ritual of comfort. We are not dealing with any mere law of reaction. It was not the thorn that was making Paul strong; it was God who was making Paul strong to endure the thorn. He himself describes the transaction as if it had involved a direct gift of the divine grace, as it had involved a direct message from the divine heart.
Yet great as are all these types of biblical consolation, we all feel that we have not reached the conclusion of the matter. Comparison is not enough. Brevity does not explain why sorrow should be just brief. Pity does not tell us why we should need to be pitied. Direct spiritual reserves do not fully justify the hard experience that calls for them. Direct and personal comfort does not solve the problem since no one would seek trouble in order to have the visits of a comforting friend. The gaining of inner strength comes nearer to a positive warrant for the sorrowsof life; yet it does not quite reach the satisfying conception. All these things are parts of the program, but they are not its conclusion. The tale of life’s sorrow is not all told by their recital. The full story we cannot understand now; still we may be able to glimpse its meaning. In the epic of Job there are traces of the revelation. The patriarch gathers a harvest out of his troubles. They never reach the uttermost extreme. They do not last forever. They bring him pity, however crude; sympathy, however bungling; comforters, however mistaken; reserve forces, however tardy; inner strength, however won. But his sorrows do more than this; they are represented in the last chapter as having been made the servant of Job. The richer and stronger man returns to the richer and stronger life. The testings have been turned into gains.
This deeper lesson of comfort is often given to us in the Bible by means of a very positive verb. Our afflictions “work” for us. All things “work” together for us. As men are sent to the fields, and as the forces of nature are sent along the wires, so sorrows are sent to become our servants. This service is not inevitable; it is conditioned on the attitude of the sorrowing life; but it is a very real service when the conditions are met. Ourafflictions work for us—when we get the spiritual vision so that we can receive the things that are eternal. All things work together for good for us—when we fulfill the innermost requirement of loving God. The condition in both cases is located within the spiritual life. This condition being met, the promise of the Bible is that sorrow is made our efficient servant. Paul in his famous verse of consolation states the case with marked confidence. The afflictions work for us until they produce “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Language could scarcely be stronger. Nor were the words used by one who lolled in the high places of ease and delight and shouted down his abstract comforts to the strugglers in the vale. The assurance to the sorrowing comes from their comrade. His experiences ranged all the way from the petty hardships of a wandering life on to the Appian Way and the block of death. It was the sure faith of the apostle that all his sorrows had been made to work for him. He was not their victim; he was their master and their beneficiary.
The persons who have seen much of the world’s better living will not deny this conception. Le Gallienne in his booklet, If I Were God, admits that suffering does often work toward the making of character andbecomes a real servant. His skepticism does not lie at this point. His inquiry is whether a just and good God could not have found some easier way, some servant for which we would not have to render such a painful cost. This, of course, is that old method of debate that flees for refuge to some imaginary world and conceives of people who do not exist. Our task is with the people now on earth, and with them we must deal in our efforts at consolation. Some of them we have seen driven to bitterness of spirit by their sorrow. They themselves made sorrow an evil servant which filled the garden of life with noxious weeds, shut the windows of hope in the home of life, put the poison of despair into the water of life, and spread the clouds of gloom over all the sky of life. Others we have seen mellowed and sweetened by the servantship of sorrow. All our visits to them showed clearly that sorrow was doing gracious service. The “weight of glory” was more and more apparent. The “good” produced by the “all things” gave increasing evidence that the “servant” was doing his work. When any close observer of life writes down his lists of saints he will always find that he has been compelled to canonize many who, like their Master, have been made “perfect through suffering.”
The quotation of these words about Christ reminds us that the world turns to him as to the last resort for the sorrowing. Here, as in all other studies, we find the climax in him. As he entered into all forms of work, so did he enter into all forms of sorrow. Is it homelessness? Is it privation? Is it misunderstanding? Is it anxiety for others? Is it anticipated suffering? Is it evil accusation? Is it ridicule? Is it shame? Is it mockery? Is it torture? Is it utter disgrace? Is it abandonment? Is it denial? Is it betrayal? Is it death? All these he knew. If the wisest and holiest suffer most, he knew all these sorrows at their deepest. None could really join with him in chanting the real De Profundis. He trod the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with him. The world that left him alone in his sorrow does not wish him to leave it alone in its sorrow. It seeks him then. It hears him as he promises, not immunity from suffering, but the experience of overcoming in suffering: “Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.” He put a deeply personal quality into his assurance, “I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.” “I am with you always, even unto the end of the æons.” So runs the promise. It is no wonder that the troubled flee to him. The Man of Sorrows draws the men ofsorrows. His benediction of peace is not formal. With the authority and with the reserves of comfort at his command, he still says, “Let not your heart be troubled.”
To the usual messages of consolation he now adds the eternal reason, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Well did Carlyle say that if Jesus were only man, he had no right to utter these words. But Jesus said much more. He would prepare the place. He would come again. He would receive them into his company. If some doubter shall ask about the way, his reply shall be the same as of old, “I am the way.” Through him alone we come to the Father. Full trust in him removes all bitter tears: and the remainder of tears he does not rebuke. He inspires the visions wherein we see those who have come up out of great tribulation hungering no more, nor thirsting any more, nor smitten by the sun or any heat; but fed by the Lamb and led by him amid fountains of living waters, while God wipes away all tears from their eyes.
This doctrine of heaven as a consolation for sorrow is not born of selfishness, as is often charged. The rankest of infidels said, “In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.”Not “listening selfishness,” but “listening love”! The love that we bear to our own and to all mankind seeks this vision and finds it waiting in the divine plan. Is it selfish to desire that for ourselves which will injure none others? Is it selfish to long for that which will meet the longings of the whole world? Verily some critics discover strange dictionaries when they define words in reference to the holy faith. But all the while the afflicted seek the face of Christ. Troubles look unto him and are lightened. The poor man cries and the Lord still delivers him out of his troubles. Our Bibles and our Hymnals personalize the haven for us. He is the Rock of Ages. His bosom is the Refuge. To him we go when shadows darkly gather. A present help is he. The last low whispers of our dead are burdened with his name. The suffering world states its comfort in terms of Christ himself.
For the final sorrow of death he offers the full consolation. The tragedy of separation remains. Our indictment against death is that of Tennyson:
He puts our lives so far apart,We cannot hear each other speak.
The more worthy of immortality our belovedseems to be, the keener is the pang of parting. Lowell felt it so “After the Burial”:
Immortal! I feel it and know it,Who doubts it of such as she?But that is the pang’s very secret—Immortal away from me.
The Bible has no rebuke for the sorrow of separation. But it does have the healing hope of eternal reunion. Jesus said: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” These words, fully believed, still our fear, confirm our hope, and comfort our final sorrow.
To all the burdened, Jesus says, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.” To all the joyless he says, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” To all the lonely and mourning he comes with the message, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” The world may have difficulty in securing that belief; but the world knows well that this belief alone is the defeat of sorrow. In their best and most desperate and most hopeful hours men flee to the Bible as to the only tent in which their anguish can be soothed. Within that tabernacle walks theform of the Fourth. When they turn from him, they must return with the question, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” The eternal life that he gives is the only consolation for our passing sorrows.
The Bible and Practice
When men separate the Bible from devotion and practice they are guilty of the final heresy in relation to the Book of Life. The previous pages have shown that the Bible has a real message for actual living. While the larger departments have been treated, it is still true that the message of the Scriptures for other sections of life is vital and fundamental. Whatever we may say about the message of the Bible in regard to chemistry, or biology, or geology; whatever we may say about its inspiration for the literature of the world; and whatever we may say about its accuracy in matters of ancient history and geography—the Book holds a lonely primacy as the Book of Duty. The scientist may not get from it a full revelation; the littérateur may be tempted to omit certain portions from his “choice selections”; the historian may not find in it a full or chronological list of events; but the man with a moral and spiritual passion, the man bent on finding his duty that he may do it faithfully, will discover amplematerial in its pages. Indeed, he will have a sense of surplus. The ideals of the Book will be so far beyond his performance as to give him the feeling of a gentle rebuke. As a Book of moral science, moral literature, moral history, the Bible has no competitors. As a revelation of the heart of God, of the heart of man, and of the way in which the heart of God and the heart of man are brought into loving harmony, the Bible is supreme.
The great difficulty in the use of the Bible has come from wrenching it from this main purpose. Confusion is sure to arise whenever any volume is employed apart from its primary intent. If one wishes to learn mathematics, and his foolish teacher shall give him a book of music, the result is not edifying. The pages of the book may be properly numbered, and the scales of music may be denoted by the correct fractions; but mathematics represents a thoroughly subordinate purpose, and the volume does not lead easily on to Calculus. The result is even more confusing if the arithmetic be handed to a pupil who wishes to study versification. The multiplication table may look like verses when seen at some distance; still the arithmetic’s main intent is not the teaching of poetry. The illustrations of possible confusion could be taken from all fields. The common sense of the racesaves it from the blunder of misapplying the most of its books. The Bible, however, has been subjected to misapplication because the theory of its infallibility has often been made to cover a wide, not to say a universal, range. The student who goes to the Bible with a purpose that is mainly historical, or scientific, or geographical, or genealogical, or mathematical, or even poetical and literary, may not find all his wishes gratified. But the student who seeks its pages under a profound sense of God and with an equally profound will to do God’s will is certain to find material for all his moral and spiritual ambitions.
Consequently when the religious attitude toward the Bible is changed into a professional or critical or debating attitude, the Book is deflected from its intent. Doubtless we must have in the realm of scholarship some men who give themselves to a technical discussion of the Bible. These men may be charged with the duty of recovering portions of the Book to reality; and they may have an important, but secondary, relation to its primary purpose. Nevertheless their attitude is not the final one. It would be useless to deny that the last generation has witnessed a changed attitude toward the Holy Scriptures. One result has been that two camps have been formed, and that doughty champions of a viewhave sallied forth from each camp to do warfare. The missiles have been verbal. Sometimes they have been abusive. Each champion has believed himself a David and his opponent a Goliath. The unprejudiced observer of the conflict has had difficulty in deciding which champion has been most guilty of a wrong spirit. The conservative has called the progressive various names, infidel, atheist, destroyer, betrayer, a successor of Judas in spirit and of Celsus in method! The progressive has responded in kind and has named the conservative a reactionary, an intellectual coward, a defender of a discredited theory, a foe of liberty, and a traitor to the truth. The conservative has often become a spiritual Pharisee and has ruled the progressive out of court on the ground that the progressive lacked piety, while the progressive has often become an intellectual Pharisee and has ruled the conservative out of court on the ground that the conservative lacked scholarship. There have, of course, been conspicuous instances of breadth and catholicity on both sides, but occasionally the spirit of the contest has not tended to exalt the mood of the contestants or to glorify the divine Book.
The results of such a spirit could easily be predicted: they cannot make for edification. If we list on one side the radical conservativesand on the other side the radical progressives, we shall discover an evangelical helplessness in both lists. In each case a conception of the Bible supplants the purpose of the Bible. The champion defends a doctrine more than he promotes a life. The apologist overcomes the preacher. The theorist destroys the evangelist. All this is not a denial that the speculative emphasis has its place. The defender of the faith will always have his place. Usually he must work in the background, in some point of scholarly retreat. The pastor and preacher who goes into a community with the idea that his main mission is to promote a special view of inspiration is doomed to failure, while he who goes into a community with the idea that his main mission is to preach the salvation of the Bible as it climaxes in Christ cannot fail utterly. There are conservatives and progressives whose ministry is pitiably weak, and there are progressives and conservatives whose ministry is grandly strong. The difference comes from the point of emphasis. If a man is more anxious to prove that Moses was the sole author of the Pentateuch than he is to prove that Jesus is the sole author of salvation, his ministry will answer to his own emphasis. If a man is more anxious to prove that there were two Isaiahs than he is to show that there is one only name given among men wherebywe may be saved, his ministry will be no more important than is his contention. The primary purpose of the Bible is not the revelation of the single authorship of one of its sections or the dual authorship of one of its books; its primary purpose is to declare that One is our Master, even Christ.
It must be plain that, as the divine revelation of the Bible culminates in a Life, so the human intent of the Bible can culminate only in lives. The purpose of the Bible is met in Practice. If we adopt the military figure of life, the Bible is a weapon given to men for moral warfare. Sometimes in its own pages the Word of God is presented under the figure of a Sword. The writers could not have had in mind the Scriptures as we have them now; but the principle applies to every revelation by which God seeks to bring men to the understanding and doing of his own will. When Isaiah felt divine messages burning in his heart he said, “He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword.” The writer of Hebrews took the same nervous metaphor and wrote, “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow.” Paul in his description of the Christian armor speaks of “The sword of the Spirit, which is the wordof God.” It may not be amiss, then, to take this highly authorized figure of speech and to employ it once again—not claiming, of course, that our particular applications were in the thought of the first users. The point is that under the ancient military system the sword had its main intent, and that it never did its real work as long as it was divorced from that intent. There were wrong uses of the sword, and there were secondary uses of the sword; and there was but one primary use of the sword.
We can conceive of an actual sword as being used in different ways by different people. A robber seizes it, defends himself against just arrest, and slashes the representatives of a righteous law. Evidently the sword was not made for that purpose. The sportsman takes the sword, tests its handle, polishes its blade, tries its resiliency, purchases a manual of arms, secures the best teacher, drills himself in its use. On holidays he wears a flashy uniform, marches through the streets, waves the glittering thing over his head, and so makes it an instrument of personal flourish. This use is not evil, but it does not stand for the weapon’s first intent. A third man, with a more serious mien, secures the sword. He is enlisted in the militia, and the time may come when it will be necessary for him to gointo real war. He tests its handle and polishes its blade; he studies the manual of arms; he seeks the best masters; he practices its use through many months. When the time of war actually comes this man draws the sword from its scabbard and goes out to do service in his country’s cause. The primary purpose of the sword is met only in this earnest use.
The three men may represent three classes in their attitudes toward the Bible. The Bible is often used for defense in immoralities. It is often used as a means of that cheap skill that comes near to personal display. It is often used for spiritual defense and warfare. The robber’s use is evil. The parader’s use is secondary. The warrior’s use is primary.
Many illustrations of the immoral use of the Bible could be given. In the story of the temptation of Jesus the devil is pictured as a user of the Scriptures, and he has not been without his followers in an unholy use of a holy record. The Bible covers a wide range of thought and experience. It tells of all manner of sins. It deals with all classes of characters. It presents the lives of bad men who were sometimes good, and of good men who were occasionally bad, and of other men who were quite steadily bad or good. Thus the Bible gives us all sorts of examples. Therecord, distorted and misapplied, may be made to justify the baldest of sins. In matters of questionable morality men are ever ready to appeal to the divine Book, and even for actions condemned by all enlightened moral judgment the Bible is sometimes summoned as an advocate. There is scarcely a sin which has not had a passage of Scripture presented as its excuse. Men have justified rash murder on the ground that Moses killed the cruel Egyptian taskmaster. As was shown in a previous chapter the practices of the patriarchs have been quoted, even in the halls of Congress, as a warrant for bigamy and polygamy. Men in the midst of unreasoning anger have condoned their madness by reciting the words, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Jesus himself named to the Jews a sacrilegious misuse of a Bible phrase by which heartless children excused themselves from filial duties. Illustrations might be given touching almost every phase of personal life. Even as in old days the wicked sometimes fled to a city of refuge, so now do men caught in an evil mood hide themselves behind a biblical rampart.
In larger social matters this use of the Bible has been fully as striking. Human slavery felt secure within a scriptural fortress. Wilberforce and Clarkson in England, and Garrison and Phillips in America were compelledto reply to biblical arguments. Charles Sumner, at a meeting in Massachusetts, spent an entire evening in replying to a pro-slavery discussion based on Paul’s letter to Philemon, arriving duly at the conviction that the only logical and religious result of the apostle’s words to Philemon would be the freeing of slaves in the name of Christian brotherhood. So pieces of Mosaic legislation and scraps of Pauline regulation were used to conceal the Golden Rule and the law of fraternity. It is easy to observe here, too, that as men advance in ethical life this use of the Bible ceases. Doubtless in twenty years no one has heard the Bible quoted in behalf of slavery. Yet the biblical argument would serve quite as well for reinstating slavery as it did for continuing slavery. The argument dies not only because the moral consciousness of man lives, but also because the moral judgment of man perceives that the general principles of the Bible are utterly opposed to human slavery. The man who proposed to bring the bondage of men back into the social life of the world by means of the biblical argument would be deemed as much an anachronism as his method of debate.
This same evil use of the Bible proceeds to-day among the opponents of the temperance reform. Our debate with the saloonist orbrewer or wine maker never goes far ere we are told of biblical examples of drinking, as well as that Christ turned water into wine in his first miracle at Cana of Galilee. Saloon keepers have framed and have placed upon the walls of their alluring palaces Paul’s advice to Timothy, “Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, and thine often infirmities.” They do not quote the verdict that wine is a mocker, with a bite like that of a serpent and a sting like that of an adder—the cause of woes and sorrows and redness of eyes; nor the pronouncement that no drunkard can inherit the Kingdom; nor the condemnation laid upon him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor’s lips. Nor do they put forward the inevitable drift of Paul’s law of charity which commands men to do naught that will make their brothers to offend. Nor yet do they heed the sure drift of the Bible’s teaching as it comes to its crown in Christ himself. The man who would claim that Jesus would approve the modern traffic in intoxicating liquors would convict himself of amazing perversity and ignorance. There are increasing evidences that the Master of life is now finding an effective use for his whip of cords and that there is beginning a retreat greater than that of the ancient thieves and dove sellers. The time will come when men will marvel that anattempt was ever made to use the Bible as a foundation for the trade in alcoholics.
In Scott’s Ivanhoe there is given an example of this misuse of the Bible, as well as an example of its effective rebuke. Rebecca the Jewess is beautiful in person, as she is in character. Brian de Bois-Guilbert is a member of the Order of the Holy Temple. He is a dashing, handsome, hypocritical crusader, both a military and a moral adventurer. He turns his lewd eye toward Rebecca. She stands by an open window, ready to throw herself to death upon the rocks far beneath rather than to submit herself to his wickedness. To justify his black intention Guilbert mentions the conduct of David and Solomon, and then says to the tempted one, “The protectors of Solomon’s Temple may claim license by the example of Solomon.” The beautiful woman makes a worthy retort, one that deserves frequent repetition: “If thou readest the Scriptures and the lives of the saints only to justify thine own license and profligacy, thy crime is like that of him who extracts poison from the most helpful herbs.” No honest person can believe in Guilbert’s use of the Bible; nor can any honest person escape the truth of Rebecca’s reply. The murderer’s, the bigamist’s, the slaveholder’s, the rum-seller’s, the sensualist’s method of employingthe Bible is the final blasphemy against the Holy Word. The robbers of life simply steal the sword of the Spirit in order that they may use it in the service of hell. Wolves in sheep’s clothing and devils clad in the livery of heaven are apt figures of speech for the description of this perversity. The Bible itself speaks of those who wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction!
The second use of the sword moves into the realm of the legitimate, but not into the realm of the final. Expert swordsmanship is no crime, even as it is not the highest morality. The Bible has long been one of the favorite fields of the critical scholar. Very often the search has been for technical truth rather than for vital truth. Heated discussions have related to questions of dates and authorship. These questions are not to be ruled out as useless. Sometimes technical truth gives the vital truth of the Bible a setting that makes it more forceful and persuasive. It was inevitable that both the higher critics and their opponents would sometimes go to great extremes—the critics to an idolatry of intellect, their opponents to an idolatry of literalness. We must all have been impressed that at times when the spiritual battle has been intense the warriors have stepped aside from the main conflict in order that they might discuss howand when and by whom the Sword and its parts were fashioned!
We may change the figure of speech for a moment and modify for the present purpose a borrowed illustration. A man finds a casket buried deeply in his yard. The vessel appears to have been constructed a long time ago. It bears upon its sides characters that are difficult of translation. There is even doubt as to the nature of the metal. The man summons the other members of the family. They open the vessel and discover that it is filled with gold. At once a warm dispute begins over several questions. Who made the casket? When was it made? How many persons took part in its fashioning and its filling? From what precise mintage did the coins come? What is the meaning of the peculiar hieroglyphics found upon its sides? Are all the coins of equal value? Whose images are stamped upon them? The debaters become excited over these mooted matters. At last one sensible member of the family suggests that it is apparent that by right of finding this particular household owns the casket; that the needs of the members are many; that the gold, even though the coinage be ancient, can be turned to modern use; that the questions which they are debating can be settled only by metallurgists and historiansand philologists, if they are to be settled at all; and that, pending the settlement of incidental issues, the wants of the family may be richly met by appropriating the contents of the casket! The illustration scarcely needs any interpretation. It surely does represent the attitude which the devout and obedient heart may take in this period toward the Holy Book. The ancient casket that we call the Bible is full of treasures. This much lies beyond doubt or debate. While the learned philologists and historians and exegetes surround the casket and try to ascertain the dates of its parts, the names of its authors, the meaning of its obscurities, the family of God may continue to draw on its exhaustless treasures. Nor are there wanting signs that more and more our age is adjusting itself to this reverent and practical use of the Word of God, and that Professor Dobschütz rightly contends in his new volume that the Bible is again becoming the Book of Devotion.
There is likewise what we might well call the “lowest” criticism—the spirit that uses the Bible as a volume of puzzles rather than as a volume of directions. Many a man has spent more time in speculating about where Cain got his wife than he has in trying to find out how to make his own wife happy. Many a man has spent more time in trying to find outabout the Witch of Endor as an excuse for his consulting some vulgar fortune-teller of modern time than he has spent in trying to learn the will and secure the guidance of the good and wise God. Many a man has spent more time in discussing Melchizedek, who had neither ancestors nor descendants, than he has spent in trying to learn from the Bible how he himself may honor his forbears and may train his own children in righteousness. Many a man has been so piqued by curiosity about the exact nature of Saint Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” as to forget the teaching that the grace of God can make us equal to any burden and torment of life. The men of this type will not allow the Bible the use of hyperbole. When it suits their contentious mood they become strict literalists. Even though they themselves may declare that it is “raining pitchforks” or that the waves are dashing “mountain high,” they will insist that Christ’s words about the two coats and the two cloaks and the two miles are not the strong urging of much forbearance and generosity, but the counsel of literal folly. Meanwhile the certainties and duties of the Bible outnumber its riddles and its curiosities many-fold. The importunate call to holy practice ceases not. From each of a thousand passages of the Good Book there issues a patient rebuke for thecuriosity monger, “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”
This leads us to the third use of the sword as seen in our illustration. The gallant soldier took the weapon and used it in harmony with its intent. So the Bible should be employed preeminently as a means of spiritual defense and warfare. The Scriptures are profitable, not for immoral justification, not for mere criticism however exact and searching, not for the solving of superficial riddles, but “for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” To go to the Bible with the motive revealed in these great words is to recover the Bible to its divine purpose as the book of human practice. Such a motive lifts the volume above any mere literary or historical aspects. There is, for example, the oft-quoted story about Benjamin Franklin’s experience at the Court of France. He was passing an evening with a company of cultured ladies and gentlemen. The conversation turned to the subject of Oriental life. Franklin read aloud to the company the book of Ruth. Struck by the beautiful simplicity and spirit of the narrative, his hearers expressed their delight and desired to know in what book the charming pastoral could be found! It issafe to say that these men and women needed the lesson of fidelity in the book of Ruth far more than they needed the sense of its literary merit.
We must always return to the idea that the key to the Bible is the deeply religious instinct and motive. Nothing else will really open its pages. Nor does the Bible herein wholly differ from other literature. There are men and women so thoroughly cultivated on the so-called practical side of their natures that it would be punishment for them to read Whittier, or Longfellow, or Lowell, or Tennyson for a full hour. The demands of business or social life have killed the poetic impulse. So many persons may crush from their natures the religious instinct and then wonder why the Bible does not appeal to them! The truth seems to be that a person gets from the Bible about what he seeks. It takes divinely opened eyes to see the wondrous things in the law. The psalmist, therefore, prayed that the change might come over himself rather than over the parchment. The way to illumine the sacred page was to illumine him. The Book may lie in a great light, but what can the Book do for a man with closed eyes? Seneca tells of an idiot child in his home who, becoming blind, insisted always that the room was dark! Herein is another parable.
It is only this disposition of the seeing eye and the obedient hand that can bring the Bible to us in its main purpose. Having this disposition we shall not suffer ourselves to be lured into interesting byways. We shall have a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. Our spiritual purpose will defeat all needless criticism and all needless dissection. Having this purpose, we will turn to the early chapters of Genesis. Instead of debating whether in a literal garden Adam and Eve were tempted by a literal serpent to the eating of literal fruit, and were driven through a literal gate, while a literal angel with a literal flame running along a literal blade guarded against reentrance, we shall be moved by the thought that we have lifted ourselves in puny rebellion against God, and that we have gone forth from our place of innocence, and that the third chapter of Genesis recounts the essential history of our souls. Having this religious purpose, we shall read the story of Job with a view to securing its spiritual lesson. We shall not permit any critical arguer to confine us to the question of the historicity of Job himself. We shall rather lay hold of the teaching of that marvelous book, with its colossal debate, and we shall see that, whether the book be a history or a parable or an allegory, it drives crushing suspicion from the world by teachingthat suffering is not always the result of sin, and brings cheerful trust into the world by teaching that afflictions bravely endured must have their reward. The man who back in that dim and far age got hold of the teaching of the book of Job must have somehow caught the inspiration of God himself. The common ground in all these mooted portions of Scripture is really a large and wealthy place; but only a common spiritual purpose will ever bring conservatives and progressives together in the knowledge and peace of God.
One almost hesitates to discuss the book of Jonah in this connection because petty debates have robbed it of much of its deeper meaning. The nature of the book doubtless lies beyond earthly settlement. Whether we declare that Jonah’s journey was as historical as those of Saint Paul, or that it was as parabolic as the journey of the prodigal son, we can find no sure end of the debate. But all the while the teaching of the book waits for our obedience. The individual lesson seems to be that whenever a man turns his ship from the Nineveh of duty toward the Tarshish of pleasure he will directly come to rough and perilous seas. In other words, the man who flees from his God-assigned work sooner or later gets into trouble. The missionary lesson is just as plain. Back yonder in a time ofracial narrowness, some one caught the inspiration from God and declared that the Lord of all the earth cared for all the people of the earth. The infinite love traveled beyond all our little boundaries. The personal lesson and the missionary lesson of the book of Jonah are sufficient to keep individuals and churches busy for a thousand years to come. The spirit with which we approach the book of Jonah will decide whether we shall become petty debaters, or men and women with dutiful purpose and missionary zeal.