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PROLEGOMENA

I

THE specific sources for the writing of such a book as this are, of course, the Gospels, for the teaching of Jesus, and the Epistles of Paul, for the teaching of the apostle. But we cannot understand these without taking into account the whole literature of the Hebrew people, of which these writings are an inseparable part. Though the modern Jew refuses to recognize the later collection of writings known to us as the New Testament, he cannot deny that it is as Jewish as the older collection. The apostles may have been apostate Jews, but they were certainly Jews. Only a single gentile writer, so far as we know, contributed aught to the New Testament; and even Luke was Jew by conviction, if not Jew by birth.

These writings are, without exception, deeply imbued with the spirit of the people who produced them and of the times in which they were composed. Jew and Christian are agreed in regarding them as a divine revelation (though the Jew, of course, would deny this character to the later collection), but all intelligent people of both religions have come to recognize in these books a human element, as well as a divine. They were not handed down from heaven, or even dictated by God to human amenuenses, but composed under the guidance of the divine Spirit by men who had the limitations of other men. The writers were not of a uniform grade of mentality or spiritual insight, and so great differences are discernible in the writings; in particular, the older books give us a different ideal of God and teach different ethics, from the later. Men can no longer shut their eyes to this fact; the wonder is that for ages they were able so completely to ignore it. No candid

reader of the Scriptures can now fail to see that they many times flatly contradict each other, and none of the processes of mechanical "reconciliation" that satisfied our fathers will remove this difficulty for us. There is but one honest method of reconciliation available: to recognize these collections of writings as the record of a progressive revelation; to admit frankly that the earlier writers "saw through a glass darkly," and that even some of the later can hardly be said to have seen "face to face." In other words, God revealed himself by degrees to men, as they were able to receive knowledge of him; and the revelations of earlier time were of necessity fragmentary and imperfect.

It inevitably follows from this understanding of the nature of the Bible that religious teachers can no longer be suffered to quote the words of Scripture, on the assumption that all are of equal value and authority. The old method of citing "proof texts" indifferently anywhere from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of Revelation is as dead as Julius Caesar. It follows also that the later revelation is clearer, higher, truer than the earlier; and where the two conflict, as they so often do, the later supersedes the earlier. And for the Christian, at least, the highest revelation of all is contained in the teachings of Jesus.

It should seem that one who calls himself a Christian might be safely assumed to be pledged by his chosen name to accept Jesus the Christ as his highest authority in religion. It might justly be assumed, one would think, that he is bound to evaluate all other religious teaching in accordance with the words of his avowed Master and Teacher. Whoever and whatever accords with His words is to be accepted. Whoever or whatever differs irreconcilably from His words is to be rejected. Why, indeed, should any man who refuses to abide by this principle as the touchstone of truth wish to call himself a Christian? Surely, if he refuses to bow to the supreme authority of

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