IX.

EPILOGUE.

F the Bible had not survived so many examina

tions, assaults, and afflictions, one might despair of its happy issue out of present-day inquiry and so-called dissection. What we want, however, and what we must have at all costs, is the truth. In pursuing this end Christian scholars must be prayerfully and generously supported. We may have to build other churches and other colleges, because as honest men we cannot accept a livelihood by betraying a trust; yet I believe we shall account the sacrifice a joy if by making it we can get nearer to reality and fact. If the discussion turned upon some particular doctrine contained in the Bible itself, a doctrine known to be open to various interpretations, the ground would be very significantly limited. But in this case the question turns upon the genuineness

and credibility of the Bible itself, and I, for one, am sorry that our scholars and experts do not feel themselves at liberty to speak more definitely upon that vital subject. Theirs is largely a non-committal attitude upon nearly all the points of expert opinion. They offer us "a series of tentative suggestions," they refer us to "a true historical instinct," they are not able to say this or that "at present," they give "legitimate weight" to the results or possibilities of "future excavations," and they assure us that all is right as to spiritual revelation. Adam, as he has been popularly apprehended, was removed from the Bible long ago by the naturalists; there is no Adam; there never was any Adam; there never could have been any Adam;-the account of the Creation is a Poem, but who wrote it no man knows; Adam could not have written it, for there never was an Adam;Mr. Horton ("Revelation and the Bible," p. 39) says that it would be a "childish misinterpretation" to treat the first known story in Genesis "as literal act" the serpent never talked, the Flood never fell;-Abraham was ideal and cumulative, a noun of multitude, rather than a real and historical personality;—we are getting accustomed to hear without

special emotion that “Ruth, Daniel, and Esther rest upon a very slender historical basis";-Moses did not write the Pentateuch, David did not write the Psalms, Solomon had little or nothing to do with the Proverbs;" the authors of the books which compose the Bible did not dream of making the claim that what they were writing was written by God, or spoken by God" ("Verbum Dei,” p. 105);—yet in spite of all this we are assured that on all spiritual matters the Bible may be trusted. Surely this is imposing a severe strain upon the mind of any one but an expert. But we must not consider that. What we want to get at is fact, rise or fall what may. The front gates are fired down, the castle. guns have been silenced, the moat has been crossed, the roof has been battered in, but the household hearth still remains! Does it? How long will it remain? All along the critical line orthodoxy has had to give in. Even "poor Tom Paine" is now seen to have been something of a hero and a pioneer, and in fact almost a martyr. All this may be right, or it may all be wrong; what I fear is that where criticism has so completely beaten back orthodoxy it may one day drive in the battle upon Cal

vary itself and seize the cross as a trophy of war. It is easy to deprecate this view, and easy to pity it as sentiment, yet I cannot sufficiently ignore the antecedent facts to treat it with disregard. If ninetynine of a hundred points have been carried, I cannot feel quite secure about the hundredth. But some of the men who have made the bulk of these concessions are Christian men? Truly. They are, too, men who do more for mankind than it lies within my inferior capacity to do. I know that I am not dealing with aliens and enemies. That is my supreme difficulty. I feel that if such men are right, I must be wrong. I was preaching in some blundering way before they were born, but they come up with all the new learning, and they take away, or permit to be taken away, Adam and Abraham, and David and Isaiah and Daniel, in the sense in which I have always cherished these illustrious names. They drive Christ out of the Messianic Psalms and prophecies. They tell me that the Bible is wrong in history, wrong in chronology, wrong in dates, wrong in sequence, and that (Horton, "Revelation and the Bible," p. 13) "as a treatise on ethics, or a Vade Mecum of practical conduct, the book does not pro

fess to serve."

purpose of the

But they assure me that the whole

book is to bring men to Christ.

Whose Christ? Baur's? Strauss'? Renan's? Presently may they take away my Lord himself without telling me where they have laid him?

In substance I retain the Bible exactly as my mother gave it, for she, too, was an expert. She thought the Lord made the heavens and the earth in six days, and that he rested on the seventh day and blessed it. She told me the story of Joseph just as if it had been all true, and she told me about Abraham and Isaac and the angel seizing the uplifted knife as if it were a fact. And about the Flood she told me, and never for a moment doubted the great rain, but was quite sure that the flood was forty days upon the earth, and that the waters prevailed upon the earth, and that all the high hills that were under the whole heavens were covered. She went over all the Bible lovingly, and never said a word to me about "tentative suggestions," clay tablets, and "future excavations." And many a time after reading the Bible to me we fell on our knees, and the dear old soul talked to God as if he were a