# Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 11

It is one of the honorable distinctions of the Universalist Church, that it has, from the first, been built "on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone." Strangely outlawed, ecclesiastically, as infidels, and popularly regarded as enemies of the Bible insidiously concealing its rejection under its pretended use, we have all the time steadily made faith in it, next to character, the cardinal condition to our fellowship. No Christians, indeed, have evinced a profounder or more sincere reverence for the Bible, or have furnished abler or more earnest defenders of it, or have more constantly or conscientiously deferred to its authority, than we. In the whole history of theological misrepresentation, there is nothing grosser—in the case of those who have known better, nothing more wicked—than the systematic falsification of our position in this particular,—a falsification that has doubtless done more than any other single cause to make Universalism odious in the estimation of Christian people, and to procure for us the treatment we have so unjustly received as 'heathen-men and publicans.' No odium, no unkind treatment was ever more undeserved. The Bible has been our final appeal always; and during these past thirty years especially, amidst the speculations of German rationalism, and a 'liberal Christianity' that has been but a second edition of old-fashioned Deism 'revised,' while many others have yielded, or oscillated, we have stood like a rock,—conceding all that genuine scholarship and honest criticism have required, but adhering immovably to the Divine origin of the Bible, and affirming its authority with the same positiveness with which we have affirmed the existence of God and the reality of Christ himself. In this respect, no New Departure is possible for us in the direc​tion of faith, for neither we, nor any other church, can stand more firmly by the Bible, or more strenuously insist on its Divine worth and claims, than we have done. And yet, we nevertheless need a New Departure concerning it, and shall not cease very seriously to suffer in our most vital interests, so long as this Departure fails to be fittingly made.
Two questions of fundamental interest meet us touching the Bible:—the first concerns its origin; the second concerns our need of it. With the first, it does not fall within the purpose of these pages, except incidentally, to deal; but the second sustains such relations to the fact with which this chapter is specially concerned, that only through some notice of it can we be best introduced to what is to follow.
The chapter on Experimental Religion referred to what God is as the central Life of the universe. And because of what He thus is, a knowledge of Him, that there may be conformity to His will, is a necessity of souls. Imagine the consequences should our globe, or the planets in space, break away from His hand, or should a tree, or a field of wheat, try the experiment of growing in some other way than in accordance with the methods He has ordained, and we only imagine results in the material world analogous to those which actually occur whenever and wherever a soul sets up for itself, and undertakes to live in defiance or in disregard of Him as the centre and law of moral being.
But how shall we attain this knowledge of God and of the moral conditions He has established, which is so essential for us? Is it said that all Nature is open to us, and that, with this and the spiritual instincts and intuitions of our own souls—reason, conscience, and the religious sentiment, we have all that is requisite for our instruction? But how much will these teach us? Look at the idolater and the polytheist, look wherever men, of themselves as only thus aided, have constructed theologies, and attempted to solve the problems of God and of our own being, duty and destiny, and see. All men have Nature and its teachings, such as they are. All men have more or less of rea​son, conscience, and the religious sentiment. But do all men know God, or have all men attained, or even approached just conceptions of His character, or correct estimates of human relations and obligations, or a satisfactory philosophy of death? God is just, indeed, and holds no man responsible for more than He has given him. Hence, we are never to overlook, enough is furnished in these sources of natural suggestion and instruction to make it proper that even those least favored shall be held to moral account, because supplied with the materials for some ideas of a Supreme Power and moral duty. Accordingly, though arguing to show the insufficiency of these things for the highest purposes, Paul distinctly testifies of God that "His eternal power and Godhead, though they be invisible, yet" have been "seen ever since the world was made, being understood by His works, that they [who hold the truth in unrighteousness] might have no excuse" (Rom. i. 20); and further, that "the Gentiles . . . though they have no [specially announced moral] law, are a law to themselves, since they manifest the work of the law written in their hearts, and their conscience also bears them witness, while their inward thoughts, answering one to the other, either justify or else condemn them" (Rom. ii. 14, 15). And yet, though this is true, and all that could be thus given has been imparted, still, in the nature of the case, it does not and cannot answer all that is required—any more than the ability of a child to attain some things of itself enables it thus to gather all that is important for it to know. The child needs help from some superior mind, and without it will come, at length, to a point beyond which it can proceed no farther. We, it is true, ripen out of our childish capacities as the years pass; but in presence of the grand and infinite mysteries of being, we are always children, unequal, of ourselves, to the task of grasping and solving them. At the most, when what is called Natural Religion has done all it can for us, we get only rudimentary hints,—never full and definite instruction; are able simply to walk along the skirts of the delec​table mountains,—never to scale their heights and get their broadest outlooks. For these, we must have help from some source outside ourselves, and higher than we—interpreting Nature for us more perfectly than we can; informing reason, educating conscience, enlightening the religious sentiment; and except as this help is given, and in condescension to our inability, God thus makes himself and related spiritual facts and truths known, no clear knowledge or assurance concerning them is possible to us.
There is a broad distinction between such spiritual knowledge and what is called scientific knowledge, which many fail to consider. Do we need any special help from God to instruct us in Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, or Mathematics? it is not unfrequently asked, with much show of confidence—as if our competency to make our way unaided in these implies an equal competency in the domain of spiritual truth. But, unfortunately for this kind of argument, there is an important difference between these departments of knowledge. In all scientific or mathematical investigations, we have some certain data of fact or figures, to commence with, and thus, for every step we take, have the solid rock to stand upon—because having the means for testing and demonstrating the correctness of our conclusions. But it is not so when we enter upon religious investigations. The required data are nowhere to be had. Like one attempting an hypothesis concerning the inhabitants of the sun, or trying to solve an arithmetical problem that furnishes no initial figures, we are in the realm of pure conjecture, with no facts to build on; are dealing altogether with 'unknown quantities,' with no known quantity as a starting-point. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." No doubt; but where is he to stand? True, as has been intimated, there are some data which, left to ourselves, we are warranted in regarding as certainties, and on the basis of which some rudimentary moral and religious ideas may be built; but they are not the kind required for a complete and satisfactory theology. They give us glimpses and suggestions; but when we push our inquiries, and ask who God is, and precisely what are His relations to us, and who ​we are, and what are our duties, and what is to become of us, we at once find ourselves launched upon a sea of uncertainty, where, without chart, compass, light-house, or sounding-line, we can only sail by guess; are hopelessly confronted by moral and spiritual summits, rising sheer before us, up which there are no steps of induction or inference, no processes of logic, no certainties from any source about us, or within us, by which we can climb into any knowledge, or absolute faith, by way of demonstration.
This the whole history of our race, from first to last, proclaims. At all events, it proclaims that men of themselves do not attain any certitude or demonstration; and considering the universality of this fact, not only the fair, but the inevitable conclusion is that they can not. Else, why do we not somewhere find men outside the line of what is alleged to be supernatural illumination, making some progress in religious ideas? That we do not, save as, here and there, an exceptional mind has gone beyond the masses in its unavailing speculations—speculations which have seldom had any practical fruit, is known to all who know anything of the religious history of mankind. Look at China. Except as it has been inoculated with the ideas of Christendom through the freer intercourse of these later years, it presents to-day the same idolatry, the same low religious conceptions as centuries ago. So with Japan. So with India. So—saying nothing of those lower down in the scale of development—with every comparatively cultivated or half-civilized people of whom we have any information. Why should this be so, if men unaided are sufficient for all the purposes of moral and religious knowledge? Does not the fact that it is so demonstrate man's incompetency, of himself, to deal with the spiritual problems which press upon us, and so demonstrate the necessity for some direct and special communication from God?
The Bible purports to be such a communication—or, rather, the record of a series of such communications. Is it worthy of our confidence as such, and can we accept its enunciations concerning God, and truth, and duty, as giving us the certain knowledge we need? If it is—and here is the point for which the considerations foregoing ​have been designed to prepare—if it is, then the necessity in answer to which it was bestowed, no less demands that it shall be used; nor can it be neglected, or pushed aside by anything else, except at the peril of all the interests it is intended to serve. If it be, in fact, from God, it is not a thing to be trifled with. What it contains is for the life of souls and the life of the world; and spiritual darkness and death are the penalties of ignoring, or undertaking to live without it. What but this is the sum of the universal testimony it has made for itself? 'Sacred books' are, indeed, not uncommon among the nations; and there are those who would have us regard the Bible as only of the same character as all the rest. But look along the track of any other 'sacred books' which the world has ever heard of,—look, one by one, through the several fields they have professed to illumine, and, as compared with the results which have attended the Bible, what have they, any of them, ever done for man, or for men? Even out of our Christian churches some are issuing, in these days, who, forgetting what, under God, has made them in all that is best in their manhood or womanhood, are gloryfying Buddhism, vaunting it as not inferior to, if it does not excel, Christianity. But, as Wendell Phillips has well said, "to all this, the answer is, India, past and present." And so in respect to all that may, directly or indirectly, be set up to rival or equal the Bible, the one answer is, Tell us what it has done! The awakened but unlettered sailor, wishing to purchase a Bible, happily designated it as "the Book that speaks for itself;" and in nothing does it more eloquently, or more demonstrably, speak for itself than in the work of enlightenment, healing and quickening it has accomplished. History is to be searched in vain for any similar work, or for any that begins to approach it.
Let it be granted, if any so desire, that the Bible has not equally illuminated all minds where its light has shined, nor conquered all error or evil where it has wrought. Let it be granted that many who have professed to be its friends have been corrupt and cruel, and that were any one to retort the question concerning those to whom it has come, which was just now asked of those having only Nature and their ​own spiritual instincts and intuitions for their teachers, the question, viz.: Have they all attained just conceptions of God, or correct estimates of human relations and obligations, or a satisfactory philosophy of death? we should be compelled to answer, very emphatically, No. But what gift of God fully, or soon, accomplishes all for which it was designed? In its very nature, the work intended through the Bible is progressive, and therefore gradual—as the work of the sun, every day, is by degrees to dissipate the darkness, not instantaneously to transform night into noonday. The Bible is leaven; and of necessity, all leaven does its work slowly, atom by atom. But let any one, friend or foe, candidly survey the field of the Bible's influence, or apply any honest test as to the extent of its leavening power, and what, unmistakably, does he see? What transformations! What victories over darkness and wrong! What consolations! What awakenings! What rough places smoothed, and crooked places made straight! What births and growths of finer and loftier sentiment, of nobler character, of holier and saintlier living! Account for it as we may, the fact is indisputable that wherever the Bible has become most an element in the popular life, there are found the most of those fruits which might be expected to grow from the seeds of a Divine Revelation. The worst and darkest periods in the history of the Jewish nation were the periods when their Scriptures were most forgotten and neglected; and the darkest and saddest portions of Christian history are those in which the Bible was least in the people's hands, and its spirit least in their hearts. Undeniably, the argument of results is altogether on the side of the Bible; and if a tree is known by its fruits, the conclusion is inevitable that the Bible is Divine. How otherwise are we to account for what it has done? Let those who declare it not of God answer this question.
Meanwhile, not now further to press this argument of results, we may confidently hold the Bible in the face of the world, and, whether it be Divine or not, can say, in the graphic language of the prophet, Unto this let men seek: "if they will not speak according to this word, . . . every one of them shall pass through the land distressed and famished; ​. . . and he shall cast his eyes upwards and look down to the earth, and lo! distress and darkness! gloom, tribulation and accumulated darkness" (Isa. viii. 20–22)! No words can better describe what comes of rejecting, or of not having the Bible. Where do we find the highest conceptions of God—conceptions which, while far beyond any that unaided man has ever attained, are yet such as lie most easily in our minds and hearts, most accordant with all that Nature suggests, and with what reason, conscience and the religious sentiment demand? Where do we find the clearest and best ideas of duty, and the firmest and most intelligent assurance of Immortality, and the largest measure of moral and intellectual development, and the most elevated character, and the most advanced type of what we mean by civilization? Where, but exactly where the Bible has most fully done its work? The zone of light around the globe is the zone of the Bible. The leading countries of the world—the countries whose people are most and have most, are the countries where the Bible is most read, and in which it may claim to have had its practical worth best put to the test. In proportion as we go outside its ideas and moral force, we go into shadow:—go into the midst of superstition and general ignorance; go into the midst of despotism or a savage freedom; go where man is degraded and woman a slave; go where it is literally true, in respect to all highest human needs and interests, that souls "pass through the land distressed and famished," and where everything attests the absence of any sufficient power to instruct and elevate the people.
Contrast the condition of Catholic and Protestant countries,—or the Catholic and Protestant portions of the same country. Why should not those that are Catholic be as far advanced in freedom, in general intelligence, in material enterprise, in all the elements of the highest civilization, as those that are Protestant? Can any reason be found in the nature or capacities of the people? I am not aware that it can. But who does not know that an immeasurable difference is shown in such a comparison? The puritans came to ​the rugged shores of New England, bringing nothing but themselves and the Bible, and finding no gold, no soft and genial climate, no rich and productive soil—finding only an inhospitable climate and a land of granite and of ice. The cavaliers and adventurers of Spain went to the fair and fruitful fields of Mexico and Peru, finding a delicious climate, a productive soil, and mines inestimably rich in gold, but carrying no Bible. What is the result? New England is what she is;—the Spanish colonies are what they are. To the same effect, Spain and Portugal in contrast with England, South America in contrast with the United States,—or, if one wishes to look into the same country, the Catholic and Protestant cantons of Switzerland, the Catholic and Protestant districts in Ireland, Louisiana and Massachusetts in our own land, are further illustrations. Why this difference? Various causes unquestionably combine to explain it; but the chief is to be found in a series of facts of which the Bible is the centre. Protestantism, based on the right of private judgment, puts the Bible into the people's hands, and imbibing its ideas, the people become quickened by its moral power; while Catholicism withholds the Bible, or gives it to the people only through the lips of priests, or in the interpretations of the church. During these last few years, Italy seems to have re-awakened, and more recently, the political regeneration of Spain seems to have begun; but the complete resurrection and enfranchisement of their people will come only when they shall be a Bible-reading and Bible reverencing people, and when home and church and state shall feel the inspirations which the Bible can alone shed into them. And could the Bible be to-day given to poor, priest-ridden Ireland, or to Mexico, or to South America, so that the masses of the people should be transfused with its ideas, and nurtured and established in its principles, a new life would at once be manifest in them all, and the contrast now so painfully apparent between them and Protestant countries would straightway begin to disappear.
These are facts often referred to, but that never yet have commanded the general consideration they deserve. "This is the cannon that is to emancipate Italy," Garibaldi was, ​some years ago, reported to have said to his son, handing him a Bible. The remark may or may not have been made; but it is worthy to have been, for it is true. As has, in substance, been said, the history of the Bible is that of the world's best civilization. Everywhere, it has been the herald of social progress and a ripening culture. Nay, more than this, to change the figure, has it not proved, wherever planted, 'the tree of life,' whose leaves have been for the healing of the nations? Oppressions have disappeared, thrones have tottered, ignorance and superstition have fled because of it. Catching instruction and inspiration from it, the masses have been filled with a sense of their manhood, and have risen into a perception of their rights. Star-chamber and stamp-act have given way. Ship-money and tea-tax have been resisted. Freedom has been achieved. Schools have multiplied. Laws have softened. All refining and elevating agencies have been increased; and the varied elements—moral, intellectual, spiritual, that, if the promises of God and the visions of prophets are ever to be realized, are at some time to culminate in the millennium on earth, and more perfectly in the life of the redeemed in heaven, have more and more borne sway.
And all this, let it be observed, on account of the inherent and quickening power of the Bible, though so many of its best and highest meanings have been veiled and perverted by such gross misunderstandings, and though there never have been lacking those who have used it to bolster wrong, to put the brakes on the wheels of progress, to gag the complaints of the trampled, and to throw all the weight of its authority against the advance of science and every attempt at reform. What would it not have done had its spirit always been rightly caught, and had it been used only for the ends that God approves!
And what is thus to be said as to nations is to be said also, with equal truth, of individuals;—is true of nations only because antecedently true of individuals. How does society improve except as the men and women composing it are first affected and improved? Far too easy, it must be conceded, it is to find those who profess to believe the Bible, and who read it more or less, whose lives give little ​evidence of its elevating or sanctifying power. But admitting all that must be admitted on account of such, is it not true, the world over, that, other things being equal, those most familiar with the Bible and most under its legitimate influence, are of all people the best and happiest—most elevated in their tastes, broadest and tenderest in their sympathies, stanchest in their virtue, richest in their experience? Speaking of the rule, is it not true that as a man or woman renounces or neglects the Bible, life is yielded to material or earthly uses,—that the light of God's face and of the heavenly inheritance fades out of it,—that there is a deadening of spiritual consciousness and sensibility,—that the eye loses its upward look, and character its divine flavor? Who will answer, Nay, to these questions? Centuries ago, the Psalmist said, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy Word. . . . I will never forget Thy precepts: for with them Thou hast quickened me" (Psa. cxix. 9, 93). And what he said, having only a portion of what we have as the Old Scriptures, we may far more emphatically say, having what now constitutes the Bible, with all the treasures of the New added to the Old. There is no moral counsellor, or guide, like it; and outside its pages, there is nothing that can quicken souls. Most persons are familiar with the story of the deist, who, after publicly denouncing the Bible as undeserving of confidence, was found at home instructing his child from the New Testament, and who, on being arraigned for his inconsistency, frankly confessed that, desiring to teach the child morality, he knew not where else to find such morality as in the Bible. I knew a similar case. A relative of mine—an estimable man, but an unbeliever in Christianity, and at one time the blankest atheist I ever met, had a son about to go from home, to be thrown into numerous temptations. He naturally desired to shield and strengthen him to the utmost: and what did he do? Unbeliever though he was, he put a Bible into the young man's trunk, having first written in it to this effect,—"I will not now debate who wrote this book. It is certainly full of valuable instruction, whatever the source from which it came. Read it, my son, and try to follow its counsels. If ​you do, whatever your temptations, I am sure you will be a virtuous man." What testimony this to the important relations which the Bible holds to our moral welfare! Grant all that infidelity alleges against it, and it still remains the one book essential beyond all others to our moral culture and spiritual satisfaction. Search the world, and we find that the noblest character flowers only out of roots which the Bible has watered; and when sorrow comes, when loved ones die, when suffering is to be endured, when death is to be met, how dark are the glooms which fall about the heart which the Bible has not illumined! how full of anguish the grief which knows nothing of the Bible's consolations! how uneasy the bed where the Bible ministers not to the soul! how terrible the grave into which the Bible sheds no sunshine, and across which beams none of the radiance of the Immortality it discloses!
These things, then, being so, who that has any regard to his own interests, or the interests of his Church, or the wider interests of the country and the world, can be indifferent to them? This, unfortunately, is not a Bible-reading age. There is so much other reading, and so many other calls are making their exactions on thought and time, and, on the part of many, there is such an indifference to the Bible, or such a self-complacency inducing the feeling that they have no need of it, that the Book is probably now more neglected than at any period since it was put by Protestantism and the printing-press into the people's hands. Not that there is any considerable abatement of respect for it, or of faith in it. Despite all that infidelity and a pseudoscience are, openly or covertly, doing to dethrone it, perhaps it was never more generally regarded as a Book somehow from God than to-day. Comparatively few intelligent families are willingly destitute of it in some form, while numberless costly illustrated and gilded editions, specimens of which meet us in parlors and elsewhere, indicate the reverence in which it is still popularly held. But it is not correspondingly read—except in sickness and sorrow and peculiar crises of experience. What is the result? From a neglect of the Bible, come the materialism, the mammon-worship, the spiritual emptiness and ignobleness, the prac​tical infidelity, so much of which we see. From a neglect of the Bible, come to a large extent the prevalent unsettledness and vacillation of opinion, the readiness to be captivated by novelties, and the extravagances and religious crudities of all sorts which so easily find disciples. Especially is it on account of a neglect of the Bible in homes and by firesides that so many youth are growing up with so little religious knowledge and so little preparation for life, to be by and by turned adrift, with no fixed ideas, "tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine." How many people, of any religious convictions, are in the habit of carefully studying, or even of attentively reading, the Bible? How many do not put it aside for other reading—perhaps even on the Sabbath, for novels, flashy magazines, or Sunday papers? How many young men, or young women, make it a point to read it every day, or every week? How many parents do this, with their families, or by themselves? How many children are carefully and reverently trained to the practice?
No Christians can afford to be unconcerned in respect to this subject. But it has special claims upon us. The Bible is a Universalist book. Not only, therefore, has it more spiritual wealth and nutriment for us than for our friends who fail to see its real meaning, but it is our fortress and strength, upon an intelligent use of which the future of our Faith and our Church depends. True, the result we affirm is reached through a variety of paths, and, the moral constitution of the universe being granted, is hinted, or necessitated, all the facts being duly considered, start where we will. Common sense suggests it. Nature in its pervading spirit prophesies it. Every human affection yearns for it. Every human sympathy protests against anything less broad, or inclusive. Reason, conscience, every moral instinct, unperverted, points towards it. Every perfection of God, His existence being admitted,—every spiritual faculty or possibility of man,—every principle in morals,—every axiom in science is an argument for it. As the consequence, faith in this result is variously cherished—with Christ and without him; on the authority of the Bible and independent of it; in connection with 'evangelical' opinions and as a part of ​our harmonious theology; as an Instinct, as a Sentiment, as a Philosophy, as a Religion. But while this is true, and though every tendency of religious thought and opinion is in our direction, we have no hold upon the Future as a Church except by the force of the Bible, giving us Universalism as a religion. Whatever intimations, or confirmations, of it from other sources there may be, it is by the testimony of the Bible alone that we, or anybody, can be absolutely certified that Universalism is true. Only as a Bible doctrine, buttressed everywhere by a "thus-saith-the-Lord," can it be most unanswerably established. And except as its believers constantly make the Bible their study and reliance, they can never to best effect be prepared to give an answer to every one that asketh, nor can our Zion be most vital in itself, or most thoroughly equipped for its most desirable triumphs. The one great obstacle in our way is the mistaken impression that the Bible is against us. Correct this idea, and with everything else already in our favor, the field, of course, is ours. To secure this correction, by the ability to expound the Scriptures which thorough personal study and familiarity with them alone can give, should, therefore, be henceforth one of the leading purposes of all who call themselves Universalists. Holiness of life, attesting the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, should be our first aim. Then, for our own sake and for the sake of our truth and our Church, we should make the Bible the fountain from which we incessantly draw, that we may get the personal instruction and help which it is its exclusive province to impart, and that we may thus be prepared to edify and convince others, meeting their Bible arguments with better and stronger Bible arguments, and showing that not only do all other arguments array themselves on the side of Universalism, but that the Bible, from first to last, chants the grand anthem of a complete redemption.
The time was when Universalists were pre-eminently a Bible reading people, having a greater familiarity with the whole Bible than any others, and proportionally better able to do valiant Bible battle for their faith. Then the most unlettered Universalist was more entirely at home in the ​closest hand-to-hand Bible argument than the rabbis and doctors of the dominant sects. Not the elders simply, but the young men and young women—boys and girls, sometimes—could vindicate the harmony of the Scriptures, by turning to the context of passages cited against us, and satisfactorily explaining their meaning. Our stripling Davids often put Goliaths to flight. But, though there is probably as much reading of the Bible among us as among the average of other churches, it is to be feared that this pre-eminence is no longer ours, and that our young people particularly are coming forward without that acquaintance with the Bible needful to their own most intelligent faith, or to the satisfactory defence of their opinions. Young people not unfrequently ask me, How are such and such passages to be understood, and what texts can I quote against the other side?—to whom my invariable reply, after such information as the moment allows, is, Study the Bible for yourself, and see. There is reason, doubtless, for the change thus noted. Those former days were days when every Universalist was a sort of Ishmael, and was expected to go armed, ready at any moment to receive and repel an assault. The policy of the opposition has now changed. Universalism, for the most part, is ignored. A partial truce, if not entire peace, has been proclaimed. There is, naturally, among us no such eagerness to prepare for fight. The arts of war decline in time of peace—or prolonged truce. Muskets become rusty, and swords lie unused in their sheaths. And it being forgotten that the Bible is not only the sword of the spirit, but the bread of life, and that, however one may cease to use it for fight, he must still use it for spiritual sustenance and strength, it has fallen into the comparative neglect spoken of. But we are putting our personal spiritual life and all that our Church stands for every day in peril so long as this neglect continues, and the time has fully come for a New Departure, committing us to the habits of Bible study herein urged—not for purposes of controversy, but for the far higher purposes of Christian culture and Christian effectiveness. Do what else we may, we can build on the solid rock, and accomplish the best work either for ourselves, or ​for Christ and his Church in the awakening and salvation of souls, only as we build on the Bible, making it the ground of our assurance and the means of our power.
And then, think of our children. Who of us does not desire that they shall grow up, rooted in right principles, and supplied with all the materials for the noblest and happiest living? But how is this to be, except as they are educated to love, and read and understand the Bible? Moreover, they are our recruits for the army of Christ; those who are to bear aloft the banner of our faith, and take up and carry forward whatever good work we begin—if our Church is to live and grow. But how are they to be and do what is thus implied, if they are not duly trained in a knowledge of the Bible, and accustomed to draw nutriment and inspiration from it? If we neglect them in this respect, shall we be surprised if they fall away from us into the current of popular sects and traditional theologies, or, far worse, miss their way in life, and fall into moral waste? "If Universalists sleep," once said good old 'Father' Balfour, "and allow their children to sleep with them, it is easy to see what work is preparing for the next generation. They ought to see to it that Universalists in name be also Christians, able and willing to defend from the Scriptures what they believe. There can be no safety from controversy until Christians are correctly and generally instructed in the Bible, for so long as ignorance of it prevails, there will always be those who will impose on the ignorant"—and, he might have added, lead astray the unwary. There is a meaning in these words of the dear old patriarch, to which no Universalist should fail to give heed.
The Bible, indeed, is to be studied by us, or taught to others, in no narrow, dogmatic, or merely sectarian spirit. We want no idolatry of the Bible. We are not to be bigots,—though better bigotry than latitudinarianism and indifference; nor are we to do anything to make others bigots. We are not to look on the Bible as God's only revelation,—only as His most distinct and authoritative revelation. We are never to go to it, to put a meaning into it,—only to get its meaning out of it. Especially are we never ​to forget that the Bible is not to be found in texts, sewed together like patchwork, or repeated as a parrot jingles what it has learned. The meaning of the Bible is the Bible,—not its mere letter. And one who constantly studies to reach the spirit of the Bible pays it far higher reverence than one who thinks only of its language, and deals with its words as a child deals with its bits of calico, or painted glass:—just as he is the Bible preacher who is most anxious, not to quote texts, or to say what he says in Bible terms, but to unfold Bible thought and preach Bible truth.
There are those who would have us believe that the Bible is to pass away from the authoritative place it has held,—as there are those who are fearing that it will suffer harm from the attacks made upon it. Pass away! Suffer harm! As well might one talk of the North Star's passing away from its place in the heavens, or of its suffering harm because a telescope is occasionally levelled at it. The Bible is a necessity and a fact, buttressed as well as demanded by every moral and religious need of the human soul. It is no gourd that grew up yesterday. It is the legacy of ages. It comes down to us, portions of it, from periods more remote than are reported by any other written page. It has seen empires rise and fall, and become forgotten. It has seen splendid cities built, whose very places have been lost to human recognition. Nor has it thus survived because it has had no enmity, or assaults, to encounter. It has had battles to fight that were battles—battles with learning, and superstition, and cunning, and ignorance; battles, especially, as one has well expressed it, "with men of culture, shrewdness, and force, compared with whom most of those who now assail it are, in every respect save a reckless daring, mere Lilliputians in presence of the men of Brobdignag." The Alleghanies will not be moved at present, however children may pelt them with pebbles, or discharge their mimic cannon against them, nor even though men should be found to vote them only so much vapor, or to pass wise resolves that they are nothing but sand. There they are;—and there, doubtless, however a stone may be occasionally hacked from their sides, they will stand, to invite generations yet unborn to the refresh​ment of their breezes, and to the sublime beauty of the scenery they present, and to enrich those who mine them with the inexhaustible stores of wealth God has provided in them. And so with the Bible. Here and there, there may be those captivated by a pretentious philosophy, or led away by doubt and a presumptuous egoism, or jumping in the name of science to unwarranted conclusions, who may renounce their faith in it; and in the progress of criticism, here and there an interpolation may be discovered, and an excrescence be cut off. But so long as it can point to the civilization it has reared and vitalized,—so long as it has an advocate and witness in every necessity of our nature, pleading for its satisfactions,—so long as it fills the place in its relations to the life of souls and the progress of the world which it always has filled, and which it alone can fill, the Bible will stand—the record of God's living Word; the store-house of the unspeakable riches of His grace and truth; the lens through which light from Heaven shines upon us; the perpetual source of inspiration and redeeming power.
The dear old Bible! so consecrated as the gift of God, and as the memorial of prophets and apostles through whom He has spoken,—so hallowed by all the associations and uses of ages,—so fragrant with the aroma of the heroic and saintly lives it has formed and fed,—so anointed with the tears of sufferers it has sustained and soothed, and with the blood of martyrs who have folded it to their bosoms, and gone to the rack and the stake in its behalf,—the Book out of which have come the doctrine of human rights and every principle of free government,—from which Sorrow has drank, and been comforted,—into which Bereavement has looked, and seen the light that never grows dim, and read the promise of re-union,—to which Sin has come, and been cleansed,—against which the tempted have leaned, and found strength, and clasping which the dying have gone down into the dark valley, walking in the radiance of an Immortal Life!—oh, fathers and mothers,—oh, young men and maidens,—oh, children, lambs in the flock of the Good Shepherd whose Gospel it brings us, shall it not be dear to us? Will we not carry it ​closer than ever before to our hearts, and, feeling the life of God pulsating through it, seek to take into our inmost being all that it aims to communicate, that we may be daily wiser and stronger and more efficient for Christian Work, as well as richer in all sweet and blessed experience? And will we not thus, one and all, give ourselves to the New Departure herein pleaded for, that, because of our increased study and knowledge of the Bible, our truth may shine out more and more as indeed the very doctrine of its sacred pages, and our Church, irresistible in the demonstration of the Spirit thus imparted, and vivified by an increasing spirituality and consecration, become the living and mighty instrument of God for the work He has appointed it?
* ↑ Conybeare and Howson.
* ↑ Lowth's translation.