be able to solve. But the mysteries revealed in the Bible are those which man had not been able to attain by inductive and deductive investigation, and which it is improbable that he could have attained without special divine guidance, at least at the time that that knowledge was necessary for the progress of mankind at the stage in his historical development when the revelation was given. When the study of the other departments of human learning has reached their uttermost limits, there still remains a wide expanse between those limits and the contents of divine revelation, which man cannot cross by his own unaided powers. Divine revelation is to the other departments of human knowledge what heaven is to earth. It is above them, it encircles them, and it envelops them on every side. Like heaven, it discloses illimitable heights and breadths. Those things which are revealed lift the student of the Bible to regions of knowledge that reach forth to the infinite. And yet profound as the divine revelation is, it is simple. It is like the sunlight bearing its own evidence in itself. It is like the blue vault of heaven clear and bright. It is a revelation for babes as well as men, for the simple as well as the learned. God sendeth it as the rain on the just and the unjust, for "He is kind unto the unthankful and the evil."1 The most profound study cannot master it. Any attentive study of it is rewarded with precious knowledge.

4. Biblical Study is the most attractive of all studies. Nowhere else is there so great a variety in unity. The Literature of the Bible has been carefully selected out of a vastly greater extent of Literature by the taste of God's people in many successive generations, each one adding its approval to that of its predecessors. This taste determined that which was given for the permanent blessing of mankind and discriminated the writings gathered in the Bible from others which were temporary, local, and provisional in their character. The wise guidance of the Divine Spirit on the one hand and the recognition of excellence by God's people on the other hand, co-worked to produce Holy Scripture.

In the Bible there is a wonderful variety of topic, covering

1 Mt. 545; Lk. 635.

the whole field of Theology, that divine science which embraces and absorbs all human knowledge. In the Bible there is a marvellous richness of material combining in one organic whole the sublime and the beautiful in God, in man, in nature, and in the interrelation of God with man and nature. In the Bible there is an extraordinary wealth of literary form and style, representing the thinking and the emotions of many generations; composed in three of the greatest languages used as the vehicle of communion of man with man.

In the Bible there is a magnificent unity and variety in history. Nowhere else are the generations of mankind so linked together. In the Bible the hearts of the fathers are turned to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers. Though the Jewish people constitute the central nucleus of this marvellous story, they are not the whole of it. They are the centre of a story which is as wide as humanity and whose circumference is the creation of God.

The Bible is as various as human life is various. It is interesting to the child, it attracts the peasant, it charms the prince, it absorbs the sage. It is the Book of love, salvation, and glory for all the world.

OBSTACLES TO THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

The Bible is designed for the blessing of all mankind. But all have not enjoyed its benefits; partly because those who have the Bible in their possession have not made it known to their fellow-men as they were commissioned to do by our Saviour; and partly because they have made the Bible known only so far as they understood it, or they supposed that their fellowmen were able to receive it. If they have given it to others at all, it has been in such bits of it as the teachers were able to explain to their humble and obedient pupils. Even in Christian lands, where the Bible may easily be found, there are few who experience its ideal advantages. Too many religious teachers, in mistaken zeal, are so anxious to guard the sanctity of the Bible that they refrain from opening its treas

ures to the free use of the people.

Other teachers in all

generations perpetuate the work of the Pharisees and obtrude their theories and speculations upon the Bible, making the Word of God of none effect through their traditions; they take away the key of knowledge; they enter not in themselves, and them that are entering in they hinder. If the Bible has been withheld from the people by Roman priests, obstacles to the study of the Bible have been erected in the path of students by Protestant ministers. It would be a happy result if each could so expose the sin and guilt of the other as to induce both to bring forth fruits meet for repentance and to render entire obedience to the commission of Christ.

1. The Study of the Bible is most commonly obstructed among Protestants by Bibliolatry.

The Bible has been hedged about with awe as if the use of it, except in solemn circumstances and with special and prescribed devotional feelings, was a sin against the Holy Spirit. Men have been kept from the Bible as from the holy sacraments by dread of the serious consequences involved in any fault in their use. The Bible has been made an unnatural and unreal book, by attaching it exclusively to hours of devotion, and detaching it from the experiences of ordinary life. The study of the Bible will inevitably lead to holy and devout thoughts, will surely bring the student to the presence of God and His Christ, and will certainly secure the guidance of the Spirit of God. But it is a sad mistake to suppose that the Bible can be approached only in special frames of mind and with peculiar devotional preparation. It is not to be covered as with a funereal pall and laid away for hours of sorrow and affliction. It is not to be placed upon an altar and its use reserved for hours of public or private worship. It is not to be regarded with feelings of bibliolatry. It is not to be used as a book of magic,

1 Mt. 156; Mk. 718; Lk. 1152; Col. 28.

2 It is noteworthy that the most radical Protestants, those who are most bitter in their denunciation of the adoration of the Holy Sacrament by such of their fellow-Christians as believe in the real substantial presence of our Lord therein, are the very ones who are most inclined to Bibliolatry. It is certainly no easier to think that our Saviour should dwell between the covers of a book than that He should be resident for a time in the bread of the Holy Communion.

as if it had the mysterious power of determining all questions at the opening of the book.1 It is not to be used as a cabalistic book, to determine from its words and letters, the structure of its sentences, mysterious guidance for the initiated alone.2 It is not to be used as an astrologer's horoscope, to discover from its wondrous symbolism, through seeming coincidences, the fulfilment of biblical prophecy in the events transpiring round about us or impending over us. The Bible is no such book as this. It is a book of life, a real book, a people's book. It is a blessed means of grace when used in devotional hours, it has also holy lessons and beauties of thought and sentiment for hours of leisure and recreation. It appeals to the æsthetic and intellectual as well as moral and spiritual faculties, the whole man in his whole life. Familiarity with the Bible is to be encouraged. It will not decrease, but rather enhance the reverence with which we ought to approach the Holy God in His Word. The Bible takes its place among the masterpieces of the world's literature. The use of it as such no more interferes with devotion than the beauty and grandeur of architecture and music prevent the adoration of God in the worship of a cathedral. Rather the varied forms of beauty, truth, and goodness displayed in the Bible will conspire to bring us to Him who is the centre and inspiration of them all.

2. The Study of the Bible is obstructed by sectarian partisanship. A sin against the Bible is often committed by the indiscriminate use of proof texts in dogmatic assertion and debate. These texts are hurled against one another by zealous partisans in controversy with such differences and inconsistency of interpretation as to excite the disgust of all openminded persons. It has become a proverb that anything can be proved from the Bible. Then again the Bible is too often used as a text-book of abstract definitions giving absolute truth. The Protestant Reformers threw aside the authority of the Church as the in

1 There are many sad instances of this misuse of the Bible. Doubtless there are cases in which there has apparently been good guidance, but there are others in which men and women have been misled to the ruin of themselves and other people. This method of resorting to a divine oracle is less likely to lead to faith and holiness than to disappointment, distrust of God, and eventual unbelief. 2 See Chap. XVIII. p. 432, for this method of using the Old Testament.

fallible interpreter of the Bible and refused to submit to the interpretation of the Fathers of the Church as final. They asserted the right of private judgment for themselves and others. But their successors established a Protestant rule of faith which became as tyrannical over private judgment as Roman tradition had ever been. Over against these abuses, we maintain that the Bible was not made for ecclesiastical dogmaticians and lawyers, but for the people of God. It gives the concrete in the forms and methods of literature. Its statements are ordinarily relative; they depend upon the context in which they are imbedded, the scope of the author's argument, his peculiar point of view, his type of thought, his literary style, his position in the unfolding of divine revelation. There are occasional passages so pregnant with meaning that they seem to present, as it were, the quintessence of the whole Bible. Such texts were called by Luther little bibles. But ordinarily, the texts can be properly understood only in their context. To detach them from their place and use them as if they stood alone, and deduce from them all that the words and sentences may be constrained to give, as absolute statements, is an abuse of logic and the Bible. Such a use of other books would be open to the charge of misrepresentation. Such a use of the Bible is an adding unto the Word of God new meanings and a taking away from it the true meaning. Against this we are warned by the Bible itself.1 Deduction, inference, and application may be used within due bounds, but they must always be based upon a correct apprehension of the text and context of the passage. These processes should be conducted with great caution, lest in transferring the thought to new conditions and circumstances, there be an insensible. assimilation first of its form and then of its content to these conditions and circumstances, and it become so transformed as to lose its biblical character and become a tradition of man. It is a melancholy feature of Biblical Study that so much attention must be given to the removal of the rubbish of traditional misconceptions and misinterpretations that has been heaped upon the Word of God continually just as in the times

1 Rev. 2218. 19.