The wrong use of the Bible
Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness.—2 Timothy, III, 16.
The Unreal Bible is fading upon the vision of our age. You have probably all perceived this more or less clearly. I have uttered the conviction which many of you have held in secret with misgivings and self-reproaches, and have shown you some of the many reasons why, as it seems to me, this view can no longer be held by men of open minds. The Real Bible is as yet vaguely seen, and, therefore, its power is feebly felt. According to their natures men are indulging in flippant flings at a vanished superstition, or grieving silently over the disappearance of the ancient light which ruled the night of earth. I have sought to clear your vision of the new moon rising upon us, the same holy light God set in the heavens of old, though changed in the altered atmosphere of earth.
I propose now to translate the generalities of the previous sermons into some practical applications. I want to-day to make more distinct certain wrong uses of the Bible which grow out of the old view of it; wrong uses from which great mischiefs have come to the cause of true religion, and great trouble to individual souls; abuses which fall away in the light of a more reasonable understanding of the Bible. The Bible viewed as a book let down from heaven, whose real "author" is God, as the Westminster Catechism affirmed; a book dictated to chosen penman and written out by their amanuenses under a direction which secured them against error on every subject of which they treated; a book thus given to the world to be an authoratitive and infallible oracle for human information on all the great problems of life—naturally calls for uses which, apart from this theory, are gross and superstitious abuses.