The Magical Chance

by Dallas Lore Sharp

Perhaps that is not a life human enough, and abundant enough, for a book. It is the simple story of a poor boy picking stones and building walls on his father’s farm in New York State; then, as Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, rebuilding “The Wall of Nehemiah”; then, as scholar and professor, re-creating “The World before Abraham”; and finally, as the storm center of one of the bitterest theological controversies of recent years, dismissed, dishonored, betrayed for less than thirty pieces of silver, a silent, brokenhearted man. It is only another version of an old and very common story. Prophets and pioneers are all alike; and their stories are much alike, whether the pages turn westward, where new empires take their way, or eastward, back along the scholar’s crossed and tangled trails to a world before Abraham.

As the manuscript of the book lay upon my table, I wondered if any publisher would feel the human pathos of the struggle, and the mighty meaning of it all for truth. Who would publish it? But here it is, printed and bound, a book—“For the Benefit of My Creditors,” as if he were debtor to all, his enemies included, and owed them only love.

This is as modest and self-withholding a story as a man ever told of himself. There are all too few of such human stories. This one would never have been told had the author not hated intellectual cowardice as he hated moral cowardice, with a perfect hatred. He sought the truth—in the Bible, and in his own mind. The geologist seeks some of the same truth in the rocks; the astronomer in the stars. The Old Testament was this scholar’s field. And, laying aside tradition and the spirit of dogma, he sought as a scientist seeks, patiently, fearlessly, reverently, for what his long and thorough preparation made him eminently able to find.

This is the highest type of courage and daring. Who finds truth finds trial and adventure. In his condemnation by the bishops of his Church, he felt that truth had been assailed and the scientific method. He did not write this book to defend the truth, nor to defend himself; but to examine himself, as he would examine a difficult fragment of Hebrew manuscript, and make himself easy for other men to read.

His trial was long past, and most of his life had been lived, before a page of his book was written. He came at it reluctantly: he might seem personal—petty or selfish or egotistical; or he might say something bitter and vindictive and do harm to the Church. But neither himself nor his Church must stand in the way of truth; and in his trial, truth had been tried, and the only way of knowing truth had been condemned. So he sits down to write this story of his life exactly as he sat down to write a commentary on the Book of Genesis—to account for his being as a man and a scholar, his preparation, his methods of study, his attitude, and approach.

How much truth has he discovered? He makes no claims. Darwin may or may not have the truth about Evolution; but we have a certain and a great truth in Darwin—in his mind and method. It was how Darwin tried to solve the problem of life and its forms, rather than the solution, that has changed the thinking of the world.

For three years I was a student of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis under this scholar. I have forgotten all he taught me, and more. But the way he taught me has changed forever my outlook upon life. His attitude was truth, and it flooded not only the whole mind, but one’s whole being, with light. Many a time I have sat in his classroom during the discussion of some highly difficult and dangerous question of doctrine, and said to myself, amid the drawn daggers of those who had come to trap him, “Right or wrong his findings, he is himself truth, its life and way.”

Life enough for a book? He could have written a book on teaching. For he loved to teach! He loved to teach young preachers. He could not preach; but he was the teacher born. The classroom was his from the foundation of the world. Here he was preaching truly—from a thousand future pulpits at the very ends of the earth. He saw his students scattered over the whole world preaching to the intelligences of men as well as to their hearts; revealing the wisdom as well as the love of God; and expounding a diviner Bible because it was a wholly human Bible. In all of these pulpits he heard himself speaking with tongues not his own, but the message was his own, the simple sincere faith of his classroom.

The thought of it thrilled him. It lifted him up. He dwelt in the presence of the opportunity as in the very presence of the Most High. As humble a man as ever lived, doubting his every power and gift, and relying only on the truth to make him free, he would come into the classroom and take his chair on the six-inch platform, which raised him by so much above his students, as if that platform were the Mount of Transfiguration. His face would shine; his voice, his gestures, his attitude working with his careful words, made his whole being radiant with zeal for the truth and love for us, his students, so mysteriously given to his care.

Then suddenly, after more than twenty years of this, he was expelled—driven from this sacred classroom and branded as unsound, unsafe, unfit!