The Bible and Life

by Edwin Holt Hughes

The great difficulty in the use of the Bible has come from wrenching it from this main purpose. Confusion is sure to arise whenever any volume is employed apart from its primary intent. If one wishes to learn mathematics, and his foolish teacher shall give him a book of music, the result is not edifying. The pages of the book may be properly numbered, and the scales of music may be denoted by the correct fractions; but mathematics represents a thoroughly subordinate purpose, and the volume does not lead easily on to Calculus. The result is even more confusing if the arithmetic be handed to a pupil who wishes to study versification. The multiplication table may look like verses when seen at some distance; still the arithmetic’s main intent is not the teaching of poetry. The illustrations of possible confusion could be taken from all fields. The common sense of the race saves it from the blunder of misapplying the most of its books. The Bible, however, has been subjected to misapplication because the theory of its infallibility has often been made to cover a wide, not to say a universal, range. The student who goes to the Bible with a purpose that is mainly historical, or scientific, or geographical, or genealogical, or mathematical, or even poetical and literary, may not find all his wishes gratified. But the student who seeks its pages under a profound sense of God and with an equally profound will to do God’s will is certain to find material for all his moral and spiritual ambitions.

Consequently when the religious attitude toward the Bible is changed into a professional or critical or debating attitude, the Book is deflected from its intent. Doubtless we must have in the realm of scholarship some men who give themselves to a technical discussion of the Bible. These men may be charged with the duty of recovering portions of the Book to reality; and they may have an important, but secondary, relation to its primary purpose. Nevertheless their attitude is not the final one. It would be useless to deny that the last generation has witnessed a changed attitude toward the Holy Scriptures. One result has been that two camps have been formed, and that doughty champions of a view have sallied forth from each camp to do warfare. The missiles have been verbal. Sometimes they have been abusive. Each champion has believed himself a David and his opponent a Goliath. The unprejudiced observer of the conflict has had difficulty in deciding which champion has been most guilty of a wrong spirit. The conservative has called the progressive various names, infidel, atheist, destroyer, betrayer, a successor of Judas in spirit and of Celsus in method! The progressive has responded in kind and has named the conservative a reactionary, an intellectual coward, a defender of a discredited theory, a foe of liberty, and a traitor to the truth. The conservative has often become a spiritual Pharisee and has ruled the progressive out of court on the ground that the progressive lacked piety, while the progressive has often become an intellectual Pharisee and has ruled the conservative out of court on the ground that the conservative lacked scholarship. There have, of course, been conspicuous instances of breadth and catholicity on both sides, but occasionally the spirit of the contest has not tended to exalt the mood of the contestants or to glorify the divine Book.

The results of such a spirit could easily be predicted: they cannot make for edification. If we list on one side the radical conservatives and on the other side the radical progressives, we shall discover an evangelical helplessness in both lists. In each case a conception of the Bible supplants the purpose of the Bible. The champion defends a doctrine more than he promotes a life. The apologist overcomes the preacher. The theorist destroys the evangelist. All this is not a denial that the speculative emphasis has its place. The defender of the faith will always have his place. Usually he must work in the background, in some point of scholarly retreat. The pastor and preacher who goes into a community with the idea that his main mission is to promote a special view of inspiration is doomed to failure, while he who goes into a community with the idea that his main mission is to preach the salvation of the Bible as it climaxes in Christ cannot fail utterly. There are conservatives and progressives whose ministry is pitiably weak, and there are progressives and conservatives whose ministry is grandly strong. The difference comes from the point of emphasis. If a man is more anxious to prove that Moses was the sole author of the Pentateuch than he is to prove that Jesus is the sole author of salvation, his ministry will answer to his own emphasis. If a man is more anxious to prove that there were two Isaiahs than he is to show that there is one only name given among men whereby we may be saved, his ministry will be no more important than is his contention. The primary purpose of the Bible is not the revelation of the single authorship of one of its sections or the dual authorship of one of its books; its primary purpose is to declare that One is our Master, even Christ.

It must be plain that, as the divine revelation of the Bible culminates in a Life, so the human intent of the Bible can culminate only in lives. The purpose of the Bible is met in Practice. If we adopt the military figure of life, the Bible is a weapon given to men for moral warfare. Sometimes in its own pages the Word of God is presented under the figure of a Sword. The writers could not have had in mind the Scriptures as we have them now; but the principle applies to every revelation by which God seeks to bring men to the understanding and doing of his own will. When Isaiah felt divine messages burning in his heart he said, “He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword.” The writer of Hebrews took the same nervous metaphor and wrote, “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow.” Paul in his description of the Christian armor speaks of “The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” It may not be amiss, then, to take this highly authorized figure of speech and to employ it once again—not claiming, of course, that our particular applications were in the thought of the first users. The point is that under the ancient military system the sword had its main intent, and that it never did its real work as long as it was divorced from that intent. There were wrong uses of the sword, and there were secondary uses of the sword; and there was but one primary use of the sword.

We can conceive of an actual sword as being used in different ways by different people. A robber seizes it, defends himself against just arrest, and slashes the representatives of a righteous law. Evidently the sword was not made for that purpose. The sportsman takes the sword, tests its handle, polishes its blade, tries its resiliency, purchases a manual of arms, secures the best teacher, drills himself in its use. On holidays he wears a flashy uniform, marches through the streets, waves the glittering thing over his head, and so makes it an instrument of personal flourish. This use is not evil, but it does not stand for the weapon’s first intent. A third man, with a more serious mien, secures the sword. He is enlisted in the militia, and the time may come when it will be necessary for him to go into real war. He tests its handle and polishes its blade; he studies the manual of arms; he seeks the best masters; he practices its use through many months. When the time of war actually comes this man draws the sword from its scabbard and goes out to do service in his country’s cause. The primary purpose of the sword is met only in this earnest use.

The three men may represent three classes in their attitudes toward the Bible. The Bible is often used for defense in immoralities. It is often used as a means of that cheap skill that comes near to personal display. It is often used for spiritual defense and warfare. The robber’s use is evil. The parader’s use is secondary. The warrior’s use is primary.

Many illustrations of the immoral use of the Bible could be given. In the story of the temptation of Jesus the devil is pictured as a user of the Scriptures, and he has not been without his followers in an unholy use of a holy record. The Bible covers a wide range of thought and experience. It tells of all manner of sins. It deals with all classes of characters. It presents the lives of bad men who were sometimes good, and of good men who were occasionally bad, and of other men who were quite steadily bad or good. Thus the Bible gives us all sorts of examples. The record, distorted and misapplied, may be made to justify the baldest of sins. In matters of questionable morality men are ever ready to appeal to the divine Book, and even for actions condemned by all enlightened moral judgment the Bible is sometimes summoned as an advocate. There is scarcely a sin which has not had a passage of Scripture presented as its excuse. Men have justified rash murder on the ground that Moses killed the cruel Egyptian taskmaster. As was shown in a previous chapter the practices of the patriarchs have been quoted, even in the halls of Congress, as a warrant for bigamy and polygamy. Men in the midst of unreasoning anger have condoned their madness by reciting the words, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Jesus himself named to the Jews a sacrilegious misuse of a Bible phrase by which heartless children excused themselves from filial duties. Illustrations might be given touching almost every phase of personal life. Even as in old days the wicked sometimes fled to a city of refuge, so now do men caught in an evil mood hide themselves behind a biblical rampart.

In larger social matters this use of the Bible has been fully as striking. Human slavery felt secure within a scriptural fortress. Wilberforce and Clarkson in England, and Garrison and Phillips in America were compelled to reply to biblical arguments. Charles Sumner, at a meeting in Massachusetts, spent an entire evening in replying to a pro-slavery discussion based on Paul’s letter to Philemon, arriving duly at the conviction that the only logical and religious result of the apostle’s words to Philemon would be the freeing of slaves in the name of Christian brotherhood. So pieces of Mosaic legislation and scraps of Pauline regulation were used to conceal the Golden Rule and the law of fraternity. It is easy to observe here, too, that as men advance in ethical life this use of the Bible ceases. Doubtless in twenty years no one has heard the Bible quoted in behalf of slavery. Yet the biblical argument would serve quite as well for reinstating slavery as it did for continuing slavery. The argument dies not only because the moral consciousness of man lives, but also because the moral judgment of man perceives that the general principles of the Bible are utterly opposed to human slavery. The man who proposed to bring the bondage of men back into the social life of the world by means of the biblical argument would be deemed as much an anachronism as his method of debate.

This same evil use of the Bible proceeds to-day among the opponents of the temperance reform. Our debate with the saloonist or brewer or wine maker never goes far ere we are told of biblical examples of drinking, as well as that Christ turned water into wine in his first miracle at Cana of Galilee. Saloon keepers have framed and have placed upon the walls of their alluring palaces Paul’s advice to Timothy, “Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, and thine often infirmities.” They do not quote the verdict that wine is a mocker, with a bite like that of a serpent and a sting like that of an adder—the cause of woes and sorrows and redness of eyes; nor the pronouncement that no drunkard can inherit the Kingdom; nor the condemnation laid upon him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor’s lips. Nor do they put forward the inevitable drift of Paul’s law of charity which commands men to do naught that will make their brothers to offend. Nor yet do they heed the sure drift of the Bible’s teaching as it comes to its crown in Christ himself. The man who would claim that Jesus would approve the modern traffic in intoxicating liquors would convict himself of amazing perversity and ignorance. There are increasing evidences that the Master of life is now finding an effective use for his whip of cords and that there is beginning a retreat greater than that of the ancient thieves and dove sellers. The time will come when men will marvel that an attempt was ever made to use the Bible as a foundation for the trade in alcoholics.

In Scott’s Ivanhoe there is given an example of this misuse of the Bible, as well as an example of its effective rebuke. Rebecca the Jewess is beautiful in person, as she is in character. Brian de Bois-Guilbert is a member of the Order of the Holy Temple. He is a dashing, handsome, hypocritical crusader, both a military and a moral adventurer. He turns his lewd eye toward Rebecca. She stands by an open window, ready to throw herself to death upon the rocks far beneath rather than to submit herself to his wickedness. To justify his black intention Guilbert mentions the conduct of David and Solomon, and then says to the tempted one, “The protectors of Solomon’s Temple may claim license by the example of Solomon.” The beautiful woman makes a worthy retort, one that deserves frequent repetition: “If thou readest the Scriptures and the lives of the saints only to justify thine own license and profligacy, thy crime is like that of him who extracts poison from the most helpful herbs.” No honest person can believe in Guilbert’s use of the Bible; nor can any honest person escape the truth of Rebecca’s reply. The murderer’s, the bigamist’s, the slaveholder’s, the rum-seller’s, the sensualist’s method of employing the Bible is the final blasphemy against the Holy Word. The robbers of life simply steal the sword of the Spirit in order that they may use it in the service of hell. Wolves in sheep’s clothing and devils clad in the livery of heaven are apt figures of speech for the description of this perversity. The Bible itself speaks of those who wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction!