The second use of the sword moves into the realm of the legitimate, but not into the realm of the final. Expert swordsmanship is no crime, even as it is not the highest morality. The Bible has long been one of the favorite fields of the critical scholar. Very often the search has been for technical truth rather than for vital truth. Heated discussions have related to questions of dates and authorship. These questions are not to be ruled out as useless. Sometimes technical truth gives the vital truth of the Bible a setting that makes it more forceful and persuasive. It was inevitable that both the higher critics and their opponents would sometimes go to great extremes—the critics to an idolatry of intellect, their opponents to an idolatry of literalness. We must all have been impressed that at times when the spiritual battle has been intense the warriors have stepped aside from the main conflict in order that they might discuss how and when and by whom the Sword and its parts were fashioned!
We may change the figure of speech for a moment and modify for the present purpose a borrowed illustration. A man finds a casket buried deeply in his yard. The vessel appears to have been constructed a long time ago. It bears upon its sides characters that are difficult of translation. There is even doubt as to the nature of the metal. The man summons the other members of the family. They open the vessel and discover that it is filled with gold. At once a warm dispute begins over several questions. Who made the casket? When was it made? How many persons took part in its fashioning and its filling? From what precise mintage did the coins come? What is the meaning of the peculiar hieroglyphics found upon its sides? Are all the coins of equal value? Whose images are stamped upon them? The debaters become excited over these mooted matters. At last one sensible member of the family suggests that it is apparent that by right of finding this particular household owns the casket; that the needs of the members are many; that the gold, even though the coinage be ancient, can be turned to modern use; that the questions which they are debating can be settled only by metallurgists and historians and philologists, if they are to be settled at all; and that, pending the settlement of incidental issues, the wants of the family may be richly met by appropriating the contents of the casket! The illustration scarcely needs any interpretation. It surely does represent the attitude which the devout and obedient heart may take in this period toward the Holy Book. The ancient casket that we call the Bible is full of treasures. This much lies beyond doubt or debate. While the learned philologists and historians and exegetes surround the casket and try to ascertain the dates of its parts, the names of its authors, the meaning of its obscurities, the family of God may continue to draw on its exhaustless treasures. Nor are there wanting signs that more and more our age is adjusting itself to this reverent and practical use of the Word of God, and that Professor Dobschütz rightly contends in his new volume that the Bible is again becoming the Book of Devotion.
There is likewise what we might well call the “lowest” criticism—the spirit that uses the Bible as a volume of puzzles rather than as a volume of directions. Many a man has spent more time in speculating about where Cain got his wife than he has in trying to find out how to make his own wife happy. Many a man has spent more time in trying to find out about the Witch of Endor as an excuse for his consulting some vulgar fortune-teller of modern time than he has spent in trying to learn the will and secure the guidance of the good and wise God. Many a man has spent more time in discussing Melchizedek, who had neither ancestors nor descendants, than he has spent in trying to learn from the Bible how he himself may honor his forbears and may train his own children in righteousness. Many a man has been so piqued by curiosity about the exact nature of Saint Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” as to forget the teaching that the grace of God can make us equal to any burden and torment of life. The men of this type will not allow the Bible the use of hyperbole. When it suits their contentious mood they become strict literalists. Even though they themselves may declare that it is “raining pitchforks” or that the waves are dashing “mountain high,” they will insist that Christ’s words about the two coats and the two cloaks and the two miles are not the strong urging of much forbearance and generosity, but the counsel of literal folly. Meanwhile the certainties and duties of the Bible outnumber its riddles and its curiosities many-fold. The importunate call to holy practice ceases not. From each of a thousand passages of the Good Book there issues a patient rebuke for the curiosity monger, “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”
This leads us to the third use of the sword as seen in our illustration. The gallant soldier took the weapon and used it in harmony with its intent. So the Bible should be employed preeminently as a means of spiritual defense and warfare. The Scriptures are profitable, not for immoral justification, not for mere criticism however exact and searching, not for the solving of superficial riddles, but “for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” To go to the Bible with the motive revealed in these great words is to recover the Bible to its divine purpose as the book of human practice. Such a motive lifts the volume above any mere literary or historical aspects. There is, for example, the oft-quoted story about Benjamin Franklin’s experience at the Court of France. He was passing an evening with a company of cultured ladies and gentlemen. The conversation turned to the subject of Oriental life. Franklin read aloud to the company the book of Ruth. Struck by the beautiful simplicity and spirit of the narrative, his hearers expressed their delight and desired to know in what book the charming pastoral could be found! It is safe to say that these men and women needed the lesson of fidelity in the book of Ruth far more than they needed the sense of its literary merit.
We must always return to the idea that the key to the Bible is the deeply religious instinct and motive. Nothing else will really open its pages. Nor does the Bible herein wholly differ from other literature. There are men and women so thoroughly cultivated on the so-called practical side of their natures that it would be punishment for them to read Whittier, or Longfellow, or Lowell, or Tennyson for a full hour. The demands of business or social life have killed the poetic impulse. So many persons may crush from their natures the religious instinct and then wonder why the Bible does not appeal to them! The truth seems to be that a person gets from the Bible about what he seeks. It takes divinely opened eyes to see the wondrous things in the law. The psalmist, therefore, prayed that the change might come over himself rather than over the parchment. The way to illumine the sacred page was to illumine him. The Book may lie in a great light, but what can the Book do for a man with closed eyes? Seneca tells of an idiot child in his home who, becoming blind, insisted always that the room was dark! Herein is another parable.
It is only this disposition of the seeing eye and the obedient hand that can bring the Bible to us in its main purpose. Having this disposition we shall not suffer ourselves to be lured into interesting byways. We shall have a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. Our spiritual purpose will defeat all needless criticism and all needless dissection. Having this purpose, we will turn to the early chapters of Genesis. Instead of debating whether in a literal garden Adam and Eve were tempted by a literal serpent to the eating of literal fruit, and were driven through a literal gate, while a literal angel with a literal flame running along a literal blade guarded against reentrance, we shall be moved by the thought that we have lifted ourselves in puny rebellion against God, and that we have gone forth from our place of innocence, and that the third chapter of Genesis recounts the essential history of our souls. Having this religious purpose, we shall read the story of Job with a view to securing its spiritual lesson. We shall not permit any critical arguer to confine us to the question of the historicity of Job himself. We shall rather lay hold of the teaching of that marvelous book, with its colossal debate, and we shall see that, whether the book be a history or a parable or an allegory, it drives crushing suspicion from the world by teaching that suffering is not always the result of sin, and brings cheerful trust into the world by teaching that afflictions bravely endured must have their reward. The man who back in that dim and far age got hold of the teaching of the book of Job must have somehow caught the inspiration of God himself. The common ground in all these mooted portions of Scripture is really a large and wealthy place; but only a common spiritual purpose will ever bring conservatives and progressives together in the knowledge and peace of God.
One almost hesitates to discuss the book of Jonah in this connection because petty debates have robbed it of much of its deeper meaning. The nature of the book doubtless lies beyond earthly settlement. Whether we declare that Jonah’s journey was as historical as those of Saint Paul, or that it was as parabolic as the journey of the prodigal son, we can find no sure end of the debate. But all the while the teaching of the book waits for our obedience. The individual lesson seems to be that whenever a man turns his ship from the Nineveh of duty toward the Tarshish of pleasure he will directly come to rough and perilous seas. In other words, the man who flees from his God-assigned work sooner or later gets into trouble. The missionary lesson is just as plain. Back yonder in a time of racial narrowness, some one caught the inspiration from God and declared that the Lord of all the earth cared for all the people of the earth. The infinite love traveled beyond all our little boundaries. The personal lesson and the missionary lesson of the book of Jonah are sufficient to keep individuals and churches busy for a thousand years to come. The spirit with which we approach the book of Jonah will decide whether we shall become petty debaters, or men and women with dutiful purpose and missionary zeal.
The conclusion is that when we seek the Bible with the motive of holy practice we never meet with disappointment. The religious purpose saves the Book for us and saves us by the Book. This purpose will likewise bring us face to face with the Hero of the Divine Word. Other sacred literatures may offer us high moral precepts, and they may occasionally give us glimpses of spiritual ideals. But one Book alone gives us Christ. One Book alone reveals the Redeemer. The climax of practice to which the Scriptures call us is the following of Christ. In all our studies in these chapters we have found that the supreme lessons centered in his teaching and in his example. The Man, the Home, the School, the Workshop, the Market Place, the Playground, and the Hospital all wait upon him for their guidance and their warning. But Jesus is more than the way and the truth; he is the Life. He is more than the Exemplar of Practice; he is the Helper in Practice. He walks the pages of the Bible even as he walked the ancient paths, and his disciples may still say, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Other sacred books may offer revelations of morality; the Bible offers the revelation of a Saviour. The Bible is not its own goal. Jesus is the end of its revelation. The devout in all ages have been ready to use the heart of the verse of a familiar hymn:
Beyond the sacred page,
I seek thee, Lord;
My spirit pants for thee,
Thou living Word.
If men seek the Exemplar who will give them a goal for their practice, they find such an Exemplar in the Christ of the Bible. If they seek the Inspirer who will give them a longing for the perfect practice, they will find that Inspirer in the Christ of the Bible. If men seek the Saviour who will help them on to the perfect practice, they will find that Helper in the Christ of the Bible.