The Bible and Life

by Edwin Holt Hughes

Various explanations are given. Some men say that the Bible is powerful because it has been promoted by a powerful organization. But this explanation needs explaining. How did the Bible secure the aid of this organization? Why did not the organization take the Dialogues of Plato and become the evangel of Socrates’ splendid wisdom? Why did it elect one particular volume? And what would have been the effect on its own life if it had chosen some other book? Would the writings of Marcus Aurelius or of Seneca, with their high moral grade and their marked religious insight, have served the holy purpose as effectively? When we attempt to substitute some other book in the Bible’s place, our hesitancy quickly passes on to positive refusal. The Christian Church, with any other volume as its textbook, is simply inconceivable.

Other men will say that the power of the Bible has come from its girding by a doctrine of authority. This explanation must likewise be explained. Could a Book without inherent authority be long maintained among intelligent peoples on the basis of artificial authority? Why is the Bible the best seller and the greatest worker in those lands where it has been set free to yield its own message? What is the peculiar quality in the Book that has saved any theory of its authority from appearing absurd? The Bible showed its power long before men adopted any theory of its power. Doubtless the claim of authority has increased the influence of the Book over certain types of minds. Still it may be confidently asserted that the claim of authority has depended far more on the power of the Bible than the power of the Bible has depended on the claim of authority. The effect should not be allowed to pass itself off as the main cause.

Nor does the power of the Bible depend upon mere bulk. Shakespeare wrote enough to make several Bibles. So did Scott. So did Dickens. So did Parkman. If the Bible is a moral and spiritual Encyclopedia, its material has been strangely condensed. It is a brief Book, yet out of its small compass men gather texts for fifty years of preaching and at the close of their life’s task feel that the pages are still exhaustless. The Bible has inspired literature far beyond its own bulk. It is a small library of books gathered from many authors, but it has filled great libraries with commentaries and sermons and discussions. Its brevities have provoked measureless pages of writing. The world is big, yet it is measurably ruled by a small Book.

It would seem likewise that a Book written so long ago would fail of the element of timeliness. That an old volume should keep its place in a new century is in itself an anomaly. The last of the Bible was penned hundreds of years since. Accepting the most radical views as to dates, its youngest book was produced quite more than a millennium and a half ago. Meanwhile the world has been making amazing progress. We boast of our achievements in transportation and communication. All ancient things seem to be outgrown, save only the Bible. The books that were written as contemporaries of parts of the great Book have either slipped into oblivion or are known to-day only by the intellectually elect. The classics are studied by a small circle of scholars. The average man knows nothing of Virgil, or Cicero, or Homer, by any direct contact with the works of those authors. But the Bible, which is out of date by the calendar, is not out of date by its own meaning. It is singularly contemporaneous. Its different portions were called forth by passing events and the Book itself is clearly touched by its own times. For all that, eternity appears to have lodged itself in its contemporaneousness. The twentieth century, eager and thrilling as it is, accepts a Guide Book from the distant years. Roman Law and Greek Art are filtered to the new age through modern channels. The Bible itself comes to us more simple and more powerful than any modern interpretations of its messages. There is a sense in which it declines to apply to itself its own figure of speech about the new wine in the old bottles.

The Bible defies geographical distance as well as calendar distance. For the most part its record relates to what happened in a small and remote section of the earth. It reaches its climax in an obscure province which was smaller than many a modern county. The customs of which it tells are mostly gone. Sandals and tents and camels and parchments are curiosities in the new lands and new times. Much of the setting of biblical events is wholly unknown to our day, and so must be reproduced for our children in pictures and for our adults in descriptions. An Oriental Book is the chief literature of an Occidental world.

In spite of its small size, its great age, its cramped geography, its vivid Orientalism, the Bible keeps its mastery. What is the explanation?

It must be that the Bible appeals to something fundamental in life itself. The final test of inspiration must, of course, be found in what the Bible does for life. A book that is not inspiring cannot be proved to be inspired. It cannot give what it does not have and it must surely have received what it gives. It would be a mistake, however, to confuse formal truthfulness with inspiring vitality. The description of a street scene, dealing with the passing relations of pedestrians, wagons, trees, birds, houses; the lengths and widths of sidewalks and streets; the figures of population; the social status of the various groups—all this may be told with exact and mathematical truthfulness. It may be correct and still not be inspired or inspiring. On the other hand, the parable of the prodigal son is a story which in its precise detail may represent something that never occurred. But it has impressed the world as both inspired and inspiring. Its words haunt and pierce and coax and subdue men. This indicates that a story given for a spiritual purpose shows more essential truthfulness than does a description given for formal exactness. The reason is that the parable appeals to something fundamental in life itself. The son and the father are ever with us. God and his children are the everlasting facts. The story is more true than is the description. This contrast represents the biblical trend. The Book penetrates through the husk to the kernel, through superficial facts to deepest truths, through passing events to eternal meanings. It is the Book of Life.

What gives the Bible this appeal? Whence did it secure its vital quality? The only reply is that the appeal to life must be born of life itself. Sometimes a bizarre explanation is given of the source of a religious volume, the assumption being that a human origin denies a divine origin. The more men have to do with its production, the less may we presume that God has touched the work. A curious illustration of this viewpoint is found in the claim for the Book of Mormon. The story is as follows: A heavenly visitant appeared to Joseph Smith and told him that in a certain place he would find the miracle book. Smith obeyed the directions and found in the place named a box of stone. In this box was a volume half a foot in thickness. It was written on thin plates of gold, and these plates were bound together by gold rings. The writing was in a strange language, but with the book was found a pair of miraculous eyeglasses which conferred the ability to read the pages. In other words the Book of Mormon was not born of human life under the guidance of the divine life. It was the product of a straight miracle, and the power to decipher its meaning came only by miracle. Such a theory of the origin is easy to understand, even though it may be difficult to believe. It represents the extreme form of that faith which minimizes the partnership of man with God in the making of all genuine gospels of life.

The incarnation was Man and God together. The church is being fashioned by man and God together; the Spirit and the Bride are colleagues. Worship is possible only when man and God are together in fellowship. If the Bible came by any method other than the coworking of man and God, its production would stand for a departure from the usual divine method. The power of the Bible, however, grows out of the fact that it is not an abnormal book, fantastically given to men. There is a humorous story of an old woman who was discovered in diligent study of the Hebrew alphabet. Asked why at her age she was beginning to learn so difficult a tongue, she made reply that when she died she desired to address the Almighty in his own language! There have been theories of the Bible that are scarcely caricatured by this tale. If there have been doctrines of the Book that made it the product of a lonely man, there have likewise been doctrines that made it the product of a lonely God. Neither doctrine is correct. The Bible grew out of human life that had been touched and glorified by the divine presence and power. Because it grew out of life it makes its appeal to its native element in life itself. It simply claims its own.

A review of the different parts of the Bible will show how true this statement is. Practically every book is localized and personalized. Something that happened among men called forth the writing. The names of the books in the Pentateuch show this fact. Genesis treats of the origins of the earth and of man, and is an answer to the inevitable question that springs in the human mind. Exodus treats of the going forth of the Hebrew people from their Egyptian bondage. Leviticus is a description and discussion of the Levitical rules. Deuteronomy is a second giving of the Law and an enlargement of its sphere as well as an enforcement of its precepts. The Ten Commandments make a human document because their sole aim is to ennoble and protect human life.