It is but a step from the consideration of the critical methods in biblical study to that of the historical methods in the broader sense. Many students who are out of patience with the more narrowly critical processes maintain that the broader historical methods are of vast value in biblical discussion. Here, again, we must admit the large measure of justice in the claim. We can see at once that the same reservations must be made as in the case of the critical methods. The assumptions play a determining part. If we are on our guard against any tricks that assumptions may play, we can eagerly expect the historical methods to aid us greatly.
We have come to see that any revelation to be really a revelation must speak in the language of a particular time. But speaking in the language of a particular time implies at the outset very decided limitations. The prophets who arise to proclaim any kind of truth must clothe their ideas in the thought terms of a particular day and can accomplish their aims only as they succeed in leading the spiritual life of their day onward and upward. Such a prophet will accommodate himself to the mental and moral and religious limitations of the time in which he speaks. Only thus can he get a start. It is inevitable, then, that along with the higher truth of his message there will appear the marks of the limitations of the mold in which the message is cast. The prophet must take what materials he finds at hand, and with these materials direct the people to something higher and better. Furthermore, in the successive stages through which the idea grows we must expect to find it affected by all the important factors which in any degree determine its unfolding. The first stage in understanding the Scriptures is to learn what a writer intended to say, what he meant for the people of his day. To do this we must rely upon the methods which we use in any historical investigation. The Christian student of the Scriptures believes that the Bible contains eternal truths for all time, truths which are above time in their spiritual values. Even so, however, the truth must first be written for a particular time and that time the period in which the prophet lived. When the Christian speaks of the Scriptures as containing a revelation for all time, he refers to their essential spiritual value. The best way to make that essential spiritual value effective for the after times is to sink it deep into the consciousness of a particular time. This gives it leverage, or focus for the outworking of its forces. No matter how limited the conceptions in which the spiritual richness first took form, those conceptions can be understood by the students who look back through the ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out with perennial freshness. Paradoxical as it may sound, the truths which are of most value for all time are those which first get themselves most thoroughly into the thought and feeling of some one particular time. Let us look at the opening chapters of Genesis for illustration. The historical student points out to us that the science of the first chapters of Genesis is not peculiar to the Hebrew people, that substantially similar views of the stages through which creation moved are to be found in the literatures of surrounding peoples. A well-known type of student would therefore seek at one stroke to bring the first chapters of Genesis down to the level of the scriptures of the neighbors of the Hebrews. He would then discount all these narratives alike by reference to modern astronomy, geology, and biology. But the difference between the Hebrew account and the other accounts lies in this, that in the Hebrew statement the science of a particular time is made the vehicle of eternally superb moral and spiritual conceptions concerning man and concerning man's relation to the Power that brought him into being. The worth of these conceptions even in that early statement few of us would be inclined to question. Assuming that any man or set of men became in the old days alive to the value of such religious ideas, how could they speak them forth except in the language of their own day? They had to speak in their own tongue, and speaking in that tongue they had to use the thought terms expressed by that tongue. They accepted the science of their day as true, and they utilized that science for the sake of bodying forth the moral and spiritual insights to which they had attained. The inadequacy of early Hebrew science and its likeness to Babylonian and Chaldean science do not invalidate the worth of the spiritual conceptions of Genesis. This ought to be apparent even to the proverbial wayfaring man. The loftiest spiritual utterances are often clad in the poorest scientific draperies. Who would dare deny the worth of the great moral insights of Dante? And who, on the other hand, would insist upon the lasting value of the science in which his deep penetrations are uttered? And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has shown the nature of the material universe as pictured in Milton's "Paradise Lost." In passing from heaven to hell one would descend from an upper to a lower region of a sphere, passing through openings at the centers of other concentric spheres on the way down. Nothing more foreign to modern science can be imagined; yet we do not cast aside "Paradise Lost" because of the crudity of its view of the physical system.
Assuming that the biblical prophets were to have any effect whatever, in what language could they speak except that of their own time? Their position was very similar to that of the modern preacher who uses present-day ideas of the physical universe as instruments to proclaim moral and spiritual values. Nobody can claim that modern scientific theories are ultimate, and nobody can deny, on the other hand, that vast good is done in the utilization of these conceptions for high religious purposes.
A minister once sought in a sermon on the marvels of man's constitution to enforce his conceptions by speaking of the instantaneousness with which a message flashed to the brain through the nervous system is heeded and acted upon. He said that the touch of red-hot iron upon a finger-tip makes a disturbance which is instantly reported to the brain for action. A scientific hearer was infinitely disgusted. He said that all such disturbances are acted upon in the spinal cord. He could see no value, therefore, even in the main point of the minister's sermon because of the minister's mistaken conception of nervous processes. I suppose very few of us know whether this scientific objection was well taken or not. Very few of us, however, would reject the entire sermon because of an erroneous illustration; and yet sometimes all the essentials of the Scriptures are discounted because of flaws no more consequential than that suggested in this illustration. The Scriptures aim to declare a certain idea of God, a certain idea of man, and a certain idea of the relations between God and man. Those ideas are clothed in the garments of successive ages. The change in the fashions and adequacy of the garments does not make worthless the living truth which the garments clothe. Jesus himself lived deeply in his own time and spoke his own language and worked through the thought terms which were part of the life of his time. Some biblical readers have been greatly disturbed in recent years by the discovery of the part which so-called apocalyptic thought-forms play in the teaching of Jesus. The fact is that these conceptions were the commonest element in all later Jewish thinking. Jesus could not have lived when he did without making apocalyptic terms the vehicle for his doctrines. We have come to see that the manner of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus is not so important as the character of that kingdom.
Not only must a prophet speak in the language of a definite time, but he must speak to men as he finds them. This being so, we must expect that revelations will in a sense be accommodated to the apprehension of the day of their utterance. The minds of men are in constant movement. If the prophet were to have before him minds altogether at a standstill, he might well despair of accomplishing great results by his message. He would be forced to think of the intelligence of this day as a sort of vessel which he could fill with so much and no more. But whether the prophets have through the ages had any theoretic understanding of human intelligence as an organism or not, they have acted upon the assumption that they were dealing with such organisms. So they have conceived of their truth as a seed cast into the ground, passing through successive stages. Jesus himself spoke of the kingdom of God as moving out of the stage of the blade into that of the ear and finally into that of the full corn in the ear. This illustration is our warrant for insisting that in the enforcing of truth all manner of factors come into play and that the truth passes through successive epochs, some of which may seem to later believers very unpromising and unworthy. The test of the worth of an idea is not so much any opinion as to the unseemliness of the stages through which it has passed as it is the value of the idea when once it has come to ripeness. The test of the grain is its final value for food. The scriptural truths are to be judged by no other test than that of their worth for life.
In the light of the teaching of Jesus himself there is no reason why we should shrink from stating that the revelation of biblical truth is influenced by even the moral limitations of men. Jesus said that an important revelation to man was halted at an imperfect stage because of the hardness of men's hearts. The Mosaic law of divorce was looked upon by Jesus as inadequate. The law represented the best that could be done with hardened hearts. The author of the Practice of Christianity, a book published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how the hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the "tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness and unresponsiveness which the prophet must meet, we can see how such an element would condition and limit the prophet.
Again, Jesus said to his disciples that he had many things to say to them, but that they could not bear them at the time at which he spoke. Some revelations must wait for moral strength on the part of the people to whom they are to come. Suppose, for example, in this year of our Lord 1917, some scientist should discover a method of touching off explosives from a great distance by wireless telegraphy without the need of a specially prepared receiver at the end where the explosion is desired. Suppose it were possible for him simply to press a button and blow up all the ships of the British Navy, or all the stores of munitions in Germany. What would be the first duty of such an inventor? Very likely it would be his immediate duty to keep the secret closely locked in his own mind. If such a discovery were made known to European combatants in their present temper, it is a question what would be left on earth at the end of the next twenty-four hours. With European minds in their present moral and spiritual plight it would not be safe to trust them with any such revelation. And this illustration has significance for more than the physical order of revelation. There are principles for individual and social conduct that may well be put into effect one hundred years from now. Men are not now morally fit to receive some revelations. All of which means that any revealing movement is a progressive movement in that it depends upon not merely the utterances of the revealing mind, but upon the response of the receiving mind. In the play back and forth between giver and receiver all sorts of factors come into power. The study of the interplay of these factors is entirely worthy as an object of Christian research. We may well be thankful for any advance thus far made in such study and we may look for greater advances in the future. For example, the historic students thus far have put in most of their effort laying stress upon similarities between the biblical conceptions and the conceptions of the peoples outside the current of biblical revelation. The work has been of great value. Nevertheless it would seem to be about time for larger emphasis on the differences between the biblical revelations and the conceptions outside.
Still when all is said the mastery of historical methods of study is but preliminary to the real understanding of the Scriptures. If we come close to the revealing movement itself, we find that before we get far into the stream there must be sympathetic responsiveness to biblical teaching. The difficulties in understanding the Scriptures are, as of old, not so much of the intellect as they are of conscience and will—the difficulties, in a word, that arise from the hardness of men's hearts.