Again I hear a voice from the pews—Who then save a scholar is competent for such a use of the Bible? I answer—No one, except a pupil of the scholars. The scholars have placed within our reach the results of such a critical study of the Bible. You can find the rational guidance you may desire in the manuals which set forth the conclusions of these critical processes; though you must painfully feel, as I do, the lack of the religious tone in some of them. A crying need of our day is a Hand Book to the Bible in which the new critical knowledge shall blend, as it may blend, with the old spiritual reverence.
One should not rise from such a study of the Bible as we have made to-day, in its merely literary aspects, without a new, strange sense of awe before this mystic Book. It is the handiwork of no one man, of no group of men, of no period. It is an organic product, the growth of a whole people the coralline structure builded by a nation. Hands innumerable have toiled over these pages. Voices indistinguishable now, in blended chorus from the dawn of history, have joined in the cry of the human after God which whispers upon us from this sacred phonograph.
Successive generations of men, struggling with sin, striving for purity, searching after God, have exhaled their spirits into the essence of religion, which is treasured in this costly vase. The moral forces of centuries, devoted to righteousness, are stored in this exhaustless reservoir of ethical energy. At such cost, my brothers, has Humanity issued this sacred book. From such patience of preparation has Providence laid this priceless gift before you. In such labor of articulation—spelling out the syllables of the message from on high, through multitudinous lives of men dutifully and devoutly walking with their God—does the Spirit speak to you, O, soul of man. Say thou—
Speak Lord; thy servant heareth!
It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated the only question is; Is it true in and for itself?
Hegel: "Philosophy of History," Part III.: Sec. III.: Ch. II.
With reference to things in the Bible, the question whether they are genuine or spurious is odd enough. What is genuine but that which is truly excellent, which stands in harmony with the purest nature and reason, and which even now ministers to our highest development? What is spurious but the absurd and the hollow, which brings no fruit—at least, no good fruit.
Goethe: "Conversations," March 11,1832.
No article of faith is injured by allowing that there is no such positive proof, when or by whom these and some other books of holy Scripture were written, as to exclude all possibility of doubt and cavil.
Watson's "Apology for the Bible," Letter IV.