A message may be perfectly true while the material used to convey the message may be mixed with error. For instance, I once used an illustration in electricity to make plain a deep spiritual truth, and the evidences were unmistakable that my purpose was realized. However, on the way home my little son said, "Oh, papa, I was awfully ashamed of you to-day, you made a mistake in your electricity." Convinced that I was wrong I said, "It is too bad." Then he tried to comfort me by saying, "Oh, well, I don't suppose that more than two-thirds of the people knew the difference." Nothing could have been more true than the religious idea I was trying to elucidate. Those who did not notice my error in my electricity, in addition to getting the idea, thought the illustration a good one. And while those who did recognize the mistake may have inwardly smiled, yet they too grasped my meaning equally well. Every one present knew that I was not trying to teach electricity, but religion. In like manner, while recognizing the crude science in the story of creation, we may adore the matchless revelation of God in His relation to the universe.
It is as if I had made something beautiful and ingenious for the people of darkest Africa. At first, they would be afraid of it. Not until they were persuaded that it was made in love would they come forward and cautiously lay their hands upon it. Then as their fear subsided and their appreciation increased they would exclaim, "And devils didn't make it, and it won't hurt us, and you made it for our good!" But after their first curiosity had been sufficiently satisfied, I would touch a spring and awaken new wonder by showing the invention to be different from what they had thought, and ten times more wonderful. And thus, at every new revelation of the gift, their mistaken views would be corrected, and their admiration and love for me would be increased. So, in the story of creation, God presented the world to His children by first telling them that devils did not make it, and that vicious gods do not infest it; but that it all proceeded from His will as a loving gift to them. Though they still thought the universe like that which their unaided senses reported to them, yet the thing of supreme importance was that the loving gift came from a good God who rules over all. Than this revelation, nothing could be truer, nor more calculated to put their hearts at rest from fear. It marked a complete transition from a polytheistic and immoral conception of the universe to a theistic and ethical conception. Through all the centuries that have followed, this new revelation of God in His relation to the universe has been arousing the noble ambition and commanding the loving obedience of men. As men have studied their good gift from God, a growing scientific knowledge has enabled them from time to time to unlock the mysteries of nature; and behold, their good gift was not a snug little world floating in a sea, as they had thought, but a magnificent solar system flying through space, and pulsating in an infinite sea of ether; and the supposed firmament was but a light effect on particles of dust in the atmosphere, caused by the light as it makes its journey of ninety-three million miles from the sun. And once more devout men exclaimed with awe, "Is this what the good God made for us by the mere fiat of His will?" That God said, "Let there be light: and there was light," was the affirmation of an inspired man who little realized that light travels the distance of eight times around the earth in one second, and yet requires more than four years at that speed to come from the nearest star. Thus science may forever change our conception of the world, and our sense of the Creator's majesty.
Someone may say, "Is not this upsetting our old Bible?" I think it is. But when a friend expostulated, "Pat, don't you know that your stone wall will upset if you build it on that swampy ground?" Pat's reply was, "Faith, it is two feet high and three feet wide, and if it upsets it will be a foot higher than it was before." It is but truth to say that our old Bible is two or three times higher than it was before modern learning upset it; and may scholars keep on upsetting it as long as they can make God's word stand out clear and strong above all human learning and bigotry and superstition.
2. The story of the garden
When I was a boy, nearly every one grew gourds on his picket fence. And at almost every well there hung a gourd dipper. How many cool and refreshing draughts of water I have taken from gourd dippers I dare not say; but the memory is precious, and I should be delighted to repeat the experience now. No one, however, was ever foolish enough to tell us that after drinking the water we must eat the gourd. Now, the Bible is just full of gourd dippers from one end to the other,—and for this I am pleased.
Let me present one of these gourd dippers. It is the story of the Garden. Here is refreshing and life-sustaining water. It is not in a well, but in a spring that bubbles clear up to the surface. You need neither rope nor bucket,—nothing but the gourd; and a child may help himself. This story is a bit of inspired genius, if ever there was any. My library contains great fat books on ethics, yet I never knew half a dozen men or women in my parishes who had the grit or grace to read one of them through. The mental discipline in reading them is good for ministers, though the conclusions arrived at in these books are identical with the teachings in this simple story. If the methods of these writers on ethics had been adopted by the biblical writers, very few people would be any the wiser for the Bible. But, from the dear old gourd a child may drink with ease and satisfaction.
This beautiful allegory was true to fact when it put Adam and Eve in a garden. Human beings can live only in a garden; they must have a base of supply in the products of the soil. But what about the forbidden fruit? As a child, I did think it too bad that the Lord put the forbidden fruit in the garden when He must have known that it would cause no end of trouble. However, when I became a man I realized that even God could not make a garden that was fit to live in, without its having forbidden fruit in it. The grave is the only place where there is no forbidden fruit. Recently I spent ten days in our Capital City. And it is a beautiful garden, with many things "good for food" and "pleasant to the eyes." During the ten days, Washington was my garden; and the other occupants there made me feel that I was very welcome. But did not they and I know that there were at least a dozen kinds of forbidden fruit that I might not partake of without running the risk of being tarred and feathered? Forbidden fruit is not bad fruit, it is fruit that belongs to some one else, or to us at some future time. It is all ours now, in a way; the wealth, the beauty, and the people are ours within certain limits; and it is this that makes our lives worth living. When, however, we begin to break up families, or to take anything that belongs exclusively to others, we have eaten the forbidden fruit,—and the curse is upon us. "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." This is the infallible word of God, spoken to our first parents, to us, and to all mankind. Instead of haggling over the question of swallowing the gourd, we should preach this truth about forbidden fruit until offenders feel their hearts filled with holy fear and wholesome disgust.
Though the story of the forbidden fruit is truly wonderful, yet it is no more wonderful than that which makes the serpent the symbol of temptation. The serpent does not chase its prey like some bellowing hound, but silently awaits the victim's coming. As the serpent lies coiled in the midst of your flowers, so temptation lurks in the heart of some pleasant situation. You may be looking with legitimate pleasure upon some beautiful thing that belongs to your neighbor, and, before you are aware of it, the serpent of covetousness has struck its fangs into you. If, however, the temptation is seen before you are bitten by it, like a serpent, it makes strange circuitous routes as if it were coming and going from every side. It stops to parley. And if it succeeds in entwining itself about you, it crushes you with every part of its sinuous length. In countries that are infested with serpents, the reptiles go everywhere; they even hang from the rafters of dwellings. Just so, temptation may appear anywhere to surprise or to charm you. If you are as good as the Master, temptations will assail you. If like Lincoln you should climb from a hut to the White House, even there you will be confronted by serpents of monstrous size striving in every possible way to beguile you. He who advocates a walking and a talking snake, does so to the great detriment of God's word. We are in no danger from talking serpents; but we all are in great danger from serpent-like temptations.
This parable and fable of the garden is meant for our edification and safety. As an analysis of temptation, sin, and punishment, for all people and for all times, nothing can surpass this story of the garden. Seeing that it contains such vital thrilling truth, it is a great pity that it has fallen into almost universal neglect. The story has been killed by the credulity of its friends.
3. The Bible stories in general