The Bible and Life

The Bible and Life

The Bible is a book of power. The man who would deny this statement would impugn his own intelligence. It is to-day the Book of the strongest nations. If the strongest nations selected it for their inspiration and guidance, that fact is significant. If, on the other hand, the Bible has trained the strongest nations, that fact is more significant. In either case power is lodged in the Holy Scriptures. The miracle is this: That a very ancient Book rules a very modern world.

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.

It is so with the historical books. They are the records of actual human living. Their pages are sprinkled with the names of real men and women. Joshua, the Judges, Ruth, Samuel, the Kings are all there, eager participants in earth's affairs under the sense of God. These books are not theoretical dissertations on life by a dreamer in his closet; they are rather the general descriptions of life itself as it moved along a period of seven or eight centuries. They give us the salient and meaningful happenings among God's chosen people. They tell the story of a crude race as it is being led forward to the heights. The pages record limitations and faults simply because they tell us of actual life. The sins of the Bible's premier heroes are written down with entire frankness. The human touch is everywhere. We shall not read the historical books long ere we find that they, too, are human documents. But these human documents, covered with the names of men and women, are likewise covered with the ever-recurring name of Jehovah. In the record one discovers man and God.

In the prophetical books the like fact is apparent. The prophets were men of flesh and blood. They rushed into the prophetic work from the ordinary occupations of ancient life. From the fields they came, and from the vineyards. Perhaps one came from a royal palace. Surely not more than one of them came from the altar of the priesthood. They were men who knew the shame and glory of contemporary life. They did not hesitate to touch the politics of their day. They decried kings. They denounced landlords. They made frontal attacks on all forms of wickedness. Their appeal was for reality. They declared that God hated all pretense. New moons and feasts and fasts that did not grow out of devout hearts they declared to be an insult and an abomination before a righteous God. They talked from life to life. They came in response to some human demand in their times. They were not theorists, discussing academic problems of conduct. They were blazing moral realists. We do not need to detail the list of those forthtellers of the Word of God. Even the book of Jonah is full of life. Parable, allegory, history-its descriptions are based in life and its appeal is to life. In its moral lesson for the individual, and in its missionary lesson for a narrow race, it offers enough duty to keep life busy for a million years. If men would heed its lessons for life and cease their petty debates about the anatomy of whales, the Book would meet them with vital urgings. The one point now is that the prophetical writings grew out of life. They did not come encased in stone boxes, written on gold leaves, to be read and understood only by miraculous spectacles. They came from real living, and they claim their own wherever real men are living to-day.

We need not follow the same idea into the later books of the Old Testament. The Proverbs were gathered from the streets of life. Ecclesiastes is the pronouncement of life vainly satiated. Even the Psalms, classed as devotional books, were usually evoked by some actual happening. The king goes out to war; a psalm is penned. The ark is moved from one place to another; a psalm is written. A man is jaded and discouraged; a psalm is written to recover him to a consciousness of the care of Jehovah. A monarch falls into grievous sin; a psalm is written to express his penitence. A study of any Commentary on the Psalms will show us that nearly all of these devotional utterances were prompted by some human experiences. They are the shoutings and sobbings of living men. The book of Psalms is not the liturgy of academicians. Its processionals and its recessionals show actual men and women in the real march of life.

In the New Testament this same law of life rules. Jesus comes before the Gospels. Without the Life there could not have been the record of the Life. In any worthy Bible life must always come first. This phase will be treated later. Now it must be emphasized that the entire New Testament sprang from a Life that was lived among men. The Word must become flesh before it could become literary record. Grace and truth walked the earth ere they were traced on pages. Here again the Bible comes from life in order that it may return to life again.

The statement concerning the New Testament will admit of more detail. The Gospels grew immediately out of the disciples' life with the Lord. The Acts grew out of the life of the disciples in their daily contact with that ancient world. The Epistles all came from some urgency of life. While there were minor reasons for writing each of them there was still a main purpose that dictated the writing in every case. The Epistles to the Thessalonians seek to produce a right attitude toward the doctrine of the Lord's return. The Epistle to the Romans is a discussion of the doctrine of justification by faith and the relations of that doctrine to Judaism. That to the Galatians is both a personal defense of Paul's questioned apostleship and a declaration of freedom from bondage to the law. The Philippians grew out of an experience of human kindness, being an expression of gratitude for help in trouble and sympathy in sorrow. The Ephesians is a composite of moods-the victories of grace, the hope of the heavenlies, the expectation of ascension with the glorified Christ, the nature and aim of the true church. Colossians expresses the universal Lordship of Christ and tears down every theory that denies the reality of the incarnation and the utter preeminence of Jesus.

Even those Epistles that are personal in their character deal with universal life. Philemon reappeared in the contests concerning slavery both in England and America and scattered the arguments of Christian democracy. The bondage of men could not well live with the tender brotherhood that breathes in the letter which Onesimus carried back with him to his former master. Titus and Timothy are the pastoral advices sent by the aged apostle to his younger sons in the faith, while one of the Epistles is the hopeful farewell to earth and a glad trust toward the Eternal City. Revelation may be filled with strange imagery and may be shaken by the tremors of a perilous age; but men who know real life will say that the Beast and the Lamb are not merely wild figures of speech. The writer of the Apocalypse knew the world, and he knew the churches in its various cities.

Thus it seems literally true that all the New Testament was penned for the aid of life. When life went wrong, warning came. When life went aright, encouragement came. When life was mistaken, correction came. Whether the need was for doctrine, for reproof, or for instruction in righteousness, God met the need by the message that he gave to his servants. The Book is not a series of infallible abstractions; it is rather a vital Guide Book won from the experience of life's ways. The Bible is not a ready-made product dropped down from heaven; it is rather a Library made by men in many ages in partnership with the God who lives with men in all ages. In the best and truest fashion it makes record of the life of God in the souls of responsive men. Because it came from life it inevitably seeks life. It was born of God among men. Therefore, it lives among men with God.

We may carry the relation of life to the Bible quite beyond this point. The Bible not only grew from life, but it came back to life for its testing. Even as there have been theories of the making of the Book that ignored the element of human living, so have there been theories of the canon of Scripture that ignored the element of human testing. Years ago a renowned teacher said to his pupils, "Never go deliberately to work to make a book. The only volumes worth while are those that grow out of your deepest life." The advice was good. In a way it suggests the manner of the Bible's making. There is no evidence whatsoever that any writer of its pages ever thought that his work would become part of a Bible. No man ever said, "I will now write a book of the Holy Scripture." Nor did any group of men assign departments to each other, saying, "We will prepare a divine Book." The Bible came in no such mechanical way. Written because of life's needs, as seen in the light of God, it was tested and collected by life's needs, as seen in that same light. It was once strikingly said that the words of Jesus were vascular; if you cut them they would bleed. One shrinks from the metaphor. Yet it presents a truth about the whole Bible. A Book written by life and selected by life has naturally a message for life.

How did the books of the Bible secure their place in the canon? The romancer offers his tradition here again. We find a very fantastic legend coming down from medieval times to this effect: In the church at Nic?a one day a great mass of religious writing lay in an indiscriminate heap beneath the altar. A miracle gave an answer to the question as to what books should secure permanent places in the Holy Book. The First Ecumenical Conference was in session. The year was 325 A. D. While man wondered and questioned, God settled the issue. Suddenly the genuine books were lifted from the mass of volumes and, without visible power, lay on the sacred table. The writings miraculously declared uncanonical remained beneath the altar. This theory of selection corresponds to the theory of dictation. We have in both cases an active God and a passive man. While it would be unfair to say that this medieval legend has any modern following, it is true that certain theories of the selection of the canon resemble it in that they discount the human factor. Even as God and men worked together in the writing of the books, so God and men worked together in the binding of the books into their volume of fellowship. Life that confessed God and tried to do his will chose the books and decreed that they should dwell in unity.

As there has been a tendency to overstate the miracle feature in the selection of the canon, so has there been a tendency to overstate the part played by the authoritative councils of the church. The assumption has been that arbitrariness was the chief feature of the whole process. Certain men met in conference, debated the merits of the several books, and finally settled by vote what particular writings should have their place in the Bible of the church. Now while something of this kind did occur, it is far from the truth to affirm that the councils lacked a representative capacity. The vote may have been recorded by theologians, but the vote had previously been determined by the Christian democracy. Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. His predecessors were the people. In a dignified sense Lincoln was their clerk, expressing their will after many years of agitation. The wisdom of the Great Commoner was shown not only by the personal conviction that he put into the document, but also by his keen appreciation of the will of the multitude. Though the parchment of liberty was proclaimed by one man, it is a fact that it was dictated by many men. Something parallel to this occurred in the selection of the material of the Bible. Councils played their part; their part, however, was the part of agents.

This was true of the Old Testament. Many persons may still have the vision of Jewish officials with long robes and sober faces deciding the ancient canon. Indeed, there was for long a tradition that Ezra founded a kind of Imperial Synagogue which continued for not less than two hundred years and which in that period finished the collection and authorization of the Old Testament. This synagogue had various presidents, including Nehemiah. No such organization for the selection of the Scriptures existed. Accurate ancient history gives no trace of its work. The work of testing the writings was slow. The arbiter was life. Life had determined the writing. Life must now determine the authority.

We can catch an interesting glimpse into this process by studying for a moment the story about Josiah, the young king. Hilkiah, the priest, finds the book of the law. Shaphan carries the book to the king and reads to him from the ancient lore. The book quickens the royal conscience. God and the earthly ancestors of Josiah speak to him from the pages. He is made to feel how far he and his people have gone from the will of Jehovah. He rends his clothes. He sends for the human voices of the Most High. Huldah, the prophetess, is the chief instructor. The people are called back to their allegiance. The land is purged. A manuscript has done all this. It inspired the king and his people until abominations fled from Israel. The land continued in obedience until the archers sent King Josiah to his sepulcher. That portion of the law that had been read to the king by Shaphan and had then been delivered to the people proved its inspiring quality in its effects on life. On that day a portion of the Old Testament canon was selected.

Doubtless this incident is somewhat typical of a procedure that was more or less constant. The imperial synagogue was the Jewish people. The debate that settled issues was the debate of experience. Life was electing its own books. Words that touched the conscience into an impression of God and then worked their way outward to the blessing of the multitude were gaining for themselves the popular vote. Candidates for the canon were rejected. Other candidates were held in long suspicion. Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Esther, Solomon's Song-all these served a long probation ere they proved themselves worthy of their place. The ancient world, like the modern world, was not willing to surrender Proverbs, with their homely wisdom; Esther, with its lesson of loyalty to race and kindred; Solomon's Song, with its refusal to listen to the blandishments of royal lasciviousness luring to the betrayal of a true and humble lover; or even Ecclesiastes, with its pessimism uncured until the writer once more finds God.

After books secured their place in the authorized list of the Jews, they had still to contest to keep their place. As late as the first century of the Christian era, debate was frequent. Life was slow to render its decision. There was no hasty authority. The final judgment was rendered by the experience of a race. When Eck reminded Martin Luther that the church had decided what books should go into the canon and that Luther must accept a quotation from Second Maccabees as authoritative, the great Reformer made reply, "The church cannot give more authority or force to a book than it has in itself. A council cannot make that be Scripture which in its own nature is not Scripture." So it came to pass that in due season the freed religious consciousness of the church took certain apocryphal books from the Old Testament canon. That consciousness seemed to feel a difference in spiritual power between the Apocrypha and the other portions of the Old Testament. Life was still coming to the polls in order that it, far more than any stately council, should elect the true Word of God.

This same process of selection went on in relation to the New Testament. The early Christians started with no New Testament whatsoever. Their Bible was the Old Testament. We do not find any warrant for saying that they expected to make additions to the Bible. Jesus came first. Then the Gospels and Epistles came as natural consequences. The early Christians, as we shall later see, had received the very purpose and climax of Revelation, because they had received Christ. But the Gospels and Epistles which grew up out of life had in their turn to be tested by life. Believers began by reading these as if they were suggestive; after the writings had wrought their full impression upon the minds of the believers, they began to consider them inspired and holy. This decision did not come abstractly, nor did it come quickly. Gradually the sense of the value of certain writings grew upon the early church. Almost two centuries of the Christian era passed ere the collection so commended itself to believing hearts as to be given definite form. As in the case of the Old Testament, so in the case of the New, life declined to be hurried into a decision. The books must prove their authority in the experience of the people. The Christian republic was engaged in the task of choosing its Bible from life.

We find, too, that certain books appeared as claimants for permanent authority that did not win their case. The ancient manuscripts were passed from church to church and were read to the people. The task of sifting went surely forward. Directly lists of books that peculiarly commended themselves to the Christians began to appear. In the first two centuries such leaders as Iren?us, Clement, and Tertullian present their lists which show some of our present books omitted, some other books included, and still other books declared as good but inferior. The Christian consciousness had not yet reached a confident verdict. But a review of the period shows the Christian leaders verging toward unanimity. Slowly some books were eliminated; and slowly other books asserted their right to be included. By the beginning of the fifth century the canon had been practically determined. The great Augustine, with his immediate predecessors and his close successors, reveals the well-nigh unanimous conclusion to which the church had come. It may well be noted that the voting booth stood open for almost four hundred years. The Councils of Hippo and Carthage were simply the servants of the people. The books that had sprung from life had received the testing of life.

It must be allowed that here, as in the case of the Old Testament canon, some books had to re-prove their right to the place of authority. The Council of Trent may have settled the matter for all Roman Catholics, but it did not irretrievably close the canon for Protestants. It is well known that Luther himself wished to remove several books from the list, and that he called the Epistle of James "strawlike." Luther's reason was a polemical one. He felt that the vivid practicalness of James conflicted with the principle of justification by faith alone. It is only a stronger evidence of the demands of life in the selection of the final canon that even the powerful influence of Luther could not prevail. The church well knew that the Epistle of James would be a good antidote for any lazy mysticism. Life voted against Luther in this instance, and life won. Zwingli wanted to exclude the Book of Revelation from the canon. The Christian republic felt that beneath all the weird imagery of the Apocalypse God was speaking by his servant to the churches of all time. Life voted against Zwingli in this instance, and life won. When life was given its freedom the most influential voices of authority could not prevail against its verdicts. This completes the circle. The Bible was written by life, and the Bible was selected by life.

Perhaps it is well to note that when any portion of the Scripture has been taken away from the purpose of life, it has lost its note of authority; when it has been brought back to that purpose of life, it has regained that note. The Song of Solomon illustrates this point. It had slight hold on the life of the world as long as it was used as a complex allegory or symbol relating to Christ and the church. All labored attempts to so construe the book did the book itself injury. But when the Song was permitted to recover its own relation to life, it recovered its own power. The lesson of the book, rightly used, may save many young women from selling themselves to lascivious luxury and may give them strength against tempting allurements away from loyal love. However old the world may become, it will always need that lesson. In some way the Song came from life; and when it is tested by life, it regains its relation to life. Released from the strain of an allegorical interpretation, it proves itself a servant of one of life's holiest causes.

We come now to the primary consideration. The Bible grew from life. The Bible was tested by life. The Bible climaxes in Life. Jesus said that the Scriptures testified of him. It is even so. In the Sargent pictures in the Boston Public Library the prophets are represented as pointing forward to him. We may even more surely represent the writers of the Gospels and Epistles as pointing backward to him. The Bible is to be judged by its goal; and the goal is Christ. Other sacred books, such as the Koran, were written by one person; the Bible was written by many persons for one Person. Jesus himself insisted on this. He claimed to surpass the old revelations. With all his reverence for the Old Testament, he still put himself above it by words like these: "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of olden time, But I say unto you." This is as much as to affirm that he was the end of a progressive revelation. A skeptic once said that the whole Bible turns upon Jesus. The skeptic was right. One of the Gospels gives a word that may safely be applied to the whole trend of the Bible, "These things are written, that ye might believe that Christ is the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name." The very purpose is declared to be that men may be brought to faith in Christ.

It would be too much to say that all revelation ceased with the closing of the canon. Lowell's claim that the Bible of the race is written slowly, that each race adds its texts of hope and despair, of joy and moan, and that the prophets still sit at the feet of God, cannot be denied. But we may confidently assert that revelation came to its culmination and crown in Jesus Christ. When once the essential things concerning him had found place in a Book, the Bible found its consummation. Thus do we see that the books that were written by life, and then were tested by life, came to their climax in Life. The only way to secure a book better than the Bible is to secure a person better than Jesus. The best men entertain no such vain expectation because they know that nothing can be more perfect than Perfection.

We have set forth these three main reasons for the unique influence that the Bible exercises over life. Some are fond of saying that the Bible is merely one of many sacred books. Those who have read the bibles of other races will not be misled by the statement. Max Müller writes that the Sacred Books of the East "by the side of much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, and true, contain much that is not only unmeaning, artificial, and silly, but even hideous and repellent." Of the Brahmanas he affirms that they "deserve to be studied as the physician studies the twaddle of idiots and the ravings of madmen." The Koran sets forth a very fine morality, but it was written by one man and really presents a legal religion. Moreover it offers no perfect example. The author of the Koran himself claimed to receive revelations that opened a path to immorality. One voice declared the authority of the book, and an obedient people accepted this verdict. The Koran was not written by a wide range of life, expressing God's dealing with many persons under diverse conditions. It was not tested for its authority by the free conscience of a people. Mohammed wrote and adopted his own canon. The Christian's Bible, written by life, tested by life, and culminating in Life, has come back to life with transforming power.

The insistence of these chapters is that, when the Holy Scriptures are given a free opportunity to do their work with life, they prove their own inspiration. After all, there can be no other proof. The Bible is what it is, no matter what theory men may adopt as to its formation. It creates its own evidences. The argument for its inspiration is the life that it inspires. If the Book gives power and purity to all departments of life, the Book defends itself against attack and makes its own conquests. Does the Bible rightly exalt man? Does it sanctify the home? Does it promote education? Does it glorify work? Does it save wealth from greed, pleasure from excess, sorrow from despair? These questions reach the center of the problem.

We can go but one step beyond them, and that step is most significant. Do we find in the Bible not only a way to be followed, and a goal of truth to be gained, but a Life that will help lives along the way toward the goal? Does the Book really reveal the way, the truth, and the life? The answer must again be found in life. The evidences of dynamic are in the realms of human experience. More and more the students of the Holy Scriptures, who seek the pages with a religious purpose, will find that all the departments of human living wait on Jesus for their meaning and come to him for their power. He is the Saviour. He lifts men out of their sins, up into a trembling and glorious idealism, and still up into a passion for efficient goodness. The supreme apology for the Bible will ever be found in men who have been so instructed, reproved, and corrected, that they may be named as perfect men of God, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. Given its full right, the Book that was born of life, tried of life, glorified of Life, will find its own best witnesses in redeemed lives.

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The Bible and Man

The natural outline of a human life which has suggested the method of these lectures represents a man as awaking each morning to the consciousness of himself. Every man lives perforce in his own company. He walks with himself on every road of life. He sits with himself in its resting places. He lies down with himself in its slumbers. He is his own friend, and his own enemy. Omar Khayyám declares that he is his own heaven and his own hell. There is a story of a farmer who said that when he climbed to the roof of his barn and looked about, he always found that he himself was the center of the world. The roof of the sky at all points was equally distant from him; the walls of the world made by the dipping horizon showed the same length of radius from himself! The story has its serious, as well as its amusing side. Every man is the personal center of a world which gets its meaning from his own heart. It is no wonder that the old Greek motto was "Know thyself."

Yet the knowledge of self is not easy knowledge. The fact that no man has ever seen his own face, save by reflection in some mirror, is a parable. The very eyes that see cannot see themselves. They are so near that they are hidden. The moral literature of the race always emphasizes the difficulty of self-revelation. Its cry is, "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults." It has a yet deeper desire: that it may know more of its own essential nature. Each man longs for a revelation of God; and each man longs for a revelation of himself. The present emphasis is that the Bible is the medium of this human revelation.

We do not go far in the reading of its pages without discovering that the word "thou" looms large in its spiritual grammar. Those curious persons who often bring their arithmetic to the Bible could doubtless tell how many times "thou" and "thee" and "thy" and "thine" are found in its chapters. In the Ten Commandments and in the New Commandment "thou" is the recurring word. Personal address is prominent everywhere. Indeed, the whole Book is a kind of prophet coming into the court of each soul and saying, "Thou art the man." Sometimes the approach is an accusation, sometimes an approbation; in any case the note is intensely individual. In the New Commandment the "self" is made the standard by which the relation to the neighbor is to be tested. The implication would seem to be that the man who does not love himself lacks the law by which his love for other men may be made efficient. Polonius was not far from the biblical idea when he said:

To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

In daily parlance it is often said. "Put yourself in his place": but the value of that transfer of self is small if you do not know what the self is after you give it the new place! The revelation of self is likewise the revelation of other men. We know our neighbors only as we know ourselves.

Presuming, therefore, that we send a man to the Scriptures to find the doctrine of his own nature, what will be his discovery? The question is not a new one, and its answer has sometimes been touched by prejudice. Many have contended that in its effort to magnify God, the Bible is guilty of belittling man. Fragments of Scripture might be presented to support this criticism. We must, however, insist that the biblical teaching is to be determined by its main current rather than by its eddies. The Book does present God as high and lifted up, while man lies with his lips in the dust. It does make God a King, while it proclaims man a subject. It does stress divine sovereignty, while insisting on human obedience and reverence. It does call for humility on the part of man. We may well admit that it is possible to overdo the call to humility. That good mood may easily pass over into a false mood. Occasionally men, in an effort to be humble, speak untruth concerning their own souls. It is just here that the "worm-of-the-dust" theory gets its chance. That phrase was a biblical one, used by a character in his moment of self-abasement. Yet the Concordance will prove that this lowly estimate of man is by no means the staple of teaching, as well as that much of the cheap preaching of human nature is a radical departure from the doctrine of the Book. It is always good to keep clear the distinction between vanity and self-respect, so that if a man may not have the right to look down on his neighbors he may still have the right to look up to himself. Humility must ever be based on truth, and self-respect can have no other foundation. The two moods are not contradictory. The one comes from the recognition of the nature of God, in the utter and unspeakable perfection of his attributes; the other comes from the recognition of the nature of man as being himself a partaker of that divine nature. In reality the two moods grow out of the same truth.

A still deeper objection is sometimes offered against the scriptural theory of human nature. It is charged that the doctrine of the Fall, together with the constant emphasis of man's "exceeding sinfulness," deprives man of special dignity. Without doubt the theory of the Fall has sometimes been presented in such a manner as to cancel all human claims to greatness. Whenever a religious teacher carries his doctrine of the Fall to unjust lengths, we must all be tempted to declare that we can readily prove an alibi! And if he shall employ that doctrine as a vast slur on humanity, we shall insist that the length of the fall must be the length of the possible rise! In harmony with this idea a great preacher has given the world a sermon on "The Dignity of Humanity as Evidenced by its Ruins." Much of the glory of the Coliseum at Rome has departed, but even its ruins are a testimony to its greatness. Seeing its gaunt grandeur in the sunlight, or viewing its impressive shadows in the moonlight, the tourist gets the shock of its glory. The simple truth is that a doctrine of the Fall is possible only when you start with human greatness. God made one creature strong enough to resist Himself-one creature with sufficient self-determination to make mutiny in the world. We would not torture the doctrine of the Fall into a mere compliment for humanity; but we would insist that the possibility of a Fall implies a height to fall from, and that responsibility for a Fall implies a nature great enough and free enough to make far-reaching choices. The evidence of the dignity is still found among the ruins.

We must always supplement any doctrine of the Fall with a doctrine of human responsibility. The Bible is most explicit in this insistence. Its pages are crowded with the moral imperative for man. The thorn and the brier are on the earth; but they are not blamed, because they wait for the era of the good people. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain; but the creation is not blamed, because it waits for the revealing of the sons of God. The lion and the lamb do not lie down together; but they are not blamed, because they wait for the age of peace that can issue only from the hearts of men. The coin rolls into dust and shadow and is lost; we do not blame the coin. The sheep wanders into desert and darkness and is lost; we do not blame the sheep. The son goes off into the swine field and is lost; and we do blame the son. The coin and the sheep have no communings with self, no sense of guilt, no road of repentant return; but the son has all these. The Bible does utter its vigorous charge against man's sin; it is the ever-open court room into which the human conscience is summoned for judgment. The Book does not treat man as a machine whose cogs and wheels are moved only by outside force; nor does it treat him as a manikin, jerked hither and yon by irresponsible sensations; it rather dignifies him with personal responsibility. The Fall does not prevent climbing, if only man will take advantage of those gracious powers that are offered for his help. Emerson saw the meaning of this when he wrote his tribute to mankind based on its ability to respond to the moral order:

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, "Thou must,"

The youth replies, "I can!"

Words like "ought" and "should" and "must" have gone forth from the Bible and have fairly penetrated the moral consciousness of the race. No other book so honors human nature with a sublime call to responsibility.

We now leave these general considerations and take up the several portions of the Scriptures with a view to ascertaining their contributions to a doctrine of man. The foundation of that doctrine is seen in the account of the creation. Whether that account be poem, parable, allegory, or history, its meaning for this special point is the same. The climax of the creation is man. God is represented as changing chaos into cosmos, separating waters and land, fixing sun and moon in their places, bringing verdure to the surface of the earth, assigning birds and beasts and fishes to their spheres, and then as giving to man a wide rulership. "God made man to have dominion"-that is the biblical word; and the ages have been telling how true that word is. The Bible theory and the facts of life join in a coronation of man.

The account of the creation goes deeper than this in its estimate of mankind. Its conferring of power on man is explained by its conferring a nature on man. Man is made in the divine image. The Word was not content with one statement of that fact; it must needs give it double emphasis. "So God created man in his own image"-that would seem simple and strong enough. But the statement is strengthened by repetition, "In the image of God created he him." These twice-repeated words are the real charter of man's greatness. The atheist must admit that man has the dominion, but the believer holds that man has the dominion because he has the birthright. Man is not only God's submonarch, he is God's image.

It is interesting and convincing to note how soon that primary truth about man's nature began to work. In the persecution under Diocletian the precious parchments of the Bible had been secretly carried from house to house. The charge that a Christian had given up the sacred Book in order to save himself from death was one of the most serious that could be presented. Many martyrdoms occurred because men preferred the Bible above their own lives. Though circulated under such difficulty, and though made into readable parchments at such expense of labor and money, the Bible was slowly impressing its doctrine of man upon the stubborn period. We are often smitten with horror as we read stories which show how lightly human life was regarded by the Romans. Those dreadful scenes in the arena, where thumbs so often declined to turn down as a sign of mercy, are dire mysteries to men who have gotten the biblical standpoint. We are distant from that heartless mood because we are near to the Bible. The Book and the gladiator could not live together in peace. The Book at once began to call men from the tiers of bloody pleasure. With the conversion of Constantine, superficial as it may have been, the change began. The emperor ordered many splendid copies of the Bible for the churches of his capital. He himself came under the spell of its human doctrine. Zealous Christian teachers may sometimes overstate the influence which the Bible exercised over later Roman law. Still there are some undoubted evidences of that influence. Constantine made a law forbidding that a criminal should be branded on the face, and he gave as his reason for the law that the image of God should not be marred! This leaves us in no doubt as to what had inspired the legislation. It was the simple beginning of a program that has not yet come to its consummation. The biblical idea of man routed one form of slavery, and it will yet rout all other forms. When men come to believe that man is made in the divine image all good movements for the betterment of life are set in the way to victory.

The legal portions of the Bible give us the like lesson, even though the approach to the lesson is different. Here we discover that humanity is worthy enough to call for conservation and protection. The legislation reaches to hygienic and sanitary details of minute character. The whole effort is to build a protecting fence about men. The Ten Commandments, studied in this light, become a very human document. Their harsh and negative quality is softened into gentleness. They guard the goods of man-his property, his wife and children, his body, his good name. It would be possible to regard the Decalogue as a series of prohibitions in which the word "not" occurs with forbidding frequency. In this case the appropriate accompaniment is thunder and lightning, and the appropriate scroll for the writing is stone. This viewpoint is one sided and unfair. The Ten Commandments are prohibitions only because they are protections. They have been through many ages the kindly sentinels of society. They have taken the side of God, of his dumb creatures, and of men and women and little children. Considered in any just way, the legal portions of the Bible are a tribute not merely to divine authority, but to human worth.

The prophetical books add their lesson, and from a still different angle. They are filled with protests against man's conduct, with wrath against his insincerities, and with predictions of his coming woe. The mouths of the prophets were not filled with compliments. Those stern men were not the flatterers of their own generations. Their sayings could be so elected as to make a degrading estimate of men. But here again we must get the full meaning of the message. In their last analysis the prophecies are a marked tribute to potential man. Beyond the disturbed present they see the peaceful future. Beyond the clash of swords and the swish of spears they see the mild and productive era of the plowshare and the pruning hook. Beyond the unreal altars they see the incense of true worship arising to God. The prophets were, in the best sense, optimists, and they were optimists because they believed that all men would some day yield to the Lord. They beheld the whole earth filled with righteousness. They saw the stone cut loose from the mountain and filling the wide world. The healing river was to flow to all peoples. Jerusalem was to be the universal joy. The day would dawn when it would be unnecessary to say to any man, "Know thou the Lord." The most dismal of the prophets foretold the perfect day. But all this means that the prophets foretold the perfect man and the perfect race. To proclaim that humanity, under the guidance of God, is so capable is to dignify human life beyond measure.

Nor are we lacking among the prophets an individual example of the power of self-respect. Nehemiah may not be the premier among his fellows, but he talks with a royal self-consciousness. When messengers come, desiring that he shall go down into the plain for a parley with Sanballat, he declines by saying, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down." Again he is told that the enemy is coming, and he is counseled to go into the temple and cling to the altar for protection. Once more self-respect comes to the rescue; the reply is, "Should such a man as I flee? and who is there, that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in." Here the potential man, foretold by the prophet, was the actual man. He had reached such a high doctrine of his own nature that the doctrine itself became the prevention of triviality and of cowardice. The rebuilded walls of Jerusalem arose from that spirit. Those walls were likewise an expression of the prophet's faith in the future of his people. The prophetic confidence in man was second only to the prophetic confidence in God. This form of tribute to humanity is preeminent in the books of the prophets.

In the devotional part of the Bible we should not naturally expect that tribute would turn manward. The tendency is seen in those sections of prophecy where the prophet himself has close dealings with God. When the greatest of the prophets sees the ineffable One and hears the awful trisagion of the seraphim, the prime confession is that his own lips are unclean and that he dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Inasmuch as the Psalms are in large measure a liturgy of worship, their emphasis is on the greatness of Jehovah. Yet sometimes the emphasis turns toward man. The most striking illustration occurs in the eighth psalm. The writer there utters the feeling that we have all shared. The limitless expanse of the heavens, the shining of moon and stars in the far heights, the workmanship of the Lord in the vast universe-all this makes the psalmist feel that he is a mere speck in the scheme. Tried by those celestial measurements, he drops into insignificance. He is rescued from self-contempt only by a return to the message of Genesis. His despairing cry issues in a shout of personal triumph. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" If materialism should conquer the Bible there is but one answer. The psalmist is saved by the Scripture, "Thou hast made him a little lower than God, and hast crowned him with glory and honor." It is no marvel that the first translators lowered the tribute and substituted "the angels" for God. The reverence that so often used a sign for the divine name trembled on the verge of such a human tribute. Still that tribute was a return to the doctrine that God had made man in his own image and had given him dominion over the works of his hand. In addition to all this, the Psalms are girded with the consciousness that man can enter into the august presence of the Lord. The mutual element in worship is an exaltation of man. The greatness of Jacob is greater when he meets with the heavenly visitant by the Jabbok brook. He becomes a prince. In the devotional books man claims his princely heritage. He treads the courts of the infinite King.

Moving forward into the New Testament, we find that the doctrine of man gathers more impressiveness. Jesus never cast any doubt upon the supreme place of man in the program of God. He put his harshest blame upon those who wickedly misled the children of the Father. He himself was chided because he sought the lowliest and the worst among men and women. He ate with the publican and gave his choicest lesson to the harlot. He was willing to exchange his social reputation for the privilege of associating with the humblest people. For a woman with a dark past he delocalized worship. From another he accepted the offering of grateful tears and put her conduct in contrast with that of the lordly Pharisee. He was the Prophet for the soul as such. He was the Priest who mediated gladly between the least one and the greatest One. We search his words in vain for anything that put contempt on man as man.

When he compared men to the rest of creation it was always to human advantage. He told of the care of the shepherd for the sheep, and then he asked, "How much is a man better than a sheep?" He declared that God noted the fall of sparrows, though they brought small price in the market place, and then, speaking to ordinary men and women, nearly all of them ignorant and more than half of them slaves, he said, "Are ye not much better than they?" Nor were these sayings really interrogative; they were exclamatory. Jesus knew that every normal man would feel the answer in his own soul. The worth of man was, in the teaching of Jesus, beyond debate.

He moved, also, from inanimate things to the assertion of man's worth. The lilies and grasses were in the care of God and waited on him for their vesture. "Will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" He made the worth of man the warrant of the care of God. At last he put man on one side of the scale and the whole world on the other side, and he affirmed that man outweighed the world. Men may barter themselves for half a township; but Jesus declared that it would be a disastrous bargain, if a man should accept the world in exchange for himself. "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the world and lose himself? Or what will a man give in exchange for himself?" This is the final answer to any paltry teaching about the worth of man.

When choice had to be made between man's interests and sacred laws and ordinances, Jesus gave preference to man. The shewbread was consecrated, but he approved the taking of it to satisfy human hunger. The Sabbath day was holy, but the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; so the plucked ears of corn were a testimonial to men.

The attitude of Jesus toward childhood is tender evidence of his thought of humanity. The child has not yet won any achievement, save the loving assertion of its own dependency. The child in the midst represented humanity in its freshest and most natural form. It is said that some ancient religionists were accustomed to debate whether or not a child had a soul. Jesus would have scorned such a debate. He made the child the model of the kingdom. Human life unspoiled was lifted up as an example. To offend a little one was worse than being sunk by a millstone into the sea. A cup of cold water given to a child would win a special reward. The angels of the children behold ever the face of the Father. Thus the child, in all the teaching of Jesus, was made the creditor of the race.

Jesus carried this doctrine of man on to the uttermost issue. We have never yet secured the full meaning of that "inasmuch" in the account of the final judgment. The Lord lives beyond the need of man's overt aid. But human beings are his representatives. The righteous had so far overlooked this fact, that they were forgetful of any ministry to him; and what had been the unconscious glory of the righteous was the unconscious tragedy of the wicked. The judgment day will be filled with human tests. He who has not acted as if human beings stood for God cannot meet the final standards. Jesus's picture of the judgment is a statement of divine authority; and it is an appraisement of human worth.

Thus do we see that from whatever side we come to the teaching of Christ, we find an exalted doctrine of man. The incarnation itself is a contribution to that doctrine. If we call it "the human life of God" it was a life lived for the sake of man. The Word became flesh and dwelt among men, full of grace and truth, because men needed the message of that Word. The whole life of Jesus was lived for man. He himself said, "For their sakes I sanctify myself." All those sacrificial phrases that describe the purpose of his coming add glory to human life. The joy that was set before him was the goal of a redeemed humanity. His living for men was simply his teaching about men, made over into concrete terms. In the Parable of the Good Shepherd he gives the revelation of his own attitude toward men. One soul, brought back into right relations with God, makes joy in heaven. It is the Eternal One who is represented as saying, "Rejoice with me." Men may deny the doctrine of the only begotten Son, but they can scarcely deny that that doctrine leads on to a wondrous doctrine of human worth.

The Cross, viewed in one light, becomes the very climax of the doctrine of man. Theologians have often laid their stress upon some single purpose of the divine sacrifice. One has said that the Cross appeases the anger of God; another that the Cross maintains the majesty of the law; another that the Cross is a moral influence wooing and winning the heart of man to God; another that the Cross is the expression of the Father's sorrow with the sins and sorrows of his children. But we may surely take one meaning of the Cross to be the divine estimate of man. God's sense of values must be preserved. He did not send his Son to die for worms of the dust. That idea may fit an extreme mood of spiritual abasement. We may grant all possible condescension in the atoning act of God, but we cannot grant a condescension that dedicates infinite worth to finite worthlessness. Jesus died for men just because men were far more than worms of the dust. If we are to keep that theory of atonement that has long held the heart of the church, we are driven to affirm that the Cross gives us a divine estimate of mankind. No man ever appreciates the worth of himself until he gets the appraisal of Calvary. The dying of Jesus is not out of harmony with his teaching and his living. The whole program is like the garment taken from him on the day of crucifixion; it is woven throughout without seam. Men may decry a doctrine of substitution, but they cannot say that such a doctrine is a slight tribute to human worth. In such a doctrine thorns and nails and spears and all the drama of the Cross are made into tributes to the soul of man.

This carries us on to the biblical teaching of man's permanent worth. The doctrine of immortality makes its incalculable addition to the doctrine of man. There is a story, for which the writer cannot vouch, that Thomas Carlyle in a mood of pessimism one day wrote this peevish estimate of man:

What is man? A foolish baby!

Vainly strives and fumes and frets!

Demanding all, deserving nothing,

One small grave is all he gets!

Language like this is certainly no contribution to the literature of self-respect. The story proceeds to relate that Carlyle's wife found this poetic depreciation lying on the table, and that she wrote the following confession and correction:

And man? O hate not, nor despise

The fairest, lordliest work of God!

Think not he made thee good and wise

Only to sleep beneath the sod!

Doubtless the tale is apocryphal. In any case the latter estimate is far nearer to the biblical conception, and it is altogether worthy of a woman's moral instinct. If man is to live forever, as the climax of Revelation insists, it is quite impossible for him to "think too much" of himself, unless he indulges in comparison of himself with others. An argument for immortality does not fall within the scope of this lecture; but the bearing of immortality, as declared in the Holy Scriptures, on the view that men must take of human nature, touches our purpose in a radical way. A deathless person must respect himself. A deathless person must command the respect of a world-and of God. The doctrine of immortality adds an infinite measure to the doctrine of human worth.

Even the biblical representation of heaven secures a relation to this subject. The abode for immortal life, as well as immortal life itself, may be turned into a human estimate. The book of Revelation declares that the nations shall bring "their glory and honor" into the Eternal City. This can only mean that men shall make some contribution to the eternal life. What they are and what they have done shall fill heaven with added value. The cities of earth shall transport treasures to the Heavenly City. Here, again, we come upon a reason based on the divine sense of values. God will not provide an Eternal Home that is any better than the Eternal Beings for whom he makes it ready. The gem is to be better than the setting. In a certain sense, therefore, jasper walls and pearl gates and gold streets, as seen in the descriptions of heaven, are tributes to human souls. The Bible tells us that "greater than the house is he that built it," and the Bible would tell us, also, that the occupant of the house is greater than the house. God will provide no everlasting dwelling that is better than the everlasting dwellers. Heaven is made for man, and not man for heaven. The many mansions are tributes to the people that shall live in the Father's house. The Scriptures are reserved in their revealings of the other land; but their descriptions of celestial glories may be united with those other portions of the Bible that dignify the human spirit and may be taken as standing for the divine valuation of the essential selves of men.

This review of the teaching of the several sections of the Bible has confessedly sought for the words and ideas that exalt the doctrine of man. Allowing all possible discounts, and admitting all possible offsets, the residuum of instruction tending to glorify human nature is significant. We need not wonder that some thoughtful men have affirmed that the chief characteristic of Christianity is the value that it places on man. If we do not accept this statement, we can still declare that the Bible is the supreme Book when judged by its emphasis on human values.

Nor can there be any doubt of the need of this emphasis in our own age. As men crowd more and more into the great centers of population, the tendency will be to hold men cheaply. In former times man was often highly valued because of his rarity. On the far Eastern plains a new face, not being often seen, was regarded with curious interest. Thus Abraham stood in the door of his tent in the heat of the day and welcomed the stranger, because the stranger was an event. But in the modern city the stranger is no longer an event; he is only an episode, or perhaps an incident. We pass him on the dense street, and we do not notice him at all. There are so many of him that, unless we are heedful, we shall come to regard him lightly just because he is hidden by the crowd. When factories grow so huge that men are known, not by their names, but by their numbers, only the scriptural emphasis upon men as such can save human beings from being deemed "hands" rather than souls. If the sin of the countryside is an excessive social interest that makes for gossip, the sin of the city is a social carelessness that makes for indifference. The various problems of our social life wait for their solution upon the Christian doctrine of man. When that doctrine has done its full service, race problems, labor problems, liquor problems, and all their dreadful accompaniments will issue into a righteous and intelligent peace. An immortal son of God, knowing himself, cannot be unjust to another immortal son of God, when once he knows his Brother.

This hints at the personal bearing of the doctrine. As men grow in moral and spiritual experience, they find themselves using more and more the test of self-respect. Knowing that the reaction of certain behaviors makes them feel that a fragment of the soul has slipped away from them, so that they have the sense of smallness, they guard their natures lest legitimate pride should be destroyed. Andrews Norton once wrote to his son, Charles Eliot Norton, who was about to go abroad for an important service, telling the young man that his family and friends recognized that he had special powers for doing large and worthy things. Then he added that "this ought not to make one vain. On the contrary, their true tendency is to produce that deep sense of responsibility-of what we owe to God, to our friends, and to our fellowmen-which is wholly inconsistent with presumption or vanity." It was a wise father who wrote thus to his son. If the Christian doctrine of man be true, no man can think too much of himself. There is a type of saving pride. Clough stated it in his well-known lines:

Then welcome, Pride! and I shall find

In thee a power to lift the mind

This low and groveling joy above-

'Tis but the proud can truly love.

The pride that comes from the consciousness of the divine image has power to restrain from sins and trivialities, and it has power likewise to constrain toward holiness of character and largeness of service. One who has come to believe that he is made in the divine image, that he is one of the divinely appointed rulers of the world, that the great laws are designed for his protection, that the alluring prophecies of the future are declarations of his coming power, that his worship is the symbol of his partnership with the Most High, that the incarnation is in his interest, that the Infinite Teacher brought him matchless tributes, that the Cross of Calvary is an expression of his own valuation, that immortal life is his destiny, and that a glorious heaven is the fitting place for his final dwelling-such a one has gained all the preventions and all the inspirations of the Christian doctrine of self-respect. Sins and trivialities cannot flourish when one thinks so much of oneself; great affections and lasting consecrations seem natural to one so highly endowed. The conception that makes for the dignity of self makes also for the consideration of others. He who entertains this view begins to

Find man's veritable stature out,

Erect, sublime, the measure of a man,

And that's the measure of an angel,

Says the apostle.

To such a one life becomes solemn and beautiful. He is now the son of God. While he knows not yet what he shall be, he sees the vision of the Elder Brother and so purifies himself even as he is pure. The world needs the gospel of the Son of God in order that it may learn the gospel of the sons of God.

* * *

The Bible and Home

The significance of the home is seen in the fact that every human being is a son or a daughter. This ordinary statement at once insists on becoming extraordinary. It is difficult to think what life would have been, or even how it could have been, if children had been pushed upon the earth from some mysterious void and had been nurtured without the providential agency of fathers and mothers. So much do we realize the importance of the home that where it is impossible to maintain one, owing to the death, or inability, or worthlessness of parents, we still make provision for an institution that shall provide as many domestic features as can be won for the orphaned. This we call an Orphans' Home. It is significant that the sociological tendency of the period drifts away from even this institution. The effort now is to bring the childless and the parentless together. Goldsmith said that the nakedness of the indigent world might be clothed with the trimmings of the vain. There are those who affirm that, if the parentless and the childless could be brought into the company of homes, the Orphan Asylum would be no longer needed.

Our imaginations may make an easy test. Let an authoritative edict go forth that after the approaching midnight the home would be banished, and that each community must adjust itself to some other form of social life. What would such an edict mean? The homes from which students have come are no more responsible for them. They constitute no longer the bases of supplies on which they can draw, nor the alluring hearthstones to which they can return. The workman turns no more his eager feet toward the lights of his cottage. The prince finds his palace removed and all its splendor ceases to invite him. Little children are herded into impersonal surroundings and become public rather than domestic charges. The scene of disaster could be described without merciful stint. These suggestions are enough to show that society could scarcely escape chaos if the home were to be destroyed. How much do the words father, mother, brother, sister, wife, husband, son, daughter mean? Empty out their closer significance, and you vacate much of life's meaning.

Nor is this the narrow word of an ecclesiastic or theologian. Drummond in The Ascent of Man claims that the evolution of a father and mother was the final effort of nature. John Fiske, as scientist and historian, points out the helplessness of infant life as binding parents into unity that grows out of responsibility. Soon after its birth the wee animal runs and leaps, while the wee bird does not wait long ere it flies from limb to limb; but the human babe in the ancient forest lies helpless in its log cradle for many months. Both Drummond and Fiske agree that by this program the God of nature was introducing patience, devotion, and sacrifice into the world and was making ready for the kingdom of heaven. It is plain that Drummond does not state it too strongly when he says that "the goal of the whole plant and animal life seems to have been the creation of a family which the very naturalist had to call Mammals," or Mothers.

This represents somewhat the divine history of the home. The prophecy of the home likewise does some convincing work. The truth is that the home as an institution plants itself squarely in the path of some modern social theories. Some of those theories have begun by boldly demanding that the home be abolished because it has been made a buttress of private life and property. Not only has this suggestion been met with a horror that in itself expresses the instinctive conviction of the sacredness of the home, but it has been met with the insistence that the prophets should name their substitute for the hearthstone. This insistence has received nothing more than hazy and vague replies. The prophet stammers out some dark saying about "something better" or about the home as having fulfilled its mission in "the evolution of society"; and by the very helplessness of his speech he really becomes an advocate of closer domestic relations! It is interesting to note how these reformers seek to find a good path back from their social desert! They soon declare that the new regime must keep the home intact, and that only sporadic and irresponsible voices from their camp are lifted against the home's sanctity! The antihome prophet always has a hard task. He collides with one of the granite convictions of humanity. If he would save the rest of his theory he must save the home from the proposed destruction. God has set the solitary in families. Men look in vain for a better setting for the jewel of life. From all their seeking they come back in due season to the truth that, imperfect as the home may often be, it is still rooted and grounded in outer life and in inner instinct, and that it is futile to try to make better what God has made best.

All this will serve for emphasizing the importance of the home, though much more might be added. When the man awakes in the morning, becomes aware of himself, and then hears the voices of his wife and children, he is immediately related to one of the fundamental institutions of society. If the Bible be, as we have claimed, preeminently the Book of Life, it must relate itself vitally to the home. Our inquiry, therefore, is, What bearing does the Book have upon the home? The answer must necessarily be sketchy and incomplete; but we can soon gather an answer that will establish the biblical drift of teaching.

The Bible begins with an impressive lesson of monogamy. In the Eden life one man and one woman join hands as partners in joy and work. Let the account be poetry, allegory, parable, the lesson is the same. In that intimate communion with God that found him in the garden in the cool of the day, bigamy and polygamy are not represented as being at home. Even the Fall is not described as quickly dropping man low enough to reach the dreadful level of promiscuity or of any of the approaches to so-called free love. It required time ere that downward journey could be made. Humanity in its innocence is not described as starting from the dens of polygamy.

But in season the Bible gives us some disconcerting facts. Bigamy and polygamy confront us in the lives of some worthies. Let it be allowed that sometimes the motive is the perpetuation of the home itself. Provision is sought against the curse of barrenness. Let it be allowed, also, that the Bible does not represent bigamy as working well. It brought discord into Abraham's tent. The peevish wife drives her own wretched substitute from the door, until the desolate Hagar stands in her loneliness and repeats the comforting ritual of the seeing God. The son of bigamy goes off into his wild life, with his hand against every man and every man's hand against him. The admirable thing about the second patriarch is his devotion to one woman. Neutral and characterless as Isaac seems to be, he still won a mention in the marriage service of the ages by his faithfulness to Rebecca alone. Upon the third patriarch bigamy was forced by a cruel deception. In truth a review of the Old Testament will show that any departure from the unity of the home made for trouble. It filled the moving tabernacles of the patriarchs with quarrels. It led David on to murder. It drenched Solomon in debauchery. It degraded the successive kings until it destroyed their power and ruined the nation. Its inevitable end was the loss of the land and the sadness of captivity.

The Old Testament records polygamy, but it does not applaud polygamy. When once a polygamist stood in the halls of Congress and defended his right to a seat by quoting the examples of the patriarchs, his plea did not avail. Not only was the conviction of the nineteenth century against his contention, but the mood of the very Book from which he quoted was his enemy. So far as we can judge, monogamy was the general rule among the Jewish people. The exemplars of bigamy and polygamy were mainly those whose position enabled them to flaunt the public sentiment of their day. The history of Old Testament polygamy is so sorrowful that the Hebrew people have reacted from it into a stanch defense for the monogamic home. The seduction of Tamar, the murder of Amnon, the unfilial licentiousness of Absalom, the sordid road of impurity trod by the later monarchs of Israel, and the despair of the Babylonish captivity, make a piercing case against polygamy. On the other hand, the unwavering faithfulness of the maid in the Song of Solomon, the patience of Hosea with his prodigal wife, the idyllic story of Ruth, all these became persuasive pleas for a home wherein one man and one woman should live together in loyal love even until death. When Jesus came to give his message contemporaneous polygamy had all but ceased in Palestine. But easy divorce, sometimes called "consecutive polygamy," had become prevalent. The world was waiting for the voice of authority, and it heard that voice when Christ began to teach.

The teaching of Jesus in reference to marriage is unmistakable. It may impress many as severe; it cannot impress any as doubtful. If we accept him as the Supreme Teacher we receive a decision given with no equivocal terms. It is often said that the method of the Lord was to offer general principles and to leave his followers to carry out these principles in the spirit of loving discipleship. Thus he declined to give detailed rules for the observance of the Sabbath, explicit instructions for the division of estates, definite laws for prayer and worship and almsgiving. Yet when he discussed marriage he gave both general principles and specific rules. If this was not the only case where he became sponsor for a rule it was surely the most emphatic case. He seemed to feel that concerning marriage and the home he must give a mass of distinct precepts. It was as if he deemed the home so sacred and its enemies so subtle and powerful as to make necessary some particular instruction.

Perhaps we shall not err in saying that Jesus found in his time urgent reasons for specific and strong teaching about marriage. The Jews, who went to a mechanical extreme in their observance of the Sabbath law, had gone to an opposite extreme in their attitude toward the law of the home. In this regard the period was worse than our own, but it was not unlike our own. The domestic conscience of the Jews had been more or less weakened. Mere trifles were made excuses for the breaking up of home. Doubtless the influence of the Romans was making itself felt among the Hebrews. Professor Sheldon quotes Dorner as showing the reckless ease of divorce among leading Romans. One man divorced his wife because she went unveiled on the street; another because she spoke familiarly to a freedwoman; another because she went to a play without his knowledge. Even Cicero, proclaimed a very noble Roman, divorced his first wife that he might marry a wealthier woman, and his second wife because she did not seem to be sufficiently afflicted over the death of his daughter! "In fine," says Professor Sheldon, "it was not altogether hyperbole when Seneca spoke of noble women as reckoning their years by their successive husbands rather than by the Consuls" (History of the Early Church, pages 29, 30).

The records of this same period among the Romans will rout the claim that easy divorce tends to purity. Faithlessness to marriage vows was not seriously regarded, and there were instances of so-called noble women registering as public prostitutes in order that they might thus avoid the penalties of the laws! Easy divorce seemed to be accompanied by easy virtue, as if, indeed, both evils grew naturally out of the same soil. The Roman fashions were having their influence on the Jews. The sacred law was searched and was explained away with evil subtlety in order that men might be religiously released from the marriage bond.

Evidently, then, the times demanded that Jesus should save the marriage law from looseness. The ease of divorce was not unlike that in our own land to-day. If the teaching of Jesus was needed then it is needed now in order that marriage may recover its binding solemnity. On general principles we must all rejoice that Jesus did not give a dubious word on this sacred matter. It may be doubted whether any man who did not have the cause of his own pleasure to serve and who was not willing to subordinate a social law to the superficial joy of his own life, would be willing to modify the Saviour's teaching. Certainly that teaching has long been the firm bulwark of the married life. Had Jesus spoken with doubt, or had he given sanction to easy divorce, what would the results have been? Our homes would have been builded upon the sands of freakish impulses and of hasty tempers. But Jesus's word puts rock into the domestic foundation. When it was given it was met by all of the objections which it still evokes. Some said that the teaching was extreme in its severity, quite outdoing the law of Moses in its demands. Others said that rather than to submit to a bond so unbreakable, it would be better not to marry at all. Still Jesus did not lower his teaching. God was the author of marriage; man must not assume to be its destroyer. God takes two persons and makes them one flesh; man must not cut that vital bond.

Plainly, then, Jesus felt that marriage established a family relationship which was to resemble other family relationships in its indissolubleness. How can a man get rid of his brother, or his sister, or his father or mother, when God has decreed a relation in the flesh that cannot be severed? One may live apart from brother or sister, or father or mother, as a matter of convenience or peace; but how can one destroy the relationship? In spite of angry decrees, is not the brother still a brother, and do not father and mother remain father and mother in defiance of all unfilial pronouncements of divorce? In Jesus's view the second family relationship was as indissoluble as the first. If one were to argue from a certain standpoint it might be easy to claim that it must be even more indissoluble. A man does not choose his first home. It represents a necessity against which he may not strive. But he does choose his second home, and it represents a union for which he is himself distinctly responsible. Why should a man be allowed to divorce himself from the home which is founded by his liberty while still being inexorably bound to the home which was founded without his choice? Jesus taught that the very constitution of society, as resting on the word of God, demanded that the second home be as sacredly unbreakable as the first. The "one flesh" must not be severed in either case.

Hence it comes about that, while the law of Jesus does not allow divorce, unless for the one reason mentioned later, it does not forbid separation. The sin does not consist in putting away the wife when conditions are unbearable; it does consist in marrying another. He does not insist that the quarrelsome shall live amid their brawls; but he does insist that they shall not go into another experiment that degrades a sacred covenant. We do not long listen to the specious arguments for easy divorce, with the privilege of remarriage, without discovering that these arguments affirm either that personal purity is impossible or that personal convenience and pleasure are the primary demands of life. Jesus did not so teach. Dr. Peabody, in his matchless discussion of Jesus's teaching about the family, well says: "The family is, to Jesus, not a temporary arrangement at the mercy of uncontrolled temper or shifting desire; it is ordained for that very discipline in forbearance and restraint which are precisely what many people would avoid, and the easy rupture of its union blights these virtues in their bud. Why should one concern himself in marriage to be considerate and forgiving, if it is easier to be divorced than it is to be good?" (Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 159.) That these words touch the evil heart of many modern divorces there can be no doubt. The emphatic teaching of Jesus was that marriage should not be regarded as a breakable agreement of convenience, but rather as an indissoluble pledge of permanent union.

Whether Jesus allowed any exception to this law remains a debatable matter among the scholars. Some contend that the "save for fornication" clause is an interpolation, and that the teaching of Jesus admitted no divorce whatsoever. Others contend that the gospel writers who omit this clause regarded the one reason for divorce as so certain that it was not deemed necessary to mention its legitimacy. It may be claimed with a show of reason that the regarding of adultery as an exceptional sin against the married life stands for something instinctive in human nature. Notwithstanding all statements that desertion and abuse and drunkenness may be so aggravated as to constitute offenses worse than fornication, normal men and women continue to assign a lonely infamy to the sin of carnal unfaithfulness. If Jesus did use the exceptional clause there is not wanting evidence that his word is confirmed by an all but universal feeling. Many races have been disposed to decree that the sin of adultery is the one iniquity sharp and incisive enough to sever the "one flesh." Perhaps it is safe to affirm that the great majority of good men and women do not shrink from the exception as being unworthy of Jesus's teaching. But, the exception being granted, that teaching is clear and uncompromising. When that teaching becomes the law of the world divorce courts will be largely emptied and the marriage vows will be assumed with less haste and with more solemnity.

The New Testament is thus seen to be the headquarters of that conception of marriage that alone gives a firm foundation to the home. It is impossible to conceive what would have been the dismal statistics of divorce, if Jesus had made the marriage bond of slender strength. Truly the situation is bad enough as it is. Often the causes for divorce are trivial; sometimes they are deliberately arranged by the separating parties! and occasionally the much-married comedian is hailed on the stage with a joking tolerance. But when more than ninety per cent of the marriages of the land stand the tests of time and are kept in fidelity until the "one flesh" is severed by death, it is evident that some strong force still guards the home from desecration.

We need not inquire what that force is; it is the Word of Christ. Among those who follow him least, he has made divorce "bad form"; among those who follow him somewhat, he has made it doubtful morals; while among those who accept him as Lord and Master, he has made it sacrilege and blasphemy. The devotees of pleasure and convenience and lust may well quarrel with the decree of Christ. The devotees of compromise may seek to refine and discount his explicit law. Yet all those who see in the home the very center and heart of a properly organized society, as well as the very ordination of the Lord God Almighty, will not cease to be grateful that Christ spoke so unmistakably concerning its solemn sanction. He fixed forever the difference between the civil marriage and the Christian marriage. He filled the marriage service with religious terms. "The sight of God," "instituted of God," "mystical union," "holy estate," "Cana of Galilee," "reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of God," "God's ordinance," "forsaking all other," "so long as ye both shall live," "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health," "the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," "God hath joined together," "in holy love until their lives' end"-all these words are Christ's words, his Spirit confirmed them in the service of his church. That service may well close with the prayer which declares that his is "the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."

More and more careful students of both sociology and Christianity will see that no safe conception of marriage can be found save in the words of the Lord. The civil contract idea is full of peril. The case of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the English poet, is in evidence. The illustration may be extreme, but it will the better show the sure goal of that theory of marriage that forgets God. Shelley, for a time at least, was an outright atheist. Bowing God out of the universe, he could not consistently leave God in his theory of marriage. His college thesis was an argument for atheism. Given sufficient provocation and motive, Shelley was sure to reach the limit of a godless idea of marriage. It seems almost impossible for men with a literary mania to see social or moral fault in their heroes, and their tendency often is to absolve writers of genius from the usual laws. Shelley married the daughter of a retired innkeeper. In two years he separated from his wife and two children. Three years later the wife drowned herself, meeting voluntarily a fate which Shelley was to meet involuntarily. An apologist for Shelley says, "The refinements of intellectual sympathy which poets desiderate in their spouses Shelley failed to find in his wife, but for a time he lived with her not unhappily; nor to the last had he any fault to allege against her, except such negative ones as might be implied in his meeting a woman he liked better." The more we study this language the more does its superficiality impress us. Let it be said that Shelley was young and heedless when he first married; let it be said, also, that he was in general strangely lovable and warmly philanthropic; and let it be said, even, that he was in his lifetime execrated beyond his deserts. But it would not be so easy to palliate his conduct if one's own daughter had drowned herself to end her sorrow, or if one's own daughter had traveled with him, unmarried, over France and Switzerland! Somehow literary admiration plays tricks on moral natures. Doubtless the judgment of Shelley on the basis of his boyish poem "Queen Mab" was unfair, even as its surreptitious publication without his consent was unfair. None the less one may trace a connection between his college production in defense of atheism and his later domestic conduct. No marriage has a sure foundation apart from a religious sanction. The more we consider the possibilities suggested by this confessedly extreme illustration, the more will we cling to the strict theory of Jesus as against the limping logic of any loose sociologist.

We have thus seen that the foundation of the home comes to the Bible, and particularly to the goal of the Bible's revelation in Christ, for its solidity. Other foundations are fashioned of yielding sand. The marriage ceremony might well be modified in some minor regards; but the word of Christ will insist that the ceremony shall represent no flimsy contract. While he rules the pronouncement will be, "God hath joined together"; and the human response will remain, "till death us do part."

The relation of Jesus to the home goes farther than his word about marriage, deep and far-reaching as that is. His life emphasized the sacredness of the family relation. He went back from the scene in the Temple to be "subject unto his parents." He wrought his first miracle on the occasion of a marriage. Many of his miracles of mercy were performed in answer to a family plea. He heard the cry of a mother when he healed the daughter of the Syroph?nician woman, and again when he raised up the son of the widow of Nain. He heard the cry of a father when he cast out the evil spirit and restored a stricken son, clothed and in his right mind. He heard the cry of sisters when he stood weeping at the grave of Lazarus. The domestic plea quickly reached his heart and summoned his aid. It was so even in the personal sense. In the agony of the crucifixion he did not fail to commend his mother to the care of his best-to-do disciple, and to cause the writing of that simple statement, "From that day that disciple took her into his own home."

Indeed, through all the life of Jesus he glorified the family, unless the family stood in the way of his truth or work. Emerson said once, "I will hate my father and my mother when my genius calls me." We all know where Emerson got those words; they were not written on his own authority. Jesus made our human ancestry subject to our divine ancestry. Above the earthly parents he saw the heavenly Father. The God who ordained the home was above the home. But Jesus would allow no other exception. He himself lived by that supreme law. He was homeless in obedience to his own divine mission. There is a peculiar illustration of this, hidden somewhat by our awkward distribution of the Bible into chapters and verses. The seventh chapter of John ends with the words, "They went every man to his own house." It is not difficult for us to reproduce the scene, even with its Oriental touches. The discussion of the day is over. The hearers did what men and women have been doing ever since-they turned to the twinkling lights of their homes. Soon the crowds had disappeared and the various persons had joined themselves to their family groups. The homeless One was left alone. The first verse of the eighth chapter of John says, "Jesus went unto the mount of Olives." It was just an instance of his tragedy, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." The homelessness of Jesus was vicarious. Sometimes still he calls his own into the same vicariousness. He separates sons and daughters from their fathers and mothers and sends them afar to preach his kingdom. Wherever those homeless ones may go, the meaning of home takes on a new and sacred meaning. They carry with them the Word and Spirit of him who, being weary, invited the weary ones to come to him for rest; being thirsty, invited the thirsty ones to drink of the water of life; being poor, invited the poor to come to him for riches; being dead, invited the dying ones to look to him for eternal life; and, being homeless, still commands the world to look to him for the spirit of home. Even though he himself went down into the darkness of the Mount of Olives, ever since his day the people that have heard and heeded his word have found the lights of home more inviting and the mission of the home more divine.

There is yet another consideration which must be noted ere we receive the full message of Jesus about the home. The teaching of Jesus concerning God was almost wholly based on a figure of speech derived from the home. In the Old Testament God is mentioned under the title of fatherhood but seven times. Five times he is spoken of as the father of the Jewish people; twice he is spoken of as the father of individual men. Only once in the sweep of the ancient Scriptures is there found a prayer addressed to God as Father. God was the King of kings, and the Lord of hosts; he was Creator and Lawgiver. But in the knowledge of the people he was not yet Father. The world waited long ere men found an Elder Brother who could break the spell of their orphanhood and reveal to them a Father. When Jesus desired to tell men what God was like he went to their homes and found therein the form of his teaching. He sprinkled the New Testament with the domestic name of God. Two hundred and sixty-five times God is spoken of under the title of Fatherhood. The sacredness of the home relation could not receive holier emphasis.

Thus the homes which are founded by the Lord become revelations of the Lord. Domestic relations are teachers of theology. Well may we speak of a Family Bible! There is such a Bible. The illustration of theology is the family illustration. Some day we shall recover that theology, and we shall place the theologies that have superseded it in their secondary place. Jesus was the final Teacher of theology, and we must give him the primacy. Under his teaching every true home is a symbol of the divine household; every true parent is a limited representative of God; every true son is an example of the filial spirit that is religion. The path of prayer starts with the word Father. The doctrine of providential care is explained by the word Father. The call to obedience refers to the will of the Father. The deeper tragedy of sin comes from the fact that the offense is against the Father. Conversion is a return to the Father.

Taking, then, the direct teaching of Jesus with reference to marriage as the founding of the home, taking his life in its merciful relation to the home, and taking his teaching about God as based on the home, we are justified in saying that Jesus was the Prophet and Saviour of the Family. The vision that he gave of the other life took on that form again. He declared that he was preparing a place for his own, and he called that place the "Father's house." He was likewise preparing a home this side of the many mansions. A Carpenter he was. He has builded many sanctuaries, some for worship, and some for the mercy that we show to the sick, and aged, and destitute. But the Carpenter of Nazareth is the builder of the true home. His word lays its foundations, raises its walls, places its capstone, and furnishes its atmosphere of peace and love. The home that is placed on any other word cannot stand the shock of the tempest. It is based on sand; and when the winds and rains and storms of passion come, the home will fall, and great will be the fall thereof. The world needs to-day the lesson of Jesus about the home; and it needs, also, the spirit of Jesus in the home. When men and women yield to that spirit, extravagance will be checked, forbearance will be increased, love will be promoted, peace will be established. Husband and wife will not then plead that Jesus's strict decree concerning marriage may be annulled. Earthly homes will be like vestibules of the Father's House.

There remains for brief discussion the relation of the Epistles of the New Testament to the home life of the people. The tendency here has been to give undue emphasis to certain phases of Paul's teaching. Some reformers, especially some radical feminists, have spoken of the great apostle's teaching with scant respect. The command to wives to obey their husbands has been kept apart from the command to husbands to love their wives even as Christ loved the church. Christ loved the church so that he gave his life for it; and when husbands love their wives to that sublime extent, obedience is no longer demanded for tyranny. All technical matters aside, it will be seen that the apostolic treatment of the domestic relations, touching the relative duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants, shows a marked balance. When each party keeps his portion of the precepts, and is strictly minded to fulfill precisely his part of the apostolic contract, debates about primacy and authority find their gracious solution in mutual love. Unless we should wish to make undue account of Saint Paul's doctrine of the husband's primacy, we cannot say that his attitude toward womankind was marked by anything other than utmost respect. Just what his own domestic experiences were is a question of age-long doubt. If we study his actual references to women we shall find a series of compliments too deep to serve as the expression of a superficial gallantry and too genuine to allow the author to be classed as a hater of the mothers and sisters and wives of the race. Near the end of his life Paul caught the vision of his Master. Beyond his wanderings he saw a destination; above his imprisonments he saw a freedom; after his shipwrecks he saw a haven; and the destination and freedom and haven were all expressed in the words "at home." "At home," "at home with the Lord," this was Paul's conception of the waiting heaven. He, too, exalted the home by making it the forefigure of heaven.

We have now presented enough to justify the statement that the Bible is the stanch friend of the home. As long as men and women read and obey the Book, and love and follow the Lord of the Book, their feet will turn reverently homeward as to the place of God's appointing, as to the school of God's own discipline, as to the place of God's own joy, and as to the anteroom of God's own heaven.

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