The Bible and Life

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ectly the children are made ready for school and join that romping procession that moves each day at the joint command of parents and teachers. In the normal Christian community this fact of school-going is all

deed, if we figure the average span of life, the school claims more than one fourth of the individual career. Many persons continue formal school work

l opportunity. It thus requires no long observation to convince any thoughtful man that our educational program, involving every young life in the nation and ideally every young life on the planet, is of incalculable meaning. Each morning an army of many millions, ranging from wee kindergartners up to adult postgraduates, moves to the schoolroom door. The whole scene is as impressive as it is human. The question naturally comes, What started

rld's instruction. The Bible has been the supreme text-book, even as it has been the supreme force, in the schools of nearly two millenniums. These facts have been well set forth

d badly in history. On the other hand, the inner sanction, unenforced by any objective form of obligation, has won some big victories. An explicit command to act as an immortal is not so powerful as the implicit conviction that we are immortal. It is safe to declare that the implications of Scripture are often as deep and influential as its explications. If, then, the flowers of knowledge bloom not by command in the fields of the Bible, may we still find there the seeds out of which such flowers inevitably grow? If the school

f the intellectual process by which some "Father of the Multitude" must have reached the creed of the divine unity and spirituality. We could not expect, of course, to find organized education in the primitive days of religious history. But, after all, education is relative. An eminent American graduated from Harvard in 1836 when he was sixteen years of age. In this day his sixteen years and his completed course of study would barely admit him to the Freshman class. So Abraham's education must be graded by the standard of his dim and far day. Tradition represents him

istorians, as having the best mental furnishing of his day. The book of the Acts says of him that he "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." Clemens Alexandrinus records that Moses had the finest teachers in Egypt, and that the choicest scholars were imported from G

Old Testament prophesying, the "school" arrived quickly and began the training of the young men. Criticism has not attacked the view that the book of Isaiah bears marks of high culture. If that book had two authors, the ancient world is entitled to the credit of a second scholar. When the radical is done with the story of D

s that have moved the ages. But, whatever the fact be here, he would be wild indeed who would find in ignorance any explanation of the gospel's victory. Let us remember, moreover, that, when the "unlettered" Twelve were cramping the universal faith into a local religion, the corrector of their blunder was the "lettered" Paul. In his statement of experience he was ever ready to say that he had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the greatest Jewish teacher of the day. After Christ Paul is the colossal fi

e proved to be true. Where words seemed to fight each other, the deeper facts were found to live in peace. So Jesus in his personal influence was ever reaching goals of which the paths did not give promise. This is seen peculiarly in his relation to the intellectual life. He left no manuscripts. The only time he is represented as writing was when he

areth? Was his mother his only earthly teacher? Did his neighbors speak literal truth in the question, "Whence hath this man wisdom, having never learned"? The silent years give no answer to the questions. But this we do know: He who went to school slightly or not at all has sent a world to school. He who founded no immediate institution

d they, having gotten their hearts from him, carried schools with them. When the gospel reached England and Germany, education reached those countr

hoolroom phrases with which the account of his life is filled. The prologue of his wonderful message on the Mount illustrates this. "And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him; and he opened his mouth, and taught them." The posture of Jesus was that of the teacher. His audience was made up of "disciples," that is, of pupils. He "taught" them. All this might be called a superficial play upon mere words. But we may go further and discover tha

re study so effective that along a path of lilies men walked to God. When it was necessary to individualize in order to come to this high result, Jesus took up that burden of teaching. His school, like all other schools since its day, enrolled "a son of thunder." It took the love that suffered long to make John, the son of thunder and lightning and vaulting ambition, into the son of t

us with the call to purity. To the attentive he comes just as truly with the call to knowledge. He has given us a gospel for the body, and that gospel teaches that drunkards and other defilers of the human temple of God cannot inherit his kingdom. He has given us a gospel for the spirit, and that gospel commands that the inmost realm

is a sinner. We have said that the man who dwarfs and represses his spirit is a sinner. Are we ready to say that the man who gives his mind no chance, the man who fails to move on to the ideal of an omniscient God, is likewise a sinner? Is God's perfect spirit a goal for his children, and is God's perfect mind removed from our vision

power. On the contrary the system of Jesus seems to have had a genius for diffusing education. It has been a vast normal school. The purer and freer and more spiritual its form, the mightier has it been as an educational force. If we list the nations of the earth in classes with reference to literacy and illiteracy, we shall find that the farther the nations are from the Bible, the more dense is their ignorance. We shall find, too, that where the people are the freest in their relation to the Bible, there the ignorance is least. Plainly the Bible with its crowning revelation in

. He found that the Bible did not condemn slavery, but that the Bible did give concerning it certain regulations. The pro-slavery orators made good use of the letter to Philemon. The people who believed in human liberty, and who likewise believed in a mechanical and verbal theo

n Rule is of little force, apart from that doctrine of human personality that pervades the New Testament. Give that doctrine power, and it would refuse to live in the same world with slavery. That doctrine, under a Captain, was a delivering army. That doctrine, under a King, was an Emancipation Proclamation. The Golden Rule had been given in negative form by Confucius, and it went to sleep in his maxi

octrine over other seas and lodged it in the hearts of Lovejoy, Phillips, and Garrison. Directly four million sable faces were glowing with the light of liberty. Jesus had said, "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." The word had essentially a spiritual meaning, but

divine dominion over motive is strongly asserted. And that comprehensive responsibility claims the mind. The first great commandment of the new dispensation is that we must "love God with all the strength, with all the soul, with all the mind." Men may differ about the precise meaning of the mind's love for the Lord, but the Christian sense of duty has asserted it in strange fashions. From vast revivals young men and women have gone forward intellectually and have sought the higher educat

on, but these may reassure themselves with the conviction that any theory may be fearlessly accepted, if it brings us face to face with God at any point of our total life. The failure to follow this biblical idea has brought a penalty always. No denomination that has fought or slurred education has led a large and victorious life; on the contrary it has invariably become one of the fading and dwindling forces of God's work. The God of wisdom is evermore against the promoters of ignorance. So

s sensibility, and he must use that. Man has will, and he must use that. Man must get the truth out of his integral self rather than out of his fractional self. The man who does not use his heart and will in the gaining of truth is just as faithless as is the man who will not use his mind. Without attempting to use psychological terms with exactness

universal method. It takes humility to make the beginnings of a scholar, and weariness and shame of ignorance, and faith in an intellectual empire, and a high trust that the mind is made for truth, and the truth for mind. Ere we have done, we have a huge creed wrapped up in our intellectual processes. But the creed has been saved from its cold pride. The Bible says in one of its marginal readings, "Knowledge puffeth up; love buildeth up."

the essential mystery of things. He was no dealer in an intellectual cure-all. He spoke with authority and yet with reverent limitation. There was a great reserve in his explanations. Yet in the realm where men must live their present lives, Jesus gave enough truth to keep men busy all their days. Here again comes in the question of dynamic. Men sometimes prate about their "love of truth." The intellectual life, like the religious life, may be guilty of cant. It takes more than an open mind to get the truth; it takes a working mind. Truth does

to-day is for more men with the highest culture placed under the thrall of his grace and under the guiding power of the Spirit whom he sends-more Luthers from Wittenberg, more Wesleys from Oxford, more Pauls from Gamaliel's school; more men from

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