1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 229 



among men of that personal fellowship with God through 

 word and faith which alone can satisfy our souls, and so 

 assures us that the life of faith in Christ, which is the 

 grand ideal of the Reformation, is no vain phantom, 

 but a real fellowship with a self - revealing God. The 

 Bible, to use Luther s own phrase, is the garment of 

 Christ. 1 We do not lay hold of Christ by grasping His 

 garment, we have not fellowship with Christ by a mere 

 head - knowledge of the Gospel history ; but Christ is 

 wrapped up in the historic record, and it is only within 

 this garment that faith can find Him. 



It is certainly true that this historical conception of 

 the Bible was by no means defined with theoretical 

 clearness, or grasped with perfect firmness, by the Re 

 formation theology ; 2 but just as the principle of personal 

 faith is the foundation of all the fresh life of the Reforma 

 tion, so the principle of a historical treatment of Scripture 

 is at bottom, though far less clearly apprehended, the 

 principle of the whole Reformation exegesis. I venture 

 to say, that from this one principle flows all that is new 

 and true in the Protestant interpretation of the Bible ; 

 that the understanding of Scripture has advanced or 

 gone back in the Evangelical Churches just in proportion 

 as this principle, in connection with the great principle 

 of justifying faith, has been held fast or overlooked ; and 

 that we, too, if we are really in earnest with our study of 

 the Bible, if we desire to deal truly with Scripture and 

 our Protestant freedom, must regulate all our exegesis 

 and all our criticism by the great principle that we are 

 to seek in the Bible, not a body of abstract religious 

 truth, but the living personal history of God s gracious 

 dealings with men from age to age, till at length in 



1 On Ps. xxii. 19 (18), in his &quot; Operationes in duas Psalmorum 

 Decades.&quot; 



2 Compare on this point an instructive Essay by Diestel, &quot; Die kirch- 

 liche Anschauung des A. T. f &quot; in the Jahrbb. f. D. Theol, 1869, p. 232 

 sqq. Professor Diestel shows how two views of the Old Testament soon 

 branched off in the Protestant Churches. 



