i8 74 ] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 233 



one word pointing out that a necessary consequence of 

 this way of treating the Bible is the honest practice of a 

 higher criticism. The higher criticism does not mean 

 negative criticism. It means the fair and honest looking 

 at the Bible as a historical record, and the effort every 

 where to reach the real meaning and historical setting, 

 not of individual passages of the Scripture, but of the 

 Scripture Records as a whole ; and to do this we must 

 apply the same principle that the Reformation applied 

 to detail Exegesis. We must let the Bible speak for itself. 

 Our notions of the origin, the purpose, the character of 

 the Scripture books must be drawn, not from vain 

 traditions, but from a historical study of the books 

 themselves. This process can be dangerous to faith only 

 when it is begun without faith when we forget that the 

 Bible history is no profane history, but the story of 

 God s saving self-manifestation. 



VI. And, finally, one word on the bearing of the 

 Reformation principle on the use of Scripture for edifica 

 tion. In the Bible history, as the Reformers conceived 

 it, we hear two voices the voice of God speaking love 

 to man, and the voice of the renewed man answering in 

 faith to God. :&amp;lt; The Scripture,&quot; says Jurieu, &quot; is almost 

 nothing else than a tissue of prayers and thanksgiving &quot; ; l 

 and this loving communion of God and man is no dead 

 bygone thing, but a thing in which we may share. &quot; God 

 is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live 

 unto Him.&quot; And so when we draw near in faith to the 

 Bible, we feel ourselves entering into a higher, holier 

 world : &quot; not to the mount that might be touched, and 

 that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, 

 and tempest ; but unto mount Sion, and to the city 

 of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an 



1 &quot;L criture n est presque autre chose que cela, qu un tissu de 

 prieres et d actions de graces &quot; (Jugement sur les Methodes, etc., Rott. 

 1688, p. 84). Luther s views on the answer of man to God, as expressed 

 in Scripture, are beautifully developed in the Preface to the German 

 Psalter. 



