viii Worship of the Letter. 141 



learn by this passage so remarkably repeated in the 

 three Synoptic Gospels is the lawfulness and the 

 duty of interpreting Scripture by the spirit rather 

 than the letter, and bringing higher principles to the 

 work than those of technical grammar and formal logic. 



This is a lesson which the Church has not yet 

 sufficiently learned. Worship of the letter is deeply 

 rooted in human nature. Every teacher of those 

 subjects which make demands on the understanding 

 rather than the memory, must, if he knows his busi- 

 ness, feel that he has constantly to struggle against 

 the tendency in his pupils to trust to a rule which can 

 be remembered, rather than to a principle which can 

 be understood. In such subjects as logic and mathe- 

 matics, every one sees that this is a human weakness : 

 a man is not a mathematician, though he may be a 

 calculator, merely because he can apply rules without 

 understanding why they are true ; but in religion 

 and theology many make a boast of not ascending 

 from rules to principles. To use expressions which 

 have obtained currency, they demand " chapter and 

 verse for everything," and pride themselves on not 

 going "beyond the things which are written." 



As this last expression occurs in Scripture, and, 

 like many other expressions of Scripture, is habitually 

 misapplied, let us examine it in its context. It occurs 

 in that introductory part of the First Epistle to the 

 Corinthians where its author is warning his converts 

 against the spirit of pride, boastfulness, and schism. 

 The entire passage is as follows : 



