THE BIBLE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 



35 



but to me it is beautiful to read how our Father in Heaven 

 re-states His laws in terms of entreaty. The very young child 

 needs short commands, " Come when I call you," " Don't touch 

 the fire " ' ; but the older child needs a glimpse of the heart of love 

 that lies behind the rules, an explanation of the miseries of dis- 

 obedience, and the joys of sympathy with the nobler aim and the 

 wider scope of the parents. Though this view of a far later date 

 seems to me better, because more in accordance with our 

 experience, I am quite ready to leave it because it deals only with 

 the shell ; the impoi^tant point is that the words are really there, 

 an expression of hope and disappointment, of sympatliy and 

 longing, straight from the heart of God, incorporated in our Bible. 

 But I pray you listen to this further expression of experience ; if 

 the critic goes beyond mere facts and gives you his conclusions, 

 I say without hesitation that we will not accept them. No, not 

 one of them, for qua critic he can deal only with the outer shell. 

 He misses out our chief witness. He cannot help it. He comes 

 under our Lord's explanation that, unless the little flame of 

 the Divine life is lighted within, a man cannot even " see the 

 kingdom of God," not even know that it is there to be studied. 

 St. Paul's version of the same solemn truth about " the natural 

 man " is that " the things of the Spirit of God are foolishness 

 unto him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually 

 discerned." These words may seem severe, but again and again 

 does the agnostic set his seal to them by saying, It isn't that 

 I won't believe, it is that I can't. I have not the requisite data." 

 The critic may go on to tell us that Genesis is by no means the 

 first book to be written down, but is a comparatively late produc- 

 tion, and that the Apocalypse is not the last ; if he goes on to 

 add, Therefore the Bible is not reliable,'' then we may chase 

 him from us without allowing him another word, exactly as 

 Nehemiah did the son of Joiada the high priest, because he was 

 son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite. It is only lately that I see 

 this division clearly between the work of Learning, and the work 

 of the Spirit of God, and surely it leaves us a reasonable path 

 to walk in ! The critics cannot deal with more than the shell, 

 the body; they must not touch the inner soul, because they have 

 no experience of it, and so the judgment they pronounce is worth 

 nothing. And even as to the arrangement of the books — a 

 wonderful series written over a space of at least fifteen centuries — 

 suppose all the sixty of them were bound in separate volumes, 

 how should we place them? Surely it were wise to begin with 

 the remote past, and to end with the remote future ! That a 

 critic may also be a sincere Christian is, thank Heaven ! true, but 

 then he takes another place, and we call his work Apologetics 

 rather than Criticism, because they bring in a witness the world 

 cannot recognize. 



