THE BIBLE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 



41 



excuses and apologies for our Bible. If 1 had space we should 

 see how the cruel exterminating wars and the bitter words of 

 the imprecatory Psalms are all explained, and how, given the 

 circumstances, these are the best things that could have been 

 recorded for our instruction and our encouragement. 



The great principle is that we are never to judge a thing, 

 whether a plan, a work, or a person, by the primary stages — the 

 mception — but only by the final stage — the completion. If you 

 look at a statue half made, it may seem to you very poor and 

 rough, but if you are a sculptor you may see the perfect form in 

 the block. If you are planting out an orchard, you ask to see 

 and taste the ripened apple before you make your decision as 

 to the trees. If you are writing the life of a man, and summing 

 up his character, you do not put against him the screams and 

 rebellions of his infancy. Our God has been infinitely tender with 

 our age-long immaturity, and has never been so far in front of 

 us that we cannot understand Him. As soon as He could, He 

 sent us His Son, the perfect Word of God, the translation of the 

 eternal Heart of the Father into a series of words and deeds, 

 such as we can understand. Jesus of Nazareth lived for us, 

 and then suffered and died for us, and is now in the place of 

 power sending the regenerative Spirit to all who come to Him. 

 That is our present position, and it is full of hope, for it holds 

 out a prospect of completion. We are to go on " till we all 

 come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son 

 of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of 

 the fulness of Christ." No possible conception can go beyond 

 that. 



We have now spent enough thought on the three classes of 

 objection brought against the Bible — the Literary and Historical, 

 the Scientific, and the Ethical. There is, as I have already 

 mentioned, a fourth class, the Psychological, but this is aimed 

 at the work of the Spirit of God in the heart of man rather than 

 at the letter of the Bible. We may leave it aside as beyond the 

 limits of our present discussion. 



Let us now turn to the entirely positive and constructive side 

 of our subject. 



As early as 1852, a good twenty years before my day, there 

 was an undergraduate of Oxford, who wrote these simple Hues : — 



" I have a Ufe in Christ to live, 



But ere I live it must I wait 

 Till learning can full answer give 



To this or that book's date ? 

 I have a life in Christ to live, 



I have a death in Christ to die ; 

 And must I wait till science give 



All doubts a full reply?" 



