THE BIBLE AND THE NATION
“And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Gen. 12:2-3 The greatest National promise connected to the Bible and the God Who wrote it concerning Israel. And soon this shall come about after great tribulation which is how they choose to learn.
Our subject is strictly national. I am not dealing with the place of the Bible in the doctrine and life of the Church. That is quite another matter, necessarily related to this, and yet separate from it. Neither am I attempting to discuss the value of the Bible in the culture of personal devotion. That is still another subject, yet related. I emphasize the fact that our subject is strictly national, because there are some people who are inclined to say that the Christian has nothing to do with the nation and with his national life. I am not arguing that at any length, but shall dismiss it with a statement of profound conviction, which can be expressed in words familiar, written by Sir Walter Scott in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel":
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land."
and he goes on with biting words to say of such a one,
The wretch, concentrated all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd and unsung.
With that I agree. To tell me the Christian man has nothing to do with national life is to tell me he is a renegade to Jesus Christ in some department at least of his life and thinking.
It may immediately be said, however, that the thinking of the Christian man in regard to his value to his nation is qualified by his Christianity. He will never be very careful to sing, "America leads the world." It is a wild idea altogether, and I may say physically she never did rule the waves, as we know very well, for Britain used to, and politically she is no longer ruling the world. Neither is our care, as Christian people, that our nation should be pre-eminent in commerce, important as this may be. Our value to our nation is qualified by our Christianity. Our love for our land is none the less, but there has come to us a new interpretation of life, which necessarily qualifies our attitude toward the nation of which we form a part.
Believing, then, that our value to our nation has to do with the Bible, and the Bible with our value to our nation, I think the tendency of the times is to think of it as something that we have outgrown. That is stated carefully. I think that is the general attitude towards the Bible today. One of the leaders in America was a man named Ingersoll. He used to belittle the value of the Bibles various accounts and had a lecture on "The Mistakes of Moses." I cannot resist telling a story. Mark Twain had a very close friend who said to Mark Twain, "Sam" (Sam Clemens was his name), "Bob Ingersoll is lecturing tonight on ‘The Mistakes of Moses.’ It is only a dollar; let us go and hear him." To which Clemens replied, "No, I'm not going to hear Bob; but I will tell you what I will do. If you can arrange for Moses to lecture on the mistakes of Bob Ingersoll, I will give ten dollars to hear him!"
Now the national attitude towards the Bible is one of ignorance for they ignore the Bible as a fairy tale story book with no practical value for right or wrong or as a source of truth on any subject. Our children display the truth that they have no hope as suicides increase. They display a set of moral standards that speaks of no input from God’s word. They have no fear of judgment for most know nothing of what follows the death experience. Righteousness, morality, is rooted in religion. Their concept of love is afoul for “God is love.” Love is the essence of Deity.
And this shows the trend. Our nation was the beacon light of what this Literature can do for the good of all nations that would mimic Americas Godly values which contributed to the good of all other nations. But it cannot be neglected, without disaster to our nation. My purpose now is to claim that there are such values, contributive to national life, which, if we neglect, we cannot do so without disaster to our nation. We now go over some ground covered when dealing with the authority of the Bible, but from a different angle. I shall name four values derivable from this Book, and found nowhere else, which I maintain are vital to national life, and then we shall briefly consider them.
First, in this Book we have the moral conception which has created the great civilizations. Second, in this Book we have the conception of God which has issued in the great humanities. Third, we have in this book the conception of man that has created discontent with false conditions, and has inspired all the great reforms that have come to human life. Finally and centrally, we have in this Literature the declaration of an Evangel which gives hope to man of renewal, personal, social, and national. None of these things are found in any other literature in existence today.
First, then, I find in the Bible the moral conception which has created the great civilizations. I did not say the moral standards. These are involved, but I want to go behind them. I am not discussing laws either found in the Old or New Testament, but the conception of morality lying behind all the laws found in the Bible. What is that conception?
I propose to answer my question by going back to the Old Testament, and, if that surprises some, then I will go to the New to show why I went first to the Old. I read in the Book of Deuteronomy these words: “Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
Do not forget, this was a national word, spoken to a nation. That is the Biblical conception of morality. I go on to the New, and the record of our Lord, as given by Matthew. On one occasion a man devoted to the delivery and teaching of the law asked a question, "Which is the great commandment?" How did Jesus answer him? He said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”
He was quoting from the Old Testament: “This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Jesus had not finished. He not only quoted from Deuteronomy, and from Leviticus, but He then said this: “On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets.”
Jesus said the whole law, and all the prophetic interpretations, and applications to changing conditions and changing times, all depend upon these two. The first is the greater, and the second is the corollary and sequence, and is impossible apart from the first. That is the Biblical conception of morality. The Bible says that morality is rooted in religion. It teaches from beginning to end that there is no standard which is sufficiently powerful either to interpret or to enforce a beneficent law for the human race, except the standard that comes when the human race has right relationship with God. Righteousness, morality, is rooted in religion.
Without considering any of the laws either of the Old or New Testaments, think for a moment of the relative issues of that conception of morality. First, the sacredness of life. Secondly, the sanctity of marriage. Thirdly, the importance of the family as God's first circle of human society. Finally, the test of the little child in the midst of the family. The Bible conception of morality has produced these things, and nothing else. The sacredness of life is not held anywhere where the Bible is denied ; not even in this country, in the measure in which people deny the Bible, do they hold life to be sacred, and certainly not anywhere else. I need not argue about the sanctity of marriage, the importance of the family, and the test of the child. All these things are the result of man's acceptation of the Biblical conception that morality must be rooted in religion.
If that be the first great value, the second is that of the conception of God which the Bible gives, that has issued in the great philanthropies. The Biblical conception of God is completely crystallized in the clear, short, sharp, eternally undying definition in the writings of the New Testament, "God is love." I am always inclined to quarrel with the theologians if or when they tell me that love is a divine attribute. Love is not an attribute. It is the essence of Deity. There are attributes: truth, and justice, and beneficence, and compassion, but they are all included in love. If we interpret that text, "God is love," by the abominable misinterpretation of love of which our thinking is so cursed, and make it weak, and sickly, and sentimental, we had better amend our understanding of the definition. Love can be as fierce as the grave, and fiercer than fire. That is not love that stands shedding tears over the man or woman with cancer. Love cuts it out, if it can be done. That applies to all world conditions. Soft and sentimental people who go back to the Old Testament, and weep and lament over the corrupt and licentious crowds in Palestine, against whom God raised a scourge to sweep them out of existence, do not understand that God was cutting out the cancer. I think He is doing it today in some parts of the world. Oh, yes, love can use the knife. Love can use the rod. Love can be fierce and angry. But God is love.
Take the conception of God found in the Bible, including Old and New Testaments, as they merge in one great harmony, I say the Bible reveals that God is Father and Mother. We have heard that in the Old Testament, and we are still singing it in the Psalms:
Like as a father pitieth his children,
So the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.
Someone may say, What about motherhood ? Listen to one of the fierce prophets:
“As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.”
If there are any doubts about motherhood in the heart of God, let Jesus speak:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.
Fatherhood and motherhood, the merging in one great being of God of principle and passion; principle always, but suffused with passion. Passion always held in poise by principle, Grace and truth.
In the history of man, the love of man is always the outcome of the love of God, and always has been. And nations are a part of that love. All the toils, travails, and triumphs with which we are familiar in the interest of suffering derelict humanity have resulted from this doctrine of God. There were no institutions caring for the unfit before Calvary. It is well to remind ourselves of that. I go back for one brief moment to those days of 1914-18. Oh, the horror of it all! Yes, but remember what came from those fields of battle. The white flag with a red cross. Not a red lion, nor a red eagle, but a red cross. From that Cross wherein God was unveiled in His compassion for derelict and broken and bruised humanity, men began to build hospitals to care for the unfit. All the great philanthropies have sprung out of the God revealed in this Book. If we destroy this Book, and lose that God, we have only to look abroad in the world to see the kind of God that will have to be substituted, some deity, whether of State or a man. We shall see the absence of compassion, and the drying up of all the springs of pity and tenderness from the human heart.
But, third, we have in this Book the conception of man which has inspired the great reforms. What is the conception of man? That he is a being made in the image and likeness of God. We only begin to understand the ruin of man as we see that ideal broken, violated, smashed, a wreckage amid tears, and blood, and muck, and misery. It is because men have seen man as the Bible reveals him, that they have become discontented with false conditions. There are conditions of life, have been, and still are in America, in England, in other places, in which babies are more damned than born into the world. Well, why not? When that old pagan, Marcus Aurelius, was once questioned about the perfecting of human personality someone said, "When you have perfected a few beings, what about the rest?" "Oh," said the old pagan, "there must always be shavings in a carpenter's shop." Now, the Bible cuts clean across that, and denies that any man is to be looked upon as shavings, to be flung away, in order that a few may be perfected. The Bible declares that every baby born (whether properly or improperly matters nothing) is born to a birthright of personality and faith; and if it is impossible for it to be realized, then out of that has come every passionate attempt at reform.
Once more, we have in this Book the announcement of an Evangel, that gives to men the hope of renewal. That is no national value at all unless we add to the statement that history proves the announcement is true in that it has worked, and is working still, in the recovery of human lives from dereliction to realization. That we claim, without any further argument. The Evangel works, and proof can be had in two ways. Derelict humanity, hearing the Evangel, believing the message, submitting to the terms, goes out and expresses itself in victory over sin. Not completely and always.
Many a tumble, many a trembling and failure; but the whole set of the life of the man who has believed this Evangel is against sin, and, though he fall, he will rise again, and press toward the goal. And the other proof that the Evangel works is that it expresses itself in the service of others. Victory over sin, and service of others; these are the great proofs of the effectiveness of the Evangel.
There is no evangel in any other literature. There is no evangel in any philosophy or science. It is right here in this Book. It breaks like a sunbeam across a shadowed garden into which sin had come. Behold the woman's seed shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel; and it goes on through all the mystic writings of prophets, seers, and psalmists, until it culminates in the Cross of Calvary, which is the way of human redemption.
Great as the Bible is as literature, great as its effect has been on language, these are the things in which it is greatest. We are hearing so much of the wonderful effect the Bible has had on literature. I am not denying it. I glory in it, but it is a byproduct. We are hearing so much of the wonderful effect the Bible has had on language, so much so that people are eternally burning incense to the Authorized Version as well as the King James version showing how all high language is dependent upon it. I am not denying it. But I do not care very much about the effect it has had on literature, and am not particularly interested to know the effect it has had on language. I am tremendously interested to know the effect it has had on life. I declare that to neglect these things is to perish, in spite of policies and armaments. And if this is true of the national life, there is the point of the Church's responsibility for the Bible, to which, by the goodness of God, we shall come in our next two articles.
No comments:
Post a Comment