THE BIBLE IS A BOOK OF ROMANCE

THE ROMANCE OF THE BIBLE

 

            In this year of 2013 we celebrate the four-hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the day when the Bible was bound in the churches that the people might read it. This fact gives the reason for this present series of articles.

            When considering this subject, I found myself challenged by a word in the subject as it had been announced. It was the word "romance." I found that the definition of this word was, "A work of fiction, or adventure. To invent and tell fictitious stories; exaggerate, lie." Some consider this Book to be almost as a collection of fairy tales. But I felt there were other uses of the word "romance"; and I found this also: "A blending of the heroic, the marvelous, the mysterious, and the imaginative, in actions, manners, ideas, language, or literature." I decided I would retain the word "romance," because that second definition exactly marks what I want to say of this Book that lies on my desk in front of me. I speak of the Book which I hope you have in your homes, that is in the churches everywhere, the Book that is being read so marvelously by some.

            This second definition permits my use of the word, for the history of the Bible is a romance. It is a blending of the heroic, the marvelous, the mysterious, the full significance of which only the imagination can grasp. It is wonderful in its history. It transcends the ordinary. So it is a romance.

            There are four things I want to consider. First, the romance of the Bible as a book; second, the romance of the Bible as to its nature; third, the romance of the Bible as to its thought or its contri­bution to human thought; and last, the romance of the Bible in its influence.

            First, then, the romance of the Bible as a book among other books. I go into a bookseller's shop, and pick up a book here and there, and if the shop is worth keeping open, I can pick up a Bible among the other books.

            From that standpoint, thinking of it as a book among books, there are three tests of value. Taking them in an ascending scale, first, how does it sell? The second test is a severer one. How long will it live? The third test outdistances the first two. How far is the book of sufficient elemental human value to demand translation into other languages than the one in which it is written?

            By these tests the Bible is far and away in advance of any book. It is the best seller. There is no book sells like the Bible sells. It is a very remarkable thing that during the War the sales of the Bible never went down. They increased. How long has it lived? In its present form it has lived for at least eighteen centuries. Here it is still, in spite of determined efforts to destroy it completely. But how about the severest test of all, translation? I may illustrate by comparison. Homer has been translated into about twenty different languages. Shakespeare has been translated into about forty different languages. Leaving out all others, there are two books, so far as I know, that have gone out into over one hundred translations. Those are John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis. The only two which have reached the three figures are those dependent upon the Bible. They are the offspring of the Bible. While we are gathered here, the Bible in its entirety, or parts of it, has been partially translated into well over two thousand five hundred languages of human speech.

            But there is a more wonderful thing than that. Of those languages, over three hundred of them did not exist, but were created to receive the Bible. This has been the heroic and marvelous work of missionaries who have gone out to a people with no written language, who have caught the significance of words, and have created words, and an alphabet, and a grammar, until they have put the Bible into that language. That has been done over three hundred times.

            I remember a translator once telling me he had to do his work among people who in their spoken language had only three prepositions. Take Paul's letters, and his many prepositions, and see how they can be crowded into three! Another had to trans­late the Bible into the language of a people in whose mentality there was no conception of relation between cause and effect. Very difficult to translate for those people Paul's "therefores." Yet it has been done three hundred times. There are three hundred languages written in the world today that did not exist, and which came into being in order to give the people this Book.

            Turn to the romance of the Bible as to its nature. We call it a Book, and it is a great name for it, but it is not a book to begin with; it is a Library. Take this Book, and divide it into its component parts. We find it is a Library, having sixty-six books, in our present English edition, stitched together. These books were written by between thirty and forty authors, and were written over a period of fifteen hundred years. They were written in three lan­guages, one classical, the Hebrew; two colloquial, the Aramaic, of which some may be found in the Old Testament, and the other the Greek of our New Testament.

            Once again, can we use our imagination? In the history of our own land, where were we seventeen hundred years ago? With that stretch of time, take up sixty-six books, very small, mere pamphlets, and stitch them together and make a book! That is what has been done in the case of the Bible.

            In this Book there are two departments—the sacred writings of the Hebrew people, and the sacred writings of the Christian faith. Yet, when these books are brought together, they are cor­related, Hebrew and Christian, so clearly, that we cannot do without any part of the one section, and successfully understand any part of the other section. We are told today we want the New Testament, and the Old does not matter. That is the language of ignorance. Pick up the New Testament and read, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David." David? Who is he? "The Son of Abraham." Who is he? We have to go back and see who David and Abraham were. All the New Testament depends upon the Old and it will be seen later on in our articles how the Old is incom­plete until the New is reached; and the Old has no final interpretation apart from the New.

            In the third place, the romance of the Bible as to its contribution to human thought. First of all, the assumptions of the Biblical philosophy suggest the ultimate secret of all philosophic interpretation. I use the word "assumptions" here carefully. The Bible is not a philosophic textbook, but it has a very clear philosophy. It is found in the books we call Wisdom—Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs—and I should be inclined to add one from the New Testa­ment, James. Let no one speak disrespectfully of philosophy. I am no expert, but I have browsed in its fields for fifty years; and every student of the subject will agree with me that every system of philosophy, of which we know anything, begins with a question. We go back to Anaxagoras, and the first two living centuries when philosophy was a vital, palpitating thing; then across the next two millenniums, when there was no new voice, no living thought; but philosophy pursued its way by repetition; until we come to the age of Bacon and Descartes, when it once more flamed into life, and so on down to James and Dewey. But every system of philosophy has begun with a question, and heroically sought the answer to that question, which is always the same. It is the question Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" (Truth is a Person, and His name is Jesus Christ) Human philosophy starts with a question, but the Bible differs. The Bible starts with an assumption, from which assumption it makes a deduction. Having made the deduction, it then proceeds to the asking of questions and investigation.

            What is the assumption? God is. The Bible does not argue, does not ask if there be a God. It is never recorded that Jesus argued for the Divine existence. Everything assumes the fact, "In the beginning God created," but "In the beginning, God." That is the assumption.

            The deduction from that assumption is that all wisdom is in God; that in the last analysis, there is no such thing as a riddle of the universe. Riddle to man verily but not to God. That which is dark­ness to man is light to Him. There is no secret, unexplained mystery, because it is held in solution in God. Therefore the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom for man, and when man starts his investigation upon the basis of that belief and certainty, then he can ask his questions, then he can make his investigations. When philosophy has wrought its way round the circle, it will arrive where these men start—God; in Him all wisdom; and our wisdom to fear Him.

            Second, the Bible in its revelation of a Person, yields the only key to theological statement. The Bible has presented to us a Person, and in Him there is found the interpretation of God. We remember that remarkable statement at the begin­ning of John's Gospel, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." (And that because He has seen Him) I like to take that word declared, and translate the Greek word, giving an interpretation of the meaning. "The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father. He has exegeted Him." Exegesis is exposition, but it is more. All theology centers in Him. All systems of religion have been anthropo­morphic. All the false gods have been magnified men—Jupiter, Zeus, Moloch, Baal. Men cannot conceive of God except upon that basis. There is the wonder and the mystery of the Incarnation; God gave Him, His Man. Take any of the false gods, and magnify them, the results are monstrosities and brutes. Take this Man, God's Man, and project the lines from His human Personality into infinitude, and we have encompassed all truth about God. That is the romance of the Bible in its contribution to theology.

            Again, the conception of its ethic provides the final ideal and lonely sanction of conduct. What is the Biblical conception of morality? What is the Biblical conception of ethics? A lawyer once said to Jesus. "Which is the great commandment in the law?" He replied, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." To summarize the teaching the Bible shows that all righteousness is rooted in religion. If we destroy man's relationship to God, and his consciousness of Him we destroy the possibility of man's right relationship with his fellow-man. That is what the world has lost sight of so largely. Perhaps it may come back through blood and misery and tears in these appalling days.

            The last thing to say under this heading is that the Bible's passion for truth has created the oppor­tunity for science, and guards it from falseness, when it is obeyed. Modern science has disregarded the Bible and the truths about origins with which modern science only guesses but teaches as final truth. I go back once more to words of Jesus, familiar, which are rightly used in application to that which is personal, but they have also a wider application. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Research is the great word of science, and it has been knocking at barred doors for years. It is marvelous how the doors have opened; but men would have found nothing if they had not sought. It is this passion for truth and investigation, for which the Bible stands from beginning to end, and it has created the opportunity of science but science today is still in need of truth.

            Finally, the romance of the Bible in its influence. First of all, its influence on life, individual, and social. In thousands of  languages it produces, wher­ever it goes, exactly the same results, lifting, ennobling. I know it was the fashion some years ago, and we hear it sometimes still, that the Bible is immoral. I would say to any who so says, my friend, if you get to heaven, you would find a cess­pool there, because you took it with you; but you’ll never get there with those thoughts! I challenge you to find anywhere one boy or girl, who has been demoralized as the result of the study of this Book. It always ennobles. It always elevates.

            Its influence on social life? Its influence on art, whether literature, music, painting, or architecture. A few years ago a writer in one of our American magazines said, Jesus never wrote a book, never composed a symphony, never painted a picture, never put up a building. To what stupidities supposedly clever people are reduced sometimes. Granted for the sake of argument that He never did write a book, but think of the literature He has inspired, outside the Bible. Granted that He never wrote a sym­phony; but when music marches to its greatest measure, it celebrates the Messiah. Granted He never painted a picture, but look at the art of nineteen hundred years that has gathered around His crib and Cross. Granted that He never erected a building, but there are no buildings, not even the most modern ones, that compare with the true Church of Jesus Christ.

            Last, the influence of the Bible on the outlook of mind to that which lies beyond this life. It gives the reason for faith in the reality of the unseen. It gives to man the ground, and interprets the nature of his hope for the life that lies beyond. It reveals to man the vastness and the glory of the love which wraps around the whole universe; the love of God.

            If a person does not know this Literature, let such a one not call himself or herself educated. From the standpoint of a book, a Book as to its peculiar nature, as to its influence, or suggestiveness in human thought, as to its influence on life, nothing compares with it. The whole story is a romance between God and those He loves.