L

CHAPTER I

THE PURPOSE OF THE BIBLE

I

ET me say at once that in this book there will be neither argument nor

homily. The object will not be to teach; still less will it be to convince or to convert. It will go no farther than the stating of the process by which one individual learned to pick his way through the difficulties which attend the reading of the Bible, and to find a small portion of its message.

To those who can do this already this book will be of no value. For those who take their interpretation of the Bible from some authority, probably a church, to which they elect

to submit themselves, there will also be nothing of interest. There are always, however, people more or less at sea. There are those who cannot get at the Bible across theologies and dogmas. Millions of quite honest souls find the very phrases in which Christians talk about the Bible vulgarized and hackneyed. Such readers as these may be willing to investigate a by-path, when the old historic highways seem intricate and bewildering, or overgrown and choked.

I should apologize more profoundly for the personal tone of these records had I not been asked to write from the personal point of view. After all, experience, however humble, has a value of its own. Academic teaching may be as broad as that of Plato, as deep as that of Paul, and yet the soul's empirical adventure will always have its significance. Even if it makes mistakes, and takes an occasional wrong turn, at least it does so on its

independent quest. When it comes to the effort to see through conditions admittedly obscure, almost any man's story is worth telling.

But while this book will be neither dogmatic nor theological, it will be indebted to dogmatic theology for much that it contains. As a matter of fact, dogmatic theology has entered into our ways of thinking far more deeply than we commonly suppose. It could hardly be otherwise among a people whose ancestors were steeped in it. It infuses our thought and our language. It is behind our society, our literature, our governments, our laws. We cannot get away from it. That without some of its points of view we should try to understand the Bible is impossible.

It is equally impossible to approach the subject without some guidance from the churches. While I am not of those who believe that the churches produced the Biblethe assertion is often made—yet to a consid

erable extent they have been its custodians, especially during those centuries when they stood for the only civilizing force. As I understand the Bible, it belongs not to the churches but to the world; it is not a handbook of religious instruction. but a chronicle of development.

Nevertheless, for the western nations, at any rate, the churches have put their stamp on it. The stamp may vary as the sects vary; but it is not easy for the American reader to see the Bible with no sectarian stamp on it at all. He reads it as a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or a Roman Catholic, or a Baptist, or an Anglican Bible, as his mind happens to be biased. My own effort is to read it through my personal lens, with as much detachment, independence, and intelligence as I can bring to it. At the same time, in whatever I have to say, the teachings of the Anglican, Roman, and Evangelical bodies, together with the

writings of Mrs. Eddy, will count for much; though there is something that counts for

more.

That is my own judgment. If to the reader this should seem presumptuous, I must remind him that one's own judgment is the ultimate test of all one's opinions, the ultimate standard of all one's acts. One may decide to renounce one's own judgment, as to some extent a monk or a soldier always does, but even that is a case for one's own judgment. No matter how unquestioningly we obey, it is of our own judgment that we do obey. It is of our own judgment that we become lawyers, doctors, politicians, clergymen, atheists, agnostics, Protestants, or Catholics.

Moreover, the individual who seeks a power which will interpret the Bible for his use is always obliged to say, "It gets its authority from me." That is to say, no church can have more authority than the individual ascribes