CHAPTER VIII

THE BIBLE AS A MEANS TO SERVICE

From an address of Lincoln before the Bible Society at Springfield: "It seems to me that nothing short of infinite wisdom could by any possibility have devised and given to man this excellent and perfect moral code. It is suited to men in all the conditions of life, and includes all the duties they owe to their Creator, to themselves, and to their fellow man. ""

Most religions are meant to be straight lines connecting two points-God and man. But Christianity has three points-God, man, and his brother-with two lines to make a right angle.

-MALTBIE D. BABCOCK

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, prest down, shaken together, running over, shall they give into your bosom. For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.

-Luke 6:38

On one of the battle-fields of South Africa a young chaplain found a Highlander sorely wounded and with life ebbing quickly away. He asked him to allow him to pray, but the soldier said gruffly, "No, I don't want prayers. I want water." The chaplain secured, with great difficulty, some water, and then asked the refreshed man if he might read a Psalm. "No," said the soldier again. "I am too cold to listen to a Psalm." The chaplain instantly stript off his coat and wrapt it tenderly round the wounded soldier. And then, touched by the chaplain's sympathy, the man turned and said, "Chaplain, if religion makes men like you, let's have that Psalm.""

The man comes out in his work; the character is revealed by conduct.

-HUGH BLACK

O Cross, that liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from thee;

I lay in dust life's glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

-GEORGE MATHESON

CHAPTER VIII

THE BIBLE AS A MEANS TO SERVICE

I-Modern Tendencies

JOHN WESLEY said: "The Bible knows nothing of a solitary religion." Yet for generations the church has restricted the Bible message to the individual. It is true that Luther cut the chains that bound the Bible to the church altars, but neither he nor his immediate successors discovered the social gospel of the Christian Scriptures. Indeed, a study of certain periods of Christianity might arouse wonder as to whether the Bible really contains a social message. The perusal of Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living," or "The Confessions of St. Augustine," tend to make one quite forget that the Bible presents any word save to the lonely individual, searching his own personal heart and busy with his own personal prayers.

Fifty years ago, even, the hymns of the

church were almost entirely hymns directed to the individual conscience and heart.

"My faith looks up to thee."

"Holy Ghost! with light divine,
Shine upon this heart of mine";

hymns surpassingly beautiful, but self-centered and introspective, expressing only the half-truth of religion. The prophets, for our fathers, touched no note of social or moral reform. They did not believe the Bible for its works' sake. Jesus was Savior, indeed, but to them he was hardly a great physician, a healer of the nations, the founder of a gospel of labor, the lover and uplifter of the poor, a humanitarian par excellence going about doing good.

To-day, however, we are in the midst of a new Bible emphasis. In these times of insistent demand for a visualized religion, the Bible lies at the heart of modern reform, both for the recasting of theology and for the reconstruction of society. We are per

ceiving that the genius of the Bible is the life of the Spirit in its reaction upon the world. "Character," says Professor Edward I. Bosworth, "is growing good-will expressing itself in increasingly efficient action." The Bible movements of to-day are placing emphasis upon this active good-will, this neighbor part of the one great commandment. The hymns which we delight to sing are not simply those dealing with the satisfied personal sense of being safe in God, nor merely a "forgetfulness of evils and a truce from cares," as Hesiod sang; rather we sing

"The Son of God goes forth to war,

A kingly crown to gain;

His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train ?"

or Dr. Gladden's matchless hymn of work:

"O Master, let me walk with Thee
In lowly paths of service free."

Professor Peabody, of Harvard, has said that the Bible has emerged from the realm