Editorial May 9, 1901 Issue

The Bible an Every-day Guide

Editor

Helpful Thoughts

The best test is experience, and this test the Bible meets perfectly. Ever since its successive books began to be read by men the mass of testimony in support of its aptness and value in relation to human needs has been accumulating. Regarded from no matter what point of view, it is found to fit the ever-varying conditions of life with a pertinence far surpassing that of any other volume or library, and this fact alone proves its divine origin.

Its value is exhibited conspicuously in its discriminations between details and principles, for one thing. It deals with some details of conduct. Certain things, falsehood, for instance, always are wrong, and it prohibits them positively. Certain other things, the love of one's neighbor, for example, always are right, and it inculcates them with similar definiteness. But there is a long list of possible actions which may be either right or wrong according to circumstances, and in regard to these it contents itself with laying down principles, the application of which is left to, and constitutes the moral education of, the individual conscience. Indeed, it often is necessary to use one's own judgment in a secondary sense in reference to matters of an unmistakable moral quality. Thus it guards human freedom, and its fitness s as elastic as it is unalterable.

The Bible is intended for ordinary men and women. It therefore deals with every-day life, common motives, and familiar emergencies. It is meant for the culture of the soul, and it fits the round of ever-recurring tasks and emotions of the commonplace career not less exactly than the loftiest moods and the most exalted actions of the genius or the hero. It never can be outgrown, and it always is a safe and inspiring guide.—Helpful Thoughts.

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