Article May 9, 1903 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from PHILLIPS BROOKS, LUCY LARCOM, F. W. FARRAR, J. McC. HOLMES, JOHN JAMES TAYLER

At the same time, however useful these studies may be to an elucidation of the Biblical text, one may attain high proficiency in them without perceiving the spiritual message of the book and without having his own heart respond to it. And the encouraging note at Chicago [at the Religious Education Convention] was that that great body of educators and leaders of Christian thought appeared to feel that what the Bible has to say about spiritual realities—about God and destiny and obligation and righteousness and forgiveness—is of vital importance.

We are inclined to believe that this attitude toward the Bible is coming to be characteristic of the best Christian thought. Christian scholarship has been wandering in the desert for quite forty years. The transition from the treatment of the Bible as a treasury of texts, all of which are of equal value, to a revelation of a way and a power of life has been slow and painful, but there are a good many signs that the Promised Land is not far in the distance. The most effective preachers to-day are not spending too much time on telling their congregations how we got the truth, but they are telling them what the truth is, and trusting that as truth it will commend itself to the human heart. The external evidences coming from the authority of documents are of immense value, but the self-evidence of the truth to the human soul, and its power of meeting the needs of the spirit, while interpreting it to itself, energizing its functions and creating new necessities, are also of crowning worth. In modern apologetics the authority of the Scripture is best vindicated in the experience of the soul that obeys its message. And we are coming to preach and teach the Book as a message.

The Watchman.

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