Article November 27, 1909 Issue

THE BIBLE SPIRITUALLY INTERPRETED

CHARLES H. S. KING.

EMERSON has said of the Bible: "The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences that have been the bread of life to millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. I look for the new teacher that shall follow so far those shining laws that he shall see their rounding complete grace; . . . and shall show that the ought, that duty, is one thing with science. with beauty, and with joy."

To an ever-increasing number the Christian Science textbook is this "new teacher" which explains the seeming contradiction of the Bible in such a way as to show its "epical integrity" and "rounding complete grace" through spiritual interpretation. This spiritual interpretation starts, of course, with certain premises which depend on spiritual sense for their justification and authority. The declarations that there is no matter, that man is wholly spiritual, and that evil has no power, are based on the Scripture statements that God made all; that it was good, and that man was made in the image and likeness of God, Spirit. These Scripture declarations are accepted and honored not only because of their inherent truth, but because they were demonstrated to be true by the world's greatest teacher, Christ Jesus.

The Bible has been loved by millions because it is a guide to life, and if its message is that absolute Life is God, then the lessons of human living point to the attainment of the God-life, or of our living toward God, as the one great end. From Genesis to the Apocalypse, the Bible is a progressive revelation of God the immanent Spirit, and it discloses an ever deepening sense of man's relationship to the All-Father and of his resultant responsibility. Its teaching, when spiritually discerned, is a unit which points to the one God, good, and warns against the one evil, the false claim which opposes this good. The heights of spiritual revelation respecting the nature of God, as infinite Life, Truth, and Love, and His consequent power over all evil, appear like light-crowned peaks of truth, and it is along these shining peaks that spiritual sense travels, "leaping upon the mountains," until it culminates in the Christ-life.

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