THE BIBLE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 101, 30 March 1925, Page 6

THE BIBLE

ITS DIVINE ORIGIN. At tho Empire Hall on Sunday evening Rov. A. A. Murray continued his lectures on tho Divine origin of tho Bible. Tho speaker, said : “Tho more you study the Biblo tho moro apparent does its Divino origin become. Those who deny its Divino origin havo not studied it with caro, or they havo a strong moral bins against it which blinds their minds, eauterisos tho conscience, and petrifies the heart.

"The first proof of the Divino origin of the Bihlo which I shall bring before you to-night is its marvellous unity. It has sixty-six books, and these have about forty authors, who wrote in threo different languages, and whose literary style was by no means similar. This remarkable Book contains prose, poetry, epic poetry, lyric poetry, didactic poetry, history, prophecy, proverb, allegory and parable. Its composition extended over a period of 1500 years. Its writers lived in lands remote from one another. They were men in various stations of life, and of various occupations! living under various forms of civil governments. Now wo should expect. that a book written under such conditions, and by so many different writers, living at different times, should betray glaring contradiction and discordancies. But instcaid wo have the most marvellous unity you could possibly find. This unity is by no means superficial, but organic It is the unity of life and growth. In Genesis wo have the seed and beginnings of all things; and in the rest of the Bible, we have the, full grown tree, with its trunk, brandies, leaves and fruit, each book being the complement and counterpart of tho rest. Suppose you wanted to build a church of stone of various qualities and colours. Of blue stone from Otago, white stone from Oomaru, dark granite from Coromandel, marble from tho Continent, red stono for Amercia, and granite from Scotland. And suppose these stones wero to bo of all conceivable sizes and shapes; somo large and some sma.ll, some cubical, spherical, conical, cylindrical and .some trapezoidal and some rectangular parallelepipedons. Finally, all theso stones are brought to the church site, and the builders (begin to work, and 10, they find that every stono has been eut the rignt sizo and shape, and each has it. l place in the structure, and not a stono too many or too few. Now what would you say had happened or how would you explain the phenomena? That tho plans and specifications hud been prepared by one architect, and that every stone squarer had had his instructions from the architect. No other explanation that will meet tho. demands of common senso is possible. So i is with tho Bible. God is its grand and great author and all its writers did their noble and enduring work under Divine direction—every book being a living stone in the great temple of truth. 'Tear away ono boox and you mar the unity and solidarity of tho whole. . “In the second place, tho Bible is ot Divine origin because its teachings are superior to those of all other books. There are those who place tho teachings of the Bible in the same category as those of Buddha, Zorvast-er, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus, Socrates, Seneca, Epictetus, and Mohammed. But those who do so are ignorant of tho real contents of the Bible. The Bible contains nothing but truth, while the writings of the pagans contain truth, but truth mixed with error. Theso ethnio writers give us some gems, but as Joseph Cook said years ago: “Jewels picked out of the mud.’’ Bocrates taught very beautifully how a philosophor ouglib to die, but ho also taught how a person should conduct a business that was not quite cloan. Marcus Aureliuß Antoninus taught very fine things about clemency; yet he taught it was right to put peoplo to death for no other crime tfian that they were Christians. Seneca gave excellent advice on tho advantages of poverty but ho himself was ono of the most worthless spendthrifts in Rome the onyx tables alone in his lordly mansion costing an immense fortune. And, mark you, it was this same Seneca who tutored the Emperor Nero, who has gone down to history as a vile monster, and whoso actions for brutality and criminality are unparalleled in the annals of the race. And what about Confucius? lie taught most admirably tho duty of children to parents, I but he also taught that it was right to tell I lies when occasion demanded it, and he j himself admitted practising lying. Again, I tho writings of theso pagan philosophers ! contain part of tho truth while the Biblo ! contains all truth. Tho Bible is an old IBook, yet man has not discovered one single truth on moral or spiritual subjects j that cannot be found for substance within I the two lids of the Biblo. If every human [book w#re destroyed and the Bible left, tho worid would not lose on single moral or spiritual truth. Again, the Bible contains more truth than all tho books in the world put together. You can go to all the literature of ancient Greece, Koine, India, I China, Persia and all the modern litoraj ture as well, and gather from it all that lis good, and put it. in a book, and you i will not havo a book to take tho place iof tho Bible. llow do you account for j this? —Other books are tho books of men, ! the Biblo is God’s Book, j “My last point is this: The Bible is ot ! Divine origin because of its marvellous power to lift men out of sin up to God. IA stream can riso no higher than its ! source. A book that has power to lilt men up to G6d must havo corne down from God. This Book has found nations and tribes in a state of savagery acid' degradation and through its influence they havo risen to purity, usefulness and power. A 1 that is noblest and best in the British nation is duo to the tremendous influence of the Bible. The islands of the Bacific wore at one time infested with bloodthirsty cannibals, but now under the saving and civilising power of the Biblo they j are a happy and God honouring peoplo. A Book that can produce such marvellous | fruit is of Divino origin. Let us see to it I that wo read it in our homes, and teach ; it to our children, and by so doing we ; shull contribute largely to a happy God- | fearing and prosperous Dominion.’’