SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10127, 9 May 1896, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

A TALK ABOUT THE BIBLE. [BY lAN MACLAKEN.]

Two great mistakes have bten made—on the one hand by religious men making crusades upon science, for which they are often ill- ' fitted ; and on the other by scientists dog- ' matising in the matter of theology. We j ought not to be shocked by sudden and ' little panics which every now and then seem to overwhelm our faith. The Bible is not a note-book of any science—it is the last ; book to go to if we want to learn science; ' but scientific men, as such, have no more right to lay down the law about religion than theologians, as such, have to legislate for science. The Bible is now coming out of the critical stage, but we ought to render thanks to God for what criticism has wrought. It is good for us that the trained faculty of criticism should have been brought to bear upon this religious literature. What would we have thought of that faculty if it had avoided such inspection? The soul of the Book has not been touched—that is impalpable and spiritual. It is the old Book rebound that we have, with foot-notes added— the spirit is all there, and the body is made better. But criticism must be watched when it passes into the heart of the Book, and, passing from the letter, proceeds to talk of the religion of the Book and deny its spirit, which is its blood. Criticism, however, appears to be throwing off the rationalistic tendency and uniting itself with faith. THE BIBLE AND THEOLOGY. It is a Book to teach religion and to form a soul. Theology is science working on the intellect, and for the explanation and illumination of religion. It is possible to be religious without knowing anything about theology; but, if a man is living by faith and believing in Christ, one could not regard him intellectually with greatrespect if he had never thought something about the great mystery of our Lord's person and about the principles by which the life of God and Jesus Christ comes into and lives in the human soul. The Bible is a supremely human book. Do not regard it as a book just dropped from heaven! Such a book would have had no greater connection with human life than some sermons have. It is an intensely human book: when you put your hand upon it you feel first the beat of the heart of man and afterwards the beat of the heart of God. In it you can follow man as he travels and journeys with the Unseen, watching for every trace of the Divine footsteps, and each man pressing somewhat further forward than his predecessor. It is a continuous record of God as He is realised, and known, and believed, and loved by human men and women. it cannot be a complete revelation. It is a revelation wrought out through the souls of men; therefore it can never be taken out of the heart of man. It belongs to our fibre and to our blood. It is the Canaan which men have possessed; they want it, and they have got it. Love is the most influential power on the face of the earth, and it is found all through the Bible on rising levels, until in the New Testament we find it sublimated and gathered up in the love of Christ in the human soul, in the love of God, which is life everlasting. We ought to be thankful for the love of Jacob and Rachel. It is because the Bible is so very human that it touches somewhere or other all life at the present day. If a book is absolutely human it is eternal if it is to last.it must run down the main channels of human life; and no book keeps in deeper waters than the Bible— takes the broadest channels. Some there are who scoff jestingly at the Book of Jonah, but it is infinitely more full of spiritual truth and more worthy of respect than the creations of Greek mythology— legends and pictures as Andromeda and the Dragon—at which they do not jest. It is marvellous that a period after the exile, a man was so touched with the infinite love of the Eternal, and discovered that every great city was dear to God, that he took the name of a Hebrew prophet and supposed him sent to a great city and made a great opposition to him in his own mind, but finally sent him on the errand with the message, concluding with the repentance of the city, and a mee.*ge of mercy to men, and women, and children, and even cattle. lam amazed at the felicity of the book, and could stake the inspiration of the Bible upon it. The next time a man jests at it, put these points before him, and ask for another parallel to this spiritual vision. The Song of Songs was written as a satire on Solomon's court and a vindication of pure love at a time when the morality of the Jewish people was being degraded and c erupted. In Ecclesiastes we have the sceptic's statement. There it has been said far better than he is able to say it. No matterwhata man's position is; probably, if he believes in God at all, this book will speak for him just where he is. All that we should have to say on such a subject as the massacre of the Canaanite, for instance, is that it was an act below our morality and Christ's; but it was an act a little in advance of the code of the period. They did better than other nations of the time who were not guided by God. The massacres were for moral ends. It was a great thing in that age to see men who would draw the sword for righteousness sake. When you are asked any question, answer: What date? The date settles the matter. The Bible is SUCH AN HONEST BOOK 1 so much more honest than any biographies that we write! In the interests of faith we should not read some biographies, because there could not possibly have been such men as these depict. They are not to be found in the Bible or in any other place. They ought to have been removed at the beginning of the book. Such biographies destroy hope in a man who may be at the bottom of the hill; hut he can place himself confidently in the hands of the God that made Jacob into Israel. What a hopeful kind of book it is i It is NOT ONLY HUMAV, BUT DIVINE. No auman being knows how people are inspired — you only know when they are inspired. We do not know how the Bible is inspired, but we do know that it is removed by such a tremendous gulf from other books —that it is inspired. What book would yon bind up with it ? Just as the Greek level in art wis once reached, but has never been attained again, so they once reached a spiritual level which has never been again attained, and it was this spiritual rise which produced the Book. > It is the one book With a spinal marrow—it records a perpetual series of steps forward to Jesus Christ.- As the stalk, and the chaff, too, is to the oat— all are required to bear and complete the grain— are the older books, with their battles and bloodshed, required to lead up to and demonstrate Jesus Christ the sum and substance of faith and our religion. ■

HUMILITY THE GLORY OP THE CREATURE. [BV THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY.! They shall cast their crowns before the throne, saying: Worthy art Thou, oar lord and our God, to receive the glory ami the honour and the power ; for Thou didst create all thin*., tnd because of Thy will they were, and were created (Rev. iv. 11). When, God created the Universe it was with the one object of making tlie-creaturo par.

taker of His perfection and blessedness, and so showing forth in it the glory of His love and wisdom, and power. God wished to weal Himself in and through created beings by communicating to them as much of His own goodness and glory as they were capable of receiving. But this communication was not a giving to the creature something which it could possess in itself, a certain life or goodness, of which it had the charge and disposal. By no means. But as God is the ever-living, ever-present, ever-acting One who upholdeth all things by the Word of His power, and in whom all things exist the relation of the creature to God could only be one of UNCEASING, ABSOLUTE, UNIVERSAL DEPENDENCE.

As truly as God by His power once created so truly by that same power must God every moment maintain. The creature has not only to look back to the origin and first beginning of existence, and acknowledge that it there owes everything to God, but its first care, its highest virtue, its only happiness is now, each moment, and through all eternity, to present itself an empty vessel in which God can dwell and manifest His power and goodness. The life God bestows is imparted, not once for all, but each moment by the unceasing operation of His mighty power. Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility,

IS THE ROOT OF EVERY SIS' AND EVIL. It was wheu the now fallen angels began to look upon themselves with self-complacency that they were led to disobedience, and were cast down from the light of heaven into outer darkness. Even so it was when the serpent breathed the poison of his pride, the desire to be as God, into the hearts of our first parents, that they, too, fell from their high estate into all the wretchedness in

which man is now sunk, In heaven and earth, pride, self-exaltation, is the gate and the birth of hell.

Hence it follows that nothing can be our redemption but the restoration of the lost humility, the original and only true relation of the creature to its God. And so Jesus came to bring humility back to earth, to make us partakers of it, and by it to save us. In heaven He humbled Himself to become man. The humility we see in Him possessed Him in heaven; it brought Him, He brought it, from there. Here on earth "He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death." His humility gave His death its value, and so became our redemption. And now the salvation He imparts is nothing less ar-d nothing else than a communication of His own life and death, His own disposition and spirit, His own humility, as the ground and root of His relation to God and His redeeming work. Jesus Christ took and filled the ; place and destiny of man as a creature by j His life of perfect humility. His humility is ; our salvation:

HIS SALVATION IS OCR HI'MILITV. And so the life of the saved ones, of the saints, must needs bear this stamp of deliverance from sin, and full restoration to their original state; their whole relation to God and man marked by an all-pervading humility, Without this there can be no true abiding in God's presence, or experience of His favour and the power of His Spirit. Without this no abiding faith, or love, or joy, or strength. Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows Him as God to do all. God has so constituted us as reasonable beings, that the truer the insight into the real nature or the absolute need of a command, the readier and fuller will be our obedience to it. The call to humility has been so little regarded in the Church because its true nature has been too little apprehended. It is not a something which we bring to God, or He bestows; it is simply the sense of nothingness which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all. When the creature realises that this 13 his true nobility, and consents to be, with his will, his mind, and his affections,' the form, the vessel, in which the life and glory of God are to work and manifest themselves, he sees that humility is simply acknowledging the truth ot his position as creature, and yielding to God His place. In the life ot earnest Christians, of those who pursue and profess holiness, HUMILITY ODGHT TO BE THE CHIEF MARK

of their uprightness. It is often said that it is not so. May not one reason be that, in the teaching and example of the Church, it has never had that place of supreme importance which belongs to it. And that this again is owing to the neglect of this truth, that, strong as sin is as a motive to humility, there is one of still wider and mightier influence, that which makes the angels, that which made Jesus, that which makes the holiest of saintsin heaven bo humble: that the first and chief mark of _ the relation of the creature, the secret of his blessedness, is the humility aud nothingness which leaves God free to be all.

LIFE'S EVENING HOUR. Sweet is life's evening hour! The soul looks calmly back O'er all the varied track, Passed through in comfort or in pain; In sunshine now, and now in rain ! And thinks a few rough stages more Will land her on that peaceful shore Where, by no weariness apprest, She will enjoy an endless rest. Sb ,-et is life's evening hour I Its business and its toil, Its hustle and turmoil, "The heat and burden of the day These have forever passed away. That holy calm succeeds The tainting spirit needs, Meekly, in peace, by faith and prayer, For its last conflict to prepare, Sweet is life's evening hour! What though the enfeebled frame Some anxious thought will claim 1 Dearer each day becomes the hope, firmer its ground, more wide its scope, That soon a wondrous change, Mora glorious e'en than strange, This frame will suddenly transform, And make it like the Saviour's form. Sweet is life'* evening hour ! The Christian's steadfast eye Fixed on the sunset sky, Behind those crimson clouds of gold, Sees brighter, lovelier scenes unfold; Through the still air he hears Sounds from those upper spheres, Which make him long to flee away, And burst the encumbering bonds of Claj* Sweet is life's evening hour I The tranquil, contrite breast In simple f-iith doth rest; Grasps the salvation full and free Wrought out by Christ eternally, He, in his last long sleep, His child will safely keep; And when the eternal dawn shall break, Ob I to what rapture will he wake! Charlotte Elliott.