MR GLADSTONE ON THE BIBLE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1266, 4 June 1896, Page 8

MR GLADSTONE ON THE BIBLE.

THE WHITE-WASHING OF JAEL. INTRODUCTION OF GREAT BEAUTY. From Our Special Correspondent. London, April 18. The first part of the great Anglo- | American Bible History, in which writes s from both sides of tho Atlanli: are collaborating, is out, its most interesting feature being an introduction by Mr Gladstone. This was written in 1891, and will remind most readers of the G. O. M.'s book, "The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," of which _ a revised edition was published in 18G2. Mr Gladstone's article is an eloquent and striking popular appeal for the Bible. It sketches its history, traces to its influence the great achievements of Christian civilization, and shows how it has held the allegiance of Christendom for fifteen hundred years. Tho vast expansion of Bible knowledge during the now fastclosing century has made spread of tho Bible " a kind of challenge to tho powers of tho world at lartje." "This challenge was first delivered principally from Great Britain, and only by a portion of tho Christian body, although that body is now more united thanTformerly, with respect to its form ; which was tho circulation of tho Sacred Volume without note or comment. They were Protestants, they wero Englishspeaking Protestants, they wero Englishspeaking Protestants chiefly of the nonconforming type, or in varying degrees of sympathy with it, who conceived the idea of an association marked, even in its day of small things, by its aspiring and com-

Turning to the contents of tho sacred books, Mr Gladstone finds in them all the material of orthodox Christian creeds and teaching. Ho turns to other Eastern writings to show the superiority of the Hebrew books, and discusses at great length the cosmogony of Genesis. lie cads the tirst chapter of Genesis " the great chapter," expounding it, however, in a sense the very opposite of that in which Dean Farrar takes it. Mr Gladstone contends that the Christian Church has never tied itself to the opinion that tho six days of Creation wero periods of twenty-four houi'3, and prefers a construction of the phrase which is agreeable to tho analogy of Nature, which "points to the prolongation of complex and diversified processes over considerable periols of time." Perhaps the novel part of Mr Gladstone's argument is his treatment of tho case of the murder of Sisera by Jael. Ho eay? : " What were the alternatives set before her by tho act of Sisera ? Ho demanded shelter ; he required of her that die should deny his presence in her house, and should use against those who were first entitled to her sympathies the instrument of falsehood .vliich she turned against him. Surely all tho reason of the case \va=i not on the side of this demand. What were the alternatives before her if she complied p.ith it >. The victorious Israelites were in hot pursuit ; and Barak's path lay by her house. _ As a lone woman she was in no condition to refuse him entry to her house altogether. Had she denied ,the presence of Sisera, as he required, and had her house been searched, her life must obviously have fallen a sacrifice to the vengeance of the victors ; nay, rather to their just resentment. Bad they waived the search, and had Sisera in consequence made good his way to Haz:>r, with what purpose would he have gone there ! Oertainly, and from his point of view justly, ho must have gone there still to fight his people's battle ; that is to say, again to carry lire and sword, at the earliest practicable moment, through the homes of Israel. Had she no duty to her own flesh and blood I none to the people in whose land she dwelt, and with whom by her husband's descent she stood in bond of sacred alliance ! She knew, too, that Sisera and his friends wore laid under the curse, as inhabitants of Canaan, which God had laid upon that peop'e for their wickedness ; so that except by disobedience to God '.he Israelitiea wero under a general command to withhold from them clemency in war. I do not prosecute this branch of the subject, which sometimes is so handled as to involve the assumption that no amount of wickedness could warrant the extinction of the nation involved in it. Now, 1 submit that what has been said shows that there wero very grave difficulties in Liiis case from whatever point of view it may be regarded. I have cded a statement of it wholly adverse to Jael. Let mo put the case in her favour. There was war—a war of extermination. When she was compelled to take a side, she rightly took tho side of those with whom she had special ties. She slow a man, but it was a man who, more than any other, was tho life and soul of the war against those whom she had made her own people. She slow him in her own house ; but it was not she who brought him there. She sacrificed his life for her folk. Ho had desired her to expose her own life for him. She slew him with deceit and falsehood. But these are of the essence of stratagem in war, and could the Israelites, or thola denizens who took their part, be expected to refrain from them >."

Mr Gladstone sums up tho argument in a passage of great eloquence and beauty, and concludes--

" ' Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' As they have lived and wrought, so they will live nnd work. From the teacher's chair and from the pastor's pulpit ; in the humblest hymn that ever mounted to the ear of God from beneath a cottage roof, and in the rich, melodious choir of the noblest cathedral, 'their sound is gone out into all lands and their words into the ends of the world.' Nor hero alone but in a thousand silent and unsuspected forms will they uiiwoariedly prosecute their holy office. Who doubts that, times without number, particular portions of Scripture find their /.ay to the human soul as it embassies from on high, each with its own commission of comfort, of guidance, or of warning? What crisis, what trouble, what perplexity of life lias failed or can fail to draw from this in exhaustible treasure-house its proper supply ( What profession, what position is not daily and hourly enriched by these words which repetition never weakens, which carry with them now, as in the days of their first utterance, the freshness of youth and immortality > When tho solitary student opens all his heart to drink them in, they will reward his toil. And in form 3 yet more hidden and with drawn, in the retirement of the chamber, in tho stillness of the night season, upon the bed of sickness, and in the face of death, the Bible will bo there, its several words how often winged with their several and special messages, to heal and to sootho, to uplift and uphold, to invigorate and stir. Nay, more, perhaps, than this ; amid the crowds of the court, or the forum, or the street, or the market place, when every thought of every soul seem 3 to bo sot upon the excitements of ambition, or of busine33, or of pleasure, there, too, even there, the still small voice of the Holy Bible will be heard,

and the soul, aided by some blessed word, may find wings like a clove, may flee away and be at rest.