Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 153, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1914 — Back to the Bible [ARTICLE]

Back to the Bible

Application «l the Scriptures to the World Today as Seen by Eminent Meh In Various Walks of Life

(Copyright, 1914, by Joseph B. Bowles) SIXTY-SIX BOOKS, ONE KEYNOTE.

fßy ROBERT STUART MACARTHUR, D. D., LL. D., President, Baptist World Alliance.)

“The most learned, acute and diligent student cannot. In the longest lift, obtain an entire knowledge of this one volume (the Bible). The more deeply he works the mine, the richer and more abundant he finds the ore.”— Sir Walter Scott.

The Bible consists of two volumes, one of thirty-nine and the other of twenty-seven books. It took sixteen hundred years to make it. It has about forty human authors; and It was written In somewhat different countries, as well as In widely different centuries. It discusses many subjects, but it preserves perfect unity throughout. Its unity has been appropriately and eloquently illustrated by the keynote in a grand oratorio. That keynote is now heard thundering in the bass, now trembling in the soprano, and now for a moment it is lost to hearing; but it Is ever appearing until it re-asserts itself in a magnificent outburst of harmony. In like manner the predominating thought of the Bible is seen in history, in prophecy, in petition, and in doxology. It is an internal rather than an external unity. It is the unity of some glorious castle or some ancient cathedral. Although cathedral and castle externally may represent different centuries, different architects, and various styles of architecture, yet the interior often shows the dominance of one great thought, and all parts of the edifice contribute to one definite purpose. The authors of the Bible differed widely from one another. Some were princes, some peasants; some were warriors, some lovers of peace; some lived in palaces, and some in tents. But all were actuated by one spirit; all worked accordingly to one great plan of the one divine Author. There may be in the Bible an absence of system; but there is the presence of method. Systems are human; methods are divine. You find methods in rocks and fields; you find systems in museums and herbariums. It might have been enough for the principles of revelation if God had made the book simply instructive; but He was pleased also to make it attractive. Like God’s other volume, the book of nature, it has its lofty /mountains, its shady dells, its suns and stars, its smiling fields, and its singing groves.