So, I repeat, the chief purpose of the Bible, from cover to cover, is to make known primarily to the intellect, and through it to the inner consciousness of the soul-the Son of God, in union with the Son of Mary, victorious over sin, death and hell, as the Redeemer and Saviour of the race. What a grand purpose this is; worthy of the great God who formed and executed it! How it exalts and dignifies man that he should be divinely chosen to be the medium of the communication of such great grace! How comforting also to the preacher of gospel truth to know that it does not depend so much upon his eloquence, or learning, as to whether his hearers shall be benefited by the truth as it does upon the Spirit of God, who is ever present to apply it, with saving effect! We may admit that there is a great deal in the Bible that to human wisdom might have been omitted without impairing its value to us of to-day; we may admit that in the many translations of it, through the ages, some errors have crept into our canon that are not strictly of advantage to receive as truth; yet, if we have spiritual eyes to see, and spirit-filled hearts to apprehend and appreciate the great truth, which it is the purpose of the Bible to unfold and impress, we cannot read, preach or study this book of God with any other than a conscious feeling that by it God in Christ comes into our souls, filling a void that nothing else can; and satisfying a longing that can be satisfied in no other way. Remember, we do not say that the book called the Bible is absolutely necessary to a full and saving knowledge of Christ. He may be revealed by oral teaching, or by truth, orally handed down from inspired teachers, but what we do contend for is, that God, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, has chosen to give us a record of truth in the Bible that is authentic and reliable, as regards the provision made for our salvation. He has further chosen, through its teaching, to give us a saving hope that we may lay hold upon and realize that we are saved, as the Spirit enables us to accept the Christ presented to faith. Why talk about refusing to believe that we cannot bring within the compass of the finite intellect? Why not rather say we know because we believe, for this is the fact? Under the theocracy God was revealed first as the sovereign of intelligent creation to whom all owe allegiance; second as a holy and righteous Judge, who punishes all violations of His divine law, and third as a very Merciful Father ready and willing to forgive sin, when the guilty are truly repentant. But He cannot and will not set aside justice to save the sinner from the consequences of his sin. Foreseeing man's fall, it was planned from all eternity to save believers consistently with justice, though the sacrifice, merit and mediation of His Son. God wanted man to know this, that he might not despair in his lost and miserable condition. Accordingly He first revealed this great truth to Adam, even before he was driven from Eden for his sin. So also the same blessed truth was revealed to patriarchs, from time to time, so that their faith in a promised Messiah might be kept in active exercise. The Messiah to come, it was clearly taught, was to be the "seed of the woman." The sacrifices and ceremonies of the law all pointed to and had their meaning in Him. Those who believed in Him were already saved, as really as we who believe in Him now, for He was the same then that He is now, though in history He had not yet appeared in visible form. The union of the divine and human in His person may be said to have been complete from all eternity, and must have been, if He was "slain from the foundation of the world." But though under the old dispensation, the full truth, concerning the Messiah and Deliverer could not, in the nature of things, be understood, enough was known and believed to fill the soul of the true child of God with saving hope and blessed assurance of a full complete salvation. It was the divine purpose to reveal this fundamental truth in such ways as, at the time, man could comprehend. Having made this revelation (whether by audible voice, in visions and dreams; by Heavenly messengers or other theophenies) it was also a gracious provision of divine love to inspire suitable men to write, record, and hand down to posterity the truth that had been thus revealed. So Moses, or some one else (it matters not who) wrote Pentateuch; so others (it matters not who) gave us the other books of the Old Testament Scriptures, all having the same chief pur. pose, viz: to reveal Christ, a deliverer of those who believe in, and accept Him. As already intimated, it may be that there is in the Bible a great deal of filling up with detail, and unimportant historical matter; it may be that patriarchs and prophets drew on their imagination, to an extent, in some things that they tell us ; it may even be that portions, of the Bible are not inspired, and were not intended to be a part of it, but, admitting all this-for argument's sake—the great fact still stands out, and towers up like the pyramids on the plains of Egypt, that a Messiah is promised, and has been provided to redeem man from sin. This is the internal and external evidence of the genuineness and integrity of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. It is impossible to explain away this fundamental truth or on any other theory account for it than that it was, and is, the purpose of God to reveal the Christ of history as the Hope and Saviour of the world. It seems as plain as the shining of the noonday sun that the great end of the Old Testament was to bring men to a knowledge of, and a hearty trust in, God as Father who would send a Deliverer; and, by the spirit of truth in revelation to teach of Him as Comforter and Guide, through this world of sin. When now we come to the New Testament we do not find any new revelation of essential truth, but a fulfillment of that before revealed. Of necessity, the actual, visible coming of the Messiah promised, answering precisely to the circumstances under which it was predicted He would come, and in all respects confirming what had been said of Him, shed a clearer light upon the meaning of Old Testament revelation; but the revelation itself was, and is, the same. What the Christ of the New Testament was and is; what He did and taught, when He tabernacled in the flesh, He was, and is, and did, and said for the salvation of sinners who believe in, and accept Him as Saviour. The record of this is so fully authenticated; bears on its face so visibly the evidence of genuineness, that it requires much more credulity to reject Him as a divine-human Saviour than to believe in, and accept, Him. No one can possibly study, or even cursorily read the New Testament Gospels and Epistles without finding Jesus of Nazareth and Christ-the Anointed-the same identical person, exhibiting the wisdom, power, and love of God ("God manifest in the flesh") and the central, chief truth of each of its twentyseven books. So that, in detail and in sum total, the entire sixty-six books of the Sacred Scriptures, we call the Bible, is ONE book with a single purpose. If this be true-as will, of course, be granted by all believers (for whom, especially, we write)—why, we again ask, shall our young men, studying theology, or our older men, in the active Gospel ministry, concern themselves very much about what the critics have to say regarding the UNimportant things relating to or contained in the Bible? Why shall we not devote ourselves in body, intellect and affection with the enthusiasm and interest inspired by the great theme we are set apart to study and preach; hold up CHRIST before men, their only hope and deliverer from the thraldom and dreadful consequences of sin? Why turn aside from the true purpose of our calling to follow the critics into the mists of speculation and doubt to our discomfort, and that of those we are called to serve? It will in no sense pay. It is all wrong. The better way, the true way, as all experience proves, is to stand by the teachings of the Church and the fundamental things on which the orthodox church catholic agrees. Ministers of the Gospel, especially, should have right convictions and the courage of their convictions, which they cannot have on doubtful questions. It has been found by experience in all the ages past that a true faith will authenticate itself if based upon the Word of God. Living Christ and teaching Christ must go together if there is to be any success in winning souls to Him. He must be our "all and in all." We find Him in the divine book of revelation, and we must preach Him as revealed. V. LIBRARY PROGRESS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. BY SAMUEL H. RANCK. On the threshold of the twentieth century it is interesting and, perhaps, profitable to review what has been done in the nineteenth. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace calls the nineteenth "the wonderful century" and in a book under that title discusses its successes and failures. "The wise and the foolish, the learned and the unlearned, the poet and the pressman, the rich and the poor," he says, "have not been slow to praise it," though in his opinion our self admiration does not rest upon an adequate appreciation of the facts. The nineteenth century for inventions and discoveries cannot be compared with any other century; it can only be compared with all the preceding centuries of history. In a list of thirty-nine great inventions and discoveries given by Mr. Wallace twenty-four belong to the nineteenth century, and only fifteen to all the ages before. Libraries cannot be classed as among the inventions and discoveries of the nineteenth century, for there were libraries four thousand years ago. Libraries are, however, a part of the general movement for public education and the diffusion of knowledge. “The wonderful century" has done more for the diffusion of knowledge among men than all the other centuries combined, and the public library as one of the instruments of this diffusion belongs chiefly to the latter half of the century. In 1800 there were less than fifty libraries in the United States and they contained less than a hundred thousand volumes-less than the number of books in the central building of The Enoch Pratt Free Library. The number of libraries and the number of volumes in them for the first seventy-five years of this century have been variously estimated. The following are from reports of the ! |