The Divine Voice.

Here I beg not to be misunderstood. I take the Bible to be the most reliable, most wonderful, and most valuable book extant as being a record of the sayings and doings, impressions, convictions, and history generally, of the Jews and their intercourse with the supernal world : in that sense it is the Word of God. As containing a code of lofty morality and spiritual instruction to guide man from time to eternity, it is all that is claimed for it—an inestimable treasure, unmatched, unmatchable. But to get at the gems and the pure gold, to take the correct meaning out of the Bible without having due regard to the character of the Divine Being, to the times and circumstances under which it was written, the bias, mental states, conditions and needs of the various peoples it deals with, as well as the supermundane influences at work among them, would be impossible. Despite all warnings, their idolatrous tendencies greatly moulded their lives and thoughts; and it may be easy to prove that often times they paid court to "Lords many and gods many" without being aware of it.

Our difficulty with respect to the Bible lies in the interpretation, and arises from two principal causes. First, there was the construction which the Jews put upon what they observed, heard, and were commanded to do, say, and record. Secondly, there is the conflict of modern thought as to the meaning of the record they have given us thereof.

In meeting the difficulty arising from misapprehension on both parts (and the record proves that the Jews, like other people, were continually blundering) we are not to overlook the fact, which no churchmen will actually dispute, that the holy spirit and an unholy spirit have been invisibly at work in human affairs all through history. Keeping this in view, we must next confront the question, how was the voluminous matter in the Bible obtained? Seeing that The Book did not come down from heaven like Mahomet's Koran, ready-made, complete, and bound just as we have it, but is the record of many succeeding generations of scribes, how, by what process, I ask, was the will of God made known to man? Why does the Church preserve silence upon this question? It must often occur to the student of Scripture, and it is of vast importance that we should formulate some reasonable theory to explain the matter. We read, "The word of the Lord came unto" so-and-so, saying, "the Lord spake unto Moses." David inquired of the Lord, and "the Lord said" such-and-such. I ask, then, how was it gone about? An answer of some kind should be forthcoming. It is incredible that the Universal Presence ever spake page 9 to man in direct accents. Frame what theory you will, abandon that notion you must. God spake by proxy. The tympanum of the human ear is not adapted to the immediate utterances of the Great Being who fills the universe. It beats the globe how any person can believe it from any point of view. The Bible repeatedly assures us that "No man hath seen God at any time," that "he dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see," that "No man shall see God and live (Exodus xxxiii. 20); and, by parity of reasoning, it would be just to say, No man can hear God and live; but an authority greater far than Moses—the thunder of heaven—echoes these words in accents which the deaf might hear, while the forked lightening writes them against the dark sky in vivid characters which the eyes of the blind might see. The telescope also declares that the stars in their courses say so. Is not nature alive with proof that the Almighty works by means in all his providences? What, then, were the means employed to supply Moses and all the other Bible writers with their instructions and inspirations? From the record itself I shall refer to the principal means, and go a little into particulars. In so doing I address myself only to those who believe the Bible—the explanation being gathered from the book itself, it alone is responsible.