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Page 18
Nor do we think that God ceased speaking when the Canon of the Bible was
complete. How could He, if He be the living God? "Truth," said Milton,
"is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow
not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of
conformity and tradition." The fountain of God's Self-revealing still
streams. Religious truth comes to us from all quarters--from events of
today and contemporaneous prophets, from living epistles at our side and
the still small voice within; but as a simple matter of fact, its main
flow is still through this book. When we want God--want Him for our
guidance, our encouragement, our correction, our comfort, our
inspiration--we find Him in the record of these ancient experiences of
His Self-unveiling. When near his death, after years of agony on his
bed, when he himself had become a changed man, Heinrich Heine wrote: "I
attribute my enlightenment entirely and simply to the reading of a book.
Of a book? Yes! and it is an old homely book, modest as nature--a book
which has a look modest as the sun which warms us, as the bread which
nourishes us--a book as full of love and blessing as the old mother who
reads in it with her trembling lips, and this book is _the_ Book, the
Bible. With right is it named the Holy Scriptures. He who has lost his
God can find Him again in this book; and he who has never known Him, is
here struck by the breath of the Divine Word."
CHAPTER III
JESUS CHRIST
Three elements enter into every Christian's conception of his
Lord--history, experience and reflection. Jesus is to him a figure out
of the past, a force in the present, and a fact in his view of the
universe. Whether we be discussing the Christ of Paul, or of the Nicene
theologians, or of some thoughtful believer today, we must allow for the
memory of the Man of Nazareth handed down from those who knew Him in the
flesh, the acquaintance with the Lord of life resulting from personal
loyalty to His will, and the explanation of this Lord reached by the
mind, as, using the intellectual methods of its age, it tries to set His
figure in its mental world.
The Jesus of the primitive Church was One whom believers worshipped as
the Christ of God, in whose person and mission they saw the fulfilment
of Israel's prophecy and the inauguration of a new religious era. They
represent their conception of Him as corresponding to and created by His
own consciousness of Himself. He was aware of a unique relationship to
God--He is His Son, _the_ Son. And because of this divine sonship He is
the Messiah, commissioned to usher in the Kingdom of God, and to bring
forgiveness and eternal life to men. This He does by becoming their
Teacher and their lowly Servant, laying down His life for them in
suffering and death, and rising and returning to them as their Lord. He
appeals to them for faith in God, for loyalty to Himself as God's
Servant and Son, and for trust in His divine power to save them.
This conception of Jesus is given us in documents which must be
investigated and appraised as sources of historical knowledge. The four
gospels are our principal informants, and no other writings in existence
have been so often and so minutely examined. Among scholars at present
it is a common hypothesis that Mark's is the earliest narrative; that
this was combined with a _Collection of Sayings_ (compiled, perhaps, by
Matthew) and other material in our first gospel, and by another editor
(probably Luke) with the same or a similar _Collection of Sayings_ and
still other material in our third gospel. Later yet, a fourth evangelist
interpreted for the world of his day the Jesus of the first three
gospels in the light of his own and the Church's spiritual experience.
The earlier sources, as is usually and naturally the case with literary
records of the past, are considered historically more reliable than the
later. The words of Jesus in the form in which they are given in the
Synoptists are more nearly as Jesus spoke them, than in the form in
which they are recorded in _John_. There is a tendency, often found in
kindred documents, to make events more marvellous as the tradition is
handed on. In _Mark_, for instance, the Spirit descends upon Jesus "as a
dove," symbolizing the quietness with which the Divine Power possessed
Him; in _Luke_, the symbol is materialized, and the Holy Spirit descends
"in _bodily form_ as a dove." The writers interpret the narrative for
their readers: _Matthew_ takes Jesus' ideal of the indissoluble
marriage-tie, as it is given in _Mark_, and allows, in the practical
application of the ideal, divorce for adultery; he adds to Jesus' word
about telling one's brother his fault "between thee and him alone"
further advice as to what shall be done if the brother be obdurate,
ending with "Tell it unto the Church." _John_ substitutes for the many
sayings of Jesus in the earlier gospels, in which He appears to look
forward to a speedy and sudden coming of His Kingdom in power, other
sayings, in which He promises to come again spiritually and dwell in His
followers. On the other hand, in some particulars scholars think that
the later writers had more accurate information, and used it to correct
misunderstandings conveyed by their predecessors; the length of our
Lord's ministry, the procedure followed at the trial, the date of the
crucifixion, are by many supposed to be more exactly given in _John_
than in the Synoptists. In general there is no reason for questioning
the data in the later sources, save as they seem to come from an
interest of the Church of their day, unrelated with the Jesus of the
earlier records.
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