MR. GLADSTONE ON THE BIBLE.
MR. GLADSTONE'S general introduction to the new American work on the Bible history* is marked by passages of singular eloquence and beauty of which his description of the great career which the Bible has had in raising and elevating the intellect of those who have ventured on the apparently almost impossible task of translating it into other tongues, is certainly not the least impressive. He notices and even insists on the varieties of meaning which some of these translations embody as the clearest and most decisive evidence we could have that verbal inspiration is an essentially nugatory guarantee for our instruction, seeing that by far the greater number of the members of the human race are wholly dependent on translations for their knowledge of the divine word. But he dwells on the marvellous influence which the task of translating it has exerted in raising so many of these great translations to the standard of something like mighty originals. Not only has the Greek translation,—the Septuagint,—gained an autho- rity almost equal to that of the probably later Hebrew text of the Old Testament,—but the Latin version, the
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Vulgate, has a singular charm of its own, while both the English and the German Bible (Luther's Bible) have leavened those languages and their literatures with a dignity and splendour which no other work has lent them, so that a borrowed book has become the recog- nised standard of these tongues' strength and delicacy and musical charm. Mr. Gladstone does not say the same of the French Bible, and we doubt whether it could be truly said. The genius of that lively tongue does not seem altogether well adapted to respond to the breathings of divine inspiration, and we should doubt whether any great judge of French would speak of the French Bible as illus- trating the highest magic of French speech. In this as in other cases we must probably admit that even inspira- tion has met with a resisting medium to which the rebellious heart of man has not found it easy to bow. But there is no other book except the Bible which has given to tongues alien from that in which it was originally written, the highest compass and standard of their literary achievement.
We think Mr. Gladstone, eloquently as he has insisted on this great triumph of the Bible, might have pursued his fascinating theme a little further. Surely it is a singular phenomenon that the speech of the Bible, in four or five different tongues at least, should have found not only the highest form of expression for authority and command, and for the endurance and majesty of divine purpose as well as for the depth of human awe, humility, and trust, but should also have raised the expression even of human pride and revolt to its highest intensity. " I am that I am " is not a more pregnant expression of the divine self-existence, nor is "they [the Heavens] shall perish, but thou shalt endure, they all shall wax old as doth a garment, as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed," a more thrilling expression of the divine eternity, than is such an apostrophe as "Oh, daughter of Babylon wasted with misery, happy shall be be that rewardeth thee as thou has rewardeth us, blessed shall he be that taketh thy children and dasheth them against the stones," remarkable as a profound expression of vindictive passion. " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away," is not more majestic as the assertion of divine stability, than is "Oh, generation of vipers, who bath warned you to flee from the wrath to come " expressive of the scorn with which the prophetic spirit can look down upon the capricious and cowardly spirit of human guilt. The Bible is hardly greater in its wonderful ennnciations of the eternal will, than it is in its marvellous utterances of wrath and dread.
Mr. Gladstone gives free expression to his deep sense of the human element in the Bible, but we do not think that he is wise in endeavouring so earnestly to attenuate the treachery of Jael in her assassination of Sisera, only because the prophetess Deborah pronounced her " blessed above women" for the ghastly deed. We do not think it can be doubted for a moment that though the divine inspiration strives with and generally conquers the human passions of the prophets and singers of Israel, it sometimes fails to do so, and leaves the nakedness of unblest hatred in the sharpest possible contrast to the diviner frame of mind. If ever there was a deed altogether penetrated with not only unholy but un- natural treachery it was Jael'e, much as we may allow for the patriotic zeal of a friend of Israel. Doubtless Deborah, in her thankfulness that so formidable an enemy as Sisera had been removed, forgot the gravity of the sin to which that relief of her anxieties was due. But it is not to be denied that it was a sin in no degree excused even by the conceptions of the age in which Jael lived. And in the passage we have just quoted from one of the loveliest songs of the exile, we see again how the vindictiveness of the Jewish temper penetrated even the most characteristic of the Psalms of patriotic devotion.
We believe that the inspiration of the Bible is not un- frequently brought out by contrast, and even by contrast with the lower spirit of the very writer or singer who finds
it some of its loftiest expressions. No one can read the Psalms without frequently coming across a fierce vindic- tiveness which even the Hebrew ethics and religion at its higher levels strongly condemned.
Mr. Gladstone insists very powerfully on the distinction between the Bible and the sacred books of other religions, in this,—that the Bible is "so minutely and exactly divided by periods and by authorship. No other covers so vast a range of time and of diversified human history. They began for a family and they ended for a world. Not given at once and in stereotype, but 'at sundry times and in divers manners.'" Nothing could have been said more impressively. and nothing is more characteristic of the Bible, than this elasticity and adaptation to the different stages of a progressive revelation. But these "sundry times and divers manners" certainly involve not only the variety and elasticity, but the human faults of human authorship, inaccuracy here, in- subordination to the divine spirit there, and all the com- plexity of books written by men at times so full of human passion that they did not always respond as they might have done to the restraining influence of a divine control. Of course, this view of the Bible involves the great difficulty of discriminating that which is tainted with its human origin from that which is the pure product of divine influence, but we do not see how that difficulty can be avoided in any view that can possibly be taken of the inspired literature.
Whether you say that a great psalmist or a prophetic poet like Deborah, yielded to the lower impulses of human nature or not, when she uttered so grand an expression of vindic- tive passion, you cannot at least allow her poetic wrath to be treated as a divine sanction for revenge. and it does not lunch matter whether you have to find reasons for putting aside her sentiments, while contending that they were not quite unjustifiable in those times and places, or whether you admit frankly that even in those times and places, she might have known better if she had willingly yielded her heart to the guidance of the divine spirit. Mr. Gladstone, we think, hardly allows the human element in the Bible its full share of responsibility for these passages with which the apologists have had so much difficulty. It seems to us far simpler and truer to say, " Here we see the effect of vin- dictive passion," than to find excuses which can hardly ever really satisfy the consciences of those to whom you speak.
We admit fully that wherever the moral spirit expressed, even though falling far short of the Christian ideal, is clearly in advance of the general tone of the time in which it found utterance, that is all we can ask of the progres- sive spirit of revelation. Bat there are many passages in the Bible to which this explanation is not applicable.
The greatest service which Mr. Gladstone's essay renders us, is perhaps to be found in the noble passage which has been quoted in so many of our contemporaries from its conclusion, a passage which we much prefer to his dis- • cussion of Deborah's panegyric on Jael's exploit as an assassin :-
"' Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' As they have lived and wrought, so they will live and 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 unto the ends of the world.' Nor here alone but in a thousand silent and unsuspected forms will they unweariedly prosecute their holy office. Who doubts that, times without number, particular portions of Scripture find their way to the human soul as if embassies from on high, each with its own com- mission of comfort, of guidance, or of warning ? What crisis, what trouble, what perplexity of life has failed or can fail to draw from this inexhaustible 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 mow, as in the days of their first utterance, the freshness of youth and immortality ? When the solitary student opens all his heart to drink them in, they will reward his toil. And in forms yet more hidden and withdrawn, in the retirement of the chamber, in the stillness of the night season, upon the bed of sickness and in the face of death, the Bible will be there, its several words how often winged with their several and special messages, to heal and to soothe, 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 seems to be set upon the excitements of ambition, or of business, or of pleasure, there too, even there, the still small voice of the Holy Bible will be heard, and the soul, aided by acme blessed word, may find wings like a dove, may flee away and be at rest."
it would be difficult to exceed that in eloquence and beauty and truth. Indeed, so far as we have the right to an opinion, we heartily concur with Mr. Gladstone in main- taining that the Bible stands in a totally different region from all other sacred books, in the absolute supremacy of its spiritual wisdom. One of our contemporaries rashly selected for special praise as deserving to be written "in lettere of gold," a sentence which is not Mr. Gladstone's, but, on the
contrary, occurs in a context from the drift of which Mr. Gladstone decidedly dissents, to the effect that "it is not the Bible which produced religion and morals but religion and morals that produced the Bible." In effect, Mr. Glad- stone holds that to a very considerable extent the inspired writings did produce that specially high level of morals and religion which is to be found in the Hebrew literature alone. Of course he would not deny that inspiration acted on the minds of the inspired writers before it took hold of their language and doubled the force of their prophecies and their lyrics. But Mr. Gladstone intended to contro- vert the notion that any minds not more or less possessed by the spirit of God could have raised human morals and religion to the height to which the Bible has raised them, and there we hold, so far as we can hold it without a much more perfect knowledge of other sacred books than we actually possess, that Mr. Gladstone is absolutely right. The Bible is not merely primes inter pares as the depository of the divine spirit, but is the only collection of sacred writings which gradually develops for us something like the very lineaments and personality of God himself.
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