THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURAL "TEXTS."
1TR. LYTTELTON asks us a question in the letter which we 111 publish to-day that deserves a careful answer. He aaks why it is that if an argument resting on the authority of Scripture is presented to those who believe in Revelation, they pay it the distant courtesy of a bow, and pass on to what they think more germane considerations, almost as if it had never been urged. The special proof he cites of this is not, we venture to think, very good proof, for the reasons we have given at the end of his letter. But we are quite willing to admit that this particu- lar proof was not essential, that he is more or less right in his state- ment of the case, and that we ourselves attach no great authority to the statement in the Epistle to Timothy that the love of money is the root of all evil, even if it really mean exactly what is there said, and not rather that it is the root of all the evils referred to in the previous verse, i.e., "the temptations, snares, and lusts" into which men are certain to fall who make up their minds to be rich. And it is not very difficult to say why we should attach no great importance to it. It is clear enough, first, that the Apostles, like other men, used at times loose and vague language ; that they never contemplated for a moment the Use that would be made of their words, as a species of oracles or charms in later centuries ; and further, that they were not by any means infallible, even on points on which they did define their meaning clearly and urged it strongly. No one who reads the Scriptures with his eyes open can doubt that St. Paul, for instance, was distinctly mistaken as to the duration of the visible world ; nor that his opinion on the subject of the veils or bonnets which women ought to wear in churches was, at the least, eccentric, and that the curious and mystical symbolism of the reasons assigned for it, is neither instructive nor, indeed, to us at least, quite intelligible. For this reason alone, even if there were not sufficient critical doubt as to the authority and true interpretation of a good many passages of Scripture to make it very difficult to ride rough-shod over any one with a mere text of Scripture, it would not be very easy to compel men who find an unmanage- able fragment of Scripture thrown at their heads with a demand for instant obedience, to defer to isolated passages of this kind. If the text cited is abrupt and peremptory, without being at all convincing, it may be misunderstood, or even have slipped un- designedly from the writer's pen, just as St. Paul's exclamation, " God shall smite thee, thou whited wall, for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten con- trary to the law ?" fell from his lips. We have no reason at all to suppose that the written words of the writers of Scripture were a bit more carefully guarded than their spoken words, and indeed there is every reason to suppose that neither the former nor the latter were in any way protected from error. Now if this be so, how is it possible for an isolated text, which neither recom- mends itself, nor seems to be in keeping with the main stream and tendency of the teaching to which it belongs, to adsert much authority over us? As Mr. Lyttelton himself Showed very power- fully in his paper on "The Divine Guidance of the Church" in the August number of the Contemporary, most of the highest teaching of Christianity appeals expressly for its authority to the nature and understanding of those to whom it is given. Ile illustrates this himself by the passage in which our Lord teaches that not that which goes into the mouth, but that which comes out of the mouth, defiles a man, a passage which is directly prefaced by the words, "Are ye also yet without understanding?" as if he could hardly believe that those who had been with him so long, had not caught the self-evi- dencing character of the truth he had just uttered. And Mr. Lyttelton illustrates the same characteristic of Christ's teaching on another subject in his letter to-day, when he points to the appeal made by our Lord to God's calling himself the God of men long dead, as a reason for holding that they were and must be still living to Him who had once lavished on them His care and love. Unquestionably, the Christian revelation, though it does not scruple to affirm facts otherwise unknowable, does, in its main stream of teaching, address itself to what has been pedantically called the "verifying " character of the human conscience and in- tellect, and asks for credence for that chiefly which is no sooner heard than it is seen to be appropriate to the atmosphere of the human soul. Indeed, we should be prepared to say deliberately that mere "texts," unless they enlarge, carry on, or complete the stream of that teaching which has from the first been the great gift of the Jewish and Christian revelations to man, have hardly any moral interest for us, and certainly no authority. When Deborah blesses the wife of Heber the Kenite for her treachery, or even St. Paul invokes on "Alexander the coppersmith" retribution for the evil he had done him, we simply pass it by, being quite conscious that both these 'texts' are not enlarging or continuing the main teaching of revelation, but, on the contrary, are flaws in the substance of that teaching. Again, when even in the accounts of our Lord's own teaching we find fragments which, in their present format least, seem inconsistent with its main tendency, they' produce little or no effect upon us, and as we maintain, ought not to produce any such effect. When he is repre- sented as saying that in the resurrection the Apostles shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, we must say that as thus reported there is nothing to learn by the statement,—that it would imply a delegation of divine government and a special kind of reward for faithful service for which there is no parallel in the rest of our Lord's teaching,—that it seems quite at variance with the answer given to James and John that though they should indeed drink of their master's cup and be baptised with his baptism, "to sit on his right hand and on his left was not his to give, except to those for whom it had been prepared of his father," words which were certainly a virtual rebuke for an ambitious conception of the life of the invisible world,—and that the chances are that our Lord's language in this case had been misunderstood or mieremembered. At all events, take it how you will, such a fragment of promise entirely out of keeping with all the lessons concerning the great- ness of humility, and the nobility of service, can be made nothing of. It does not come home to any one. It does not teach any- thing. It is simply a difficulty, and must be left as a difficulty to stand alone. We know that there are inconeistencies and errors in the various histories of our Lord's life ; why not also mis- reports of his words ? It is only where his words form part of a continuous and steady strain of teaching which have produced their effects in moulding the life of the Christian Church, that we can have any certain guarantee for their accuracy.
But we quite admit that there are far more lessons in Scripture to which we do owe allegiance than isolated passagea to which we owe none, and that the Christian teaching as to the danger of riches is of the former kind, and as we believe, profoundly true, though it does not go anything like the length of asserting the love of money to be the root of all evil,—a clear exaggera- tion of expression, even when applied to covetousness, of which obviously St. Paul was really speaking. Our Lord's teaching on this head is very clear. It is often repeated, and seems to have been sometimes almost paradoxically expressed, while at others it was carefully explained. " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God !' And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches (roe; to enter into the kingdom of God !
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It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.' And they wore astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved ?' And Jeans looking upon them saith, 'With men it is impossible, but not with God : for with God all things are possible,' "—a passage which seems to us to indicate more clearly than any other our Lord's belief in the moral possibilities of the world beyond the grave to effect changes of heart impossible here, for we think it may most naturally mean, what, of course, it is not usually supposed to mean, that while those who trust in riches continue to be exposed to the worldly influences which foster and stimulate that trust, it will be impossible for them to reach the true spiritual life, but that when they are removed from the special temptations which this human world supplies, the requisite change of heart, like all other needful changes of heart, may be made possible. So in other passages, Christ teaches that where the treasure is there will the
heart be also, and that if the earthly treasures—those which moth and rust can corrupt and thieves can break in and steal— be groat, it will be very difficult for the heart to fix itself on those higher treasures which belong exclusively to the spiritual .world. But the whole scope of the teaching is not that earthly wealth is mischievous, but only earthly treasures; that it is the lichee you lean upon in your heart, not the riches which merely pass through your hands, which endanger your spiritual life. The man who is so full of his riches that he says, "I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and reygoods ; and Twill say to my soul, soul, thou hest much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry," is the man who is in danger ; not he who has ten talents, and who puts them all out to usury to gain ten talents more, treating them, meantime, not as his own possessions, but as lent him by his Lord. it is the dwelling in the sense of property or wealth, the disposition to spend or lose yourself in the power and gratifications which these things bestow, not the using of the "unrighteous Mammon" so that when it fails, it may receive those who so used it into "everlasting habitations," which our Lord condemns ; and it was this, too, which his Apostles after him con- demned. " Charge those who are rich in this world that they be ready to give, and glad to distribute, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may attain eternal life," says one apostle; and another, going deeper to the root of Christ's teaching, says, " Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ?" Now, by this teaching, which, as we have said, is con- tinuous and clear, and of the very essence of the revelation of Christ, it seems to us that all Christians are bound. But they are clearly not bound to accept the words of an isolated saying ,which does not come home to them, which is not of a piece with the general stream of Christian teaching, and which needs more paring and effort to "explain it away" than it can ever afford of useful counsel even after it has been thus explained away. With the departed belief in the infallibility of the Bible, this kind of scrupulous deference to the literal significance of any isolated passage in the Bible, however puzzling, ought surely also to disappear.
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