The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 4/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
CAUSE OF THE FALSE AND THE REAL VENERATION FOR THE BIBLE.
The indolent and the sensual love to have a visible master in spiritual things, who will spare them the agony of thought. Credulity, Ignorance, and Superstition conjure up phantoms to attend them. Some honest men find it difficult to live nobly and divine; to keep the well of life pure and undisturbed, the inward ear always open and quick to the voice of God in the soul. They see, too, how often the ignorant, the wicked, the superstitious, and the fanatical confound their own passions with the still small voice of God; they see what evil, deep and dreadful, comes of this confusion. Such is the force of prejudice, indolence, habit, they find it sometimes difficult to distinguish between right and wrong; they love to lean on the Most High, and the Bible is declared His word. They say, therefore, by their action, Let us have some outward rule and authority, which, being infallible, shall help the still smallness of God's voice in the heart; it will bless us when weak; we will make it our master and obey its voice. It shall be to us as a God, and we will fall down and worship it. But alas, it is not so. The word of God—no Scripture will hold that. It speaks in a language no honest mind can fail to read. Such seem the most prominent causes that have made the Bible an Idol of the Christians.
No doubt it will be said, “such views are dangerous, for the mass of men must always take Authority for Truth,
not Truth for Authority.” But are they not true? If so
the consequences are not ours; they belong to the Author
of truth, who can manage his own affairs, without our
meddling. Is the wrong way safer than the right? No
doubt it was reckoned dangerous to abandon the worship
of Diana, of the cross, the saints and their reliques; but
the world stands, though “the image that fell down from
Jupiter” is forgotten. If these doctrines be true, men
need not fear they shall have no “standard of religious
faith and practice.” Reason, Conscience, Heart, and Soul
still remain; God's voice in Nature; His Word in Man.
His Laws remain ever unchanged, though we set up our
idols or pluck them down. We still have the same guide
with Moses and David, Socrates and Zoroaster, Paul and
John and Luther, Fenelon, Taylor, and Fox; yes, the same
guide that led Jesus, the first-born of many brothers, in
his steep and lonely pilgrimage.
This doctrine takes nothing from the Bible but its errors, which only weaken its strength; its truth remains, brilliant and burning with the light of life. It calls us away from each outward standard to the eternal truths of God; from the letter and the imperfect Scripture of the Word to the living Word itself. Then we see the true relation the Bible sustains to the soul; the cause of the real esteem in which it is held is seen to be in its moral and religious truths; their power and loveliness appear. These have had the greatest influence on the loftiest minds and the lowliest hearts for eighteen hundred years. How they have written themselves all over the world, deepest in the best of men! What greatness of soul has been found amid the fragrant leaves of the Bible, sufficient to lead men to embrace its truths, though at the expense of accepting tales which make the blood curdle!
Take the Bible for what is true in it, and the first chapter of Genesis is a grand hymn of creation, a worthy prelude of the sublime chants that follow; it sings this truth: The World was not always; is not the work of chance, but of the living God; all things are good, made to be blest. The writer—who, perhaps, never thought he was writing “an article of faith”—if he were a Jew, might superstitiously refer the Sabbath to the time of creation and the agency of God, just as the Greek refers one festival to Hercules and another to Bacchus. Then oriental Piety comes beautiful from the grave hewn in the rock by our dull Theology; utters her word of counsel and hope; sings her mythological poem, and warms the heart, but does not teach theology, or physical science.
The sweet notes of David's prayer; his mystic hymn of praise, so full of rippling life; his lofty Psalm, which seems to unite the warbling music of the wind, the sun's glance, and the rush of the lightning; which calls on the mountain and the sea, and beast, and bird, and man, to join his full heart,—all these shall be sweet and elevating, but we shall leave his pernicious curse to perish where it fell.
The excellence of the Hebrew devotional hymns has never been surpassed. Heathenism, Christianity, with all their science, arts, literature, bright and many-coloured, have little that approach these. They are the despair of imitators; still the uttered prayer of the Christian world. Tell us of Greece, whose air was redolent of song; its language such as Jove might speak; its sages, heroes, poets, honoured in every clime,—they have no psalm of prayer and praise like these Hebrews, the devoutest of men, who saw God always before them, ready to take them up when father and mother let them fall.
Some of the old prophets were men of stalwart and robust character, set off by a masculine piety that puts to shame our puny littleness of heart. They saw Hope the plainest when danger was most imminent, and never despaired. Fear of the people, the rulers, the priests, could not awe them to silence, nor gold buy smooth things from the prophet's tongue. They left Hypocrisy, with his weeds and weepers, and feigning but unstained handkerchief, to follow the coffin he knew to be empty, and went their own way, as men. What shall screen the guilty from the prophet's word? Even David is met with a Thou-art-the-man. What if they were stoned, imprisoned, sawn asunder? It was a prophet's reward. They did not prophesy smooth things; they gave the truth and took blows, not asking love for love. If these men are set up as masters of the soul, Justice must break her staff over their heads. But view them as patriots whom danger aroused from the repose of life; as pious men awakened by concern for the public virtue, and nobler men never spoke speech.
Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old.
Little needs now be said of the New Testament, of the simple truth that rustles in its leaves, its parables, epistles, where Paul lifts up his manly voice, and John, or whoso wrote the words, pours out the mystic melody of his faith. Why tell the deep words of Jesus? Have we exhausted their meaning? The world—has it outgrown Love to God and Man? They still act in gentle bosoms, giving strength to the strong, and justice and meekness and charity and faith to beautiful souls, long tried and oppressed. There is no need of new words to tell of this.
Now it is not in nature to respect the false, and yet
reverence the true. Call the Bible master—we do not see
the excellence it has. Take it as other books, we have its
Beauty, Truth, Religion, not its deformities, fables, and
theology. We shall not believe in ghosts, though Isaiah
did: nor in devils, though Jesus teach there are such.
We shall see the excellence of Paul in his manly character,
not in the miracles wrought by his apron; the nobleness
of Jesus, in the doctrine he taught and the life he lived,
not in the walk on the water or the miraculous draughts
of fish. We shall care little about the “endless
genealogies and old-wives' fables,” though still deemed essential
by many—but much for being good and doing good.
Our faith—let him shake down the Andes who has an arm
for that work.
On the other hand, he that accepts the monstrous prodigies of the Gospels; is delighted to believe that Jesus had divine authority for laying on forms, and damning all but the baptized; that he gave Peter authority to bind and loose on earth and in heaven; commanded his disciples to make friends of “the mammon of unrighteousness,” to tease God, as an unjust judge, into compliance, with vain repetitions—can he accept the Absolute Religion? It is not possible, for a long time, to make serious things of trifles, without making trifles of serious things. Cannot drunkenness be justified out of the Old Testament; the very Solomon advising the poor man to drown his sorrows in wine? Jeremiah curses the man that will not fight.[1] Is not Sarah commended by the Fathers of the church, and Abraham by the Sons? Men justify slavery out of the New Testament, because Paul had not his eye open to the evil, but sent back a fugitive! It is dangerous to rely on a troubled fountain for the water of life.
The good influence of the Bible, past and present, as of all religious books, rests on its religious significance. Its truths not only sustain themselves, but the mass of errors connected therewith. Truth can never pass away. Men sometimes fear the Bible will be destroyed by freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Let it perish if such be the case. Truth cannot fear the light, nor are men so mad as to forsake a well of living water. All the freethinking in the world could not destroy the Iliad; how much less the truths of the Bible. Things at last will pass for their true value. The truths of the Bible, which have fed and comforted the noblest souls for so many centuries, may be trusted to last our day. The Bible has already endured the greatest abuse at the hands of its friends, who make it an idol, and would have all men do it homage. We need call none our Master but the Father of All. Yet the Bible, if wisely used, is still a blessed teacher. Spite of the superstition and folly of its worshippers, it has helped millions to that fountain where Moses and Jesus, with the holy-hearted of all time, have stooped and been filled. We see the mistakes of its writers, for though noble and of great stature, they saw not all things. We reject their follies; but their words of truth are still before us, to admonish, to encourage, and to bless. From time to time God raises up a prophet to lead mankind. He speaks his word as it is given him; serves his generation for the time, and falls at last, when it is expedient he should give way to the next Comforter whom God shall send. But mankind is greater than a man, and never dies. The experience of the past lives in the present. The light that shone at Nineveh, Egypt, Judea, Athens, Rome, shines no more from those points; it is everywhere. Can Truth decease, and a good idea once made real ever perish? Mankind, moving solemnly on its appointed road, from age to age, passes by its imperfect teachers, guided by their light, blessed by their toil, and sprinkled with their blood. But Truth, like her God, is before and above us for ever. So we pass by the lamps of the street, with wonder at their light, though but a smoky glare; they seem to change places and burn dim in the distance as we go on; at last the solid walls of darkness shut them in. But high over our head are the unsullied stars, which never change their place, nor dim their eye. So the truths of the Scriptures will teach for ever, though the record perish and its authors be forgot. They came from God, through the Soul of Man. They have exhausted neither God nor the Soul. Man is greater than the Bible. That is one ray out of the sun; one drop from the infinite ocean. The inward Christ, which alone abideth for ever, has much to say which the Bible never told, much which the historical Jesus never knew. The Bible is made for Man, not Man for the Bible. Its truths are old as the creation, repeated more or less purely in every tongue. Let its errors and absurdities no longer be forced on the pious mind, but perish for ever; let the Word of God come through Conscience, Reason, and holy Feeling, as light through the windows of morning. Worship with no master but God, no creed but Truth, no service but Love, and we have nothing to fear.
- ↑ Proverbs xxxvi. 6, et seq.; Jer. xlviii. 10.