第69章

Add that the times have and still need its moral steadying.Every age seems to its own thoughtful people to lack moral steadiness, and they tend to compare it with other ages which look steadier.That is a virtually invariable opinion of such men.The comparison with other ages is generally fallacious, yet the fact is real for each age.Many things tend in this age to unsettle moral solidity.Some of them are peculiar to this time, others are not.But one of the great influences which the Bible is perpetually tending to counteract is stated in best terms in an experience of Henry M.Stanley.It was on that journey to Africa when be found David Livingstone, under commission from one of the great newspapers.Naturally he had made up his load as light as possible.Of books he had none save the Bible; but wrapped about his bottles of medicine and other articles were many copies of newspapers.Stanley says that "strangest ofall his experiences were the changes wrought in him by the reading of the Bible and those newspapers in melancholy Africa." He was frequently sick with African fever, and took up the Bible to while away his hours of recovery.During the hours of health he read the newspapers."And thus, somehow or other, my views toward newspapers were entirely recast," while he held loyal to his profession as a newspaper man.This is the critical sentence in Stanley's telling of the story: "As seen in my loneliness, there was this difference between the Bible and the newspapers.The one reminded me that apart from God my life was but a bubble of air, and it made me remember my Creator; the other fostered arrogance and worldliness."[1] There is no denying such an experience as that.That is precisely the moral effect of the Bible as compared with the moral effect of the newspaper accounts of current life.Democracy should always be happy; but it must always be serious, morally steady.Anything that tends to give men light views of wrong, to make evil things humorous, to set out the ridiculous side of gross sins is perilous to democracy.It not only is injurious to personal morals; it is bound sooner or later to injure public morals.There is nothing that so persistently counteracts that tendency of current literature as does the Bible.

[1] Autobiography, p.252.

From an ethical point of view, "the ethical content of Paul is quite as important for us as the system of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche.The organization of the New England town meeting is no more weighty for the American boy than the organization of the early Christian Church.John Adams and John Hancock and Abraham Lincoln are only the natural successors of the great Hebrew champions of liberty and righteousness who faced Pharoah and Ahab and put to flight armies of aliens." But aside from the definite ethical teaching of the Bible there is need for that strong impression of ethical values which it gives in the characters around which it has gathered.The conception of the Bible which makes it appear as a steady progression should add to its authority, not take from it.The development is not from error to truth, but from light to more light.It is sometimes said that the standards of morality of some parts of Scripture are not to be commended.But they are not the standards of morality ofScripture, but of their times.They are not taught in Scripture; they are only stated; and they are so stated that instantly a thoughtful man discovers that they are stated to be condemned.When did it become true that all that is told of a good man is to be approved? It is not pretended that Abraham did right always.David was confessedly wrong.They move much of the time in half-light, yet the sum total of the impression of their writings is inevitably and invariably for a more substantial morality.These times need the moral steadying of the Bible to make men, not creatures of the day arid not creatures of their whims, but creatures of all time and of fundamental laws.

Add the third fact, that our times have and still need the religious influence of the Bible.No democracy can dispense with religious culture.No book makes for religion as does the Bible.That is its chief purpose.No book can take its place; no influence can supplant it.Max Muller made lifelong study of the Buddhist and other Indian books.He gave them to the English-speaking world.Yet he wrote to a friend of his impression of the immense superiority of the Bible in such terms that his friend replied: "Yes, you are right; how tremendously ahead of other sacred books is the Bible! The difference strikes one as almost unfairly great."[1] Writing in an India paper, The Kayestha Samachar, in August, 1902, a Hindu writer said: "I am not a Christian; but half an hour's study of the Bible will do more to remodel a man than a whole day spent in repeating the slokas of the Purinas or the mantras of the Rig-Veda." In the earlier chapters of the Koran Christians are frequently spoken of as "people of the Book." It is a suggestive phrase.If Christianity has any value for American life, then the Bible has just that value.Christianity is made by the Bible; it has never been vital nor nationally influential for good without the Bible.

[1] Speer, Light of the World, iv.