kept them out of good company at the tavern, kept them busy at work, or singing and praying, in short, it committed them to many unbearable irregularities.

In these years Wesley preached in every city, town, and hamlet in England, in most of those in Scotland, and in many in Ireland. He preached thousands of sermons, sometimes to, it is said, twenty thousand people at a single time, all of whom could hear him with no effort apparent on the part of either speaker or hearers. He faced angry mobs with unflinching courage and with uniform success. He was certainly one of the grandest figures of his century in his capacity as a preacher to the people, to say nothing of his wonderful administrative ability in developing and controlling the Methodist Church through the first halfcentury of its existence. Since his death that Church has been among the foremost to penetrate every land where Christianity is known, and outnumbers every other sect numerically in the United States.

Wesley's ridiculous belief in the miracles and exhibitions of "powers" constantly taking place about him is due presumably to the relics of seventeenth-century superstition which had been so vitally engrafted on his life in the early years at Epworth. They need not call for any excuse or explanation: they are too trivial when we think of the grandeur of the man in whose life they played, after all, a very small part. So much for the external, historical aspect of the revival, which persisted in its effects long after its originator died, in 1791.

Now for a word concerning its workings within. The spiritual life of the age, like that of its individuals, was wholly out of sight, like the current of a frozen river. An insincere formalism and general apathy for vice in all forms kept the religious atmosphere sufficiently cold to preserve this state continuously. The question was, How could this life be melted? First of all, through the avenue of the emotions, by threats of future disaster and by encouraging promises of salvation, men were brought by main force, as it were, to face the horrors of their present sinfulness. In spite of the charge often made that the Methodists preached to one's nerves, it seems likely that men's thought would never have been quickened or even turned toward the prob

lems of the religious life if this had not been the method adopted. Inspired with a love of souls and fortified with a knowledge of human prejudices, these preachers made up in physical vitality whatever they lacked in intellectual acumen. And perhaps, after all, the qualities which they had in greatest abundance were those most needed for the people whom Methodism was to reach.

The emotions once kindled, in the fire of enthusiasm which usually swept through the vast congregations under Wesley's preaching, they served to arouse the entire man, thought and all, to do something in itself evidence of his renunciation of his past habitual sinfulness. This work was followed up in class-meetings, where every physical symptom of the "great change" was depicted beforehand and encouraged during its appearance. Hallelujahs and prayers and hymns helped on the final conversion; and then the converted man, with his life thus turned into a new channel, was set to work along lines in which the new life might be made permanent.

There is good philosophy and common sense in this method, even if some of the means employed are shocking. It, furthermore, brought into the sharpest antithesis possible the religious and the worldly life; it quickened men's minds to think of religious matters; it warmed men's hearts to a love for humanity, and roused great resentment against what was mean and selfish. It was too great an excitement for many to. endure: insanity, and even death, overtook many, where the internal conflict of forces was great, while the mind and body were weak. Whittier has embodied the kindest and truest criticism of this great work in the lines:

"And who shall marvel if evil went
Step by step with the good intent,
And with love and meekness, side by side,
Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride?—
That passionate longings and fancies vain
Set the heart on fire and crazed the brain?-
That over the holy oracles
Folly sported with cap and bells?

In a strength that was not his own, began
To rise from the brutes' to the plane of
man."
W. F. GREENMAN.

Winona, Minn.

THE POPULAR MISUSE OF THE

BIBLE.

Upon no subject of equal importance is there so much popular ignorance as upon the real nature of the Bible. In consequence, the Bible is very generally misused. It is believed to be, and used as being, what it is not; and so it is set upon a false and fictitious foundation, leading many to stifle the voice of natural religion in their own hearts by accepting a purely superstitious external authority, and driving many more to a contemptuous rejection of the Bible altogether. The facts which modern criticism has revealed, though now well known to scholars and students, have been shamefully withheld from general circulation. The popular leaders and teachers of the people actually encourage this ignorance, and the consequent blind misuse of the Bible. From this state of things it inevitably follows, not only that the Bible itself suffers, but that the moral life of the community is dangerously imperilled.

It will be the purpose of this article to show, first, in what way and to what extent the Bible is commonly misused; second, how the popular leaders encourage this misuse; third, the injury thus wrought upon the Bible itself, and upon the moral and religious life of the community.

First. The Bible is generally believed to be one book, a single divine utterance, specially inspired; and it is so used. Now, the plain, indisputable, well-established facts are that, instead of being a single book, it is the collected literature of a nation, extending from a period of barbarism to a time of comparative culture, embodying all the changes of custom, life, and thought which a race developing out of gross barbaric idol worship toward a pure theism might be expected to pass through. It contains warsongs, legends, traditions, biographies, addresses, poetry, prayers, speeches, proverbs, laws, prophecies, and letters, written by hundreds of different hands, and slowly collected together for at least a thousand years,

-that is to say, the latest book in the Bible was written at least a thousand years after the earliest book. Between the two covers we have, not one book, but selections from the literature of a thousand years.

As to the authors of these various compositions, it is now conclusively shown that hardly a book in the Bible can be said to have any author at all. Each one is the work of compilers: nobody sat down and wrote it. Each book was put together by hand after hand, often centuries apart. Even the New Testament Gospels were compiled in this way.

What possibility is left of any special, particular revelation, when we know that the material was thus produced, bit by bit, through a thousand years? Or what can we think about inspired authorship, when we see that what we have is a mass of heterogeneous selections, pieced together out of a nation's literature from its childhood to its death? And yet so misused is this collected literature that it is the commonest thing to see sentences, single haphazard quotations, taken from any part and regarded as of equal authority. The real authority from such a conglomerate source is not one whit greater than would be the authority of quotations taken at random from, say, the collected literature of the English race for a like length of time, which would include the war-songs of the Saxon gleemen when the Danish pirates were ravaging the land, and the calm utterances of Martineau's "Endeavors after the Christian Life." If the first part had authority, the last could have no authority; for they are at absolute variance. Compare, for example, the one hundred and ninth psalm with Matthew vii., or the sixteenth chapter of Numbers with the twenty-third of Luke (verses 33, 34). Three men told Moses he was over-officious, whereupon the Lord caused the Earth to open her mouth and swallow them up, and fire came forth from the Lord and devoured the two hundred and fifty men who stood nearest them, as a slight salutary warning to all other dissatisfied people. But in the twentythird chapter of Luke we read of Jesus crucified unjustly, yet crying out, even in the agony of mortal suffering, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Where is the authority? The same volume sets before us both accounts. If the first,

supposed to be the act of God, is of authority, then the other, being contrary, is worse than foolishness: it is deception.

The fact which needs to be recognized is that a quotation from the Bible gains no authority whatever from the mere fact of its being in the Bible. Anything from myth to allegory may be in the Bible.

Now, this misuse of the Bible is far more wide-spread than might be supposed. Here is a tract headed "Inspiration of the Bible," by H. L. Hastings, in an edition marked, "Second million." It is literally sold by weight, so much per pound or ton; and yet it is saturated with contempt of the rational, modern, and right use of the Bible, and seeks by a mass of flashy rhetoric and impudent assumptions to perpetuate just those ignorant, blindfold methods which I have characterized as its popular misuse. begins, for example, by saying, "The Bible is God's Book or man's book: either it is the word of the Lord or it is a lie." This is typical of unreasonable misuse. Bible is by no means a lie because only here and there is imbedded a genuine "word of the Lord," any more than a gold mine is worthless because the gold has to be separated from the dross.

It

The

One of its audacious assumptions runs thus: "The absolute inspiration of the whole Bible is proved because its sixty-six different books form one harmonious whole, which would be impossible except to special inspiration." But its "sixty-six different books" do not form one harmonious whole. On the contrary, they are as absolutely at variance one with another as the natural evolution of the times in which they were written could possibly suggest.

In another place the tract states that the "earliest pages of the Bible, and all the prophets, predict the coming of Christ," whereas the plain truth is that there is not a single reference to Christ in the whole of the Old Testament.

It is such misuse as this which is circulated into the "second million" edition. As if to emphasize the present popularity of this misuse, there appeared in the Herald of February 1 a five-column article purporting to prove that every separate word in the Bible is specially inspired. The method of the proof is to show that all the important words in the English version occur a

certain number of times, coolly ignoring the fact that in every early manuscript the use of the same words is quite different.

Secondly. The leaders and teachers of popular thought actually encourage this misuse, seeking to bolster up the Bible on its unnatural foundation, and give it a forced, artificial, and false authority. See, for example, the printed rules of interpretation issued by the leaders of the Union Bible Class in Tremont Temple, and widely distributed as a guide for the people in their use of the Bible. These rules contain such directions as these:

"The Bible is one book: it has one meaning, one intent, and only one."

"You are to take for granted the credibility, authority, and inspiration of the Bible."

"The common rules of grammar and correct reasoning cannot be applied to prophecies, miracles, or remarkable revelation." (Just where correct reason is most needed.)

Can anything be more shocking than this deliberate effort to maintain for the Bible a position among common people which all modern scholarship has most distinctly shown to be entirely untenable? The encouragement of this popular ignorance is not confined to a few public leaders. On inquiry at a leading Bible house, I am told that not one in a hundred Bibles sold to-day is a revised version.

"How do you account for that?" I inquired.

"Well, the ministers won't recommend it," was the reply. "They prefer that the people should continue the use of the old version."

This means the retention before the eyes of the people of thousands of Scriptural falsehoods. The revised version is by no means a perfect work; but it is at least an honest attempt to present an edition of the sacred Book freed from the glaring errors of the old. The common version of the Bible (the King James's) presents the text in the most misleading way conceivable. It cuts it up into verses and chapters, puts doctrinal headings to the books and chapters, turns all poetry into prose, leaves out all quotation marks, mixes the books all out of their chronological order, and gives entirely misleading marginal dates. Notice, for instance, the heading to Genesis xviii. 7,

"Abraham entertaineth Three Angels": the text itself says nothing about angels, it distinctly says three men. Now, the revised version corrects all this: it does not put the books in their right order, but it does throw out forever the false dates, the divisions into chapter and verse, the doctrinal headings, and corrects literally thousands of errors of more or less importance. Is it not monstrous that the clergy should stand in the way to prevent the eyes of the people from being opened? Protestants speak with scorn of the Romish Church, purposely keeping the people in ignorance; but what is this effort of Protestant ministers to maintain in use an antiquated and misleading version when a corrected edition is at hand, if it is not an attempt to prevent the spread of enlightenment?

Thirdly. The Bible itself suffers from this misuse, and the moral tone of the community is lowered. Thousands of people are to-day losing their reverence and respect for the Bible, solely on account of the preposterous claims made on its behalf. In the eyes of enlightened nineteenth-century men and women, the Bible, as a complete revelation from God, as an authoritative inspired Book, supernatural, isolated from all other literature, becomes only an object of ridicule.

It is degraded solely by the false position assigned it. In its proper and natural use it cannot be spared. On one basis only can it be kept safe; and that is the basis of fact, of what it really is. Its real influence inevitably dies away as it is perverted from its natural use. The continued assertion that it is to be used as one book throws thousands of earnest minds into complete confusion in helpless efforts to reconcile its contradictions; and it leads others to treat the Bible as something unreal, to draw from it doctrines instead of life, to take it for its wonders and miracles instead of for its common humanity, and so to end every discussion with "The Bible says so!" as if it were a fetich, a barbaric oracle, to be set over and above living human thought, reason, and conscience. This is as much a degradation of the Bible as it would be a degradation for a civilized American citizen to forsake the decency and culture of his people, and, returning to some primitive race of savages, set himself up as a heathen god, demanding worship. The people who are

Many

committed to this misuse of the Bible are themselves thereby morally injured by surrendering the authority of the living voice of the Holy Spirit within themselves to the authority of a mummy spirit wrapped in the musty pages of a dead record. are driven to irreligion by the absurd claims put forward in the name of the Holy Writings. The divine education of all is checked, and the way blocked toward a more clear, enlightened, and practical religious faith.

What is needed is a wider dissemination of the facts, now well known, but too long withheld from general circulation. Then, instead of giving the Bible an artificial authority, and saying, "This is so because the Bible says so," the people will be taught that there is a higher test than that contained in the Bible itself, and any truth which the Bible expresses will be true, not because it is in the Bible, but because it finds indorsement in the reason and conscience of humanity. Within the Bible just as without in the great arena of life, truth and error are "blended into one tissue." No mechanical means will ever avail to separate them. You cannot rule off a space, and say that in here is God's truth, and out there the world's error: they are everywhere blended. To endeavor to get rid of the difficulty of choice by turning the Bible into an external authority, is to sacrifice the qualities of responsible manhood, and refuse to grow too big for a cradle. The methods of thought, reason, and conscience, are the qualities that make us human; and it is only by the use of these qualities we can ever hope to embrace the thoughts that are God's, or learn to live in his spirit. The mother that knows her boy is obedient, not to the letter of the Bible, but to the eternally divine authority of the voice of God within his own breast, knows that her boy is safe.

The right use of the Bible, therefore, is not as an unfailing rule of life, but as a tonic to quicken our own faculties, that we may the better learn to hear the voice of God speaking to us to-day as to every aspiring human soul through all the ages.

The right use of the Bible is that reasonable, historical treatment of it which, admitting its deficiencies and errors, presents it as a collection of vivid life-pictures of

Prof. von Holzendorff's Preface, and Prof. Paul Wilhelm Schmidt's Introduction, to the "Short Protestant Commentary." 3 vols. Williams & Norgate, London.

"The Religion of Israel," by Dr. A. Kuenen. The Introduction, pp. 5-27. Vol. I. Theological Translation Fund Library.

"The Seat of Authority in Religion," by Dr. James Martineau. Chapter II., Book II. "The Protestants and the Scriptures." Longmans, Green & Co., London.

Introduction to Noyes's "Translation of the Hebrew Prophets."

Article on "The Bible," by Prof. W. Robertson Smith, in 9th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.

"Literature and Dogma," by Matthew Arnold. Particularly the Preface and Chapter I. Macmillan & Co., New York.

"The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible," by Heber Newton. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

"Lessons on the Title Page and Table of Contents of an English Bible," by F. E. Millson. Sunday School Association, Essex Hall, London.

"First Three Gospels: Their Origin and Relations," by J. Estlin Carpenter. American Unitarian Association, Boston.

"The Bible of To-day," by J. W. Chadwick. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. "The New Reformation," article by Mrs. Humphry Ward, in Nineteenth Century Magazine. Vol. XXV., March, 1889.

"Outlines of the History of Religion," by C. P. Tiele. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.

"History of the Religion of Israel," by Prof. C. H. Toy. Chapter X. Unitarian Sunday School Society, Boston.

"Judaism and Christianity," by Prof. C. H. Toy. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. "What is the Bible?" by J. T. Sunderland. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Salem, Mass.

F. B. M.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE TRINITY, AND THE DEITY OF CHRIST.

I.

The doctrines of the trinity and of the deity of Christ stand or fall together.

What is the orthodox theory of the Godhead? It is that there is one God in three persons. As the Athanasian Creed puts it: "And the catholic [i.e., the universal] faith is this that we worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal."

Now, that which specially strikes an observer in a definition of this kind is the difficulty of understanding what it means.

or, if anything at all seems plain, it is that one cannot be three and three one. "Ah!" it is said, "this is a great mystery; and finite minds cannot comprehend the infinite mysteries of religion." This is correct: there are many truths we cannot comprehend. That is, we accept the fact of the existence of many things, the details or the causes whereof we do not understand. But we never accept the fact of the existence of anything if we are not convinced of such fact.

It is said, for example, "Look at the grass, how it grows! and yet the most learned man in the world cannot understand it." But he does understand that the grass does grow, the most ignorant is convinced of that fact. There is no mystery at all about that: the only mystery is how it grows. But, in the other case, it is the fact itself which is in dispute,-whether there is a trinity or not. In a word, we do not know what the definition means; or, rather, we do know that it means nothing, because it is self-contradictory. What would be said of a geometrical definition which should describe a figure as a circle and a square at the same time? We should say, not that we do not understand so great a mystery, but that the definition contradicts itself, and is therefore meaningless. And this is exactly what we say about the definitions of the trinity. All illustrations employed to explain this doctrine are, consequently, worse than useless: they are