World-wide Bible study

Preface

"T^HE object of this book is threefold : First, to show the reasons for the world-wide interest in the Bible ; second, to point out how people may become interested in the Bible ; third, to reveal the modern opportunity of the Bible, in relation to the state, the school, the home, and the church.

Particular attention is given to the preparation and the training of Bible teachers, because of the wide-spread need of efficient leadership in Bible study.

The author wishes to express his appreciation and indebtedness to The Sunday School Times for permission to publish a number of articles which have appeared in the Times. He wishes also to thank The Christian Herald for like permission to include two or three articles published in that paper.

It is hoped that the point of view presented in this book for the study of the Christian Scriptures by men and women of widely varying

V vi Preface

belief and race, may assist in bringing to manypeople a rediscovery of this book whose message belongs to the world.

Clayton Sedgwick Cooper.

New York City, October lo, 191 1.

Chapter I

The Universality of the Bible. — The Bible and Literary Culture. — The Bible and Life-work. — The Bible and the Brotherhood of Man. — The Bible and National Ideals. — The Bible and Character, — The Optimism of the Bible. — The Bible and Service. — The Bible and Personalities. — The Bible and Religion i

Chapter VIII The Preparation And Training Of Bible Teachers

What is a Training Class? — Functions of the Training Class. — The Training Class Teacher. — How to Ask Questions. — The Subject Matter. — Howto Illustrate. — Comparison of Experience. — Suggestion Rather Than Knowledge. — Emphasis on Things of the Spirit. — Important Points to Remember : ^21

Chapter IX Maintaining Interest And Attendance In Bible Classes

The Bible Study Organizer, a Real Leader of Men. — The Bible Class Teacher. — An Assistant to the Teacher. — Personal Interviews with the Students. — Personal Invitation Immediately Preceding the Class Hour. — The Teacher-Training Class. — The Bible Institute. — Training at Bible Conferences. — Carefully Selected Bible Courses. — Bible Addresses, Lectures and Questionnaires. — Bible Reference Libraries. — Meetings for Evangelism. — Social Features. — The "Group Plan" of Bible Study 148

Chapter X The Bible And Religious Education

Clear Ideas. — Bible Knowledge in King James' Period. — Spiritual Culture. — Individual Bible Studv. — Practice. — What Are We Doing About It ? 170

X Contents

Chapter XI What Shall We Do With The Bible In Our Modern Life?

The Bible and the American Home. — The Bible and Education in the Public School. — Bible Study for the Church. — Bible Study and Religious Education in Colleges. — A Statesmanlike Leader of Bible Interests in Every Institution. — Faculty Men as Bible Promoters. — Bible Study and the World's Education 182

Appendix

WORLD-WIDE WITNESS TO THE BIBLE

Witness to the Bible in Literature and Education. — Witness to the Bible from World Leaders. — Witness of Great Men to the Moral and Religious Values of the Bible i99

Chapter I

"T* HE Bible is the best selling book in the world. Its sales average 10,000,000 copies a year. More Bibles were sold in 1910 than any other hundred books together. This did not happen by chance, for a similar ratio of sales has long existed. There are valid causes for this unprecedented popularity and world-wide influence. Out of many I would point out ten reasons for the Bible, almost any one of which would be sufficient to make the book immortal.

The comprehensive character of this book is shown by its international and universal acceptation. The Bible has escaped provincialism; it belongs to the world. It is a book of all races and all religions, of all sorts and conditions of men. It has been translated into more than 450 different languages and dialects. The Bible was called by Huxley "the Magna Charta of the poor and oppressed," and Erasmus said of the Scriptures that ''the husbandman might sing parts of them at his plowtail, the weaver might warble them at his shuttle, the traveler might with their narratives beguile the weariness of his way." A well-known educator of India — a Hindu professor — informed me that the educated men of India know the Bible better than they know any sacred book of Hinduism. In Korea the Bible is practically the national book. Great difficulty is experienced in furnishing enough Bibles at twenty-two cents apiece to supply the Koreans. A few years ago one Korean church ordered 20,000 copies of the New Testament. The publishing of these books was delayed for a brief time, with the result that every copy was sold before a single one was printed. Fully one-half of the 3,000 young men in China who expressed their interest by enlistment in Bible classes during my visit to that country were Confucianists. Four hundred and twentyeight thousand Bibles were purchased by the Chinese in 19 10. Among the 28,562 students who attended Bible classes for two months or more in the North American colleges in 19 10, 6,156 men were non-Christians. This number included, besides English, Canadian, and American students, Japanese, Ceylonese, Mexicans, North American Indians, East Indians, Negroes, South Americans, Russians, Italians, Hebrews, Chinese, Germans, French, West Indians, Cubans and Hawaiians.

The following different religious faiths and shades of opinion are found among the college men studying the Bible: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Confucianist, Shinto, Muhammadan, Greek church, Boodhist, with a large number of men espousing no particular religious belief.

One hundred and eighty-five thousand copies of the Bible in 36 different languages were distributed among immigrants arriving in New York the past year from the hands of agents of the American Bible Society. The combined sales of Bibles by this Society and the British Bible Societies recently reached five hundred millions of Bibles — a vast number of which have been printed in foreign languages and sold to peoples all over the earth. Such universality of demand and use is unparalleled in literature. The Bible, as Goethe said, is the "Book of the nations."

This universality of the Bible is proved not simply by the extent of its use by diverse nations and by peoples of diverse belief. Indeed, this wide popularity is founded upon the universal applicability of the contents of this book to all life. The Bible is the book for humanity. It is dateless — it is perennial literature. Its immutable principles are primary and absolute, unconditioned by provinciality, tradition, or time. It touches human nature in all of its depths and ranges — down out of reach of national, social, or religious differences. It reveals generic types by describing individuals. The twelve disciples of Jesus form a suggestive study of mental and temperamental types. The Bible men and women, as Lowell said of Shakespeare's characters, are "the contemporaries of any generation, because they are not products of an artificial and transitory society, but because they are animated by the primeval and unchanging forces of that humanity which underlies and survives the forever fickle creeds and ceremonials of the parochial corners which we who dwell in them sublimely call the world." No ideal or experience or memory of any part of mankind

IS absent from the Bible. It contains, indeed, the ''Ideal form and universal mould'* of life itself. It possesses the vitality of nature. *'The words that I speak unto you," said the Master, ''they are spirit and they are life."

The Bible is the book of general education. "Get learning, get understanding," said Solomon. Ex-President Eliot omitted the Bible and Shakespeare from his five-foot shelf of books, saying, when asked why he did this, that he took it for granted that every one knew the Bible and Shakespeare. The New York Sun remarked that it was the usual opinion that a thorough knowledge of the Bible and Shakespeare constitutes in itself a liberal education. Sir Edwin Arnold said: "I owe my education as a writer more to the Bible than to anv other hundred books that could be named." There are Bible allusions in 37 of Shakespeare's plays. Dr. van Dyke reports in the October, 19 10, issue of the Century Magazine more than five hundred direct references to the Bible in Tennyson. He continues : "Professor Albert T. Cook has recently counted sixty-three Bible references in a volume of descriptive sketches of Italy, twelve in a book on wild animals, and eighteen in a novel by Thomas Hardy."

The references to the Bible in the poetry of Robert Browning have been very carefully examined by Mrs. Minnie Gresham Machen in an admirable little book. In his longest poem, "The Ring and the Book," there are said to be more than five hundred Biblical references.

With what pathos does Sir Walter Scott, in the "Heart of Midlothian," make old Davie Deans bow his head when he sees his daughter Effie on trial for her life, and mutter* to himself, "Ichabod! my glory is departed!" How magnificently does Ruskin enrich his "Sesame and Lilies" with that passage from Isaiah in which the fallen kings of Hades start from their thrones to greet the newly fallen with the cry, "Art thou also become as weak as we ? Art thou become like unto us ?" Browning's "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day," a poem of 2,500 lines, alludes to the Bible 130 times. "The Bible is my book," said Victor Hugo. Scott said, when dying: "Bring me the book." When asked what book, he said: "Need you ask? There is but one."

The Bible is full of literary imagination and suggestion. It teaches truth with that mystic symbolism and delicate touch that charm and illumine and incite. It is immortal in its verse. Edwin Markham says of the poetry of Jesus: "Jesus lifts the worn and pedagogic into the peerage of poetry. He changes sand into j>earl ; he turns cloud into rainbow." The Bible's style has been the model of the world's literature in its highest mood. It is rich in that nervous *^conceptive energy" which invigorates the mind. It is the highest example extant of what Lowell calls "that wonderful composite called English, the best result of the confusion of tongues." Professor Phelps, of Yale, makes the suggestion that all examinations in English for college men be confined to the Bible. "If everything else in our language should perish," wrote Macaulay, "the Authorized Bible alone would suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power."

And Whittier has expressed in lasting verse the value of the Bible as literature :

"We search the world for truth ; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From graven stone and written scroll,

From all old flower-fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read."

A life-work is made great by its emphasis, by its accent upon the issues that count. A great man is known by the things he omits as well as by the things he emphasizes. A vocation is determined by a clear perspective of real values, a sense of right relations, good judgment, ability to see things in the proportion of reality.

The Bible furnishes here an unimpeachable guide. It affords what the Germans call the sense of "inner mission.'* Here are the root principles, the outlines of great and high living and thinking: the individual must fill in the personal details. Nor does the Bible assist simply in the choice of a work, presenting opportunity to a particular temperament for special service, but it is indispensable in its frequent suggestion along the way, as a corrective, regulator, and reminder. Bible study is limited only by its vision, by its reserve, and by its readiness to be called out to its supreme bounds.

It assists life work by keeping the career of a man clear of the obstructing impedimenta which hinder real progress. It accomplishes this only for those who become serious enough in Bible study to make it a regular habit. A vocation is as great as it has capacity to be. It is as big as it is in its crises. Bible study, when it assumes regular phases, produces a state of mind and heart conducive to poise and power. It brings "peace of mood." A Bible habit offers a refuge in calamity and sorrow; as a solace in grief it is unapproachable. It furnishes equipment for unexpected occasions. Many a career has been saved by a habit that produces what Napoleon called "two o'clock in the morning courage," the force to act right when life is at its lowest levels. Mr. Moody used to say, "This book will keep me from sin, and sin will keep me from this book."

"In Life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscles trained ; knowst thou when Fate Thy measure takes? or when she'll say to thee, *I find thee worthy, do this thing for me'?"

The Bible is the book of friendship. A vital reason for Bible study resides in the fact that lo World-Wide Bible Study

it opens the way for gaining friends and becoming a ''brother of the guild which passes the torch of Hfe from age to age." It creates the still, deep atmosphere in which true affection is born. Jesus staked His whole gospel upon the transforming power of friendshiplove. He revealed there His broad sympathy. The church of the Bible is far more inclusive than the church of to-day. The Bible loves where we often scorn or despair. Jesus said seventy times seven sins should be forgiven, for He was the "friend of sinners." We find it hard at times to forgive once. The reading of the Bible gives wide-spaced charity and a sense of interest in men without which success is empty and progress is pitiably aimless.

At one of our universities in the Middle West a member of a Greek letter society said:

"I always respected my friend. I never really loved him until I discovered him in his deeper mood in a Bible class."

The reason for Bible study is i Corinthians 13: "The greatest of these is love." Is there a finer secret of modern success than learning w H

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Ten Reasons for Bible Study ii

to treat men — all kinds of men — as God treats them — to really care? Norman Gale said:

"The daybreak comes when Christ with tender face Welcomes the poor in spirit — who were least."

At one of our universities recently I met five men who were among the most representative students in the senior class. They told me that in their freshman year a certain upper classman had asked them to meet with him in his room for an hour once a week to take up a certain line of Bible study and to talk over personal and college problems. These men affirmed, however, that the class hour was only a small part of the value of this relationship, since the upper classman became really and truly their friend. He was interested in their entire life; he gave up his pleasures and at least one vacation because of his sincere interest in different members of the group. For two years this class was conducted in like friendly fashion, and, after the teacher graduated, these five men, who held at least four of the highest positions in the gift of the undergraduate body, were each in turn conducting similar groups. The present uprising of students for Bible study finds its secret not simply in discussion of abstract principles, but as well in the deep appreciation of the vast opportunities and privileges of a great college brotherhood. To learn from the Bible, friendship — the master passion — this is permanently valuable.

The late Senator Dolliver said to me a short time before he died: "Our modern political life needs the recreating power of the Gospels ; it needs change from within more than it needs external panaceas.'*

The modern national revival of civic spirit and social activities calls for the type of man and the kind of idealism that the Old Testament prophets present. Emerson once said: "The glory of a nation does not depend upon the size of its census, or the size of its cities, or the size of its crops, but upon the kind of man the country turns out." The Bible has proved itself the nation's greatest book, as it has been wrought into the life and ideals of its great men. It has been the solace and inspiration of national leadership in men like Gladstone, Lincoln, Jackson, Sydney, Garibaldi, Joseph Neesima, Carey, Milton,

Victor Hugo and hundreds of other public men. The late Justice David J. Brewer is quoted as saying, "No nation is better than its sacred book. In that book are expressed its highest ideals of life, and no nation rises above those ideals." The Bible was the rock upon which our fathers built our early civilization, those men 'Svho set their consciences by the will of God as countrymen set their clocks by the sun." The pilgrim with a staff in his hand and a Bible beneath his arm is carved in bronze and stone in our parks and commons, because thus he was equipped. The Bible was his law and his gospel. ''When you know how a nation deals with the Bible you may know what that nation is," said a Bishop of the English Church. It has affected directly the social and political ideals of nations in its high principles set forth for governments. Andrew Jackson called the Bible the rock upon which our republic rests. A professor in a Middle West institution uses the book of Proverbs as his sole text-book in teaching political economy and social ethics. The ground strain of the Old Testament was national righteousness as the eternal foundation.

"Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation," said Jehovah. These personal and national ideals have permeated the highest Christian civilizations. This ideal of constitutional government was from the Bible, from the Hebrews. It was contrary to Oriental government principles, which elevated the ruler at the expense of the people. The Bible makes the people supreme. Their rights, their obligations, their possibilities are its theme. As Dr. W. W. Moore points out, a hundred years before Plato dreamed of his ideal republic, Jethro and Moses were working on Mount Sinai at the foundation of republican government presenting a written constitution to which public assent was given by the people.

We are now beginning to study with seriousness the political and social ideals of Jesus. Thousands of students discussed last year in the colleges the questions of the relation of Bible Christianity to labor and capital, poverty and crime, and the problems of rural and municipal life in America. These are life questions and they are Bible questions. Such study is not only bringing a new conception of the

Word of God — it is assisting especially in the recasting and reorganizing of our national and intellectual ideals relative to the changing conditions of the twentieth century. *'To this" (book) says Ulysses Grant, "we must look as our guide in the future." "Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon the rock.'' Our age is one that often turns away from professional and enforced presentation of moral truths, but it is everywhere keen for those unlabeled suggestions that make for undivided strength, for self-control, — for the culture of the will. Christianity wins to-day by persuasion rather than by pressure, by influence rather than force. In many cities and towns the organization called the "Gideons" has recently placed Bibles in every room of the leading hotels. It is reported that the electric light and gas bills of these hotels and boarding houses immediately increased. As one man, who found a Bible in a Chicago hotel, expressed it, "I never knew before that I was interested in religion." The Bible is to be increasingly the silent but effective power for the production of firm morals and serious thinking concerning conduct, as people read it, unguardedly, for themselves. The words of the Bible reach down to the decisive forces of human lives. Here the Bible is unexcelled in its pervasive, revolutionary, leavening character. "Everything that sets free our intelligence without giving us self-control is fatal." The free response to the Bible is quick and uplifting.

Thomas Carlyle said that the Bible was the one book wherein for thousands of years the spirit of man has found light and nourishment, and the response to whatever was deepest in his heart. The basic, ethical principles, the principles that are capable of controlling and guiding modern humanity, are here adding moral and spiritual energy to material and personal energy. The Bible "lights up" morality and makes it effective. Its widening use will safeguard national and public liberty and property by making men morally able to bear these responsibilities. Its general study will fill society with those standards and sympathies which will come to use when the crises arrive. The Bible's main theme is righteousness, and righteousness is the eternal foundation of the nation. The Bible touches the heart of individuals and brings humanity to itself. It conveys the words of Jesus which were with authority — the authority of character. No time has needed more than ours to realize that behind the institutions of to-day is the individual; behind the capital is the capitalist; behind labor is the laboring man and the mind of society. The man alone is the audience to which the Scripture speaks. The Sermon on the Mount is a valuation upon single individuals in their relationships. The reform movements of to-day must be directed primarily against those forces that tend to choke or arrest the development of moral personality. Greatness has always reached the summit of its power through isolated persons, as they have cried in the great cry for character:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thought ; And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting."

In one of his superb letters, Robert Louis Stevenson said: "As I live, I feel more and more that Hterature should be cheerful and brave spirited." Of such character is the Christian Scriptures. The predominant note of the Bible is that of hope and good cheer for men. On every page one feels the gospel of the Psalmist:

"Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For Jehovah upholdeth him with his hand."

Or the triumphant belief of Paul: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Or, "There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth." Or the final words of Jesus: "I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you."

The Bible gives a clear, straightforward analysis of human nature; it is the sword of the Spirit and cuts deep into all lies, sham, and hypocrisies of living or thinking ; but the Bible never allows criticism or pessimism to predominate. Despair is never the last word. Moses had his tribulations as a leader, but he died in song. The Psalmist forgot his trials in his praise. The lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son are always matched by the restoration and the rejoicing. The Bible and despondency never go together. God tells us throughout the Scriptures, as he told the discouraged Elijah, that he has seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. The two root principles of Christianity are on ev'ery page — a forgiven past and a new future. To know God is to love Him and to be happy. The Bible is the revelation of God our Father. Indeed, the Bible writers seemed to have written for man's encouragement: "to find out where joy resides and give it a voice fine beyond singing." The Bible is the nation's call to men to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Heaven is objectified in the language of light and of beauty and of boys and girls playing in the streets.

20 World-Wide , Bible VStudy

Edmund Burke had the habit of reading a chapter of Isaiah before he went to speak in the House of Commons. He said: "Isaiah possesses both the blaze of eloquence and the light of truth." Any man who is inclined to be pessimistic or discouraged should read each day a psalm, or a bit of Hosea's love song, or one of Paul's victorious passages, or the promise of Jesus about the sure victory of righteousness. The Bible is filled with that music which George Eliot called the "gladness of the world." The individual who learns from personal experience to say: "I know whom I have believed," to see a new heaven and a new earth, is freed from earth's thraldom. It is a liberation of the spirit. The Bible student certainly finds some of the patience and faith of the saints. He learns to "abound i^ hope." Every page of the Bible to such a man is a hymn — a paean of victory — a note of permanent and unquenchable optimism.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Bible furnished religious propaganda with creeds; in the eighteenth century it was drawn upon by the great crusades for the rights of man, and in the nineteenth century for light on national problems. The twentieth century has even now opened in a great struggle for utilitarian values, as these values are evinced in commercial and industrial results, on the one hand, and practical social and religious reform, on the other. In this age the Bible must prove its usefulness to business and to society. The significance and charm of its facts will depend upon its embodiment, its visualization in serviceable, human lives. It is not enough to commend the Bible as "the good book" — it must be good for something. The field to-day is the world of needs and deeds. Jesus fills the New Testament with a new dignity for work. He himself furnished the sublime example of toil unsevered from tranquillity. His words and the words of His followers defined the Christian as an ambassador, a shepherd, a steward, a fighter, a laborer. His command was not only to overcome self, but also the world, and he gives instruction regarding the method. "Arise, let us go," he says, and Christianity has been, when true, a purposeful crusade, a service campaign for the sake of positive assistance to the sons of men. The true end and aim of a well-ordered and contented life is for the sake of God through society. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Men are discovering that social principles and economic rules are found in the Bible — not as catalogued injunctions for every changing detail of life, but as great, guiding, informing ideas to be discovered, thought through, and adapted to social progress by men who both think and act, by men who are good, but who are also useful.

The Bible drives men out to follow Jesus — to seek and to save. Its message is for peace by means of strife and toil, and risk and disaster. The Bible study objective for the twentieth century is not to discuss in quiet and delightful retirement the problems of good and evil, but to find God's message in order forthwith to do it. God's call to-day is for "doers of the word, not hearers only." His desire is for men of daring and action.

"Oh prudence is a right good thing

And those are useful friends, Who never make beginnings Until they see the ends.

"6ui now and then give me a man

And I will make him king, Just to take the consequences, Just to do the thing."

"If ye know these things," said the Master, "happy are ye if ye do them."

Bible history is biography and autobiography. It is the revelation of giant personalities, of ''mountainous men." This is one reason for its enduring character. It holds the mirror up to nature — human nature — and it reveals the motives, convictions, ideals, hopes and fears of immortal personalities in mortal life.

''The great mission and priceless value of the Bible," says Dr. Henry Churchill King, "are, that it puts us in touch with the most significant lives of the world, in the greatest realm, — that of the moral and spiritual, — the lives that we need most of all, because religion is the great unlocker of the powers of men."

In one of the large American universities the Christian activities and Bible study seemed incapable of rising above a passive dead-level. The faculty was indifferent to vital religion,.

and the students were too busy with the pursuit of technical learning, *'In action's dizzying eddy whirled" to perceive that Presence which pervades the world. To think of or to emphasize the eternally zn^orth while was foreign to the life of the institution — indeed, men frankly admitted that they were not interested in such subjects. But this lethargic and indifferent sense was suddenly broken, and then the student body became aware of a new spirit moving within it : a new building for Christian work — fresh objectives for social service — newly enlisted professors and representative students — a large fund raised for helpers — hundreds of men enrolled in the Bible classes, — truly a new attitude to religion, to men, to the Bible. Why? A student with unquenchable enthusiasm and fortitude of heart — a man of influence and unselfish ideals — had been appointed to lead the Christian forces. These were the main points of his policy :