A living Book in a living age

Front matter

a 12 i ftllliiiipi

Lynn Harold tteuoH

EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Living Book 1

II. Some Sleeping Ages 10

CHAPTER I The Living 'Book

"That man is dead and doesn't know it." So in a brief, cutting sentence a brilliant critic characterized a man who had wasted his vitality and was living out his years in dull lethargy, the mere husk of the man he had once been. People differ vastly in this matter of vitality. Some are vividly and contagiously alive, some have flashes of vital energy, and some seem to be curiously lifeless.

Books are like people as respects this matter of vitality. Some books are like stately cemeteries, dignified cities of the dead. Some books suggest a throbbing, busy metropolis; there are signs of life everywhere. The Bible thrills with vital power. It has a sort of stinging, inevitable vitality.

The Bible is alive because it comes out of life. You always hear voices whenever you go near the Bible. Sometimes you hear men talking with eager zest. Sometimes you hear them pleading. Sometimes you hear them praying. Sometimes you hear them weeping. Sometimes you hear them singing. But you always hear them. Armies are marching. Workers are laboring. Judges are hearing complaints. Kings are ruling. * People are busy about all the interests of life. There is stir and movement everywhere. And above all the human voices is the high command of that great voice which speaks with the authenticity which comes from the Master of life himself. In the Bible human life becomes articulate. And deeper than that, in the Bible God becomes articulate, speaking in the language of men.

[I-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE

'There goes a Bible character," said a shrewd observer, as the saint of the village passed down the street. "How do you get him inside the Bible?" queried a bystander. "I thought Abraham and Moses and Paul were the Bible characters." "I don't get him inside the Bible," was the quick reply. "I get the Bible inside of him. Bible characters are not merely people the Bible tells about. They are people the Bible makes."

It is this power of making people which is the deepest basis for our calling the Bible a living book. It has life in it. It sends life out of it. It masters men's minds and rules their thoughts. It masters their bodies and keeps them clean. It masters their hearts and determines their feelings. It masters their wills and rules their actions. And this it does not as a book of rules to which men submit mechanicallv. Its supreme power is exerted by a strange ability to get a vital grip on the inner motives of men, and from within to work out. So it becomes bone of a man's bone, flesh of a man's flesh, and life of a man's life.

Of course, mere white pages with black marks on them do not do this. The Bible is not a book of magical formulas. It is not a god to worship. It is not a shrine before which to kneel.

It is the adequate experience of a message which grips men and changes them and lifts them to a new quality of experience and activity. It is the message in the Bible which makes the Bible a living book.

A good many books have been written about man's quest for God. The Bible is a book about God's quest for man. The Bible is a book of which God i* the hero. It tells the tale of his love for. men, of his plans for men, and of all his passionate endeavor to win men to his own ideal for their lives.

The Bible tells of a God who cannot be discouraged. Men disappoint him. Men turn from him. He will not give

THE LIVING BOOK [I-i]

them up. He gives them prophets with words which sing and words which burn. He gives them leaders and institutions. He gives them poets whose hearts are glowing with a sense of the meaning of God's nearness and God's will. And at last, in his own Son, God breaks into life with the glory of a sacrifice which will go any length for the winning and the saving of men. Life is transfigured as we watch the gentleness and the virility, the patience and the strength, the steady poise and the noble passion of Jesus Christ as he lives among men. At length he gives the supreme gift. He flings himself against the Cross in one last deed of daring, suffering summons, of mighty ethical and spiritual achievement for the sake of men. And then, brushing aside the chains of death, he sweeps vital and regal and triumphant into the world which he has conquered. Stronger than sin, stronger than death, he opens the doors of a new life for men.

You cannot imprison this sort of thing in a book. It leaps from lip to lip, from eye to eye, from heart to heart, from life to life. It is the dvnamic for the renewal of the life of the world. And perpetually when men forget and are heedless, fresh from the book leaps the life of it again, to work wonders in men's hearts and to send them forth on life's adventure with fresh new power.

To every man on every day the Bible is calling in the name of the strong, victorious life whose power it bears. And the true reading of the Bible is like stepping through a doorway. When you step through the doorway you find God inside.

First Week, First Day

Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is set for him? shall a snare spring up from the ground, and have taken nothing at all? Shall the trumpet be blown in a city, and the people not be afraid? shall evil befall a city, and Jehovah hath not done it? Surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except he reveal his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared; who will not fear? The Lord Jehovah hath spoken; who can but prophesy? — Amos 3: 4-8.

These words are so hot and intense that they fairly burn. Life and religion were one to the prophet Amos, and he found them so full of exciting meaning that he could scarcely speak without shouting. He lived in the eighth century B. C. The people to whom he spoke were inclined to be religious without being righteous. They were inclined to make much of worship and to be careless about character. Gripped by a sense of what it means to worship a righteous God, Amos came to shock the people into a consciousness of their hideous, tragic failure. His words thrill with passion. They are the roar of a lion translated into speech. As you read the prophet Amos righteousness ceases to be merely an idea. It becomes a mighty force which you must put in command of your life. No book of the Old Testament has more surging vitality than this book of Amos.

First Week, Second Day

Woe to them that devise iniquity and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet fields, and seize them; and houses, and take them away: and they oppress a man in his house, even a man and his heritage. — Micah 2: 1, 2.

Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel: is it not for you to know justice? ye who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bofies; who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron. Then shall they cry unto Jehovah, but he will not answer them ; yea, he will hide his face from them at that time, according as they have wrought evil in their doings. — Micah 3: 1-4.

THE LIVING BOOK [I-3]

The bitter cry against social injustice is lifted by Micah. He is another prophet of the eighth century B. C. He has seen the wrongs of the poor. He has watched the cruel and careless deeds of their oppressors. He does not remain silent. He dare not remain silent. In the name of God he cries out in protest. His voice has all the cutting edge of a great ethical indignation. And it is lifted with the sympathy of a man who has known with the most intimate and personal experience the intolerable lot of those who are the victims of social oppression. The very demand of religion, according to Micah, means the abolition of the oppression of the weak by the powerful. Social wrong must be repented of and turned from. A real opportunity for life must be given to the hard pressed men held under the burden of powerful social tyranny. The message comes out of life and it has significance for every age where men have ignored the rights of the poor.

First Week, Third Day

O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away. . . . For I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings. — Hos. 6: 4, 6.

How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I cast thee off, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboiim? my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee; and I will not come in wrath. — Hos. 11: 8, 9.

Here we have another illustration of the fashion in which the Bible fairly palpitates with life. Hosea also is an eighth century prophet. His is a sensitive, tender, poetic spirit. He is the prophet of the suffering love of God. You feel that you have a sudden glimpse into God's own life as you hear his drawn and poignant words. You feel the heart of God torn with the tragedy of the evil of his people. You see how wrongdoing on the part of men hurts God as if it were a wound. With awed and reverent eyes you watch the struggle of divine love with an erring people. You hear a sob of pain which comes from an agony greater than any human suffering. You see human evil as the thing which tortures God, who in spite of it will not give up the people whom he loves. You begin to know that a God like this must be the Saviour of his people. It is all deeper than any life you have ever known. It is beyond all your experience. But it grips and holds you with the power of the very life and passion of God.

First Week, Fourth Day

Jesus therefore said unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly. — John 10: 7-10.

We remember the poet who cried out so vehemently:

" 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want."

More people fail because they lack vitality than because they lack ability. Some years ago a New York weekly published a gripping story of a young man who came to the metropolis and absolutely failed to make a place for himself. He sank lower and lower in poverty and discouragement. Then there came an expeiience which completely revitalized him. He wore the same clothing. He used the same body. But veritable fountains of vitality were now playing within. He went forth and simply commanded the hearing which he had been unable to obtain. Success lay easily within his grasp and he seized it and held it fast.

THE LIVING BOOK [I-5]

Jesus possessed a hundred secrets of vitality. He gave men a new intellectual vigor. He enriched their sense of every significant experience. He made conscience sturdy and strong. He stirred spiritual potencies undreamed of before. He took the man of waning personal power and made him into a man of magnetic energy. His gift to men was the supreme gift of life, glowing and triumphant.

First Week, Fifth Day

And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. — Acts 2: 1-4.

On the day of Pentecost the Christian Church was born. A few furtive, hesitating, confused men became a dynamic group ready to go forth to conquer the world. "Ye shall receive power," their Master had said. And right amazingly was that promise kept on this wonderful day. They received a baptism in vitality. They became more gloriously and splendidly alive than they had ever been before. Every power was lifted to its highest quality of vigor and effectiveness. Other men seemed half asleep compared with them.. They lived as if life were set to music. They spoke as if speech were a triumphant song. They thought as they had never thought. They felt as they had never felt. They spoke as they had never spoken before.

The secret of Christianity is always with the men who have been revitalized by the potent presence of God himself. They do not need to speak new tongues. Bnt they always have a new tongue. Life has been made over again by the vivid, renewing presence of God. And they go forth to help in the remaking of the world.

First Week, Sixth Day

But he (Stephen), being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed upon him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city, and stoned him. . . . And they stoned Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.— Acts 7: 55-60.

Stephen was probably the most brilliant young leader in the Christian Church before the conversion of Saul. He had a gift of effective speech, and he saw farther into the nature of Christianity than most of his fellow-disciples. With a skill in argument and a persuasive power of extraordinary character, he set forth his interpretation of Christianity as a great emancipating faith. He raised a storm of hostility which culminated in his violent death. And in the face of death his experience of the new life filled him with a serene gladness which the world has never been able to forget. With words of trust and forgiveness upon his lips, he swept in triumph through the gate of death. Not even the darkness of the tomb could cloud the gladness of a man in whom the new life was reigning. Death itself became an incident. Life was all in all.

First Week, Seventh Day

And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. . . . And there shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. — Rev. 22: 1, 2, 5.

L

THE LIVING BOOK [I-7]

Carlyle once wrote an amazing passage about the strangeness of life: "Like some wild flaming, wild thundering train of Heaven's artillery we emerge from the inane, haste stormfully across the astonished earth and plunge again into the inane. But whence, Heaven, whither? Sense knows not: faith knows not. Only that it is from mystery to mystery, from God to God." In the words from the book of Revelation which we have quoted another note is struck. In wonderful symbolism the great future is declared to be a time of perfect life and perfect light. The incomplete is lost in the complete. Evil is overthrown. Death is finally conquered. In the presence of God life is triumphant forever. The Bible, which surges with human life, which glows with the wonder of the new life God sends to men, closes with a vision of life perpetual, in fulness of joy, in radiance of light.

The reader cannot avoid the challenge which the living book brings to his own mind and conscience. Such glowing life is a promise and a hope and a prophecy. The last word is not the life of God in the soul of Amos or Micah or Hosea or Stephen. It is the life of God in the soul of the reader. Whittier cried out once, "I have opened all the windows of my soul." The man who does that does not read about life. He receives it.

CHAPTER II Some Sleeping Ages

The wife of a blunt, shrewd farmer was finding excuses for their son, who was very difficult to arouse in the morning. The father listened in impatient silence and then gave a contemptuous snort.

"Humph !" he said. "If a man is asleep all the time, he might as well be dead." There is a difference, however. Sleep may be inactive. But it has potential power. The sleeping ages are those when civilization did not function well. But all the while the lurking vital forces were there. Some day they would make themselves felt.

In the fourth century A. D. the Roman Empire became Christian. After centuries of persecution the Church came to the throne. In the fifth century A. D. Rome fell. Barbarians were swarming everywhere. The culture which was Greece and the government which was Rome lost their grip upon the world. A chaotic period followed. Lawlessness and anarchy lifted their heads. It seemed as if that high energy of thought and feeling and organization which had wrought out the civilization of the ancient world had sunk into slumber. And while civilization slumbered, wild and furious forces raged unchecked.

One power emerged to tame the barbarians. When the senile and decrepit powers passed trembling off the scene, the sturdy young Church came forward with firm and dauntless step to do its work. It cannot be said that the Church which tamed the barbarians was the Church of simple

SOME SLEEPING AGES iil-c]

brotherhood of apostolic days. It had become a vast organization. It had become a method of government. The new life was often lost to view in the movement of the complex machinery. It seemed as if that fresh and inspired life which had swept like a flood of light around the Mediterranean in the first century had been changed into a wonderful machine with endless wheels and belts. Simple, vital Christianity seemed to have gone to sleep, even as civilization had gone away to slumber.

But the great machine was not without Christian power. And with all its limitations and weaknesses, it did tame the barbarians and it did make the way for the modern world.

On the political side, at length feudalism began to assert some real authority. With no centralized government, men developed personal loyalties which helped to restrain lawlessness, and it must sadly be confessed sometimes made for a sort of organized confusion.

A terrible impact upon Christendom from the new world of Mohammedan power in the eighth century found power enough in the Christian world to force back the fierce warriors of the Crescent. Later Charlemagne rose with greater authority than had been seen since the fall of Rome. But his empire fell apart after his death. In the tenth century the Holy Roman Empire in Germany came to light. Then greater popes arose and century after century pope and emperor fought for the throne of the world.

A great dream possessed the mind of Christendom and one great crusading expedition after another sought to rescue the sepulcher of Christ from the unbeliever. Men were more occupied by the thought of reaching the tomb where the dead Jesus lay than by the desire to follow the principles of the living Christ. Fair, fantastic, and romantic were the dreams which floated before the mind of Europe. Chivalry itself was a moonlight vision of the night-time of the world.

Religion was being bent to the purposes of ecclesiastical

ii

[II c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE

lordship. Worship tended to become the observance of ritual rather than the direct approach to the Lord of all. The observance of rite seemed to many minds more important than the doing of the right. The priest was like a master of magic who waved a potent wand. Devotion was often clouded by the darkest and crassest superstition. Conscience had its own times of sleep.

To be sure, there were many noble Christians in the sleeping ages. Such a man as Anselm shines like a light in the eleventh century. As you read of his life you feel very near to a true man, a keen thinker, and a lofty-souled saint. But the sky is not full of such stars as Anselm in this sleeping time of the world. Ignorance had cast its blight upon Europe. Lawlessness and barbaric war had left their blight. In many places evil was rampant while goodness slept.

Manv men turned from the world in despair. The monastic movement in its original form represented an endeavor to escape from the world rather than an attempt to serve the world. The choicest spirits fled from the turmoil and the wild disorder and in the quiet solitudes sought to live their life of devotion, free from all the hard pressure of the world. They did unconsciously serve the world as they cultivated desert spots and made waste places blossom as the rose. They did unconsciously serve the world as their patient scholars laboriously copied old masterpieces. They did render service when the suffering poor came to the convent gate to beg. But all the while the eye of monasticism was turned inward toward the soul to be fed and disciplined and trained, rather than outward toward the world to be served. The spirit which would remake the world after the fashion of the will of Christ may have been a latent power in the life of the monk. But at the time it was soundly

sleeping.

The great dream of the Middle Ages was the dream of the Holy Roman Empire. That was the dream of those who did

SOME SLEEPING AGES [II-iJ

think in the terms of the world. Christendom was one world, they believed. It was one great state. The Emperor was its secular ruler; the pope was its religious ruler. These two represented God's will on earth. One carried the secular sword; the other carried the spiritual sword. This dream of the Holy Roman Empire never became a reality. But it haunted the heads of the sleepers and it became one of the most influential dreams which ever hovered before the minds of men. And in days of lawlessness and barbarity it did do something to give spiritual unity to men's thought of the world.

These ages were full of meaning. The sleep was the preparation for a new day. And by and by the dreams of the Middle Ages were to be exchanged for the realities of the modern world.

Seco'nd Week, First Day

Now Solomon purposed to build a house for the name of Jehovah. . . . the house which I am about to build shall be great and wonderful. — II Chron. 2: 1, 9.

And he garnished the house with precious stones for beauty. . . . and the flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs, of gold, and that perfect gold. — II Chron. 3: 6; 4: 21.

"He is as hungry for beauty as some men are for bread.' 1 So said a wise student of men regarding a young poet whose whole life seemed palpitating with desire to find loveliness everywhere. The sense of esthetic beauty was not an outstanding feature of the life of the Old Testament people. A sense of moral beauty was deep in their life. But the artistic sense does find expression in such words as those we have quoted above. There is a definite desire to make you feel, not only the value and the size of Solomon's temple, but also its beauty.

It was the Greeks, however, who gave to the world its sense of symmetry, of artistic loveliness, and of all the won-

[II-2] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE

der of esthetic charm. It was poured forth in hauntingly beautiful poetry, in architecture which seemed a part of nature's own beauty, and in art of a noble, chaste grandeur the world is unable to forget. The sleeping ages had forgotten most of this, and it was long before the old Greek life spoke again its great message to the world. But in the ages of twilight and of dark, Europe was developing a new sense of beauty which was to find memorable expression in Gothic architecture. And this new sense of beauty had moral power as well as loveliness of form. Beauty itself must be made a Christian thing if it is to help and not to hurt the world.

Second Week, Second Day

Thou shalt therefore keep the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command thee this day, to do them. . . . All the commandment which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which Jehovah sware unto your fathers. — Deut. 7: 11; 8: 1.

"Men cease to be barbarians when they have to think in terms of law." So a judge of wide reading and profound thought once declared. The sentences from the book of Deuteronomy which we have quoted are full of the sense of the importance of law and its loyal acceptance. And the Old Testament has a place all its own in relation to the moral law and its demands upon men.

In a certain practical sense, however, Rome was the lawgiver of the ancient world. With a wide and careful organization, with a far extended and consistently worked-out administration, Rome became the legal ruler of vast masses of men. When, in the sixth century A. D., the Justinian code was collected, it represented the supreme legal wisdom of the world up to that time. The Eastern empire did not keep its grip upon the West. The Western empire had passed away. As an organizing lawgiving power for Europe, Rome was no more.

SOME SLEEPING AGES [II-3]

But just at this point the Christian Church became the heir of Koine. It became a lawgiver on its own account. It developed a kinship with the legal spirit of the Old Testament and the legal mind of Rome. It developed its own wonderfully articulated canon law. There is a very real sense in which the Church became a new law rather than a glorious Gospel. In the sleeping ages the Church kept a sense of law and a system of order for all men alive in the world.

Second Week, Third Day

For thus saith Jehovah unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live. . . . Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live; and so Jehovah, the God of hosts, will be with you, as ye say. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish justice in the gate. — Amos 5: 4, 14, 15.

A distinguished professor once made a remark to the effect that one of the great achievements of the prophets is the pronouncing of the word righteousness with unforgettable power. The words from the eighth-century prophet which stand above are sharp with moral demand and vigorous with moral power. And they are characteristic of Old Testament religion at its highest. If Greece taught the world beauty and Rome taught the world law, through the Hebrews came the gift of an ethical religion. Worship must spell itself out in righteousness.