Bible studies..

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

r

Bible Studies.

Preface

The lectures on the early Old Testament books contained in this volume were delivered in Plymouth Church, on Sunday evenings, during the autumn, winter, and spring of 1878-79, and were given, it may be presumed, in accordance with a comprehensive plan, cherished by Mr. Beecher, which included the desire, repeatedly expressed by him, that he might find opportunity to preach a course of sermons on the later historical books, the Prophets, and the Psalms. That this desire was not realized cannot but be deeply regretted by those who are aware of the power and skill of Mr. Beecher as an expositor of Scripture, and who therefore can form some conception of how he would have handled those topics, and especially the themes suggested by the matchless hymns of David.

These Lectures were not published immediately after their delivery, because at that time a series of Mr. Beecher's morning sermons was being issued in his paper, the Christian Union; but, following my usual custom as reporter of his utterances, I preserved full stenographic notes of them. It was evident that a more than transient purpose actuated their author in giving them forth, and from the first I felt that they ought not to be allowed to perish. After Mr. Beecher's death this feeling took on the form of a conviction of duty, which has resulted in their preparation for the press ; and they are now, with the consent and approval of the family of Mr. Beecher, offered to the public.

It is probable that of the many hundreds of reported discourses of Henry Ward Beecher no series could be selected

iii

4 PREFACE.

that would be perused with greater interest or profit than these " Bible Studies."

The present time, when there is such widespread and earnest attention paid to the study of the Scriptures, would seem most opportune for the appearance of this work ; and it is sent out in the hope that through its instrumentality multitudes will be led to a better understanding of the Word of God, and a greater love and reverence for it.

T. J. ELLINWOOD.

INTRODUCTION,

BY THE EDITOR.

Probably the thing which will most surprise those who for the first time have knowledge of these Bible Studies will be their modern spirit. The world of scholarship, criticism, and theological thought moves fast when once it starts ; and since 1878, when these lectures were delivered, great advances have been made, especially in the larger freedom of utterance which men of reverent love for the Bible and of lives consecrated to the service of God deem it their duty to take. The necessity laid upon them by the new philosophies of the divine methods —

" That to the height of this great argument [They] may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men,"

— has driven them into bolder denial of the mechanical theories of inspiration ; the amanuensis-theories of Bible-writing ; and the infantile conceptions of the ancient Hebrews concerning their national deity, Jehovah, as binding upon the faith and conscience of men after two thousand years' study of the ampler revelations made by "Jesus, the Christ of God."

Popular hostile critics of Christianity have found their chief success in holding it responsible for a belief in every statement of these artless, childlike records as indubitable facts, and in exhibiting the savage cruelties committed by the early Israelites under "immediate divine commandment" as inconsistent with the professed teachings of Christ ; thus claiming a demonstration that neither the Old Testament nor the New is of divine authority, since they stand as one, and both cannot be true. And foolish Christians, in captivity to the form of sound words as to "all Scripture" being "given by inspiration of God" have largely accepted this cunning dilemma, and contended earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. Of late years, however, philology, literary criticism, and the study of the past with an ever-

6 INTRODUCTION.

widening sense of historical perspective, have changed the views of scholars; and — especially during the past five years — have resulted in diffusing an entirely new atmosphere, enabling those who are not scholars to comprehend something of the divine methods of creation by growth, in things spiritual and in the mental, moral, and social nature of man as well as in the physical world. So that, although the views of these Bible Studies will not be new to scholars or to those of the laity who keep abreast of the times, they will be almost novel to a multitude of devout Bible students, while full of fresh suggestion and invigorating thought even to those who have long held the same position.

Moreover, their especial value lies along the line not of destruction but of conservation. As a Presbyterian minister wrote to Mr. Beecher just after the issue of his volume of sermons on " Evolution and Religion " : —

"It seems to me you keep all the most choice and precious things, only placing them on the right foundation ; and how they can stand much

longer on the old foundation I do not see Surely your book

will bring light to many."

The whole force of these lectures goes to throw off the cramping theory of " inspiration " which makes God responsible for all the evil that was done by the inchoate Hebrew people in his name. Thus the student is left free to follow this master expositor in rediscovering and newly appreciating the wisdom, the goodness, the grand foundation-work of Moses under the Divine impulse, which both served to build up the Israelitish nation and has entered into many of the soundest elements of modern civilization. To quote another opinion as to the "Evolution and Religion " : " Many will owe to this illumination no less than the renewal of a lost belief."

Whoever will at this date read Mr. Beecher's sermons and addresses in the time of our Civil War will not only be moved by their eloquence, he will be interested and surprised at their solid conservatism. In the realm of civil polity as well as in that of religion and theology, the man vv^rought out his own noble, generous, honest, essentially just nature ; and, when he found what he believed to be truth, flamed it out upon his fellow men with the effective contagion of human sympathy and an unwavering faith in God and the goodness of God's ways.

There must have been a mighty satisfaction dwelling in the soul of such a man-helper as Henry Ward Beecher. Despite the innumerable criticisms breaking upon him from ever)^ quarter,—

INTR on UC TION. 7

some, just, which he tried to heed ; the most, unjust, which he regarded much as boys do snowballs in a winter fight, — throughout his entire life he was inspirited by a continuous acclaim of gratitude, many- voiced as the ocean, from men and women who gladly owned to him their debts of deliverance from darkness and spiritual captivity. Amid the buffets of blame, which no man of such abounding activity would expect to escape, he received also unstinted praise and outspoken admiration. This doubtless pleased him, for, though not a vain man, he was an amiable one.

But neither praise nor blame weighed much with him. His whole being was devoted to serving his kind. And the solid fact — based upon the ceaseless testimonies of thousands during twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, as his public life went on — that he was successfully doing what God had inspired him with the desire to do, must have brought to him a supreme contentment ; must have been a part of that astonishing reserve of spiritual power, that kept his head erect and his face serene while his pulpit work went on with increased richness and effectiveness, in the midst of troubles that should seemingly have crushed him.

The particular series of Sunday evening talks about the early books of the Old Testament which form the present volume, given in the winter and spring of 1878-9, were taken down stenographically as they fell from Mr. Beecher's lips, by Mr. T. J. Ellinwood — for nearly thirty years his special reporter. While going over them in preparation for the press, I have been impressed with the feeling that in Mr. Ellinwood's heart, too, there must be a large portion of satisfaction, in the fact that his keen sense, intelligent appreciation, and skillful hand have been the means of preserving to the world the chief part of Mr. Beecher's public ministrations, during their most eventful and influential period. It is due to Mr. Ellinwood to say that, while, great numbers of Mr. Beecher's sermons, lectures, prayer-meeting talks, public addresses, etc., were reported by him as a matter of business engagement, either with Mr. Beecher or his publishers, there were a multitude of others that he took down for the mere pleasure of takingthem, and in the hope that at some time they would be used. The present series were among this latter class ; and surely, those who read them, and who find them a torch of new light in exploring the decried or forgotten treasures of the Old Testament Scriptures, will not overlook the debt they owe to the man who caught them in the air, and gave them to the "art preservative " fourteen years after their utterance.

8 INTRODUCTION.

Mr. Beecher, without dispraising any other reports of his sermons, grew unwilling to be held responsible for any except Mr. Ellinwood's, and so wrote at the time of the establishment of " Plymouth Pulpit," the weekly pamphlet edition of his sermons, in 1868. This was after ten years of experience with Mr. Ellinwood's reporting of his rapid and often irregular outpourings.

The discourses of the present volume are not sermons, — excepting the two in the front of the volume, one on " Inspiration of the Bible " and one on " How to read the Bible." They are in fact Bible readings, interspersed with comment in most free and familiar fashion. In the preparation of them for the press, many careless colloquialisms and repetitions have been elided ; iterations of Mr. Beecher's view of inspiration, and recapitulations of its bearings on the history, — necessary in addressing congregations containing many different people from week to week, but surplusage in a connected printing of the whole series, — have been omitted ; here and there, incomplete statements of his views, thrown out hastily and liable to misconstructions, have been reinforced from other and more careful statements made by the author elsewhere ; and some of his interpretations, which to the old-style reader might seem almost irreverent, or at least " rationalistic," in their reduction of a passage to a common-sense meaning, have been confirmed by foot-note references to the text or margins of the Revised Version of the Old Testament, which was not published until six or seven years (A. D. 1885) after the delivery of these discourses.

In all this, however, scrupulous care has been taken not to mar or interfere with the spirit or essential form of the author's utterances, but to keep well within the line of revision pursued through many years under Mr. Beecher's own eye, and subject to his direction, in others of his lectures, sermons, and books.

The attentive reader of these Bible Studies will lose no living belief in the ancient Scriptures as containing the Word of God to men, while he will gain new and larger views of their worth for Christian life to-day — and that, not in spite of the new philosophy of growth, but in full harmony with its irresistible advance,

JOHN R. HOWARD.

N'ew Yorky December ^ 1892.

Contents

Preface, Introduction,

I. The Inspiration of the Bible,

II. How TO Read the Bible,

II 31 47 65 83 103 125

145 163

IX

I.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE.

" But now we are delivered from the Law, that being dead wherein we were held ; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." — Rom. vii. 6.

For the general purpose of bringing home especially the more ancient of the Hebrew Scriptures to your consideration and your confidence, unembarrassed by the theories which have been given and which turn the Bible very largely into a book of disputes, I purpose, in this series of Sunday evening lectures, first, to discuss somewhat the meaning of "inspiration," as applied to this source of our faith, and then to go over with you the chief historical books of the Old Testament, trying to find what there is in them for us of the modern day.

Good and scholarly men have taken the declaration that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God," and given to it what I think is an erroneous construction. I hold inspiration to be a fundamental fact; but they have proceeded to form a theory of inspiration, not out of the Word of God, but out of their own idea of the action of God upon the human soul. Then they have brought that theory forward as a criterion by which to interpret the Bible; and when facts have confronted it and seemed to contradict it, they have been tempted to go into a wrestling with and a wrenching of those facts, and to adopt a system which is inconsistent with all fairness, all straightforwardness, and all honesty. To a very large extent in our own time men have been deterred from reading the

Sunday evening, November 3, 1878.

Word of God; some by disgust at what seemed to them dislionest methods of interpretation; and some by despair because they could make nothing of i-t, as taught.

Look at the way in which this book is held, by thousands and thousands in the community, w4th abject indifference ! It is as if it were not, so far as they are concerned. They have no curiosity, no appetite that leads them to desire the Word of God. And many of those that have a desire for it are thrown back from it when they see what are the methods of interpretation which are brought to bear upon it. Some men spiritualize every part of it, as if it were all a book of symbols, not carrying its true meaning in the letter and upon the face of it; as if it merely prefigured something outside of itself. Other men exactly reverse this, and give a literal interpretation to every part of the Bible ; they unspiritualize it and degrade it by carrying men toward matter. Still others (and I am sorry to say that among them are men who have been much blessed by reason of their zeal and appetite for doing good) have been very pernicious in their influence upon the popular acceptation of the Word of God, their method being to give a spiritual interpretation to every material fact and a material interpretation to every spiritual fact, and so to work it both ways out of the range of ordinary reason, and put it beyond the operation of common sense, by which men are guided in the household, in the affairs of business, and in matters of State.

Now, if the Word of God is ever to be as powerful as it ought to be among men it must have an interpretation that will bring it home to the bosoms of men, so that they shall understand it as they understand any great and important truths in human life; and instead of imitating those who first form a theory of inspiration and then undertake to make the Bible conform to it, we must go humbly to the Word of God and see how it is made up, and ask what the facts are, and then out of the facts form a theory of inspiration — for I hold that the Bible was written by inspired writers. Everything that is in it, looked at

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 1 3

exactly as it is, without perversion, must go to make up our theory of what inspiration admits or includes in itself.

I pass by briefly the definition of " revelation," which is making known to men things not known before.

As to the Word of God itself, it does not claim to be a book of revelations. It contains revelations; but at first it did not stand on that ground, nor did it base its authority thereon. Indeed, there are very few revelations, as such, in the Bible. There are records innumerable of things that men at large had not found out, but that they were capable of finding out. Men were told in the Word of God much valuable truth, as a child is told by its mother, for the sake of early instruction, many useful things that it has not yet learned, but that are within its reach. In a certain sense revelations may consist in disclosures of things which lie within the sphere of a man's reason. And at particular periods of the world, and for special purposes in the conduct of human affairs, it has pleased God to make extraordinary revelations, through extraordinary men, unfolding to men at large things which they did not know, and which they could not find out in the then stage of the world, but which afterwards, when they came to investigate, were plain and easy for them to comprehend.

Men laugh and say, " If we can ascertain such things by natural reason, what is the use of revelation ? " Of course, if the race were to wait long enough, they could find out many things that were revealed in the Scriptures ; but for purposes of education these things were wisely made known in the childhood of mankind. Beneficently, with a view to man's earlier development, some things were anticipated to which men would evidently have come if they had been let alone.

And yet, there are some things that human reason of itself could not compass; as, for instance, the nature of God, the character of the other life, the destiny of man, and the great moral principles on which God administers his government in this world. These are spiritual elements that men unaided cannot understand. I do not undertake to say that men may not, in later periods of large and multifarious knowledge and by scientific methods, arrive at right conclusions in regard to these elements also; but there are now many questions which no man can fathom except by the light which is thrown upon them by revelation. Because there are things revealed that are within the reach of men's investigations, it does not follow that there are not other things revealed which are beyond the pale of human research.

But revelation is the smallest part of the Word of God. There is far less of it than of narrative and of history. Divine inspiration educed the material, and men "spake as they were moved by the Spirit " — that is, under the inspiration of holy feelings they were competent to record with substantial accuracy the experiences that sprang from the influence of the divine mind upon the human mind. For inspiration is something much broader than revelation. It may be very generally defined as being a divine influence that quickens the faculties of men. Whether it acts directly upon individual hum.an minds (I believe it does, at times); whether it acts indirectly upon the human mind through institutions (and I believe it does that also); or whether it inspires mankind at large with a knoudedge of the truth or with the light of truth, — it is an action of the divine mind upon the human mind, either in the mass or as individuals, so as to secure — What? Such a presentation of the truth as shall work toward morality and spiritualized manhood.

The whole drift of the Bible is to be a practical book — a book to teach men the highest way of life; to teach them how to live so as not to be degraded by their senses; so that they shall be able to meet the inequalities of life; so that it shall be possible for them to use the world without abusing it; to teach them how to live in this world so that they shall come to a higher and better one. If there ever was a book the aim of whose teaching was that the man of God might be thoroughly furnished unto every good work, that book is the Bible — as we commonly call this collection of ancient sacred Scriptures.

THE INSPIRA TION OF THE BIBLE. 1 5

Now, let us see what Inspiration, as it is derived from an examination of the Book itself, must include. There is an impression that in the larger understanding of inspiration there is a limitation of the interpretation of God's Word; on the contrary, I believe that the larger liberty gives the larger power.

First : Any adequate theory of inspiration must admit of the incorporation of all existing records into the Word. Genesis, in its earlier chapters, unquestionably was made effulgent with the combination of several then-existing records of things. They are very plainly marked in the original. The whole style and the whole use of language demarks them one from another. So, at the very first step into the Bible we find that inspiration, as it were, gathers up documents, statements of fact, that existed before, and makes them part and parcel of the inspired record; and that with which the Word of God begins it goes on with. Whole books were selections from existing literature. There is no question but that the book of Esther was taken bodily out of the records of an Oriental monarch. Without doubt the ten genealogies came from the public records, made just as any other genealogical records are — just as the public documents in Brooklyn are made, that are in the hands of the county clerk, and of which one might make a transcript. And so many existing documents were brought together in the making up of the Bible that, if it was produced under inspiration, we must see that inspiration admitted — nay, directed — the taking into the Word of God much of the literature that had sprung up in the ordinary course of human thought and procedure.

Then, secondly: Inspiration, to be applicable to the Bible as we have it, must admit the incorporation of statements, in regard to incidental facts, which originated in the usual faulty, errant operation of the human mind. If any theory of inspiration admitted such inaccuracy as vitiated moral principles, and misled men as to conduct, as to disposition, and as to great spiritual tendencies, it would

1 6 BIBLE STCDIKS.

be fatal to every scheme for the elevation of men to which it might be applied; but inspiration is consistent with such a presentation of solid truths as is adapted to the welfare of the human race, while yet this presentation is made through vehicles that carry with them the limitations and imperfections of human language and human thought, not only, but also the peculiar characteristics of the period, the nation, and the man inspired to declare it. We do not destroy the moral purpose of a document when we show that it is misspelled, or that there are literary or statistical mistakes in it, provided the mistakes are quite irrelevant to the main end. It is destructive of any theory of the inspiration of the Bible to claim that every word and letter which it contains is infallibly correct. That claim, carried out logically or consistently, would do one of two things: it would destroy the Bible itself, in the faith of justminded men and honest-minded interpreters; or it would put men on a system of twisting and twirling metaphorical statements. It would lead to discriminations which would make men special theorists, and result in erroneous judgments on their part. Indeed, it has resulted in just that.

To say that there were " ten thousand " when there were only five thousand does not invalidate the practical intent of conveying the fact that there were a great viany. The use of specific numbers to indicate a strong statement of a large number is thoroughly Oriental, and natural in an Oriental book. To say that there was a flood of forty days if it lasted only twenty days does not disprove the fact that there was a great cataclysm or phenomenon of nature, lasting an unusually long time. This does vitiate a theory of inspiration which makes every figure in the Bible accurate, which spells every word right, and which places every element in its correct place: but the record itself disputes any such theory of inspiration as that; for that would hold it morally responsible for inaccuracies, misstatements which are contained in the record, and would make the whole thing false in respect to the great moral ends for which any communication is made.

THE INSPIRA TION OF THE BIBLE. ij

If it be said that one man, in writing- a portion of the Scriptures, said one thing, while the opposite was said by another, that may be an utterly unimportant error. It is stated in one of the Gospels that Christ went to Nazareth before certain events happened, and by another it is declared that he went after the happening of those events; but what difference does it make whether he went before or after? He itcnt. If the theory of inspiration insists that exactitude as to facts is indispensable to its divine origin, then it makes a great deal of difference; but if the theor}^ of inspiration takes no note of incidental errors provided they do not vitiate the great purpose which divine truth was intended to bring forth, then it does not amount to any difference. At any rate, no man can critically examine the text of the Old Testament and the New and not find these internal and external vehicular inaccuracies; and I take the ground that the true theory of inspiration admits of those incidental errors of time, place, etc., which do not alter the general drift of the text, nor the impression it was designed to make on men, the object being to "thoroughly furnish them for every good work." A truth may be valid, and yet be clothed with imperfect views and erroneous statements, and even urged upon low grounds.

" Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

What is the drift of this passage? Is it to teach men how to live a great while? No. People want to live a great wdiile, anyhow. That does not indicate inspiration. That is inherent. The drift of the passage is Honor thy father and thy mother; and the motive applied was, comparatively speaking, a low one; but it was probably the only motive by which, in the early ages of the human race, children could be touched in a way to make them treat their parents with filial reverence. A great thing longevity was thought to be ; and there was a distinction made between the length of days of those who honored their father and mother and those who disregarded them. It was not the highest motive ; nor, for us, could it be the true one: but, for the slaves just escaped out of Egypt, it was wise.

So in every age human nature must be dealt with in the best way in which it can be reached; and \i there be one thing that is shown all the way through the divinely inspired record it is the adaptation of methods, institutions, and revelations of truth to the weaknesses and necessities of men in each particular age. The garment was made to fit the figure. The manner of teaching was in accordance with the need of the time and nation in which it took place. Not perfection, but right direction, was the aim.

Thi7'dly: Inspiration as properly viewed may include a whole statement of material truths, good and bad, which makeup a complete history, without either criticism, judgment, determination, or characterization. The sins, the evils, the mistakes of good men are not approved because they are stated without any application to them of moral discriminations and condemnations.

In the early periods of history, in the record, for instance, of the patriarchal age, we are confronted with conduct which would drive a man from society if it were committed to-day. We permit in a child things which, if he were to continue them until he became grown, would deprive him of good standing and throw him out of society. And in the infancy of the race things were permitted which, judged by our modern standards of honor and right, would condemn a man as utterly base. They were bad then, and they would have been worse in every age since, by reason of the growing light that has been brought to bear upon truth and duty ; and yet they are narrated in the Word of God without a single protest. Conduct was allowed in the past which was far less criminal than it would be in our age : but it was criminal then ; and nevertheless, there it stands, apparently unrebuked.

Look at Jacob, much of whose conduct would be condemned from beginning to end, according to any modern canon of moral criticism. He outwitted, with the connivance of a cunning mother, his elder brother. He was

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 19

politic all the way through. While he was a politician, he always thought of himself, and looked out for " Number One." He was selfish and cruel. And yet, he is not criticised ; there is no stamp of dishonor put upon him. He acted in these things by the light and the low morality of the age in which he lived, making mistakes and committing offenses that would be outrageous if they were committed in our day ; and yet he stands up as one of the three great patriarchs — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.