Chapter VIII: Foreword: To Appendix

As a child and later a student, I recall intensely disliking Paul. I wasn’t quite sure he was a “crazy fanatic and self-hypnotized epileptic and self-deceived, unconscious fakir,” which I have heard teachers of youth in our colleges call him; terrible views for a child to hold about a saintly character—I only set them down to show how wrong teaching can color our version of the Bible—but I regarded him as fanatical, narrow, crabbed, sour, domineering, eager to dragoon men into believing as he did, whether by fear of Hell-fire, which seemed to me a cowardly fire-insurance policy against retribution or by sheer force of will, I had not decided. I distinctly disliked saints, whose milk of human kindness had turned sour. Later, years later, when I came back to read his life in the sacred records, as I would read with unprejudiced eyes in the search for facts which we carry to the reading of an ordinary life, I was amazed and staggered to find he was a small man, frail of body, short-sighted, suffering some physical ailment from the persecutions to which he had been subjected, fearless as a lion where the faith was concerned, humble and simple as a child in other matters, generous in money matters—see the loan to Philemon—so independent that while he collected funds for famine in Jerusalem, he would never touch those funds himself, but supported himself by the making of tents, for which there was great demand owing to caravan travel being universal, and so great of heart that his tenderness extended to a little slave boy, who came to him in Rome and who ultimately became the youngest bishop in the Christian Church in the third largest city of the Roman Empire.

About this time I began reading the Bible as I would any other book, or a newspaper editorial, critically but shorn of early beliefs and prejudices. I read ignoring chapter divisions and verse divisions, which too often have provided controversialists with bullets for sharp-shooting in ambush by wresting sentences from context and meaning, and using them as “the Devil quotes Scripture” for his own purposes; and I can conceive of nothing that will restore belief quicker than to read the Bible as a historical record of the birth and growth of a great redemptive force for humanity—using redemption as a force in present-day life, not in a far-away, vague shadowy Kingdom of the Hereafter.

About this time, too, I realized what one of the greatest American theologians has frankly admitted—that the worst foes of Christianity are not its enemies but “the friends in its own house,” and those foes are sometimes medieval inheritances of superstitious interpretations, of which we are unconscious; scraps of misapplied, ignorant Sunday-School teaching. In fact, I have often wondered, if secular teaching were given with as colossal ignorance of historic data as sacred teaching is given, how many pupils could pass even a primary examination? How much would be known of applied science, or even our own secular historic development? For instance, how many Bible teachers know that Christ and John and Paul all quote from the Book of Enoch, which is variously dated as from 200 to 120 B.C.? How many know that “the camel and the eye of a needle” was an Arab expression used to this day? How many know that many of the expressions precious to the whole world were quoted by the writers from ancient masters sacred and secular—such as the reference to “principalities and powers” separating us from the love of God? How many realize that “oil out of the flinty rock” was not a metaphor, but a fact—such a fact, that modern drillers for petroleum have found oil in that very spot? How many know that the fiery furnace recorded in the book of Daniel to destroy the three young Hebrews is corroborated by references in the Maccabees and other ancient books to naphtha waters which burned with a flame to consume all towards whom the wind blew, but which had a funneling air center inside, which left the furnace harmless in the middle? How many know that tiles and statuary dug out of the ruins of Babylon show a man lying unharmed under a lion in the lion’s den of the king’s royal gardens? We ridicule the story of Jonah and the whale; yet from the belly of a stuffed sacred alligator in Egypt amid scraps of waste paper were taken precious lost records of the sayings of Christ.

The Bible is not much longer than seven short novels. The most of people read seven novels in a year. The ordinary modern magazine has the same number of words as a short novel. A great many people read a magazine from cover to cover once a week. If the Bible were read in the same free spirit, unclouded by inherited prejudice or taint of “creeds,” the return to belief among youth would be a thing to astound the world.

Why isn’t it so read?

To quote the theologian—because “the literalists” insist that in the reading, youth shall read into the context what they dictate rather than what youth finds of everyday usable livable truths; and to-day, youth will not be dragooned. He is going to follow the light of truth as he finds the light of truth and proves the truth. He isn’t going to accept one set of opinions on Sunday, which he finds won’t work out in everyday life on Monday. Christianity has to be a workable scheme for every day in the week, or youth is going to leave the church pews empty and crowd to “the movies,” to the theater, to the anarchist lectures, to the wild abandon of joy in the rhythmic emotional dance; and—youth is right. With unfettered feet and wings of dawn to its soul, it faces always the new day. It never looks backwards. It rejoices in Life; and Christianity must be put in terms of youth, or preach to emptier and emptier pews. Paul never ceased reiterating “Rejoice—rejoice and again I say—rejoice.” Too often we have clothed a glad and glorious message in habiliments of age and woe, which are really the consciousness of past sins and failures. The Communion is not a Doleful Supper commemorating a death. It is a Loving Cup commemorating a wonderful and glad new birth. The Kingdom of Heaven is not to-morrow. It is now; or else it is never. And yet, let us not blame the Middle Age interpretations shadowy with crime and sorrow. In a carnival of lust and crime and rapine and sword, the Middle Age Church preserved and conserved for humanity, like an oasis of the spirit in a desert of materialism, all that has helped humanity most, and this in spite of the fact it foolishly punished astronomers, who proved the earth round and burned men who differed by a hair’s breadth from its “credo.” While it was guilty of these tragical mistakes of obeying the letter rather than the spirit—as the Pharisees who crucified Christ, had done before it—the Middle Age Church kept the faith for us, inspired and conserved art, science, letters, in a wilderness of barbarism. Who encouraged almost sublime architecture? Who produced paintings that have never been equaled to this day? Where did Roger Bacon work out his great, though concealed, truths of science? In the safety, though it was the imprisonment, of a friar’s cell. Roger Bacon (1214-1294), the friar at Oxford, wrote these words. Were they clairvoyant foresight, or the superior knowledge of a scientist from facts? “Ships will go without rowers and with only a single man to guide them. Carriages without horses will travel with incredible speed. Machines for flying can be made in which a man sits. Machines will raise infinitely great weights. Bridges will span rivers without supports.” His superior knowledge was ascribed by his superiors to Black Magic; but Pope Clement IV supported him and ordered his knowledge set forth in books, of which he wrote three in eighteen months without secretary; but his own immediate superiors ascribed his marvelous knowledge to communications from the Devil, and had him imprisoned for fourteen years. After seven hundred years, the light of that cell comes out to the world: yet, the men who suppressed him thought they were protecting God’s word from assault. It can only be added that the history of ignorance repeats itself with surprising persistence. The good men of his day were simply trying to tie truth down to the dead line of their own ignorance. With a charity and a clarity infinite as the love of God, let us be careful we do not do the same thing.

Rather than condemn the mistakes of the Middle Age Church from whose darkened and superstitious interpretations we yet suffer, let us beware we do not repeat their mistakes by shutting out the new light of history and archæology and science, where we should welcome it.

Christianity does not need to apologize for itself, or beg the question. When it does that, he who excuses accuses. When it does that, it is off the carpet in the modern world. It can stand on the solid foundation of its own truth. If that foundation cracks, it will fall as the Holy City fell before a New Order. Rather than repel attack, we should welcome it. Attack is the storm wind that strengthens the hold of the roots on the eternal rocks. It is the wind that causes the corn stalk to put out guy ropes above its roots to hold fast to sure foundation. I love to read attacks on Christian truth if they are sincere and not cheap, cynical, ignorant sneers, which never get anywhere. They force examination of the certainty of the facts beneath our faith.

To take but one example of what muddy thinking has done to stir up shallow waters to make them look deep—consider the furious and foolish controversy in the modern church over “miracles.” “We believe in miracles,” shouts one section of the Church, “and if you don’t, we’ll see that you are put out of the church and prove that you are damned.” “We don’t believe in miracles and we defy you to put us out of the church; or we’ll pull down the pillars of youth like Samson as we go out,” shouts back the other section; and neither stops to ask in simple clarity:

What is a miracle?

Is it God breaking, or intervening to prevent, the effect of His own laws?

We have no such phenomena in natural life, and shy back from answering that question in as bold terms as it is asked.

Or is it the working of a higher law overruling and annulling a lower law? There are cases of that in nature, as when the effect of a warm and constant ocean current is annulled by a cold wind from the north; but in this case, neither law is abrogated. We are getting the effects of each; but the effect of one is stronger than the other. That might be the meaning of “a miracle”; but the explanation is so obscure and the workings so complex and in the unknown, that if that be the conception of “miracle” we had better not split the church over it. We are dealing with too many unknown quantities to postulate with mathematical certainty what we do know and what we don’t of fact, or to exclude from fellowship on the grounds of what is unknown.

Or is a miracle a superior knowledge of all laws and the use of that knowledge to get certain effects, such as the knowledge of Roger Bacon, who was seven hundred years in advance of his time? If that be “miracle,” the controversy vanishes in thin air.

A century ago, if any man had told us we could see through a man’s flesh and count his ribs and the joints in his backbone, we would have called him an unconscious fakir, or a conscious liar. Yet X-rays have worked that “miracle.”

Fifty years ago, if any one had told us we could go round the world under the sea like Jonah in the whale’s belly, we would have answered him in the language of Missouri, “Show me.” Yet the submarine has worked that “miracle.”

Twenty-five years ago, if any one had predicted we would course the skies in winged chariots of which you can read a description in the First Chapter of Ezekiel, we would have told him a comic legend about Darius Green and his flying machine. Yet the aeroplane has worked that “miracle.”

Ten years ago, if some one had told us soberly and expecting belief that he could talk without wire or letter from New York with a friend in Honolulu, we would have had him examined for his sanity. Yet wireless has worked that “miracle.”

The impossibility of yesterday is the wonder of to-day and the commonplace of to-morrow. The laws of the X-ray, of under-sea navigation in submarine, of air travel in aeroplane, of wireless communication, existed just as much and the same in the days of Christ as they exist to-day; but men did not know those laws and did not know how to use them. “Greater works than these shall ye do,” said the Master. We didn’t believe Him, though we thought we did; and we witness the fulfillment of the prophecy. We are heirs to the fulfillment of the prophecy by the greatest Master in foresight the world has ever known, by One who did more to set the human soul free of the shackles of ignorance and prejudice than any other leader of all humanity.

He, who postulates to-day on what is, or is not, miraculous, simply writes himself down an ignorant muddy-brained thinker, stirring up shallow waters to make them look deep. The “literalist” in this case simply tries to bind youth down to “old wives’ fables” and to nursery beliefs. He tries to level Christian truth down to the dead line of the most ignorant.

And so of nearly all the disputes in the Christian Church—“the resurrection,” “the descent into Hell,” “the Immaculate Conception,” “the letter inerrancy of the Scriptures.” Ask definitely what the controversialist means by his own terms, and whether agnostic or fundamentalist, instead of answering you, he backs against the wall of his “rightness” and hurls thunder bolts of damnation and excommunication from fellowship at you; and Youth still goes on its way in laughter and gladness; and I thank God that it does. It would be terrible if Christianity ever became as static and dead as the faith of the Pharisee, who crucified Christ because He would not conform to the letter of the law instead of the spirit.

We should remember the simple words, “He will not wrangle.” All Christianity asks is—“prove all things.” If they don’t prove up, don’t take them.

Not long ago, a friend had an experience that illustrates this. For twenty years, she had practically never read the Bible. She had been taught the Bible wrong and when the Bob Ingersoll era came on, ridiculing these vulnerable teachings, she had quit reading the Bible. As a professor, who teaches teachers in the largest teachers’ institution in America, once said to me: “Really I envy you your naïve beliefs! I envy any one who can believe that old stuff”; she had discarded the Bible as a book of myths and fairy tales. She said once “I can’t read it. I simply can’t read it. I read into it the old impossible prejudices and creeds I was taught when I was a girl; and now I know they are not true.” To overcome that mental habit of reading into the Bible what isn’t in it, I suggested Weymouth’s translation in modern phraseology with strictest adherence to linguistic scholarship. We miss some of the old and beautiful phrases in this translation, but we get a translation free of the old controversial doubtful implied interpretations. She began re-reading the Bible as she would any other authentic historic record. In her enthusiasm, she carried her new treasure to a devout elderly saintly friend of the old school. The friend sat up in horror. How dare any one suggest there could be any improvement in the translation of the Bible. The good friend was evidently in devout and blissful self-righteous ignorance of the sources of the Bible. She evidently did not know that the Tindale Bible of 1555 was improved in the King James Version of 1611, and the King James Version was improved in the 1888 version; and there are still phrases and words which linguistic research is improving. And recall that, in old texts from which the Bible is taken, some of the old manuscripts did not use the vowel but left the vowel to be guessed. The good friend—and she was sincere—mistook the pebbles and the small rocks of the trail up the slopes of light for the main foundation and the light ahead; and promptly began hurling those rocks and pebbles at a true seeker after light.

It was a case of a saint’s shadow darkening a seeker’s trail.