Chapter IV: The wrong use of the Bible

"The Scriptures will be more studied than they have been, and in a
different manner--not as a magazine of propositions and mere dialectic
entities, but as inspirations and poetic forms of life; requiring,
also, divine inbreathings and exaltations in us, that we may ascend
into their meaning. No false _precision,_ which the nature and
conditions of spiritual truth forbid, will, by cutting up the body of
truth into definite and dead morsels, throw us into states of excision
and division, equally manifold. We shall receive the truth of God in a
more organic and organific manner, as being itself an essentially vital
power."

Horace Bushnell. God in Christ; p. 93.

"But, further, the zealots for the Bible _as it is_, just because it
_is_, forget that, in their outcry in behalf of every existing book,
and paragraph, and sentence, and word in the present edition of it, as
'God's Word written,' they are simply begging the question, What _is_
'God's Word written'? What _is_, without any doubt, a genuine portion
of those writings which contain the message from God? The question is,
in no case, 'Will you part with any utterance of God's voice, whether
through apostle or evangelist?' but only, 'Is this particular word, or
sentence, or passage, truly such an utterance? Have we good grounds for
accepting it as such? Nay, have we not overwhelming grounds for
doubting it to be such?' We do right to hold fast 'the faith once
delivered to the saints,' but the more we are determined to be faithful
to this faith, just the more sedulous and more searching must be our
inquiry, Have we here this faith in its integrity?"

Thomas Griffith, late Prebendary of St. Paul's, London: The Gospel of
the Divine Life, p. 418.

IV.

The wrong use of the Bible.

"Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for
reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man
of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."--2
Tim. iii; 16-17.

"Use the world as not abusing it" was a great principle of the Apostle, which has many special applications. One of these comes again before us to-day: Use the Bible as not abusing it.

I proceed to point out some further wrong uses of the Bible: