cessary before
any one can properly answer the question--What saith the Scriptures?

Again I hear a voice from the pews--Who then save a scholar is competent
for such a use of the Bible? I answer--No one, except a pupil of the
scholars. The scholars have placed within our reach the results of such a
critical study of the Bible. You can find the rational guidance you may
desire in the manuals which set forth the conclusions of these critical
processes; though you must painfully feel, as I do, the lack of the
religious tone in some of them. A crying need of our day is a Hand Book to
the Bible in which the new critical knowledge shall blend, as it may
blend, with the old spiritual reverence.

One should not rise from such a study of the Bible as we have made to-day,
in its merely literary aspects, without a new, strange sense of awe before
this mystic Book. It is the handiwork of no one man, of no group of men,
of no period. It is an organic product, the growth of a whole people the
coralline structure builded by a nation. Hands innumerable have toiled
over these pages. Voices indistinguishable now, in blended chorus from the
dawn of history, have joined in the cry of the human after God which
whispers upon us from this sacred phonograph.

Successive generations of men, struggling with sin, striving for purity,
searching after God, have exhaled their spirits into the essence of
religion, which is treasured in this costly vase. The moral forces of
centuries, devoted to righteousness, are stored in this exhaustless
reservoir of ethical energy. At such cost, my brothers, has Humanity
issued this sacred book. From such patience of preparation has
Providence laid this priceless gift before you. In such labor of
articulation--spelling out the syllables of the message from on high,
through multitudinous lives of men dutifully and devoutly walking with
their God--does the Spirit speak to you, O, soul of man. Say thou--

Speak Lord; thy servant heareth!

* * * * *

It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated the
only question is; Is it true in and for itself?

Hegel: "Philosophy of History," Part III.: Sec. III.: Ch. II.

With reference to things in the Bible, the question whether they are
genuine or spurious is odd enough. What is genuine but that which is
truly excellent, which stands in harmony with the purest nature and
reason, and which even n