er people in the realm of art, and its test is: Does the Bible's
ultimate message, its crowning commandment of Christ's life and love,
produce goodness in morals? just as the test of the long revelation
of beauty in his ancestors and the Greek is, does its ultimate
commandment produce goodness in art.

Christianity does not ask: "What think ye of the Bible?" It asks:
"What think ye of Christ?" There the throne is set, and so majestic is
His glory that the moment we come into His presence we are judged. The
Judge of the earth has taken His place in thought, history and hope.
He is not on trial, and He asks no question as to what man thinks of
the book which has enthroned Him in literature. The test is placed in
my conduct and yours; each may say with Michael Bruce, who left these
words on the fly-leaf of his Bible:

'Tis very vain of me to boast
How small a price this Bible cost;
The day of judgment will make clear
'Twas very cheap or very dear.

Shall we go forward with our Bible or backward without it? Infidelity
has always forgotten that, so far as it has an eye for liberty and
humanity, the Christianity not of sects but of the Bible has furnished
it and trained it. The liberalism which puts its Bible aside will
acknowledge that a Christless humanity culminated in Rome. Skepticism
is often eloquent when it tries to show how much "fragments of Roman
art" had to do with the making of modern civilization. Now, as Rome
marks the height to which humanity without a Bible ascended, it would
seem that this would be just the point where free and untrammeled
thought and the fullest intellectual liberty would be found. Right
there, where a Christless race was supreme, ought to be the place
where the liberty abounded which the religion of Christ is said to
destroy.

Whose program for the production of intellectual and spiritual liberty
can liberals accept? Hoarse is the cry: The Bible is to be cast out.
We look and behold men who have these opinions sitting on the throne
of the Caesars. Now, one would suppose the intellect of that whole
realm would have fair play. There was no Bible there to fetter or to
annoy. This ought to be the halcyon age for "the liberty of man, woman
and child." These rulers have the same dignified abhorrence for all
kinds of religion. The skeptic Lucretius says: "The fear of the lower
world must be sent headlong forth. It poisons life to its lowest
depths; it spreads over all things the blac