e. There is no necessary connection between
these doctrines and the life of him who holds them. They make him
orthodox, not necessarily righteous. They satisfy the intellect but need
not touch the heart. It does not, in short, take a religious man to be a
theologian. It simply takes a man with fair reasoning powers. This man
happens to apply these powers to theological subjects--but in no other
sense than he might apply them to astronomy or physics. But truth in the
Bible is a fountain. It is a diffused nutriment, so diffused that no one
can put himself off with the form. It is reached not by thinking, but by
doing. It is seen, discerned, not demonstrated. It cannot be bolted
whole, but must be slowly absorbed into the system. Its vagueness to the
mere intellect, its refusal to be packed into portable phrases, its
satisfying unsatisfyingness, its vast atmosphere, its finding of us,
its mystical hold of us, these are the tokens of its infinity.

Nature never provides for man's wants in any direction, bodily, mental,
or spiritual, in such a form as that he can simply accept her gifts
automatically. She puts all the mechanical powers at his disposal--but
he must make his lever. She gives him corn, but he must grind it. She
elaborates coal, but he must dig for it. Corn is perfect, all the
products of Nature are perfect, but he has everything to do to them
before he can use them. So with truth; it is perfect, infallible. But he
cannot use it as it stands. He must work, think, separate, dissolve,
absorb, digest; and most of these he must do for himself and within
himself. If it be replied that this is exactly what theology does, we
answer it is exactly what it does not. It simply does what the
green-grocer does when he arranges his apples and plums in his shop
window. He may tell me a magnum bonum from a Victoria, or a Baldwin from
a Newtown Pippin. But he does not help me to eat it. His information is
useful, and for scientific horticulture essential. Should a sceptical
pomologist deny that there was such a thing as a Baldwin, or mistake it
for a Newtown Pippin, we should be glad to refer to him; but if we were
hungry, and an orchard were handy, we should not trouble him. Truth in
the Bible is an orchard rather than a museum. Dogmatism will be very
valuable to us when scientific necessity makes us go to the museum.
Criticism will be very useful in seeing that only fruit-bearers grow in
the orchard. But truth in the doctrinal