The Bible’s Plain Meaning
By R. F. Cottrell
believer in the Bible and a preacher of salvation through Christ. But let me tell you that all who favor the mystical mode of interpreting the Scriptures are accomplices in this work of helping in the progress of infidelity, and are in a degree responsible for the prevailing and increasing skepticism of our times. The Bible is a revelation to mankind, or it is not. If it is, its plain statements of facts, its promises and its threatenings, are to be taken at par—they mean what they say. But if these things are to be allegorized, spiritualized, rationalized and mysticized, the Bible is not a revelation, but a riddle. All have an equal right to guess at its meaning; and, is a consequence, there may be as many creeds as there are persons. To make such a book a revelation, another one is necessary to tell us what this one means. You may wonder that any one should allegorize the plain statements concerning the creation of man as described above, so as to deny that he was formed of dust, while we see him turning to dust again; but if you make the threatening of death, in case of man's disobedience, to mean eternal life in torment, or something besides what God defined it to be—a returning again to the dust out of which he was taken—you are in a like position, and are aiding in the work of destroying faith, and building up infidelity. And this remark applies to every interpretation which takes the license of setting aside a commandment of God, or an ordinance of the gospel. The fault of factions and false doctrines is not in the Bible, but in this huge license of interpretation. This is the pillar and support of infidelity. If the Bible be thus assailed by its professed friends, what shall we not expect from its open enemies? R. F. COTTRELL.