THE RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY.
By Samuel T. Spear
THE great questions of life relate to the existence, character, government, and providence of God, and to man considered as the creature of his power and subject to his law. What one shall eat and drink, and wherewithal he shall be clothed, where and how long he shall live, what shall be his position among men, whether he shall die rich or poor, known or unknown to fame—all these matters are of but trifling importance, when compared with the questions that relate to God, and what man is in his relation to God, and what awaits him when he retires from this earthly scene. Who is God? What are his attributes? What are his feelings toward the human race? Has he established a moral government over men? and if so, what are his requirements? Is there forgiveness with God for sinners? and if so, in what way may it be secured? What is man as the subject of his law? and what are his duties to God? . . . These are the supreme questions, and so appear to everyone who properly considers them. . . . The judgment of the race is, and ever has been, that mere reason exercising itself upon the field of nature, without any special help from God, is not adequate to the solution of these questions. . . . The human mind is theistic in the sense of operating toward God, and in that of being loaded with impressive thoughts in regard to him; but, in all its operations upon a purely natural basis, it stops short of the final mark. It does not go far enough to find a resting-place and satisfy itself. It does not get God near enough to answer its own wants. . . . The religion contained in the Bible adjusts itself to this fact. There is not a word in that book that proceeds upon the hypothesis that its contents are the discoveries of reason, or were placed there by reason. The assumption of the Bible in regard to itself is just the reverse of this. “Thus saith the Lord” is the label which it puts upon its contents. The theory of the New Testament is that the Old Testament contains the oracles of God; that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost;” that God “at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets;” that the sacred writings composing the Old Testament were “given by inspiration of God;” in a word, that the law and the prophets and the psalms came from God and are stamped with his authority, and are not the creations of human reason. The gospel of Christ, according to the New Testament, is “the glorious gospel of the blessed God;” and this gospel “at the first began to be spoken by the Lord himself, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will.” . . . The Bible, in short, assumes to be the word of God, and speaks to men as such. . . . The one thing then to be done with the book is to read it, to understand it as far as possible, and, alike with the head and the heart, to bow to it as an ultimate and absolute authority on all the subjects of which it speaks. Chief Justice Marshall was one of the greatest judges this country ever produced; and, as he sat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, and held the Federal Constitution in his hands, he treated it as “the supreme law of the land.” Its authority he never disputed; and the only questions he ever raised in regard to it related to its meaning and application. He did not make that Constitution, and it was not his prerogative to change it, and was his duty to obey it. And in like manner should the Bible be treated by everyone who believes God to be its author. This faith, by its very terms, makes it “the supreme law;” and there is to be no question as to the truth of its teaching. Faith is not to be disputing its own affirmation. Having affirmed, it is to stand there and accept as true what the Bible declares to be true. . . . God himself is always good authority for whatever he affirms; and reason never rises higher, and never acts more reasonably, than when it simply believes God. The question is not whether it can explain everything, or answer all possible objections, but whether the Bible puts its imprimature upon a fact or a doctrine. This attitude of mind toward the Bible as the supreme and final authority on all matters relating to religion, intensified and wrought into the very warp and woof of the soul, and thus living as a felt reality, is an indispensable condition of the power of the Bible to control thought, to sanctify the life, and impart comfort to the heart. We must believe with unhesitating confidence, believe right on, believe always, and believe forever, or we shall know but little of this power. Those who really know21this power are not the disputatious cavilers, not the self-wise doubters asking more questions than they can answer, and not the open and undisguised infidels, but the simple-minded children of faith who have acquired the happy and hallowed art of being content with what the Bible says, and to whom a single promise in that book is worth more than all the speculations of the wisest men who ever lived. . . . These are the happy men, the happy Christians, who, whether they are scholars or not, know how to believe, and in this sense are the children of Abraham. This great secret of the Lord is with them and in them. . . . Reason is not, and God is, their supreme and sovereign guide. His authority in the book divine settles all questions for them. Here they rest, and here find peace and comfort as nowhere else.—Samuel T. Spear, D. D., in Independent.