THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
DR. TAYLOR LEWIS published some years ago, a book entitled, "The Divine Human in the Scriptures." He contended in it that the Bible is the most thoroughly human book in the world, and inferred from this its divinity. It was a legitimate inference. Only He who knew man thoroughly could make a book that would win its way to the hearts of men of all races and temperaments, and degrees of culture through the ages. Compare any ancient history by an uninspired author with the historical books of the Old Testament. Few people read Herodotus or Xenophon, though we have excellent translations of them. But everybody reads the Bible. Its men and women seem nearer to us than the men and women in Bancroft's History of the United States. Tens of thousands know more about Abraham and Joseph and Moses than they know about George Washington. There must be a reason why these writings, that come to us from a period so early and comparatively rude, are so universally studied and admired. That reason is their naturalness; the charming clearness and simplicity with which they present the most surprising and most familiar things. The narrator describes the every-day life of the patriarchs who dwell in tents, and then goes on to tell of a visit of angels, and of the raining of fire and brimstone from heaven, in the same quiet style, as if, from his point of view, there was nothing strange or startling in what we call the supernatural. It is this constant self-possession of the sacred writers which makes their books so attractive, and which compels us to believe that they wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now, if we had no Bible, and it were announced that God is going to give us one, and the scholars of the age were asked, what kind of a book it would be, what would they answer? Would they not reply, a systematic statement of God's nature and attributes, and of man's duty and destiny? Would they ever dream of such a Bible as we now have? But would a Bible made according to their ideal be popular? Would it come into general use? Would the common people love it, and study it, and pillow their heads upon it in sickness and in death? No, such a Bible would be a text-book in theological seminaries, but not a hand-book in the homes of both the rich and the poor, the wise and the unwise. Truly, the foolishness of God (as skeptics deem it) is wiser than men."—Occident.