THE BIBLE AND THE PEOPLE.
By Prof. Swing
To the multitude, the Sacred Volume tells a straight-forward story. They see in it a picture of the human heart in all its sinfulness, and in all its divineness too. They see the dark destiny of sin and the bright destiny of virtue. One is called hell, the other heaven. They do not descend into particulars about the region of sorrow or the region of joy. They feel that the one is to be dreaded, the other loved. There, on the open page, lies the doctrine of repentance, far more impressive in Peter and in Magdalene than in any system of abstract doctrine. There lies the doctrine of faith in Christ, sweeter in the group around Jesus, in the apostles and martyrs, than in any confession of any church. There in the gospels lives and moves, and dies, and rises again, the Redeemer, in a charm and power to which the learning of commentators can add nothing. In fact, one may perhaps be glad that there is an army of earth's inhabitants, old and young, white and black, hidden away in the obscurity which ignorance and poverty bring, to whom human wisdom in the form of "eternally begotten," and "eternally proceeding," and "limited atonement," and "inability," has never come, but to whose hearts the Bible tells its simple story as a mother talks to her confiding child. Much of modern theology is only great banks of cloud rolling up between the human family and the moral sun. As the damp vales of earth, and the bitter ocean, are always exhaling vapors that keep our sky clouded and that expose the beautiful earth to perpetual storm, so from the intellect, in its extravagant vanity, clouds arise that hide both Creator and Saviour from the upturned faces of mankind. Upon Goat Island, in Niagara, upon a Sunday, years ago, I found, hidden away at the root of a tree, a servant from the hotel reading in his Testament about the crucifixion. He was an old, emancipated slave. Upon being questioned as to whether he loved that passage above all, he said he always cried over the idea, that, for even black men, a Christ should have died. I wondered whether any of the formulas of men about that death could ever entice from a slave's heart such tribute of weeping. Here an humble fugitive slave came to fulfill the image of Tennyson: All subtle thought all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
He bows, he bathes the Saviour's feet
With costly spikenard and with tears. Thus, doubt it not, the common people glean from the sacred page the very golden sheaves which the Lord let fall for man. They find them in all the wide field reaching from Abraham to St. John. Not the entire multitude will thus be found extracting honey from this great field of flowers. Man will never move in a solid phalanx toward any form of good. Many are called, but few are chosen. The downward path is always broad, the upward path narrow. Hence, when I speak of the blessings which the common people draw from the Bible I am not dreaming of an unbroken host poring over a divine book, but of many souls, many indeed, that in youth and in old age, in joy and in sorrow, in darkness and in light, are at times taking up the Bible, to trace in it the path of hope for time and eternity. Could you call all these together this day from all the corners of our land, and from the lonely ships on our seas, they would come in such a multitude, and so pressing the book to their hearts, that even were you an infidel you would bless God that so many souls were drawing so much happiness from the two Testaments. The hardest heart might weep for joy that so many had found infinite peace.—Prof. Swing.