The Bible Valued by Agnostics.
THE observances of the Society for Ethical Culture are worthy of attention, tho they sometimes speak of practical matters in connection with the Christian religion, of which they have but partial knowledge. There is considerable theoretical matter made by them to have the force of indubitable fact, but they are not far from the fact when they say that the tendency is to eliminate the Bible as a literary and educational force. The reason for this, said one of the speakers, is plain. “Being no longer regarded as a book that must be read, it is simply a great book which may be read.” Then he asks, “And who reads great books?” “The Bible is going as other great things are going.” He deplored this and affirmed that “it is absolutely necessary to keep in touch with the great classics of the past,” and the “Bible is the greatest classic of conduct, the legacy of a people with a sublime passion for righteousness.” Moreover, he declared, “English literature is so full of Biblical allusions that it is impossible to understand it without knowing the Bible. Otherwise the force of these great reverberations is lost.” He proposes to select such passages as are literary units, and to give no opportunity for doctrinal teaching. The foregoing is true, but it is a specimen of the one-sided view of a collection of books that are pervaded by a spirit which can not be accounted for without the influence of a Higher Power, imbuing prophets and apostles with aspirations and the spirit of discernment between the transient and the permanent, the spiritual and the material, and the realization of things invisible and of a life eternal. All that is said truly of the Bible as literature is meager in comparison with what may be truly said by those whose spiritual eyes have been opened to perceive its glorious truths, its supporting promises, its revelation of God and immortality.—N. Y. Christian Advocate.