THE BIBLE AS A WHOLE by Dr. Haven

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 9, 1860

THE BIBLE AS A WHOLE.

By Dr. Haven

If a morning traveler finds himself before the Cathedral of Milan, before the shrouding mists are taken from the new-raised world, he cannot see its vast proportions, its hundreds of columns, its incredible number of statues. But, as he passes along, he cannot avoid admiring the perfection of its minutest parts. Almost everywhere there peers out upon him a sweet angel’s face, surrounded by most delicately traced foliage, all cut in the enduring rock. Here, he admires a statue of an apostle; there, one of a saint; and it seems as if the architect were jealous lest one stone should escape without being an evidence of skill, and suggestive of thought.

But as the sun dispels the mist, his attention is called away from the minute examination to a survey of its grander features. Through the opening rifts he sees its many buttresses, its slender minarets; his eye wanders up the dizzy heights of its lofty towers; and if he step within, as the choir and organ fill every part with the morning song of praise, he is often awed to his knees, and his soul overwhelmed with a sense of the presence of God.

So when, in the morning darkness of nature, one approaches the mighty structure of Christianity, as displayed in the Bible, built, through four thousand years, upon the foundations of prophets and apostles, with Jesus Christ as the chief corner stone, God its great architect, he can have no just idea of its greatness; his eye is not single; and that spiritual light which pervades every part, does not affect his vision.

Yet every man can see, from the very first, the gems of beauty that everywhere sparkle on the pages of the Bible. The angel of peace looks upon him from one page; on a second, he sees a picture of heaven that pales all pictures of earthly make. In one part there is a sweet angel song; in another, a prayer the man Christ Jesus only could make. Here he sees an altar; and on it a sacrifice and oblation once offered for all; and if he say and feel, That sacrifice avails for me, a new light fills the temple—all darkness is gone. He sees its beauties thick as stars on a sparkling winter night, so suggestive that each seems to have a soul that speaks to his. But it generally happens that men get absorbed with the individual beauties and forget to dim their eyes to nearer objects and try to take in some idea of its magnificent whole. Could they do this, they would find that its foundations are broad as earth, and its top reaches the heavens. Instead of hearing only the song of his happy heart, the whole temple would be resonant with angelic harmonies, in which human voices perfectly blend: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” Instead of the beauty that pleased him at first, an unutterable grandeur would fill his soul with highest rapture and a diviner depth of feeling than ever swept over his being before. —Dr. Haven.