Ied by the lives of good men and women, has been a great teacher of pure
religion. We have learned what to think about God and how to worship him
aright by what he has shown us in the living epistles of his goodness
and grace which he has sent into the world, and, above all, in that
"strong Son of God" whom we call our Master. The other source from which
the influences have come by which religion has been purified, is that
divine Spirit who is always in the world, and always waiting upon the
threshold of every man's thought, and in the sub-conscious depths of
every man's feeling, to enlighten our understanding and purify our
desires. To every man he gives all that he can receive of light and
power. To many his gifts are but meagre, because their capacities are
small and their receptivity is limited; but there are always in the
world open minds and docile tempers, to whom he imparts his larger
gifts. Thus we have the order of prophets and inspired men, whose words
are full of light and leading. In the Bible we have a record of the
messages given by such men to the world. In that teaching, rightly
interpreted, there is great power to correct the errors and cleanse away
the delusions and superstitions which are apt to gather about our
religion. We cannot estimate too highly the work that has been done by
these sacred writings in purifying our conception of God. It is
possible, however, to treat this book in a manner so hard and
literalistic that it shall become a hindrance rather than a help to the
better knowledge of God. The one fact that it brings vividly before us
is that fact of progress in religious knowledge which we are now
considering. It shows us how men have gone steadily forward, under the
leadership of the divine Spirit, leaving old conceptions behind them,
and rising to larger and larger understanding of divine things. Any
treatment of the Book which fails to recognize this fact--which puts all
parts of the Bible on the same level of spiritual value and
authority--simply ignores the central truth of the Bible and perverts
its whole meaning. The truth which we need to emphasize in our use of
the Bible is the truth that the same Spirit who gave the men of the
olden time their message is with us, to help us to the right
understanding of it, and to give us the message for our time.
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