although we find the same books containing gross and low thoughts.
We should always remember that although the Bible is more specially
a revelation to us of the Western nations than are the Vedas and the
Zend-Avesta, that it is only so because it is better suited to our modes
of thought, and because it has-been one of the agents in our education.
* W. R. Greg.
The reverence with which we may regard the Bible as bound up with
many-sacred memories, and as the chosen teacher of many of our greatest
minds and purest characters, is rightly directed in other nations to
their own sacred books. The books are really all on a level, with
much good and much bad in them all; but as the Hebrew was inspired to
proclaim that "the Lord thy God is one Lord" to the Hebrews, so was the
Hindoo inspired to proclaim to Hindoos, "There is only one Deity, the
great Soul." Either all are inspired, or none are. They stand on the
same footing. And we rejoice to-believe that one Spirit breathes in all,
and that His inspiration is ours to-day. "The Father worketh hitherto,"
although men fancy He is resting in an eternal Sabbath. The orthodox
tells us that, in rejecting the rule of morality laid down for us in the
Bible, and in trusting ourselves to this inspiration of the free Spirit
of God, our faith and our morality will alike be shifting and unstable.
But we reck not of their warnings; our faith and our morality are only
shifting in this sense, that, as we grow holier, and purer, and wiser,
our conception of God and of righteousness will rise and expand with our
growth. It was a golden saying of one of God's noblest sons that "no man
knoweth the Father save the Son:" to know God we must resemble Him,
as we see in the child the likeness of the parent. But in trusting
ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit of God, we are not building the
house of our faith on the shifting sand; rather are we "dwelling in a
city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Wisely was
it sung of old, "Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but
lost that build it." Vain are all efforts of priestly coercion; vain
all toils of inspired books; vain the utter sacrifice of reason and
conscience; their labour is but lost when they strive to build a temple
of human faith, strong enough to bear the long strain of time, or the
earthquake-shock of grief. God only, by the patient guiding of His love,
by the direct inspiration of His Spirit, can lay, stone by stone, and
timber by timber, that priceless fabric of trust and love, which shall
outlive all attacks and all changes, and shall stand in the human soul
as long as His own Eternity endures.
ON THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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