Part 11 (2/2)
We must know, and know for a certainty that will leave no peradventure to arise as a troubling after-ghost, whether this Bible is, as Paul says it is, in truth, the Word of G.o.d; and the question will insistently repeat itself:
”How may we know the Bible _is_ the Word of G.o.d?”
The question need not make us tremble.
The answers are at hand.
The evidence is so great, its very wealth is an embarra.s.sment.
That evidence stated, detailed, a.n.a.lyzed and elaborated, would require--not a few pages--but whole libraries.
One broad and general proposition may be laid down.
It is this:
The Bible is proved to BE the Word of G.o.d when it is shown to be NOT the word of man; and it is proved to be not the word of man when it is shown to be--not such a book as a man WOULD write if he COULD; nor such a book as a man COULD write if he WOULD.
That it is not the word of man--not such a book as a man _would_ write if he could, is made clear enough by the picture it paints of the natural man.
This picture is so sharply drawn, the figures stand out in such living and apt delineation, that no one can mistake the import.
According to the Bible, man came direct from the hand of G.o.d. G.o.d created him body, soul and spirit--a tripart.i.te being. The soul was the person, the seat of appet.i.te and pa.s.sions. The spirit was the seat of the mind, the centre of reflection. Spirit and body were the distinct agents of the soul. The spirit, the agent to connect the soul with G.o.d--the body, the medium of the soul's manifestation or materialization in this world, and the instrument for its use and enjoyment. The mind, seated in the spirit, was intended, under the influence of the spirit, to be the governor and regulator of the soul--enabling the soul rightly to use its appet.i.te and legitimately to satisfy its pa.s.sions.
Thus organized, G.o.d set man up in the world to be his const.i.tutional, moral, spiritual and governmental image--his likeness morally--his image (his representative) administratively.
Man turned his back on G.o.d, listened to the appet.i.te of his soul, and surrendered to the demands of sensual hunger.
The soul, at once, sank down into the environment of the body. The mind sank down into the environment of the soul and became, henceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind ”sensual,” ”devilish,”
a mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimited gratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind, the spirit lost its vital relations.h.i.+p to G.o.d, lost its function as a connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will of G.o.d; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understand G.o.d; and feeling the influence of the mind, instead of influencing it, followed it in its downward course into the environment of the soul.
Out of this dislocation the soul came forth dominant over mind and spirit. Soul appet.i.te and soul desires became supreme; the body, the willing and active agent thereof. From this period on, man was no longer a possible spiritual being, but a ”natural” man. The word ”natural” is ”soulical.” In Scripture it is twice translated ”sensual.” The much-used word ”psychological” is a derivation of it.
In the Bible sense of the word, a psychological person is just the opposite of a pneumatical or spiritual person.
Man was now psychological, soulical, sensual. He had been transformed into a being no better than an _intellectual_ animal, and the slave of his physical functions. Instead of being the master of his appet.i.tes, he was mastered by them. His pa.s.sions intended, under right use, to be blessings, became curses; instead of angels, they became as demons. Instead of dwelling in the midst of his endowment in harmony with it and able to direct it, he found himself at its mercy, incessantly smitten by it and suffering his own equipment. Repudiating faith, walking by sight, talking of reason and governed by his senses, he threw himself open to invasion by the world, the flesh and the Devil.
As a result of his fall, man has become a degenerate, full of the germs of evil, ”every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only evil continually”--an incurable self-corrupter.
In him there is not one thing that commends him to a holy G.o.d; and even should he succeed in living a life of perfect morality, his best righteousness in the sight of G.o.d would be no better than a bundle of filthy and contagious rags.
There is no power within him by which he can change the essential character and determined trend of his life. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. All the effort that the most devoted and laborious of men might give to the culture of a hedgerow of thorns would not succeed in producing one grape. Though men spent life and fortune in cultivating a field of thistles, they would not gather a single fig. No sooner (says the Bible) can the natural man bring forth the fruit of righteousness unto G.o.d. The Ethiopian may change his skin, the leopard his spots, before a natural man can change himself into a spiritual man. ”The carnal mind is enmity with G.o.d; for it is not subject to the law of G.o.d, _neither indeed can be_.” ”The natural man (the word 'natural' is psuchikos, soulical) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of G.o.d: for they are foolishness unto him: _neither can he know them_, because they are spiritually (pneumatikos, _pneumatically_) discerned.” ”The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” meaning thereby that G.o.d alone can sound the depths of its measureless capacity for sin and iniquity; therefore, he says: ”I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins.”
The end of man is to die.
Such an end is not natural.
It is unnatural.
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