EXPLANATION OF THE METHOD

The contents of the preceding pages may be said to be preliminary to the definition or description of what the synthetic study of the Bible is; for by that name the method to be described has come to be called. The word "synthesis" suggests the opposite idea to the word "analysis." When we analyze a subject we take it apart and consider it in its various elements, but when we "synthesize" it, so to speak, we put it together and consider it as a whole. Now the synthetic study of the Bible means, as nearly as possible, the study of the Bible as a whole, and each book of the Bible as a whole, and as seen in its relation to the other books.

A very dear Christian friend and neighbor, the late A. J. Gordon, D.D., used to tell an amusing story of a conversation with a deacon of a church for colored people in his proximity. He asked the deacon how the people liked their new pastor, and was surprised to hear him say, "Not berry much." When pressed for an explanation he added that the pastor told "too many 'antidotes' in the pulpit." "Why," said the doctor, "I'm surprised to hear that; I thought he was a great Bible man." "Well," replied the deacon, "I'll tell yer how 'tis. He's de best man I ebber seed to tak' de Bible apart, but he dunno how to put it togedder agin." Principal Cairns, I think it was, who heard this story, said it was the best illustration of the distinction between the constructive and destructive criticism to which he had ever listened. The synthetic study of the Bible, it may be said in a word, is an attempt to put it together rather than to take it apart.

To illustrate, I have always felt a sort of injury in the way I was taught geography; capes and bays and lakes and rivers were sought to be crowded on my understanding before I ever saw a globe. Should not the globe come first, then the hemispheres, continents, nations, capitals, and the rest? Does not a view of the whole materially assist in the comprehension of the parts? Is it not vital to it, indeed? And history -- what is the true method of its study? Is it not first the outline history of the world, then its great divisions, ancient, mediaeval, modern, then the separate peoples or kingdoms in each, and so on? How could you hope to interest a child in botany who had never seen a flower? How would you study a picture of a landscape? Would you cover the canvas with a cloth and study one feature of it at a time? What idea of it would you obtain under such circumstances? Would you not rather say, "Hang it in the proper light, let me get the right position with regard to it, and take it all in at a single glance, fasten the whole of it at once on the camera of my consciousness, and then I shall be able and interested afterward to study it in detail, and to go into the questions of proportion, and perspective, and shading, and coloring and all that"? Is it not the failure to adopt the corresponding plan in Bible study which accounts in large measure for the lack of enthusiastic interest in its prosecution on the part of the people?

It is assuring to discover that the American Bible League, which promises to do much to quicken Bible study among the people along lines of faith in its integrity as the revealed Word of God, has reached almost precisely the same conclusion as to method. The esteemed secretary of that league, Rev. D. S. Gregory, D.D., LL.D., a man of wide experience in educational and literary lines other than those of the promulgation of Bible truth, charges the present ignorance of the Bible, "everywhere in evidence," to the failure of the old methods of its study. To quote his words in the "Bible Student and Teacher":

"The fragmentary method was tried for a generation or two. We were kept studying the comments upon verse after verse, on the tacit assumption that no verse had any connection with any other verse, until we wearied of that, and would have no more of it.

"So the lesson systems came in, and we have had series upon series of such systems, showing that men deeply felt that there was need of system in the study of the Bible. But these systems have been artificial, all of them; the latest of all the most so of all. The men who have been engaged in preparing them deserve our gratitude. They have done the best they could, doubtless; and we will look for more light and improvement for the time to come. But you hear everywhere that the people are weary of lesson systems. They are so because the systems are artificial, and because they do not take you directly to the Bible as the Word of God, but rather by means of most useful lesson leaves and other devices take you away from it.

"And it is impossible to grasp the system, however valuable it may be. You study in seven years your three hundred and fifty lessons in a so-called system; and at the end of the seven years the best memory in Christendom has been found unable to hold that system so as to tell what has been taught in that time. When you have passed on from each lesson you have lost its connection with the Bible, and lost the lesson, too."

It is the judgment of this same observer that these "fragmentary methods" account, in part, for the assault of the rationalistic critics upon the work of the Sunday school. "There was a call for something better, a 'vacuum' in the minds of teachers and professors in charge of instruction in the Bible, and just at the psychological moment there came all this German material -- interesting, ingenious, imaginative, ready to fill that vacuum. The two needs meet, and so we have had our recent development of the critical system of studying and presenting the Bible, which they are seeking now to introduce into all the schools and colleges and Sunday schools.

"That critical method has taken the Bible apart into bits and scraps and scattered it to the ends of the earth, as we have heard and have reason to know. When one comes upon its results he feels that he does not know exactly where he is."

Men hate bits and scraps, as this writer says, and as Bible teachers we should bring our methods into harmony with their natural constructive sense. Like the expert mountain climber, let us take them to the highest peak first, that they may see the whole range, and then they can intelligently and enthusiastically study the features of the lower levels in their relation to the whole. The opposite plan is confusing and a weariness to the flesh. Give people to see for themselves what the Bible is in the large, and then they will have a desire to see it in detail. Pat a telescope in their hands first, and a microscope afterwards. Martin Luther used to say that he studied the Bible as he gathered apples. He shook the tree first, then the limbs, then the branches, and the and after that he reached out under the leaves for the remaining fruit. The reverse order is monotonous in either case -- studying the Bible or gathering apples.