OBJECTIONS ON MORAL GROUNDS.

Actions deemed censurable, or laws and principles of action regarded as immoral, are found in Scripture: therefore it is argued that it cannot be inspired. Most of these points of objection are really urged, as by Tom Paine and Ingersoll, against accepting the Scripture as from God in any sense at all. It is thought, by some defenders of the Bible, that the defence is made easier and more impregnable by adopting a view of Inspiration, which gives up these to the assaults of the enemy, as only belonging to the human element, for which the divine is not responsible. These things are thrown overboard, as tubs to the whale, while the ship, lightened of them, pursues its course unimpeded. A wiser course, it seems to us, is to meet the difficulties squarely.

1. The objections on moral grounds to the actions narrated may be classified under four different heads. It may be doubtful, sometimes, to which class a particular transaction should be referred, — but the general propriety of the distinction proposed is clear.

a. Many acts are recorded without specific censure that are certainly not approved. Their occurrence in the narrative gives no moral sanction to them, either expressed or implied. Every one con cedes that in most cases this is so. It is claimed, however, that in certain objectionable acts, such a sanction is implied, as in the cases of Jephthah's daughter, the killing of Sisera, and Rahab's false hood. We think that in these there is no divine sanction of the conduct referred to. Others prefer to admit the commendation, and to justify the actions. Opinions may differ, as to that. Practically, however, the difficulty remains substantially the same, whatever view of Inspiration we adopt.

b. Some of the actions objected to are not really censurable, when properly examined. The slaying of Agag, the Amalekite king, by Samuel (1 Samuel xv. 33), the “spoiling” of the Egyptians by the Israelites on their departure (Exodus xii. 35, 36), the alleged falsehood of Elisha to the Syrian army that came to take him (2 Kings vi. 19), may be most probably regarded as instances of this sort. Agag deserved death for his manifold slaughters and rapines, and had been divinely condemned. Samuel was but the executioner of a penalty sanctioned at once by human and by divine law in such a case. As to the " spoiling of the Egyptians, " there is no countenance in the original to the idea of borrowing and lending unfortunately and erroneously suggested by our common translation. The Israelities asked (Rev. Version), and the Egyptians gladly gave, to get rid of these terrible people, whatever they asked. There is no implication of any promise or obligation to return the things given, no fraud or deceit in the case. Elisha’s conduct might be regarded as among the stratagems allowable in war; but aside from that, he did lead them to the man whom they sought, as he said he would; and he dismissed them without harm.

c. Some actions, which would now and ordinarily be wrong, were right under the peculiar circum stances of the case, or were made right by specific divine authority, modifying the general law. In stances of this kind may be found in the marriage of brothers and sisters in the beginning of the race, the extermination of the Canaanites under Joshua, the imprecations in the Psalms and Prophets by inspired men, where God's retributive interposition is denounced or implored against foul and persecuting cruelty.

d. There are numerous cases where, though the general character or conduct of persons is approved, no sanction is given to the various errors or the crimes into which they fell. It is sufficient to mention, without further comment, the cases of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, David, Peter. They were good men, — but, as all others on earth, imperfect good men.

2. Besides specific actions like these, in regard to which the principles of explanation are clear, whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the particular view to be taken in each case, there are more general moral objections on the ground that morally faulty conceptions, enactments, or institutions are inwrought into the Scripture; that, in certain of the writings (those of Solomon especially) a low moral tone prevails, not religious but purely selfish, prudential, and worldly; and that in others such fierce, bloody, and cruel ideas are sanctioned, or positively inculcated, as are in consistent with divine authorship.

Special objection is made to the Old Testament teachings with reference to polygamy, divorce, war, and slavery, and to such laws as that of strict retaliation upon a malicious false swearer, death for the idolater or seducer to idolatry, etc.

As to the law of retaliation, like for like, it is sufficient to say that it is difficult to see how a fairer retribution could be assigned, or one more likely to deter from such a crime, than that a malicious perjurer, who expected by his false swearing to injure another, should have exactly that same suffering inflicted upon him that he thought to bring on the other. A rigid law strictly enforced is mercy to the innocent, however hard upon the guilty; and is far more beneficial to those who might otherwise have been criminals, by deterring them from crime, than impunity in wrong -doing would be.

In reference to the punishment for idolatry, it is to be remembered that the Jewish state was a theocracy; and that, in a government where God was the King, promoting idolatry was high treason, and fitly to be punished by the highest penalty known to the law.

As to polygamy, easy divorce, slavery, and war, they all existed in the state of society into which the earliest revelations came. They were modified, controlled, and have been greatly ameliorated by the progressive influence of the Mosaic and the Christian systems. They have not yet been entirely abolished. The complaint against the Bible is, that it did not instantaneously and at the outset annihilate evils, already intrenched in such strong holds of human passion and interest and habit as even the boasted Nineteenth Century cannot utterly demolish. If it be said that any partial correction of evil is compromise and connivance, — that every thing proceeding from God must be absolutely perfect, and that everything temporary, transitional, preparatory, must be ascribed to the fallible human instruments, and not to the divine Designer who used them, — we reply that we do not concede these points. God does make millions of incomplete, imperfect things, of all shades and degrees approximating perfection; He does correct evils progressively and gradually; and it is His wisdom, and not the folly or mistake of the instrument employed, which secures the adaptation of the successive phases and stages of Revelation to the needs of mankind. The skill of an architect may be expended as well upon the temporary scaffolding as the permanent structure, and may be seen as truly in the rough foundation as in the polished column or carved ornaments.

The relative imperfection of parts of a progressive system may be an element of that real perfection which consists in its adaptation as a whole to the people and the circumstances for which it was designed, and to the object which it was to accomplish. Taking men as they were, sunk and degraded in ignorance and vice, it was necessary for their deliverance that God should stoop to their need; should construct a ladder, the lowest rounds of which should not be too far above the Slough of Despond in which they were sinking; should send down a law that would reach them, and lift them up, where they were. Would it have been more divine had it stopped short of them, in order that it might conform to some abstract conception which we may imagine of perfection? Certainly not.

The success of the divine moral government as a unity, and yet a progressive unity, was dependent on such a use of gradual steps and processes. As Dr. Ladd has well said, — "Imperfect human ways of thinking and speaking, and ethically low and imperfect customs, institutions and laws may be taken up into, and more or less changed and assimilated by, the forces of revelation and inspiration. Such must the historical process, indeed, be, if God is to get his moral and religious ideas realized in human life. . . . . It resembles all the methods of the divine government, to take man in hand for legal discipline in the condition in which he is found, and to deal with him by starting from this condition.” (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, I. 476.)

But if we thus recognize " these concrete divine words and definite commands as the forms into which the divine ideas cause the crude material to crystallize"; if the fact that the ideas take these forms is, indeed," as Dr. Ladd says, “a proof of their divine origin and nature”; if in this adaptedness to man's case consists their perfection for their purpose, and if this relative imperfection was really necessary to its end, and wisely, mercifully, lovingly, adapted to that end, — why must we ascribe that peculiarity to the fallible man rather than to the all-wise God? Why attribute this exact suitableness in the instrument for its end to the instrument itself, and account it a token of fallibility, rather than to Him who both made and chose and used the instrument, and shows His wisdom thereby?

The imperfection, then, in these laws and institutions, we admit; the immorality we deny. And if the Mosaic law not only recognizes its own preparatory and partial and incomplete nature, but points to and provides for its own completion in the subsequent stages of revelation, this seems to us far from indicating an origin inferior to the mind of Him who saw the end from the beginning, and had it in view in the very first steps of his divine self-revealing.

We may be permitted to quote and adopt, on this subject, the forcible words of Rev. Dr. Frederic Gardner, of the Berkeley Divinity School, Connecticut.

“Revelation was progressive, because only in that way was it possible that man could receive it. No where is it possible for him to attain, or even to comprehend, perfect truth at a bound. He is obliged to gain first one elementary fact or principle, and then by means of this to advance to another, which must often seriously modify his conception of the first. In the study of language, he must master the rule before he can learn the exception. The Ptolemaic system in astronomy was the necessary means of systematizing observations until they should lead to the Copernican; the Copernican must begin by the assumption of circular orbits and uniform motions of the planets, until these could lead to the discovery of elliptical orbits and the doctrine of the radius vector. Still our present knowledge is imperfect. The law of gravity and the observed facts of astronomy are not in perfect ac cord. Each new discovery, as of the asteroids and of Neptune, brings about a closer harmony; but we can not expect to see in nature a perfect realization of the law until we can look out upon its completeness from the footstool of the throne of the Omniscient. The same thing is true of chemistry and of all other natural sciences, and indeed of all human knowledge. As already said, the elements, the most essential points, must be thoroughly fixed in the mind before it can receive their modifications. Were the process reversed, and the fuller truth set at once before the untrained thought, the result could only be disastrous, and positive misconceptions take the place of simple imperfect apprehension. The child now, as well as the race in its childhood, must learn the unity of God, before it can be profitably, or even safely, taught the doctrine of the Trinity. Any other course will be sure to lead to the error of Tritheism.” — GARDINER's Old and New Testament in their Mutual Relations, p. 49.

Substantially the ideas above suggested apply to the other allegations against the morality of the Bible. We must be allowed, however, before passing from the subject, to protest against the charge that certain of the Proverbs “show so much of shrewdness as scarcely to escape the charge of being immoral, when considered from the Christian point of view (see Proverbs xvii. 8, xviii. 16, xxi. 14).” These are simply statements of what is a fact of common observation and experience, that gifts are both used effectively and abused; they do not give any commendation or advice of bribery. Also we fail to discover any “asceticism” in Paul's judicious suggestions to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians vii.). They seem to us quite suit able, as he said, “by reason of the present distress, and not at all out of harmony with the cheerful views of God and man, of human life and enjoyment, in his discourse at Lystra (Acts xiv. 17), or his charge to the rich (1 Timothy vi. 17).

That the record of religious experiences, of the conflicts of minds grappling with the great problems of life and of thought, is not unfit for a revelation designed for the instruction of those who are called to similar experiences and conflicts, is apparent enough. There is no more effective way of teaching the ignorant, guiding the perplexed, and comforting the despondent or tempted, than by such examples. Yet the use of this very method in Psalms like the sixth has been regarded as an exhibition of “moral feebleness amounting almost to cowardice," and in the seventy -third as a “com plaint against the divine dealing," regardless of the triumphant issue of these conflicts of soul indicated in Psalms vi. 9 and lxxiii. 17-26. Dr. Ladd, though censuring these passages, says very forcibly and justly in another place: —

“In these cases (of religious experiences] we surely can find no fault either with the contents of the writing, or with the moral consciousness of the author, for furnishing to us an accurate and sympathetic picture of facts. Even the saints, both of ancient and of modern times, do often doubt the word of the Lord, waver in their judgment of his justice and mercy, and wander in the dark places of rebellion and despair. The story and the picture of these experiences may well form a part of the ethico-religious contents of Sacred Scripture; for the use of the story and the picture have, in all subsequent times, been both ethically and religiously purifying. And when the narrator of the experience, or the painter of the picture, comes at last into the confidence of trust and into clearness of moral vision, we may well believe that the Spirit of all truth and light has been with him all the way. We may well assign the record of such moral and religious experiences to a notable position among the revealed ethico-religious truths of the Bible. Such remarks as the foregoing are more or less applicable to the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, to many of the Psalms, to numerous portions of the prophetic and historical writings, and to certain pas sages of the New Testament." — LADD, I. 466.

We need scarcely add anything to these truthful and appropriate suggestions.

Our reply so far has been limited to discussing, first, the particular actions complained of as immoral, and, secondly, the general objections to the ethical teachings of the Bible. It is time that we turn to a larger view, and contemplate those teachings, not in fragments or scraps, but as a whole.

3. The moral grandeur of the ethics of the Bible, whether taken singly as a system, or com pared with any other system that has ever been presented to man, bespeaks its divine origin. In the search for flaws on the beautiful vase, men may fail to observe its matchless symmetry, its richly variegated hues, and the skilful blending of tints. In looking for spots in the sun, one may be blind to the magnificence of that glorious orb itself. And thus we may be so absorbed in finding, or even in refuting, paltry objections against the ethics of the Bible, as to fail to take those impressive and affecting views that we should of its sublime moral teachings.

It remains a fact, that after all the highest exertions of the human mind on moral questions, and all the wildest vagaries of invention and combination, no moral teaching has ever been derised which has so ennobled man, so purified life, so liberated captives and overthrown tyranny, so lifted up the degraded and invigorated the weak, so comforted the bereaved and animated the despairing. During an age when comparatively enlightened and cultivated nations were still groping in darkness on moral questions, the Hebrews received, and have transmitted to all succeeding ages, a code of ethics that still furnishes the foundation for all ethical teaching for mankind. There is such simplicity, such grandeur, such regal breadth of control, such divine adaptation to the human heart, in the Decalogue and the subsequent precepts based upon it, as to cast utterly into the shade all the injunctions and advices that have come from heathen sources, and make them seem entirely puerile and empty. Every renewal or acceleration of moral life in the world, every quickening of worn -out nationalities, or amelioration of savage tribes, may be traced directly to the influence of the Bible; and the decadence which has occurred, in numerous distressing cases, in Christendom itself, is no less distinctly connected with the neglect of the Word, with departure from its plain precepts, and with holding it back systematically from the people.

By their fruits ye shall know them. “The in fallible test of all religious teaching,” says L. Abbott, “is its practical result in the lives of those that receive it. The answer to modern eulogists of Buddhism and Confucianism is India and China." The most terrible and overwhelming refutation of Atheism is France in the Revolution. The most invincible argument against the substitution of the Church of Rome for the authority of God's Word is sullen, stagnant, sinking Spain. And the effect of even the partial introduction of the Scriptures is to be seen in the awakening of Italy, and the dawn of a brighter day for that priest-ridden land.