him. This very domestication of literature was a potent influence to disintegrate men's iron-bound views of the Bible. A severe blow the theory of verbal inspiration had already received, when it was seen that the long-accepted form of words must be opened to the chances of revision and even rejection; and now that the common mind was entering into the springs and motives of literary thought, how could that theory maintain itself unchanged? Nay, human hands must have wrought at that Bible, too; it was not a table of stone, an oracle of thunder; it was - what was it but a work of genuinely human literature? Whatever more it was, this at least could be traced there, with all that it implies. Thus a second spell was broken, the spell by which it was becoming an impossible book; and men are learning to come close to it and talk with it, to walk with its ideas and expressions as with any others, to approach it with the comrade spirit they would accord to any author's work.

That the Bible is literature, with the forms, the artistry, the hidden vitalities of word and figure and rhythm involved in literature — this, strange to say, is a very recent discovery; and this idea it is which the latest versions and editions are engaged in naturalizing. To do so is a gradual process, for there are many sides to it. The most obvious initial step to it is to print the Bible like another book to work the text clear of that exceeding fineness of print, those double columns, and that clutter of verse-numbers, italics, and numberless marks of marginal reference. A step toward this result was taken by the Revised Version by dividing into paragraphs instead of verses; though its paragraphs are hardly determined as real literary divisions- they are too long and cumbrous. The Cambridge Paragraph Bible is, I think, better in this regard.

When a new idea like this of the Bible as literature is introduced, it has to go through a certain stage of coltishness before it finds its true pace and place. It is apt to exploit phases of the subject which turn out to be side ideas rather than the main issue. As part illustration of this I must regard Professor Moulton's Modern Reader's Bible, which I think were better entitled The Modern Literary Student's Bible, an edition of the Revised Version in little handy volumes, with the text printed according to its literary forms, prose and poetic. As a commentary on forms it is suggestive and interesting; not always convincing; sometimes, it seems to me, what I may call twiddling. Its main service to the common reader is in helping him realize that the Bible is really a book like other books. But it does not take very far in assuring him he is reading a sonnet, or in arranging the Bible phrases like an inventory. Another aspect of this same literary coltishness, valuable as a commentary rather than as a constant companion, is seen in two versions now in process of publication: The Twentieth Century Testament, and Ferrar Fenton's New Testament in Modern English; versions in the idiom of the modern novel and business item -

as it were a translation into United States. I do not wish to disparage them; they are seriously intended, and especially on such books as St. Paul's epistles give considerable elucidation. But it seems to me they have conjured up a bogey to fight when they launch their colloquial version in the melancholy conviction, as expressed by Ferrar Fenton, "that unless the Sacred Scriptures were translated afresh into current spoken English, a belief in the Christian Religion as a Faith would perish." Surely we are not at that pass yet; have we not the Authorized Version, the sweetest, purest English in the world, a Book that has smitten itself into the mind-tissue of the centuries, as the body of Christ is fabled to smite itself into the sacrament? No rattle of colloquialism can permanently replace that, with its associatlons sacred and esthetic; it is the form of sound words which underlies and survives the commentary.

Here, I think, is where, after our excursions and experiments, we are likely to rest. I am speaking now for the common folk, the rank and file, who must get their Bible from a version. When the question what the Bible means as literature is answered and they have become adjusted to the recognition therein implied, they will still twine their affection round the Book that comes to us from the spacious age of Shakespeare and has been seasoned along with him. To all its quaintnesses and naïve archaisms their deepened sense of literature will easily adapt itself. These others, Revised Versions and new translations, will stand on the shelf for consultation; but the book of the home and heart will continue to be the Authorized Version. Only, I hope to see it in the every-day form and print of other books; to relegate those verse numbers and italics and marginal references to the occasional volume of the shelf. I do not deny that it would cause a pang to see the limber-jacket Bible go; but if along with it that smug, high-buttoned-coat, Sunday suggestion should likewise take itself away, I could survive the loss. My ideal of a Bible to read, as a weekday and workday book, with its idea free to make its way, is most nearly answered in the so-called Eversley Bible, an edition of the Authorized Version in eight convenient volumes, neither bulky or diminutive, printed with fair, open page, the chapter and verse notation omitted, italics wholly banished, paragraphs and punctuation carefully determined, and spoken words in quotation marks. This seems to be almost a symbol of the classic Bible that is to be; that shall be read as a comfort and not as a duty; that shall come into man's heart not only through the religious sense but through all the channels of taste and beauty and eloquence and imagination, as well as through the instincts of practical sense and sturdy soundness which the nineteenth century has done so much to open.

A Bible so held and so published implies another way of reading, another kind of tenure in the human heart. I dare not say it will be learned so much by rote, or that the literal accuracy of particular phrases will play so large a part as it has since the days of the homo

ousians and the homoiousians. I dare not count overmuch on such a prevalence of the soaking-in process of meditation as we find in the good old days. Still all that desirable excellence could consist with a mere appreciation of the letter; and when the spirit of the Bible enters at every pore, and such subtle elements as made themselves felt when the jolting of revision disturbed them, there may still be something very vital left there. The version may be written deep in the heart of man, deeper even than word or dogma, just as it has proved itself to be inwoven deeply with history and literature. Let us not gather too gloomy an outlook from the seeming lack of Bible knowledge, or deplore it more than it deserves. The spirit of seventy-six and sixty-one inspired, even to supremest sacrifice, many a man who could not quote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And when today every public measure, every national or neighborhood enterprise, must from every corner of the land encounter a stern plea for the spirit of Christ; when aid and sympathy leap forth unstinted to meet disaster, and schools, asylums, hospitals, parks, libraries are devised for the humble and helpless; when even in far islands wars for humanity, and plans for justice, education and industrial expansion are conceived in veritable missionary spirit; we can forgive much ignorance of the letter, much short-coming in theological doctrine; there is vital Bible there, not a fetich; a version is there that he who runs may read. To make that version more legible, a power that shall take into its swell and sweep the whole man and the whole corporate life, becoming as it were a new Word made flesh- this we may hail as the duty and the glory of the time to come.

THE PREACHING FOR THE TIMES

REV. LAWRENCE PHELPS, LEOMINSTER.

1

Mr. Moderator, Fathers and Brethren, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Nearly four months ago a courteous invitation was received from your committee of arrangements, inviting me to speak upon the Preaching for the Times. Permit me to express publicly my appreciation of the honor conferred and to remind you all of a scene in the Holy Land.

Our Lord returns home near the close of a missionary tour in Galilee. The village folk do not care to give the young preacher a welcome. Jesus is evidently surprised, and learns a lesson in the psychology of the neighbor. The adage has become historic, and by your kind permission will be repeated in its most modern garb, as translated or paraphrased by our ablest twentieth century scholars, - a prophet is not acceptable in his own fatherland, or a prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house. So deeply ingrained in our own con

1 See page 19.

sciousness has this idea become, that our first instinct is to feel that one will not be understood in the home of one's childhood. Your graceful welcome comes to me in nature of a helpful surprise. We are assembled on sacred soil. The memories of yesterday almost overwhelm me. Only yesterday the preacher of preachers was expected to supply the pulpit. Of course the chapel was crowded to hear Professor Park. We waited not in silence, for the academy boys were there. Waited to see a venerable man with emaciated form and white hair, but the face alive with Hebrew roots, enter the pulpit, explain the unavoidable absence of the learned logician, and, forgetting the boys, give as his text: "What dost thou hear, Elijah?" We boys did laugh, for we wondered why Professor Elijah Barrows chose that verse for that occasion. I have wondered ever since, but presumed it was the "preaching for the times." Like a speck in the sky forming into a cloud, gathering, contracting, breaking, so do the memories of yesterday haunt me. Only yesterday, and a minister, noted for his scholarship and long prayers, entered the pulpit. The twenty minutes had lengthened to the half hour. In modern language we would say the time was up. So thought a young boy sitting on the front seat, who, in boy fashion, found the tin popgun and the bean and his own mouth and very irreverently forced the bean through the tin pop-gun in such a way as to hit Professor Stowe on the nose, and thus cause a very abrupt amen. I assume the "preaching for the times" necessitated the long prayer, and the young boy was simply a little too progressive. We must not linger over mere memory, for an honored instructor in this seminary was accustomed to say to the senior class in homiletics, that reminiscence was a sign of age. I should, however, be guilty of lack of loyalty to my dear and honored father, who was so kind and gentle to his children, and whom I miss and need more today than ever before, if I did not take this opportunity to thank his pupils for the many kindly words spoken to me of his work. To think of attempting to speak about the "preaching for the times" seems as impossible as it is incongruous, in view of the life's work of Professor Austin Phelps on Andover Hill. I doubt not that the same criticism will be passed on this paper that my good father gave after hearing me read a sermon especially prepared for an occasion similar to this, "My son, how could you be so foolish as to forget that your audience knew a great deal more about that subject than you did.”

These memories become to me translated incentives, infusing new life, transforming the yesterday and today with the forever of the "foolishness "of preaching. These memories are pardonable, because they resurrect into modern garb the ideals of yesterday. We live in a modern age, with a modern faith and a modern Christ. True also that preaching always must imply the thoroughness, thoughtfulness and thankfulness of a brain that has worked its best upon the theme, a heart that has loved its best to illustrate the thought, and a soul that has lived its best to experience the truths embodied.

Preaching is character. Preaching any time, anywhere, is life. Life both in the cloister and the street, life in the tenement and the palace, life in the peculiar half truth in modern Christian Science, and the modern struggle whereby the weakest can go to the wall, but rebound with the interrogation marks of God's goodness or the inevitable law of supply and demand. Life is found wherever humanity exists, and to preach is to touch humanity. Preaching is conduct. The three sins of self-exaltation, self-promotion, self-will, are more diabolical in their tenacity than the devils of Holy Writ, and accountable for any diminution of the power of thought, or weakness of influence in the pulpit, if such exist. This three-headed monster seems to convey, convert and contract these tendencies until the distinction between the true knowledge of the prophet and his easily acquired egotism is lost. Preaching is life touching life. Egotism is the I, conscious of its own self-importance. To touch humanity means the ability to live effectively. A few years ago I entered this chapel for the purpose of greeting the newly installed Bartlett Professor. I shall never forget the hand-clasp or those eyes filled with tears, as that true friend, Professor Churchill, met me and said, "Thank you, I shall try to teach my pupils to become true preachers of the life of self-sacrifice." An old idea was thus expressed in a new form. Our only question is this, — "What sort of preaching touches life?" Life is touched by magnetism and a much-abused idea called spirituality. Dr. Smith, in his able lectures at Yale University (no one anxious to touch life can afford to be without this book as a constant companion to the Bible), states in the introduction that "it is upon Christ's Bible and the church's Bible, Christ's fatherland and the church's fatherland, that we are called to estimate the effect of one of the most thorough intellectual processes of the time," and ends the work, as you will remember, with that beautiful wisdom vision of vice and virtue, with the forces of the universe on the side of the will that chooses virtue. "Given one pure spot and God's heart comes forth to teach, to lift, to restore." Dr. Smith thus defined spirituality for me. We shall speak in brief sentences of the magnetism and spirituality required in the preaching of the day. Above them all, like the upholding arms of the Almighty, underneath them all, like the restful presence of the Man of Galilee, must come the desire to touch the heart of God, to touch God, not in sentiment nor in bigotry, not in mere Bible reading nor in the mystery of repeating the Lord's Prayer, but in a brain able to think God's thoughts, in a mind willing to keep pace with the inevitable law of progress, in a soul competent to study constantly and thoroughly and create or recreate genuine thought, thought filled with power, because God himself lives and restores it. The preaching of the times must be magnetic. An illustration should illustrate, not arouse a sleepy audience or pander to the mental inertia of a half truth. Magnetism is power that must attract. To understand this term study again your chemistry, entering the