"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me." To the writer of the Psalm, these words were real and expressed the deepest conviction of his heart. His sense of relationship to God, experienced not in some wild ecstasy but continuously and throughout life, is the supreme fact of his experience. It unifies, transforms and animates the whole of his life and thought and action. This consciousness of God and the desire for closer union with Him permeates the minds of the Biblical writers, but closely related to it, so inseparably connected with it that it may even be described as an element of their religious experience, is the consciousness of the demand which God makes as the very condition of that communion. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness. "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.' Religion, according to the Biblical writers, cannot exist apart from, and must always manifest itself in, morality. The sense of God and His goodness creates in those who possess it a passion for righteousness. Lord, what love have I unto Thy law all the day long is my study in it." "O that my ways were made so direct: that I My delight shall be in Thy commandments; which Side by side with this passion for righteousness, there is an overwhelming sense of the failure to attain it. According to the Bible, the consciousness of sin, not as a mere mistake, but as a deliberate thwarting of the Divine will, is an essential element of religious experience.1 Isaiah's account of his call is typical. The vision of the Lord of Hosts opens his eyes so that he sees his own sin, and the sin of 1 See Essay VI. pp. 272-3, 278. his people. "Woe is me, for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. This, in fact, constitutes his call. He is called to fulfil in his own life and in the world around him that Divine will which is revealed to him in his perception of God and His holiness. But he feels he is not worthy of the mission which is entrusted to him. Conscious of his sin, he dare not go forth as the preacher of God's holiness, and it is not until his iniquity is taken away and his sin is purged that he can answer "Here am I; send me." It was the same with the writer of the 51st Psalm. It was according to the multitude of God's mercies, and His great goodness, that he perceived his own offences. He prays for forgiveness, the comfort of God's help, in order that his lips may be opened to show God's praise, and that he may teach His ways unto the wicked. Everywhere the sense of God carries with it a sense of vocation. Life is viewed as a conflict between good and evil, in which men are called to join. It is the working out of great issues, and the powers of darkness. are arrayed against the powers of light. But the victory is with God and with those who submit themselves to Him, for they shall receive "power from on high." Sure of God, they can throw themselves back on Him, with the assurance of ultimate triumph. It is, of course, really impossible to separate, even in thought, these various elements in the religious experience of the Biblical writers. They do not represent distinct and successive stages in the development of the religious consciousness: from the first they are united in a single progressive movement which is one of growing intensity and not of differentiation. With the different writers the different elements are differently emphasised, but for all of them religion is a life dominated and inspired by the knowledge of a Divine Power working within, a Power which fashions according to its will those who submit themselves to it. The religious man is the man who goes through life sure in his heart of the living God and of His love and care for men, with the determination to do God's will because God loves him and he loves God, and with the conviction that God will show him what that will is and, despite his constant and repeated failures, will enable him to perform it. It will be necessary later on to consider the origin of the religious experience of the Biblical writers and its value to us. For the moment, however, we are simply concerned with its existence as a fact, as the fact of supreme importance in relation to the Bible. It is the possession by the various writers of this religious experience, the same in its essential character throughout, which gives to the miscellaneous collection of books which form the canon a real unity, despite their superficial diversity. Separated though they are from one another by long intervals of time and by the different environments, intellectual and ethical as well as social, in which they find themselves, the writers are united by their conviction of the goodness of God and in their experience of His compelling and saving power. They do not all attain to the same height of religious insight. It would be absurd, for example, to place Leviticus and Esther on the same level as some of the Psalms or portions of Deutero-Isaiah. The religious experience of some of the writers is fuller and richer than that of others, but though it may vary in its intensity its character remains constant throughout, and the difference, where it exists, is one of degree and not of kind. It is one and the same faith which inspires all the writers and shines through the pages of their record. And the purpose with which they write is one and the same. They write in order that they may communicate to others that knowledge of God, that living faith, which they themselves possess, and that others may share in that conviction of God's righteousness 1 See below, p. 69. which has transformed and given meaning and purpose to their own lives. "These things are written that ye may believe; and that believing ye may have life." A necessity is laid upon them. The secret of God burns within their hearts, and they cannot rest till they have told it. "The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" Their message, of course, is addressed to the men of their own age, and of necessity it takes different forms to meet the different needs of different times. The faith which is held "in divers portions is expressed "in divers manners" and through divers forms. Sometimes the writers' aim is to embody and perpetuate their religion in legalistic and ritualistic enactments. Sometimes they use the past history of the race, the stories of its great teachers and leaders or of the origin of national institutions, as the vehicle of their message. It is not in the facts as mere events of past history that they are interested; but rather in those facts as manifesting God's eternal purpose and revealing His will. Their method is selective, and they could not always distinguish between mere legend and reliable traditions, and they idealise and freely adapt their material to meet their needs; and sometimes, as in Jonah and Job, they do not hesitate to employ a more conscious and direct form of parabolic teaching. Nor is it only the past which they endeavour to interpret. In the light of their trust in God and His goodness they try to explain the present, the facts of present experience which seem to run counter to their faith-the fact of sin and suffering, the apparent lack of coincidence between virtue and reward or they try to discover the religious significance of the great national crises through which they pass the rise of Assyria, the fall of Samaria, the exile, the disillusionment which followed the return from Babylon. Sometimes their message is primarily a message of hope, and with eyes fixed on the future they picture in vivid and highly symbolical language the glorious destiny of the nation and the good things which God has prepared for them that love Him. The predictive is no accidental element in prophecy. Life is not what it ought to be, and therefore, viewed from the religious standpoint, not what it must and will be. The day must come when God's will shall prevail, and "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" ; when God shall manifest His righteousness, and for His name's sake, and His people's sake, shall establish His kingdom. The Messianic expectation in all its varying forms, the later apocalyptic ideas, the gradually growing belief in a future life, the calling in a new world to redress the balance of the old-these are the product, and in some sense the measure, of this faith. Inevitably, of course, each writer expresses and interprets his faith in the thought-forms of his age, and, inevitably, as generation succeeds generation and knowledge advances, these change and develop. A living faith must express itself in a growing and developing theology. But theology is not religion, and it is important to make the distinction clear. Theology is the science of religion. It is the reflexion upon religious experience, the attempt to interpret, to understand and to systematise it. And as such it is necessarily subject to development with every development of man's understanding and knowledge. The same religious experience will be differently interpreted, not only at different times, but even by different individuals at the same time. The Professor and the Blacksmith, in so far as they are religious, may have the same religious experience, but their "theological" views, their "thoughts' about God, are and must be widely different. Το comprehend, to be able to understand and give adequate intellectual expression to one's religious experience-if and in so far as this is possible-is a higher state than not to comprehend it; but the depth of the experience |