It has made the sacred ark of Israel so vulnerable that its defenders dare not challenge the great Goliath of the Philistines, who, year by year, comes forth to strut before the armies of the saints in ridicule of that they hold so dear; and thus it is to be held responsible for the loss of the young men who throw away their ancestral faith and go over to the apparently victorious side of Unbelief.

It has slid in a false bottom to men’s faith; shoving in a supposititious revelation of miracle above the real revelation which is in nature and in man, and in the Christ as the ideal man; and thus holds back that reconstruction of belief which Providence is forcing on, as It is shaking all things, to settle faith upon the everlasting verities:  whereon religion, planting its feet on the solid rock, may lift its head into the skies, and worship Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “Our Father who art in Heaven.”

In the name of religion let it die!

Then there will be a resurrection, and the Bible will live again, clothed in a higher form for our most rational reverence.  All that ever made the Bible a Sacred Book, lives on to-day and will live on while these books exist.  Holy men of old spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost.  They were most truly inspired.  The Biblical writers recorded a real revelation.  These books hold for us the words of God.  The Word of God speaks to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

These spiritual realities, no criticism can touch.  And these spiritual realities make the Bible.

Book of our Fathers, venerable and sacred, speak still to our souls those words proceeding from out the mouth of God on which man liveth!

II.

The Real Bible.

“Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,—­
The canticles of love and woe.

* * * * *

The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o’er him planned.

* * * * *

Himself from God he could not free.”

The Problem.

The most original book in the world is the Bible....  The elevation of this book may be measured by observing how certainly all observation of thought clothes itself in the words and forms of speech of that book....  Whatever is majestically thought in a great moral element instantly approaches this old Sanscrit....  People imagine that the place which the Bible holds in the world it owes to miracles.  It owes it simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other book.—­Emerson, The Dial, October, 1840.

II.