Speak Lord; thy servant heareth!

* * * * *

   It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated the
   only question is; Is it true in and for itself?

   Hegel:  “Philosophy of History,” Part III.:  Sec.  III.:  Ch.  II.

With reference to things in the Bible, the question whether they are genuine or spurious is odd enough.  What is genuine but that which is truly excellent, which stands in harmony with the purest nature and reason, and which even now ministers to our highest development?  What is spurious but the absurd and the hollow, which brings no fruit—­at least, no good fruit.

   Goethe:  “Conversations,” March 11,1832.

No article of faith is injured by allowing that there is no such positive proof, when or by whom these and some other books of holy Scripture were written, as to exclude all possibility of doubt and cavil.

   Watson’s “Apology for the Bible,” Letter IV.

VI.

The Right Historical Use of the Bible.

The principle of development involves also the existence of a latent germ of being—­a capacity or potentiality striving to realize itself....  What Spirit really strives for is the realization of its Ideal being.....

The profoundest thought is connected with the personality of Christ—­with the historical and external; and it is the very grandeur of the Christian religion that, with all this profundity, it is easy of comprehension by our consciousness in its outward aspect, while, at the same time, it summons us to penetrate deeper.

   Hegel:  “Philosophy of History,” pp. 57, 344. [Bohn.]

Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity as it glistens and shines forth in the gospel!

   Goethe:  “Conversations,” March, 11,1832.

VI.

The Right Historical Use of the Bible.

   “When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His
   Son.”—­Galatians, iv. 4.

St. Paul condensed the philosophy of Hebrew history into a metaphor.  Israel travailed in birth with Christianity.  In the mind of the nation was begotten, of the Most High, a conception of ethical religion, whose gestation was a process of centuries.  The period of parturition came, and a universal religion was born into the world; bodied, as religion needs must be, in a man, Jesus, the Christ.

   “When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His Son.”