CHAPTER IX

THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE

We have studied the teachings of science concerning man and his environment, let us turn now to the teachings of the Bible.  And though eight chapters have been devoted to the teachings of science, and only one to the teachings of the Bible, it is not because I underestimate the importance of the latter.  It is more difficult to clearly discover just what are the teachings of Nature in science.  The lesson is written in a language foreign to most of us, and one requiring careful study; and yet once deciphered it is clear.  Science attains the laws of Nature by the study of animal and human history.  But this record is a history of continually closer conformity to environment on the part of all advancing forms.  The animal kingdom is the clay which is turned, as Job says, to the seal of environment, and it makes little difference whether we study the seal or the impression; we shall read the same sentence.  Environment has stamped its laws on the very structure of man’s body and mind.  And the old biblical writers read these laws, guided by God’s Spirit, in their own hearts, and in those of their neighbors, and in their national history, as the record of God’s working, and gave us concrete examples of the results of obedience and disobedience.  Hence the teaching of the Bible is always clear and unmistakable.

The Bible treats of three subjects—­Nature, Man, and God—­and the relations of each of these to the others.  I have tried to present to you in the first chapter the biblical conception of Nature and its relation to God.  In its relation to man it is his manifestation to us, and, in its widest sense, the sum of the means and modes through which he develops, aids, and educates us.  And in this conception I find science to be strictly in accord with scripture.

Now what is the scriptural idea of man?  Man interests us especially in three aspects.  He is a corporeal being; he is an intellectual being; he is a moral being, with feelings, will, and personality.

Man’s body.  Plato considered the body as a source of evil and a hindrance to all higher life.  And Plato was by no means alone in this.  The Bible takes a very different view.  Neglect of the body is always rebuked.  The only place, so far as I can find, where the body is called vile is where it is compared with the glorious body into which it is to be transformed.  “Your bodies,” writes Paul to the Corinthians, “are members of Christ,” “temples of the Holy Ghost.”  But the Bible teaches that the body is to be the servant, not the ruler, of the spirit.  “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection,” continues Paul.  Here again science is strictly in accord with scripture.