In a sense each Protestant Christian is entitled to make up a Bible of his own out of the books which record the historical discoveries of God.  He is not bound by the opinions of others, however many and venerable; and unless a book commends itself to his own spiritual judgment, he is under no obligation to receive it as the word of God to him.  As a matter of fact every Christian does make such a Bible of his own; the particular passages which “grip” him and reproduce their experiences in him, they, and they alone, are his Bible.  Luther was quickened into life by the epistles of Paul, but spoke slightingly of James; many socially active Christians in our day live in the prophets and the first three gospels, and almost ignore the rest of the Bible.  But individual taste, while it has preferred authors and favorite works, does not think of denying to Milton, or Wordsworth, or Shelley, their place among English classics; a social judgment has assigned them that.  A man who is not hopelessly conceited will regret his inability to appreciate a single one of the great authors, and will try to enlarge his sympathies.  The Christian will, with entire naturalness, be loyal to so much of the Bible as “finds him,” and humbly hope and endeavor to be led into ampler ranges of spiritual life, that he may “apprehend with all saints” the breadth, length, depth and height of the historic Self-revelation of God.

The Bible is thus a standard of religious experience.  If there is any question as to what man’s life with God ought to be, it can be referred to the life recorded in these books.  But men have often made the Bible much more; confusing experience with its interpretation in some particular epoch, they used the Bible as a treasury of proof texts for doctrines, or of laws for conduct, or of specific provisos for Church government and worship.  They forgot that the writers of the early chapters of Genesis, in describing their faith in God’s relationship to His world and to man and to history, had to express that faith in terms of the existing traditions concerning the creation, the fall, the deluge, the patriarchs.  Their faith in God is one thing; the scientific and historic accuracy of the stories in which they utter it is quite another thing.  They did not distinguish between Paul’s life with God in Christ, and the philosophy he had learned in Gamaliel’s classroom, or picked up in the thought of the Roman world of his day.  Paul’s religious life is one thing, his theology in which he tries to explain and state it is another thing.  They read the plans that were made for the organization of the first churches, and hastily concluded that these were intended to govern churches in all ages.  The chief divisions of the Church claim for their form of government—­papal, episcopal, presbyterian, congregational—­a Biblical authority.  The religious life of the early churches is one thing; their faith and hope and love ought to abide in the Church throughout all generations;