And when the leaves of the Book shall be unrolled, And when paradise shall be brought near, At the end of another Súrah, and one of the latest in point of time, this fine passage occurs: 'God! there is no God but He, the Living, the Eternal. Slumber doth not overtake Him, neither sleep; to Him belongeth all that is in heaven and earth. Who is he that can plead with Him but by His own permission? He knoweth that which is past, and that which is to come unto them, and they shall not comprehend anything of His knowledge but so far as he pleaseth. His throne is extended over heaven and earth, and the upholding of both is no burden unto Him. He is the Lofty and Great.' Again: 'It is God who hath ordained the night for your rest, and the day to give you light: verily God is rich in bounties to most men; but most men render not the tribute of thanks. 'This is God your Lord, Creator of all things; no god is there but He: why then do ye turn away from Him? Again: 'O my son! observe prayer, and enjoin the right and forbid the wrong, and be patient under whatever shall betide thee for this is a bounden duty. And distort not thy face at men; nor walk thou loftily on the earth; for God loveth no arrogant vain-glorious one. 'But let thy pace be middling; and lower thy voice; for the least pleasing of voices is surely the voice of asses.' And as a last quotation : 'There is no piety in turning your faces towards the east or the west, but he is pious who believeth in God, and the last day, and the angels, and the scriptures, and the prophets; who for the love of God disburseth his wealth to his kindred, and to the orphans, and to the needy, and the wayfarer, and those who ask, and for ransoming; who observeth prayer, and payeth the legal alms, and who is of those who are faithful to their engagements when they have engaged in them, and patient under ills and hardships, and in time of trouble; these are they who are just, and these are they who fear the Lord.' CHAPTER XIII. ON THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. IN the remarks which were made on the right use of legends of the past, I promised to show you why the Bible should be read as we read other books. It is a common notion that the Bible has to be treated in some different way; and owing to that chiefly, it is, although one of the most read, yet the most misread of books and the least understood. The care which has to be applied, the free, full use of the powers of the mind which has to be made to enable us to get at the meaning of any book, is often most strangely withheld by people when reading the Bible. The fact has already come before you that there are several book-religions in the world, and this will have caused you to ask in what way the book on which our Christian religion is founded differs from the books on which other religions are founded. For it is clear that what Christians believe concerning the Bible, namely, that it is the work of men specially helped by God, Who made use of them to reveal truths needful for us to know and which none of us could ever have found out for himself, and that it is free from the errors and defects which every other book contains; is believed in a still more intense degree by the Brahmans concerning the Veda, by the Muslims concerning the Korân, and so on. The knowledge of this renders it needful for us to enquire whether our belief is ill or well grounded, whether we have surer proof of its truth than the Brahman has of his, for to neglect this is to confess that we shrink from comparing the Bible with the Veda, fearful lest it might suffer thereby, and the grand truths which it contains become less dear to us. There are plenty of give an account of the the order in which the are believed to have been written, of the supposed dates and places, of the names of the authors, and like matters relating to its wonderful history. All these may here be passed by and give place to a books within reach which contents of the Bible, of books which compose it few simple facts which are more or less known, but which are much overlooked, and upon which all proof as to the value of the Bible must ever rest. The first of these is that the Bible was produced like every book; men wrote it. It is made up of a number of works of the most varied kind; history, poem, proverb, prophecy, epistle; all written by learned or unlearned men, many of them unknown to one another, since they lived in different lands and centuries apart; each as he wrote his history or poured forth his song little thinking that it would form part of a book which has been precious to millions of men for hundreds of years, which 'goes equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king; which is woven into the literature of the scholar and colours the talk of the street; which mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life; which blesses us when we are born; gives names to half Christendom; rejoices with us; has sympathy for our mourning;' a book, every portion of which, strange to say, has been regarded as of equal value; whether it be the Book of Esther or the Epistle to the Romans. |