139
March 1927
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
400,000 slaves sweating, toiling, bleeding, rotting, dying, to make possible the life of the 20,000 citizens! In this our day, civilization has come to mean that order of life in which the highest good of the highest number may be realized. We are all seeing that, and moving towards it. Well, that is the direct outcome of all that you find in this Book. Let me mentally push you back through the years to July, 1914. You see where I want to put you for a moment—behind the war. I would ask you to get back to the mentality of that period; and I would ask you to point to three countries where this ideal of civilization had reached its highest levels. No one could deny that civ ilization had reached its highest level in Great Britain, the United States, and Germany. And that civilization re sulted from the reception of this Book by the people, and from the fact that this literature had been given to the people in their own tongue. When I went to school, we were taught history, and it consisted chiefly in learning the dates on which battles were fought and lost, or won, dates on which kings sat on the throne, and dates when, by the goodness of God, they died. The history of a coun try is the history of its people, and the history of a peo ple is the history of the thinking of a people. M orality is R ooted in R eligion When John Wycliffe gave the Bible to England, he translated it, not from the original, but from the Vulgate. How many of you know John Wycliffe’s introduction to his Bible ? It is in the British Museum. Sixty years ago, or thereabouts, Abraham Lincoln told the American people that the true ideal of life was government of the people, by the people, for the people—under God. The inter esting thing is that Abraham Lincoln was not the com poser of that revealing phrase. You will find it in the introduction of John Wycliffe’s Bible, and Lincoln knew Wycliffe’s introduction. On you go again until you come to Tyndale. When his work was completed, the printing press came, and England began to read. A new conception of life dawned for her. What about Germany ? And when you talk and think about Germany, do not always think about her war lords—think of Martin Luther. Her greatness came when she got the Bible in her own tongue. “But what about her failure?” someone says. It is time we stopped fling ing stones. We are all going that way. Germany deliber ately, by her philosophy, turned her back upon this Book. The Bible stands from beginning to end for this as an ethical conception—that morality is rooted in religion; that there are no sanctions sufficiently powerful to compel, or impel, right behaviour between man and man, except
W here to M ake D istinctions Let me touch upon the first, because it is the one that receives most dogmatic assertion, and apparently, most unanimous agreement-—that we have outgrown the Bible scientifically. There are two principles I would like to lay down. The first i s :■ Draw a clear distinction between the ascertained facts of science dnd the unproved hypothe ses of investigators. Hypotheses are perfectly permis sible on their way to the discovery of facts, but, while per missible, they are not to be accepted as final facts until they are proven. The other thing I would ask you to do is to draw a clear distinction between what your Bible says and what some people say it says. It is not always the same thing. If you start your investigations on those lines, I shall have no anxiety as to the issue. I say this after forty-one years’ study of the Bible. There are no discrepancies whatever between the ascertained facts of science and those things that the Bible really says. In the Bible we have a moral conception which has created the great civilizations of the past two thousand years. In the Bible we have a conception of God which has created all the philanthropies that are at work in the world today. In the Bible we have a conception of man which has created in the human mind a discontent with, false conditions of life, which discontent has been the in spiration of all reforms. In the Bible we have the declara tion that the God of the universe has made a way by which derelict humanity may be re-born. In Short, in the Bible we have the Biblical conception of morality, the Biblical interpretation of God, the Biblical interpretation of man, and the Gospel. These are things of national value, and if -we lose any of them, we lose the real secret of our strength. T he O nly R eal C ivilization First, in the Bible we have the conception of morality which has issued in the great civilizations of the past two thousand years. The world has never yet seen a real civilization. That will only come when the kingdom of God cpmes in all its perfection. I speak of civilization as that order of life in which the highest good of the high est number is realized. Let me refer you to the ancient Athenian civilization. I would like to give you the figures of Athenaeus. At the census of Demetrius, he said that in Athens there were about 21,000 citizens, free citizens, living on the sunlit slopes of the city, basking amid its flowers, discussing its philosophies, entering into its high revelry by day and by night, and having no need to toil— free and emancipated. He says that at the same time there were in residence, sharing in the life and glory of Athens, 10,000 students. And, listen! there were also
“Light” , Thou Sun of Righteousness Divine Thy radiant glory through me shine; I would light up the Calvary way That turns all darkness into day.
love
Thy light within brings warmth and To my whole being—from above; O use me, Lord, a light to be, That others might my Saviour see.
Just as Thou wilt; Thy choice is mine; I’m not my own, for I am Thine; At Thy disposal, loos’d by Thee, Thy will be done, dear Lord, in me.
—N ellie A. M oyes .
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