After All These Centuries, is That Old Book Going to Fail Us? * ' Must We Look to Wells? By REV. JHENRY C. BUELL Long Beach, Calif.
Isa. 40:8— “The grass withereth, the flower fadoth, hut the -Word of our God shall stand forever.'' OME years ago an enterprising newspaper man wrote to one hundred men in England, representing various classes,-^ members of Parliament, peers of the realm, professional men, merchants and others, asking them the question: "If you were to be sent into three years’ solitary confinement, and could take with you only three books, what three would you select? Please name them in the order of your preference.” It is said that 98 out of the 100 men tioned the Bible as the first of the three books of their selection. As those addressed were not all Christian men, it was a remarkable tribute, to this old Book. There is living in England today a brilliant writer, Mr. H. G. Wells, who might have mentioned the Bible among the three, selected books only because the world has not yet a better Bible which he could take along. In his series of articles on “ The Sal vaging of Civilization,” which appeared' in “ The Saturday Evening Post,” Mr. Wells has written on “ The Bible of Civilization.” He admits that the civilization of the world is fast hastening to ruin, and in order to save it, we need,— a new Bible! We must have something with which to unify the world. We muSl have a universal language as a common me dium of instruction and discussion, and we need this new book which he calls “ The Bible of Civilization.” The reason for this need is that we
have outgrown the, old Bible,— says Mr. Wells. The old Bible has had its place in the world and has served a worthy purpose. “ It has formed a culture, and unified and kept together through many generations, great masses of people. It has been the basis of Jewish and Chris tian civilization alike,” but since the Bible left off, the world has gone 6n, and “ there are a multitude of modern problems— problems that enter inti mately into the moral life of all of us, with which the Bible does not deal”— and he goes on to mention some of these problems which include the establish ment of American independence, the. duties of a citizen at an election, the duties of a shareholder to the labor, employed by his company, find the age long feud of Russia and Poland! Our old Bible has done a wonderful work. “The civilization we possess could not havfe come into existence and could not have been sustained without it,” says Mr. Wells. But this .old Book no longef grips the community. It has lost its hold, and nothing has arisen to take its .place. “We want a Bible”;—a new Bible. “ We want a Bible so badly that we cannot afford to put the old Bible on a pinnacle, out of daily use” until the new Bible is created. And then the author gobs on to show the kind of a Bible we need for this educated and enlightened 20th century. The hew Bible will give us a new cosmogony. Man’s relation to the world as de scribed in Genesis is not suitable for today. We must have a Bible that will tell us the story,— not of man’s fall,—=-
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