is exemplified by the elaborate ceremonial of Freemasonry, of Orange Lodges, and of the Salvation Army. It is strange that some of these bodies should object so strenuously to ceremonies in others while they practice them so assiduously themselves.

The truth is that there is nothing necessarily either right or wrong in ceremony by itself. It is right in so far as it expresses the ideals of worship in a decent and orderly manner, wrong if it tends to become a substitute for that worship of the spirit which is the only true source of acceptable service.

There is another aspect of external worship which must never be forgotten. We ought to give to God the very best of everything that we have. Our Lord deliberately accepted and endorsed this principle when He accepted the breaking of the alabaster box of precious ointment in His honour, and rebuked those who blamed it as an extravagance.

We cannot make the House of God beautiful, and maintain its services with all the striking and beautiful accessories of external worship, except at a cost to ourselves; and those who object to the externals of worship ought to make it clear by more than ordinary self-sacrifice that they do not object because of the expense and self-sacrifice that they entail.

We must not forget also that the externals of worship tend to link us to our fellow worshippers, and to promote a sense of companionship and brotherhood that is lacking in internal and self-centred worship. The externals of worship are meant for all, they appeal to common sentiments and lead up to common ideals, they bind men together vithout words in common aspirations, common supplications, and common hopes; whereas without them the worshippers are apt to be held apart in spiritual isolation. The real reason why many object to acts of outward reverence and worship is because some of them are practised by the Roman Catholic Church. This reason is absurd. We might as well object to use the Creed or the Lord's Prayer because the Roman Church uses them.

There are a number of external acts used by the Roman Church which as loyal members of the Church of England we have no right to use, but it is because we believe that they are wrong in themselves, not because they are in use in the Church of Rome. That, in and by itself, is no argument whatever against them. Each must be judged on its own merits.

On the whole there can be little doubt that external acts of reverence and worship are a real help to most people in deepening the spirit of devotion, and making worship more real and full of interest. Of course they have their dangers, but the abuse of a thing does not take away its rightful use. We should beware of being swayed by our prejudices, and jumping hastily to the conclusion that everything to which we are used must be right, and that those things to which we are not used must be wrong. Our Church allows a very great latitude in this matter and we must exercise self-discipline and Christian charity.

If a certain practice is harmless in itself and helps our neighbour to worship God better, why should we seek to deprive him of it? If what helps us fails to help or even hinders our neighbour's devotion, why try to force it upon him?

St. Paul said: "If meat make my brother to stumble, I will eat no meat while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to stumble." The principle holds good of many other things besides meat and drink.

XXIII. THE BIBLE

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning.-ROMANS XV. 4.

URING the Coronation Service a Bible is presented to

the King with these words: "We present unto you this book, the most valuable thing this world affords. Here is wisdom, this is the Royal law, here are the lively

oracles of God, able to make you wise and happy in this world, yea wise unto salvation and happy for evermore." What is this book of which these great and true words are spoken? To begin with it is not, strictly speaking, a book at all. It is a National Literature, extending over a period of 1500 years and containing all sorts of different subjects.

It contains in the first place a history of the world and of events that could only have been known by a Revelation, and secondly, a record of the Jewish nation based on carefully preserved traditions and also on ancient documents. Next we find a number of biographies of national heroes, Moses, Saul, David, Elijah, and others in the Old Testament, and of our Lord in the New. Then we find a number of genealogies, intensely interesting to the Jews, but for the most part very dull to others. Then we have pages of ceremonial directions covering the whole field of worship, and combined with sanitary and domestic regulations which deal with all the circumstances of human life. In both of these classes the Sabbath and the Temple fill a conspicuous place. We find political addresses or speeches in parts of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and sermons like those of Isaiah, St. Stephen, St. Peter, and St. Paul. We have dramas like Job and the Song of Songs, and philosophical musings like Ecclesiastes, proverbial wit and wisdom like Proverbs, the most sublime poetry as in Isaiah and other prophets, and in certain early fragments preserved in Genesis. We find collections of prayers, as in certain Psalms, and in Daniel, visions as in Daniel and the Revelation, hymns as in many of the Psalms, letters as in the Epistles, theological treatises as those of St. Paul and the author of Hebrews, and prophecies as in Daniel, Isaiah, some of the minor prophets, and the Revelation.

It is obvious that materials of such a widely differing character, and of such very differing dates and sources cannot all be of equal value, and that the old idea which regarded it as all equally important, and all verbally inspired, must be abandoned, as not consistent with plain facts. On the contrary there is most obviously in the Bible a gradual evolution and growth from lower to higher

conceptions of God and from narrower to wider ideas of His relation to men. At first God was thought of as a mighty ruler, somewhat of the Mohamedan type, chiefly concerned that men should obey His laws, whether they understood them or not, and whether or not they tallied with even human ideas of justice, until gradually the prophets conceived the idea of God as the God of justice and mercy, of truth and righteousness, and so paved the way for the conception of God as revealed in Christ.

At first God was thought of as the God of the Jews only, a local deity, to whom all foreigners were enemies, then the prophets realised that God was the God of all the nations, and that Israel had been chosen to bring them the knowledge of the truth, and thus they prepared the way for the message of the Gospel.

The same thing is true of the idea of the future life. At first the idea was very vague and hardly consistent with what we mean by personal immortality at all. It did not present itself as a problem, just as it does not present itself as a problem to young children, but gradually the idea became more and more definite until it blossomed into the full Christian hope.

If this be so, and it can scarcely be denied, then we must be careful not to quote the Bible as all of equal value. We must not say "The Bible says this or that,” but “ The Bible in its most elementary stage, or the Bible in its transition period, or the Bible in its fullest revelation says this or that." Only so can we possibly avoid the most serious error.

Another fruitful source of error has been a confusion as to what was meant by inspiration. People thought, without any grounds whatever for such a belief, that by "inspired" was meant that every word, phrase, and expression in the Bible was written down at the express dictation of Almighty God, and that it was therefore a crime to question or doubt any particular statement and that everything must be accepted without hesitation in its plain and most literal meaning. No wonder that such a theory led to confusion, distress, and unbelief.

Now the Bible is inspired, but inspiration does not mean what people once thought it meant. Inspiration is something far higher and nobler than using a man as an amanuensis.

We may get at the truth most easily by thinking of inspired works outside the Bible. I suppose most people would agree that the Divine Comedy of Dante is to a very considerable extent inspired. It was an ardent belief in the greatness of God that moved Dante to write it, and it contains some of the noblest and most beautiful thoughts in all literature, but the fact of inspiration did not save Dante from egregious blunders, from savage political hatred, from all the limitations of his age and knowledge.

It is not suggested that the writers of the Old and New Testament had only the same degree and kind of inspiration that Dante had. This would not be true. Many of them were inspired to a far higher degree and far more free from personal characteristics and weaknesses which so often mar and weaken inspiration, but their inspiration was on similar lines. We must remember that the inspired writers were not first chosen to be inspired writers, and then inspired to write. They wrote first and the Church afterwards decided that they had been inspired when they

wrote.

God's inspiration does not override and destroy a man's natural characteristics, though it may mortify them. God's inspiration lifts a man up to a higher level of earnestness and insight than he would even have possessed without it, but it does not destroy his personality. It leaves him still perhaps over-impetuous, or over-cautious, overardent, or over-cold; it does not guarantee him against mistakes due to his time, or to his temperament. He presents the truth as it appears to him and not as it is known only to God. He is uplifted and enabled to do far more than his natural best, but he is not made into a mere penman. What he says has passed through the crucible of his own thoughts and comes out tinged with his own personality.

Apart from this, however, there is another sense in