The indolent and the sensual love to have a visible master in spiritual things, who will spare them the agony of thought. Credulity, ignorance, and superstition conjure up phantoms to attend them. Some honest men find it difficult to live nobly and divine; to keep the well of life pure and undisturbed, the inward ear always open and quick to the voice of God in the soul. They see, too, how often the ignorant, the wicked, the superstitious, and the fanatical confound their own passions with the still small voice of God; they see what evil, deep, and dreadful, comes of this confusion. Such is the force of prejudice, indolence, habit, they find it sometimes difficult to distinguish between right and wrong; they love to lean on the Most High, and the Bible is declared His word. They say, therefore, by their action, Let us have some outward rule and authority, which being infallible, shall help the still smallness of God's voice in the heart; it will bless us when weak; we will make it our master and obey it's voice. It shall to be us a god, and we will fall down and worship it. But alas, it is not so. The word of God- no scripture will hold that. It speaks in a language no honest mind can fail to read. Such seem the most prominent cause that have the Bible an idol of the Christians.
No doubt it will be said, "Such views are dangerous, for the mass of men must always take authority for truth, not truth for authority." But are they not true? If so the consequences are not ours; they belong to the author of truth, who can manage his own affairs, without our meddling. Is the wrong way safer than right? No doubt it was reckoned dangerous to abandon the worship of Diana of the cross, the saints and their relics; but the world stands, though " the images that fell down from Jupiter" is forgotten. If these doctrines be true, men need not fear they shall have no "standard of religious faith and practice" Reason, conscience, heart, and soul still remain; God's voice in nature; His word in man. His laws remains ever unchanged, though we set up our idols or pluck them down. We still have the same guide with Moses and David, Socrates and Zoroaster, Paul and John and Luther, Fenelon, Taylor, and Fox; yes, the same guide that led Jesus, the first born of many brothers, in his steep and lonely pilgrimage.
This doctrine takes nothing from the Bible but its errors, which only weaken its strengths; its truth remains, brilliant and burning with the light of life. It calls us away from each outward standard to the eternal truths of God; from the letter and the imperfect scripture of the word to the living word itself. Then we see the true relation the bible sustains to the soul; the cause of the real esteem in which it is held is seen to be in its moral and religious truths; their power and loveliness appear. They have had the greatest influence on the loftiest minds and the lowliest hearts for 1800 years. How they have written themselves all over the world, deepest in the best of men! What greatness of soul has been found amid the fragrant leaves of the Bible, sufficient to lead men, to embrace its truths, though at the expense of accepting tales which make the blood curdle.
Take the Bible for what it is true in it, and the first chapter of Genesis is a grand hymn of creation, a worthy prelude of the sublime chants that follow; it sings the truth; the world was not always; is not the work of chance, but of the living God; all things are good, made to be blest. The writer- who perhaps, never thought he was writing an "article of faith"- if he were a Jew, might superstitiously refer the Sabbath to the time of creation and the agency of god, just as the Greek refers one festival to Hercules, and another to Bacchus. Then oriental piety comes beautiful from the grave hewn in the rock by our dull theology; utters her word of counsel and hope; sings her mythological poem, and warms the heart, but does not teach theology or physical science.
The sweet notes of David's prayer; his mystic hymns of praise, so full of rippling life; his lofty Psalm, which seems to unite the warbling music of the wind, the sun's glance, and the rush of the lightning, which calls on the mountain and the sea, and beast, and bird, and man, to join his full heart, all these shall be sweet elevating, but we shall leave his pernicious curse to perish where it fell.
The excellence of the Hebrew devotional hymns has never been surpassed. Heathenism, Christianity, with all their science, arts, literature, bright and many colored, have little that approach these. They are the despair of imitators; still the uttered prayer of the Christian world. Tell us of Greece, who air was redolent of songs; its language such as Jove might speak; its sages, heroes, poets, honored in every clime- they have no pslam of prayer and praise like these Hebrews, the devoutest of men, who saw God always before them, ready to take hem up when father and mother let them fall.
Some of the old prophets were men of stalwart and robust character, set off by a masculine piety that puts to shame our puny littleness of heart. They saw hope the plainest when danger was most imminent, and never despaired. Fear of the people, the rulers, the priests could not awe them to silence, nor gold buy smooth things from the prophet's tongue. They left hypocrisy, with his weeds and weepers, and feigning but unsustained handkerchief, to follow the coffin he knew to be empty, and went their own way, as men. What shall screen the guilty from the prophet's word? Even David is met with a Thou-art-the-man. What if they were stoned, imprisoned, sawn asunder? It was a prophet's reward. They did not prophecy smooth things; they gave the truth and took blows, not asking love for love. If these men are set up as masters of the soul, justice must break her staff over their heads. But view them as patriots whom danger aroused from the repose of life: as pious men awakened by concern for the public virtue, and nobler men never spoke speech.
Out from the heart of nature, rolled the burdens of the Bible old- Emerson
Little needs now be said of the New Testament, of the simple truth that rustles in its leaves, its parables, epistles, where Paul lifted up his manly voice, and John or whoso wrote the words, pours out the mystic melody of faith. Why tell the deep words of Jesus? Have we exhausted their meaning? The world-has it outgrown love to God and man? They still act in gentle bosoms, giving strength to the strong, and justice and meekness and charity and faith to beautiful souls, long tried and oppressed. There is no need of new words to tell of this.
Now it is not in nature to respect the false, and yet reverence the true. Call the Bible master- we do not see the excellence it has. Take it as other books, we have it's beauty, truth, religion, not its deformities, fables, and theology. We shall not believe in ghosts, though Isaiah did; nor in devils, though Jesus teach there are such. We shall see the excellence of Paul in his manly character, not in miracles wrought by his apron; the noblesness of Jesus in the doctrine he taught and the life he lives, not in the walk on the water or the miraculous draughts of fish. We shall care little about the "endless genealogies and old wives' fables," though still deemed essential by many- but much for being good and doing good. Our faith- let him shake down the Andes who an arm for that work.
On the other hand, he that accepts the monstrous prodigies of the gospels; is delighted to believe that Jesus had divine authority for laying on forms, and damning all but the baptized; that he gave Peter authority to bind and loose on earth and in heaven;, commanding his disciples to make friends of the "mammon of unrighteousness," to tease God as an unjust judge, into compliance with vain repetitions- can he accept the absolute religion? It is not possible, for a long time, to make serious thing of trifles, without making trifles of serious things. Cannot drunkenness be justified out of the Old Testament; the very Solomon advising the poor man to drown his sorrow in wine? Jeremiah curses the man that will not fight (Jeremiah XLVIII.10) Is not Sarah commended by the fathers of the church, and Abraham by the sons? Men justify slavery out of the New Testament, because Paul had not his eye open to the evil, but sent back a fugitive! It is dangerous to rely on a troubled fountain for the water of life.
The good influence of the Bible, past and present as of all religious books, rests on its religious significance. It's truths not only sustain themselves, but the mass of errors connected therewith. Truth can never pass away. Men sometimes fear the Bible will be destroyed by freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Let it perish if such be the case. Truth cannot fear the light, nor are men so mad as to forsake a well of living water. All the free thinking in the world could not destroy the Iliad; how much less the truths of the Bible, which have fed and comforted the noblest of souls for so many centuries, may be trusted to our last day. The Bible has already endured the greatest abuse at the hands of its friends, who make it an idol, and would have all men do it homage. We need call none our master, but the Father of All. Yet the Bible, if wisely used, is still a blessed teacher. Spite of the superstition and folly of its worshippers, it has helped millions to the fountain where Moses and Jesus, with the holy hearted of all time, have stopped and been filled. We see the mistakes of its writers, for though noble and of great stature, they saw not all things. We reject their follies; but their words of truth are still before us, to admonish, to encourage, and to bless. From time to time, God raises up a prophet to lead mankind. He speaks like his word as it is given him, serves his generation for the time, and falls at last, when it is expedient he should give way to the next comforter who m God shall send. But mankind is greater than a man, and never dies. The experience of the past lives in the present. The light that shone at Nineveh, Egypt, Judea, Athens, Rome, shines no more from those points; it is everywhere. Can truth decease, and a good idea once made real ever perish? Mankind, moving solemnly on it's appointed road, from age to age, passed by its imperfect teachers, guided by their light, blessed by their toil, and sprinkled with their blood. But truth, like her God, is before and above us forever. So we pass by the lamps of the street, with wonder at their legit, though but a smoky to fear.
from Theodore Parker's A Disourse of Religion