Each author is solely responsible for the views expressed in his article. Notice of discontinuance must be sent to the Publishers; otherwise subscriptions will be continued. MOORE, The Literature of the Old Testament.. MULLINS, Freedom and Authority in Religion... OESTERLEY, The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach... PLESSIS, Les Prophéties d'Ezechiel Contre l'Egypte... ROBINSON, The Christian Doctrine of Man.... UNDERHILL, The Miracles of our Lady Saint Mary....... 105 105 123 Theological Review JANUARY, 1914 THE BIBLE AS THE TEXT-BOOK IN SOCIOLOGY We are accustomed to regard the Bible as the text-book, because the authority, in dogmatics and ethics. Our "Confession of Faith" (Chap. i. 10) says: "The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture." Our "Longer Catechism", in response to the inquiry, “What is the Word of God?" replies: "The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience." Our "Shorter Catechism", in answer to the question, "What do the Scriptures principally teach?" says: "The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man." Our "Form of Government" obliges all our church officers, ministers, ruling-elders and deacons, to affirm that they "believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the only infallible rule of faith and practice" (Chap. xiii. 4 and Chap. xv. 12). Our Book of Discipline says: "Nothing shall be the object of judicial process, which cannot be proved to be contrary to the Holy Scriptures, or to the regulation and practice of the Church founded thereon" (Chap. i. 4). Our "Directory for the Worship of God" in a footnote explanatory of its title is careful to state as follows: "The Scripture-warrant for what is specified in the various articles of this Directory, will be found at large in the Confession of Faith and Catechisms, in the places where the subjects are treated in a doctrinal form." These several declarations have been interpreted to mean, as it would seem to be self-evident that they were meant to mean, that all that the Bible requires in dogmatics and ethics and, indeed, as regards their expression in religion, must be received and that nothing which it does not require in these spheres may be imposed. The question before us is, Does all this apply, and apply in the same sense, in sociology? Is there a "divine order of human society"; and does the Bible, and the Bible alone, set forth this order? Is it true that with respect to the family, the nation, the church, the race, the kingdom of God, the great institutes which are the subjects of Christian sociology, the Bible gives us what we find nowhere else; and that all that it gives us in this field, as in that of dogmatics and ethics, is infallible and authoritative? Is it so that whatever the Bible requires in the case of these institutes is also the law and that nothing which it does not require may be made the law? This is the question to be considered. None could be so pertinent or more evidently important. None could be so pertinent, because, as Prof. Francis Greenwood Peabody remarked in substance, "The problems of the social world are undoubtedly the problems of to-day. Social unrest is the fact of contemporary life. No institution of society-the family, the state, or the church—is too stable or too sacred to be assailed." So, too, no question could be more evidently important. If the Bible is the authority in sociology, then what our age needs most to know is the trend and the extent of this authority. Only thus can it answer the inquiry in which it is most interested, and which is most insistent, and yet it is from almost every source but this that most are now seeking the answer. I. We assert, then, that the Bible is as truly the authority and so the text-book in sociology as it is in dogmatics and ethics, and we assert this for the following reasons: (1) The Bible is the text-book in religion, and a pro gressive or even a permanent civil society or nation is impossible without religion. That the Bible is the great religious text-book, we have just seen: this is the fundamental presupposition of all our standards. That a progressive or even a permanent civil society is impossible without religion, this results from the nature of things and is also one of the clearest teachings of history. The institute of rights, an avowedly unmoral nation is a contradiction in terms; and, as Washington said in his Farewell Address, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." We see the truth of this specially in connection with the most pressing and difficult social problems. As the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, U. S. Commissioner of Labor, remarked recently, "Religion is the only solution of the conflict between labor and capital. The Decalogue is a good platform. Religious education must bring about an alliance of ethics and economics in the welfare of mankind." Nay, we must go further. What has just been observed of the necessity of religion in general, must be affirmed of Christianity in particular. Says Prof. R. E. Thompson, "History is the biography of nations,-not of the whole body of mankind in all stages of arrested or of continuous development, but of those bodies politic, which have not stereotyped their institutions, which have contributed a share to the common wealth of civilization, and which have influenced each other for good. In modern times this group of nations is all but coincident with Christendom. It is only the Christian nation which has been able to garner the experience of the past-Hebraic and Hellenic, Roman and Teutonic-and to carry forward its development to still higher ends. It is within Christendom that history is not wasted and the past not barren for men, and this because we have learned to see in it the leading hand of the living God” (The Divine Order of Human Society, p. 121). In a word, it is only on a Christian foundation that society is truly progressive. |