Herman J. Heuser

“ A tarnished mirror gives but a blurred and imperfect reflection. Just so the mind occupied with the follies and vanities of worldliness, the heart filled with the changing idols of unworthy attachments, is no fit surface for the delicate impressions of those chaste delineations of truth which are nothing else but the image of God in the human soul. To His likeness we were created, and to His likeness we must again conform ourselves by a right study of truth. ”

“ It is not love of unchanging truth, but the captivating passion of the hour, which, as someone has said, acts upon the brain "like the foaming grape of Eastern France—pleasant to the sense of taste, yet sending its subtle fumes to the brain, and stealing away the judgment." Truth in literature possesses a power of eloquence of which fiction is but a shadow at best, varying in size, and dwarfed or magnified in proportion as it approaches and recedes from the object which occasions it. ”

“ Known by generations as the inviolable law of God, guarded with scrupulous solicitude as their greatest religious treasure, read sabbath after sabbath in the synagogues, not alone of Palestine, but of Arabia, Assyria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome—in short, wherever the sons of Abraham had been dispersed in the course of more than twenty centuries—who was it, friend or foe, that could have dared to change this royal mandate of the Most High to His chosen people! ”

“ Yet, as a traveller in search of fortune may pass over seemingly barren tracts of desert land or mountain ridge, which treasure beneath the surface richest mines of gold, and caverns of splendid crystal and rarest marble, so the reader of the sacred books, in search of knowledge, may wearily tread along the paths of Bible truths, his eye bewildered by endless repetitions of precepts and monotonous scenes and seemingly uninteresting facts, unconscious of what wealth and beauty lie beneath him. ”

“ Catholics are fortunate in this, that they may gain from the study of the Bible that purest light of wisdom which is only partially communicated to those who find no way, through the sacraments, of cleansing their souls,—that mirror in which God's image can show clearly only when it is polished and purified from the dust-stains of our earthly fall. Whatever opportunities for thorough study of the Bible we may have, there can be no doubt that this is one of the most important conditions for its proper and fruitful appreciation, because the intelligence is always warped by sin. ”

“ They rebel, they commit every crime forbidden by the Law; yet whilst they kill the prophets who charge them with ingratitude, they patiently suffer the record of it all to go into the books which they know will be read to all the people for their shame. They make no attempt to minimize or to excuse themselves to their children, however much they love the glory of Israel and the splendor of Jerusalem as the one nation and city worthy of the most exalted patriotic praise. Other nations made themselves a religion in harmony with their passions, so as to soothe the conscience. ”

“ There is nothing which is better calculated to imbue the masses with homage for the truth than to see it joyously proclaimed by learned men who have gained distinction in some other faculty. Moreover, the bitter tongues of objectors will be silenced. At least they will not dare to insist so shamelessly that faith is the enemy of science when they see that scientific men, of eminence in their own profession, show towards the faith most marked honor and reverence. ”

“ When we have assured ourselves that the Bible is really as old and as truthful a record of history as it pretends to be, and that it has for it such human testimony as leads us to admit historic facts in general, we shall occupy ourselves with its contents, with the influence which this wonderful book, this ancient testament of our royal Sire, exercises upon the heart, the mind, the general culture, by which it leads us to our inheritance, and enables us to assume our place in our destined home. ”

“ The subject-matter of the Bible obliges us, however, to apply not only the various cautions and methods of interpretation which are required for the understanding of the classics generally, but it exacts more. The Sacred Scriptures, as a grand work of art, have not only a human, but primarily a divine conception for their basis. Hence it does not suffice to have mastered the meaning of the words and the outline of the subject, or the individual genius and human ideal of the writer who acted merely as the instrument executing a higher inspiration. ”

“ The completely super-worldly standpoint in which Jesus finds strength and love to devote himself to the world has nothing extravagant about it. He is the first to know himself, not simply in moments of emotion, but in completest restfulness, the child of God; before him no one so felt or so described himself.' 'Jesus not only prophesies the kingdom of God, but brings it out of its transcendence on to earth; he plants at least its germ. The new times already begin with him: the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead arise. ”

“ But with all the weapons of the best of arts, fully and perfectly to fight for the holiness of the Bible is far more than can be looked for from the exertions of commentators and theologians alone. It is an enterprise in which we have a right to expect the co-operation of all Catholic men who have acquired reputation in other branches of learning. As in the past, so at the present time the Church is never without the graceful support of her accomplished children. May their services to the Faith ever grow and increase! ”

“ To read the Sacred Scriptures in a flippant mood, or even in an irreverent posture, and without having previously reflected on the fact that it is God's word, is to lessen immeasurably one's chance of profiting by the reading. The Mahometan or Jew in the East reverently lifts each piece of paper or parchment which he finds upon the road, for fear that it might contain the name of Allah or Jehovah, and be profaned by being trodden under foot. We owe no less to the inspired word of God, above all if we would gain the key to its intelligence. ”

“ Though revelation is necessary to guide the human mind, prone to error, and to sustain the human will, weak by reason of an hereditary fall, we have seen that the Bible is but one channel of that revelation, and that a complementary, secondary one. It neither contains all revealed truth, nor can the truth which it contains be clearly and completely understood without the guidance of an intelligent interpretation. A teacher of any science or art may give a book into the hands of his pupils to serve as a text, as a reminder of his precepts, as a compend of his methods and practice ”

“ The reason of this is the natural wish of the translators, anxious to preserve the literal form of the original, not to sacrifice accuracy to the nicety with which they might round their phrases. They were intent alone upon truth; and it is precisely in this element that eloquence finds its first and most powerful incentive. Beauty of language has two sources of inspiration. One is that of truth, which arouses in the heart a love lifting the mind with a burning enthusiasm into the regions of all that is fair and chaste and grand ”

“ The Church, by reason of her wonderful propagation, her shining sanctity, and her inexhaustible fecundity in good, her Catholic unity, and her unshaken stability, is herself a great and perpetual motive of credibility, and an unassailable testimony of her own divine mission. But since the divine and infallible teaching authority of the Church rests also on the authority of Holy Scripture, the first thing to be done is to vindicate the trustworthiness of the sacred records at least as human documents. ”

“ The work done by non-Catholic scholars who have examined the Bible, either to bring out the verbal meaning of its text, or to verify some historical or philological hypothesis, is astounding. Catholic students owe a great debt to the first gleaners in this field; for though we have neither felt impelled to look for the rule of our faith in the Bible exclusively, nor always been inclined to accept the dicta regarding the literal sense of so sacred a document from the professors of philological discipline, we have incidentally profited by all these searchings. ”

“ Those who infuse into their speech the spirit and strength of the Word of God speak, "not in words only, but in power also, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much fulness." Hence those preachers are foolish and improvident who, in preaching religion and proclaiming the precepts of God, use no words but those of human science and human prudence, trusting to their own reasonings rather than to those that are divine. ”

“ The miracles and manifestations of God's power are not what they profess to be, but are either startling effects which are not beyond the forces of nature, or else mere tricks and myths. The Gospels and apostolic writings are not, they say, the work of the authors to whom they are assigned. These detestable errors, whereby they think to destroy the truth of the divine Books, are obtruded on the world as the peremptory pronouncements of a newly-invented "free science." This science, however, is so far from final that they are perpetually modifying and supplementing it. ”

“ They believe that the Bible is the most perfect book on earth, that it is the book of books, as it has been called from time immemorial; for the word Bible means simply a book, the book of all others by excellence, as if there were none so worthy of study, and none which could not be dispensed with rather than this. ”

“ But, you will say, whilst it is plain that we need not adhere to the text of Holy Writ so strictly as to suppose that each single word is the only exact representation of the thought or truth with which God inspired the writer, it seems difficult to see where you can draw the line between the teaching of God and its interpretation by man who is not bound by definite words. In other words, if verbal inspiration is not to be admitted, how far does inspiration actually extend in the formation of the written text? ”

“ Surely this is a hopeful sign, and should encourage us in the study of the Bible, which is on so many accounts a source of intellectual pleasure, of abiding peace of heart, and of that high moral refinement which comes from contact with noble minds. There are none better on earth than the sacred writers—men who walked and spoke with God, and whose living contact we may enjoy in the participation of that celestial inspiration which breathes through their writings. ”

“ So far as they were written, the truths contained in the Bible were to serve all time. To change their form is to tamper with the spirit of a divine language, which, although it comes to us in human sounds, variable according to nationality and time and place, still has an unction, a breath of heaven accompanying it which would vanish as the perfume vanishes from the transplanted flower. There are some truths, some ideas and feelings, which cannot be expressed in popular fashion without losing their essential qualities. ”

“ Perhaps we fail in the proper choice of books, or else we do not observe the right method in reading and study.
Yet it is impossible for most men to go in search of and test everything that is labelled "truth." Is there no remedy provided against the danger of oft going wrong in order to find the right? Yes. God has given us a compendium of everything that fosters true knowledge and wisdom in a book consigned to the direction of an old, experienced, and wise teacher. That book is the Bible, and the teacher is the Church of Christ. ”

“ If it is urged that there are contradictions between the Bible and science, then the case demands attention. We know that truth cannot contradict itself; but we know that we may err in apprehending it, and that science may err in its assumptions of fact. Hence in the matter of Biblical Apology, when dealing with science, it is of the first importance that we render an exact account to ourselves of what science affirms and of what the Sacred Scripture affirms. It is important to note here the distinction which P. Brucker points out; namely, what science affirms, not what scientists affirm. ”

“ When we have discovered a beautiful thought, a strong chain of reasoning, which, whilst convincing, attracts and leads us into the domain of truth, however partial, we ponder it and make it our own, and we feel stronger in the permanent possession of it. We desire truth, and we look for it in books, mostly. Yet we may be anxious for knowledge, and worry or dream out our days in a course of reading without gaining any real advantage from it. ”

“ When philosophers are agreed upon a point, and that point is not contrary to faith, it is safer, in my opinion, neither to lay down such a point as a dogma of faith, even though it is perhaps so presented by the philosophers, nor to reject it as against faith, lest we thus give to the wise of this world an occasion of despising the doctrine of the faith. ”

“ If we refuse on general principles to have the Bible read to our Catholic children in a public school from a Protestant translation, it is simply because the admission of such a practice implies an admission of a Protestant principle, and might leave a wrong impression upon our children as to the value of the true version of their religion. The Protestant translation of the Bible contains a great deal of truth, but some errors which we cannot admit in our teaching. ”