Biblical narrative

“ For, without our direct consciousness, there is ever something impressive in Biblical association; there is a magical power in Biblical comparison, a tenderness in the use of Biblical words and terms which we feel without actively noting. ”

“ This new conception, thus answering to the historico-psychological reality of the development of the human mind, by distinguishing what in the Bible is religious and moral truth—the special object of its teaching—from what is merely explanation and development of it, avails providentially to save its veracity, its inerrancy, its inspiration. ”

“ In the New Testament are the stories of Christ’s birth, His life, with all its boyhood incidents, its parables, and its wonders, closing with His death and resurrection. The question is not, “What can I tell?” but, “Which shall I tell?” The fund is practically inexhaustible. ”

“ Since the day of his birth, the firm, unwavering, fanatical belief that the Bible was God's direct, unchangeable revelation to man, made him, as it had made his father, impregnable to the assaults of reason. ”

“ No Bible story is worthily told which does not touch the underlying truth of the beauty of holiness, and the folly and inevitable consequences of sin. In preparing Bible stories for telling, the story-teller should have always in mind what has been called the “basic principle of both Old and New Testaments”—the perfect God desiring to restore man “to holiness and true communion with Himself.” ”

“ The purpose of the Bible, the form of it, the gradual formation of it, the steadily-growing Revelation contained in it, these harmonise with the moral law revealed originally in the conscience. And the effect which the Revelation has produced on human history is real and great. The power which God's Revelation has exerted on the world is an undeniable fact among phenomena. ”

“ Yet this book, the Bible, portrays the character of God, the Father of our spirits, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as clearly as any work ever written by man portrays the shape, nature, construction and constitution of the human frame. ”

“ For the old-time friends of the Bible, the night of darkness and doubt is rapidly passing; the morning of a fuller knowledge and a fuller confidence is at hand. Gone are those agonies of doubt regarding the truthfulness of the Bible's history and the adequacy of its ethics for the needs of our modern world. ”

“ But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the history of the human race for the better are those chapters of the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of love, charity and forgiveness. ”

“ Now, in the name of common sense, why have men, and why do men, down through the centuries, and now, entertain such views? Because every Bible reader must see that there are many prophecies that must be fulfilled before Christ can come—one of which is the appearance of the two witnesses of the text. ”

“ The central truths of Christianity are always the same; but Biblical criticism, the comparative study of Hebrew or Christian epochs, the domain of doctrinal thought, are growths of the human mind, and every advance has been the fruit of experimental searching. ”

“ It is the presentation of Christ as He is presented in the written Gospels, the narrative of His life and death without note or comment, theory or inference, argument or appeal, which stands in the first rank of efficiency as a means of evangelizing the world. ”

“ The Bible must be snatched out of this burning fire of the depraved and savage passions of degraded men, and we must cry out amid the noise and confusion of modern Babel that the Bible is the book Divine, full of wisdom, justice and love. ”

“ Why then should the mean aspect and lowly office of certain parts of Scripture,— (genealogical details and the narrative of what we think ordinary occurrences,) —be supposed to disentitle those parts to the praise of being as fully inspired as any thing in the whole compass of the Bible?
[108] I may remind you, in passing, that the narrative of Scripture, even in its humblest, and (to all appearance) most human parts, has a perpetual note of Divinity set upon it. ”

“ This highest passion of mankind is wakened by the Bible as by no other book. Through it, the mystic Forerunners reveal themselves to the human soul most alluringly; enthralling it with their pure charms, dispelling the illusions of the senses and the glamor of the world, in the light of their holy loveliness. ”

“ Though the Bible is not mere history or mere literature, it nevertheless has to do with history, and it is literature in the highest sense of the word. It has a human element as well as a Divine element; and how far the books are human and how far Divine is the great Scripture problem. ”

“ While cordially accepting the divine nature of Christ, I may see such clear indications and evidences of the manner in which accounts of miracles sprang up in the Church without foundation of fact, that I may be compelled not merely to omit miracles from my Gospel and to confess myself unconvinced of their truth, but even to avow my conviction of their untruth. ”

“ By this stroke of inspired imagination the Bible story rescues from all such risks and degradations our thought of the Creator, and at its close leaves us face to face with our Divine Maker as free, personal, living, loving, and conscious as we are ourselves. ”

“ By opening up to our minds the deep, sanctifying truths of the Bible, and especially by revealing to us the character and spirit of Jesus and His Apostles, and leading us to follow in their footsteps—­the footsteps of their faith and love and unselfish devotion to God and man, even unto the laying down of their lives. ”

“ Now we must, above all things, come to an understanding as to what is meant by revelation before we attribute revelation to the Bible. There are not many now who really believe that an angel in bodily form descended from heaven and whispered into the ear of the apostles, in rather bad Greek, every verse, every word, even every letter of our Gospels. ”

“ You believe that the only and ever-present God begot a Son whom he sent to reform the world, and to propitiate its sins; you believe that a book, called the Bible, contains a true account of this event, together with an infinity of miracles and prophecies which preceded it from the creation of the world. ”

“ The Gospel is emphatically the Word of truth; it is reliable history, not romance—a revelation of truths essential to salvation. It is the function of the Holy Spirit to illuminate the mind by the instrumentality of the truth, to apply the Word to the conscience, and to regenerate the heart. ”

“ This important truth of the divine origin of the scriptures (that what is contained in them is the mind of God and not of man) is to be known and owned by all who will give heed to the sure word of prophecy. That the scriptures are the word of God is not only an article of the true Christian's faith, but also a matter of science or knowledge. ”

“ If we examine what is termed the sacred history of the Bible, we shall find that in the various ages of the world, until soon after Christianity was introduced, there was a feeling among men to call upon God and to have their prayers answered—a feeling that if they would approach the Most High and call upon his name in faith, he would answer their supplications and give unto them wisdom, intelligence and revelation for the guidance of their feet in the pathway of life ”

“ Its Self Convincing Power in Experience.—There is in the consciousness of man a conviction that the religion of the Bible rests upon a sound foundation. And he who puts the Bible to the test in his own experience, who lives its life, and follows its law, and enjoys its communings, finds an assurance to the satisfaction of his spiritual nature, that this book contains God’s message to his soul. Every Christian’s experience is, therefore, a testimony to the truth and the inspiration of Scripture. ”

“ Now, as we say that the truth and grandeur of the Old Testament most comes out experimentally,—that is, by the whole course of the world establishing it, and confuting what is opposed to it—so it is with Christianity. Its grandeur and truth are far best brought out experimentally ”

“ The gospel, I conceive, in its most extensive sense, comprehends the whole revealed will of God, recorded in the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament [Tim. iii. 16.] .
This sacred book, which we call the Bible, describes the original state of man, as a state of perfect purity and innocence. He was made in the image of God. He was made upright [Gen. i. 26, 27.; Eccles. vii. 29.] . His understanding, will, his affections and conscience, his body and soul, were free from defilement, guilt, or guile, and while he continued so, he was not liable to pain, misery, or death. ”

“ There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings."
Our masters of poetry and prose have thus become the Bible's messengers; but such also are the lesser writers and speakers of every day. The Bible words find a response that is universal; for Truth knows no chosen vessel but rather has chosen all. Story and lyric, epic and drama, alike carry onward the Bible's messages and continue to spread their truth among all people of the English tongue. ”

“ The prophecies and miracles set forth and recorded in the sacred Scriptures are the fiction of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the result of philosophical investigations. In the books of the Old and New Testament there are contained mythical inventions, and Jesus Christ is himself a myth. ”

“ The history, which constitutes our difficulty, is its own answer. For there, in that Bible, lies the recorded story of the facts which pressed hard upon the earliest intuition of God, and drove it forward, and compelled it to fix itself, and to define itself, and to take a firmer root, and to make for itself a secure dwelling-place, and to shape for itself a career. ”

“ No other old Testament history, written by the actors in its scenes, tells of miracles. Such stories are found in the traditions written down long after the events narrated, by men who knew nothing of the facts at first hand. ”

“ And his miracles being generally wrought upon men, not only upon their bodies, as they were mostly when Christ was here upon earth, but, which is more, upon their minds, as they were mostly after the pouring out of the Spirit in the gift of tongues and other supernatural endowments, were the most proper confirmations possible of the truth of the gospel, which was designed for the making of men holy and happy. ”

“ In the midst of the disputations over the meaning of many parts of the Bible, which have caused so many heart-burnings and bitter feelings among preachers and professors of religion, out of the earth has come forth a sacred record containing divine truth in such plainness and simplicity as to settle in the minds of believers those controversies which have agitated the world of theology. ”

“ Ye have taken from us a Bible which we reverenced to idolatry but in many parts did not understand, and have given to us a Bible which, with undiminished claims to reverence, awakens in our minds a real, rational interest to which hitherto we have been comparative strangers. ”

“ The beautiful narratives of the Old Testament, the stories of the four gospels, the many striking incidents in the lives of the saints, the legends of the faithful middle ages, the histories of the contemporaneous manifestations of God’s mercy, all offer mines of wealth to a skilful narrator. If, instead of goblin tales more fit for the entertainment of rational people than for the staple of a child’s too credulous meditations, these holy histories became the nursery rhymes of the future generation, it would be well indeed for the spiritual advance of our age. ”

“ Are not there many who, while they may have familiarised themselves with the history, the geography, the anecdotes so to speak of Holy Scripture, and the fanciful, often daring, interpretations of unfulfilled prophecy, yet know comparatively nothing of what God is to them, what they are to God, what is required of them, and what is promised or threatened? ”

“ The scripture proves its divine authority and original both to the wise and to the unwise: even to the unwise and least-thinking part of mankind, it is abundantly proved by the many incontestable miracles wrought by Moses and the prophets, Christ and his apostles, for the confirmation of its truths and laws: it would be an intolerable reproach to eternal Truth, to suppose this divine seal affixed to a lie. ”

“ Reason is the guide that leads to the temple of revelation. There is an overwhelming mass of evidence, external and internal, to convince any unprejudiced mind that the Bible is the word of God. Prophecies accomplished, types fulfilled, the divine Spirit breathed through the pages, the unearthly perfection of One character there portrayed, with superhuman knowledge of the frailties and requirements of man ”

“ The Old Testament, which is the record of the earlier stages of the Christian revelation, distinctly preparatory and prophetic, forms a continual instruction in duty and righteousness. It grounds the moral life essentially in the religious, but religion must walk in holiness. ”

“ But what does the Bible, and what does the history of the world tell us about man ever since he fell from this heavenly state in which he was first created? The Bible declares that the 'heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.' The Lord said to the Pharisees, a class of people who even claimed to be religious: 'Ye are of your father the devil; and the works of your father ye do.' From the Bible we turn to the history of man's career through all the ages down to the present time, and we find its lines all written in characters of blood. ”