Literature and Dogma: An Essay Towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible

Abstract

meddles with.The difference between us and them, however, is more a difference of theoretical statement than of practical conclusion; speaking practically, and looking at the very large part of human life engaged by the Bible, at the comparatively small part unengaged by it, we are quite willing, like the churches, to call the Bible and its religion ^//-important.And yet with all this agreement both in words and in things, when we behold the clergy and ministers of religion lament the neglect of religion and aspire to restore it, how must one feel that to restore religion as they understand it, to re-inthrone the Bible as explained by our current theology, whether learned or popular, is absolutely and for ever impossible !-as impossible as to restore the predominance of the feudal system, or of the belief in witches.Let us admit that the Bible cannot possibly die; but then the churches cannot even conceive the Bible without the gloss they at present put upon it, and this gloss, as certainly, cannot possibly live.And it is not a gloss which one church or sect puts upon the Bible and another does not; it is the gloss they all put upon it, and call the substratum of beHef common to all Christian churches, and largely shared with them, even, by natural religion.It is this so-called axiomatic basis ' St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 156.xxxiv PREFACE.with system.He does a good work who does anything to help this; indeed, it is the one essential service now to be rendered to education.And the plea, that this or that man has no time for culture, will vanish as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin to examine seriously our present use of our time.It has often been said, and cannot be said too often : Give to any man all the time that he now wastes, not only on his vices (when he has them), but on useless business, wearisome or deteriorating amusements, trivial letter-writing, random reading, and he will have plenty of time for culture.' Die Zeit ist unendlich lang^ says Goethe ; and.so it really is.Some of us waste all of it, most of us waste much ; but all of us waste some. CONTENTS.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 105 citations exist upstream.