visions, nor
discourses, nor the pomp of signs. * * * * When any one alleges such
things as these about the gods, we must show disapproval, and not grant
them the privilege of a chorus; neither should we suffer teachers to
employ them in the training of youth--if, at least, our guardians are
to be pious and divine men."

Plato: The Republic; Book II.

"This, it seems, is the modern method of coming to inquire of the
oracles of God; by this process they become a light to our feet, a lamp
to our path! Accept the book as a whole, and then treat all the
portions of it just as you like. Confess all its words to be the words
of the Lord, and then you may yourself be lords over them, and may
perform moral miracles by turning the bread of life into stones for
casting at your enemies."

Maurice: What is Revelation, p. 475.

III.

The wrong use of the Bible

Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for
reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness.--2 Timothy,
III, 16.

The Unreal Bible is fading upon the vision of our age. You have probably
all perceived this more or less clearly. I have uttered the conviction
which many of you have held in secret with misgivings and self-reproaches,
and have shown you some of the many reasons why, as it seems to me, this
view can no longer be held by men of open minds. The Real Bible is as yet
vaguely seen, and, therefore, its power is feebly felt. According to their
natures men are indulging in flippant flings at a vanished superstition,
or grieving silently over the disappearance of the ancient light which
ruled the night of earth. I have sought to clear your vision of the new
moon rising upon us, the same holy light God set in the heavens of old,
though changed in the altered atmosphere of earth.

I propose now to translate the generalities of the previous sermons into
some practical applications. I want to-day to make more distinct certain
wrong uses of the Bible which grow out of the old view of it; wrong uses
from which great mischiefs have come to the cause of true religion, and
great trouble to individual souls; abuses which fall away in the light of
a more reasonable understanding of the Bible. The Bible viewed as a book
let down from heaven, whose real "author" is God, as the Westminster
Catechism affirmed; a book dictated to chosen penman and written out by
their amanuenses