he church of Christ has always found in the Bible a safe guide for
her polity and conduct, and civil government has prospered when the
principles of Scripture were followed by the powers that ruled the
State. Because the Christian believes the Bible to be the product of men
inspired by Christ, he can send it out by the million copies as equal to
the moral and spiritual needs of the world.

And because Christ is, through his imperfect agents, the real author of
Scripture, we believe in its absolute _authority_. When rightly
interpreted, however. It will never do to treat poetry as if it were
prose, or drama as if it were history, or allegory as if it were fact.
Christ can use, and he has used, all the common methods of literary
composition, and he expects us to use common sense in dealing with them.
But out of the whole can be evolved a consistent doctrine and an
authoritative law. The one and only way of salvation is plainly that of
faith in God's provision of pardon and life in Christ. In spite of many
divergences, the great body of Christians throughout the ages have
agreed in their recognition of the personality and the deity of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; of the incarnation and the
atonement of Christ; of his resurrection and his lordship; of his
omnipresence with his people even to the end of the world. They have
expressed this agreement in the Apostles' Creed and in the hymnology of
the church. But the great body of instructed Christians also believe in
Christ as the Revealer of God in nature and in history; as "the Light
that lighteth every man" in conscience and tradition; and as the
righteous Judge who accepts in every nation those who fear God and work
righteousness, casting themselves as sinners upon the divine mercy even
though they do not yet know that this divine mercy is only another name
for Christ. The Bible, as a whole and when rightly interpreted, is
absolute authority, because it is the word of Christ; and Christ holds
each of us, as individuals, to the duty and the privilege of
interpreting the Bible for himself.

It seems to me plain that this method of interpreting Scripture in the
light of the Christian's experience of Christ, is not "the historical
method," as it is usually employed. This latter method seems to ignore
the relation of Scripture to Christ, and to proceed in its
investigations as if there were no preexistent Christ to furnish its
principle. It insists upon treating S