Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 51:203 (Jul 1894)
Article: The Bible As Authority And Index
Author: A. A. Berle

BSac 51:203 (July 1894) p. 361

The Bible As Authority And Index

Rev. A. A. Berle

We have seen in the previous discussions, that the development of the religious life is a process involving many and differing forces.1 Some of these are of so simple a character that they can be traced readily, and do not for a moment perplex us either as to their own nature or the sources from which they are derived. Others, on the contrary, are more elusive. They, do not reveal themselves easily or frequently. They change in their manifestations. They are, if not strictly supernatural, so much like supernatural forces as to demand a classification peculiarly their own.

Forces of this latter type have always abounded in the history of religion. They are the variants, amid the permanent elements of religion, which supply in each case a certain rationale which without them we should utterly lack. They are many, but feeling is one of them. We may say it is one of those which we have the least difficulty in catching and examining, though it may not be for long at a time. It has also appeared that these forces have an important part to play in the crystallization of religious thought into institutions, and afterward into literature descriptive of them. More than

BSac 51:203 (July 1894) p. 362

this, they have the power of reproduction and self-extension. They possess a kind of appeal to the ages. They are never without expositors. And these expositors are the prophets of their time.

But up to this point, religion, considered as the aggregate of the phenomena which express the human spirit in its upward struggles to higher life and growth, is purely personal and of a psychological nature. It hence demands at this stage a psychological treatment. But religion cannot long remain personal, and must of necessity, as soon as it seeks expression, become social. It must busy itself with the content which it secures from the immediate problems of society. And from this fact, the progress of religion may be said to be coeval with the progress of society. Its laws grow like social laws. They extend in application or they diminish in limits as the society under which they flourish admits of such extension or requires such repression. But it is this very fluctuation which marks the presence or the absence of the variable elements of the religious life which form the problem of investigation. Their exceptional character leads, in the earliest times, to the inference that they are supernatural interferences with the existing order. Their recurrences at stated intervals or under similar conditions may lead, in a scientific period, to their reduction to the sphere of law. But the essential fact is their existence and their undoubte...