ITS FOURTEEN ATTRIBUTES. ITS FOUR USES.

HAVING finished our discussion of the Bible's inspiration, the next line of thought that will be discussed is its attributes. It has, indeed, many attributes, qualities. It will be recalled that in giving our general reasons in proof of the Bible's inspiration, among others, we set forth 21 attributes of the Bible as proving its inspiration. By combining some of these 21 attributes we have reduced them to 14, which, with God's help, we will set forth as the attributes of the Scriptures. On each of these 14 we will give greater details than were given when we used the Bible's attributes as one of the general proofs for its inspiration; otherwise we would be merely giving needless repetition of what was formerly given. It is hoped that our previous discussions of the Bible from the standpoints already given have enhanced our appreciation of it and of God as its Author. It is also hoped that what will be given on the rest of the phases of the Scriptures coming up for discussion will add to that enhancement; for the more the Bible in the general theory of it in its various phases is studied, the more should it and God, as its Author, be enhanced in our appreciation, since it and the Spirit of God, of all His impersonal gifts to us, are the greatest and best. Or to put it in other words, the Truth and the Spirit of the Truth are God's greatest and best impersonal gifts to us. Let us, therefore, prize them as such, and from such esteem of them make a most faithful use of them to God's glory and the profit of others and of ourselves.

The first of the Bible's qualities that will be here discussed is its diversity. It has this attribute from a variety of standpoints: It is diverse in its writers; for the Old Testament had about 40 writers and the New

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Testament 9. Again, these writers were different from many standpoints: as to talents, characters, calling, education, amount of writing, style of writing, object of writing and impressionableness of their writing. Some of them were outstandingly great and influential men, like Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Daniel and Paul. Some of them were men of more than average caliber, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Luke. Most of the rest of them were men of average caliber; and a few of them were below the average. As to times of writing: these from first to last stretched over a period of about 1,700 years. The Bible is rather a library than a single book; for it consists of 66 books, of varying sizes, subjects and importance. It is a library of two diverse divisions: Old and New Testaments. These books differ in style. Some of them are written in the most elevated style, e.g., Deuteronomy, Job, which is considered even by unbelievers as the supreme literary product, Psalms, Isaiah, Hebrews and James; some of them in a simple, almost colloquial style, like Genesis, Joshua, Ruth, John, etc. They have diverse forms of literature: some are historical; some of them are almost entirely oratorical, e.g., Deuteronomy, Job; some of them are poetical, like Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles, Ecclesiastes and most of the Prophets, especially Isaiah and Lamentations; some of them are a mixture of history and legislation, like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy; some of them are didactic, like the Epistles; some of them are a mixture of the historical and the didactic, like the four Gospels and Acts; some of them are prophetic, like the major and minor Prophets and Revelation; some of them intersperse the didactic and prophetic, like James, 2 Peter, 1 John and Jude; and some of them consist of the historical, didactic and prophetic, like Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Its diversity is seen in the three worlds or dispensations that span the entire plan that it contains, in the Ages that constitute its second and third dispensations, in the Harvests of the Jewish, Gospel and Millennial

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Ages and in the planes of being and of conditions in those with whom it has to do. Its variety is seen in the different classes that it describes, in good and evil angels, in the perfect unfallen race in Adam and Eve, in the fallen race undergoing the experience with evil, in the elect patriarchs, in elect fleshly Israel's consisting of real and nominal fleshly Israelites, in the faith-justified, in the four ultimate elect classes: Little Flock, Great Company, Ancient Worthies and Youthful Worthies, in real and nominal spiritual Israel, in the embryonic and born Kingdoms, in the born Kingdom's two phases, in the initial two classes of the restitutionists: Jew and Gentile, in the ultimate two classes of the restitutionists: saved and lost, and in the ultimate classes of the fallen angels: restored and destroyed. This diversity consists also of the Bible's teaching elements: doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types. In each of these teaching elements great diversities occur. In its doctrinal teachings the following as the main different ones appear: God, Christ, Spirit, Creation, Covenants, Law, Man, Sin, Death, Hell, Chronology, Ransom, Faith-justification, Consecration, Spirit-begettal and Spirit-anointing, The Seven Salvations and Saved Classes, Election, Free Grace, First and Second Advents, Time of Wrath, True and Nominal Church, the Kingdom, Resurrection, Future Probation, Final Trial, Rewards and Punishments.

This diversity is seen in the Bible's many ethical teachings. While they consist of two main lines of thought, its precepts on our relation to God and our fellows, each of these consist of a vast diversity of precepts as to justice and charity. They embrace charges as to the 7 higher primary graces, the 17 lower primary graces, the 17 secondary graces and the 12 tertiary graces. The diversity of its promises appears from the fact that a Scotchman counted over 70,000 of them. There are at least as many exhortations in the Bible, if not more. There are thousands of diverse prophecies. Its diverse histories, of vast numbers of individuals

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and events, face one on all sides. Different are its biographical personages and events; and its types are just as numerous and diverse as its historical and biographical sections. Diverse, indeed, are the purposes of each of the Bible's various dispensations, Ages and planes of being. Its books were not only written by diverse persons at diverse times, but also in diverse languages and in diverse countries and sent to diverse persons, with diverse objects. Great is the Bible's diversity! While other diversities of the Bible may be brought out, the above are certainly sufficient in proof of diversity as being one of its attributes.

With all its diversity the Bible, nevertheless, has unity as one of its attributes; for all of these diverse elements are only parts of one marvelous whole. This unity is one of structure. The unity between the Old Testament and the New Testament is seen in the fact that each has three similar parts: each is divided into three divisions and these are similar: historical, didactic and prophetic in each case. In the Old Testament we find structural symmetry in the fact that there are first the five books of Moses, which are followed by 12 historical books; then follow five poetic books; thereafter follow five books of the Major Prophets and 12 books of the Minor Prophets. There is a unity of subject-matter in these two Testaments: in the first type and prophecy, in the other antitype and fulfillment: and both alike prophesy and type things future to the New Testament. The first three chapters of its first book treat of the creation and the fall; the last three chapters of its last book treat of the re-creation and the restoration from the fall. Again, both testify of the Bible's seven salvations, particularly of its two main ones. Thus there is a marked unity in the structure of the Bible's two parts. Its unity is organic: for, as in all organic unity, there are three essential features: (1) all parts, without any additions or subtractions, constitute an organism, (2) all parts complement one another; and (3) all are pervaded by the same energy. Thus, first,

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all of the Bible's 66 books are needed to make it the Bible. Take one of these away and you do not have the Bible. Add one or more, and, again, you do not have the Bible. All are needed to constitute it God's full Bible. Secondly, every part of the Bible complements its other parts. Thus one gospel is not sufficient for the life and teachings of Christ. Each of the four gospels complementing the others, we have a complete picture of Christ's life, character and teachings. Also the rest of the New Testament books are needed to fill out features of the mystery of God, of which Jesus and the Church are the fullness; hence we have the Acts, the Epistles and Revelation to fill up the entire mystery. Again, all five books of the Pentateuch complementing one another, are in turn complemented by the other two divisions of the Old Testament: (1) the Earlier and Later Prophets and (2) the Writings. Each of these in turn complements the others; and similarly the New Testament complements the Old and the Old the New. Thirdly, there is the same energy that permeates the whole; for the Spirit of God, both as God's power and God's disposition, permeates the whole, even as life-principle permeates all animal and spiritual organisms.

Its unity is manifest in the one God, of a perfect person, character, word and work, though there is great diversity exhibited in Him in these four features. It is manifest in its coming from One Author, though He used many amanuenses in receiving and transcribing it. This unity is seen in the plan that the Bible reveals. This plan has the one design of glorifying God in His dealing with the sin-condemned race. In bringing about this design all sorts of diverse elements enter into that plan; but they all contribute, whether negatively or positively, to the outworking of that design. Does the race experience evil? Its ultimate end, under Divine control, is to glorify God, who makes the wrath of man praise Him, with its final part restrained in annihilation, thus also glorifying God. Does Satan seem to be winning in his warfare against God, good principles

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and those in harmony therewith? It is only that in the end God, as a man uses a grindstone to sharpen a knife, will overrule Satan's course to God's glory, by His so shaping the faithfuls' experiences in conflict with Satan as will make them all the firmer in truth, righteousness and holiness, and by His limiting the unfaithfuls' cooperating with Satan to manifest them as inseparable from evil and therefore as unfit for existence, as corrupters of good, and fitted for the annihilation that will engulf them, the whole resulting in a perfect and righteous universe. Did Christ perform a perfect ministry and undergo a terrible death? It results in glory to God in the highest and in good will to men, through His laying down the ransom-price for the world and in His developing a character fitting Him to be God's eternal Vicegerent in heaven and earth, to honor God forever in executing His plans and purposes. Does the Church undergo a set of experiences similar to those of Jesus? It results in the same end—God's glory in the highest and good will to men, in that by its sacrificial sufferings it shares with Jesus in suffering and in being made perfect in character and thus fit to be the Bride of Jehovah's Vicegerent, in cooperating under the Bridegroom in eternally glorifying God in advancing His plans and purposes. Similarly, though in a lower measure, the parts in the outworking of the plan carried forward in this life by the Ancient Worthies, Great Company and Youthful Worthies will inure to God's glory in their development in character fitness to cooperate under Christ and the Church in advancing God's plan. Have the Jews suffered unspeakable evils during the period of their rejection from God's favor? It will all result, after their eyes are enlightened and their hearts are mellowed, in their becoming all the more zealous and efficient for God in the Millennium and will inure to the faithful of them being fitted for life eternal and to the unfaithful of them being destroyed, to God's glory. Has the Gentile world suffered much under the experience of evil? This, too, will

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eventually come to the same result to the Millennial faithful and unfaithful. Thus every feature of the plan adds up to the unity of the whole—God's glory in the good having perfect life and in the incorrigibly evil becoming non-existent, as the necessary condition of the universal prevalence of righteousness.

There are other features of the attribute of unity pervading the Bible. The Bible's fruitage culminates in working in the responsive the one Spirit of God—one in its possession of truth, righteousness and holiness, and one in its abhorrence and avoidance of, and opposition to evil. In the diversity of the seven component elements of the Bible we see unity to exist. Note their complete unity with God's character, from which they all flow! Every one of the Bible's doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types is harmonious with God's character, inasmuch as it expresses His mind. This, of course, is not to be understood to mean that the wicked things there mentioned are an outflow of His character, but He caused them to be recorded as warning examples, and from this standpoint it is in harmony with His character to have recorded them. But not only are these things in harmony with, and an outflow of His character, but there is a remarkable harmony between the ransom, the Bible's central doctrine, and these seven lines of thought in the Bible, the last three of them, prophecies, histories and types, to be understood as limited in the preceding sentence, the things therein stated being matters of record, and not all of them necessarily sanctioned by God, but the unsanctified ones being warnings against evil.

Note, please, the unity of the ransom with the unity of God, and how it contradicts the trinity. Since the ransom satisfies God's justice, it must have been brought by one who is not God, which disproves the trinity, as it also disproves it from several other standpoints. God could not be the ransom, corresponding-price to Adam, since God is more valuable than a perfect man; hence the trinity is false; since it herein

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contradicts the ransom. Again, God could not have died; hence the trinity contradicts this phase of the ransom. Again, death, and not eternal torment, is sin's penalty; for the ransom-price was laid down by Jesus' death, not by Jesus' undergoing eternal torment. For the same reason man is not immortal, since the ransom required the death of Jesus, who therefore had not up to then been immortal. Again, the ransom has been given for all; all must have an opportunity of benefiting from it; but the bulk of the race died without getting that benefit; hence they will get their opportunity after they are awakened from the dead. The ransom being a real, not merely a seeming death, the dead are unconscious while dead. The ransom implies justification by faith; for if Jesus meets our debt without merit on our part, all that we need do to obtain the benefit of it is to accept it; hence justification by faith, since Jesus paid it all. The ransom proves that man is human, not part human and part spiritual, since it was the man, not a spirit-man, Jesus Christ who tasted death for every man. The ransom acquires the opportunity of restitution to Adamic perfection and Paradise restored, not spirit life and heaven, for the race as a whole. The ransom, perfecting our humanity, makes the Church in its humanity acceptable for consecration and death with Christ, and keeps it so. Accordingly, we see the oneness of the ransom with the other Bible doctrines. It is a touchstone of Truth and error. In a similar way we could show the oneness of the ransom with all of the Bible's precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies and types, but think enough has in the foregoing been shown on its oneness with the plan, without going into further details on this feature of the Bible's oneness.

We will say something on the oneness of the other six parts of the Bible's elements. There is a marvelous oneness in the ethical principles of God's Word. And this oneness is seen in that all of these principles are calculated to accomplish the one design of all God's words and works—glorify God. These principles revolve

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about and center in love, as the fulfillment of the law of duty and disinterested love; for every precept, whether it is a prohibition or a charge, has as its heart love. Out of love flows every other grace, except faith, hope, self-control and patience, which, however, must be in harmony with it as supports of it and as avenues through which it may flow. God's multitudinous promises have this feature of unity; for they are all implied in, and flow out of the all-embracing Abrahamic Covenant, which is God's eternal purpose, the Divine Plan of the Ages, put in a nutshell. Indeed, that Covenant is the whole Bible in a nutshell, a marvelous summary of God's plan; hence it is apparent that with all their diversity the promises are a unity that are designed to bring glory to God. The same remark applies to the very numerous exhortations of the Bible; for, like the precepts of the Bible, they center in character, warning against those things that go to develop evil characters and encouraging unto those things that go to make up good character. Hence in the exhortations there is oneness. This is true from another standpoint: their relation to the precepts of the Word; for their heart is an encouragement of duty and disinterested love, out of which, as shown above, practically all graces flow; and it works in harmony with the above-excepted graces of faith, hope, self-control and patience. All this also inures to glorify God. The prophecies are a one whole; for they center in the Christ as the mystery of God; all else on which they touch is in the Bible because of their relation to this mystery. And in this we can see their oneness, as this oneness with the Christ is a guarantee that they will inure to God's glory. The histories of the Bible partake of this oneness, because they bind together into one whole the other Biblical books as a revelation of the one God of perfect wisdom, power, justice and love. The types, as being pictures in pantomime of the future classes, persons and operation of the one plan of God in its reflecting credit upon God, share in the oneness of the plan and its object, God's glory.

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The oneness of God's Word appears from still another standpoint, that of ultimate results. By God's plan, under God's one headship, He is making and will continue to make unto a completion in Christ all things in heaven and earth. This is shown in the I. V.'s rendering of Eph. 1:10: "He purposed by Himself for a stewardship of the entirety of the seasons, to make Himself again Head as to all things in the Christ, the things in heaven and the things in earth." A few explanations will clarify this passage. Once, before sin came into existence, as to all free moral agents in heaven [spirit beings] and all things in earth [Adam and Eve, i.e., the then human race] God was Head. But since some angels and all mankind sinned, God ceased to be the Head of all spiritual and human beings, though He still remained Head of the good, i.e., the unfallen angels. God, according to this verse, has by Himself made a plan that is being administered through a full series of Ages, by which, when completed, He will have made Himself again Head of all things in the Christ, Head and Body, but only of those things spiritual and human which come into and remain in the Christ. This will make a wonderful unity, produced through God's Word. The following is the process by which it is realized: First, Jesus by His consecration and Spirit-begettal came into God as His Head (1 Cor. 11:3) and by His faithfulness remained in Him, thus becoming eternally one with God (John 17:21). The next step is the Church coming into Christ by consecration (1 Cor. 1:30; 12:12, 13) and by faithfulness remaining in Him as its Head (Eph. 1:22, 23; Col. 1:18), thus becoming eternally one with the Father and the Son, in the one Spirit (John 17:21, 23). Next will come the Ancient Worthies, Great Company and Youthful Worthies into this oneness under God as Head and in Christ and the Church. Following these will come the good angels and then the reformed fallen angels under God as Head and in Christ and the Church. This will complete bringing in

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the Christ the things in heaven under God as Head. Finally, the faithful restitutionists will be brought into and remain in the Christ under God as Head, which will complete the bringing again of all things in earth in Christ under God as Head. Thus the outworking of the Word or Plan of God will effect it that all things in heaven and in earth in the Christ will come under God again as Head, those refusing to be or to remain in Christ being eternally destroyed. Thus the whole family of God on various planes of being will be all one under God's Headship in Christ, all from the oneness of God's Word in its effect. This oneness has been aptly illustrated by a pyramid, whose top stone is God, each subsequent layer of stones corresponding to those named above, in the order mentioned. Glorious oneness, achieved by God in Christ, through His Plan!

We now come to the consideration of another attribute of the Bible, its harmony. This harmony is one of the Bible with itself as a whole, in its parts, its teachings, God's character, the ransom, facts and its purposes. It is true that some have thought that the Bible is self-contradictory, and have as a result denied its harmony with itself; but such alleged contradiction disappears when the Word is rightly divided, for which a study conducted in the spirit of humility, meekness, hunger for truth and righteousness, honesty, goodness, reverence and holiness is necessary (2 Tim. 2:15). To see this harmony the Word must be partitioned into its proper dispensations, and each passage pertaining thereto must be placed in its proper dispensation. Furthermore, this partition must be one into its proper Ages and Harvests, and each passage pertinent thereto must be put into its Proper Age and Harvest. And, finally, this partition must be according to its proper planes of being and each passage assigned to its proper plane of being. When this is done the Bible as a whole and in its every part will be found to be in perfect harmony with itself. Apparent contradictions are due to a wrong division of the Word of Truth or misunderstandings

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of its thoughts. If, e.g., we should limit as operative in the first dispensations Eph. 1:10, which was first explained, which shows all dispensations, and belongs mainly to the third dispensation, there would be a contradiction; for from the fall to our day all things were not reduced into one under God's headship again; but placed mainly in the third dispensation all is clear. Or, if we should place those passages that treat of actual restitution in the Gospel Age, we would find contradictions, resulting in making the Bible self-contradictory; but if we should put them in the Millennial Age, the Bible would be found self-harmonious on this subject. Or, if we should put on the plane of perfect or fallen human nature passages that treat of immortality, which belong exclusively on the plane of the Divine nature, the Bible would become self-contradictory, for it indicates that the Divine nature alone has immortality (John 5:26; Rom. 2:7; 1 Tim. 6:16; 2 Pet. 1:4), and hence human nature does not have it. But if we put those passages as belonging on the Divine plane, the Bible is found to be self-harmonious. Every other case where the Bible is supposed to be self-contradictory will be made harmonious by a right division of the Word.

This harmony of the Bible is seen to exist as between its passages. E.g., Paul's statement that we are justified by faith without works (Rom. 3:19—5:1; Gal. 2:16—3:29) and James' statement that we are justified by faith and works (James 2:14-26) are thought to be a contradiction between passages. But they are in harmony, because they treat of two different justifications—tentative justification and vitalized justification. Tentative justification is that act of God whereby He, in view of Christ's merit, but without its actual imputation on behalf of and to the involved person, for the time being treats the repentant and believing sinner as though the merit had actually been imputed on his behalf and to him, i.e., treats him for the time being as though his sins were actually forgiven and as though he were actually covered with Christ's righteousness,

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and thus He takes him into fellowship with Himself. He so does, that if this believer should fail to consecrate or fall away he would still have his share in Christ's merit coming to him, for a Millennial trial for life; since had the merit actually been imputed for and to him, and then he should fall away or fail to consecrate, his share in that merit having been exhausted, he would be irretrievably lost. To prevent such a result God has arranged for a tentative justification, i.e., one without works by faith alone. It is this, tentative, justification that Paul describes when he teaches justification by faith alone without works. But to obtain vitalized justification, i.e., a justification that God actually gives for the sake of Christ's merit alone, and not by any merit of the works that lead one up to the vitalizing of his justification, one must not only have lived justly after his tentative justification, but must have been so thorough in such a life as to consecrate himself entirely to God. When, during the operation of the high calling for new aspirants, this consecration was made, God had Jesus make an actual imputation of His merit for and to the consecrator, that merit alone, and not the works done up to and including the act of consecration, earning the right for the pertinent person's forgiveness and covering with Christ's righteousness and unconditional fellowship with God. That actual imputation of Christ's merit vitalized the justification that before was tentative. Thus these good works, as the necessary condition of vitalized justification on the pertinent person's part, did not merit that justification, which Christ's merit alone earned, and which God's grace alone gave; but they had to be done in order that the person could come into a consecrated condition, apart from which no justification was ever vitalized. It is these works, incidental to one's becoming consecrated and thus obtaining vitalization of his justification, that James stresses as necessary to one's having (a vitalized) justification. Thus there is no contradiction between Paul's teachings on justification by faith without works, when it is kept

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in mind that he treats of tentative justification, and James' teaching on justification by faith and works, if one remembers he treats of vitalized justification.

Similarly, some have thought that a contradiction exists between the passages that teach that we are saved by faith without works and those passages that teach that we must work out our own salvation, that without holiness no man shall see God, that glory, honor and immortality come only to those who persevere in good works and that the higher primary graces must be added, be active in us and abound, as the condition of entrance into the Kingdom. These passages are only then made to contradict when they are misplaced as to the plane of being where they belong. If those that treat of faith alone without works as saving us are placed on the plane of justification and the others and similar ones are placed on the plane of Spirit-begetting, i.e., one applied to the human, the other to the Divine salvation, everything is harmonious. Toward the end of our discussion of inspiration we examined very many alleged contradictory passages, particularly all that are of any moment, and showed their full harmony with one another. Hence this will be enough on the subject of the Bible's harmony in its passages.

Again, the Bible is harmonious in its doctrines. Some think that it is not in harmony on its doctrinal teachings. We will instance the main ones of this line of thought and show the complete harmony between them. Most of these alleged disharmonies are due to the fact that their allegers confound the two salvations of the Bible. The apparent contradiction-between the passages that teach that the heavens and the earth are eternal (Eccl. 1:4; Ps. 148:3-5; Jer. 31:35, 36) and are to be destroyed (Matt. 24:35; 2 Pet. 3:10-12) is solved by taking the first set as the literal heavens and earth and the second set as the symbolic heavens (false religions) and earth (society based on selfishness and evil). Some think that a God of perfect wisdom, power, justice and love (Ps. 25:7, 8; Jer. 9:24; Rev. 15:3)

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could not have permitted so much sufferings as are in the race (Rom. 8:20; Acts 14:22). The harmony is found in this, that God uses these experiences educationally: (1) to refine His people into perfect characters, especially in sympathy, forgiveness, gentleness, mercy, benevolence, beneficence (Rom. 8:28, 29; 2 Cor. 4:16-18), and thus fits them educationally to be merciful and faithful helpers of the world when the Kingdom comes; and (2) to educate the world by a terrible experience with evil to hate sin as the cause of their misery, when by contrast they will come to their experience with righteousness, whereby, from its blessed effects' reversing physical, mental, artistic, moral and religious degradation into physical, mental, artistic, moral and religious elevation to perfection, they will learn to love righteousness, the two experiences or educations turning the bulk of the race against sin and to righteousness and thus fitting them for everlasting life. To produce these results certainly is a remarkable demonstration of God's wisdom, justice, love and power (Rom. 8:20, 21; 11:32; Ps. 90:4-12 [the experience with evil], 13-17 [the experience with righteousness]). Some think that the Bible contradicts itself on the doctrine of election (i.e., God's love limited to only a few for salvation, Christ's death limited to only a few for salvation and the Spirit's work limited to only a few for salvation, 2 Thes. 2:13; Jas. 2:5) and the doctrine of free grace (God's love, Christ's death and the Spirit's work for all for salvation, John 3:16, 17; Heb. 2:9; Rev. 22:17). The harmony appears readily, if we apply the elective passages to the second dispensation, especially to the Gospel Age (Joel 2:29) and the free grace passages to the third dispensation in its Millennial Age; for God is now selecting the elect to use them as the blessers of all the non-elect in the Millennium (Joel 2:28; Rom. 8:20-22; 11:25-32).

Some think there is disharmony in the Bible doctrine of the righteous suffering much evil on earth (Acts 14:22; Heb. 10:32-34; 2 Cor. 11:23-27) and the Bible

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doctrine of the righteous not suffering evil on earth (Ps. 37:3, 9, 34, 38; Prov. 2:21; Is. 65:21, 22; Ezek. 36:28-30). Here, too, the harmony of the Bible in its doctrinal teachings is seen when the doctrine of the righteous suffering in this earth is applied as operating while the curse fully operates in the earth, during the reign of evil, while the righteous elect people are undergoing their training for their office of being the Seed of Abraham that will bless all the families, nations and kindreds of the earth; while the Bible doctrine that the righteous will not suffer on the earth will operate during the Millennium, when the curse will be taken away and the reign of Christ and the Church will not only remove the evils from the righteous, but will bless them with every good thing that the head can think and the heart desire. The proof of these things is given in 2 Tim. 3:10-12; Ps. 72 and in many other passages. Thus here, too, is harmony. Again, some think that there is disharmony in the Bible's doctrines that all are lost (Rom. 2:12; Gal. 3:10) and that all are saved (1 Tim. 2:4; Rom. 11:26). The harmony between these two apparently contradictory sets of passages is this: All Jews as humans and Gentiles as such are lost in Adam, whose condemnation to death has come by heredity upon all; and all Jews as Jews are additionally lost in Moses, whose Law Covenant condemnation comes to all Jews, except Jesus, since all but Him have violated the Law. And all Jews as humans and Gentiles as such are saved by Christ, not eternally, but from the death condemnation that they have inherited from Adam; and additionally all Jews as Jews are saved from the Law Covenant's death condemnation. The former classes are saved from their death condemnation by Christ's taking Adam's and their place in the ransom delivery and thus He has gained the right to deliver them therefrom, which He does to believing Jews and Gentiles in this life and will do to the rest as humans in the next Age (Rom. 5:18, 19; 1 Tim. 2:4-6). But the Jews as Jews Christ ransoms from the

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curse of the Law by becoming a curse for them, and thus has become the Redeemer of believing Jews from the Law's condemnation in this life (Gal. 3:13; 4:4, 5), and will become the Same for the rest of them in the Millennium (Rom. 11:25-32). These condemnations and salvations are not to eternal death and life, but the sentence to, and deliverance from Adamic death.

Some think that the Bible doctrine that people suffer for the sins of their ancestors (Ex. 20:4; Rom. 5:12; Ezek. 18:2) and the Bible doctrine that they do not suffer for the sins of their ancestors (Ezek. 18:4, 20) are contradictory. These apparent contradictions are harmonized by the right division of the Word, first, as it applies to the first and second dispensations, and, second, as it applies to the third dispensation; or, to put it in another way: applying the passages that prove that people suffer for ancestral sins to the time before the Millennium, and the passages that prove that people do not suffer for ancestral sins, but for their own sins, to the Millennium. Thus all will be found to be in harmony (Jer. 31:29-34). Now by the law of heredity the race since Adam's day suffers for ancestral sins, as Rom. 5:12-19 and Ezek. 18:2, as well as all experiences prove; but in the Millennium no one will suffer for ancestral sins, but only for his own sins. This is proved in Ezek. 18:3-9. If a righteous man then has a wicked son, this son will suffer for his own sins only and the righteousness of his father will not be reckoned to him (vs. 10-13, 18). And if a wicked man then has a righteous son, that son will not suffer for his father's wickedness (vs. 14-17, 19). Furthermore, if a wicked man then repents and reforms, he will be forgiven and not die (vs. 21-23), but if a righteous man then turns to iniquity, he will die for his sins (v. 24). Against the charge of injustice that some will then bring against God for destroying the apostate righteous and saving the reformed wicked, God vindicates His Millennial course in vs. 25-32. Thus we find harmony between these two apparent contradictions.

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Just one more point: an apparent doctrinal contradiction seems to be between the Bible doctrine that the way of salvation is hard (Matt. 7:14) and that the way of salvation is easy (Is. 35:8, 9). The harmony here is obtained by rightly dividing the Word of Truth, applying the difficult salvation as operating in the Gospel Age and the easy salvation as operating during the Millennial Age. Now the way of salvation is hard, because the devil, the world and the flesh use the present unfavorable conditions to make it hard to gain the elective salvation now operating; for now abounding sin, error, selfishness and worldliness oppose the elect's progress. The operation of the evils of the curse make it hard to be faithful. Oppressive and persecuting governments, predatory aristocracies and false and persecuting religions fight the faithful, and also opponents in one's family, society, business and industry are against them. All of these, as well as other obstacles, make it hard to gain the elective salvation, as Bible passages (Matt. 20:22, 23; Luke 12:50; Acts 14:22; 1 Cor. 4:9-12) prove and experience corroborates. On the other hand, the highway of holiness, as the way of salvation (Is. 35:8) for the non-elect in the Millennium, will be easy, as Is. 25:6-9; 35; Ps. 37; 72, etc., etc., prove; for then, not error, but Truth, will prevail, everybody seeing it (Is. 11:9; 29:18, 24; Jer. 31:34). The highway of holiness will be inconducive to unrighteousness and conducive to righteousness, inasmuch as all features of the curse will be removed and the opposite features of blessing will prevail, as these contrasts are shown in the following 14 sets of passages: (a) Is. 61:4; Ezek. 36:35; Is. 35:1, 2; (b) Rev. 20:1-3; Ps. 72:8; (c) Is. 25:7; 11:9; (d) Is. 25:7; 29:18, 24; (e) Rom. 8:21; (f) Is. 35:10; (g) Is. 2:4; 9:7; (h) Is. 25:8; Ps. 72:7; (i) Is. 26:9; Ps. 37:35, 36; (j) Is. 65:15; 60:14, 15; (k) Is. 60:12; Ps. 72:12-14; (1) Is. 65:22; Mic. 4:4; (m) Is. 65:23; 60:17; (n) Ps. 107:42; Is. 61:11. Certainly, these conditions will make it hard to do wrong and easy

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to do right in the Kingdom. Thus the harmony between these apparently contradictory doctrines of the two ways of salvation is seen.

There is harmony also between God's character and the Bible. This can be seen from the standpoint of the Bible as a whole, of its passages, of its seven component parts, of its teaching on that character itself, of the ransom, of facts and of the purposes of the Divine plan. Take, for example, the doctrinal parts of the Bible. Great is the harmony between God's character and man's trial in Eden, the fall, the sentence of death as sin's penalty, the permission of evil, the Old Testament elections, the ransom, Jesus' resurrection and glorification, justification, consecration, the sacrifice of the Church with Christ, the object and manner of the Second Advent, the two-phased Kingdom, the resurrection, future probation for the non-elect, the world's judgment, restitution, final trial, rewards and punishments, as there is certainly disharmony with that character and the creeds on almost all of their views on these subjects. There is likewise harmony between the Bible and the ransom. In fact, everything in the Bible revolves about the ransom, as a wheel with its hub, spokes and rim revolves about its axle, and as the spokes and rim have the hub as foundation and center. Yea, the whole Bible and its plan center in the ransom. We have above shown this in relation to the main doctrines of the Bible, as we have there shown its disharmony with counterfeits of the Bible's teachings. Those points also prove the harmony of the ransom with the Bible. The Bible is in harmony with facts, with all the facts that it gives and with all the facts of true science and philosophy, as we have shown in detail in our book on Creation (E2). This will be shown also in certain features when we discuss the Bible's attribute of truthfulness. And, certainly, the Bible is in harmony with its two objects: (1) its secondary object of blessing all with the opportunities of eternal salvation and of giving it to the faithful, and of destroying the incorrigible

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as necessary to blotting out all sin, and (2) its primary object of glorifying God as supreme, and Christ as His Vicegerent in heaven and earth. Accordingly, we have found that from every standpoint harmony is an attribute of the Bible.

The next Bible attribute to be studied is its conformity to art. We have no one noun in English to express this idea, though we have adjectives therefore, artistic and artistical. We will, therefore, avail ourselves of a privilege of an editor and author to coin suitable words, which we can do from either of these adjectives in harmony with English usage. From the first one we may coin the word articity, and from the second one the word artisticality, to which we may attach the meaning of the quality of conforming to art. The fine arts consist of music, poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture. But the word art is often used to designate other things than the fine arts, e.g., manual arts, mechanical arts, in fact almost any kind of activity or its products requiring skill and dexterity to do or to make. In our use of the word as an attribute of the Bible we lean more to the idea implied in the fine arts, without, however, excluding the idea of other skillful and dextrous activity and its products. Especially in the fine arts there are a number of qualities required to entitle a thing to be called artistic. Three of these we have already discussed as attributes of the Bible: Unity, diversity and harmony, e.g., take a fine painting; there will be unity as to subject, etc., diversity as to details and harmony in the relations of the parts to the whole. These things we have seen as to the Bible, which, therefore, at least to that extent, is artistic. But there are other qualities that are demanded to make a product a work of art. One of these is simplicity, another is beauty, a third is sublimity. These six qualities—unity, diversity, harmony, simplicity, beauty and sublimity—are the main qualities that go to make up art in its highest sense; and the Bible has all of them; and, therefore, as a product of the highest

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art, it certainly has the quality of articity. While classifiable as belonging to art, we will not here treat of unity, diversity and harmony, having already studied these; we will discuss the other three qualities of art—Biblical simplicity, beauty and sublimity.

Certainly much of the Bible contains the quality of simplicity. All will at once recognize this quality in its histories. Certainly the history in Genesis is the soul of simplicity, as can be seen in its history of creation, of man's fall and condemnation, of the flood, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. All will acknowledge the simplicity of the historical parts of Exodus in its record of Israel's enslavement and deliverance and the journey to, and stay at Mt. Sinai, and in its giving various laws and in its instructions on the tabernacle. The few events of Leviticus are simply told. The same remark applies to its descriptions of the various sacrifices and other ordinances. Numbers' record of the organization of Israel as a nation, of its journeys and of its legal enactment are set forth with great simplicity. The same is true of the way matters are set forth in Deuteronomy. The same remark certainly applies to all the rest of the Old Testament and New Testament histories and biographies; especially those centering in Jesus are certainly the soul of simplicity. It is this quality of simplicity that makes the Bible histories and biographies so much loved and appreciated by the child, the adolescent, the middle aged and the very aged. When the general features of the Divine Plan of the Ages are understood they are recognized as being characterized by the quality of simplicity as a part of the Bible's articity. There is a simplicity even in the more abstruse things of the Bible after they are understood. This is true of its main doctrines, precepts, promises and exhortations. Its prophecies and types on the surface can hardly be called simple, yet after these are understood, they may be called simple.

Another quality that belongs to the Bible's articity is beauty. And certainly the Bible deserves the palm

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for beauty. It is beautiful in its thoughts, in its words and in its literal and symbolic sentences. For sheer beauty of oratorical composition what can equal the oration that forms the bulk of Deuteronomy? For dramatic beauty what in all literature, dramatic or otherwise, can equal the supermarvelous beauty of the drama that constitutes the book of Job? For devotional beauty what can equal that of the Psalms? For ethical beauty nothing in the world can hold a candle to that of the book of Proverbs. For the beauty and delicacy of a love-song what, in all creation, can compare with Canticles? For prophetic beauty what can surpass that of Isaiah? For didactic beauty what in all literature can stand beside the sermon on the mount and Jesus' final discourse in the upper room? For argumentative beauty what can be mentioned in the same breath with the epistle to the Hebrews? For hortatory beauty what can compare with the epistles of James and 1 Peter? For analytical beauty what can compare with Paul's treatise on charity in 1 Cor. 13, or on the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:35-54, or his apostrophe to death and hell in 1 Cor. 15:55-57? And for apocalyptic beauty where is anything that can equal the Apocalypse of John?

What shall we say of the beauty of the Bible's figures? In the use of metaphor the Bible is unrivaled, e.g., how could one in metaphor more beautifully state the condition and course of God's people amid an inimical world than Jesus put it in Matt. 10:16: "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves"; or the hypocritical inconsistencies of sticklers for little, and overlookers of great things: "Ye blind guides that strain out the gnat and swallow the camel" (23:24, A.R.V.). Viewed as symbolic institutions, what institutions are so beautiful in symbolic signification as water baptism in representing our death and resurrection with Christ, or as the Lord's supper as representing, in the broken bread and out-poured wine, the death of Jesus and the Church, and in our eating and

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drinking thereof our appropriating justification through His merit, and our sharing with Jesus in death for the Church and the world? What can equal the Bible's similes in beauty, e.g., "As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that reverence him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that reverence him" (Ps. 103:11-13). Isaiah frequently uses beautiful similes, e.g., Is. 55:10-13 and 61:10, 11. Dr. Bullinger has written a large book on Bible figures in which he discusses in detail 181 different kinds of them, giving copious examples of each. Where in all the world are there parables that can in any way be measured with those of Jesus? The Bible lays almost everything in heaven and earth under contribution to furnish figures under whose forms it beautifully clothes its thoughts.

The last quality that forms a part of the Bible's articity on which we desire to comment, is its sublimity. Sublimity is the highest and most noble feature of articity. While many can write with simplicity, and yet less can write with beauty, very few are able to produce sublime literature; for it is the highest adornment of literary style. Only a few literary lights have reached this degree of excellence. Homer and Virgil have done wonders in the sphere of literary beauty; but almost never do they reach the heights of the sublime. At times Dante, Goethe and Schiller, especially the first, mount from the beautiful to the sublime. Milton and Shakespeare frequently ascend from the beautiful to the sublime, the former even more so than the latter, and that because his subjects were more sublime than the latter's. But the Bible, in whole books, dwells in the sublime. Even more than beauty does sublimity characterize Deuteronomy, the greatest of all orations. Moses' statements in that oration of the curses on the evil in their depths, and the blessings on the good in their heights, beggars description.

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His descriptions of God and God's people in that oration, mount to the high heights of the sublime, e.g., "The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." Even in a higher degree than Deuteronomy does Job exhibit sublimity. Note the sublimity of the imprecations of Job in chapter 3, of his description of the curse in chapter 7, of the weight of affliction resting on him in chapters 10 and 19, of his refutations of his three critics in chapter 12, of his description of death in chapter 14 and of the wicked in chapters 21, 24 and 27, of his apostrophe on God in chapters 26 and 28, of his contrast of his past as given in chapter 29 with that of his present as given in chapter 30, of his avowal of readiness to receive punishment, if an evil-doer, in chapter 31. And what shall we say of the sublimity of God's answer to Job, as to his littleness in contrast with God's greatness in chapters 38-41? Speech fails us to describe its sublimity. No wonder that even unbelievers, like Gibbon, certainly a most competent judge of literature, gives to the book of Job the supreme place of all literature.

How sublime are many of the Psalms, e.g., Ps. 2; 18; 22; 45; 46; 72; 90; 91; 103; 104; 107, to mention a few among many. Sublimity underlies Ecclesiastes and Canticles. Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Zechariah are permeated through and through with sublimity. John's gospel, his first epistle and Revelation, as well as Paul's Romans, Ephesians and Hebrews are sublime pen-products. Especially does Jesus' discourse in the upper room, including His High-priestly prayer, partake in abounding measure of this quality. The Bible owes its sublimity in very large measure to its two main characters—God and Christ; for its descriptions of these are the sublime of the sublime. Note Isaiah's sublime statement on God: "Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones"

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(Is. 57:15). How sublime are the following statements made by Jesus of Himself: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6); "All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matt. 28:18).

The six main qualities of articity—unity, diversity, harmony, simplicity, beauty and sublimity—are not set forth in the Bible in such a way as makes each one exist in a separate part of the Bible by itself, and not as commingling qualities. Rather they are found at times side by side, and at times commingling with one another. Take for example 1 John. Here unity, diversity, harmony, simplicity and sublimity intermingle with one another on all sides. The book of Revelation, adding to these the quality of beauty, commingles all six of these attributes everywhere. It does this perhaps in larger measure than any other book. In Canticles, apart from simplicity, the other five qualities of articity abound everywhere throughout the eight chapters of this book. Deuteronomy unites all six of them. So does the book of Job. Nor should we in this connection overlook the book of Lamentations, which, treating of things of pathos, interweaves these six attributes of articity in its poetry. Other books of the Bible could be adduced as exhibiting this same phenomenon, but enough has been pointed out to prove such a commingling of these qualities in the Bible, and enough has been given to prove that the Bible has the attribute of articity to warrant our ending our discussion of it with the assertion as proven that articity is an attribute of the Word of God.

Secretiveness is the next attribute of the Bible that will be taken up for study. At first thought it seems contrary to the thought of the Bible's being a revelation to say that one of its attributes is secretiveness. Nevertheless the Bible, reason and facts prove that secretiveness is one of its attributes. By this we are not to understand that everything in the Bible is secretive; rather that there are mysteries there that God desires

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to secrete from the generality of mankind, the non-elect. This the Bible shows to be true from a number of standpoints. In Rev. 5:1 God's Word is represented by a book (scroll), written on the inside and outside and sealed with seven seals. The things written on the outside represent the easy and simple things of the Bible, like its histories, most of its precepts and exhortations and some of its doctrines, while those written on the inside sealed by seven seals represent the secret features of the Bible, none of which can be understood until in due time Jesus opens the secreting seals and expounds the things therein to the elect people of God (Rev. 5:9). This same thought of concealment is symbolized in Is. 6:2 where the Seraphim, the four great attributes of God surcharging the Bible, wisdom, power, justice and love, are represented as acting by the Old and New Testaments as their two symbolic wings operating in three aspects, thus as six wings. The two covering the face represent how these two Testaments hide the Truth (2 Cor. 4:6), and the two covering the feet represent how these two Testaments hide God's secret acts, and the two flying represent how the two Testaments open up the Truth as due and set it into operation in effecting God's purposes.

Jesus gives testimony to the same effect in Mark 4:11: "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand." See also Matt. 13:14-17; Luke 8:10; John 12:39-41. There is a mercy in this for both those that see and those that see not. To the former, the faith class, their seeing the deep things proves that they can, if they will, overcome amid faith-exacting conditions, since it proves their Spirit-begettal. But if the others, the unbelief class, saw these deep things, it would imply their Spirit-begetting and their being put on trial for life amid faith-exacting conditions too hard for them to overcome, which would

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mean their eternal ruin. Hence God keeps them in their blind condition, reserving them for their opportunity of gaining life amid non-faith-exacting conditions amid which, if they will, they could overcome. Paul gives us the same thought of the Bible secretiveness in 1 Cor. 2:6-16, where he shows that God's Word is a mystery, which word in the Bible means, not an incomprehensible, reason-contradictory thing, but secret things not known and understood by the uninitiated, but known and understood by the initiated. In E2, pages 472-475, we have given detailed proof on the Bible meaning of the word mystery, and hence will not repeat it here. The faithful consecrated faith class are the initiated who know and understand these mysteries, the unbelief class are the uninitiated who do not know and understand them; and it is for the good of both classes that these conditions are as they are, and the unbelief class will see it as for their good.

God knew that the Bible would be put into the hands of millions of the unbelief class, and to keep it from harming them purposely made it very complicated, so that the unbelief class would not, to their injury, come to understand its secrets. That the Bible is a very complicated and ambiguous book is very apparent from the fact that there are hundreds of sects all contradictory of one another, all of whom claim to base their creeds on the Bible, and all of whom claim they have the right, and the others the wrong interpretation of the Bible. We say it reverently, that the Bible is more complicated than a thousand Chinese puzzles combined in one, and Chinese puzzles are said to be the most difficult of all to solve. When one sees the two salvations of the Bible, the one for the elect, the faith class, now operating, and the other for the non-elect, dead and living, the unbelief class, to operate in the Millennium, and then sees that by God's withholding the understanding of the Bible mysteries from the non-elect by not begetting them of the Spirit, He prevents their coming on trial for life at a time when they cannot

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overcome, and reserves them for their chance to gain salvation for a time when they could overcome, he can see the mercy of God for both the elect and non-elect in making the Bible so that the former can, and the latter cannot understand it. Not only facts of experience prove the complicated secretiveness of the Bible; but it itself tells us that this is the case, and that for the good of both the elect and non-elect. Is. 29:11-16 shows that it is complicated, because neither the non-elect learned nor unlearned can explain its mysteries (11, 12); hence they do not give God a truth-clear service (13); God wondrously blinds the worldly wise and prudent (14), whose theories and practices are darkness and not light (15), and their perversion of matters, through their lack of the Holy Spirit, makes their efforts vain and fruitless; but unlike the potters' clay they fault the Lord, who censures their faulting of Him (16).

Is. 28:9-13 shows in part how it is that the Bible is so complicated. It shows us first that only those who have progressed beyond the milk stage, babes, will by God be taught the knowledge of the deep things (9). It then proceeds to show that the Bible and the teaching of it are a piecemeal matter—here a little, there a little (10), and that its expounders appear to the nonelect as unintelligible speakers (11). To the non-elect God has repeatedly let it be known that the Bible is the real rest and refreshment of man (12), but they would not take its complicated secret teachings, which results in their stumbling into deeper misunderstandings and alienation from the Word. It would be well for us to note just how God put His secrets in the Bible so as to hide them from the unbelief class. One of the ways that He did it was never in one consecutive place to give all its teachings on one subject, but to throw them together piecemeal, disconnectedly and confusedly, or to use Isaiah's expression, Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. Take, e.g., the various disconnected and partially

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treated things set forth in Is. 28: Under the imagery of the drunkards of Ephraim, the decadence of, the wrath of God against, the degradation and fall of Christendom are set forth in vs. 1-4. But in that time God would honor His faithful by Himself (5), and would give them truth and strength for their work (6). Then turning to all nominal Christians, official and non-official, He describes their fallen condition as to error (7) and their throwing up their unclean creeds (8). Having briefly above explained 9-14, we will proceed to 15. Errorists have made a covenant with death and hell in advocating Satan's first lies: Unreality of death, change of the dead from humans to spirits, consciousness of the dead and their bliss or torment (Gen. 3:4, 5). This, being error (15), will be overthrown in the wrath time (18); for God had made Christ the Head of His Church as the Light-shiner (16); and with truth and justice He will measure everything and overthrow by them all error, as the refuge of errorists (17). This truth and justice will annoy the evil continually (19), because the creed beds will afford no comfort (20); for God will battle for the Truth against error and overthrow them, as typed in a certain battle of David and in another of Joshua (21). Mockers at His Word are warned to cease mocking, otherwise they will be bound all the firmer in wrong and error; for God will complete His work as to the whole earth (22); then He exhorts to attention (23). Then under an agricultural figure God describes the Gospel-Age plowing, sowing, growing, reaping and threshing work as to His people (24-29). All will agree that in Is. 28 we have a heaping together of many subjects very meagerly treated, and thus a secreting of its thoughts. Not only by disconnected heaping together of partially treated subjects, but by parables, dark sayings, symbolic language, figurative speech, ambiguous words, words having a great variety of meanings, omissions of words, idiomatic expressions peculiar to Hebrew, Hebraisms in the Greek New

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Testament, etc., etc., God has hidden His mysteries in the Bible so that the uninitiated cannot understand it. But under testful conditions, wherein the faith class must prove their fitness to receive a progressively increased understanding of these mysteries, these are opened up more and more to them; and thus the secretiveness of the Bible is maintained as against the unbelief class and revealed to the faith class. The above proves that secretiveness is an attribute of the Bible, and that because He desired to conceal from the uninitiated certain mysteries therein, to be made known in this life to the initiated alone, the non-elect to understand them in the Millennium.

Truthfulness is the next attribute that we will study. By truth we mean harmony with facts and proper principles, and truthfulness is the quality of such harmony. Our definition of truth implies the spheres wherein the truthfulness of the Bible is to be found. It is to be found in its facts and its principles. Time was when Biblical facts had in man's sight no witnesses of their truthfulness, except the Bible's own statements as to the facts; and this condition was used by infidels as the occasion of denying its statements as to matters of fact. But since 1799 the Lord has been unearthing archeological fact after archeological fact corroborating the Bible's statement of facts. The records of Assyria, Babylon, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, etc., have come to light in the ancient monuments discovered in the forms of cuneiform inscriptions, stone and clay tablets, steles, hieroglyphics, papyri, tomb contents, geological deposits, ruins, pottery, etc., corroborating practically every major event and many minor events recorded in the Bible. These refute many of the higher-critical claims against the Bible. Thus have been corroborated the general outlines of creation as given in Genesis, man in the state of innocence, the fall of man by a serpent's subtlety, the two genealogies of Gen. 4 and 5 (in the Abydos tablets), the building of the ark, the flood and

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the saving alive of couples of all living things. Thus the main antediluvian statements are corroborated by the ancient monuments, for which we are glad.

Philology has corroborated the fact of there having been originally one speech, which later became divided into three main languages, which in turn were developed into many others. The Tower of Babel, the separation of the people into three families of nations and the formation of kingdoms begun by Nimrod, have all received corroboration; Palestine's invasion (Gen. 14) has been proven true; Ur, Haran and Mamre as dwelling places of Abraham have been discovered. The fire-wrought ruins of Sodom, Gomorrah, etc., were lately unearthed; and Lot's wife will likely shortly be found encased in a salt pillar of Usdum. Israel's sojourn and enslavement in Egypt have been corroborated by a stele of Rameses excavated at Beth-shean, as well as by the discoveries of and in the store cities that they built in Egypt. The Tel-Amarna tablets tell of Joshua's invasion of Palestine, as well as mention many cities and towns mentioned in Joshua. During the period of the Judges and Israel's first three kings, Israel had almost no contact with extra-Palestinian nations; hence very little of corroboration of pertinent events has been found, except discoveries of things in Palestine itself, i.e., its cities, Solomon's temple, palace, stables, parts of the Solomonic Jerusalem's walls, etc. But events of subsequent kings, etc., find such frequent corroboration, that from them certain reigns can in part be constructed. Ahab's ivory palace, etc., in Samaria has been unearthed; the wars between him, Ben-hadad, Jehu, Hazael, etc., and of the first three against Shalmanezer II are corroborated; and from that time on the various wars against, and invasions of Israel by the kings of Assyria and Babylon are mentioned in the steles and stone and clay tablets of Assyria and Babylon. An inscription has revealed the underground aqueduct of Hezekiah from the pool of Siloam into the city. Israel's captivities in Assyria and

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Babylon find corroborations in the tablets of those periods. The annals of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, have enabled us to identify Belshazzar as his son and coregent at Babylon. Tablets of Cyrus have enabled us to identify Darius, the Mede, as Cyrus' commander against Babylon, and his decree of Israel's return to Palestine and the charge to rebuild the temple. From Roman and Grecian authors, as well as from Josephus, we have been able to corroborate the work of John the Baptist, Jesus and the early Christians, as well as their persecutions. Josephus corroborates many geographical situations and historical personages mentioned in the New Testament. The miracles of Jesus are attested by the unbelieving Jews in various of their writings, e.g., the Talmud. We may safely say that there is not an historical event mentioned in the Bible that is contradicted as untrue by any of the ancient monuments. We are, therefore, warranted in stating that the Bible's history is true.

Its prophecies have by fulfillment been proven true. This is true of its prophecies as to Jesus' first advent, of the suffering of the Jews in various sieges, the destruction of the two temples, Israel's dispersal among the nations, the desolation of the land, and now their prophesied return to, and rebuilding of Palestine. Very accurately have its prophecies of the Gentile nations been fulfilled, and that as to the nations surrounding Palestine, as well as the great nations of the world: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and the remnant nations of Rome. Its prophecies as to the real and nominal church during the Gospel Age have been fulfilled in their great details; and now in connection with our Lord's return, pertinent prophecy after prophecy has been fulfilled. Thus we have seen the numerous prophecies of the reaping time fulfilled in the gatherings and siftings marking it, in its reapers and sifters, in its superintendent on earth and in the battles of Truth against error that marked it. We also see the prophecies as to the world fulfilled and fulfilling,

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e.g., the increase of knowledge and travel, the exposures of evil in all classes of society, the bundling of the tares in church, national, capitalistic and labor alliances, the hurling of these tare bundles into the fiery furnace, the great tribulation, in whose first phase we are now living, the World War, which is prophetically to be followed first by worldwide revolution and then by worldwide anarchy, and last of all by the final phase of Jacob's trouble. We are also witnessing the fulfillment of prophecy in the separation of the Little Flock and the Great Company, and in the latter's division into 60 groups, as we are also witnessing the fulfillment of prophecies as to the development of Youthful Worthies. And contemporaneously with the reaping work we witnessed the prophecies fulfilling on the advancing Truth designed for the development of the Little Flock, as now in the threshing time we are witnessing the prophesied unfolding of the Truth needed to develop the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies. These, plus many other prophetic fulfillments, prove that the Bible's prophetic program is true, the past fulfillments being a guarantee of the fulfillments of those not yet due for fulfillment.

The Bible's ethical features, which include the precepts, exhortations, prohibitions, corrections and warnings, are true as principles governing conduct. Its principle of justice, duty love to God and Christ with all the heart, mind, soul and strength, is a true and proper matter of justice for their having given us all of good that we have and are, the Former as the Source of all our good and the Latter as His Agent of all our good, for which we certainly owe them duty love (thankful good will for the good that They have done us) with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. The Bible's law of justice also obligates mankind to love the neighbor as self—to wish and do him the good that, if the positions were reversed, we would have him wish and do to us. In the world all have, not before God, but before one another, the same general

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inalienable rights; hence for each to obtain these from others, it is but just that he yield these to others. This rule applying to everyone's relations to others will make all render others their dues—justice. These two laws of justice embrace all of one's duty relations to God and man, and certainly are true and proper principles. Its principle of disinterested love is also true and proper as a matter of charity. Disinterested love, based on a delight in good principles, delights in, and fellowships in unity with those in harmony with good principles, sympathizes with those who are treated contrary to, or who are out of harmony with good principles, and from such delight, fellowship and sympathy takes pleasure in laying down life to advance such principles in the blessing of others. The law of disinterested love extends in its operation as to objects, to God, Christ, the brethren, the world and one's enemies, and in proper proportion and balance is sacrificial to the degree of laying down life for good principles.

In addition to duty love, which includes piety toward God and Christ and brotherly love toward man, and disinterested love, the Bible's ethical teachings include also as among the dominating graces faith, hope, self-control and patience, all seven of them constituting the higher primary graces, which are properly called the dominating graces, since in their blending they are to control all our other graces, the lower primary, the secondary and the tertiary graces. The lower primary graces are the selfish, ten in number, e.g., cautiousness, secretiveness, providence, self-defensiveness, aggressiveness, self-esteem, approbativeness, etc., and social graces, seven in number—sexliness, spouseliness, parentliness, filiality, brethrenliness, friendship and domesticity or patriotism, which to remain graces must be controlled by the higher primary graces. If they are not so controlled they produce faults, e.g., providence not so controlled develops covetousness, etc. The secondary graces result from the higher primary graces restraining, repressing and suppressing the efforts of

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the lower primary graces to control, e.g., so restrained, repressed and suppressed, self-defensiveness results in longsuffering, restfulness, industriousness, self-esteem, humility, appetitativeness, temperance, sexliness, chastity, etc., etc. The tertiary graces, 12 in number, are compounded from a number of other graces in which the higher primary graces predominate, but in which are mixed lower primary, secondary and in some cases tertiary graces, e.g., zeal, meekness, reverence, obedience, faithfulness, etc. Every rightly-disposed person will recognize that these graces are true and proper as qualities of good principles. Backing these precepts as parts of the Bible's ethics are exhortations, encouraging to good, prohibitions, forbidding evil, corrections reforming evil and warnings cautioning against evil. All will surely recognize that all of these ethical teachings are true, as in harmony with proper principles.

The Bible's doctrines are true: its worlds, ages and planes of being are true. Its doctrines of God, Christ, the Spirit and the covenants are true and in harmony with one another. Its teachings on creation, man, the law of God, the fall, the penalty of sin, the educational purpose of the permission of evil and the Old Testament elections are all true. The carnation, consecration, Spirit-begettal, anointing, the sacrifice, ransom-sacrificial death, resurrection, ascension, glorification and Gospel-Age ministry of Christ are all truth-harmonious. The doctrine of the Church, its justification, consecration, Spirit-begettal, election, organization, order, discipline, development, sufferings, trials, perfecting, baptism, Lord's Supper, Sabbath, mission to self and the world, deliverance, resurrection and glorification are all truth-harmonious. Christ's Second Advent, the gathering of the Church as wheat and the world as tares, the Time of Trouble as the day of God's wrath, the overthrow of Satan's empire and the establishment of the spiritual phase of the Kingdom, are, one and all, true teachings. The separation of the Church from the Great Company, and the latter's division

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into 60 groups, the development of the Youthful Worthies, partly in association with the 60 groups of the Great Company and partly as separate and distinct therefrom, and as the last parts of the Gospel-Age work, according to the Bible, the forming of the Epiphany nominal people of God as the nucleus of the Millennial people of God and the deliverance of the Great Company and Youthful Worthies are true teachings, even if belonging largely to the (near) future. These teachings are true. Then it must also be said of the Bible's teachings pertinent to the Millennium, that they are true: the earthly phase of the Kingdom, restitution, resurrection, free grace, Christ's beneficent reign over the race, the imprisonment of Satan and his impenitent angels during the time, the removal of the sentence and the curse, future probation, the loosing of Satan, the final trial of the race, final rewards and punishments and the Ages of glory to come. We may be sure that as the Bible doctrines already having operated or now operating are true, these future ones, guaranteed by the operation of present ones, will be true, as based on good and proper principles. Not only are each and every one of the doctrines mentioned in this paragraph true, but they are self-harmonious, and harmonious with one another, with every Scripture passage, with God's character, the Sin-offerings, facts and the purposes of God's plan. These seven harmonies are the Bible's axioms that must be applied as tests of every doctrine and only those standing the tests are proven to be true. Hence we give these seven axioms as the proof that the Bible doctrines are true. Therefore, the Bible's doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, histories, prophecies and types, being true, it must be true, and therefore, truthfulness is one of its attributes.

The seventh attribute of the Bible is sufficiency. By the Bible's sufficiency is meant that quality of it whereby it is such a depository of saving knowledge for the Elect as makes it enough to be the sole source

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of faith and principles of practice and the main rule of faith and practice. When we speak of it as the sole source of faith and principles of practice, we mean that out of it and out of it alone come the thoughts that Christians are to accept as their belief and out of it alone come the principles that Christians accept as governing the character of their thoughts, motives, words and acts. When we speak of it as the main rule of faith, we mean that it is the main regulator of a Christian's belief; and when we speak of it as the main rule of practice, we mean that it is the main regulator of the character of his thoughts, motives, words and acts, the Holy Spirit and God's providences being subordinate rules of faith and practice in the sense of their assisting us interpretatively as to matters of faith and practice. Negatively it means that a Christian is to accept nothing as a matter of faith or of principle of practice unless it comes out of the Bible, and that he does nothing as a matter of thoughts, motives, words or acts that is not regulated by the Bible and God's Spirit and providence as to such thoughts, motives, words and acts. This effects that God out of and by the Bible is made the sole Giver of His people's beliefs and principles of His people's conduct. And this is what one's justification and consecration imply, viz., that on matters of faith he takes God's Biblically-given faith thoughts alone as enough for his faith and that on matters of practice he takes God's Biblically-revealed principles of justice and love as enough for the sole source of his life, and rules his conduct in harmony with the Lord's Word, Spirit and providences. So far as we as the objects of God's revelation are concerned, one of God's main purposes in giving us the Bible is to make it suffice as the sole source of our faith and principles of our practice and the main rule of our faith and practice. The perfection of God's works (Deut. 32:4) implies, therefore, that the Bible is sufficient for such a use.

722 The Bible.

We now proceed to the proof that the Bible is sufficient as the sole source of faith and principles of practice and the main rule of faith and practice for God's people. We infer this from Moses' prohibition that anything be added to, or subtracted from the Bible (Deut. 4:2); and from John's similar warning against these two things (Rev. 22:18, 19). St. Paul certainly proves this for the Scriptures when in 2 Tim. 3:15-17 he tells us that the Bible is able to make one wise (teach one) unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, and that it is profitable for doctrine (what we should believe), refutation (what we should reject), correction (what we should not do) and instruction in righteousness (what we should do), to the end that God's people may be completely instructed and fitted unto every good work. The Bible exhorts us to betake ourselves to it for all needed instruction, and warns against contrary instruction as coming from darkness (Is. 8:20). This also appears from the perfection of the Bible (2 Sam. 22:31). It is because it is heavenly food that it is to be esteemed above earthly food (Job 23:12); and it is the delight and meditation of God's people (Ps. 1:2). It is sufficient to enable them to keep themselves victorious against Satan (Ps. 17:4). It is sufficient to convert and educate (19:7), to give joy and full enlightenment (8), to warn against evil and reward well-doers (11), and to keep God's people from all slippings (37:31). In the heart it enables one to do the whole will of God (40:8). It is enough to lead and guide to the Kingdom (43:3). Heeding it, God's people develop hope, remember God's works and are kept from following bad examples (78:6-8). It suffices to effect holiness (93:5). It is sufficient to cleanse those who heed it (119:9), to keep one from sinning (11), to give full counsel (24), to work hope (49), to comfort (50), to keep one from perishing (92), to quicken (93), to make one wiser than his opponents, teachers and the ancients (98-100), to give understanding and direction (104, 105, 133), to give one the Truth (130), to keep

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from fainting under persecution (157), and to keep one from stumbling (165). It is enough to rule in all life's affairs (Prov. 6:20-23), to give certainty as to all its teachings and to enable one to refute all attacks (22:21), to shield all who trust it and to reprove and prove false those who add to it (30:5, 6), to incite to progress (Eccl. 12:10), to stumble the evil (Is. 28:13), to direct the course of the perplexed (30:21), to work conviction (34:16), to work righteousness, if kept in the heart (51:7), to accomplish God's designs (55:10, 11), to break down the hard-hearted (Jer. 23:29), to work faith (John 20:31), to give all wisdom unto salvation (Col. 3:16), to equip one to expound the Truth (2 Tim. 2:15), and to fit one for the Divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). These prove its sufficiency.

It is, therefore, the sole source of faith and principles of practice. Some do not accept it as such. Rationalists set forth the thought that reason is the sole source and rule of faith and practice, and thus they reject it altogether in its sourcel and regulatory functions. These take reason to mean the intellectual faculties, or their contents, or both of these. To assert the first is to deny that man is fallen in his intellectual faculties; to assert the second is not only to imply the infallibility of people's knowledge, but to make such a source and rule as various and contradictory as people's knowledge is contradictory, and to assert the third is to combine the evils of both. Hence we must reject reason as the source of faith and principles of practice. Others claim that the Bible and reason are combinedly such source and rule. But such a combination depraves the former and unduly exalts the latter, both of which are wrong, and in practice in reality it effects these two evils. Again, Romanists claim that the Bible and tradition, i.e., the teachings of their Church as they have been elaborated during the centuries, are such source and rule. But in practice this has resulted in subjecting the Bible to that Church's creed and practice, with the effect that some plain

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teachings of the Bible are set aside, others of its teachings have been denied, and all of them more or less counterfeited. In all cases this principle results in making the Romanist teachings dominate as the superior source and rule of faith and principles of practice. It is Satan's counterfeit in his antichrist of the true sole source of faith and principles of practice and the main rule of faith and practice (Matt. 15:3, 9; Mark 7:9, 13). It overthrows God's purpose of giving the Bible to His people as their sourcel and regulatory guide over the narrow way unto life. To deny the Bible to be such leaves one with a God-given false or incomplete instructor, while to take it as the sole source of faith and principles of practice and main rule of faith and practice will give men an all-sufficient guide, fully equipping them for a proper relation in teaching and practice toward God, Christ, neighbor and enemies.

Infallibility is the eighth attribute of the Scriptures here to be studied. By their infallibility is meant that quality of the Scriptures by which, as they came from God's hand, they are not only free from error, but they cannot err. This attribute is more comprehensive than their attribute of truthfulness; for in addition to their being in harmony with fact and proper principles, which is what their truthfulness means, they cannot err. It is not our thought that infallibility covers the work of copyists, who have introduced not a few mistakes into their copies, or that it covers the work of translators, or that of recensionists and interpreters, but that it covers only the originals as God gave them through His inspired penmen, and only that much of these originals as have been preserved to our times. Such infallibility we infer from their being inspired by God (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20, 21); for God not only does not, but cannot lie (Heb. 6:18). It is morally impossible for Him to lie, as it is morally possible for man to lie (Num. 23:19), since He is truthful and without error (Deut. 32:4; 1 Sam. 15:29). This covers His Word (Ps. 33:4). Hence He made this quality permeate His

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Word (40:8). Its being God's light and truth, it cannot err (43:3); and it is infinite in this quality (57:3; 108:4). This is so because He is true (Jer. 10:10). His infallibility must be maintained, though it make every man a liar (Rom. 3:4), just because He cannot lie (Tit. 1:2). Hence, because He is infallible, the Bible, being His Word or Revelation, cannot err (John 10:35; Luke 16:17). It is because people do not know the Scriptures that they err (Matt. 22:29). The Bible's inerrancy or infallibility keeps back the faithful from error and keeps them in the Truth (John 17:17). Hence we can confidently rely upon the Bible's teachings as infallible. And this is indeed a great comfort to the faithful amid the confusion, strife of tongues, in human creeds, theories, hypotheses, speculations, philosophies and sciences so-called; for it keeps them steadfast amid the strife of tongues in confusion worse confounded. Yea, it makes the Bible their rest and refreshment, their pillow and comfortable bed (Is. 28:12). Praised be God for an infallible Bible!

We now come to a discussion of the ninth attribute of the Bible—its authoritativeness. By its authoritativeness we understand the quality of the Bible to be meant by which it properly in its dignity demands and arouses the assent of the intellect, the response of the affections and the obedience of the will of God's people to its teachings. This dignity of authority is imparted to it by its coming as from its Source and Author—God, who inspired its sentiments and words. Moreover, its truthfulness and infallibility accentuate its authoritativeness and thus the propriety of its demands. That it is invested with such dignity of authority is evident from the facts that it is the Divine Revelation and that it comes to us with overpowering evidence of its truthfulness in the internal, external and internalo-external proofs of its being the Divine Revelation. This is further emphasized by its inspiration. Again, further dignity is added to it by its attributes, its uses, the relations of its parts and its effects on believers and

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unbelievers, as well as on partial believers. Hence the authority and dignity and majesty of God is imparted to it as being His expressed mind, heart and will. It is therefore fitting that to its authoritativeness all bow in reverence, awe, appreciation, veneration, affection, belief and obedience; for it being God's Word, God regards that what is thought, felt and willed as to it is thought, felt and willed as to Him. Accordingly, the Bible from its source, nature, qualities, uses, relations and effects is invested with a majesty and a dignity of authority that demands and arouses compliance to it by intellect, affections and will. And such compliance is not one that is servile, but is sympathetic in the response that it makes; for it not only gives overpowering evidence to the responsive heart as to its authority to make its demands, but arouses a most sympathetic response as to the fitness and privilege of such responsiveness to its authoritativeness; for it identifies itself with God's mind, heart and will as to man. Hence God and Christ identify their Word with Themselves.

Let us see what the Bible says on its authoritativeness as to matters of faith and practice for man's intellect, heart and will. The value of the Bible as the depository of God's wisdom is well set forth in the following, often in contrast with its opposite, and in its majesty and dignity: Job 28:12-28; Prov. 1:5, 7, 20-33; 2:1-20; 3:13-26; 4:4-13, 18-22; 7:2-4; 8:1-36; 9:1-6, 9-12; 22:17-21; 23:12, 19, 23. These high qualities of the Bible imply its authoritativeness. It is its authoritativeness that convinces the obedient of the Bible's truthfulness (John 7:17). Its authoritativeness convinces of the truth and emancipation of the Word (8:32). Its authoritativeness makes it obeyed (10:14). It gives full assurance of the truth (17:7, 8). It makes it silence opponents (Acts 6:10). It commends the Bible's teachings as true to believers (1 Cor. 2:6-16). Many Scriptures show the Bible's thoughts to be God's, therefore authoritative, e.g., Ex. 4:11, 12; Deut. 4:5, 6, 35, 36; 1 Chro. 22:12; Ps. 25:8, 9, 12, 14. God's

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using the Bible as His means of instruction gives it authority (32:8). His giving life and light by it proves its authoritativeness (36:9). Often its authoritativeness is enforced by punishments that it teaches (94:12); and its giving light amid darkness makes its authoritativeness all the more impressive (112:4). Its authoritativeness is seen in its giving charge as to what course should be taken when different ways to go present themselves (Is. 30:21); and its effects on the Church and the world confirm its authoritativeness (42:6, 7, 16). Above all does this appear from its Author (48:17; 54:13). Its being God's means of solving the most difficult questions proves its authoritativeness (Dan. 2:20-23). Its hiding its thoughts from the unworthy and revealing them to the worthy manifests this quality as inhering in it (Matt. 11:25-27). This also appears from the fact that the Bible gives irrefutable arguments against its enemies (Luke 21:15). Its giving and withholding light proves this same quality (John 9:5, 39; Rev. 11:3-6). It shows this by the utterances of its mouthpieces (John 12:46; 18:37). Its keeping God's mystery secret before the Gospel Age and revealing it only to the saints in the Gospel Age prove its authoritativeness (Col. 1:26-28). Its great gifts prove the same thing (2 Pet. 1:2-5, 8). Its control over God's people evidences it (Ex. 13:9). Its solemn recital also proves it (Deut. 31:9-13). The blessings and curses that it announces flow from its authoritativeness (Josh. 8:31-34). It requires the Bible to be remembered forever (1 Chro. 16:15).

The purity of the Bible is another guarantee of its authoritativeness (Ps. 12:6). It is its authoritativeness that demands a proper hearing of it (85:8). It makes God's people hide it in their hearts (119:11), arouses their respect for, and delight in it (15, 16), makes them meditate on it, despite highly placed persecutors (23), makes them honor it (30), makes them brave, even before kings (46), makes them remember it when robbed of their goods (61), and arouses their reverence

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even unto hope in it (74). The Bible has this quality because of its faithfulness (86). It kindles the saints' love for it (140), makes them stand in awe at it (161), makes them speak of God's Word and character (172), calls for obedience from all who are righteous and love the Word (Is. 51:7), calls upon God's people attentively to consider it (Ezek. 44:5), appeals to those only who have hearing ears (Matt. 11:15), makes the Bible eternal (Mark 13:31), makes it full of power (Luke 1:37), demands a hearing for it (Luke 16:31), arouses energy in its hearers (24:32), gives life and power to it (John 6:63), makes it work faith and understanding (Rom. 10:17), and makes it speak as due (16:26). The Bible has this quality because it is God-derived (Gal. 1:12). Its authoritativeness makes it the sword of the Spirit in spiritual battles (Eph. 6:17), gives it potency (1 Thes. 1:5), warrants the exhortation to hold it fast (2 Tim. 1:13), makes it free from all bondage (2:9), demands the most earnest heed to be given it (Heb. 2:1-3), makes it energetic and powerful (4:12), warrants the execution of its judgments (10:28), calls for the Word to be received with meekness (Jas. 1:21), makes the faithful confident of eternal life (1 John 5:13), makes the believer contend earnestly for the Bible as the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3), and gives emphasis to the prohibition to add to, or subtract from the Word (Rev. 22:18, 19). Certainly the Bible gives and implies much on its authoritativeness; and this should make us stand in awe of the Word (Is. 66:2).

The tenth attribute of the Bible to be here presented is its adaptability to its purposes. As we have seen, the Bible has a variety of purposes. It is to glorify God and Christ, to win and develop the four elect classes, at present to obscure the Truth to the non-elect, by and by to enlighten them as to God's various dealings and to give them witness as to sin, righteousness and the coming kingdom. That the Bible is to glorify God as its Author and the Outworker of its plan is manifest

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from many standpoints. It reveals Him in His attributes of being and character in a way that certainly reflects credit upon God. This revelation is made by direct statements and by the plan that it exhibits, holding up these attributes of being and character, especially those of character. It reflects credit upon Him by showing how He is working out that plan along the lines of dispensations, ages and planes of being, each one carrying out to a completion its designed outcome. It reflects credit upon Him in that it shows Him successful in His purposes toward the four elect classes and the world in its experience with evil now and with good in the Millennium and in the final successful outcome of that plan, establishing eternal truth and righteousness and the righteous forever in complete triumph, and annihilating all evil and incorrigible evil-doers forever, with God made supreme in the minds, hearts and wills of the faithful. Thus the Bible is adaptable to secure its purposes as to God. It is likewise adaptable to glorify Christ as the Bible's Agent and Executive of its plan. It secures these results as to Christ by revealing His three successive natures as perfect in their attributes of person and character, by revealing the various high offices that He has filled in each of His three natures, and by showing that He was successful in His three prehuman offices as God's Agent in creation, providence and revelation, in His carnation as an obedient subject of the natural and Mosaic laws in His humanity, as the all-prevailing ransom-price for Adam and his fallen race in that same humanity, and as the faithful New Creature sacrificing His humanity as the ransom, developing a new-creaturely character unto perfection amid trialsome conditions and standing successfully its trials unto a completion. In the experiences of the days of His flesh He found the Bible thoroughly adaptable to every need of His humanity and New Creature. And the Bible reflects credit upon Him in His Gospel-Age ministry to its three elect classes, as it reflected credit upon His work with the elect and quasi-elect

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of the pre-Gospel-Age times. It also reflects credit upon Him for His Gospel-Age ministry to the world, particularly in its relations to God's plan and people; and it holds out the thought of His successful outworking of God's plans Millennially and post-Millennially, resulting in eternal glory being reflected upon God and Christ (Rev. 5:13).

The Bible proves its adaptability to secure its purposes as to the four elect and the two quasi-elect classes. That it was in its Old-Testament-unfolding form adaptable to develop the Ancient Worthies is evident, not only from the fact that it worked in them repentance and faith unto tentative justification and thereafter wrought in them consecration and the faithful carrying out of it, but also from the fact that it actually secured them as the first of the elect classes to be won. That the Bible in its Old Testament part secured its purpose of winning as one of the quasi-elect classes the Jews who held to the Abrahamic promises and sought to keep the Mosaic Covenant during the Jewish Age and the Gospel Age, is evident from the fact that they have been so won. And that during the Gospel Age it secured its purpose of winning the second of the quasi-elect classes, those faith-justified ones who, while not consecrating, maintained their hold on the ransom and practice of righteousness, is evident from the fact that such a class has been secured. Hence it must have been adaptable to winning these two classes. But the Bible in its Old and New Testaments has the adaptability to win its three Gospel-Age elect classes: the Little Flock, the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies. Let us first see its adaptability to winning the Little Flock. These have been selected by the Bible in its teachings from among the Gospel-Age faith-justified, except those of their number who in the Jewish Harvest were of the Jewish-Age faith-justified. Both of these were by the Bible in its teachings enabled to consecrate themselves to follow in Jesus' footsteps along the narrow way. By it they were enabled

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to keep their wills dead to self and the world and alive to God, while laying down their human all in sacrifice unto and until death. At the same time the Bible in its teachings enabled them to overcome their weaknesses, faults and lacks, and to develop unto growth, strengthening, balancing and crystallizing their characters in Christlikeness. And the fact that this has been done unto a completeness in the vast majority of this class and is being done in the remainder of them proves that it is adapted to work this effect. It has been accomplishing its purpose as to the crown-losers for Great Companyship. This it has been and is accomplishing by arranging for them to undergo the resistance of their revolutionism, by their commitment to the fit man and Azazel by the World's High Priest, in that the bulk of them have already washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb and in the water of the Word, and in that this is beginning with the rest of them, which proves that the Bible is adaptable for the complete winning of the Great Company. That it is adaptable to winning unto consecration and cleansing the Youthful Worthies, and their full carrying out of their consecration, is evident from the fact that ever since Oct., 1881, this has been going on with ever-increasing numbers of them. Thus the Bible is proven to be adapted to winning the elect and quasi-elect.

It is also adapted to carry out to a successful completion its purposes toward the world of mankind. That it is adapted to letting them have their experience with evil is evident from palpable and undeniable facts existing ever since the fall. This we see to be true of the Old Testament period and of the Gospel-Age period; and we ourselves are witnesses by observation of that experience as going on. Moreover, there is another feature of the Bible plan that during the Gospel Age is being worked out: the world during the Gospel Age has by the Church been given a testimony as to its sinfulness, as to its lack of righteousness and as to the coming judgment [trial of life] in the Kingdom (John 16:8-11).

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Accordingly, we see from the fact that these two purposes have been fulfilling that the Bible is carrying out its two purposes as to the world now due to operate. Its secretiveness makes it adaptable to keep the non-elect unenlightened while they undergo their experience with evil. But the Bible has a third purpose as to the world: through the Kingdom, the four elect classes, to give it an experience of righteousness, to cure it from the effects of the experience of evil and to grant it restitution to the original perfection. While this is a thing that lies in the future, yet we may have the assurance of faith that it will be realized; for not only God's Oath-bound Covenant and the ransom guarantee it, but God has hitherto prepared the agents who will be used in administering that future experience with righteousness, even the four elect classes, assisted by the two quasi-elect classes. Moreover, God has made all the necessary arrangements and prepared all the needed means for operating that experience. Hence we have the assurance of faith that it will come to pass; and the Bible's truths, supplemented by the new Millennial truths, will prove as effective to secure this result as its truths have been adapted to secure the results of God's plan already due to operate. And it will be as completely adapted for the final trial of the restitutionists, for rewarding with everlasting life and blessedness the faithful and for punishing with eternal annihilation the unfaithful as it has been adapted to accomplish its pre-Millennial purposes. Thus adaptability to its purposes is the Bible's tenth attribute.

Its eleventh attribute is dueness in the progressive unfolding of its truths. God caused the Bible to be written in general for the benefit of all His saints and for the special benefit of each one of their generations, each of which generations He intended to have the special message due in and for its times, experiences and needs. He, of course, knew the times, experiences and needs of each generation of His people. Therefore He caused to be put into the Bible not only things

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that covered their general needs as a whole, but also things that the special times, experiences and needs of every generation of them called for. We doubt that we go too far, if we say that He caused to be inserted there everything that the special experiences and needs of every one of His consecrated people required. He could so do, because He foreknew such times, experiences and needs. Hence He adapted its teachings to such times, experiences and needs. And He so arranged the Bible that it was silent on such special times, experiences and needs until they came to pass; and then He made it speak out to those special times, experiences and needs. Passages like the following prove this: "The path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect [full] day" (Prov. 4:18); "My times are in thy hand" (Ps. 31:15); "to give them meat [their portion of meat] in due season" (Matt. 24:45; Luke 12:42); "the testimony for due times" (1 Tim. 2:6); "the mystery which hath been hidden from ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to his saints" (Col. 1:26); "the very hairs of your head are numbered" (Matt. 10:30); "there shall not a hair of your head perish [without the Father's will]" (Luke 21:18); "a book written … sealed with seven seals … Lamb … worthy … to open the seals" (Rev. 5:1, 6, 9). This is seen in the messages to the seven churches of Rev. 2 and 3.

The Bible having special messages adapted to each generation, especially to each movement of God's people, differing according to their different times, experiences and needs, it keeps the particular messages secret until such special times, experiences and needs come. Before that due time comes nobody can understand that part of the message. An illustration will help to clarify this: During the reaping time it was not yet due to see the truth on what would reveal membership in the Great Company, a truth that became due during the time of the Harvest following its reaping time. That truth is given as revolutionism against the Lord's teachings

734 The Bible.

or arrangements, or both, in Ps. 107:10, 11. The writer lectured on that Psalm at least 25 times during the reaping time and never then saw that it gave the clue whereby membership in the Great Company is to be recognized; but after the reaping time was over; and the other harvest processes became due to be enacted, particularly its threshing, sifting and winnowing processes for separating the Little Flock and Great Company and the Great Company into its various groups, that passage, becoming due, spoke out its secret. Note the vast amounts of truth that, not understood during the preceding times, became due and thus opened. At the opening of each one of the seven seals advancing truth became clear, but only as due in those times. Please note the many new truths that became due during, e.g., the Philadelphia Epoch of the Church, truths not seen before since shortly after the Apostles fell asleep. Above all other sunbursts of Truth note the great abundance of advancing truths that became due during the reaping time. Apart from matters related to the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies, almost everything in the Bible became due to be understood clearly during that reaping time; and since the reaping time ended and by the time that the other six harvest processes as to the separation of the Little Flock and Great Company and the Great Company into its groups are completed, everything else in the Bible will have become due. All of this is due to the fact that the Bible is so constructed in its various teachings as to be ununderstandable until those teachings become meat in due season, and then and only then do they speak out their pertinent message. It is for this reason that the Bible is an ever new book speaking up-to-date messages to God's people; or to put the matter in its own words: "The path of the just [God's people] is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect [full] day." And this kind of an unfolding will continue until ere long everything in the Bible will

The Bible's Attributes and Uses. 735

be clear. Yes, dueness, or the progressive unfolding, of Bible truth as needed is one of the Bible's attributes.

The twelfth attribute of the Bible that we will study is its efficiency. By its efficiency is meant that one of its qualities whereby it has the ability to effect the Divine designs in giving it. The Divine designs in giving the Bible are to glorify God and Christ, to give the faith classes the opportunity of gaining rescue from the curse and the salvations of the elect—the Little Flock, the Great Company and the Ancient and Youthful Worthies—with the bestowal of the same upon those of them who prove faithful; and to give the unbelief classes—all unbelieving Jews and Gentiles—the opportunity of gaining rescue from the curse and the salvation of restitution, with the bestowal of the same upon those of them who prove faithful. The Bible, through its Truth and Spirit, effects these purposes as due, and therein exercises its quality of efficiency (Is. 53:10, 11; Luke 1:37 [A.R.V.]). It is not efficient to effect purposes other than these, unless they are implied in these. Nor is it efficient in seeming to effect these purposes through other truths, e.g., secular truths, like those of history, science, philosophy, etc., nor through another spirit than its own, nor by errors, nor by methods, means and manners other than its own, e.g., irresistible grace or physical force. But it is efficient to attain these ends by its own truths, spirit, methods, means and manners. It has this quality because of its present appealing force to the faith classes, to enable them to become amenable to every feature of the processes through which they must pass to gain deliverance from the curse and the salvation peculiar to each of their respective classes; and it will exercise a future, a Millennial, appealing force to the unbelief classes, to enable them to become amenable to every feature of the processes through which they must pass to gain deliverance from the curse and the salvation of restitution. In addition to such appealing force it has a second elemental quality—practicability. Unlike many an alleged

736 The Bible.

revelation, which cannot fit the needs of the lost race, it is so adjusted to human and new-creaturely needs as to supply every one of them along salvation lines. Above we showed that the needs of the race were 21, due to the 21 evil effects of the curse; and these Christ by His 21 offices supplies through the Bible's teachings, the Bible thereby being practical to remove these evil effects and implement their opposites. The third element of this quality is its efficacy, i.e., it actually has and uses its ability, and thus works out the pertinent Divine purposes in giving the Bible. It effects the glory of God and Christ by outworking the aforesaid blessings, as well as implements the destruction of all evil and incorrigibly evil ones. Accordingly, we see from these facts that the Bible has the attribute of efficiency.

Let us see how the Bible through its teachings exercises this quality of efficiency by rescuing the faith classes from the curse and by enabling the faithful of these to gain their respective salvations. It effects these two things by operating four processes upon them: instruction, justification, sanctification and deliverance. At the present time the Bible through its teachings efficiently works on the faith classes in these four processes. It is a Bible teaching confirmed by experience that all men do not have the faith quality (2 Thes. 3:2); hence mankind from the standpoint of faith is divided into two classes: the faith class and the unbelief class. Because the unbelief class could not successfully stand a trial for life amid faith-exacting conditions, like those now prevailing, God does not in this life put them on such a trial; and since the knowledge and understanding of the Bible's teachings are essential for such a trial, God for their good does not now give them such knowledge and understanding, by having made the Bible's teachings unclear to them (Mark 4:11, 12; Rom. 11:32), but will give it to them under non-faith-exacting conditions, in the Millennium (Is. 29:18, 24; 40:5; 52:10; John 1:9; 1 Tim. 2:4). Hence in faith dispensations God has so conditioned

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the Bible's teachings as to make them enlightening only to the faith class (Mark 4:11; Matt. 13:10-17). The Bible's teachings, therefore, through Jesus' ministry (1 Cor. 1:30), give light to the faith classes from the time that it finds them dead in trespasses and sins, until they make their calling and election sure to the salvations respectively pertinent to the four elect groups. Thus it enlightens their eyes of understanding (Ps. 19:7, 8; 119:18, 104, 105, 130; Prov. 4:18; 6:23; Is. 8:20; Hos. 6:5). This quality of the Bible is inherent in itself, and operates through Jesus Christ in His office of being the sole Interpreter of the Bible (Rev. 5:5). He exercises His teaching office through special and ordinary servants of the Truth, the former kind of servants being the seven stars of Rev. 1—3, each star consisting of a plurality of individuals, and the latter kind of servants being all the rest, official and unofficial members, of Christ's Body. He exercises this teaching office in connection with the process of justification, sanctification and deliverance; and in each one of them the efficiency of the Bible manifests itself.

This efficiency is seen in its work in justification by faith, both in the latter's antecedents and in its aftermath. To attain justification one must exercise "repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus." To exercise repentance one must submit himself to the teachings of the Bible along the lines of its law or justice; for the law gives a knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20; 7:7). Through this knowledge one recognizes that he is a sinner by motive, thought, word and act, and therefore is worthy of death, and also recognizes that he is justly condemned in Adam; and this knowledge stirs up in his heart sorrow for (Ps. 34:18; 51:17; Acts 2:37; 2 Cor. 7:9, 10), hatred of (Rom. 7:13-15; Ezek. 20:43), and giving up of, and longing for deliverance from sin (Is. 55:7; Prov. 28:13; Rom. 7:24). These five things: knowledge of, heart's sorrow for, hatred of, giving up of, and longing for deliverance from sin, constitute the first part of repentance, which

738 The Bible.

in its fullness means everything that belongs to reformation (Jer. 26:3, 13). Its second part is love for, and practice of righteousness (Matt. 3:8; Rom. 7:15-22), which two things constitute a return unto the Lord (Is. 55:7). Thus we see that there are seven elements in repentance. As we see in Acts 2 from Peter's accusing the Jews of murdering Jesus, with Biblical proofs of it, that they were influenced to go through the two steps of repentance, we recognize that it was the Bible teachings that moved them to repentance. But in addition to repentance there is another antecedent of justification: faith in the promise that God for the merit of Jesus will forgive the repentant and believing sinner. Such a faith consists, first, of a mental appreciation of this promise, i.e., a knowledge (Rom. 10:14), understanding (Rom. 10:17; Col. 2:2) and belief of it (John 3:36; Heb. 11:6), and, second, of a heart's reliance upon it, i.e., full persuasion or full assurance as to (Rom. 4:21; Heb. 10:22), appropriation of (Heb. 11:13), and responsiveness in living according to that promise's implications, i.e., living a righteous life (Jas. 2:17, 26; 2 Tim. 2:19). Since, as just shown, the teachings of the Bible work repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus unto justification by faith, it is efficient to accomplish this result, and to enable the justified to overcome some of their depravity and to lead a righteous life.

The Bible in its teachings is also efficient to work sanctification in the responsive (Ps. 119:9, 11; John 15:3; 17:17; Eph. 4:13, 15; 5:26; 2 Pet. 1:2-4). There are especially three things implied in sanctification, which primarily means (1) a separation from sin, error, selfishness and worldliness and (2) a dedication of oneself to God. These three are: (1) a sanctification of will, (2) of body and (3) of spirit, which includes cleansing oneself from filthiness of flesh and spirit. By the sanctification of the will the giving up of self-will and the world's will and the acceptance of God's will for one's own will are meant (Prov. 23:26).

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By the sanctification of the body are meant giving one's human all for, and using it up in, the Lord's service in fruitful ministry: all that one is and has and hopes to be and to have by virtue of his being a human being, which is represented in one's body, humanity, i.e., his time, strength, health, talents, means, influence, position, reputation, education, associations, etc., in a word, all that he has by virtue of his having humanity (Rom. 12:1). By the sanctification of spirit are meant primarily one's cultivating his disposition in good, by setting his affections on the higher things and developing the primary, secondary and tertiary graces unto perfection (Acts 20:32; Rom. 12:2; Gal. 5:22, 23; Col. 2:1-3; 3:12, 13) and secondarily one's cleansing himself from filthiness of flesh and spirit, i.e., purging oneself from the disgraces that root in the body and mind (Rom. 6:17; 1 Cor. 10:6-11; 2 Cor. 7:1). This feature of sanctification's third part has its beginnings in justification as a condition, but works mainly in sanctification. The Bible in its teachings is efficient to work out in one every one of these three features of sanctification. Not only does the Bible in the passages cited in this paragraph, as well as in numerous others not here cited, teach these three features of sanctification as effected by its teachings, but the experiences of all of God's children who have been even a little while in the way prove this thought to be true.

The Bible through its teachings is also effective to accomplish the various features of deliverance. In deliverance victory is given one over his enemies: the devil, the world and the flesh, as these seek to manipulate our sinfulness, erroneousness, selfishness and worldliness in all the varied forms of these against us. That the devil is an enemy of ours is evident from the meaning of his names: Satan and devil, both of which mean enemy, and from Matt. 13:39; 1 Pet. 5:8, etc.; that the world, those in harmony with the present evil order of affairs, is an enemy of ours is evident from John 15:18-21; Jas. 4:4; and that the flesh

740 The Bible.

is such we know (Rom. 7:15-24: Gal. 5:16, 17, 19-21). Hence there is a constant war between us and them. In this war the Word of God, taken into a responsive mind, heart and will, is so powerfully effective in its efficiency as to enable us to overcome, and gain the victory over them. Thus, like Jesus (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10), we are enabled to be victorious over Satan by steadfast resistance in the faith, i.e., the Truth of the Bible (1 Pet. 1:9), by the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Eph. 6:11-17); for steadfast resistance of him by guarding ourselves through the Word will put him to flight (Jas. 4:7; 1 John 5:18), which will make us victors (1 John 2:13, 14; Rev. 12:11). That same Word enables us to overcome the world (Rom. 12:2; Tit. 2:12; 1 John 2:15-17). It also gives us victory over our flesh (Ps. 119:11, 28, 50, 92, 104, 133; Luke 1:37 [A.R.V.]; Rom. 8:12, 13; 2 Cor. 10:4; Gal. 5:16, 17, 24; 1 Pet. 2:11-16; 4:1, 2). In some of the citations just given no express mention of the Word is made, but it is implied in the expressions: spirit, mind, etc. It gives the responsive victory over the fear of death and the grave, which they by it are able calmly to regard. Accordingly, our discussion proves that one of the attributes of the Bible is efficiency. In the next Age toward the unbelief classes it will show the same efficiency; and this now effects and then will effect God's and Christ's glory.

The next Bible attribute to engage our attention is its holiness. We indicate it in the name that we usually apply to the Bible: the Holy Bible, a quality that it gives itself, using the word, Scripture, or Scriptures, instead of the word, Bible (Rom. 1:2; 2 Tim. 3:15). It is holy, because it is the product of God's holy wisdom, because it expounds and enforces God's holy justice, because it reveals, applies and is in harmony with God's holy love, and because it exercises God's holy power in all its works; hence in its having God as its Source, Enforcer, Motivator and Activator it is holy. It is holy in its nature; for it is holy in what it Is. It is holy in

The Bible's Attributes and Uses. 741

its purposes, which are to glorify God and Christ, enlighten, sanctify and deliver the faith class now and the unbelief class in the next Age. It is holy in its effects so far due to be wrought; for it has in this Age been executing its purpose in enlightening, justifying, sanctifying and delivering God's saints, and thus reflecting honor upon God as its Author and Christ as its Executor. It is holy in its teachings; for its doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types are all holy in themselves, in their Author, in their Expounder and Executor and in their effects. It is holy in its products: saints, who are by it enlightened, justified, sanctified and delivered. It is holy in its present works toward the unbelief class; for it reproves them for the sins that they commit, for the righteousness that they lack and for their condition and characters in relation to the coming judgment in the Kingdom. It is holy in its reformatory effects on fallen human society; for through its faithful practicers it has been the salt of the earth, nourishing, seasoning and preserving society from utter corruption.

Some claim that the Bible is not holy, because it narrates sinful acts, like the dishonoring of parents, murders, adulteries, rapes, incests, wars, thefts, slanders, covetousness, as sins against man, and irreligiousness, idolatries, blasphemies, unbeliefs, etc., as sins against God. Yea, some go further and accuse it of wrong, because it has charged people to wage wars of extermination, has justified great calamities, like the flood, the overthrow of the cities of the plains, Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, the 185,000 men belonging to Sennacherib's army, etc. On these charges the following should be said: In its narrating sinful acts against God and man it does so in a way that does not incite its readers to commit such sins, but gives them as warning examples of the terrible nature and bad effects of sin, and thus incites its readers to hate, avoid and denounce such sins; and thus in these matters, instead of its being unholy in narrating these acts, it is certainly

742 The Bible.

holy therein; and as an actual matter of fact, by these narratives it has incited people against sin in favor of righteousness, and thus in such narratives is holy in its nature, purpose and effects. Innumerable people have been kept back from such sins by its examples of their perpetrators' bad acts and exemplary punishments, which proves the Bible's holiness. In regard to the calamities cited above that the Bible sanctions, the following may be said: All who suffered these calamities were already under the death sentence and had to die in due course. In every case they were especially wicked, and therefore deserved exemplary punishment, which did them no wrong, since they were already under sentence to death and their great sins deserved to hasten its execution. Moreover, in all these cases their great wickedness called for their exemplary punishment, to shield others from their evils, e.g., both the Bible and archeological discoveries prove that the seven nations of Canaan whose extermination was Biblically charged were so corrupt with venereal diseases that their continued existence was a danger to other nations by way of contamination. The weak resistance that they offered to Israel proves their great physical weakness. Their extirpation was a blessing to others, shielding them from contamination. The destruction of Pharaoh's and Sennacherib's hosts was necessary to protect the innocent from their base intentions. The fact that they met sudden death while in the full bloom of life spared them the long-drawn-out sufferings that a so-called natural death usually brings in its wake. Moreover, these calamities proved a deterrent from wrong on the part of others. And, finally, they form types prophetical of punishments to be meted out upon future wrongdoers. These facts show that such calamities sanctioned by the Bible are in harmony with its holiness.

The last Bible attribute that we will discuss is its indestructibility. In many passages the Bible sets forth this as one of its attributes (Deut. 29:29; Ps. 111:7, 8; Is. 40:8; Mark 13:31; Luke 16:17; 1 Pet. 1:23, 25).

The Bible's Attributes and Uses. 743

Accordingly, no power can destroy God's Word. Satan has tried it in various ways, but has failed in his attempts. Repeatedly he sought to do so in times of Israel's apostacies; but it always came back indestructible. He used copyists' carelessness to destroy parts of it, but failed. Among ancient infidels he raised up Celsus, Porphyry, Julian the Apostate and other neo-Platonic philosophers to encompass its ruin, but could not accomplish it. By the papacy he produced a gigantic, complete and accurate counterfeit of it, by which for centuries he perverted it and kept it in the background. By the papacy's course of keeping the common people in dense ignorance and illiteracy it kept them from reading it. It kept the Bible locked up in the sackcloth of dead languages, to hide it from the common people. Despite these efforts, it came forth by force of its inherent power into the utmost prominence, and is spread more widely than the totality of any 100 other books. Through Protestant sectarianism, especially through palming off as its teachings the doctrines of eternal torment, human immortality, creedal trinity and the absolute predestination of a few individuals unto eternal life and of the rest of the race to eternal torment, Satan sought to make the Bible odious to serious thinkers, but in this he made a great blunder. Through modern infidelity in the forms of atheism, agnosticism, materialism, pantheism, deism, higher criticism, evolutionism, modernism and secularism, Satan has made the most desperate attacks upon the Bible. In these attacks it has indeed been put into a fiery crucible; but it has come out therefrom in its perennial strength, beauty, harmony, utility and efficiency unscathed and steadfast.

At no other book have such violent and subtle attacks been launched with such devilish ingenuity, cunning, persistence, hatred and deceivableness. Against no other book have so many keen and subtle human minds, backed by devils' support, set forth such virulent attacks as have been made against the Bible. External and internal foes of great talent and speculative ability

744 The Bible.

have concentrated into these attacks every weapon that they could forge. A Baur, a Strauss, a Renan, a Kuenen, a Wellhausen, a Cheyne, a Driver, a Briggs have, one and all, as alleged friends, made the sharpest attacks upon it, but all in vain; their attacks have rebounded upon them destructively, with all the greater credibility becoming the Bible's as a result of their attacks. From without a Spinoza, a Herbert, a Hobbes, a Hume, a Voltaire, a Diderot, a Darwin, a Haeckel, a Spencer, a Huxley have attacked the Bible with utmost vigor and adroitness; but it still continues to be the grand old imperishable book of the Ages. As to God's servants as they apply the promises to God's people, so do the words of Is. 54:17 apply to it: "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that arises against thee in judgment shalt thou condemn." As wind and wave strike a Leviathan of the deep in vain effort to cause it to capsize, so do the winds of error and the waves of infidelity strike that grand old book in vain effort to overturn it. And as the waves of the ocean dash themselves into harmless spray as they surge against a great rock that rears its crest far into and above the clouds and that remains unmoved and immovable under their vain poundings, so the tide of time, the might of empires, the ragings of false teachers, the ravings of infidels, the hostile speculations of unbelieving philosophers, the attacks of materialistic scientists and the cunning and hatred of devils, all combined and multiplied a millionfold, beat against "the impregnable rock of Scripture" in vain, since it emerges from every encounter with them unsullied, perennial, immovable, indestructible and victorious, backed as it is by the power, wisdom, justice and love of God "shining in the face of Jesus Christ," "the same yesterday, today and forever"!

A very important passage as to the Bible's theory on itself is 2 Tim. 3:15-17. In v. 15 Paul tells us that one of the Bible's attributes is to make one wise, i.e., give him the proper education as to the salvation

The Bible's Attributes and Uses. 745

which is in Christ Jesus. V. 16 shows how it is that the Bible can do this, pointing out that this is due to its being Divinely inspired, and to its having the uses that secure such a result, while v. 17 shows the result of such uses: qualifying God's people to be completely equipped for all good works. All three of these verses teach the Bible's efficiency, which we discussed above, as well as its instructiveness. All of them imply its inspiration; v. 16 teaches it directly; and all of them teach its uses. Hence this passage is very meaningful as to the Bible's theory on itself. As just shown, v. 16 in addition to its inspiration teaches its uses, which it shows to be fourfold: (1) doctrinal, (2) refutational, (3) corrective and (4) character constructive. A careful and all-sided consideration will result in the conclusion that these four uses of the Bible are all-embracing. They leave nothing out. They cover all cases completely. It is for these facts that they are intended to complete the equipment of all of God's people for every good work. Thus these verses prove that the Bible has also the quality of perfection, not for every purpose, but for all of its own purposes. This fact should endear that grand old book to all God's people, and make them use it faithfully for its purposes.

First of all we will study the doctrinal use of the Scripture. It will be noted that Paul does not use the term doctrine in this passage as the equivalent of what is the present use of the word dogma, which has a more restricted meaning than doctrine as the word is here used; for dogmas mean the articles of one's belief, while the word doctrine as here used, though including all that comes under the head of dogmas, covers other subjects than dogmas, since by doctrine the Bible here, additional to dogmas, means also its teachings on the promises, prophecies, histories and types. Hence we see that it is a wider term than dogma, as this word is popularly used. But by that term doctrine in 2 Tim. 3:16 it does not include teachings that are refutative of error, corrective of faults and constructive of character.

746 The Bible.

In the widest sense of the word, the Greek word didascalia, here translated doctrine, means any and all kinds of teaching, but here, in v. 16, it is restricted to mean what concerns matters of faith on dogma, prophecy, history, promise and type, as distinct from polemical matters and matters of practice. Accordingly, we will here use the word doctrine to cover matters of dogma, prophecy, history, promise and type as these are set forth in the Bible. It is distinct from refutation, in that it sets forth its thoughts constructively, while refutation sets forth its thoughts destructively as to error and as to attacks on the Truth. It is also distinct from correction, in that it sets forth positive teachings of faith, while the latter sets forth teachings destructive of faults. It is also distinctive from instruction in righteousness, inasmuch as it shows what we ought to believe, while instruction in righteousness sets forth what and how we ought to be and do. The first shows us what we ought to believe, the second what we ought not to believe, the third what we ought not to be and do, and the fourth what we ought to be and do.

Accordingly, in a general way we would say that by doctrine v. 16 means all that the Bible teaches on what we ought to believe. It has, therefore, to do with the Bible's theories, i.e., those teachings of God's plan that call on us to believe them, in distinction from the other three features just defined in contrast with doctrine. In specific respects doctrine includes the dogmas, the promises, the prophecies, the histories and the types of the Bible. The following are the main Bible doctrines on dogma: its belief teachings on the Bible, God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, God's Law, the Covenants, Predestination, Creation, Angels, Man, the Fall, the Curse, the Permission of Evil, the Wages of Sin, the First Hell, the Worlds, the Ages, the Planes of Being, the Ransom, High Calling, Christ's and the Church's Spirit Begettal, Growth, Strengthening, Balance, Anointing, Crystallizing, and Birth, Human Depravity,

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Repentance, Faith, Justification, Sanctification, the Three Ways, Sin Offerings, Seven Epochs Of The Church, Deliverance, the Church, Baptism, Lord's Supper, Ancient Worthies, Great Company, Youthful Worthies, Antichrist, Sectarianism, Second Advent, Election, Free Grace, the Harvest, the Day of Vengeance, Overthrow Of Satan's Empire, the Kingdom, its Establishment in Two Phases, Resurrection, Restitution, Final Trial, Paradise and the Obedient Restored, the Second Death or Second Hell. These are the main dogmas of the doctrinal parts of the Bible. All of these subjects are treated extensively in the Bible. In harmony with God's purpose none of them is exhaustively treated in any one place; but piecemeal, here, there and elsewhere in the Bible, are they treated. Some of them because of having a very widespread appeal are treated very clearly, e.g., Repentance, Faith, Justification by faith, God's attributes of being and character, Creation, the Law, Man, etc., since they are things written on the back of the scroll. Others of them are treated less clearly, i.e., the matters of the High Calling. Still others are treated obscurely, e.g., Time of the Second Advent and of the Harvest, Predestination, the New Creative process of Christ and the Church, the Youthful Worthies, etc. Nevertheless, they are all treated of in the Bible sufficiently to make them clear to the classes to whom they apply, by Jesus' ministry exercised through His mouthpieces. The fact that these have all been expounded from and with copious Bible passages proves that the Bible has as a use the revelation of the dogmatical parts of doctrine.

The second feature of the Bible's use for doctrine is prophecy in the sense of prediction; for prophecy in the Bible is frequently also used in the general sense of teaching. Practically every feature of prophecy in the sense of prediction is doctrinal. It occupies a very large part of the Bible. A large part of the Psalms, some of Proverbs, all of Canticles and practically all of the four major and twelve minor Prophets are prophecy, which

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is also interspersed among Old Testament history. And if we would look at the types in the histories and biographies of the Old and New Testaments, we would have to say that they are almost entirely prophetic. There is much of prophecy in the sense of prediction in the Gospels, Epistles and, of course, Revelation. Indeed, everything that is connected with the unfolding of God's plan was foretold (Amos 3:7). Thus we find many details in Jesus' life forecast. Great details are there prophetically given of Israel's experiences. The Bible prophesies much of non-Israelitish nations, e.g., Egypt, Babylon, Arabia, Moab, Ammon, Syria, Phoenicia, Philistia, Persia, Greece, Rome, the ten language nations of Europe and even the U. S. Greater details are given on the real Church and on the nominal church throughout the Gospel Age, and not a little on State, Aristocracy and Labor. Particularly at the end of the Age even greater details are given on these prophetically. Christ's Second Advent, the Gatherings and Siftings of the Harvest, the binding of the tares, the break-down of sectarian Protestantism, its approach to Rome, the great tribulation in its World War, both phases, the World Revolution, the World Anarchy, Jacob's Trouble in both of its phases, the overthrow of Satan's Empire, the Establishment and Operation of God's Kingdom in its two phases, the awakening of the Church and the World from the dead, the Judgment Day, Resurrection, Restitution, the final Trial and its Outcome, Paradise Restored, to the Obedient eternal life given and death eternal meted out to the disobedient,—all of these prophetic features have, in addition to their predictive character, a dogmatic feature, as shown in the preceding paragraph. In almost all cases, so far as the Church real and nominal is concerned, these forecasts are more or less obscure. But those that pertain to Fleshly Israel and their neighbors are much more clearly given. These prophecies are almost never understood before fulfillment, usually not until after fulfillment, though in some cases while in process of

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fulfillment. But when due to be understood Jesus through His mouthpieces clarifies them to those to whom they are due to be understood.

A word of explanation is needed to clarify why the histories of the Bible are here treated as a part of the doctrinal use of the Bible. As setting forth facts and as giving dogmatical lines of thought, they clearly belong under doctrine as a use of the Bible, e.g., the account of creation teaches God's existence and some of His attributes of being and character. So, too, does the chronology of the Bible, as a part of history, belong to doctrine, hence belongs to the first use of the Bible; for it helps to unfold many features of God's plan, e.g., prophecy, the flood as expressive of God's power and justice, the exodus, and separateness from the world. Of course, the genealogies given in the histories of the Bible have a doctrinal use, e.g., Christ's carnation, descent from Judah and David, etc. But the histories of the Bible are also susceptible of a refutational use against historical and doctrinal errors, e.g., against evolution and higher criticism, deism, pantheism and materialism. They are susceptible of a correctional use, e.g., the accounts of the sins and their punishments there recorded help one to abstain from sin or to reform therefrom. Similarly, they have a character-constructive use, e.g., Christ's and the Apostles' use of various Bible stories to incite to faith, hope, love and obedience. Heb. 11 is especially pertinent here. Thus we see that while the histories of the Bible have mainly a doctrinal use, some of them have refutative, correctional and character-constructive uses. A few other illustrations of the doctrinal use of the Bible histories would be in place. The history of Abraham teaches God's providences as extending over His people, that of Jacob the value of prizing the Lord's favor as of prime importance, that of Joseph God's overruling evil for good on behalf of His people, that of Moses God's honoring those who put Him first, that of Joshua and David God's giving victory to those who faithfully lead

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His people, that of Hezekiah, Daniel and the three Hebrew youths God's protecting amid, and delivering from evil His loyal servants. Accordingly, we see that the histories of the Bible have a doctrinal use.

The promises of the Bible also belong to the doctrinal use of the Bible, though they in certain connections have a refutational use, e.g., those connected with the covenants against error thereon, though they have a corrective use, encouraging one to cleanse himself from filthiness of flesh and spirit, and though they also have a character-constructive use, encouraging one to develop Christlikeness as the way of obtaining certain of the promises. But they are primarily doctrinal in their use; for they are closely connected with various features, yea, are often parts of God's covenants, which are dogmas, with various prophecies, histories and types. They are often connected with God's providential acts, His character and works as parts of His doctrinal Word. They bring prominently to mind God's wisdom, power, justice and love in their application to the recipients of the promises. There is no feature of God's dogmas that is unconnected, either negatively or positively, with His promises, e.g., God's threat to Satan (Gen. 3:15) implied a promise to the race. Even His final destruction of the incorrigibly wicked implies a promise to the faithful, i.e., that there shall finally be no more sin and uncleanness in the blessed eternity before them. Thus we see that the promises contain certain dogmatic elements. Promises are always also prophetic. This can be seen in the Oath-bound Covenant, in the promises in the Psalms and Prophets and in promises that Jesus and the Apostles make to the brethren. This can be seen in the promises made to the four elect classes on their own behalf and on behalf of their ministry to the world. Frequently these promises form part of Biblical histories, e.g., those given to Abraham, Jacob, Joshua, David, Hezekiah and the Apostolic churches in the Acts. And finally not a few of such historical promises become typical promises

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to the pertinent classes. Accordingly, we see that the promises of the Bible, of which a Scotchman counted over 70,000, are a part of Bible doctrines, and, therefore, the Scriptures that give them have mainly a doctrinal use, though as shown, above, in certain respects they can be used refutationally, correctionally and character-constructively. In fact there is not a Scripture, according to our text, that does not have the four uses of which 2 Tim. 3:16 speaks.

Finally, we come to the types as having as their main use, the doctrinal use, but we are not to forget that they have a refutational use, e.g., the Sin-offering types refute those who deny the Ransom, and who deny that there are two Sin-offerings. The types of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael refute the idea that God's Gospel-Age people are under the Law Covenant. The type of the inauguration of the Law Covenant refutes the idea that the New Covenant operates as the covenant of God's Gospel-Age people; as its two kinds of sealing sacrifices refute the same idea, and the idea of a single individual constituting the New Covenant's Mediator. Nor are we to forget the corrective use of the types, as can be seen in the type of the fall, Cain, the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc., etc. So, too, they have a character-constructive use, e.g., Abel, Enoch, Noah and his family, and the servants of God mentioned in Heb. 11 beginning with Abraham. While they have these uses their main use is doctrinal. This can easily be seen in the types of Adam and Eve before and after their fall, of Cain and Abel, of Noah, his family and the flood (baptism), Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Ishmael; Abraham, Melchizedek, Lot, Sodom, Gomorrah, Jacob, Esau, Joseph and his brethren, Israel's enslavement and deliverance, its journey to Sinai and the Covenant, the tabernacle, the Levitical sacrifices, etc., etc., etc. In fact all the histories and biographies of the Bible as types teach doctrinal matters. Thus our study shows that the doctrinal teachings embrace its dogmas, promises, prophecies, histories and

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types as their main uses, while less prominently teaching refutational, corrective and character-constructive matters. And when we come to study the Bible's refutational, corrective and character-constructive uses we will see that these three also include doctrinal matters; for, as 2 Tim. 3:16 teaches, every Bible passage is capable of use doctrinally, refutatively, correctively and character-constructively.

The question arises, Why does the Bible have such doctrinal uses? Quite a number of reasons may be given in answer to this question. First of all, it is because in the Bible's doctrinal use, as distinct from its three other uses, God has set forth the main features of His plan; for if we look at the things that are above given as the dogmatic, promissory, prophetic, historical and typical parts of the doctrines of the Bible, we at once recognize that they embrace the main features of God's plan, indeed, every part of God's plan except its preceptorial and hortatory parts. Accordingly, we see that properly its doctrinal use is its main use. A second reason is that the Bible's doctrinal use above all other of its uses displays God's and Christ's person, character, word and work and thus above other uses of the Bible honors and enhances them before us. Thirdly, it has this doctrinal use, because above all other of its uses this one enables God's people to react properly toward God, Christ, the brethren, the world and enemies. Fourthly, it has this use because it furnishes God's people with the firmest foundation on which their faith, hope, love and obedience may rest, out of which these graces may spring, and in harmony with which they may act. Fifthly, it has this use, that God's people amid the confusion of creeds and the teachings of unbelief and misbelief may know what they believe, how they believe it, and why they believe it. Sixthly, it has this use, that from it God's people in their kinds and modes of thought may be distinctly separate from the world in its kinds and modes of thought. And seventhly, and finally, it has this use, that they may be

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able to reprove the world of sin, righteousness and of the coming judgment in the Kingdom in ways of the Truth and its Spirit. Certainly these seven reasons amply justify the doctrinal uses of the Bible.

This brings up another question as to the doctrinal use of the Bible: How does this doctrinal use of the Scriptures manifest itself? To this we might answer, It does it, first of all, providentially. The Bible is a speaking book that has a message adapted to each generation; and as different movements set in, in the unfolding of the Word doctrinally, the providence of God so works as to give each generation what is adapted to it. It, therefore, gives its doctrinal message as due. God foreknowing the various movements that would come in the world, and foreknowing the special needs of people in relation to these movements, as well as those arising out of their conditions and experiences, has put into the Bible pertinent thoughts; and when those movements, conditions and experiences set in, He causes the pertinent truths as due to speak to His people according to those movements, conditions and experiences. It is for this reason that the Bible is a living book, ever showing itself to be adapted to the times as meat in due season. And its doctrinal use is a gradual one; for "the path of the just is as a shining light that shineth more and more unto the full day" (Prov. 4:18). Accordingly, it unfolds its doctrinal thoughts gradually. This is especially seen in the gradual increase of doctrinal truth in the harvests, and less so especially seen beginning with the Sardis period of the Church, increasing throughout that period, and on a larger scale doing this during the Philadelphia period. This is because Jesus as the Interpreter of God's plan has been taking off seal after seal from the Word and unrolling it more and more; and as He does so, He makes His pertinent thoughts clear to His faithful people through His chosen mouthpieces, and that in proportion to the degree of their faithfulness. Herewith

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we bring to a close our brief discussion of the doctrinal use of the Bible.

Having briefly discussed the first use of the Bible, its doctrinal use, we now take up its second, its refutational use. As the doctrinal use is to show us what we ought to believe as to the Bible's dogmas, ethics, promises, prophecies, histories and types, so its refutational use is to show us what we should not believe as to doctrine, precept, promise, exhortation, prophecy, history and type, because of error; for many errors have been by false teachers presented as genuine Bible doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types, and the refutational use of the Bible is to overthrow these errors as such, and to warn God's people against accepting them as true. In the A. V. the word in our text that shows the refutational use of the Bible has been rendered reproof. While it is true that the word elegmos, which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament than in 2 Tim. 3:16, may in certain connections in the Septuagint be so translated, it evidently is not to be so rendered here, because that is a synonym of the word correction as used in this text; hence that rendering would not give us a use of the Bible separate and distinct from its third use. The verb elegcho, from which it is derived, has, among others, the meaning to refute, e.g., Tit. 1:9, 13; 2:15; and in noun form it evidently means refutation in 2 Tim. 3:16; for the run of thought on the uses of the Bible in this passage evidently exhausts them when it shows us that the Bible is to show us (1) what we are to believe, doctrine; (2) what we are not to believe, refutation; (3) what we are not to do and be, correction; and (4) what we are to do and be, instruction in righteousness. Hence we understand the word elegmos here to mean refutation, which according to 2 Tim. 3:16 is the Bible's second use. It means that the Bible is to be used to refute error on matters of teaching and practice; for there is no error of teaching and practice of concern

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to God's people that is not in the Bible in one way or another overthrown.

The sphere of the exercise of this second use of the Bible is every erroneous teaching of concern to God's people. And error affecting them has abounded in the world decidedly more than truth. There is not even one true teaching of the Bible but is contradicted by error. Let us notice a few examples in illustration and proof of this statement, e.g., the Bible's teaching on God as to His existence, being, attributes, word and work. His existence is denied by atheism, materialism and certain forms of evolution and questioned by agnosticism. His personality is denied by pantheism and is much limited by rabbinism in its denial that He has any positive attributes, like love, appreciation, sympathy, tenderness, etc., though it ascribes intelligence, justice and might to Him. Deism denies His providence over His works; milder evolution denies much of His creative work. Higher Criticism denies much of His word. So-called orthodoxy, by logical inference, greatly limits and caricatures His attributes of character. Others misteach on His attributes of person, particularly His unity, omniscience, and onmipresence. The so-called orthodox by creedal trinitarianism grossly err on God's person or being. Others misteach on His works of creation, providence, redemption, instruction, justification, sanctification and deliverance. There is not a Biblical feature as to God but is mistaught by some one. Another example of erroneous teaching: Christ's person, character, word and offices. He is mistaught as being coeternal, coequal and consubstantial with the Father. His prehuman existence is denied by some and mismagnified by others. His carnation is misrepresented as an incarnation, with the consequent error as to a God-man. His death and resurrection are mistaught to be merely a pro forma death and resurrection, the latter to be in the flesh, His humanity and divinity to communicate their attributes to one another, with the consequent error that His

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humanity as omnipresent is taught by some, by others is taught to be everywhere where the Lord's Supper is celebrated. Just one more illustration: The Holy Spirit, instead of being presented as God's power and disposition in Him and all in harmony with Him, is mistaught to be a person coeternal, coequal and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. These are only a few of the dogmatical errors on God, Jesus and the Spirit.

Errors on other Bible doctrines are very abundant. There are many errors on the theories of ethics. The utilitarian theory of ethics is based on selfishness pure and simple, and, of course, contradicts Bible ethics at its foundation, which is duty and disinterested love, a direct contradiction of utilitarianism, for which now the word realism goes, and what it is can be seen in the present day political world, particularly in totalitarianism. The Bible doctrine on divorce is mistaught now, e.g., by applying Jesus' teaching on divorce in Matt. 19:9, applicable to the consecrated only, to the world in general. On the other hand, the loose ideas on divorce as exemplified in Reno divorces, are certainly against the laws of divorce that the Bible lays down for the unconsecrated. These two illustrations are sufficient to show the contradiction between the Bible doctrine on ethics and popular errors thereon. We find errors to prevail on the promises of God, particularly those contained in the covenant promises. The Abrahamic Covenant, which is really the Bible plan itself, of course, is contradicted in every feature of it, as every feature of it finds opponents, who, not individually, but collectively, deny every part of it. Universalists contradict it from the standpoint of overemphasizing some of its features; Calvinism does so from the standpoint of underestimating it. Many Free Gracists do so from a still other underestimate of it. Most errorists either ignore entirely or very inconsistently accept in a limited sense some of its features and deny others of them. The promises of the Law Covenant are mistaught to pledge spiritual salvation,

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while the New Covenant is grossly limited or misplaced in the Gospel, and not applied at all by some to the Millennial Age. Time and again the Bible's exhortations are erroneously applied and taught. How often we hear exhortations that apply to the Church only applied to the world and vice versa. Often they are mistaught, e.g., St. Paul says: Be ye angry and sin not. This is often seized upon as containing two exhortations, one charging us to be angry and the other to avoid sin, whereas it is but one and means that when we are angry let us beware of sinning thereby; for while there is a righteous anger, there is also an unrighteous anger.

Again, numerous are the historical errors attacking Bible histories. E.g., higher critics are so skeptical that they in numerous of its representatives refuse to accept the Bible's histories as true, unless they are corroborated from secular sources. A hundred years ago they, in their major part, questioned almost every history of the Bible. Thus they held man's creation in perfection, his trial and fall to be myths. The flood to them was a silly story; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph were to them unhistorical; so also to them was Israel's enslavement in, and deliverance from Egypt. The same is true of almost every other Old Testament happening. Likewise did they treat the events of Jesus' life, reducing them to myths. His death to them was a mere swooning, and His resurrection a recovery therefrom. Pentecost was to them an imagination, and the Acts of the Apostles a fairy tale. But in the meantime through archeological finds most of the Old Testament stories have found corroboration from extra-Biblical sources; and, now higher critics have been forced to modify very much of their denials of the Bible's historicity, though they continue to deny such uncorroborated parts. The field of prophecy is one in which much error has thrived. The Jews in their denial of Jesus' Messiahship contradict all of the prophecies referring to the First Advent. The theory of Jesus'

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return in the flesh denies many of them that apply to His Second Advent. Its being pre-Millennial is denied by post-and anti-Millenniarians. The Harvest is contradicted by almost every religious teacher. Prophecies applicable to the Church are misapplied to Fleshly Israel; and prophecies that apply to Israel are often misapplied to the Church, and are given false interpretations in addition to wrong settings; Millennial prophecies are frequently applied to the Gospel Age and are further given wrong interpretations. All of some and large parts of other prophetic books are given a wrong interpretation, e.g., Is., Jer., Ezek., large parts of Daniel, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, large parts of Ps. and Prov., most of the minor prophets and all of Revelation. Certainly of prophetic error the human family has almost a fullness. These have caused very much of controversy and much occasioned refutation.

The typical teachings of God's Word have been very often erroneously presented. The typical teachings of God's Word are as numerous as its historical and biographical features. In most cases they have two, and in some even three applications, e.g., one for each of the Harvests and one for the Epiphany. In numerous other cases they have one for the Interim and one for the Epiphany. In some cases in principle they have an application for the Gospel Age and the main one for the Millennial Age, e.g., enactments connected with the Law Covenant. Thus David is used in three Gospel-Age applications: (1) the Church; (2) the Twelve and (3) Bro. Russell. Solomon is used in a threefold application: the Interim star-members, the Epiphany messenger, the Millennial Christ. Joshua has three applications: the Gospel-Age one, Jesus, the Epiphany messenger and the Millennial Head and Body. Judges has four: the Gospel Age and the three miniatures. Following Solomon, Kings and Chronicles have three applications: the large parallels, the small parallels and specialized pictures. Most of the Pentateuch has four applications: the Large Gospel Age

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and the three miniatures. Ezra and Nehemiah have two: the large and small ones. Job and Esther but one each. Up to the last 8 days Christ's life has many different single applications in its individual stories; and the eight days preceding the resurrection night have two applications: the large and the small. Some deny, when not all, almost all of these. Some misteach on all, others on almost all, and still others more or less on some of them. Especially in the Parousia, and more especially during the Epiphany, is an immense amount of error taught on types and those have accordingly been the subject of much controversy. Our brief statements on the seven lines of thought, instancing a few from many examples of errors on each kind, show in small part how numerous are the errors taught on Bible subjects.

The refutative use of the Bible has its sphere in this realm of error. The Bible is so arranged that it has something to say, not only on the constructive use of its thoughts to build up that great system of spiritual philosophy summed up in the Divine Plan of the Ages, but also to refute every error thereon and every attack thereagainst. This is one of the numerous facts that prove that the Bible is of Divine inspiration; for nothing less than omniscience was required so to form it as to have these two excellencies: a theoretically and practically perfect system of thought in unity, diversity and harmony, but a so perfectly fortified whole as would refute every misrepresentation of its contents and as would crush every attack thereon, as well as to prove the error in the attack. We say that omniscience was required to furnish such a Bible with such a use; for it implies that all of these attacks and misrepresentations were foreknown with the times when each would be made, in order that the pertinent refutation could therein be placed. Many of these attacks and misrepresentations, in fact all of the more important ones, were pointed out in type and prophecy in connection with their pertinent events. The rest were had in mind and given the necessary helps for their

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refutation without direct mention of them in prophecy and type. What human could have so formed the Bible to have such uses? Yea, what angels could have so constructed it as a perfect whole with such a use? Its constructive and refutative use is one of the reasons of its indestructibility; for it secures its invulnerability from all attacks and at the same time is destructive of every attack. Hence it says of its servants as the applier of it to God's children: No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee thou shalt condemn [refute]. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord; and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord (Is. 54:17).

Having seen that the Bible has this use, this condition raises the question as to why does it have it? The answer requires a number of explanations to make it plain. The first of these is that Satan's false teachings seek to discredit and then destroy its teachings. When Satan saw the revelation of the Bible gradually growing he recognized that it was a very unique book; and he sought to understand and to pervert its parts as they were thus gradually being given. Hence these perversions of the gradually forming parts of it, misunderstood by him, he palmed off on the heathen as their religious, allegedly as the Divine, revelation. These he developed gradually during the Old Testament period; but they turned out to be so foolish and vain that he could no longer control the heathen by them by the time that Christ came, as witnesses the complete collapse of the Greek and Roman heathenism of that time! When Christ and the Apostles gave the teachings that opened up the Old Testament, and as these were given book form in the gradually developing New Testament, Satan became their most attentive hearer, and the most diligent student of the thus expounded Old and New Testaments. This father of lies so did, not that he desired the Truth, but that he desired to learn it so as to pervert it, and thus destroy it by a counterfeit of its every part. This counterfeit he

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palmed off on the world as Roman Catholicism. Hence it contradicted about everything in the Bible. Later, driven thereto by increasing enlightment, he invented less able counterfeits in Protestant creeds. God foreseeing this his course, designing to checkmate such errors and to safeguard His Truth and people against such perversions, so adjusted the Bible that it would give the pertinent light on the Truth against such arising error, with the refutation of it, as well as with the proof of the attacked truth. The dueness of the Bible, we recognize, thus worked in connection with the rise of each error, another witness of the Bible inspiration. Moreover, God armed certain abler brethren, especially the pertinent star-members and their special helpers, with the Truth of God as due to defend the attacked truth against the attacking error, and to attack and refute these errors. Thus these refuters were armed for the purposes of their warfare against error. Then He, by various circumstances, aroused His warriors to stand forth in battling for the Truth and against error. Some of these circumstances were the mischief that the errors wrought against the Truth and its people and the extreme measures of the errorists in propagandizing their error. E.g., when Tetzel, the indulgence monger, in the Philadelphia epoch of the Church, appeared near Luther's home city, Wittenberg, and by his infamous sale of his indulgences to the injury of Luther's parishioners, and in contradiction to justification by faith alone without the merit of man's works, God aroused Luther to controvert the false doctrine and evil practices of indulgence as preached by Tetzel, together with all other papal doctrines and practices impinging against the Bible as the standard of truth, the priesthood of the consecrated, faith-justification and Christ's headship, Melanchthon being his special helper therein. Other false doctrines and evil practices aroused Bros. Zwingli, Hubmaier, Servetus, Cranmer, Browne, (George) Fox, (John) Wesley, (Thomas) Campbell and Miller and

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their special helpers to combat the pertinent errors, as well as to defend the attacked Truth, the Bible in the case of each one by its dueness making known the pertinent truths and refutations.

Thus Zwingli and his special helper, Oecolampadius, getting the truth due to the Lord's Supper, defended it against papal attacks from the standpoint of the papal errors on transubstantiation and the mass and refuted these attacks, as well as the errors on which they were based. Thus Hubmaier and his special helper, Blaurock, getting the due truth on the teaching that only the justified and consecrated are God's real people, which excluded infants therefrom, and hence disapproved of the water baptism of infants, as incapable of the real baptism and therefore as not candidates of its symbol, defended it against papal and Protestant attacks and refuted the errors of a true state religion with all its citizens as Christians and the accompanying error of infant water baptism, because of their being incapable of the real, hence of the symbolic baptism. Servetus and his special helper, Laelius Socinus, not Faustus Socinus, getting the due truth on the unity of God, defended it against the attacks of creedal trinity and refuted these errors. Thus Cranmer and his special helper, Latimer, getting the due truth on the subjection of the Church in civil matters to the state, defended this due truth against the papal attacks thereon and refuted its pertinent error, that the state is subject to the Church in civil matters. Thus Robert Browne and his special helper, Robert Harrison of Norwich, getting the due truth on each church being under Christ mistress in her own midst, without dictation or rulership from another church or combination of churches or from any presiding elder, bishop, archbishop, cardinal, patriarch or pope, expounded it constructively and defended it successfully against all sorts of attacks from individuals and combinations of power-graspers and lords over God's heritage. Bro. George Fox and his special helper, Robert Barclay, coming

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to see that British sectarianism was devoid of a real religious life and was steeped in formalism, and that true religion consisted of love to God with all the heart, mind, soul and strength and of love to the neighbor as to self, not only expounded this due truth, but defended it against all attacks, as well as refuted the pertinent errors of the attackers. John Wesley and his special helper, Charles Wesley, seeing that the spiritual life, especially of the Anglican Church, was at a very low ebb, not only stressed in opposition to this condition repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus unto faith justification, but especially disinterested love as God's ideal for His people in consecration; they not only expounded these teachings, but defended them against all attacks and refuted the attackers' pertinent arguments. Thomas Campbell and his special helper, Barton Stone, perceiving that sectarianism put its creeds above the Bible and made them barriers to the unity of God's people, stressed the due truth that the Bible was the sole center of the unity of God's people, and not only truly explained this thought as the due truth, but defended it against all attacks and refuted the pertinent arguments of their attackers. Bro. William Miller and his special helper, Bro. Joseph Wolff, perceiving that the Bible chronology taught the nearness of our Lord's Second Advent, expounded these two doctrines and defended them successfully against all attacks and overthrew the contrary arguments of their attackers.

We have given illustrations of the refutative use of the Bible as to the main stewardship truths of the Church's Philadelphia epoch. But the same thing is true of every epoch of the Church. Jesus and the Apostles had repeatedly to defend their teachings against attacks and refute the pertinent arguments of the attackers. The same principle is true of the special mouthpieces and their special helpers in the four epochs between the Ephesus and Philadelphia epochs, as the brethren struggled in the controversy of Zion

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(Is. 34:8) against the increasing development of papal errors. All through the Gospel Age the true Church had to struggle to maintain every feature of Truth against the encroachments of Babylon, papal and Protestant. Hence they had to fight for every square foot of the Truth and its Spirit against the great ones of the nominal church, waging as determined soldiers the controversy of Zion. And while she was crushed into isolation by the weight of numbers, she still fought to preserve the Truth given her as her stewardship. Her controversy came to a height in the Parousia against the nominal church and against sifters in the Truth. The main subjects of controversy during the Parousia were the three doctrines of the Divine right: that of rulers, that of aristocrats and that of clergy, as the foundations of Satan's empire in state, capital and church, and the three supporting doctrines of that empire: human immortality, consciousness of the dead and eternal torment. All sorts of subsidiary errors of Babylon, particularly that of the trinity, that of the alleged God-man and that of the Spirit as a person, were refuted during that time, "the year of the controversy of Zion." And in this conflict Babylon's creeds were shaken from center to circumference; and the true Church inflicted a mortal wound upon the nominal church, from which it is now bleeding to death. But controversy marked much of the true Church's course toward sifters in and out of the Parousia Truth, especially along the lines of no-ransomism, infidelism, combinationism, reformism and murmursome contradictionism. These were the main ones of such controversies, but there were many subsidiary ones that marked the Parousia. And in them all the Bible proved its second use—successful refutation. The leader in this controversy, supported by other able controversialists, was that Servant, who brought the Parousia wars under Christ to a successful conclusion.

The Epiphany is also in its three miniatures thoroughly permeated by controversy. The small miniature's

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controversies are largely in the past and have by the priesthood been waged against crown-lost brethren, whose errors have required a restatement and a defense of almost every Parousia truth and arrangement and a refutation of pertinent errors. In this small miniature, in which from May 1915 to Aug. 1920 the Gospel Age was relived on the scale of a day for a year, the leaders of error were bad Levites, whose course of teaching and practice was varyingly erroneous in quantity and quality. But they were all met and thoroughly refuted in their false teachings and practices. The small miniature in principle had re-enacted the main events, movements and controversies of the 19 centuries of the Gospel Age, with the faithful successfully defending the true teachings and practices against revolutionism against these and the substitution of false ones in their place and refuting the false ones. The medium miniature was from 1918 to 1937. Here, as in the small miniature the bad crown-losers were manifested under bad Levite leadership, in the medium miniature, in which a year stood for a century of the Gospel Age, the good crown-losers were manifested under good leaders. And in this good Levite phase not doctrinal but arrangement controversies waged on a small scale were carried on. These came to a head in 1937 with the manifestation of the main good Levite leaders; and from time to time the manifestation of others has been taking place and will continue until as a class the good crown-losers will be manifest as such. The large miniature began Oct. 1914 and ended its first stage 25 months later. It will end 40 years later, Oct. 1954. In it 25 months correspond with a century in the Gospel Age proper. Its period is therefore the 40 years of the Epiphany; and as the Parousia lapped for 25 months into the Epiphany, i.e., Oct. 1914-Nov. 1916, so the Epiphany will lap 25 months into the following period. It will be during those 25 months that the Epiphany will come to its climax, even as the Parousia came to its climax in the

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first-mentioned 25 months. So far in the large miniature the controversy has been with Babylon in its Protestant and its Romanist sections, and that with crown-losers there. With the Protestant section it has been mainly along the lines of consciousness of the dead and eternal torment, and with the Romanist section it has been with those two questions and the union and cooperation of state and church. Later on it will involve practically every error of these two sections of the nominal church. The Bible has been used as the great refutative arsenal, and will continue to be such in the coming aspects of this controversy, meant by the thunder of Rev. 19:6, resulting not only in the refutation of the errors of non-Truth crown-losers, but also in their conversion to the Truth.

Some words on how the Bible's refutative use is to be employed: As to method there are three ways that it refutes error. First, it disproves it by exposing its erroneousness by arguments directly against it, e.g., it disproves atheism by exposing its unsound arguments. Secondly, it disproves it by proving the opposing truth to be true, e.g., it disproves materialism by proving that there is a world of spirits, which is the direct opposite of materialism, which claims that the material world is the only one that exists. Thirdly, it disproves error by showing that the arguments for the Truth are stronger than those for error, e.g., it sets forth Bible facts that are stronger in favor of direct creation than are the arguments in favor of evolution as the creative process. In manner the Bible refutes error by avoiding all bitterness, all anger, all contentiousness and all fallacies, including the straw-man trick. And it carries on its refutative work in a kindly, longsuffering, winsome, tactful, gentle, thorough and pertinent manner. Moreover, the spirit in which it refutes is free from hatred, enmity, doubtfulness, despair, selfishness and rebellion and is surcharged with full faith in the truth of its position, with the hope of blessing its opponents, in a love that appreciates

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whatever is good in an opponent, sympathizes with or pities him and willingly serves him for his good. But it is one that is fully obedient to the Truth and that in nowise will compromise it to make itself a gainer.

Certainly, in a world full of error calculated to mislead from God, truth, righteousness and holiness, the Bible to be worthy of being a revelation from God to man amid error, sin, selfishness and worldliness must contain that which will expose these evils and lead men away therefrom into the opposite good. Hence the Bible must contain controversial and refutative matter. Its very nature, purpose and results imply this its refutative use. Church history is replete with proof that it is so conditioned. Our experiences corroborate this need on our part and its office in this use of it. Hence it keeps the faithful free from injurious error and in the salutary Truth, and thus contributes to its office of sanctification (John 17:17) and purification (John 15:3). Let us praise God for this refutative use of the Bible as one of the all blessings that come from Him to us!

According to 2 Tim. 3:16 the third use of the Bible is to correct the depravity of disposition in God's people and its resultant misconduct in motive, thought, word and act. This use of it is indicated by the word correction in the cited passage. The word implies that there is something that is not according to rule, that is not right, that is not straight, and that must be made in harmony with rule, with right, with straightness. The word is derived from the Latin verb corrigo, which in turn is compounded from the words cum, with, together, changed into cor by euphony, and rego, to rule, the idea being to reprove and to regulate the irregular disposition and conduct according to right standards. These standards are the principles and examples of the Word of God. Whoever observes irregular dispositions and conduct and reproves them and seeks to regulate them according to Biblical standards attempts the office of correction;

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and whoever succeeds in securing the desired reformation accomplishes correction. Hence the word has several meanings: (1) to set right by the removal of faults and wrongs, e.g., a glutton setting right his eating habits; (2) to remedy from an evil to a good, e.g., amending a bad into a good character; (3) to chastise for an evil, e.g., a father correcting a bad son; (4) to point out evils and mistakes, e.g., a teacher correcting a pupil's composition; and (5) to reform a deviation from a right standard, e.g., to correct conscience, an error, a bill or a law, etc. Certainly the Bible can be used through its principles and examples to correct in any of these senses.

Man's fallen condition makes it necessary that the Bible have and exercise its office of correction. Man has hereditary depravity transmitted all the way from Adam, which gives him a corrupt disposition, inclining him to sin, error, selfishness and worldliness in various forms of these evils. This hereditary depravity, by leading him into various forms of sin, selfishness and worldliness, gives him an acquired depravity which expresses itself into worse forms of sin, worldliness and selfishness, and thus gives him further depravity. As a result we find him making the things to which his depraved affections dispose him his god instead of Jehovah. Thus he makes the objects of His selfish and worldly affections his god, like self-esteem, others' esteem, ease, life, safety, secretiveness, possessions, food, drink, self-defense, aggression, the opposite sex, husband, wife, children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, home and native land. These forms of idolatry make him proud, ostentatious, lazy, life-crazed, cowardly, deceitful, covetous, gluttonous, drunken, contentious, vindictive, unchaste, suprahusbandly, suprawifely, supraparental, suprafilial, suprafraternal, suprasororial, suprafriendly, supradomestic and suprapatriotic, all of which are sins against God. This depravity makes some blasphemous, perjurial, irreverent and superstitious. It makes some doubters, atheists,

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agnostics, materialists, pantheists, deists, evolutionists, higher critics and infidels. Thus depravity leads to many sins against God.

It likewise leads to sins against man. It often makes children disobey, distrust, despise and dishonor their parents and teachers. It frequently leads citizens to do these things against civil officials, subordinates to conspire and rebel against their civil rulers, and citizens, soldiers and politicians to be traitorous to the interests of their countries. It leads to anger, wrath, evil surmising, suspicion, evil construction of motives, malice, hatred, frequently arouses to violence against others as to life and limb, national animosities, revenge, wars, revolutions, feuds, party strife, sectarianism, etc. From it spring marital infidelity, provocation, bitterness, quarrels, neglect of support and care for the spouse, slander of spouse, desertion, divorce, fornication, pornocracy. From it grows the baleful tree of theft, kidnapping, confidence games, dishonesty in business, fraud, cut-throat competition, robbery, rapine, counterfeiting, forgery, embezzlement, crooked speculation, manufactured depression, profiteering, black marketing, bribery, corruption of politicians and ballot, stock market manipulations, depressed wages, inflated wages, wars between capital and labor, slavery, serfdom and white slavery—in a word the breakdown of the distinction between "mine and thine." From it also grows the evil of slander, gossiping, whispering, poison pens, perjury, lying, exaggerations, hypocrisy. And finally, from it grows the covetous spirit that unjustly desires to acquire a neighbor's property, home, wife, children, servants, animals, etc. Surely these facts show man's depravity. Of course, they are not present in all individuals, not even in any one individual. But they are present in the collective race. What was mentioned above is sinful and their mere mention is an evidence of the necessity of the corrective use of the Bible; and these show the necessity for

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its corrective use—its use to correct sin in disposition, motive, thought, word and act.

Not only sin in God's people makes it necessary that the Bible have a corrective use, but this necessity also arises from natural selfishness and worldliness in the consecrated. While natural, as distinct from sinful, selfishness and worldliness are proper in the unjustified and justified, they are not proper for the consecrated whenever exercised contrary to the interests of the Lord's cause and people. They must be denied by the consecrated whenever they call for gratification at the expense of the Lord's cause and people; for, though in justification we agreed to be dead to sin and to be alive to righteousness, additionally in consecration we agreed to be dead to selfishness and worldliness and alive to godliness, i.e., we agreed to give up self-will and world-will and to accept God's will as ours in the interests of His people, truth, righteousness and holiness. For often to serve these we must say no to our cravings selfward and worldward; i.e., whenever our gratifying self or the world runs counter to the advancement of the Lord's people, truth, righteousness and holiness, which latter three are what we mean by the interests of the Lord's cause. In the present time Satan has created such conditions as are conducive to sin, selfishness and worldliness and inconducive to truth, righteousness and holiness and to the people who make these their chief interests in life. Hence he makes it easy to gratify self and the world and hard to deny these. And unfortunately almost all consecrated persons at sometime or other succumb to self and world indulgence and gratification at the expense of the Lord's people and cause. Hence, instead of saying no to self and the world, when they cry for gratification, in the forms of self-denial and world-denial, they gratify these at the expense of the Lord's people and cause, and thus they become unfaithful to their covenant of sacrifice; and repeated yielding to self and the world against the interests of

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the Lord's people and cause develop in them a natural selfishness and worldliness which forms non-sacrificial dispositions, habits and acts, making them unfaithful in their consecration. Sometimes this self-indulgence will show itself in various forms of self and others' esteem, love for ease, safety, concealment, possessions, food, drink, life, self-defense and destructiveness, and this world-indulgence will manifest itself in an overweening love for the opposite sex, husband, wife, children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, home and country. All of this is contrary to the covenant of sacrifice; and it shows the necessity of the Bible in its office of correction; for it is not only necessary to correct sin and error in all, but also to correct natural selfishness and worldliness in the consecrated. Thus we see the necessity of the Bible's use for correction.

These corrections are made by the Bible's teachings given in the form of dogmas, precepts, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types. Some examples will prove this: the Bible's doctrine of God, especially of His character as wise, powerful, just and loving, certainly individually and collectively corrects every form of sin, selfishness and worldliness. So, too, does the Bible doctrine of His plan and work do the same thing. Surely Jesus' ministry in its truth, righteousness and holiness is a constant correction of sin, selfishness and worldliness. The Holy Spirit as God's power and disposition is full of correction of violations of justice and sacrificial love. The doctrine of man's creation in God's image does this also. God's covenants are a direct correction of these three forms of evil in God's people. What a mighty correction of wrong is the doctrine of the fall of man and his experience with evil. The ransom sacrifice is perhaps the greatest of all rebukes of sin, selfishness and worldliness. Justification by faith certainly corrects sin both in its antecedent repentance and in its consequent practicing righteousness. Consecration, in its making and carrying out, is the direct opposite of self-indulgence

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and world-indulgence. Baptism and the Passover, particularly the latter, correct sin, selfishness and worldliness. The doctrine of the Church's and world's judgment is certainly corrective, so, too, are the doctrines of final rewards and punishments.

The precepts of the Bible have a corrective use. These are of two classes, negative and positive. By the negative precepts those that prohibit wrong are meant, like most of the ten commandments, e.g., the first forbidding putting any one or thing ahead of God, the second prohibiting idolatry, the third prohibiting misusing God's name, the sixth prohibiting murder, the seventh forbidding adultery, the eighth forbidding theft, etc. By implication these contain a positive injunction, e.g., the first by implication charges to put God first and supreme in our lives, the sixth implies that people do good and help preserve the neighbor's life, the seventh that one help people to keep the marriage bed pure and the unmarried to be chaste, the eighth that one help his neighbor in his property and goods. There are very numerous other negative precepts practically all of which by implication have a positive aspect. The other class of Biblical precepts is positive, i.e., charges the doing of good and right, e.g., the fourth commandment charges the rest of faith, the fifth charges to hold parents, teachers, civil rulers, employers, and other superiors in honor and esteem. But by implication the fourth forbids unbelief, worry, irreverence toward God's Word and worship; and the fifth prohibits dishonoring, hating, disobeying and distrusting parents, teachers, civil rulers, employers and other superiors. There are multitudes of other positive precepts in the Bible. Certainly these constantly exercise a correcting office along all lines of natural and acquired depravity and their expressions in motive, thought, word and deed.

The promises of the Word have a cleansing, a correcting office, as St. Paul says, "Seeing that we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness

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of the flesh and of the spirit" (2 Cor. 7:1). St. John adds his testimony when he declares: "He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure" (1 John 3:3). St. Peter adds his testimony saying, "Ye have purified your souls in obeying the Truth" (1 Peter 1:22). There are great numbers of promises in the Bible conditional on one's correcting himself, e.g., "He that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall obtain mercy"; "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The second promise of the Oath-bound Covenant, "Thy seed shall possess the gates of his enemies," i.e., God would reward those faithfully fighting against the devil, the world and the flesh with victory over these as they seek to manipulate the various forms of sin, selfishness and worldliness against them. The Word holds out the promises of the glorious reward for those who overcome and these promises are a mighty correction of our sins, selfishnesses and worldlinesses and help us to overcome. Please note such promises in Rev. 2:7, 10, 11, 17, 26, 27; 3:4, 5, 12, 20, 21. Ps. 37 and 91 are good illustrations of the promises helping to overcome. That this is proper we can see from God's repeatedly promising blessing to those who forsake evil (2 Cor. 6:17, 18; 2 Tim. 2:21; Ps. 24:3-6; 34:18; 51:17; 145:18, 19; 147:3; Ezek. 18:21, 22; Matt. 6:14; 11:28-30; Luke 6:37; Rom. 10:9). Accordingly, from their very nature God's promises in the Bible have a corrective use.

In the nature of the case the Bible in its exhortations has a corrective use. Its exhortations have as parts encouragements, rebukes, warnings. All of the rebukes of the Word have a corrective use and that in their very nature. Its encouragements as against sin, selfishness and worldliness, stimulate us to fight against these, strengthen us in the fight, make us brave to conquer them and help us to overcome them. The warnings of exhortations arouse us against Satan's, the

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world's and our flesh's traps, put us on the alert against them, keep our eyes open as to their tricks, doubly arm us against them. The prophecies have also this office of correction. When they prophesy the course of the man of sin, they correct our propensities to compromise with it. When they foretell the evils of sectarian Protestantism, they correct in us a spirit of sectarianism that we may cherish. When they forecast the war, revolution, anarchy, famine and pestilence with which the Age ends, they arouse us to avoid the way that will make them punishments to us. When they forecast the path of the wicked, they arouse us to eschew their ways, and thus act correctively on us. When they warn us of the great dangers and temptations of the Age's end, they arouse us to putting off what in us would expose us to fall into its dangers and to succumb to its temptations. Even its fulfilled prophecies warn us against pitfalls that endangered the former faithful and that tripped the unfaithful and the measurably faithful.

The Bible's histories also have a corrective use. This is especially seen in its examples of evil ones, which warn us against following a similar course. Eve is a warning against believing those who belie God. Adam's willfulness cautions us against willfulness. Cain is an example warning against envy, presumption and hatred. The sin of the fallen angels warns us against following good intentions in disregard of God's arrangements. The antediluvians warn us against wickedness and violence. The builders of the Tower of Babel caution us against following a course at whose bottom is distrust of God. Sodom and Gomorrah caution us against luxury, laziness and wickedness. Hagar and Ishmael are warning examples against presumption and persecution. Esau exhorts against worldliness; Isaac against partiality; Laban against crooked business dealings; Joseph's brethren against envy and lying; Pharaoh against tempting God; Israel against murmuring; Aaron against submitting to popular

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clamor for wrong-doing; Miriam against self-exaltation and envy; Korah, Dathan and Abiram against unholy ambition and opposition to God's eye, hand and mouth; the ten spies against discouraging God's people by over-emphasizing the difficulties of the way; Balaam against making merchandise of one's religious calling, against covetousness, and prostitution of one's privileges from God to the use of His opponents and the opponents of God's people. Saul is a warning example against good beginners becoming progressively bad enders in Divine matters. David's sin as to Uriah and Bath-sheba cautions us against failing to watch and pray and to keep oneself unspotted. Solomon corrects in the ways of keeping oneself free from worldly entanglements. Jezebel is a fearful example of furthering false religion. Ahab rebukes those who yield their official powers to the evil designs of others. Benhadad I dissuades from boasting. Sennacherib recalls from fighting against God. Nebuchadnezzar's course corrects boasting, pride and arrogance. Haman's and King Herod's life is a correction of conspiracy. Herod the tetrarch's evils reprove adulterers and murderers; Judas', treachery; Peter's, overweening self-confidence which leads to a fall. Caiaphas' course corrects envy, prejudice and injustice in a judge; Pilate's, weakness and lack of principle in a ruler; Simon of Samaria, the spirit that would buy spiritual powers. The course of the mob at Lystra corrects the fickleness of mobs; that of Felix, the bribe-seeker; that of King Agrippa, the putter-off of making peace with God; that of Demas, the world-lover, etc. Thus the histories of the Bible have a corrective use.

Finally, the types of the Bible have this office in their antitypes. E.g., all of the Biblical, historical personages referred to in the preceding paragraph type persons, classes or movements, or two, or all three of them, in which similar evils are committed by the antitypes, and thus convey the same corrections, e.g., Moses and Aaron smiting instead of speaking

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to the rock at Kadesh-barnea type, the former, the Parousia, the latter, the Epiphany, ransom-deniers and sin-offering-deniers and thus warn against the no-ransomers and no-church-sin-offeringers. Aaron making the golden calf types infidelistic speculators developing their creed gods, and thus corrects such practices. Korah types Romanist controversialists during the Reformation resisting our Lord working through His reformation mouthpieces, and thus warn against any similar sin. Dathan types the papacy, and Abiram Protestant sectarianism and on cooperating civil powers guilty of the same evil, and thus warn against it. Balaam represents the apostasy's theologians of the Ephesian to and including the Laodicean period teaching for money, honor, luxury, etc., and, therefore, warns against such persons and practices. Saul in his evils types crown-lost leaders as heady, disobedient and envious and, therefore, is a warning against such qualities. Jeroboam I types the Lutheran movement as a clericalistic and sectarianistic developing movement and, therefore, warns against these qualities. Jezebel types the Roman Church and, therefore, in her evils types the evils of that church and thus warns against them. Ahab united with Jezebel types the civil power united with the Roman Church, a gross wickedness, and thus corrects the evil of union of state and church. Their persecuting the prophets types church and state persecuting God's Gospel-Age servants in their proclaiming the Truth as due, and thus warns against such practices. Sennacherib types the French revolutionists in their excesses, and hence warns against such correctively. Belshazzar in his excesses types church and state in their excesses in the end of the Age, and, therefore, warns against such excesses. Herod the tetrarch, in his relations with Herodias, types the policy of the illicit quasi-alliance between American politicians and the Romanist Church, and thus the antitype suggests a correction of this evil; and his beheading John the Baptist at Herodias' direction and Salome's

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request types that policy at Rome's dictation and sectarian Protestantism's request cutting off God's faithful from mouthpieceship to the public. The above are a few from many illustrations of Biblical types exercising the office of correction. Our study, therefore, proves that all seven parts of God's Word exercise a correctional office.

It does such correctional work by certain methods that it prescribes. Some of these methods may be called general and others special methods. We will briefly point out how these two kinds of methods exercise the Bible's corrective use. The Bible arouses us to watchfulness against our inherited and acquired depravity and its expressions in motive, thought, word and deed, and by so doing it puts us on the alert and arouses us to action against them, which conduces to their uprooting. It shows us our weakness against such depravity and its expressions and leads us to prayer and supplication for their suppression; and this conduces to our uprooting it and them; for watchfulness and prayer arouse us as Christian soldiers to fight it and them, and help much to victory over it and them. A third general method is very helpful in carrying forward the corrective use of the Bible: faith in the Spirit, Word and providences of God as an arrangement sufficient to correct such depravity and its expressions. The Spirit of God gives us the character that can and does successfully correct these evils. The Word of God gives the necessary enlightenment to expose these evils to view and the ways to overcome them, as it also, by the power inherent in it, energizes the mind, heart and will unto the needed correction of these evils according to the Bible. And the providences of God furnish us with the needed experiences and supports to effect these corrections. We must have such a degree of faith as will heartily believe that these three things, faithfully used, will correct the evils. Such a faith will lead us faithfully to use these for corrective purposes.

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Hope that by the use of the Bible corrections we will be able to cleanse ourselves from the inherited and acquired depravity and its expressions in motive, thought, word and act helps to make these corrections operate. If we hope for this, we will ardently desire it as a most valuable acquisition, and expect to obtain it. The despairing person never attains such an object, nor does the discouraged and despondent person. One must very strongly hope to employ this use of the Bible in order to gain victory thereby. Love for correcting our depravity and its outcroppings will also incite to a using of the Bible in its correcting office. Love for such a use of the Bible will make that use easy to practice, as well as will strongly urge to its practice and will sustain one against all obstacles to its practice; for love lightens every task, eases every burden, makes its difficulties easy, brushes aside every obstacle in the way of its gaining its goals and makes the almost impossible actual. Hence love to use the Bible in its corrective office will conduce to its realization. Persistent determination to use the Bible in its corrective office will inure to its attainment. People who have a wishbone instead of a backbone in the use of this or any other office of the Bible are not going to make a success of that work. Our depravities and their outflows are so strong and persistent to work in the ways of their cultivation that they put up a fierce fight against their correction. Hence persistent determination to use the Bible correctively must be engaged in, in order to secure the correction. Finally, the general method of exercising oneself to carry out in one's life the corrective use of the Bible will help toward its proper and successful use. We learn to do by doing. Thus we learn to walk by walking, to run by running, to cook by cooking, to write by writing. Almost nothing can be learned without doing it. Therefore, exercising the use of the Bible in its corrective office will enable us to practice and profit from its corrective use. So far the general methods.

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Very briefly will be set forth the special methods of operating the Bible's use for correction. The first of these is detaching the affections from the things to which our depraved affections cleave. Does one love others more than God, does he love idols, does he love irreverent things, love the things of doubt and unbelief, love to distrust, disobey, dislike, or dishonor his parents, teachers, rulers, employer, etc., dislike or hate his neighbor, love lust, thievery, slander and covetousness, let him detach his affections from these and all other forms of depravity, and this will have a corrective effect on these depraved affections. Another helpful method of correcting one's depravity is to abhor its objects. This method is a step beyond the preceding one. The former makes the objects of one's depravity unattractive. This one makes them repellent, abominable, disgusting and hateful; for it sees their unutterable wickedness, injuriousness and cursedness. Let the mind, heart and will dwell upon these inamiable qualities of the objects of one's depravity, and that will arouse abhorrence for them. A third special method helpful to make operative the corrective use of the Bible is avoidance of the persons and objects of, and conditions conducive to the exercise of one's depravity. This means that he go away from the persons, objects and conditions that tend to arouse his depravity into activity; that he evade any and all association with them as he would a rattlesnake, a viper, a scorpion, that he eschew every contact with them as he would a pestilence, a contagion and a blight, and that he avert his attention therefrom as one would divert his attention from a charming serpent. A fourth method of operating the Bible's corrective use is to oppose his depravity and all conditions, persons and objects that arouse its exercise. This means to fight every effort that it makes to indulge itself, that he war a good warfare against the persons, objects and conditions that tend to bring it into play, that he fight the good fight of

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faith against it and them, taking to himself and effectively wielding in the fight the armor of God.

A fifth method of operating the Bible's corrective use against one's depravity is to displace its faults by the opposite graces. Does one abound in unbelief or doubt, let him displace it by faith. Is one inclined to despondency and despair, let him put hope in their place. Is one inclined to irresoluteness and unruliness, let him drive them out by putting self-control in their place. Instead of fickleness and giving up under obstacles, let him fill himself with patience, perseverance. If he is inclined to impiety, let him by displacement operate piety against it. If one is inclined to dislike or hate his neighbor, let him put them aside by love for the neighbor. If one is self-centered, let him displace it with disinterested love, and let him so treat all his other disgraces by displacement through their opposite graces, and thus will he cause the Bible's office of correction to hold good sway in him. A sixth method of making the Bible's corrective use operative is restraining one's faults by graces other than the opposites of these faults. The fifth special method is a frontal attack on evil; the sixth is a flank attack thereon, e.g., if one's fault is pride let him restrain it by working against it a grace that has a counteractive effect on it, like the higher primary graces: faith, hope, self-control, patience, piety, brotherly love and charity. Certain of the lower primary graces would be helpful thereto, e.g., cautiousness, self-defensiveness and aggressiveness. Likewise certain of the secondary graces will help therein, like self-obliviousness, peace, tactfulness and liberality. The same thing is true of certain of the tertiary graces, like zeal, reverence, sincerity, obedience and meekness. Each and all of these will exercise a restraining influence against one's faults, and thus operate against evil the Bible's corrective use. And finally, the seventh special method of making the Bible's corrective use operative is presenting an impenetrable front to our depravity and its expressions.

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By an impenetrable front we mean an all-round developed Holy Spirit that has every grace, every will expression, every mental equipment and every good affection operative in every pertinent situation, and those so filling one with the Spirit that the evil can have no entrance or exit, because its way is blocked and brought to a standstill. This method can be used only by the advanced child of God in its fullness, though it can be used by the graces already had individually; by their giving no room to the devil, the world and the flesh; for any grace that blocks and brings to a standstill a fault that seeks to operate, partakes of the character of this method. It is like a round piece of steel that rebuffs every marble thrown upon it; it is like the knight's armor that sheds every arrow that strikes it, and is like a granite wall that causes every rubber ball striking it to rebound. Thus this method will make operative the Bible's corrective use.

Our investigation certainly proves that the Bible has this corrective use, and arouses us, each and all, to make use of it in this its office, overcoming the devil, the world and the flesh, as they seek through our inherited and acquired depravity and their expressions to defile us with evil, uncleanness, in the various forms of sin, selfishness and worldliness.

Having in the light of 2 Tim. 3:16, and other passages, studied the first three uses of the Scriptures, its doctrinal, refutational and correctional uses, we now come to the study of its fourth and final use, its character-training use. As we look at these four uses of the Bible we can readily see that they are exhaustive; for its doctrinal use shows us what we ought to believe; its refutational use shows us what we ought not to believe; its correctional use shows us what we should not be in disposition or do in motive, thought, word and deed, and its training use shows us what we ought to be in disposition, and do in thought, motive, word and act. Hence the four uses of the Bible, covering everything of faith and error, and everything of evil

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and good in character and conduct (2 Tim. 3:16), cover the whole sphere of faith and practice, both for the Church as a whole and for each of its individual members. By this we are not to be understood to mean that this verse gives all the pertinent details. These the Bible gives elsewhere, in harmony with its statement of its method of so doing: "line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little"; but by this statement we are to be understood to mean that this passage contains an exhaustive statement of the general lines of the Bible's uses. It will be noted that we use the expression character-training as designating the fourth and final use of the Bible. This term was designedly used; for the A. V.'s translation here, "instruction," is not sufficiently broad. The idea of instruction is implied in, and is a part of the meaning of the original word here used, paideia, which here means training, and the run of thought in this and the following verse proves that it here means character-training; but, of course, instruction is the foundation part of training, since it gives the knowledge that is to be woven into, and made to produce character-training. Hence here the word, paideia, should be rendered training, training in righteousness, i.e., character-training is the Bible's fourth use.

The thought just expressed that the Bible's fourth use is to train God's people in righteousness, i.e., to give them character-training, is to be insisted upon as the proper thought expressed in the last part of 2 Tim. 3:16. To give it as instruction in righteousness, as the A. V. gives it, makes the thought too narrow. Indeed, it deprives it of its chief import; for the thought, instruction, reduces it to a matter of the head, the intellect, merely, while the true thought, including the idea of instruction for the head, lays the main stress on the heart, will and life, training in righteousness. Accordingly, these words imply that the Bible is adapted to give the necessary knowledge to the head and the necessary training to the heart, will and life for God's people

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to develop proper dispositions and exercise proper motives, thoughts, words and acts, i.e., it teaches the proper ethical principles and enables one to weave into his character and conduct the expression of these principles. It is, therefore, intended to promote the knowledge and practice of proper character. It is to produce Christlikeness in head, heart, will and conduct. And the Christian head, heart and will, studying the expression thoroughly in itself and in its relation to the other three uses of the Bible set forth in 2 Tim. 3:16, will fully come to recognize that the thought of the last part of this verse is not one limited to the head merely, as the rendering instruction implies, but is one that embraces the head, heart, will and life. These remarks will enable us to see more clearly what is meant by the fourth use of the Bible—it is to train God's people in righteousness, to teach them the principles of Christian character and to work in them such a character and its expressions in thought, motive, word and act.

Its fourth use, first of all, is to teach them proper principles of Christian character and their expressions in thought, motive, word and act. It, therefore, instructs them, first of all, in the principles of justice as embracing duty love, first, to God and Christ with all the heart, mind, soul and strength, which is piety, and, second, to the neighbor as to oneself, which is brotherly love, i.e., to love God and Christ with all one's affections, with all his intellect, with all his being and all his will power, and to think, feel, say and do as to one's neighbor as he would wish his neighbor to think, feel, say and do as to him, if their places were reversed. It secondly instructs him in the principles of charity, disinterested love, as distinct from justice or duty love. It shows him that out of a delight in good principles one is to appreciate God and Christ with all his heart, mind, soul and strength for their harmony with good principles and to be in hearty oneness with them in their characters, words and works. It further shows him that out of such delight in good principles he should sympathize

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with God and Christ because of the mistreatment that they have received from wicked angels, and weak, ignorant and wicked men; and finally it implies that out of such delight and sympathy he lay down life unto death to vindicate their persons and characters, and to further their words and works. Justice, i.e., piety and brotherly love, and charity, are the chief graces. But there are other graces: four other higher primary graces, 17 lower primary graces, 17 secondary graces and at least twelve tertiary graces. Additionally there are the heavenly affections and the good earthly affections. On all of these the Bible gives the necessary theoretical knowledge enabling one to know what they are, why they are and how they are to be developed and exercised. It also gives the necessary knowledge on justification as a theory and practice, on consecration as a theory and practice, on sanctification as a theory and practice in its deadness to self and the world and aliveness to God, in the study, spread and practice of, and endurance for God's Word in watchfulness and prayer in harmony with God's Word. It also gives the necessary enlightenment on deliverance in theory and practice, as victory over the devil, the world and the flesh and the hope of victory over death and the grave. In giving the instruction on these principles and practices the Bible fulfils the first part, i.e., as to the head, of its fourth use, training in righteousness.

But its character-training use goes further than the head; it reaches through what it gives to the head into the affections and will, along the lines of character-development and its expressions in thought, motive, word and act. And it begins this feature before one has experienced justification, i.e., the Word works repentance toward God as, e.g., St. Peter's preaching worked repentance in Israelites (Acts 2:37), Jesus called, by the Word, sinners to repentance (Matt. 9:13), even as Paul did the same (Acts 20:21); and even in the Old Testament this was done through the Word (Matt. 12:41). Accordingly this fourth use of the Word effects

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repentance. It goes beyond that and works the faith that ministers justification (Rom. 10:8-10, 14, 17), such faith consisting of knowledge, understanding and belief as to the justifying Truth, and of assurance, appropriation and response as to the pertinent promises of the Word. Hence it is to be used to bring sinners to repentance and faith, unto their obtaining tentative justification. It does even more than this; it stimulates the justified to overcome their depravity and to live righteous lives, thus bringing forth fruits meet unto repentance, which keeps them in justification (Matt. 3:8; Acts 26:20; John 15:3; Eph. 5:26). Not only do the Scriptures show that the Word works repentance and faith unto justification, but our experience proves it; for it was the preaching of the principles of the Divine law, justice, that brought us to repentance; and it was the preaching of the Gospel, that God for the merit of Jesus' sacrifice would forgive us, if we believed this promise, that worked faith in our hearts in that promise. Hence we see that the ministering of repentance and faith unto justification is a part of the fourth use of the Word of God. Our experiences also prove that the Word enables us to overcome our depravity and to live righteous lives; and this is the power of God to help us through faith to maintain our salvation of justification (Rom. 1:16). In these respects the Word exercises a feature of its character-training use.

Furthermore, it is through the power exercised by the Word that we are enabled to take the step of consecration, which also is a feature of character-training. There are two qualities that enable one to consecrate himself to the Lord: (1) a consecrating faith, one that whole-heartedly trusts God with one's all, and (2) a consecrating love, one that from duty and disinterested good will gives self to God for whatever uses that He desires to make of him. The act of consecrating oneself is the first part of one's sanctification and every other part of sanctification is effected by Jesus through God's Word (1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 2:20; John 17:17, 19; Acts 26:18).

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In the very nature of the act of true consecration these two graces, a consecrating faith and a consecrating love, must be the moving qualities; for a consecrating faith is one that entrusts God with our all, which cannot take place without a faith that trusts Him whole-heartedly with one's all; and a consecrating love is one that from duty and disinterested good will gives God one's all, which cannot be done without a love that whole-heartedly esteems God above one's all. This is implied by St. Paul's exhortation to consecrate, in Rom. 12:1, when he counsels it to be done in view of God's mercies, which we experience in God's working in us repentance, faith, forgiveness, imputation of Christ's merit, cleansing and righteousness in our justification experiences. Our faith in these mercies brought to us by the Word becoming overwhelming induces us to consecration; and our gratitude and appreciation for these mercies becoming overwhelming in us induces us to consecration. But it is the Word that keeps these mercies upon our believing and loving hearts until it makes our faith and love a consecrating faith and love, and thus the Word works in us our consecration. A little thought will clarify this: In consecration we, as it were, sign our names at the bottom of a clean sheet of paper agreeing that whatever God desires to write above our names we will do whole-heartedly. How could we do this unless we trusted God with our all and loved Him above all persons and things? Such faith and love are effected in us by the Truth (Rom. 1:16; John 17:17; Acts 26:18); and self-evidently they are a part of character training; hence the fourth use of the Bible includes its enabling us to consecrate.

Such consecration is the first part of sanctification. Its second part is cultivating heavenly affections in New Creatures and good human affections in Youthful Worthies, the graces in all their classes: primary, secondary and tertiary, and in all their kinds—higher and lower primary graces, the selfishly and socially related secondary graces and the active and passive tertiary graces.

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The primary graces are developed by New Creatures exercising the heavenly affections habitually; for these graces are the habits that these affections form by their repeated operation. The secondary graces are developed by the habitual suppression of our lower primary graces' efforts to control us, and the tertiary graces are developed by the exercise of combinations of higher and lower primary, secondary and tertiary graces; for unlike the other graces the tertiary graces are compound graces, i.e., those graces that consist of two or more single graces. The higher primary graces are the product of single affections; and the higher primary graces working through the religious affections are the following: faith, hope, self-control, patience, piety, brotherly love and charity (2 Pet. 1:5-7). We may call them the controlling graces; for they are to dominate all our affections and graces. The lower primary graces are the controlled primary graces, since they should act only as controlled by the higher primary graces. They are of two kinds, selfish and social. The following are the selfish ones: self-esteem, approbativeness, peace, cautiousness, tactfulness, providence, appetitiveness, aggressiveness, defensiveness and vitativeness. The following are their social ones: sexliness, spouseliness, parentliness, filiality, brethrenliness, friendshipliness, domesticity and patriotism. As we think of the nature of these we see that they cannot be permitted to control us, but must be controlled by the higher primary graces.

As stated above, when their efforts to control us are suppressed the secondary graces are produced. These secondary graces are also not controllers, but must be controlled, dominated by the higher primary graces, otherwise they will be misused and misdeveloped. They do not have affections whose direct exercise develops them, as is the case of all the primary graces. They act as the efforts of the lower primary graces to control us are suppressed. Thus they are by the higher primary graces by way of suppression related to the selfish and social primary graces. The selfish secondary graces so cultivated are humility, unostentatiousness, industriousness,

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courage, frankness, generosity, temperance, forbearance, longsuffering, and self-sacrificingness. The social secondary graces, except chastity, have no names in English, hence we have coined names for those that lack them, by combining the prefix sub with the lower social primary graces. Accordingly, in addition to chastity we will call these social secondary graces subspouseliness, supparentliness, suffiliality, subbrethrenliness, suffriendshipliness, subdomesticity and suppatriotism. We admit that these names do not sound very nice; but they convey the thought of those secondary social graces arising from the suppression by the higher primary graces of the efforts that pertinent lower social primary graces make to control us. E.g., when the higher primary graces suppress the efforts of self-esteem to control us, which control would develop pride, humility is developed and exercised. By their suppressing approbativeness' efforts to control us unostentatiousness is developed and exercised. Their doing this to cautiousness' efforts to control us produces courage. Their doing this with secretiveness' efforts to control us cultivates frankness. Their doing this with aggressiveness' efforts to control us awakens forbearance. Their doing this with self-defensiveness' efforts to control us elicits longsuffering. These illustrations will suffice for the secondary graces related to the selfish affections. Some examples of those relative to the social affections: The higher primary graces' suppressing the efforts of sexliness to control us produces chastity. Their suppressing the efforts of spouseliness to control develops subspouseliness. Their suppressing the efforts of parentliness from controlling produces supparentliness. Their suppressing the efforts of filiality to control cultivates suffiliality. Their suppressing the efforts of friendshipliness to control produces suffriendshipliness; and their suppressing domesticity and patriotism to control us develops subdomesticity and suppatriotism. The following are a fairly full list of the tertiary or compound graces: zeal, meekness, reverence, obedience, joy, gentleness, resignation, contentment, sincerity,

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goodness, moderation and faithfulness. As indicated above they are developed by the joint exercise of two or more of the various kinds of graces. Accordingly, the second feature of sanctification consists mainly of the development of the heavenly and good earthly affections and of the three classes of graces above described.

The process of sanctification carried on by the influence of the Word in its fourth use also includes the keeping of self and the world dead in us—self-and-world-denial, growth in the knowledge of the deep and surface things of the Word and spreading the Word. It also includes the use of our human all to secure these results and the above-described character development; particularly the use of our time, talents, strength, means, influence, health, education, position, reputation for the spread of the Word, particularly along the lines of advancing God's plan toward His people and toward outsiders, both in vindicating God's character, person, plan and works and in refuting opposing errors and practices. It includes the laying down until and unto death all that we are and have, hope to be and to have as humans in the interests of God, His cause and His people. It also implies that this be done in easy and hard, pleasant and unpleasant, toward and untoward, pleasurable and painful, safe and dangerous, friendly and hostile and living and dying circumstances. This means the ultimate death of our humanity in order to the cultivation and perfecting of our new minds, hearts and wills, which to accomplish not only implies the cultivation of the heavenly affections by the New Creatures and the good earthly affections by the Youthful Worthies, and the graces in all three of their classes; but also the strengthening of all of these things, which occurs through exercise of them in easy and hard conditions, their balance, which occurs through the higher primary graces' acting in balance and dominating all other parts of character, and finally, their perfection—their crystallization, which comes from faithfulness amid hard experiences. When this is done we have all three features of sanctification: (1) initial sanctification,

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which is the act of consecration; (2) the process of sanctification in the foregoing-described features of character development; and (3) the state of holiness resulting from the operation of points (1) and (2). And it is the fourth use of the Word of God that effects all three of these features of sanctification. We will now proceed to prove the statement that the Word of God produces these three parts of sanctification.

In discussing the act of consecration we gave the Biblical and factual proof that the Word effects in us the consecrating faith and love that produce consecration. Therefore, we will now give the proof that it is the Word that works in us the heavenly and good affections and the graces. The whole process of turning people to God, conversion, is thus accomplished by the Word as it gives the necessary enlightenment and power (Ps. 19:7); for it gives joy and knowledge (8). It leads God's people throughout all their experiences (43:3). It works hope (78:1, 7). It gives peace (85:8), hope and comfort (119:49, 50, 52), gladness (111), delights (143), life (144), peace (165), protection (Prov. 30:5), directs the course of God's people (Is. 30:21), makes them fruitful in their lives (55:11), gives them joy and rejoicing (Jer. 15:16), keeps the faithful from falling (Matt. 7:24, 25), makes them fruitful in every good word and work (13:23), gives them Spirit and life (John 6:63), gives them truth and freedom to all holiness (8:31, 32), performs in them the entire work of sanctification (John 17:17, 19), works in them faith and life (20:31), builds them up in every good word and work, will give them their inheritance (Acts 20:32), as it gives access to the High Calling hope, joy, patience, sense of God's approval, the Spirit and love (Rom. 5:3-5), works the faith of justification, sanctification and deliverance (Rom. 10:17), transforms the faithful into God's image, and enables them to know God's will (12:2), makes them glorify God (Eph. 1:12), sanctifies and cleanses (Eph. 5:26), calls to sanctification (2 Thes. 2:13, 14), perfects and fits them for all good works (2 Tim. 3:17), begets

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them of the Spirit (Jas. 1:18), saves them (21), regenerates them (1 Pet. 1:23), enables them to grow in grace, knowledge and fruitfulness in service (2:2; 2 Pet. 3:18), gives fullness of joy (1 John 1:4), makes them strong (2:14), gives assurance of salvation and faith (5:13), gives courage to fight for the Truth (Jude 3), helps one to pray and keeps one in the love of God and in persevering hope for eternal life (20, 21). Certainly, these passages prove its work of sanctification from the beginning to the end and thus prove that the fourth use of the Word, among other things, is to work sanctification (1 Thes. 4:3, 4; 5:23).

The final way that the fourth use of the Word, its character-training use, works is along the line of deliverance. The delivering office of the fourth use of the Bible effects victory. Victory implies warfare and warfare implies that we have enemies that we must overcome in our warfare. These enemies are the devil, the world and the flesh. The devil attacks us with the weapons of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness in such of their forms as appeal or are likely to appeal to us. The world attacks us through the same weapons, but usually does so, not with the malice with which Satan attacks us; rather it is mainly through its depravity, ignorance, superstition, selfishness and worldliness that it attacks us; for the course that our consecration requires us to take seems to the world in its ignorance, superstition, depravity, selfishness and worldliness to be foolish, selfish and injurious to them, hence it fights us in our consecrated aspirations and course. Our flesh fights our new minds, hearts and wills by the same weapons as the devil and the world use against us, particularly through its depravity, selfishness and worldliness. Sometimes the devil alone attacks us. Failing therein he enlists the world against us in the fight, and often when this fails he works on our flesh to bring us to a fall. Hence there is a battle royal going on without and within us. That such a battle or warfare is taking place the Bible and our experiences tell us. That there is such a war going on we can see from 2 Cor. 10:3; 1 Tim. 1:18, 19; 6:12.

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That we fight therein against the devil is taught in Gen. 3:15; 2 Cor. 2:11; Eph. 6:12; Jas. 4:7; 1 Pet. 5:8; that we fight therein against our flesh we see from Rom. 7:23; 1 Cor. 9:25-27; 2 Cor. 12:7; Gal. 5:17; 1 Pet. 2:11. The following Scriptures show that in this war the world is our enemy: Matt. 10:35, 36; John 16:33; 1 Pet. 4:2; 1 John 5:4, 5. These are the personal enemies in our warfare. Besides our depraved qualities additionally we have other impersonal enemies therein, with which we are to fight: death and the grave; for these are not only enemies of the race (1 Cor. 15:26, 55), but enemies of God's people (Rom. 8:35-37). God in the Oath-bound Covenant pledges victory, deliverance, to the faithful (Gen. 22:17), gives them Jesus as their Captain (Heb. 2:10), as they fight therein by faith and a good conscience (1 Tim. 1:18, 19), with steadfastness in the Truth and watchfulness (1 Cor. 16:13; 1 Pet. 5:8, 9), with earnestness (Jude 3), with sobriety (1 Thes. 5:6; 1 Pet. 5:8), with endurance of hardships (2 Tim. 2:3, 10), with self-denial (1 Cor. 9:25-27), with faith (Ps. 27:1-3), with prayer (35:1-3; Eph. 6:18), and with freedom from earthly entanglements (2 Tim. 2:4).

In this warfare we are to take our part (Phil. 1:30) firmly (Eph. 6:13, 14), diligently (1 Tim. 6:12; Jude 2), by God encouraged (2 Cor. 7:5, 6), protected (Ps. 140:7) and strengthened (20:2), and by Christ strengthened (2 Cor. 12:9; 2 Tim. 4:17) and delivered (2 Tim. 4:18) with thanks to God and Christ for victory (Rom. 7:25; 1 Cor. 15:57). In this war the Word furnishes us with a complete armor: Truth as a girdle (Eph. 6:14), breastplate of righteousness in faith and love (14; 1 Thes. 5:8), the gospel of peace (Eph. 6:15), shield of faith (16), helmet of salvation (17; 1 Thes. 5:8) and sword of the Spirit (17). This equipment is called the whole armor of God (11), of righteousness (2 Cor. 6:7), of light (Rom. 13:12), which must be put on (Eph. 6:11), and is not carnal but mighty through God (2 Cor. 10:4, 5). It is needed in its entirety (Eph. 6:13) and on all sides (2 Cor. 6:7).

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In this war the faithful will be victorious (Gen. 22:17) through Christ (Rom. 7:25; 2 Cor. 12:9; Rev. 1:18), which victory they will gain through faith (Heb. 11:33-37; 1 John 5:4, 5) over the devil (Gen., 3:15; Rom. 16:20; 1 John 2:14), over the flesh (2 Cor. 10:5; Gal. 5:16, 17, 24), over the world (1 John 5:4, 5) and over death and the grave (1 Cor. 15:53; Rom. 8:35-37; Rev. 1:18). In this paragraph, particularly in the parts related to the armor, the Truth, the Word is shown to be the means of our deliverance, victory, which, of course, is a part of its fourth use, character-training. The following passages prove the same thing: 1 Pet. 5:9, in the faith; 1 John 5:4; Jer. 23:29; Hos. 6:5; Mic. 2:7; Matt. 7:25; Jas. 1:21. Accordingly, the Word gives victory, deliverance, in the Christian warfare. Thus we have seen that the Word gives all the knowledge and power to bring us into, and to keep us in justification, sanctification and deliverance, and that through Jesus' ministry (1 Cor. 1:30).

That the Word of God should have this fourth use is reasonable. Even human words are powerful in their effects in human matters, as witness the effects of secular orators like Demosthenes, Cicero, Fox, both Pitts, Burke, Henry, Phillips, Lincoln, Bryan, etc. Should not Divine words have powerful effects in Divine matters? One of the reasons for this is that they are the Truth; another is that Divine words are charged with Divine power to produce effects along the lines of their thoughts, even as a charged wire produces its pertinent effects. Hence God's thoughts are endowed with God's Spirit, which works their intended effects. It is this quality of God's Word that makes it indestructible and eternal. But it does not produce its effects automatically. It requires certain conditions in its hearers to produce the effects, especially those implied in its third and fourth uses. To produce their justifying effects faith and duty love are required. To produce consecration a consecrating faith and a consecrating duty and disinterested love are required. To produce the works of sanctification faithfulness in one's consecration vows

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is necessary, and to produce its delivering effects a delivering, i.e., overcoming faith, hope, love and obedience are required. Where these requirements are absent the pertinent effects are lacking, and where they are present the pertinent effects set in. Thus the Word in these matters does not work automatically, but always works where responsiveness is shown.

In the life of justification, sanctification and deliverance God's people will find certain methods helpful to attain and maintain each of these three steps. We will briefly, without any details, indicate these methods, of which there are seven general and seven special methods. The general methods are watchfulness for developing good, prayer for developing good, faith in the Spirit, Word and providences as an arrangement sufficient for developing good, hope for developing good, love for developing good, persistent determination in developing good and exercise in developing good. The following are the seven special methods for developing good: subjecting our minds, hearts and wills to the influence of God's Word by holding on them its pertinent parts, imitating God and Christ by devout contemplation of their characters, attaching our affections to spiritual things, suppressing by the higher primary graces the efforts of all of our other affections and graces to control us, enslaving our dispositions, motives, thoughts, words and acts to the will of God, supporting the weak by the strong features of Christian character and dominating all features of character by the higher primary graces harmoniously balanced with one another. These seven general and seven special methods faithfully used in our life of justification, sanctification and deliverance will enable us to employ the fourth use of the Word, character-training, or put in its Biblical form, training in righteousness, with fine and successful results in these three stages of the Christian life. And with this mere statement of the general and special methods of developing good, apart from details of application, we close our discussion of the uses of the Bible, praying the Lord to bless it to all of us.

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