For our final assurance we appeal confidently to the future. The glory
of the Lord will only be fully revealed when all flesh see it together.
But with personal certainty, based on our own experience, corroborated
by the testimony of all the saints, we both wait hopefully and work
tirelessly for the day when our God through Christ shall be all in all.




CHAPTER II

THE BIBLE


In terms of the definition of religion given in the last chapter, we may
describe the Bible as the record of the progressive religious experience
of Israel culminating in Jesus Christ, a record selected by the
experience of the Jewish and Christian Church, and approving itself to
Christian experience today as the Self-revelation of the living God.

The Bible is a _literary_ record. It is not so much a book as a library,
containing a great variety of literary forms--legends, laws, maxims,
hymns, sermons, visions, biographies, letters, etc. Judged solely as
literature its writings have never been equalled in their kind, much
less surpassed. Goethe declared, "Let the world progress as much as it
likes, let all branches of human research develop to their utmost,
nothing will take the place of the Bible--that foundation of all culture
and all education." Happily for the English-speaking world the
translation into our tongue, standardized in the King James' Bible, is