close to the revealing movement itself, we find that before we get far
into the stream there must be sympathetic responsiveness to biblical
teaching. The difficulties in understanding the Scriptures are, as of
old, not so much of the intellect as they are of conscience and will--
the difficulties, in a word, that arise from the hardness of men's
hearts.




CHAPTER II

THE BOOK OF LIFE

The approaches to an understanding of the Scriptures which we suggested
in the first chapter are those which have to do merely with intellectual
investigation. Any student with normal intelligence can appreciate the
methods and results of the critical scrutiny of the biblical documents,
but will require something more for an adequate mastery of the
scriptural revelations. There is need of sympathetic realization that
the Book itself did not in any large degree come out of the exercise of
the merely intellectual faculties. In the scriptural revelation we are
dealing with a current of life which flowed for centuries through the
minds of masses of people. To be sure of insight into the meanings of
this revelation there must be an approach to the Bible as a Book of Life
in the sense that its teachings came out of life and that they were
perennially used to play back into life. Its hold on life to-day can be
explained only by the fact that it was thus born out of life, and has
its chief significance for the experiences of actual life.