direction of enlarging human life, it will in the end win its way. A
third danger is that of institutionalism, where the organization as such
becomes an end in itself without regard to the human interests involved.
The Master's fiercest condemnations were for those who put any
institution before the fulfillment of the human ideals. In the parable
of the good Samaritan it is noteworthy that it was the priest and the
Levite who passed by on the other side. It is hard to resist the feeling
that the Master implied that the priest and Levite had been
institutionalized into a lack of humanity. Making allowance now for all
these dangers against which believers must guard, the chances are that
interpretation of a book so human as the Scriptures is not final until
it has received the real, though not necessarily formal, sanction of the
body of believers.

So thoroughly does the biblical revelation turn around the supremacy of
the distinctively human values that we must insist that anything which
would run counter to these values is alien to the spirit of the
revelation, and, therefore, to comprehension of that revelation. We do
not wish to be extreme, but it is hard to see how, in our day, for
example, any who fail to put human rights in the first place can really
master the scriptural revelation. We have spoken of the Master's rebukes
of any form of institutionalism which stands in the way of human rights.
Institutions at best are instruments; they exist merely for the purpose
of bringing men to larger life; but these institutions sometimes get
petrified into custom and become glorified by long practice, and even
made sacred by adherents who look upon them as ends in themselves. Then
there is no recourse except to break the institutions in the name of
larger human life. If we could put ourselves back in the times of Jesus
and feel something of the sacredness with which the Jews regarded the
Sabbath, we would know the tremendous force of the Master's daring when