only as they succeed in leading the spiritual life of their day onward
and upward. Such a prophet will accommodate himself to the mental and
moral and religious limitations of the time in which he speaks. Only
thus can he get a start. It is inevitable, then, that along with the
higher truth of his message there will appear the marks of the
limitations of the mold in which the message is cast. The prophet must
take what materials he finds at hand, and with these materials direct
the people to something higher and better. Furthermore, in the
successive stages through which the idea grows we must expect to find it
affected by all the important factors which in any degree determine its
unfolding. The first stage in understanding the Scriptures is to learn
what a writer intended to say, what he meant for the people of his day.
To do this we must rely upon the methods which we use in any historical
investigation. The Christian student of the Scriptures believes that the
Bible contains eternal truths for all time, truths which are above time
in their spiritual values. Even so, however, the truth must first be
written for a particular time and that time the period in which the
prophet lived. When the Christian speaks of the Scriptures as containing
a revelation for all time, he refers to their essential spiritual value.
The best way to make that essential spiritual value effective for the
after times is to sink it deep into the consciousness of a particular
time. This gives it leverage, or focus for the outworking of its forces.
No matter how limited the conceptions in which the spiritual richness
first took form, those conceptions can be understood by the students who
look back through the ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out
with perennial freshness. Paradoxical as it may sound, the truths which
are of most value for all time are those which first get themselves most
thoroughly into the thought and feeling of some one particular time. Let
us look at the opening chapters of Genesis for illustration. The
historical student points out to us that the science of the first