Page:Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology.djvu/17



Maker. And thus too the Bible is not merely, or chiefly, a book of Maxims and of Precepts everywhere formally didactic, but it is a History also of Divine Acts, and of the unfolding of Divine Ideas, continually manifesting the superintendence of a Divine Sovereignty: not a history of the World, or of all Gop’s Providence in it, but only of one kingdom and society, which was elected out of the rest to exhibit principles applicable to all kingdoms and societies, and to preserve certain privileges with which it was provisionally endowed in order that they might ultimately be extended to the whole race of man.

And therefore though the Bible is a Book so sacred and unique as a Whole, it is one of very composite character and very complex construction, made up of parts, and containing materials, of quite various kinds. It is not one Record of one Revelation, but a Series of Records of many Revelations, made at sundry times and in divers manners. It is a collection of Scriptures which extend over a period of fifteen hundred years, the most modern of which is more than seventeen centuries old, and the earliest of which cannot have an antiquity of less than three thousand years. And these writings are as various in their forms as they are in their dates: comprising the earliest traditions of our race: genealogies and biographies: abstracts of national chronicles and details of domestic narrations: visions and prophecies: songs and prayers: proverbs and parables and epistles: and varieties of composition nowhere else to be met with. In fact the Bible is not so much a Book as it is a Library: by no means indeed an Encyclopedia, or systematic exposition of all the Truths and Facts which it is necessary for man to know, but rather a vast series of documents more justly bound together by spiritual than by literal bonds: constituted into one coherent whole rather by the Providence of than by any wisdom of Man.

The Bible therefore ought always to be considered only as a partial and not as an universal Revelation, and as rather a Providential than a Miraculous gift of to man. It is but a part of a large system of Divine Influence on man, the com-