Mr R. Stout on the Bible.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3495, 8 March 1880, Page 2

Mr R. Stout on the Bible.

Mr R. Stout, of Dunedin, wound up his address on " Inspiration," at the opening of the Freetbought Association's, sesiion, with the following peroration:—The aim of our Association is to provoke thought; those of our members who are present can, in agreeing or disagreeeing with me, work out for themselves the hints I hare given. We shall, no doubt, be told that in freely criticising the Bible we do not appreciate its beauties nor understand its grandeur. I deny both statements. I assert, on the contrary, it is we alone, who do not admit its infallibility, that can appreciate its beauties, can admit its sub* limity. It does not dominate us. We admit its usefulness as a graud, nay a noble, record of humanity's struggles. It is to us full of the lights and shades of life, of the greatnesses and weaknesses of humanity, and to us all it is a hope for the future. The Bible has not suddenly been closed. It is still being written. The race is being formed, and each unit of society can help to make the future grander than the past. And when we find, as Evolution teaches us, that as we sow so shall we reap, that as the fathers are, so will be the children, there | is a commanding force leading us to right ; action, grander and greater than the ' " My soul is not a palace of the past, i Where outworn creeds, like Home's grey senate. i quake; , Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hearse,' That shake old systems with a thukder fit: The time is ripe, and rotten ripe, for changeThen let it come, I have no dread of what Is called for by ths instinct of manHkljtf,/' Nor think I that God's world will fallapart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth is eternal, but her effluence With endless change is fitted to the hour : Her mirror is turn'd forward to reflect. The promise of the future, not the past." commandments Moses promulgated! Nor need we waste our efforts, as some do, to make the old • bottles of Hebrew literature hold the new wines of science. We recognise the good that has been done by the many'Bibles of the many nations, but by them we are not bound. They act as Paul says the law acted, as a mere schoolmaster to bring- us up to a grander conception of Nature, of Deity, of humanity. We have no dread of the future. With the poet each of vi may exclaim—

To me it seems that the truly religious man ia he who refuses to worship a book, but who in looking around him in peering into stellar space or endeavoring to understand the functions of the millions of creatures with which we are surrounded —admits th»t there is an Unknowable he cannot penetrate. He alone gots au idea of the immensity of Nature,* of the grandeur of her laws, and of his own littleness and weakness*; and he alone feels that " Slowly the Bible of the race is writ". And not on paper leaves nor leaves of sttne ; Each age, each kindred adds a Terse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan."