What If There Had Never Been A Bible - Part 1 (W Graham Scroggie)

If there is one thing in the life and ministry of Graham Scroggie that has made an indelible impression upon me, it is the fact that in his first two pastorates, he was forced to leave them because he preached the truth. He reminded me of the many faithful prophets of our Lord in the Old Testament, some of whom suffered more than just rejection. And whenever I do encounter people in the Churches where I have preached who seem resistant to God’s Word, I take comfort in the remembrance of Scroggie and that I am not the first (nor the last) to experience such resistance. I have always found Scroggie helpful especially with his ability to provide a broad overview of the whole Scriptures, and portions of the Scriptures. I think here particularly of two of his better known works, The Unfolding Drama of World Redemption and A Guide to the Gospels, both of which I have found very informative and instructive. The wonderful thing about reading Scroggie is that you never know when you might discover a real gem. He has this uncanny ability to point out something in the Scriptures which is so very obvious and yet so very easily missed by us. While there have been some helpful modern attempts at constructing a Biblical theology of the whole Bible, Scroggie remains for me a must when it comes to understanding the history of redemption chronologically. I am given to understand that he has written some other works but I have not had the privilege to reading them. What I can say is that from what I have read of the two books mentioned above, we have much to learn from him today still, dated though he might in the opinion of some.

William Graham Scroggie (1877-1958) was born at Great Malvern, England, of Scottish parents who ministered as evangelists. Being one of nine children in a home without normal educational advantages, he grew up in an ambiance of rich Christian experience. After a few years in business, he entered Spurgeon’s College in London at the age of 19 to train for the Baptist ministry. Turned out of his first two churches in London and Yorkshire because of his opposition to modernism and worldliness, he set himself to the study of the Bible. And, in the next two difficult years, when he had to live with little to support him, he laid the foundation of all his subsequent work. He served a succession of churches, the most fruitful of which was that at Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh (1916-1933). In his years in Charlotte Chapel, 32 men entered the ministry and 51 missionaries were sent overseas. For many years Scroggie wrote Scripture Union and Sunday school materials for The Sunday School Times. He also led thousands through a Bible correspondence course. Following further pastorates in New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, the United States, and Canada, he became pastor of Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, during World War II. His home was bombed on three occasions, and his historic church building destroyed during an air raid. Increasing ill health forced him to retire in 1944. He devoted his remaining years to completing his literary work, The Unfolding Drama of Redemption. He died on December 28, 1958.

The following quotation by Scroggie probably sums up his one great desire and purpose as a Bible teacher and preacher better than anything I have read:

Preachers will take for texts, phrases which convey a moral or spiritual suggestion, and will develop that thought along one or other of many lines. But one may do that kind of work for half-a-century and yet leave his audience in appalling ignorance of the Bible. Such sentence can be found by the hundred thousand in the world’s literature, and a very instructive course of sermons could be preached from the dicta of Confucius; but that is not the business of the Christian preacher.

The following article is a lecture delivered at Westminster Chapel, London, as part of The Campbell Morgan Memorial Bible Lectureship in 1950. Like his quotation above, the lecture demonstrates the unique and supreme place the Bible has in Scroggie’s life and ministry. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did!

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When the Trustees who have instituted this Lectureship invited me to deliver the second Lecture, I could not and did not hesitate to comply with their wish. I am deeply sensible of the honour they have done me, and grateful for the opportunity to identify myself with their intention, in concrete ways, to perpetuate the memory of one who, on both sides of the Atlantic, exercised a unique ministry, by voice and by pen, in popularizing interest in and knowledge of the Holy Bible.

The Christian public of London was greatly privileged to have the opportunity for so many years of listening to the preaching and teaching of George Campbell Morgan, and I am confident that the time will never come when Westminster Chapel will cease to be a centre of Biblical instruction and inspiration to all who desire these blessings.

The subject I have chosen for your consideration is in some sense novel, but of the utmost importance for a true apprehension and adequate appreciation of the incomparable and inestimable value of those Sacred Scriptures which we call The Bible.

I begin by assuming that but for the Bible Christianity would not have survived. The Bible is the record of a divine revelation, and if there had been no record, no one, after the apostolic age, would have had any means of knowing what that revelation was. Oral tradition would have become more and more corrupt by omissions, additions, and other influences, until, finally, the truth would have been altogether lost.

This observation relates to the recorded New Testament revelation, but it must be evident that except for the Old Testament Writings the entire background of the New Testament revelation would never have been known, for Judaism had misread its own history.

The Biblical record is not the original revelation, but, had there been no record, we would never have known what the revelation had been, or, indeed, that there had been a revelation.

Christians do not worship the Bible, but the God who therein is revealed, but we do realize, or we ought to, that the Bible which makes the redeeming God known to us is, beyond all estimate, our most precious heritage.

Our present task is to try to envisage the obliteration of the Bible, and all traces of it, in our history, literature, art, music, language, social institutions, worship, service, and individual life.

I cannot hope, within the limits imposed by this lectureship, to succeed in so ambitious a task, but perhaps I may start a line of thought which will lead us to renewed thankfulness to God for having given to us such a book as the Bible, and thankfulness also for all who have diligently studied it, and faithfully expounded it.

I do not claim originality for the idea of the obliteration of the Bible, for in a book with the title The Eclipse of Faith, which was published anonymously in the middle of the nineteenth century, but was written by a Henry Rogers, there is a chapter called, The Blank Bible.

It tells of a dream a man had, that, on turning to read his Bible, as was his custom, he found only blank pages. On inquiry, he learned that all the Bibles in his neighbourhood were also blanks, and all copies also in the book shops.

Some people, who never looked at the Bible while they had it, became interested in it now that it was lost.

One man who had never read it, said that it was “confounded hard to be deprived of his religion in his old age.” Another person greatly mourned the loss of her Bible, because in it, for greater safety, she had deposited £100 in notes, and these, too, had become blanks. All the Bibles in the land were blanks, and the volumes were being sold for day-books and ledgers; and instead of Isaiah, and our Lord’s parables, there were orders for silks and satins, cheese and bacon.

Then a movement was set afoot to re-write the Bible from the memories of those who had read and studied it.

A Trinitarian differed from a Unitarian over a critical recension. An Episcopalian did not agree with a Presbyterian that the words bishop and presbyter were interchangeable. A Calvinist had a vivid recollection of Romans ix, and an Arminian had some doubts about some of Paul’s sentiments. Husbands remembered what was due from their wives. Undertakers remembered it had been said that there was “a time to mourn.” A comedian recalled that it was said there was “a time to laugh.” Some young ladies remembered that there was “a time to love,” and everybody knew there was “a time to speak,” except a Quaker who thought that there was “a time to keep silence.”

Protestants and Papists disagreed about many passages, and some infidels thought that the visitation on the Bible was a great mercy, removing a book which promoted idolatry.

This dream begins to show what consternation and confusion would result from the obliteration of the Bible, but the subject can be indefinitely expanded.

Of course, the major disaster would be the loss of the Bible itself, but that would involve so many other losses, the contemplation of which must make the mind to reel, and the heart to faint.

Let us, then, consider some of the influences which this Book has exercised, which would have had no being had there been no Bible.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON ART

By Art, more is meant than at first may be thought, for it includes architecture, sculpture, symbolism, painting, mosaics, monograms, frescoes, stained glass windows, and decorated manuscripts, and on all these Christianity has left its imprint.

In Architecture, from the basilicas of the time of Constantine to the magnificent cathedrals of our own time and country, the Christian idea and ideal have stood in marked contrast to the pagan temples of the ancient Greeks. Although it has been said that the devil invented Gothic architecture to prevent the people from hearing the Gospel, yet, expressive as it is of sacrifice, aspiration, peace, unity, and beauty, it is the embodiment of Christian ideals, and to multitudes has been an aid to Christian worship. Christian architecture, as Forsyth has said, “is stone made spiritual and musical,” it is “symphony in stone.”

As to Christian Symbolism, it is almost contemporary with the Christian era, appearing before the end of the first century. The favourite symbols have been the Fish, representing the fulness of Christ’s divinity; the Dove, representing peace; the Ship, representing the Church; the Anchor, representing hope; the Good Shepherd, and the Lamb of God. All these, as early as the second century, have been found in the catacombs of Rome.

But later, and down to our time, the influence of the Bible on Painting is seen in a very large number of masterpieces. As examples, one need only mention the Madonnas of Rubens, Raphael, Michelangelo, and of others; Rembrandt’s great works on The Supper at Emmaus, Christ before Pilate, The Descent from the Cross, and many more; Raphael’s Transfiguration; Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi; Tintoretto’s The Marriage Feast; Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper; Guido’ s Ecce Homo; The Presentation in the Temple, and Mary Magdalene by Titian; Correggio’s Assumption of the Virgin, and The Crucifixion by Van Dyck, Velasquez, and Fra Angelico; and the more modern religious studies by Millais, Hole, Holman Hunt, Millet, G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones, Gabriel Rossetti; and Tissot’s 350 water-colour drawings on New Testament subjects.

But for the Bible these works would never have existed, and Art Galleries in London, and Dresden, and Florence, and Venice, and Paris, and Antwerp, and Milan would never have housed these great creations of Christian Art. It is not too much to say that some of the finest work that has ever been done by pen, and brush, and chisel, and trowel, has been done in the presentation of themes and scenes which only the Bible can supply.

Then there is

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON MUSIC

Christian music, comprehensively understood, is much more popular - that is, ‘of the people’ - than Christian art, for it embraces psalm, hymn, anthem, carol, cantata, chorus, chant, and oratorio, and their instrumental accompaniments as well.

If there had never been a Bible, all these expressions of emotion and aspiration, of adoration and faith, would never have come into being, and the loss would have been incalculable and calamitous.

If there had been no Bible there would have been no Psalms. Never would we have known the thrill of singing Ye gates lift up your heads on high; I to the hills will lift mine eyes; O send Thy light forth, and Thy truth; All people that on earth do dwell; O God, our help in ages past; Let us with a gladsome mind; and, The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want.

Don’t you begin to feel a chill in your very bones at the bare thought that these inspirations might never have been?

That, however, would have been only the beginning of the loss. But for the Book of Proverbs, we would never have sung, O happy is the man who hears instruction’s warning voice. But for the Epistle to the Hebrews, we would never have heard, Father of peace, and God of love, we own Thy power to save; or, Where high the heavenly temple stands, the house of God not made with hands. But for Luke’s Gospel we would never have heard of the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Nunc Dimittis. And but for the final Apocalypse, we would never have known that heaven will be full of song, and that the singers will be Angels, and Living Creatures, and Elders, “and every creature in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.”

But the Church has always been a singing Church; and the song began in the Upper Room that night when Jesus and His disciples, at the Institution of the Supper, sang a hymn, part of the Hallel of Psalms cxiii-cxviii. The early Christians, we are told, sang, not only with their spirit, but also with their understanding, which their posterity have not always done; and they sang, not Psalms only, as some Scottish folk still do, but also “hymns and spiritual songs; making melody in their heart” (for all cannot do it with their voice) “to the Lord.”

But this early custom would not long have survived if the knowledge on which it was based had been lost. The written Word of God has inspired sacred song in the West in an unbroken line from the time of Ambrose to the present day, and, as we shall see, this has increased in volume and richness in times of evangelical revival; but it has all been rooted in the written Word.

But for the Bible would we ever have heard of John and Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, William Cowper, Paul Gerhardt, John Newton, Augustus Toplady, Bernard of Clairvaux, Gerhard Tersteegen, Reginald Heber, James Montgomery, John Keble, John M. Neale, and a host of others, men and women, who, drawing inspiration from the Scriptures, have poured it out again in immortal song!

Thousands of Christian hymns are so much a part of the thinking of evangelical Christians, that it has never occurred to us, perhaps, that we might never have had them. Yet, if the Bible had not been written, we would never have sung, or have heard sung, Abide with me, fast falls the eventide; All hail the power of Jesus’ name; Jesus, Lover of my soul; Rock of Ages, cleft for me; How sweet the name of Jesus sounds; Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts; Nearer my God, to Thee; Jesus shall reign where’er the sun doth his successive journeys run; When I survey the wondrous Cross; O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; Jesus, Thy boundless love to me; O happy day that fixed my choice; O Love, that wilt not let me go; Em feste Burg ist unser Gott, A firm defence our God is still; and so on through thousands of hymn books.

Would it mean nothing to you if these were taken out of your life? Then you must still be “in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.” It is true that we have, and sing, many songs of sweet emptiness, which cannot claim to have originated in the Scriptures, and the loss of these would be a distinct gain, but the truly Christian hymns are in the warp and woof of the Church’s life, because the Bible is there.

But in addition to all this, what magnificent contributions to Sacred Music we have on the grand scale; productions which are especially the heritage of the peoples of Western Europe.

One need name only Haydn’s Creation; Handel’s Messiah; Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and his 190 Church Cantatas; Mendelssohn’s Elijah, with its ‘O rest in the Lord,’ and, ‘He that shall endure to the end’. Spohr’s The Last Judgment; Purcell’s Jubilate; Sullivan’s The Light of the World, and his tune to ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’; and Stainer’s Crucifixion.

All this, and vastly more, would never have been, if the Bible had never been written!