A Layman's Study of the English Bible Author:Francis Bowen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE. It might seem that the next properly succeeding portion of my topic would be the poetry of the Bible. But I find t... more »hat both the poetry and the history in the Hebrew Scriptures are so thoroughly underwoven and colored by what I have been obliged, through the want of a better term, to call their ' philosophy,' that some consideration of this last must precede, before any full comment upon the two former would be intelligible. Let us therefore try first to understand the meaning of this much abused word, and thus perhaps to find an explanation of what is most peculiar in the character and the writings of the Hebrew people. The proper function of philosophy is to determine accurately the being, the nature, and the mutual relations of the three great objects of human thought, — namely, the Universe, Man, and God. This is Kant's definition of it, and I know not that a better one has ever been offered. Thus understood, philosophy is not science, and is not religion; but it is the foundation on which alone both scienceand religion must be built. That foundation consists of those primitive and fundamental truths upon which the whole fabric of our knowledge rests, and by which it is regulated; it is the aggregate of first principles, which constitute the essence of the human mind, and determine the -whole course and tendency of human thought. According to some, these principles are authoritative because they are innate; they are born with us, and must be accepted as such, because nothing lies behind them, through which they could either be proved or refuted. Now the Hebrews virtually teach the same doctrine when they declare that these primary truths are a revelation from God. They profess with Elihu in the Book of Job, " Behold there is a sp...« less