the sake of the return which the Christianized peoples will one day
bring to our studies of the truth. But the better motive is deeper than
this--the passion for human beings as human beings. Any human being is
entitled to any truth which another human being can reveal to him.

The approach must be the human approach. We must speedily get away from
the Jonah-like conceptions of the biblical revelation as intended
particularly for any one nation. One great danger from the present war
is the loss by the religious nations involved of the ordinary New
Testament point of view. Many of the fighting nations have lapsed back
into the pre-Jonah era. But the present war aside, the thought of
supreme truth as intended chiefly for a particular race or nation, leads
to a patronizing, condescending bearing toward other peoples which
thwarts the finer spiritual achievements. The contacts between the
so-called higher and so-called lower nations in military, diplomatic,
and commercial relations have thus far for the most part been
abominable. Too often missionary effort itself has based itself on these
same assumptions of racial superiority. A people may indeed receive
blessings from the Scriptures in whatever spirit they are bestowed, but
damage is wrought in the souls of the bestowers by the attitude of
superiority. The only genuinely biblical approach is one of respect--
respect for the peoples as peoples, respect which will have regard for
their growing independence in spiritual development, respect which will
not force upon them particularistic interpretations of the universal
Scriptures.

Now, all of this may seem like a long distance from a treatment of
understanding of the Scriptures in the ordinary sense. It would not have
been worth while, however, to discuss this problem merely from the point
of view of exegesis or professional commentary. The essentials about the