0.3. Introduction
Introduction “Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name”—Psalms 138:2. This saying of the Psalmist may primarily refer to some specific word of God, some promise, like that recorded about the future of David’s own house (2 Samuel 7:11
Calvin translates: “Thou hast magnified Thy name, above all things, by Thy Word;” and Luther, “Thou hast made Thy Name glorious, above all, through Thy Word.” But, with Hengstenberg, the majority of the best Bible students favor substantially the common rendering: “Above all Thy Name, thou hast made glorious Thy Word”—meaning that, beyond all works of Creation and Providence, or other means whereby God has made Himself known, He has exalted His written Word. To those to whom it is addressed, it has power to convict and convert, sanctify and edify; but it has even a higher power and province: it is the mirror of its Author; meant, first of all, to reveal, unveil, magnify and glorify Him from whom it originally went forth. This high tribute found expression when as yet there was only the Written Word. Without doubt the Living Word is a fuller unveiling of God’s inmost self. In the incarnation, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among men,” as a living Presence. In the Person of His Son, the Logos, the Word Incarnate, the Father made Himself known as never before, with new clearness and fullness of revelation.
Yet it still remains true that, in the Inspired Scriptures, He has glorified His own Name, or nature: revealing His mind, heart, will—His whole character—and, especially, His gracious attitude toward sinners; and, in such manner and measure, as to make all other revelations of Himself in the creation of the material universe and the control of human history comparatively dim and indistinct, only as the first faint flushes of the dawn in comparison with the fuller light of day.
One of the main uses of the Word of God is to supply us with a divine standard of both doctrine and duty. In his travels in the Dark Continent, Dr. Livingstone found his native guides either so ignorant or so determined to deceive and mislead, that he could do better without them than with them; and so he constantly referred to his own compass and sextant to determine direction and location. What would he have done if, by any accident, or defect in his instruments, he had found even these scientific guides utterly untrustworthy? For God’s written Word no substitute has ever been found. Whereas other ancient civilized nations, such as Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Rome, Greece, have left monuments in law and letters, mechanic arts and fine arts, Judea, as Dr. Jamieson remarks, while leaving us no legacy of secular achievements, rose immeasurably above all other lands in the possession and transmission of the Living Oracles of God. In fact, the Hebrews were rather warned against some things in which other nations prided themselves. The fine arts, for instance, were so often the handmaids of polytheism and the promoters of idolatry, finding their highest sphere in glorifying image-worship, that Jehovah required His people to be, in this as in many other respects, separate from the nations (Exodus 20:25; Isaiah 2:16). In every department of life the need for some exact and unvarying standard, as in weights and measures, time, etc., compels resort to the works of God for guidance, for here alone are found perfect forms and changeless models. Man’s best watches and chronometers have to be corrected by nature’s horologium—God’s sidereal clock, which has not varied the one-thousandth part of a second, since He appointed sun, moon and stars for times and seasons. And, so, from all human oracles, however self-confident, we turn at last to the Inspired Word, where instead of ambiguous and untrustworthy utterances we find teachings distinct and definite, authoritative and infallible.
One very conspicuous feature of the Word of God is its Self-Interpreting power. In the mastery of human books help is needful from large libraries and patient research in the realms of science and philosophy. Grammars, and glossaries, histories and biographies, copious lexicons and learned encyclopedias, often become necessary to furnish the mere sidelights to interpret the terms and illumine the sense of human literature. But, in studying this Divine Book, confessedly the crown of all literature, other writings, though often helpful, are never indispensable. To a remarkable degree, God’s Word explains and interprets its own contents, is its own grammar and lexicon, library and encyclopedia. Within itself may be found a philosophy which interprets its history, and a history which illustrates its philosophy. Even what in it is most obscure and mysterious is not dependent upon outside helps for its completer unlocking or unveiling. The humblest reader, if shut up by circumstances to this one Book, as was Bunyan, almost literally, in Bedford jail, might, without any other guide than the Bible itself, by careful, prayerful searching, come to know the Word; exploring its contents till he became another Apollos, mighty in the scriptures. This statement has been often verified by fact, as in the experience of believers, actually imprisoned for Christ’s sake but carrying their Bibles with them as companions in solitude, and coming forth enriched in the knowledge of God. The highest secret of Bible study, however, is that teachable spirit which is inseparable from obedience. Spiritual vision, like the physical, is binocular: it depends on both reason and conscience. If the intellectual faculties are beclouded, the moral sense is apt to err in its decisions; and, if the conscience be seared, the reason is blinded. Our Lord says, “If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine” (John 7:17); in other words obedience is the organ of spiritual revelation. Insight into the scriptures is never independent of the obedient frame, but is conditioned upon actual conformity to their precepts and sympathy with their spirit. True biblical learning is not so much mental as experimental. There are professed teachers and preachers who no more grasp the truth they nominally hold than does the sparrow grasp the message that passes through the telegraph wire on which it perches—as Norman McLeod quaintly put it.
It is sometimes worse than vain to read, or even to search the scriptures, with mere intellect, as though they were merely literary productions to be examined and understood with no higher faculties than those which are associated with an unsanctified scholarship. Many a man who has approached the Word of God without prayer for God’s help, without reverent attitude, or any ultimate end beyond a critical, intellectual analysis, has been left to grope his way blindly while persuading himself that he had even exceptional insight. On the other hand, many a humble and uneducated believer has had his eyes unveiled to behold wondrous things out of God’s law (Psalms 119:18), and become an expert in its “mysteries.”
Critical study is not to be discouraged; it is not only proper but helpful in its proper sphere, when conducted with a proper spirit. But there is a sort of analysis that is destructive; like the vivisection that invades the domain of life, in cutting in pieces the organic body of truth, it sacrifices vitality, and leaves only dead, disconnected fragments of what was one living organism. The Bible is such a living organism. Its various parts are members of a common body; they have a vital connection and relation, and must be examined, not in isolation and separation, but in union as integral parts of a great whole. Then criticism, instead of being arrogant and destructive, will be reverent and constructive. The late Dr. A.J. Gordon of Boston—in that memorable visit to Scotland with the writer, in 1888—used to relate an anecdote which the great Scotchman, Principal Cairns, declared to be the best illustration he had ever met of the mistakes of modern “critics.” In a conversation with a deacon of a colored church in his neighborhood, Dr. Gordon drew out from him the fact that the people did not like the new pastor “berry much;” and, when pressed for an explanation, the deacon added that the pastor told too many “antidotes in the pulpit;” and, when Dr. Gordon expressed surprise, saying that he had supposed his pastor to be a great Bible man, the deacon replied, “Well I’ll tell yer how it is. He’s de best man I ebber seed to tak’ de Bible apart, but he dunno how to put it togedder agin!” Modern critics have proved adepts in pulling to pieces the blessed Word, but they are too much like those to whom Asaph referred, who in his day had broken down the carved work of the sanctuary with axes and hammers, and burned up the synagogues (Psalms 74:3-8). No student of Holy Scripture should forget that, to see the highest truth man needs the verifying faculty. “The light of the body is the eye,” because the condition on which depend the perception and reception of all light is a healthy organ of vision, without which there is in effect no light. This is a thought of profound outreach. Objective testimony, or external evidence of truth, is never enough; there must be also subjective capacity, internal receptivity to its witness. We must not be so absorbed in simply gathering proofs or evidences of Christianity, as to overlook the need and value of an inward readiness to receive and feel the force of proof, when furnished. The candid mind, the clean conscience, and the obedient-will, are all necessary to the open eye. Their opposites, an uncandid mind, corrupt conscience, and perverse will, are in scripture compared to an eye veiled, voluntarily closed, or judicially blinded. Compare 1 Corinthians 14:37; 1 John 2:27; 1 John 4:1; 2 Corinthians 3:14-18; John 3:19-21; Acts 26:18-19; Acts 28:26-27; 1 Timothy 1:19; Romans 8:6-7; 2 Corinthians 4:3-4; John 7:17; 2 Corinthians 11:3. To understand the importance of this verifying faculty in ourselves is very rare. A mind, candidly open to conviction, asking only to know “what is Truth?” and a will that turns to truth, when found, and yields to its sway, as the needle to the pole—how seldom these conditions are found—probably never where persistent unbelief reigns. The two veils of prejudice and self-interest are still as common and as effective hindrances as in our Lord’s day. The Pharisees and Scribes were so built into the errors of that time, that to accept His teaching meant turning their little world upside down—upsetting the whole fabric of their individual, social and religious life; and hence their invention of every possible pretext for opposing and rejecting Him (John 11:47-48). Prejudice implies that a wrong or partial view has been formed which leads to antagonism; there is no longer a clear eye to see truth. Self-interest warps the whole mind, so that conviction cannot fit the demands of truth even if recognized; and, often unconsciously, men devise excuses or invent difficulties, which would at once disappear were there a fair, impartial judgment.
Gregory the Great, left us a sublime maxim: “Discere cor Dei in verbis Dei”—“We are to learn the mind of God from the words of God.” True, but we must be both prepared and willing to be taught. Our Lord rebuked even professed leaders among the Jews, because, while claiming to be exponents of the Law, they “knew not the scriptures nor the power of God.” This reminds us of the necessity, if we are to have a true acquaintance with scripture teaching, that we should feel the force of truth, not only as directly declared, but as inferentially taught. This rebuke was especially to the Sadducees, who denied both separate spiritual existence apart from the body, and the reality of the future state. And yet Jehovah had declared: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob;” referring to them, not as dead but as living; and these Sadducees might have deduced from this declaration the doctrine of the survival of the spirit at death, and of the future state which they denied. While we are to be on our guard against those false inferences which are due to careless reasoning, we are not to forget that prejudice will blind us to true and safe deductions. This unique peculiarity which has been adverted to, the self disclosure of the Word of God, it will be the main purpose of what follows to exhibit and illustrate. This is a convincing proof of a supernatural origin, and shows the universal fitness of the Scripture for man, as man, while it both incites and inspires a reverent and searching study. As a possible help to the appreciation and interpretation of the Scriptures, attention will be called to some of the leading ways in which the close study of this divine book has been found to disclose its meaning, even in cases where at first there seemed to be not only obscurity but contradiction. The year of the issue of this book marks the completion of a half century since the writer entered upon the full work of the gospel ministry; and it is intended as a sort of gathering up of some results of fifty years of Bible study, putting in form some of the laws, principles and methods found by actual trial to yield the best fruit, and so promising to be of like service to others. A rightly conducted examination of God’s Word will be found to yield not only rich results in homiletics and hermeneutics, but in apologetics. In the structure and contents of Holy Scripture may be found a triumphant answer to all assaults upon its inspiration and authority as a divine Book and the standard of doctrine and duty. The Bible is its own witness; and whoever, turning from all external defenses to the book itself, will seek to make himself master of its contents and to enter sympathetically into its spirit, will find himself lodged in an impregnable fortress where he laughs in derision at all who, like Voltaire, threaten to overthrow it, while he holds in scarcely less contempt the timidity which fears such threats. The Ark of the Covenant needs no help from puny human hands to steady it, nor is the Shekinah fire in danger of being quenched by those who blow upon it to put it out. Light needs only to be let shine and it becomes its own witness. A lion has only to be let loose and he needs no defender. Give the Word of God free course and it will be victor over all assault.
Let us imitate the Bereans who “searched the Scriptures daily.” That word “search,” is emphatic, implying a thorough examination, a judicial investigation, reminding of the work of the civil engineer, mapping out a newly-explored coast line, with triangulation of every bay and inlet. Search into the Scriptures should be thorough, systematic, habitual, tarrying over peculiarities of conception and expression, emphatic words and phrases, and seeking to know the exact meaning and order of words used by the Spirit of God. It is safe to assume that nothing is purposeless; and that to the great end of the whole every part, however minute, contributes, somewhat as, in creation, every whit subserves God’s great design. Whether or not all these mutual bearings are seen, they exist; and our dimness and narrowness of vision cannot obliterate what they only obscure.
Nothing like an exhaustive treatment is attempted in the pages which follow. No doubt many a devout reader might, out of his own treasure, bring forth things new and old, outranking in importance what is here found. Perhaps, however, others who have not digged so deep into this mine of celestial wealth may find somewhat here to incite to a more painstaking study. But all who, for themselves, will prayerfully search, will find the scriptures testifying to their own divine original, and will reap the reward of the explorer who, from new paths of investigation and discovery, brings new trophies; or of the miner who digs up new nuggets of gold, or gems. Here are to be found ever new truths, precious stones of beauty and radiance surpassing the gold of ophir, the precious onyx and the sapphire.
Arthur T. Pierson
May, 1910