S. The Holy Scriptures

The Holy Scriptures. And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 3:15.

WHATEVER we may say, it is to be admitted that there are wide and potent differences among the races of mankind. The Galatians who received Paul so joyfully, with such impulsive affection, and a few years afterward had turned away from him, were the same Gauls whom Caesar described not long before, the same as the Gallic races of mankind to-day, impulsive and changeable: and no small part of what we prize most in our civilization is to be discerned in our German forefathers, as Tacitus describes them in a beautiful little treatise he wrote about the manners, customs and character of the Germans. Many other elements of our civilization, the things that contribute most to make our life desirable, come to us from the great classic nations of antiquity. Grecian philosophy, Grecian art, Grecian poetry and eloquence, have made their mark on all that we delight in; Roman law and the Roman genius for government have much to do with what is best in our law and government. And yet, when you have made allowance for all these, ample and cordial allowance for race characteristics, and for the effect of all that is Grecian and all that is JR-oman, who can deny that a large part of what we prize most and enjoy most in our life of to-day has not been explained from any of those sources that it comes from the Bible, that it comes from Christianity? There are many men who think they are now so refined that they have gotten above Christianity, and yet it is Christianity that gave them the said refinement. Now, if all this is true, it ought never to be out of place nor beyond our sympathies to speak of the Bible the Bible that has done so much for all that we like best in our homes, our social life, our public institutions the Bible that has been the comfort and joy of many of those we have loved best in other days the Bible that is the brightest hope of many of us for time and for eternity the Bible that gives the only well-founded hope for mortal, and yet immortal man, in regard to the great future.

“ Thou hast known the holy Scriptures.” That did not mean the same thing for Timothy, exactly, as for us. It meant our Old Testament; for of course when Timothy was a child the New Testament was not yet in existence. How do I know that it meant our Old Testament? How do I know that our Old Testament is a book of Divine origin? Is there any way to prove that, which is not dependent upon scholarship, which can be easily stated? apart, I mean, from its internal evidence of its own inspiration through its wisdom, power, and blessing. I know it in this way. The term “ Scripture “ or “ Scriptures “ was in our Lord’s time a technical term, just as it is among us. When a man among the Jews spoke of the “ Scripture,” when Jesus said, “ The Scripture cannot be broken,” everybody understood that it meant a certain well-known and well-defined collection of sacred writings known to all his hearers. Jesus and His Apostles have testified that the “ Scriptures “ are divine. Now do I know what writings they were?

Yes; I know from outside sources, very varied and ample. I know from the great Jewish historian and scholar, Josephus, who expressed himself very distinctly as to the sacred books of the Jews, and declares that no man would venture to add to the number or to take away from them. I know from the Jewish writings of a later period, embodying their traditions of the New Testament time and of earlier times, the Talmud, in which the collection of sacred writings described is precisely our Hebrew Old Testament, neither more nor less. I know from Christian writers of the second century and of the third century, who made it a specialty in Palestine itself to ascertain what were the sacred books of the Jews in the time of Christ, and who definitely stated the result to be our Old Testament. Now I am not pinning my faith to the Jews and saying that these books were divine because the Jews thought so.

I am trying to ascertain what books they were which Jesus and the Apostles declared to be divine, and I learn beyond a doubt that the Jews who heard them understood, without fail and without exception, that it meant precisely what we call the Old Testament. That is a clear statement of the matter, which cannot be gainsaid and which leaves no occasion for doubt. A man may say, “ Well, I find a good many things in the Old Testament that I don’t see any use in, that I don’t see the good of, some things that I object to.” But hold! The founder of Christianity and his inspired Apostles have spoken about them, and whether you understand everything in the Old Testament or not, they have declared that the Scripture cannot be broken; that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable; that the holy Scriptures (the Old Testament) are “ able to make wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

There is a great deal of wisdom in this world. It is wonderful that mankind, considering how foolish they are, should be so wise; and oh! it is wonderful that mankind, considering how wise they are, should be so foolish. There is a great deal of wisdom in the world; wisdom that commands the admiration of all who are fitted to appreciate it. Men are so wise about their business affairs! Just look at the great business schemes, the grand business combinations! How easily men discern the new openings for business which new inventions and discoveries offer to them! How clearly we ordinary people see, after a while, what some extraordinary man saw years before, and seized upon it and made himself one of the great business men of the time by his wisdom! I was reading, only yesterday, the life of Sir Moses Montefiore, embracing something of the life of the first great English Rothschild, and was reminded how wise those men were in understanding their times at the beginning of the century, during the Napoleonic wars, in seeing deeper into the probabilities than even great statesmen saw. There is a great deal of wisdom in the world; and this makes it all the sadder to think how few, comparatively, seem to be wise unto salvation. Nay, these wonderful human endowments and energies of ours seem often to be directed toward wisdom unto sin. Men take their splendid powers and prostitute them in the service of wickedness. The longing to know evil is so intense in human nature! What is that early story in the dim light of the first history of mankind? We do not know much about it. We can ask a thousand questions about it that no one can answer. But this much we see clearly, A fair woman in a beautiful garden, gazing upon a tree and its fruit, and the thought suggested that it is a tree to be desired to make one wise; eat of that, and they will be independent of God, they will be themselves as God, knowing good and evil for themselves good and evil and not having to ask Him for guidance. She takes and eats, and gives to her husband, and he eats in flat, bold defiance of the great Father’s prohibition.

Then their eyes were opened opened unto sin, opened unto shame. And ever since why, it is just wonderful to watch your own children and see how early they show a keen relish for knowing about wrong things; how they will get off with some villainous servant or off with some bad schoolmate, and get themselves told a lot of things that it would be so much better for them never to hear of. They do so want to know the bad things! The growing boys are so curious about places that are characteristically places of evil. Wise unto sin! There are a great many thiugs it is better never ’ to know.

There are things about which ignorance is bliss; yea, and ignorance is wisdom. There are things of which those who know least are the wisest people, and those who know most are the most foolish people. It is a matter to be thankful for, and in a good sense proud of, if a man can say, that as to the popular forms of outbreaking vice he never knew anything about them; that he never entered a place of debauchery; that he does not know the names of the instruments of gaming; that he does not know the taste of intoxicating liquors.

Happy the man who can humbly declare to a friend such blessed ignorance, such wise ignorance as that.

While men are so busy in being wise unto sin, how desirable, surely, that we should be wise unto salvation! My friends, let us wake up a little. We sleep, we dream along through life. We say, “ O yes, yes, I believe that there is another life, a future.” You believe it is eternal? u Yes, I believe it is an eternal life.” And you believe in God? “ Yes, I believe in God.” And you believe in Jesus Christ? “ Well, yes; I suppose that is all so.” And yet, living in this brief, fleeting, uncertain life, in this strange world, and admitting all these things to be true, and not wise unto salvation, and not praying to be wise unto salvation!

“ The holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” That is the way in which they do it through faith which is in Christ Jesus: for the holy Scriptures of the Old Testament are never half understood except as they are seen in the light of Christ Jesus. They all pointed forward to Christ Jesus; they all found their fulfillment, the key of their interpretation, in Christ Jesus. The Old Testament history is not merely a history of some wandering patriarchs and of a strange, wayward people of wonderful powers and wonderful propensities to evil. It is not merely a history of Israel. The Old Testament is a history of redemption/of God’s mightiness and mercies, and of a chosen nation, all along toward the promised, long-looked-for time when God’s Son should come to be the Saviour of mankind.

We cannot understand the Old Testament, except we read it in its bearing upon Christ, as fulfilled in him.

I remember once a neighboring professor sent us invitations to his house for a summer evening, saying that he had a century plant which seemed about to bloom, and asking us to come and watch with them till it blossomed. It was a delightful occasion, you may fancy. With music and conversation we passed on through the pleasant summer evening hours, on till past midnight.

Then we gathered around and gazed upon the plain, wonderful thing that had lived longer than any of us had lived, and now, for the first time, was about to blossom for the admiration of beholders. And oh! I think sometimes that Jesus Christ was the blossoming Century Plant, the beauteous Millennium Flower. All the long story of Israel meant him; and if you do find many things in the Old Testament that you do not see the meaning of, remember that they all pointed forward toward him.

Then, besides, the Scriptures not only have to be understood through him, but they make us wise unto Psalms 11:1-7 vation only through faith in him; because if we do not believe what the Scriptures say concerning him, how can they have their full power over us? They have a certain power. Just as the moon, when it is eclipsed, yet has some light shining upon it, reflected from the atmosphere of the earth, so the people, who do not themselves believe in the Scriptures, and do not believe in Christ Jesus with living faith, get much benefit reflected from the Christian people around them, and the Christian homes in which they grew up, and the Christian atmosphere they breathe; but they never get the full benefit which the Bible is able to give, except through personal faith in Christ Jesus. Ah! that dark lie in the garden would never have brought its baneful results for our race of mortals, if our first mother had not believed it. A lie rejected is powerless; a lie believed is ruin. And so truth rejected cannot have its full effect upon us.

How can we get the benefit of Scripture if we do not believe in Him who is the centre and the heart and the essence and the life of Scripture, even Christ Jesus?

There is another line of thought here: “ And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Happy Timothy! His mother and his grandmother had shown an unfeigned faith, to which the Apostle himself testified. From a child they had trained him to know the holy Scriptures; and in his early youth he had met the blessed Apostle and learned from him the faith which is in Christ Jesus, and thus had become wise unto salvation. Happy Timothy! Happy, every growing child that has devout people around to point it toward the knowledge of God’s Word. My friends, we who are growing old, what do we live for in this world, but for the young who are growing up around us? What would be the use of life to us, if it were not in the hope of making the life of those whom God hath given us, and those who spring up under our view, brighter and better and purer, and worthier? We ought not to think it a small matter to train the growing children in our homes, in the Sunday-school, as we meet them in society, wherever we can reach them by our influence to know the holy Scriptures. You are not doing enough if you merely tell your children sometimes, “ You ought to read the Bible,” and perhaps scold a little because the child does not read the Bible; that is not half enough. Ah! we ought to set the child an example of reading the Bible, as some of us neglect to do. We ought to make the children see, by our own daily assiduity, our own living interest, that we believe in reading the Bible and get good out of it.

We ought to talk about what is in the Bible; we ought to point out to the child this or the other- portion that is suited to his age and character and wants. We ought to talk to the child about what he is reading, to show him the application of this or that text to his daily life.

Out of the abundance of a heart that is full of the knowledge of God’s Word, our mouth ought to speak often in the conversation of the family, so as to make the child feel that the Bible has gone into our soul, and that it shows itself in the glance of our eye and in the tone of our voice and in the tenor of our life. Are there many of us that do that? Dear children! there come times when our hearts grow soft and tender toward them, and we feel that we could die for them if that would do them any good; and yet here is something by which we could promote their highest, noblest, eternal welfare, and we do not have the time! Happy Timothy, who, ere he became grown, learned the faith which is in Christ’

Jesus. Happy every one who from a child has known the holy Scriptures, has learned early and God be thanked! the earlier the better to give the young heart lo Christ Jesus and dedicate the young life to His blessed service, and now is going on, trying to persuade others k) love and serve Him too. But ah! there are many who from a child have known the holy Scriptures, and now are passing on into mature life, wise about a great many earthly things; and some of them are gray-headed and wrinkled, and some of them tottering towards the end not yet, oh, not yet wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus! There are many peculiar circumstances about growing old: the parents gone, long ago; maybe the brothers and sisters all gone, and one stands alone, like some pine smitten of the lightning in the field alone of what was once the family circle; and the friends of youth most of them gone, alas! and some of them estranged, and others so far away; new things growing up, like the bushes growing around an old pine tree, that are not akin to it; new features, new interests, new pursuits; and he who grows old finds it hard to interest himself in these things and feel the spring and buoyancy and the sweetness of life as he felt it in other days.

Alas for a man who from a child has known the holy Scriptures, and now is growing old, and has not become wise unto salvation! Alas for a man who can bear, like Atlas, the burdens of the world’s affairs in the maturity of his strength and his wisdom, and who is neglecting to be wise unto salvation! Ah! if I speak to any one such person in middle life, or growing old, might I persuade him to say this day, out of an honest and humble heart, “ O Jesus, of whom my mother taught me in my childhood, take me now to be Thine! “And alas! that there are so many, even in our own country, which delights to call itself Christian, who from childhood have not known the holy Scriptures; that in this, which is in some respects the brightest land of earth, and in some respects the foremost nation of earth, there are some children who do not know the looks of the outside of a Bible! They are growing up in homes where no Bible was ever seen; and there are plenty of such homes. Ought it not to be a pleasure to us to try to spread the Bible among our fellow-men? One will say, many copies are destroyed and many copies are slighted. Certainly: not every venture in business pays. There has to be a head in the books of every establishment for loss as well as for profits. There are many blossoms on the tree that bring no fruit, and many seeds fall into the ground that spring not up; but that does not prevent us from planting nor hinder us from gathering. Grant that some copies will perish, and many copies will be slighted: yet scatter the Bible, and many will read it, and not a few, by the blessing of God’s grace, will thereby become wise unto salvation. It is hard sometimes to tell what is the greatest privilege of earthly life, but it does seem that just the greatest privilege of earthly life is to give to some fellow-creature the blessed Word of God, and then to try, by loving speech and living example, to bring home to the heart and conscience of those whom we can reach, the truths it contains. If we do love the Bible ourselves (and many of us do), then ought not such to delight in scattering the Bible among others? If some of us know too well that we are but poor sticks of Christians at best, and that we do not love the Bible as we ought, and do not live by it as we ought, yet shall we not at least feel, “ Now here is something that I can do; here is something that I will do. I do not treat the Bible rightly myself, but I will gladly give the Bible to every one, high and low, rich and poor, in all the land, in all the world, whom I can help.” O that it may be true of your children and mine, of your acquaintance and mine, that we have done them some good in bringing them to a knowledge of the holy Scriptures, and that they have all been brought, by God’s grace, to the blessedness of being wise unto salvation.