02.08. HOW MAY I BEST MASTER MY ENGLISH BIBLE?

HOW MAY I BEST MASTER MY ENGLISH BIBLE? In the discussion of our theme “My Bible” we have dealt with “Whence and How it Came,” “Is My Bible Scarred by Discrepancies?” “Is My Bible Marred by Reputed Miracles?” “Is My Bible a Blood-stained Book?” “Has Archeology Discredited my Bible?” “Is My Bible a Scientific Book?” “Is My Bible a Divinely Inspired Book?”

If every contention, found in these seven chapters, were not followed by a successful Bible study, the proofs of inspiration would be well nigh in vain. On that account we propose this eighth theme.

One may be surprised to have me introduce into this chapter three texts: 2 Timothy 2:15, 1 Timothy 4:15, and Matthew 6:5-6—since these three texts suggest three separate themes—Scripture study, Spiritual Meditation, and Secret Prayer.

Believing as we do, however, that the first of these is impossible apart from the other two; contending that history names no man or woman who ever became a notable student of Scripture without spiritual meditation and secret prayer, we feel that to advocate the first compels the Inclusion of the second and third. To our first texts then!

“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15).

SCRIPTURE STUDY A knowledge of the Bible is basal. It is fundamental to the individual life and development. It is the sine qua non of the church’s progress; and it is the chief cornerstone in Christian civilization. I wonder if any one of us has ever fully imagined what it would mean to be without the Bible?

Arthur T. Pierson reminds us of Henry Rogers’ unique way of impressing this thought. He records a dream entitled, “The Blank Bible.” He thought that, taking up his Greek Testament one morning to read a chapter, he found the old familiar Book a total blank, without a character in it or upon it. Thinking that someone had played a practical joke upon him, he took down successively a large quarto Bible containing both Testaments, then a Hebrew Bible, but these were also perfect blanks.

While musing on this mystery his servant came to tell him of a queer robbery, that some thief had stolen her Bible and left in its place a book exactly like it, but full of blank paper.

Going into the street he met a friend who excitedly told him that during the night every copy of the Bible had been taken from his house, and volumes of the same size, but containing only pure white paper, left in their stead. On further investigation it was discovered that it was so, universally; and even the Bible Society and large depositories of books could produce not one copy in which the same miracle had not taken place. In fine, as though in judgment on the race for the abuse of God’s Book, He had actually withdrawn it from among men, and not a sentence from the Word of God remained in all human literature.

Moreover, Mr. Rogers thought, in his dream, that as soon as men lost the Bible, they began to attach a value to it never appreciated while it was possessed. Any price would now have been paid for a single complete copy.

Some to whom it had always been a “blank” book were loud in their laments over its disappearance. One old sinner declared it “confounded hard to be deprived of religion in his old age,” and another, who seemed from his practice to have indorsed Mandeville’s opinion that “private vices are public benefits,” was greatly alarmed for the morals of mankind now that the great guide to duty was lost.” The dream is an instructive parable, and may well lead us to consider what human life and society owe to the Word of God.

Permit a few words then upon the Way of Bible Study, The Will for Bible Study, and the Wonder of Bible Study. The Way of Bible Study.

I have often commended the late Dr. James M. Gray’s suggestions on the way of Bible study. He gives five little rules for Bible study:

1. —“Read the Book.” The book of Genesis, say. Bead it. The biblical library involves the only set of books known to the mind of man where we propose to read a chapter, which, as a rule, means about a page, or a verse, which would average about a half inch at the most. No other volume in which we are interested do we read after that manner. Bead the Book!

We have suggested Genesis only because that is the beginning and one cannot be intelligently interested in Exodus until he has finished Genesis; nor can he properly understand Leviticus until he has finished Exodus, nor comprehend Numbers until he is through with Leviticus, nor Deuteronomy until he completes Numbers ;and notwithstanding the fact that the Bible has some forty authors, as a history it is a unit; and it is well to read the Book in order.

2. —Read the Book Consecutively, at a single sitting if possible.

Any book read after that manner yields more of its content to the reader’s mind than is possible when it is read a bit today, some more tomorrow, another portion a week hence, and a still later part months afterwards. When you read a book consecutively you move with the author; you get his perspective; you realize his objective.

3. —Read it repeatedly.

Dr. Gray, many years ago, in his “Synthetic Study of the Scriptures,” advocated this method. Report says that when he adopted it he read the book of Genesis forty times over before he continued further. Such a re-reading would make an expert in Genesis, even of the average man.

4. —Read it independently.

Dr. Gray was very emphatic in this matter, and justly so. He plead with his students and auditors not to run straight away for a commentary or lesson help, but to stay by the text until it was conquered and until the Spirit has had opportunity to reveal its inner meaning. His fifth suggestion was: Read it prayerfully.

It is doubtful if the other four could ever make a successful student of Scripture apart from this fifth suggestion.

According to our contention the Holy Spirit is the Author of the Book. The author knows the book-intent. That is how it fell out that Spalitan wrote to Martin Luther and asked him how he might become a successful student of the Bible.

Luther’s answer was a disappointment at first, but proved later the great Reformer’s wisdom.

He said, “Pray!”

Upon further reflection one realizes the superiority of this counsel. Luther sent him to the Author of the Book—the Holy Spirit. He alone can make known the meaning of its content. Concerning Him the Saviour said: “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.” “He shall take of mine, and show it unto you.” To work one’s way through the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Ghost is to make the Bible a part of one’s self. Any Bible study that fails of that effect is a failure.

Dr. A. C. Dixon says that a man went into an old German library and put up his hand and took an ancient looking volume off of the shelf, and as he lifted it down he noticed that the light was shining through it, and holding it up to the window, he said, “Look what the bookworm has done; he has gone clean through this’ book!” The volume was a Bible, and Dixon remarks, “I want to be a bookworm like that. I want to enter it at Genesis and come out at Revelation.”

Such a bookworm will not perish; but with wings will sweep the sky. The Will for Bible Study.

Undoubtedly the way of Bible study effects the will. The reason many people do not like the Bible is that they have not fed upon it often enough to have acquired a taste for it. The first olive I tried I spewed out, but after a few minutes I found there was an agreeable sensation left, and I tried out another and yet another until I came to love them.

There is a principle employed here. The world around people come to like the things upon which they feed; and the only reason that some people have so little appetite for the Word of God and so much for the apples of the world, is that they feed upon the latter and utterly neglect the former.

O. P. Gifford tells of a Southern officer who was going over the fields of the Civil War one day and saw a lone soldier up a persimmon tree filling himself on the green fruit.

“What are you doing there? Is that your diet?” he inquired. To which the man replied, “No, General; I am shrinking my stomach to fit my diet!”

Even a soldier of the cross, if he feed long enough upon the green persimmons of worldliness, will so reduce his spiritual capacity that a study of the Word of God will only fling him into pain, and he will put it away imagining that it is dry and difficult, when the trouble is not with it, hut with him; for at the very time that one is eschewing it entirely, another is saying with the Psalmist:

“Thy Word is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb,” or with the little negro boy in the South, who had been converted and learned to read the Bible, and said, “It’s sweeter ‘an ‘lasses!” The Wonder of Bible Study. This grows upon one who becomes a good student of God’s Word. More and more he stands amazed at its heights and depths and more and more he says: “I cannot explore the one; nor sound the other.” A few years ago thousands of acres in northern Minnesota were regarded as useless. The timber had been taken off of it; the rock-soil could not be ploughed, and the owners attempted to shift it to the names of straw men and escape any taxation. The government forced them to acknowledge their ownership, and shortly they discovered that underneath its surface there was a wealth of iron ore worth millions. Many a man has a richer mine in his house; but in poverty of spirit passes his life, when his wealth might exceed that of Croesus, a thousand fold, if he only went beneath the surface of the Word and brought it forth. The elder Spurgeon—Charles’ grandfather was visited one day by a neighbor. Spurgeon was reading his Bible, and after he had admitted his guest, he dropped into his big chair and picked up his Bible again, and seemed to have forgotten that his neighbor had come. The neighbor sat and looked upon the old face and saw the lips frequently move and pronounce the words “Wonderful, wonderful!” No wonder the poet wrote:

“O wonderful, wonderful Word of the Lord!

True wisdom its pages unfold. And though we may read them a thousand times o’er, They never, no never grow old!

“Each line is a treasure; each promise a pearl, That all, if they will, may secure. And though time and earth pass away God’s Word shall forever endure.”

SPIRITUAL MEDITATION

1 Timothy 4:15 Scripture study demands it: the Quiet Hour Expresses it: The Soul Needs it. In fact the soul is born of spiritual meditation. No man is converted to God or regenerated by His Spirit until meditation characterizes his conduct. He must stop, he must think ere can be quickened into life. David said: “I thought on my ways, I turned my feet unto Thy testimonies; I made haste and delayed not to keep Thy commandments.”

There are those who object to evangelistic, or protracted meetings. Their objections are poorly based. The one thing in favor of a protracted meeting is that it compels the men who attend it to think—to turn their eyes inward, to study themselves. We have jested a good deal about “Ten Nights in a Barroom.” We know how it can bloat the body, blight the mind, and blemish the soul. But I promise you that ten consecutive evenings before the judgment bar of ‘God, as depicted by an earnest and intelligent preacher, will reveal the iniquities of the soul, the destructiveness of sin, and compel the cry of penitence: “What shall I do to be saved?”

I saw an atheist in central Illinois attempt to sit through five consecutive nights in such a meeting, but when the fifth came he changed- front and gave a good confession in the name of the Lord Jesus. The soul is nurtured by meditation.

Phillips Brooks has a remarkable sermon on the text: “Jesus said, Make the men sit down.” His interpretation of that text is as unique as was Brooks’ preaching. He described the multitude that had followed the Lord across the water, and were filling the empty fields with clamor and confusion—a multitude in which curiosity was rife; a multitude with whom condemnation and criticism made up a constant cross fire; a multitude of whom every man was on his feet, gesticulating furiously, uttering hard words, and firing angry glances, when there came the command from Jesus, “Have the men sit down.”

Brooks says: “This meant a change from the active and restless to the receptive and quiet state, from the condition in which all life was flowing outward in eager self-assertion to the other condition in which the life was being influenced; that is, being flowed upon by the richer power which came forth from Christ.”

Truly there is too much outgo with most of us; and too little inflow.

One day in Liverpool I went down to the Mersey. She was shallow; her stream was on its way to the sea; and the great vessels along shore were stranded, many of them resting upon dry ground, and could not go, and I said, “How is” this?”

They answered, “The tide is out now; but it will turn after a bit, and instead of this river continuing to the sea, the sea will have made its contribution to the river and fill it in and fill it up, and lift the last one of these vessels to .places of power and possible motion.” That is what meditation ought to mean. By it men come into receptive attitude; by it men open their souls, and so the God of all fullness flows in and fills with Himself. The man who can say: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of mu heart be acceptable unto Thee” is very likely to call Him “My strength and my Redeemer.” By meditation the soul is inspired! No man can ever go forth to a large undertaking and find himself equal to it who has not first meditated upon it. The Christian world stands amazed today at the progress of Buddism. Its aggressive missionary spirit is the effective challenge of Christianity at every point. It is taking other lands with a rapidity which astounds the world, putting its missionaries even into America and England, though they must be renamed—in order to deceive if possible even the elect— Theosophy and Bahaiism, etc.

Yet, Buddists are not the strenuous folk that Christians are. What then is the secret of their power? Possibly in “meditation” Brooks says: “You let your boat drop quietly down the Ganges today, and along its banks the silent figures sit like carved brown statues, hour after hour, day after day, with eyes open and fixed on vacancy, clearing themselves of all thought, emotion, and desire, that being emptied of self, they may see God. The most popular religion of the world today is that which flows out from the sacred seat, under the sacred tree at Gaya, where Buddha sat for six years, silent, receptive, until the great illumination came.” This is what Jesus desired of his Church: “Tarry ye, until ye be endued with power from on high.” The men who waited in the upper room were the ones whose minds were illuminated, whose hearts were fired, and whose missions were successful. “Wait, I say, upon the Lord.”

SECRET PRAYER

Matthew 6:5-6 In it one sees himself!

Jesus believed in the quiet hour. In the great Sermon on the Mount there is more than the beatitudes; there is much of instruction concerning the development of the spiritual life, and infinitely more important, there is the injunction, “Pray”.

“Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which seeth in secret, and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” The picture of yourself cannot he developed in the light; the dark-room is essential to the bringing out of its every feature; yea, to the realization of the last line of the face. No man ever sees himself as he ought to see himself; no man ever has a perfect picture of himself before his eyes until he goes into the dark-room to get it; into the room, the door of which is “shut” to the great wide world; into the room every window of which is closed; into the room where every curtain is drawn. Jesus knew it, and hence advised, “Enter that room.”

It is in the place of secret prayer that the soul is uncovered and man sees his spiritual infirmities, and realizes the white plague that may have attacked the immortal part; or looks upon the cancer that may be eating out the spiritual life, and decides that he will perish apart from the great Physician. In Secret Prayer you see the face of God.

Only those who know the quiet hour can become acquainted with the Father. Edward Everett Hale preached a theology so liberal that we seldom quote from him; yet, Edward Everett Hale spoke a great truth when he said: “Form the habit of giving up a fixed hour every day to see what God has to say to you. I have known a man who told me he had such a place of rendezvous in the attic of his store. He went upstairs every morning. He dropped his business; he came to his oratory. He let the downstair cares drop off. He forgot the price of sugar and flour and candles, and the rest. He left the morning mail unanswered so that he could ask God what he wanted him to do and be that day. He asked and waited five minutes to see what answer came before he went downstairs. Sometimes he had an answer. Sometimes he thought he had an answer. Sometimes | he thought he did not.” But Edward Everett Hale said: “I think he went down with God’s reply to his question whether he knew it or not; for those five minutes he was better able to carry out the larger laws of life than he ever would have been had he not been face to face with God.” This brings me to the last suggestion:

Secret Prayer is the Source of Strength.

Perhaps the most remarkable preacher in America yesterday was J. H. Jowett. Jowett once said: “Gentlemen, we are not always doing the most business when we seem to be most busy. We may think we are truly busy when we are really only restless, and a little studied retirement would greatly enrich our returns. We are great only as we are God-possessed; and scrupulous appointments in the upper room with the Master will prepare us for the toil and hardships of the most strenuous campaign.” There is a hymn entitled: “My Lord and I” with which the most of you are acquainted; and there is another that must have been suggested by it, which begins after the same manner, but reaches other and quite as important conclusions:

“In the secret of His presence, I am kept from strife of tongues His pavilion is around me, And within are ceaseless songs;

Stormy winds, His words fulfilling, Beat without, but cannot harm, For the Master’s voice is stilling Storm and tempest to a calm.

“In the secret of His presence, All the darkness disappears, For a sun that knows no setting, Throws a rainbow on my tears; So the day grows ever brighter, Broad’ning to the perfect noon, So the way grows ever brighter, Heaven is coming near and soon.

“In the secret of His presence, Never more can foes alarm; In the shadow of the Highest, I can meet them with a song; For the strong pavilion hides me, Turns their fiery darts aside, And I know whate’er betides me, I shall live because He died.

“In the secret of His presence, In the sweet, unbroken rest, Pleasures, joys, in glorious fulness, Making earth like Eden blest; So my peace grows deep and deeper, Wid’ning as it nears the sea, For my Saviour is my keeper, Keeping mine and keeping me.”