| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 2 |
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In the daily life of each one there arise peculiar questions and experiences on which we want light or in which we need counsel and guidance. These should be taken at once to the divine word. Thus we bring the book of life into our daily history. We make it our counselor, our lamp, our guide. This leads to another method of reading and study which is very profitable and which yields great help.
The habit of having a verse for the day has also been adopted by many and has been a source of great comfort. Either out of the morning’s chapter or selected in some other way, let one verse be taken, fixed in the mind, and carried all through the busy day in thought and meditation. It will often prove a fountain of water, a bright lamp or a rod and staff before the day comes to a close. It is impossible to estimate the influence of a simple passage thus held all day in the thoughts. It keeps us from sin. It is a living impulse to duty. It is an angel of comfort in sorrow. Then its influence, as it pours its soft, pure light all through the life hour after hour, is full of inspiration, and purifies, cleanses and sanctifies.
So much for methods. Still more important is the spirit in which we read. We must come to it as to the oracles of God, infallible and authoritative. We must hear the voice of God in its words. Then we must come in the spirit of docility, ready to be taught. Some read it, not to learn what they ought to believe, but to find in it what they themselves do believe already, to have their opinions confirmed or their conduct justified. Only those who come as little children, with teachable spirits, to hear what God will say, and ready to accept it however it may clash with their own opinions and preferences, can find the Bible an open book disclosing to them it’s most precious things.
It must also be read thoughtfully, slowly and patiently. Many of its richest gems lie deep and must be digged for. It is not so much a flower garden as a mine. There is a great deal of hurried, superficial reading which skims over the surface, which pauses to weigh no word, take in no thought, apply no lesson, and which leaves no impression, not even a memory, behind. Such readers must use a marker, or they will read the same chapter over and over without knowing it.
Then it is necessary to read the Bible not alone to know the will of God, but that we may do it. If it is not the guide of our life, it is nothing to us. Its truths are to be applied. If we read the beatitudes, we are to compare ourselves with their divine requirements and seek to be conformed to them. If we come upon a word that rebukes any habit or spirit of ours, we are straightway to make the needed amendment. We are to accept its promises, believe them, and act as believing them. We are to allow its comforts to enter our hearts and support us in sorrow. There is nothing written in the Bible merely for ornament or beauty. Every word is practical. There is no truth in it that has not some bearing upon actual living. When we come to it eager to know how to live and ready to obey its precepts, we shall find it opening to us its utmost meaning.
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