Oftentimes young Christians say, “I cannot find the beautiful things in the Bible, nor can I acquire a taste or relish for it. I want to live it and to use it so as to receive help from it, but it does not open its riches to me. I appreciate the wealth and beauties which others find in it and point out to me, but when I look for them they do not discover themselves to me. After I have read a chapter and found nothing beautiful or helpful, another will read it and point out the sweetest bits of beauty and the rarest words and suggestions of comfort and helpfulness, not one of which I had seen. They seem to have hidden from me, like coy birds amid the branches, but when another came they flew out, and in their shining plumage sat on the boughs or perched on his shoulder and sang snatches of heavenly song. I read the book, but I confess that it yields me no honey, no food, no wine of life.”
It is quite possible that this experience is more common than we think or than many are honest enough to confess. There are few, if any, who find in the Bible all the beauty and blessing that lie in its pages. Not one of us gets from it the utmost possible of help, and no doubt most of us in our reading pass by many rare and precious things which we fail to see at all.
Yet it surely need not be a sealed book to any one. It does not aim to hide its good things away so that men cannot easily find them. It is not intended to be a book that great scholars only can understand. No doubt a knowledge of the languages in which the Bible was originally written explains many an obscure passage and resolves many a difficulty, yet it is not a book for the learned alone, but for the unlettered and the little children as well. In proof of this we have only to remember that oftentimes those who find the richest treasures and the sweetest joys in the Scriptures are not the greatest scholars and the grandest intellects, but God’s little ones, strangers to the world’s lore and ignorant of its wisdom.
Very much depends upon the spirit with which we come to the Bible. In the minds of many Protestants there is almost as much superstition regarding this sacred book as there is among Romanists regarding the crucifix or rosary. Soldiers entering a battle fling away their cards and put Bibles in their pockets. They feel that they are safer then. Many think if they read a certain portion every day, though they give no thought to the meaning, that they have done a holy service and are safe for the day. But the mere reading of so many chapters does no one any good. It would be as well to say Latin prayers and fumble over a string of beads for ten minutes. To receive blessing from the Bible it must be read thoughtfully with inquiry and meditation. It must be allowed to read itself into our heart and life.
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