may go. On the whole, therefore, I am of opinion that it is better to hold the Bible very much as we have always held it, to keep an open mind in relation to all competent and reverent criticism, to
eling to the Bible in all its proved con- solations and particular results, and to leave many difficulties and perplexities to be settled wheç, in heaven, we have more time and more light.
" O ut of His Treasure"
By G. Campbell Morgan, From ' The Life of Faith"
" Bu t the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things" (John xiv. 26). "When He, the Spirit of t (the) truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the t r u t h" (xvi. 13). Then the Book, of and by itself, is not sufficient to guide us into all the truth. Divinely complete and perfect for its purpose, it realizes its end only as the instrument of the Spirit of the truth. We are not left to a solitary grappling with the letter of Scripture, to make the best use of it we can by our own un- aided powers. Another Mind, in which dwells all the truth, without any dark- ness at all, is willing to become our teacher and guide. The central fact of the spiritual life is tjie illumined Scrip- ture, as millions of spiritual men can bear witness; and what is central must spread to the whole circumference, un- til every thought is brought into captiv- ity to the obedience of Christ. And so, as we read our Bible, our joy and hope are in remembering Him who in, and by, and through, and according to the Book opens up to us the realities of communion with the Father and the Son. We have no faculty of intuitive knowledge of the things of the heart of God, nor can we pierce the veil of words which inform us of their exist- ence; all must be revealed. " No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son wul reveal Him. Come unto Me ." ' ' For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." Nor is it enough simply to be ac-
quainted with the great facts of the re- deeming grace of God—the Incarnation, the Ministry, the Death, the Resurrec- tion, the Ascension, the Enthronement, of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been hearing, for years now; the cry: "Back to Christ.'' But there are multitudes today who, if they got back to Christ, would only reject and crucify Him— essentially, if not in form. And an- other large class would as completely misinterpret Him as did His contempo- raries, and even His own disciples. To these latter, again and again, He piti- fully appealed, asking: "How is it that ye do not understand?" A Divine fact needs to be divinely in- terpreted, for there is in it a Divine purpose and a Divine thought. When, after the Last Supper, the Lord washed the disciples' feet, He answered Peter's protest by saying: "Wh at I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." Simple as the deed was, it. needed—and received—the Master's own interpretation. Then take the Book of Revelation, a chief purpose of which is to save the Church of Christ, to the very end, from misinterpreting the. tremendous reality of Christ's pres- ent authority over all things. Without this guidance, how certainly the Church would have fallen into false inferences from the fact that their Omnipotent Lord and Friend was seated at God's right hand. Had we had the interpret- ing of that fact, very many of the things shadowed forth in Revelation we should not have dreamt of; and a hundred things not found there would have been in our false programme. The glory of our New Testament is—not merely " t h e faet of Christ"—but the fact of Christ interpreted by the chosen instruments of the Spirit of the truth,
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker