“The Scriptures” 79 and you will be rewarded, if you will look under every leaf, by searching the meaning of words. IV. A BIBLICAL MOTIVE FOR BIBLE STUDY This is two-fold: 1. That we may have right thinking about eternal life. “In them ye think ye have eternal life.” In Christ we have eternal life, but in the Scriptures is our thinking about it. We have the blessedness of the man whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” My arch of salvation rests upon two pillars. The first pillar is what Christ did for me, and that is always the same length. Time was when the second pillar was assurance of salvation through my feelings. If I felt well and happy, that pillar was of the right length, and seemed solid enough, but when de- pressed feelings came, the pillar seemed shorter and threat- ened the arch. One day, however, I read 1 John 5 :13: "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” And I saw that I was expected to trust the Scriptures and not my feelings for assurance. From that day the pillar of assurance has been all the time of the same length, for God’s Word never changes. Feelings may come and go, but “I keep on believing” the promise. I think I have eternal life, not because I feel so and so, but because God says so. Now the pillar of Christ’s merit and the pillar of His promise are of the same length, and the arch .of salvation is no longer threatened by changing feel- ings. 2. That we may learn of Jesus. “They are they which testify of Me.” Few things are more interesting and none more profitable than tracing the Messianic idea through the Bible. I t begins with the curse upon the serpent in Genesis, and closes with “the Lamb as it had been slain in the midst of the throne” in Revelation. In Christian character the image of Christ is marred by imperfections, but in the Scriptures the
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