of this Word which God has given and we have received and reveied ? As so often happens ih similar cases, the Lord of light and love has anticipated our question, and has spoken the word which casts out fear. As our text declares, the "Word will not be harmed, but will stand. Sad and ter- rible things will happen as the result of all this Satanic onslaught, but the effect will not be that God's truth will suffer. Some years since, the great iron steamer upon which the writer was traveling hurled itself with all its force against an i island of rocks off the China coast. The contact was terrific. But when we examined, the next morning, the harm which had been done, we found that the steamer was the thing damaged, not the rock. Afterwards, the steamer was abandoned, as worthless, being self-destroyed, and it no longer ex- ists. But the great rock still stands where God placed it, without a mark upon it. So shall we find i t upon that glorious morn- ing when Christ shall come to vindicate His truth. His holy Word will be found even as it was from the beginning, un- moved and immovable, unmarked and un- marred. Let those of us who have fearful, and fainting hearts, therefore, be of good cheer. It is our business to witness to the truth. As we do so, God will preserve and vindicate His truth. Ofye iDeeper Secrets of tfye ìèible*
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illumining its meaning and opening up its depths. Pray, because prayer is the illumining secret even of the intellectual eye. "Op en thou mine eyes that I may behold won- drous things out of thy l a w ." And, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, " I f any man think himself to be a prophet, or spir- itual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the Command- ments of God''—that is to say 1 , Paul, con- scious of being inspired, appealed to the verifying faculty in the prophets of the Corinthian Church. And that is one thing that settled the canon, and shows how we got our Bible. Holy men, who knew that God inspired them, appealed to the pro- phetic spirit in the early Church, until their epistles and writings were acknowl- edged by the Church to be the very voice of God and were incorporated into the canon. It is a very remarkable piece of history which shows God's providence in superintending the compilation of the Word of God. And not only pray, but believe. In all other departments men believe what they know, but in the matter of Scripture men know what they believe. It is a very re- markable and unique fact, that you come to the highest certainty only as you first beli eve. In the scientific world men- pride themselves on their incredulity, but in the spiritual world we learn that faith' is not credulity, but it is the entering of the door into the secret chambers of God. The prophet Isaiah said to Ahaz, " I f ye will
OW shall we enter into the ""TiS deeper secrets of this book? m Let me give you six rules, easily remembered: search, meditate, compare, pray, be- lieve, obey. What would you think of some univer-
sity professor who proposed carrying you into the mysteries of philosophy, by these six rules? You would think that either he was a fool, or else that he thought you were. No book on philosophy or science, poetry or history, needs any such condi- tions, but without these and every one of them, no reader penetrates the secrets of this Book! Search it; because its wonders do not lie on the surface like shells on the beach," but like nuggets in veins and caverns, to be dug up with the pickaxe. Meditate, because there is a process, akin to rumination, by which, as you dwell upon the Scriptures, your being takes root in them and shoots up and bears fruit-—the " t r e e planted by the rivers of w a t e r ;" and without such meditation you skim over the surface a thousand times and lcnow nothing of what is beneath. Compare, because there is no error on earth that may not find apparent support in an isolated text, but no error in doc- trine or practice can stand the test of the whole Scripture. And so you need to compare Scripture with Seripture, so that one passage may correct your misinterpre- tation of another, or confirm your right impression of another, or let in new light
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