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T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
It is so men reason about the Bible. They say, “ Can the Bible be inspired when so many persons pay no attention to it? Is it the right Bible? How can it be? When it is read the people do not-answer it with a shout of acquies cence and gladness. How, then, can it be inspired? The Book itself must be the wrong book. We have not got hold of the right staff.” When does the reader say, “ The blame is mine; I am not in sympathy with the Bible; I am not subject to the same inspiration which indited the holy word; I am self- inspired; I am not inspired from above; I only read the letter; I do not breathe the sacred spirit” ? Do you know that it is not every man who can.read the Bible at all times? There are some portions of the Bible which we can only read occasionally. There are whole books in the Bible which do not give up their secret and mystery to us in every mental mood and every social con dition. The self-idolatrous man, the Pharisee— cleansed well outside, and well-seeming altogether to the public eye, content with himself, counting the beads of his own virtue night and day, finding his only luxury in self-survey and contemplation— cannot read the fifty-first Psalm. He could pronounce the letters; but a very inferior creature could be taught to do that. Only the man whose heart has been broken on account of sin, who has seen its sinful ness, felt its plague, known it in all its abominableness, and tested his own helplessness in the matter, can read with right emphasis the penitential Psalm. He may punctuate it with sobs, he may interrupt his reading with tears and chokings: but it will be fine read ing. There will be an unction in the broken rhetoric which cannot be ac quired in the schools. The sob of fee bleness will be mightier in heaven than the thunder of conscious power. Only he who knows what Penitence is can read the words of penitence.
no moral hold of the symbol of proph etic presence and power. Gehazi had already stolen from Naaman, and al ready there had gone out from the court of heaven the decree which blanched him into a leper as white as snow. A man may preach eloquently, learn edly, effectively He may go very near to being a good preacher in the rigid sense of that term, but the sinful man cannot preach well in God’s sense and definition of the term. What can the bad man preach ? Can he preach salva tion by the blood of Christ?— he who knows not what it is to shed one drop of blood for any human creature, to suffer one pain of mind or body that some fellow-creature may be mitigated in the hour of agony supreme. What can he preach? Can he preach the great doc trine of sacrifice who,has never lived it? Can he call to pureness who knows not where the angel lives? Can he speak nobly who never felt nobly? We con tend, -in view of the only possible an swers to these inquiries, that no hypo-, crite can preach well, can use the staff with higher spiritual efficacy, or can bring back tidings that will fill the heart of Christ with sweet contentment. Gehazi cannot represent Elisha; the bad man cannot represent the Son of God; the man who is self-seeking, is idolatrous, and cannot represent a cross every atom of which is a symbol and a type of self-renunciation. We have now to face a very subtle temptation— namely, the temptation to •inquire, seeing that we have not suc ceeded in our ministry, whether the staff was good. When does Gehazi pierce himself and say, “ The blame is in me” ? What a temptation there is for him to look at the staff and say, “ I may have got hold of the wrong symbol! This -is really not Elisha’s own staff. Had I possessed myself of the right staff certainly the child would have been awakened when I laid it upon his face.”
(See Page 1077)
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