Testing the Bible By Experience
B y W i l l i a m B l a s t s , P fa a D „5 D . D .
HE way to assure oneself of the reality of the Bible is to see, by putting it to the test, if it can do what it cairns to be able to do—to practice its precepts, and thus see if it will produce its promised fruits. The final test of the trustworthi ness of the Bible lies in the soul’s expe rience of its truth and teaching. If the Bible claims inspiration, and "cannot inspire; if it pretends to be a holy book, and cannot sanctify; if it assumes to be an infallible guide, and yet leads men into palpable error; if it.professes to pilot man’s frail bark of life to its desired haven, and yet lands that life upon the rocks of destruction; if it purports to produce purity, virtue, and chastity, and yet leaves its most prayerful students impious, impure, unchaste—then all its claims, pre tensions, assumptions, however great, ex ceeding, paramount, are proven false; it fails, and it ought to! But if, on the other hand, we find that the most prayerful adherents of the Bible are inspired, illumined, purified, and sanc tified; that they are delivered from sin’s tyranny and power, and filled with joy, peace, and gladness; if we find that, when its counsels have been rightly sought after, they have never failed; if we find that the calls and claimls made upon it for neces sary grace and wisdom in time of need, have always been seasonably answered; if we find that its promises, when truthfully and intelligently laid hold of, have been bona fide and fulfilled' to the very letter— then we have an experimental • evidence, and an incontrovertible proof of the truth of the Bible which cannot be overthrown. When a man has had this experience of
the truth of the Bible, you cannot under mine his faith in it as the very Word of God. He knows; he has seen; he has felt. You may steal his Bible, but you cannot steal his vision; you cannot rob him of the experience that has taken place in his soul. ■You cannot criticize his vision—that is beyond criticism; it has passed into the realm of experience. No »man can take love from the heart, devotion from the spirit, and trust from the soul. Thank God, there is a realm within which the unholy, destructive, blighting, blasting thing called criticism can never place its soiled, dirty feet! There is a sanctuary into which we can retire where the yoice of unbelief and rationalism is not heard. There is an experience of the heart so real, so true, so definite, that time or talk can neither gainsay nor deny. The Bible we want today is “Mother’s Bible;” the heart Bible; the Bible that stoops to the life to kiss it and bless it, and lift it up into daily inspiration of divine help, of assurance of immortality; the Bible that opens to the poorest woman, to the tiniest child, to the wisest man; the world’s wide-open book, printed, in infinite letters so that even the blind may see it ? “Mother’s Bible,” marked all over with pencil indications, representing help re ceived and prayers answered in strenuous times, with all the comforting promises marked, and for the finding of which you need no concordance: the fourteenth of John, the forty-thifd of Isaiah, the twenty- third Psalm—all of which are marked, and blotted, and stained with tears; “Mother’s Bible”—not the scholar’s Bible merely; no, for our mothers may not have been the
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