An Old Man

 •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 7
A story is told of a Christian who taught an old man, a neighbor of his, to read. He proved a good scholar. After he had learned to read pretty well, the Christian, not having called for some time, went to see him and found only his wife at home.
“How is John?” he asked.
“He is well, sir,” she said.
“How does he get on with his reading now?”
“Nicely, sir.”
“I suppose he can read his Bible quite comfortably now?”
“Bible, sir! Bless you, he was out of the Bible and into the newspaper some time ago.”
There are many other persons who, like the old man, have long been out of the Bible into the newspaper. They have forsaken the fountain of living waters, and hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water, and gone after muddy pools and stagnant morasses.
What spiritual dwarfs many Christians are—many, be it said to their shame, have never read the Bible through once. They do not feed, nor “grow on the sincere milk of the Word”, nor do they “give attendance to reading”, as the Scriptures instruct them to do.
There never was a day when the Christian needed to be so on his guard as to the reading question as at present. Libraries, reading rooms, reading circles, magazine clubs, and circulating libraries all vie in bidding for his leisure hour. Then the endless multiplication of papers, periodicals, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, publications all present, ever present temptations to neglect the Word of God for the transient and oftentimes worthless reading of the day.
Do not be surprised, dear Christian, if you find the Bible a dry book, when, you devote an hour to secular reading for every five minutes you give to the Word of God.
It is the view of the writer that in nine cases out of ten, the daily newspaper, if allowed in the home, is a source of real spiritual weakness to every member of the household. If we could only realize that “keeping up with the times” is a poor thing compared to “keeping ourselves unspotted from the world,” we would not be so ready to make a bad bargain. No! When the Word says, “Give attention to reading” (1 Tim. 4:1313Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. (1 Timothy 4:13)), it does not have before it the newspapers or the magazines.