The power that the Scriptures are found to have is worthy of the deepest consideration. Itis the power to speak as the word which proceeds out of the mouth of God.
The Power of Scripture; Standard of Truth.
The facts, then, that by tile Scriptures the possession of eternal life can, and ought to be known, and that a new birth is necessary, make a man that apprehends them real in these matters, concerning which otherwise he would be unreal and unconcerned. Neither would this power to influence the reader be possible unless the Scriptures were what they are. The power is in the statements tin that made, and the power is to make men genuine in the very things they profess to believe but about which in reality there is a well-loved ambiguity and unreality.
Men make professions and find satisfaction in them. The Scriptures insist upon actual possession, or nothing.
Very early in our inquiry' we find the power of the statements in. the Scriptures, as well as their claims, wholly unparalleled, and could well rest the proof of their claim to be the Words of God on the fact that their plainest statements are found incapable of being received us they stand without having to do with Him—and that in truth and reality—while human teaching on these some matters is found wholly lacking in this power.
The Authority of God Claimed and Maintained by the Statement of Scripture
As long as man is in reality indifferent to God's honour and his own position before Him, the greatest difficulties present themselves in understanding the message the Scriptures contain.
They with power main taut God's authority. Other literature of any sort whatever yields its interpretation to the study of the mind, apart altogether from the character of the reader's personal responsibility, or relationship with the author. 'Scripture on the contrary will not yield its truth or its wealth till the man first him Self owns what lie does know of the claims of god and of the character of his own personal position before Him.
The Scriptures have nothing to communicate till the soul desires to hear from God. But as soon as there is the desire to: learn from them how God meets man in the needs that belong to the position he in fact occupies before Him, their Message is the simplest and the plainest. Difficulties that those who refuse to, own the truth they do know, state they find in understanding the Scriptures, is itself the strongest proof possible of the divine power of the Scriptures to maintain God's honor.
Man's Position Be From God
The position man is in as a fact before God, is that of a sinner. This he knows and seldom attempts to deny, though all that is understood in such an admission is sought to be forgotten by an unreal, conventional profession of the truth, 'or by levity in the statement of it.. Still aka fact it remains. The man would not be believed who declared he had never laid the consciousness of having sinned and of, having to answer to God for what he had done. A Man might affirm this but his own conscience and the
conscience of others would declare the untruth of the Statement.
This truth received not long since a remarkable testimony froth a source that certainly none would consider a biassed one.
In the Times, weekly edition of May 20th, 1899, p. 322, a letter appeared from Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) in reference to the book he purposed having posthumously published, in which was the following passage:
“A man cannot tell the whole truth about himself even if convinced that what he wrote would never be seen by others. I have personally satisfied myself of that and have got others, to test it also. 'You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it. You are too much ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting. ' For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others." This may be received as a fair, unbiassed testimony to what every man honestly knows himself to be underneath the surface: Such, then, is the condition of man under the surface of the world's pleasure, occupation and progress. He is in fact disgusting to himself and guilty before God. But it might be asked, if man finds his private soul destitute and disgusting, judged by himself as he is, what would his portion be in knowing God to be God? What might not God Himself; in all that He is, be to that soul. if only the man would " come to himself" in his want, and act upon the realization of it, thus finding what is for him in the Father's house?