By Dr. Dinsdale T. Young.
I AM prepared to stand by the Bible through thick and thin under all conditions, whether you call me old-fashioned or obscurantist or a back number. For from my earliest childhood I have been living in this Book. John Bunyan in Grace Abounding says, “I was never out of my Bible.” Now, by the blessing of God, I can at any rate faintly reecho that testimony. I have lived in my Bible and I live in it more than ever. I want to say to the younger folk that the more I read it, the more I see how invincible are the arguments for its Divine inspiration, and for its soul-saving and soul-enriching power. John Bunyan in the same Grace Abounding, tells us a little about his Bible-reading experiences. He says “I began to read my Bible with new eyes.” That is what we want people to do today. The old Bible — but new eyes to read it with.
I think it is no slight argument for the divinity of the Scriptures that the more we read it the fresher it becomes.
I think this argument might be pursued at great length. How do you account for it? I do not think you could say that of any other book. We all have our favorite books — I have been a book-man from my early years — and you cannot say of the best of them that they get fresher the more they are read, but that is true of the Bible. I have been living in it, and it is my testimony that the lamp gets brighter every time I have basked in its rosy light. Is that not an argument for the divinity of the Bible?
There are people who say to us you must read the Bible and approach the Bible as you would any other book. To my mind this is a most unphilosophical and, I go further, a ridiculous position to take up. You cannot come to the Bible as to any other book. There is no book like it, and that fact is prohibitive of going to it as you would any other book. We cannot forget its history, what it did for our fathers and our mothers and our ancestors, and what it has done for generations through the centuries.
Henry Rogers said that the Bible is such a Book that man could not have written it if he would, and would not have written it if he could. I am certain that this is absolutely true.
We want new eyes. The Bible has been very much criticized of late years, but we are forgetting the fact that the Bible is itself a critic. Suppose I take you into the Hebrews. You know that splendid tribute, the Holy Ghost’s tribute to the Book. “The Word of God is quick.” What does that mean? Alive, and powerful! What else does it say? “It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” So if there are critics of the Bible, remember the Bible is a critic. What we have got to do is not so much to criticize the Bible as to let it criticize us. I wish many people would remember that. It is a superb argument for the inspiration of the Bible that it searches the soul. What other book can do that? We read great sermons, books of divinity, and they do search us out, but not as this Book does. The reason why some people are so shy of the Book is that it exposes them to themselves!
Again, how much we owe the Bible for the knowledge that it alone gives us! What would we have known of the origin of things but for the Bible? We are indebted to the Bible for the fact that all things were created by God. What information it gives us about the future! What should we have known about eternity but for the Bible? Let us give the old Book its due! It has poured out a light that never was on land or sea. What should we have known about the “House not made with hands” but for this Book?
I am going on to another argument that I am quite sure is stronger still. In my reading of Dr. Vaughan the other day I was delighted to read what that saintly scholar says about the Bible: “It is an imperishable Book.”
That is a fine phrase, and it represents a finer fact. No other book is imperishable. You may say that some of the ancient classics have endured long; you may say some of our early English literature has endured and is likely to endure, but in the strict sense there is no other book that is imperishable. They predicted centuries ago that this Book would come to an end. Oh, yes, I could mention names, but they are best forgotten. There were people who said, “We will wipe it out,” yet it is alive, and it lives on, and it gets younger, more virile and fresher.
One other argument — and I think this is the strongest — I have found salvation in this Book! Where should I have found the way to salvation if I had not had this Book? How should I have known that there is a salvation that is worthy of all acceptation? I am indebted to the Bible for it. When I hear people running the Bible down, I get a little impatient, and sometimes a little angry, and I think I do well to get angry. And also when I hear preachers in the pulpit who pick holes here and there, and you might say everywhere. At any rate I would not be one of their hearers!
The Bible tells me that I am a sinner; it is my critic. It tells me I have a Saviour, and that the Saviour is God manifested in the flesh. It is such a marvelous idea that I feel it must be true. George Macdonald once said: “They say these things are too good to be true; they are so good they must be true.” This is an unanswerable position.
God came down into this world and shed His blood that I might have pardon, and holiness and heaven. Do you wonder we sing, “Tell me the old, old story”? Do you wonder that we love the Book that tells us the story? Do you wonder that we love to plead with people to take the Book to the head, and to the heart, and to the home, and to the life? And if any of us have not accepted the Saviour Whom the Book was primarily written to reveal, let us accept Him now, let us keep on accepting Him, let us live and die saying, “My Lord and my God.”
(With acknowledgments to Living Links.)