December 23

The Bible my guide

“Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory” (Psa. 73:24).
“Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?” (Micah 2:7).

To candid, reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am the creature of a day, passing through life, as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God, just hovering over the great gulf, till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen! I drop into an unchangeable eternity. I want to know one thing, the way to Heaven: how to land safely on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end He came from Heaven. He hath written it down in a Book. At any price, give me the Book of God! I have it; here is knowledge enough for me.
—John Wesley.

It is so sweet to trust Thy Word alone:
I do not ask to see
The unveiling of Thy purpose, or the shining
Of future light on mysterious untwining;
Thy promise roll is all my own—
Thy Word is enough for me!
—Frances Ridley Havergal.

Let us read the Bible as we never read it before. We must go forth, we must live above the world, if we would wish to enjoy the pure humanity which it fetters. And how? We cannot go without a guide, that were self-conceited; but what guide shall we take? Oh, I am sick of doctors and divines! Books! There is no end of them: mud, fire, acids, alkalies, every foreign ingredient contaminating pure truth. Shall we listen to the voice of God’s Spirit alone? Yes! but where? Has He not spoken to those very bookmakers? And hath not every man his own gift? Each hero the appointed witness of some peculiar truth? Then, must we plunge again into that vast, muddy, blind, contradictory book-ocean? No! Is there not one immutable book? One pure written wisdom? The Bible, speaking of God’s truth in words meant for me. There may be other meanings in that Book besides the plain one. But this I will believe, that whatever mysticism the mystic may find there, the simple human being, the lover of his wife, the father of children, the lover of God’s earth, glorying in matter and humanity, not for that which they are, but that which they ought to be and will be, will find in the Bible the whole mystery solved—an answer to every riddle, a guide in every difficulty.
—Charles Kingsley.

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