OUR LORD'S BIBLE
The life of Jesus, regarded from a mere human point of view, presents an astonishing problem. An obscure man in an obscure province has revolutionized the world. Every letter and public document of the most cultured nations dates from his birth, as a new era. How was this man educated? We find he had no access to the Greek and Roman literature. Jesus was emphatically a man of one book. That book was the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament. The Old Testament was his Bible, and this single consideration must invest it with undying interest for us.
We read the Bible which our parents read. We see, perhaps, pencil-marks here and there, which show what they loved and what helped and comforted them in the days of their life-struggle, and the Bible is dearer to us on that account. Then, going backward along the bright pathway of the sainted and blessed who lived in former ages, the Bible becomes diviner to us for their sake. The Bible of the Martyrs, the Bible of the Waldenses, the Bible of Luther and Calvin, of our Pilgrim Fathers, has a double value.
I have in my possession a very ancient black-letter edition of the Bible printed in 1522, more than three hundred years ago. In this edition many of the Psalms have been read and re-read, till the paper is almost worn away. Some human heart, some suffering soul, has taken deep comfort here. If to have been the favorite, intimate friend of the greatest number of hearts be an ambition worthy of a poet, David has gained a loftier place than any poet who ever wrote. He has lived next to the heart of men, and women, and children, of all ages, in all climes, in all times and seasons, all over the earth. They have rejoiced and wept, prayed and struggled, lived and died, with David's words in their mouths. His heart has become the universal Christian heart, and will ever be, till earth's sorrows, and earth itself, are a vanished dream.
It is too much the fashion of this day to speak slightingly of the Old Testament. Apart from its grandeur, its purity, its tenderness and majesty, the Old Testament has this peculiar interest to the Christian,—it was the Bible of the Lord Jesus Christ.
As a man, Jesus had a human life to live, a human experience to undergo. For thirty silent years he was known among men only as a carpenter in Nazareth, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament were his daily companions. When he emerges into public life, we find him thoroughly versed in the Scriptures. Allusions to them are constant, through all his discourses; he continually refers to them as writings that reflect his own image. "Search the Scriptures," he says, "for they are they that testify of me."
The Psalms of David were to Jesus all and more than they can be to any other son of man.
In certain of them he saw himself and his future life, his trials, conflicts, sufferings, resurrection, and final triumph foreshadowed. He quoted them to confound his enemies. When they sought to puzzle him with perplexing questions he met them with others equally difficult, drawn from the Scriptures. He asks them:—
"What think ye of the Messiah? whose son is he? They say unto him, the Son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?"
So, when they ask the question, "Which is the greatest commandment of all?" he answers by placing together two passages in the Old Testament, the one commanding supreme love to God and the other impartial love to man's neighbor. The greatest commandment of all nowhere stands in the Old Testament exactly as Jesus quotes it, the first part being found in Deuteronomy vi. 5, and the second in Leviticus xix. 18. This is a specimen of the exhaustive manner in which he studied and used the Scriptures.