PART III
THE PLAN AT WORK
[Sidenote: Begin at the Beginning]
There are certain simple rules to be observed in the synthetic study of the Bible if we want to master it, and the first is to begin to study it where God began to write it, i.e. at the book of Genesis. The newer criticism would dispute this statement about the primary authorship of Genesis, but the best answer to the objection is to try the plan. As Dr. Smith says in his The Integrity of Scripture: "Inherent in revelation there is a self-witness. The latest portion points to the beginning, and the beginning, with all that may be limited and provisional, contains the germ of the end. God's discovery of Himself is not an episode, but rooted in a vast breadth of the world's life, intertwined with human history, and growing from less to more, as in this divine education and discipline man became capable of receiving the full self-unveiling of God."
Dr. Ashmore, for fifty years an honoured missionary of the American Baptist Missionary Union at Shanghai, relates the following, which furnishes a practical illustration of this thought. At one time he and his brother missionaries started a Bible school for their young converts, and began to teach them the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now the Chinese are remarkable for an inquiring disposition, and questions began to descend upon the teachers to such a degree that they were compelled to forego their purpose to teach Hebrews and go back to Leviticus as explanatory of or introductory to it. But the teaching of Leviticus produced the same result, and they went back to Exodus. And from Exodus they were driven to Genesis, when the questions materially abated. The Bible is wondrously self-interpretive if we will give it an opportunity, and that opportunity is afforded if in its perusal we will wisely and submissively follow the channel marked out by its divine Author.
[Sidenote: Read the Book]
The second rule is to read the book. It is not asked that it be studied in the ordinary sense, or memorised, or even sought to be understood at first; but simply read. The purpose is to make the task as easy, as natural, and as pleasant as possible. It matters not, for the time being, how rapidly you read it, if you but read it. But is it not strange that this is one of the last things many really earnest Christians and seekers after Bible truth are willing to do? They will read books about the Bible almost without limit, but to read the books of the Bible itself is another matter. But how could one master any corresponding subject by such a method? And is it not dishonouring to God for any reason to treat His authorship thus? We are living in a time when, if only for good form, we feel an obligation to be acquainted with the best authors. But shall we say that Dante, or Shakespeare, or any other of the masters is able to interest us in what he wrote, while He who created him is unable to do so? Are we prepared to confess that God cannot write a book as capable of holding our attention as that of one of His creatures? What an indictment we are writing down against ourselves in saying that, and how it convinces us of sin!
I know a lady who once travelled a long distance on a railroad with her trunk unlocked, and when she met her husband at the terminus and reported the circumstance there was naturally some emotion in her speech. She had been unable to find the key anywhere, she said, and only discovered its loss at too late a moment to have another fitted before she started upon her journey. And the trunk with all its treasures had come that whole distance with only a strap around it. "Why," exclaimed her husband, "do you not recall that when we come home from a journey I always fasten the key of the trunk to one of its handles? There's your key," pointing to the end of the trunk. The incident is recalled by the so frequent inquiry one hears for a "key" to the Bible. Its Author has provided one, and to the average person, at least in this enlightened country, it is always at hand. Read the book.
[Sidenote: Read It Continuously]
The third rule is, read the book continuously. I think it is in his lecture on "The Lost Arts" that Wendell Phillips tells the story of the weaver who turned out so much more material from his loom than any other workman in the mill. How was it done? In vain was the secret sought, until one day a bribe from one of his employers elicited the information, "Chalk the bobbins." Each morning he had carried a piece of chalk with him to his loom, and when unobserved, applied it to that small but important part of the machinery. The result was astonishing. The application of the chalk to every bobbin of every loom of every workman made his employers rich. Who cannot supplement this story with some other where a principle just as simple wrought results as great? Try it in the case of the continuous reading of a given book of the Bible, and see what it will do.