Bible

“ This is all that doubt and investigation have done to the Bible. They have cleared away the things that no sane and earnest and devout mind wishes to keep; and they have restored to us in all their dignity and beauty and sweetness and power the real human Bible, the Bible which poured out of the heart of the olden time, and which is in all its truth and sweetness, so far as they go, a revelation of the divinest things in human thought and human dream. ”

“ I charge every reader of this message to ask himself frequently what the Bible is to him. Is it a Bible in which you have found nothing more than good moral precepts and sound advice? Or is it a Bible in which you have found Christ? Is it a Bible in which Christ is all? If not, I tell you plainly, you have hitherto used your Bible to very little purpose. You are like a man who studies the solar system, and leaves out in his studies the sun, which is the center of all. It is no wonder if you find your Bible a dull book! ”

“ And what is the Bible, the most sacred and impressive of all books—the educator of youth, the guide of manhood, and the consoler of age—but a series of biographies of great heroes and patriarchs, prophets, kings, and judges, culminating in the greatest biography of all, the Life embodied in the New Testament? How much have the great examples there set forth done for mankind! How many have drawn from them their truest strength, their highest wisdom, their best nurture and admonition! ”

“ The Bible must be snatched out of this burning fire of the depraved and savage passions of degraded men, and we must cry out amid the noise and confusion of modern Babel that the Bible is the book Divine, full of wisdom, justice and love. ”

“ Let us recognise the important difference between the Bible subjectively and objectively—that is, between what the Bible really is and what men think it is. Let us be free enough, bold enough, and wise enough, to claim the Bible itself. ”

“ If I am asked why I receive Scripture as the Word of God, and as the only perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the fathers of the Protestant Church, ‘Because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God, because in the Bible alone I find God drawing near to man in Christ Jesus, and declaring to us in Him His will for our salvation. ”

“ The amount of our religious knowledge does not depend on our proximity to the days of primitive Christianity. The Bible is the sun of the spiritual firmament; and this divine illuminator, like the glorious orb of day, pours forth its light with equal brilliancy from generation to generation. ”

“ I. We have now before us the Holy Bible, or Book, for so Bible signifies. We call it the Book, by way of eminency; for it is incomparably the best book that ever was written, the Book of books, shining like the sun, in the firmament of learning; other valuable and useful books, like the moon and stars, borrowing their light from it. We call it the Holy Book; because it was written by holy men, and indited by the Holy Ghost; it is perfectly pure from all falsehood and corrupt intention; and the manifest tendency of it is to promote holiness among men. ”

“ We notice that the Bible, when speaking of God, never gives an opinion, never speculates. It always, in simple and majestic measure declares, as in the opening sentence of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” ”

“ Speaking practically, and looking at the very large part of human life engaged by the Bible, at the comparatively small part unengaged by it, we are quite willing, like the churches, to call the Bible and its religion all-important. ”

“ The Bible gives us the story of the birth, the words, the works, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of Him whose coming was foretold by prophecy, whose arrival was announced by angel voices, singing Peace and Good-will—the story of Him who gave to the world a code of morality superior to anything that the world had known before or has known since.
Let the atheists and the materialists produce a better Bible than ours, if they can. Let them collect the best of their school to be found among the graduates of universities—as many as they please and from every land. ”

“ And that so the whole Bible, from beginning to end, is one glorious, methodic, and organic tree of life, every part growing out of the others and depending on the others, from the root—that foundation, other than which no man can lay, which is Christ, revealing Himself, though not by name, in that wonderful first chapter of Genesis,—up to the fruit, which is the kingdom of Christ, and Gospel of Christ, and the salvation in which we here now stand. ”

“ The Bible, as a revelation from God, was not designed to give us all the information we might desire, nor to solve all the questions about which the human soul is perplexed, but to impart enough to be a safe guide to the haven of eternal rest. ”

“ The fuller knowledge of our age, in evanishing the unreal Bible restores the real Bible. It is the record of the visioning and embodiment of the Human Ideal, the Divine Image—The Christ. It is the Providentially prepared Hand Book of religion in whose rich and varied phases of ethical and spiritual thought all men may find the nourishment they need. ”

“ By the substance of the Bible we mean the statements which, in various ways and diverse manners, it presents to our thoughts; the precepts and the promises, the histories and the prophecies, the doctrines and the prayers, the truths about God and about man, through which our minds are instructed, our consciences enlightened, and our hearts established by grace. By the form of the Bible, we mean the signs or sounds by which the various statements contained in the Bible are presented to us, and which are, as it were, the channel through which the truths it teaches are conveyed to our minds. ”

“ Since the day of his birth, the firm, unwavering, fanatical belief that the Bible was God's direct, unchangeable revelation to man, made him, as it had made his father, impregnable to the assaults of reason. ”

“ In one word, you have found a new Bible, and I hope and believe you have read it with new delight. I fear not that you can ever be satisfied with the views of our opponents; their manner of explaining Scripture is too carnal to satisfy the devoted child of God.
“‘Then let me advise to a continual searching for truth, both for faith and practice; and wherever we have wandered from the word of God, let us come back to the primitive simplicity of the gospel once delivered to the saints. ”

“ The Bible is an account of God's efforts to reveal Himself to mankind. It is a record of His dealings with man and His revealed will concerning him. The Bible is for instruction and guidance in all the ways of life. From all the facts that the Apostle Paul gathered he said, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." ”

“ No book has spread more discord than the Bible. Every sect in the world quotes the Bible as the source and justification of its existence. Men, equally learned, devout, prayerful, deduce the most opposite conclusions from the very same words. Two men, we will say, honestly and earnestly seek to know what the Bible teaches about Baptismal Regeneration, or the Blessed Sacrament. ”

“ The value of the Bible, the greatness of the Bible, are in this Life that it discloses to us. "It is upon Jesus," says a modern rationalist, "that the whole Bible turns. In this lies the value, not only of the New Testament, a great part of which refers to him directly, but of the Old Testament as well." ”

“ Guion.—"And yet, notwithstanding all these attacks on the Bible, it still lives and commands attention. In the estimation of wise and good men, it takes precedence of all other books: they not only admire, but revere and love it. I have in my parish a good old man who has a large library, and has been a great reader for upwards of twenty years, but now he very rarely reads any book except his Bible. On referring, one day, to his devoted attachment to the Bible, he said—'I feel, when reading it, in the presence of God, and what I read comes with authority and power. ”

“ The forms, whether of religious thought, of public worship, or of church order and organization, in the Bible, are not the same; those of the later ages have grown out of those of the former ages, and are superior to them. In brief, the Bible is the history of the development of the life of God in the life of a peculiar people; and it traces the development of that life from lower to higher, and from simpler to more complex forms. ”

“ Ye have taken from us a Bible which we reverenced to idolatry but in many parts did not understand, and have given to us a Bible which, with undiminished claims to reverence, awakens in our minds a real, rational interest to which hitherto we have been comparative strangers. ”

“ The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. ”

“ If it makes a difference what we believe, then we can see why the Bible has been given – to guide us into the Truth; and the Bible itself says that our salvation depends upon our belief of the gospel as revealed in it’s pages. ”

“ Once more I turn to the young men to say, if you would make life safe take the Bible as the man of your counsel and the guide of your life; love God and keep His commandments. In this age of glittering literature, many consider the Bible dull reading. ”

“ As the primary function of Christ is redemptive, so the inspiration of the Bible is directed to make men “wise unto salvation.” (8) It is the presence and influence in the souls of men of the same Spirit of God as inspired the Scriptures which makes the Bible effective as a means of grace; and only those who yield themselves to the Spirit of God have the witness in themselves that the Bible conveys to them the truth and the grace of God. ”

“ For every page and every word of the Bible, both the New and the Old Testament, is a perfect rule for this earthly life; and every work of the holy catholic fathers teaches us how we may direct our steps to God. ”

“ We shall take up the Bible just as we would take up any other written work, requiring, for the time being, simply so much faith—no more, but also no less than we would exact in the fair examination of any other work, whether of fact or of fiction. ”

“ God designed the Bible to be a lesson-book to all mankind, in childhood, youth, and manhood, and to be studied through all time. He gave His word to men as a revelation of Himself. Every new truth discerned is a fresh disclosure of the character of its Author. The study of the Scriptures is the means divinely ordained to bring men into closer connection with their Creator, and to give them a clearer knowledge of His will. ”

“ This is the Gospel which has been taught to us to-day, in a plain and simple manner, and in that simplicity that it was taught by Jesus Christ and his Apostles, and by many others who were ordained by them. The people profess to believe the Bible; the whole Christian world profess to believe that book—to believe that it is the Bible, but do they believe what is in that Bible? ”

“ A formal appeal to the Bible as the one ground of faith, coupled with an assertion of the right of every instructed man to examine the Bible for himself, threatened the very groundwork of the older dogmatism with ruin. ”

“ Vast numbers of wise and good men, through many generations and in different countries, have agreed in receiving the Bible as a revelation from God. Many of them have been noted for seriousness, erudition, penetration, and impartiality in judging of men and things. ”

“ By looking into this perfect law of God and continuing in its teaching one will imbibe its spirit, its life, its power, until his own life will reveal the truly high and ennobling principles of the precious volume from heaven. The true sentiment of the Bible will be so interwoven into his very existence that his decorum will be so influenced by the power of divine truth that all who read his life will but read God's Holy Book. ”

“ The Bible, as a whole and when rightly interpreted, is absolute authority, because it is the word of Christ; and Christ holds each of us, as individuals, to the duty and the privilege of interpreting the Bible for himself. ”

“ When we read the Bible with its story of human lives and their great, wonderful mysteries, we find among them, the greatest of all--the marvellous one of the Christ birth and death, and as we read we are amazed at the many confusing ideas of Jesus and His teachings. ”

“ The many-sidedness of the Bible, its appeal to man's whole nature, is one of the most marked proofs of its superhuman origin. While it addresses itself continually to man's moral nature, to his sense of right and wrong, while it appeals to his intellect and heart, it also speaks to his fears and hopes. ”

“ We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and religious opinions should be tried. ”

“ In a plain, weighty, nervous style, rising at times to rugged eloquence, he defends the Bible as the sole source of religious knowledge, and the Apostles' Creed as containing all that is necessary to salvation. ”