Sacred book

“ Of these highly developed religions again, some had no sacred book or books and they have disappeared; but those which were based on sacred books are living to the present day. As such, all the great religions of the world today are founded on sacred books. ”

“ The conclusion is that when we seek the Bible with the motive of holy practice we never meet with disappointment. The religious purpose saves the Book for us and saves us by the Book. This purpose will likewise bring us face to face with the Hero of the Divine Word. Other sacred literatures may offer us high moral precepts, and they may occasionally give us glimpses of spiritual ideals. But one Book alone gives us Christ. One Book alone reveals the Redeemer. The climax of practice to which the Scriptures call us is the following of Christ. ”

“ No one should be without a book about Our Lord, His sacred Heart, His blessed Mother, or the saints. No one should be without a book on the Mass. Besides one's prayer-book, one should have manuals of meditation and of instruction on Christian virtues. More extended devotional treatises will keep alive the piety of those for whom they are suitable. ”

“ If, in speculating upon the abstract wants of man in such a state of exclusion, one were reduced to a single book, the Sacred Volume—whether considered for the striking diversity of its story, the morality of its doctrine, or the important truths of its gospel—would have proved by far the greatest treasure. ”

“ There is good reason to think that, if God saw it needful, and for the edification of the church, that such books should be written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, by his providence he would have taken care to preserve them from destruction. We do know that this treasure of divine truth has been, in all ages, and in the worst times, the special care of God, or not one of the sacred books would now be in existence. ”

“ The writers of all sacred books—the inspired prophets—had no reason for disagreeing with the common people about the origin of things, the creation of the world, the rising and setting of the sun, and the uses of the stars, and consequently the sacred books of all ages have indorsed the belief general at the time. You will find in our sacred books the astronomy, the geology, the philosophy and the morality of the ancient barbarians. The religionist takes these general ideas as his foundation, and upon them builds the supernatural structure. ”

“ In the book of nature we have a faithful though imperfect image of God’s Wisdom, but in the Inspired Books the defects are remedied, and a more perfect representation is set before us, destined to kindle in our minds a manifold knowledge of the supernatural world. This purpose is attained by that sense and interpretation of Holy Writ, whereby we gather from the Sacred Text pious considerations and suggestions, not necessarily intended by the Holy Ghost in the precise form which they take in the reader’s mind, and yet not wholly arbitrary. ”

“ As to the influence of sacred books on religion, it is obvious, in the first place, that they are always formulations of the ideas of the places and times in which they originate, and that they vary in tone and in importance accordingly. ”

“ With wide differences in origin and character, all this sacred literature has been developed and has exercised its influence in obedience to certain general laws. First of these in time, if not in importance, is that which governs its origin: in all civilizations we find that the Divine Spirit working in the mind of man shapes his sacred books first of all out of the chaos of myth and legend, and of these books, when life is thus breathed into them, the fittest survive. ”

“ All developed religions have their sacred books. Until the translation of the Sacred Books of the East was undertaken in the latter part of the nineteenth century, few people realized how many such books there were. ”

“ The fathers of the early Christian Church, receiving all parts of our sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if any, less stress on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal, family, and personal traditions contained in the Old and the New Testaments, than upon the most powerful appeals, the most instructive apologues, and the most lofty poems of prophets, psalmists, and apostles. ”

“ On earth Thou art an exile’s rest,
In heaven the glory of the blest,
O Sacred Heart.
O Sacred Heart!
Thou fount of contrite tears,
Where’er those living waters flow,
New life to sinners they bestow,
O Sacred Heart. ”

“ In the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed: out of the old chaos has come order; out of the old welter of hopelessly conflicting statements in religion and morals has come, in obedience to this new conception of development, the idea of a sacred literature which mirrors the most striking evolution of morals and religion in the history of our race. Of all the sacred writings of the world, it shows us our own as the most beautiful and the most precious ”

“ The Bible presents me with real manna, and feeds me with the bread of life.
You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's—not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you—not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity—not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul—a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's. ”

“ The province of Art is not to present a specific message, but to impart a feeling. If we go home from the Lyceum hushed, treading on air, we have heard Oratory, even though we cannot recall a single sentence; and if we read a poem that brings the unbidden tears and makes the room seem a sacred chancel, we have read Literature. The Master has imparted to our spirits a tithe of his own sublimity of soul.
For the good old ladies who prick the Bible for a message I have a profound sympathy: the Sacred Page fits man’s every mood, and this is why it is immortal. ”

“ Every religion has its Holy Book, and ours was a mingling of history, poetry, and prophecy, of precept and folk-lore, even such as the modern reader finds within the covers of his Bible. This Bible of ours was our whole literature, a living Book, sowed as precious seed by our wisest sages, and springing anew in the wondering eyes and upon the innocent lips of little children. Upon its hoary wisdom of proverb and fable, its mystic and legendary lore thus sacredly preserved and transmitted from father to son, was based in large part our customs and philosophy. ”

“ Now, as we think of the blessing of the Lord, the Spirit, may He reveal Himself to us through these holy Words, which were written by His inspiration and which can never be fully understood and enjoyed save by His own illumination. The Bible is a supernatural book, a divine revelation: the Holy Spirit is the supernatural, the divine Guide to its meaning. ”

“ Without occupying ourselves with the question as to whether Scripture was a gift from above or an invention of men, we see that there exists two kinds of it—human and sacred scripture. I understand by human scripture, that which is considered by men as the expression of the ideas of a man; I understand by sacred scripture that which is venerated by nations as containing something more than the ideas of a man.... There are in the world an innumerable quantity of books, nevertheless there are but six of them which have been venerated by nations as sacred. ”

“ The inspiration of the writers is transferred to the books, the matter of which, so far as it forms the subject of the revelation, is received as true because divine, not merely regarded as divine because perceived to be true. The religion, together with the series of revelations of which it is the consummation, differs in kind from ethnic religions, and from human philosophy; and the sacred literature differs in kind from other books. Each is unique, a solitary miracle of its class in human history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The reading of this work and the first volume of his "Arcana Celestia" satisfied me that the Sacred Scriptures are divine or a special revelation from God to man, and differ from all merely human writings as much as a living man differs from a statue; for they are filled with a Divine spirit. ”

“ Christian art comprises the earth and its humanities, and, by implication, God and Christ also; and sacred art is the emanating idea—the central causating power—the jasper throne, whereon sits Christ, surrounded by the prophets, apostles, and saints, administering judgement, wisdom, and holiness. In this sense, then, the art you would call sacred is not sacred, but Christian: and, as all perfect art158 is Christian, regeneration necessarily can only flow thence ”

“ The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imaginative faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, in what we chiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of Deity; and the apprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading the Book whose primal commands we refuse to obey. ”

“ In the same way, the Bible is more beautiful when we have learned to see therein—ranged in order on a canvas of a thousand years—each aspiration, each sigh, each prayer of the most exalted religious consciousness that ever existed, than when we force ourselves to view it as a book unlike any other, composed, preserved, interpreted in direct opposition to all the ordinary rules of the human intellect. ”

“ Side by side with formulæ embodying superstitions common to barbaric folk all the world over, we find penitential psalms, appeals to the great gods, and spiritual utterances, some of which are on a plane with Hebrew sacred poetry. All this body of literature, secular and sacred, made up the vast store of books in the libraries whose interpretation is one of the brilliant successes of modern scholarship, and whose contents bring home to us the priceless value of the art of writing to mankind. ”

“ But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song. For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in those pages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued with religious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine. ”

“ In preparing a guide to immortality, Infinite Wisdom gave, not a dictionary, nor a grammar, but a Bible—a book which, in trying to reach the heart of man, should captivate his taste; and which, in transforming his affection, should also expand his intellect. ”

“ If not, how can portions of books which are not inspired form any portion of books which are inspired? If the Holy Ghost were to quote from the Secular Review would the Secular Review thereby become inspired? The references of the Holy Ghost to works which seem to have existed before he began to write the Bible for our salvation and bewilderment are more frequent than a superficial reader would suppose. I here give a list of the works the Holy Ghost had before him when he was writing, and from which he has quoted:—
Books Lost, cited in the Old Testament. ”

“ If, then, such and so great is the excellence and the dignity of the Scriptures that God Himself has, as the author of them, composed them, and that they treat of God's deepest mysteries, counsels, and works, it follows that the branch of sacred theology which is concerned with the defence and interpretation of these divine books must be most excellent and in the highest degree profitable. ”

“ We must study the true meaning of the Bible, the book and chief collection of the records of faith, precious above all for the immortal image and photograph, in so many a shifting light and various expression, of the transcendent form of divinity through manhood in Him to be ever reverently and lovingly named, Jesus Christ. But there is a spirit in man. ”

“ As a man not barely believes, but knows assuredly that that very person is his particular friend in whom he sees all the proper, peculiar, distinguishing marks and characters of his friend, so the Christian knows that book to be the word of God in and upon which he sees all the proper marks and characters of a divinely inspired book. He tastes a sweetness, and feels a power, and sees a glory, in it truly divine. 3. The divinity of the scriptures must be known and acknowledged in the first place, before men can profitably use them, before they can give good heed to them. ”

“ Books?... Fragments of a real 'Church Liturgy' and 'Body of Homilies', strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Books are our Church too.
On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books! ”