"B" Feathers
BIBLE The historical matters of Scripture, both narrative and prophecy, constitute as it were the bones of its system; whereas the spiritual matters are as its muscles, bloodvessels and nerves. As the bones are necessary to the human system, so Scripture must have its historical matters. The expositor who nullifies the historical ground-work of Scripture for the sake of finding only spiritual truths everywhere, brings death on all correct interpretation.—J. A. Bengel.
BIBLE—Cause of Interest in it The lifeboat may have a tasteful bend and beautiful decoration, but these are nut the qualities for which I prize it; it was my salvation from the howling sea! So the interest which a regenerate soul takes in the Bible, is founded on a personal application to the heart of the saving truth which it contains. If there is no taste for this truth, there can be no relish for the Scriptures.—J. W. Alexander, D.D.
BIBLE—How to Deal with its Difficulties An old man once said, "For a long period I puzzled myself about the difficulties of Scripture, until at last I came to the resolution that reading the Bible was like eating fish. When I find a difficulty I lay it aside, and call it a bone. Why should I choke on the bone when there is so much nutritious meat for me? Some day, perhaps, I may find that even the bone may afford me nourishment."
BIBLE—How to Read To some the Bible is uninteresting and unprofitable, because they read too fast. Amongst the insects which subsist on the sweet sap of flowers, there are two very different classes. One is remarkable for its imposing plumage, which shows in the sunbeams like the dust of gems; and as you watch its jaunty gyrations over the fields, and its minuet dance from flower to flower, you cannot help admiring its graceful activity, for it is plainly getting over a great deal of ground. But, in the same field there is another worker, whose brown vest and business-like straight-forward flight may not have arrested your eye. His fluttering neighbour darts down here and there, and sips elegantly wherever he can find a drop of ready nectar; but this dingy plodder makes a point of alighting everywhere, and wherever he alights he either finds honey or makes it. If the flower-cup be deep, he goes down to the bottom; if its dragon-mouth be shut, he thrusts its lips asunder; and if the nectar be peculiar or recondite, he explores all about till he discovers it, and then having ascertained the knack of it, joyful as one who has found great spoil, he sings his way down into its luscious recesses. His rival, of the painted velvet wing, has no patience for such dull and long-winded details. But what is the end? Why, the one died last October along with the flowers; the other is warm in his hive to-night, amidst the fragrant stores which he gathered beneath the bright beams of summer.
Reader, to which do you belong?—the butterflies or bees? Do you search the Scriptures, or do you only skim them? Do you dwell on a passage till you bring out some meaning, or till you can carry away some memorable truth or immediate lesson? or do you flit along on heedless wing, only on the look-out for novelty, and too frivolous to explore or ponder the Scriptures? Does the Word of God dwell in you so richly, that in the vigils of a restless night, or in the bookless solitude of a sick room, or in the winter of old age or exclusion from ordinances, its treasured truths would perpetuate summer round you, and give you meat to eat which the world knows not of?—James Hamilton, D.D.
BIBLE—Judged by its Fruits A Roman Catholic priest in Belgium rebuked a young woman and her brother for reading that "bad book" pointing to the Bible. "Mr. Priest," she replied, "a little while ago my brother was an idler, a gambler, a drunkard, and made such a noise in the house that no one could stay in it. Since he began to read the Bible, he works with industry, goes no longer to the tavern, no longer touches cards, brings home money to his poor old mother, and our life at home is quiet and delightful. How comes it, Mr. Priest, that a bad book produces such good fruits?"
BIBLE—Power of its Authority. The mother of a family was married to an infidel who made jest of religion in the presence of his own children; yet she succeeded in bringing them all up in the fear of the Lord. I asked her one day how she preserved them from the influence of a father whose sentiments were so opposed to her own. This was her answer: "Because to the authority of a father I do not oppose the authority of a mother, but that of God. From their earliest years my children have always seen the Bible upon my table. This holy book has constituted the whole of their religious instruction. I was silent that I might allow it to speak. Bid they propose a question, did they commit a fault, did they perform a good action, I opened the Bible, and the Bible answered, reproved, or encouraged them. The constant reading of the Scriptures has wrought the prodigy which surprises you.—Adolphe Monod.
BIBLE—To be Read with Delight When Mr. Hone, who wrote the "Every-day Book," and was of sceptical views, was travelling through Wales, he stopped at a cottage to ask for a drink of water, and a little girl answered him, "Oh, yes! sir, I have no doubt mother will give you some milk. Come in." He went in and sat down. The little girl was reading her Bible. Mr. Hone said, "Well, my little girl, you are getting your task?" "No, sir, I am not," she replied, "I am reading the Bible." "Yes," said he, "you are getting your task out of the Bible?" "Oh, no," she replied, "it is no task to read the Bible; I love the Bible." "And why do you love the Bible?" said he. Her simple, child-like answer was, "I thought everybody loved the Bible." Her own love to the precious volume had made her innocently believe that everybody else was equally delighted to read God's Word. Mr. Hone was so touched with the sincerity of that expression, that he read the Bible himself, and instead of being an opponent to the things of God, came to be a friend of divine truth.
BIBLE—The Spirit more than the Letter
It is easy enough to be learned in the letter of the Word, and yet to miss the spirit. If no other instance were before us, the Jewish people would furnish us with a most convincing one, for they have wholly missed the meaning of the Scriptures, and yet, Lightfoot tells us, "They have summed up all the letters in the Bible to show that one hair of that sacred head is not perished. Eight hundred and forty-eight marginal notes are observed and preserved, for the more facility of the text: the middle verse of every book noted; the number of the verses in every book reckoned: and not a vowel that misseth ordinary grammar which is not marked."
BIBLE—Why Priests Withhold it The true reason why the Papists forbid the Scriptures to be read is not to keep men from errors and heresies, but to keep them from discovering those which they themselves impose upon them. Such trash as they trade in would never go off their hands if they did not keep their shops thus dark; which made one of their shavelings so bitterly complain of Luther for spoiling their market, saying that but for him they might have persuaded the people of Germany to eat hay. Anything, indeed, will go down a blind man's throat.—Gurnal.
BIGOTRY
Some men magnify the importance of their own little clique of believers by denying the godliness of all who differ from them. They remind one of Bishop Hacket's story. "At Wimbledon," says he, "not far from me, a warrener promised Thomas, Earl of Exeter, that he should have a burrow of rabbits, all of them of what colour he pleased. 'Let them be all white,' said that good Earl. Whereupon the warrener killed up all the rest but the white rabbits, and sold them away, and left not enough to serve the earl's table." A sorry few would be left to serve the Lord, and preserve the name of Christ upon earth, if some men's judgments could be final. Blessed be God, the Judge of saints is not the rabbi of any of the rival synagogues.
BODY AND SOUL
"Two things a master commits to his servants' care," saith one, "the child and the child's clothes." It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, "Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost!" Much so with the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. "Lord, here is my body; I was very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its content and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away for ever. I took little care and thought about it!"—Flavel.
BOOKS—How to make them Intelligible
John Keble, the author of "The Christian Year," in a letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir) J. T. Coleridge, thus writes:—"Have you read a little publication of Miller's, which I sent to James Coleridge, and if you have, how do you like it? Lest you should think his style in this new book too obscure for the 'Plain People,' I must tell you that he made Moliè's experiment, for he gave the sermons to his servant, quite a rustic lad, to read before he printed them, and the man said he understood them all except the fifth, which accordingly M. made plainer, till the youth professed himself satisfied with it. And his father, the clerk of the parish, had given the greatest proof of his understanding even of this the obscurest part, for he said to Miller, 'Oh, yes! sir, I see what you mean, you mean such-and-such people (naming them) by the one of your two classes, and such-and-such by the other.' I call this a very satisfactory experiment, quite as much so as most of Sir Humphrey Davy's." In a letter to another friend on the same subject, Keble further adds:—"I wonder whether people that write tracts for the poor, generally take this method; it seems mere common sense for them to do so, and yet one can hardly think they do."
BOOKS—Tried by Time and Posterity
Call it by what name you please—dream, vision, or revery—we found ourselves in a large room, the walls of which were concealed by well-packed shelves of books, from the ponderous folio to the minute thirty-two-mo, and in all the variety of dress which a skilful handicraft could devise. While cursorily gazing on these intellectual stores, our attention was arrested by the entrance of two personages of mild and venerable aspect, who very courteously introduced themselves, and stated the object of their visit. They bore the significant names of Time and Posterity, and intimated that they had come to pay their semi-centennial visit, to weigh the merits of authors, and determine their destiny. The task seemed to us an herculean one, where the volumes were numbered by thousands; and we were curious to know by what process they were to ascertain the character of so many candidates for fame. We might, however, have spared our surprise, had we reflected that Time was a gentlemen who had seen much of the world, and professed great experience, and Posterity was no less distinguished for the solidity of his judgment. They were well prepared for an expeditious performance of their work, and, in truth, we felt no small degree of horror in witnessing the results of their essay. By the way, we should have mentioned that they were provided with a capacious crucible, under which was burning a large and steady flame. Into it volume after volume was thrown, and the ordeal through which they had to pass was one of fire. "Goodly volumes, these," said TIME, taking up a brace of octavos on metaphysics, "let us test their quality." Placed in the crucible, they were instantly converted into cinders. "Dust and ashes," said Posterity. This was the doom of many an ostentatious volume, whose promising title availed as little as its interior embellishments. Time rather soliloquised than addressed Posterity, while subjecting volume after volume. He would remark, "Deadborn this; its claims for perpetuity died amidst the types." "An old heresy under the slight disguise of a new dress." "Nonsense, fustian, bombast." A whole row of poets succeeded each other in their descent into the heated crucible, with no more sympathy on the part of the executioner than a contemptuous exclamation. What is called light literature could scarcely be kept in the crucible long enough to be converted into thin smoke. Whole tons of periodicals and reviews shared the same fate. Occasionally we observed an unscorched leaf or two remained in the crucible, which Posterity carefully gathered and deposited in his portefeuille. At intervals, a whole volume would escape—this, however, was very rare; for in the instances in which they preserved their original shape, large portions of these fortunate volumes were burned out. For the most part, the large books fared worse than the smaller ones, from which we were led to infer, that facility in writing was quite a different thing from ability, and that a lumbering ship may be dashed on the rocks, over which a small boat may safely ride. Whole piles of periodicals (our own did not entirely escape) were soon converted into ashes. "Fabrications," said Time, as he hurled volume after volume of history into the crucible. Some leaves, however, of most of them escaped, out of which Posterity remarked, he would make up a small volume of true history worthy of preservation. Many books of religious controversy, and many more of worldly controversies on all subjects went in with the ominously expressed doom, "Dust and ashes," and so they came out. We perceived a most offensive effluvium arise, as certain "Philosophical Disquisitions," and "Light of Reason" were submitted to the fiery test. Thus went forward the process, the further details of which might be tedious to enumerate, and in a very brief time the great library had so far disappeared that Posterity carried off what was left in a small but beautiful cabinet, made of enduring materials. We were left to wonder how human brains and iron presses worked to so little effect in this world of ours.—Presbyterian.
BOLDNESS (holy)—Congruous with the Gospel
Holy boldness honours the gospel. In the olden times, when Oriental despots had things pretty much their own way, they expected all ambassadors from the West to lay their mouths in the dust if permitted to appear before his Celestial Brightness, the Brother of the Sun and the Cousin of the Moon. Certain money-loving traders agreed to all this, and ate dust as readily as reptiles; but, when England sent her ambassadors abroad, the daring islanders stood bolt-upright. They were told that they could not be indulged with a vision of the Brother of the Sun and Cousin of the Moon, without going down on their hands and knees. "Very well," said the Englishmen," we will dispense with the luxury; but tell his Celestial Splendour, that it is very likely that his Serenity will hear our cannon at his palace gates before long, and that their booming is not quite so harmless as the cooing of his Sublimity's doves." When it was seen that ambassadors of the British Crown were no cringing petitioners, our empire rose in the respect of Oriental nations. It must be just so with the cross of Christ. Our cowardice has subjected the gospel to contempt. Jesus was humble, and his servants must not be proud; but Jesus was never mean or cowardly, nor must his servants be. There was no braver man than Christ upon earth. He could stoop to save a soul, but he would stoop to nothing by which his character might be compromised, or truth and righteousness insulted. To preach the gospel boldly is to deliver it as such a message ought to be delivered. Blush to preach of a dying Saviour? Apologise for talking of the Son of God condescending to be made man, that he might redeem us from all iniquity? Never! Oh! by the grace of God let us purpose, with Paul, "to be yet more bold," that the gospel may be yet more fully preached throughout all ranks of mankind.
"I'll preach thy Word though kings should hear, Nor yield to sinful shame."
BREVITY
Dr. Cotton Mather wrote over his study-door in large letters, BE SHORT. Callers upon ministers will please make a note of this; as also brethren who are lengthy at the prayer-meeting; Sunday-school teachers, in all their devotional exercises and addresses; speakers at public meetings, who have nothing to say; and ministers who are given to prosiness.