03.01. Chapter 01 - The Most Interesting Book in the World
Chapter 01 The Most Interesting Book in the World
What is the most interesting book in all the world? Perhaps different people would give different answers to this question. Boys might think of books describing the lives and actions of great men in history: the battles they fought, the brave deeds they did, and the wonderful things they accomplished. And girls might think of the life-story of some noble woman, less prominent on the world’s stage but equally brave, and perhaps more useful and helpful to those with whom she came in contact. But while such books are both interesting and helpful, yet there is ONE BOOK that far surpasses all others, not only as a book of history and narrative, but in every other way. That book is THE BIBLE. In it are found stories of the very earliest times. The first of all stories and the most wonderful of all stories is found in the first Chapter of Genesis. There we read how God, in six days, prepared this world to be the habitation of men, providing for their use, with gracious care, every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food. Then, when our first parents had sinned and brought ruin and death into the fair scene, God in wonderful grace gave them the promise of a SAVIOUR.
Moreover, we know from the Bible that God will again prepare a new Heaven and a NEW EARTH wherein righteousness will dwell and into which sin cannot enter. Between the accounts of these two most wonderful events we find other stories of great and good men, brave and strong men, wise and noble men; of gentle and loving women, faithful and true women, kind and useful women.
All these stories of men and women who have lived for God are recorded for our example, for only those who are really good can ever be truly great. But that which makes the Bible the book of supreme interest is that in it we find the wonderful STORY OF LOVE — the story of the Life and Death, the Resurrection, and Ascension to Heaven of our Lord Jesus Christ. All who know the Saviour love the Bible, for everything in it, in some way or other, speaks of Him. The Bible thus becomes to them a very precious possession. H. M. Stanley, the great explorer, when he set out to find Livingstone, took with him one hundred books to read while on his journey. As the difficulties of the march increased, and the loads of the carriers had to be lightened, everything not strictly necessary had to be thrown away. One by one the books followed, until ninety-nine out of the hundred had been left in the swamps of Central Africa, and only ONE remained. Which book do you think that was? It was the Bible. Stanley had selected the hundred most interesting books, but he found that the most interesting of all the hundred was the Word of God. In our days Bibles are so common and so easily procured that we are apt to think that they have always been so. And while we are deeply thankful for an open Bible in our Protestant land, yet we do well to remember that England has not always been a Protestant country, and the following pages are an endeavour to trace how the Scriptures came to us, and what a noble Englishman did and suffered in order that we might be able to read the Scriptures in our own language.
We shall have much to say in the following pages about the "Church of Rome"; therefore it will be well to remember that the Papacy was only a sect which broke off from the early Church, and introduced a great many unscriptural doctrines and practices in total contradiction to the teaching of the Lord Jesus and His Apostles. The early centuries of the Christian dispensation were ages of marked intellectual ability. The great names that are mentioned in history confirm this. Tertullian in the second century wrote his famous Apology. Origen manifested his zeal and learning by editing the celebrated Hexapla edition of the Holy Scriptures. Jerome translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and the New Testament from the Greek originals into the Latin, then the language of the West. John, called Chrysostom, or the "golden mouthed," was the greatest preacher of his time. Augustine was the greatest teacher. Many others might be mentioned who were not only familiar with the Scriptures but did everything they could to make their contents known to others. But when the bishop of Rome adopted the blasphemous title of Vicar of Christ and became a temporal sovereign, all this was changed. Rome’s motto then became, "We do not want learned men, we want submissive subjects," and of course the more ignorant the subjects were, the more submissive they became.
Private confession to the priests of Rome has been called the foundation stone of popery, and this "stone" was laid as early as the fifth century by Leo I. With audacious blasphemy, priests of Rome, sinful men themselves, and ofttimes both ignorant and wicked, were supposed to be able to "forgive sins." Succeeding popes followed this policy because it increased their revenues, and these men, though living always in luxury, and ofttimes in idleness and vice, were ever on the outlook for fresh fields over which to extend both their temporal and spiritual sovereignty.
Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and all the multifarious hierarchy of popedom were appointed by the Pope on condition that he was well paid for doing so. These men were under his power, and, even among the sovereigns of the nations, few were found that dared to disobey him.
Every effort was made to keep the people in ignorance and darkness, and at the same time everything that Rome supplied had to be bought with money. One has well said, "Not an article was there in her creed, not a ceremony in her worship, not a department in her government that did not tend to advance her power and increase her gains. Her dogmas, rites, and orders were so many pretexts for extorting money. Images, purgatory, relics, indulgences, pilgrimages, jubilees, canonisations, miracles, and masses were but taxes under another name, so many drains for conveying the substance of the nations to Rome." A "pall for an archbishop" cost from 1,000 to £10,000, and every new "saint" that was canonised cost the country of his birth 10,000 crowns. "Truly," says another, "Rome takes your gold and gives you nothing in return but words." In short, nothing could be got from Rome without money, and nearly everything for it
These years are known in history as the "Dark Ages," and one reason among others for this prevailing darkness was the fact that the settled policy of Rome was then, and is yet, to keep the Bible from the people. And we can well understand why she did so, for in the Scriptures there is the light of Truth which exposes and condemns all the false pretences of the Apostate Church. The people had been taught that there was a series of priests, popes, and "saints" between them and God. From the Bible they would learn that there is One Mediator — the Man Christ Jesus. Rome taught that pardon was to be purchased by paying her priests to say "masses." The Scriptures declare that "we have redemption THROUGH HIS BLOOD, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace" (Ephesians 1:7), and that "BY HIM all that believe are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:39).
Rome may well fear an open Bible. The power of the priest is at an end when we learn the pardoning love of a Saviour God through virtue of the finished work of Christ at Calvary. For about nine hundred years from the time that the monk Augustine, in 597, landed with his forty followers, England was more or less under the power of the Pope. Augustine thought that "faith and holiness were less essential to the Church than authority and power, and that its work was not so much to save souls as to collect all the human race under the authority of Rome." This man’s character has been summed up as a mixture of ambition, superstition, and zeal. As soon as he got a footing for himself and his attendant monks he began his work of aggression against the British Christians, and he and his successors did not rest until the papal supremacy was established all over the land. And this is just the attitude of Rome to-day. Her age-long motto is "Semper eadem" (ever the same), and she is working harder to-day than ever before to recapture England. Monasteries and nunneries are more numerous in our land to-day than they were before the Reformation. Priests and Jesuits enter in ever-increasing numbers, and each and all are doing their utmost to overthrow the good work of the Reformation. Romanists are active and awake; Protestants are in many cases half-hearted and asleep.