Delight in the Word


"How miserable it would make me now," says a philosophic writer and thinker once borne along the current of skepticism, "to give up the Bible! How I cling to its assurances of pardon and free acceptance, and undeserved love and favor, as my chief and only hope!"
Go, gather all the philosophers of antiquity—Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. Bring together the wise men of Greece, the philosophers of Alexandria, the sages of Rome. Ask if their combined and collected wisdom ever solved the doubts of one awakened soul, as have done these leaves of this hallowed Book! Which of them ever dried the tear of widowhood as these? Which of them ever smoothed the pillow of the fatherless as these? Which of them ever lit the torch of hope and peace at the dying bed as these, and flashed upon the departing soul visions of unearthly joy?
O Pagan darkness! where was your song in the night? In the region and shadow of death where did your light arise? But "we have a more sure word of prophecy to which we do well to take heed." Let us know it, in our personal and individual experience, as "the engrafted Word, which is able to save our souls" (James 1:21). "Engrafted"—the figure is significant and expressive. The graft in outer nature converts the weak tree, or bush, or stem, into a strong one. It transforms deformity into beauty. It puts, in the place of commonplace blossoms, tints of varied loveliness. The dog-rose of the hedge side, from the pauper of his race, becomes the stock and shoot of a royal line; the unfragrant plant of the thicket is made to swing, from his grafted stalks, new censers of sweetest incense on the passing breeze.
Similar, but infinitely more glorious, is the spiritual transformation effected on the soul by the engrafting of God's holy Word. The influence of its precepts, its promises, its motives, its encouragements, renews and revolutionizes the whole moral being. That soul becomes "a new creation," a "tree of righteousness." In the hands of the Divine Spirit, operating through the Scriptures, the beautiful figurative language of the prophet is illustrated and fulfilled—"Where once there were thorns, cypress trees will grow. Where briers grew, myrtles will sprout up. This miracle will bring great honor to the Lord's name; it will be an everlasting sign of His power and love." Isaiah 55:13
May it be ours, while knowing experimentally this grafting process with its transforming results in "the salvation of our souls"—to value with an ever-increasing estimate the instrumentality by which the new life is generated, and by which it is promoted and sustained. May it be ours to love our Bible through life's morning and midday, so that at the sunset-hour its glorious truths may, like the Alpine summits, be illuminated to our spiritual vision when the valleys are in shadow. Our prop and support amid the checkered scenes of the pilgrimage, may it form our staff in the swellings of Jordan.

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