John 8:3-11And the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the middle,…
No thoughtful Christian can fail to have been struck by the fact that except these few words Christ wrote nothing. He did not bow down over a table piled with manuscripts, and in hours of meditative thought, during which He outwatched the stars, erect a monument which might be admired by a succession of sages and critics; He did not write out the complete text of an elaborate system of theology. He went out into the throng of men. He spoke by the highways and the lake side, in words which, if they were high as heaven and deep as the transparent lake, were in form broad and popular. When we consider the analogy of the "tables which were the work of God" and "the writing which was the writing of God" (Exodus 32:16), and the value of books in excluding error and securing permanence, we ask why He did not write. There is one reason derived from His nature. In great books the truest element of greatness is the conviction that we can trace the pathway of a superior mind in pursuit of truth. When he seems to have found it, the writer quivers with delight. With the Word made flesh, truth cannot be an effort and a conquest — the conclusion toilfully drawn from premises laboriously acquired. Rather the truth dwells in Him. He does not say: "After long communion with Divinely-inspired books, after long self-questioning, prompted sometimes by voices that seemed to come from the ancient hills, and the glory of the sunlit heaven, I gradually worked out My system." He does not say: "I have found the truth." He does say: "I am the Truth." We may answer the question why Christ did not write — His thought is preserved in a Diviner way. "I will put My law in their mind, and write it in their heart." (Bp. Alexander.) |
Hosea 4:6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge
In a short time there will (we have reason to fear) remain but two kinds of persons among us, either those who think not at all, or those whose imaginations are active indeed, but continually evil. Of these latter it may be said, "Their foolish heart was darkened." Of the principles, I do not say of the detail, of political science, a sound theology is the only sure and steady basis. Now we trace the operations by which a destruction so extended in its consequences has been effected. The master-spring of every principle which can permanently secure the stability of a people is the fear and knowledge of Almighty God. The first operation of a principle of atheism, and perhaps one of the most formidable in its consequences, is that which leads political men to conceive of Christianity as a mere auxiliary to the State. Religion was not instituted (in the Divine council I mean) for the purpose of society and government, but society and government for the purposes of religion. As a...
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