The Importance and Value of Proper Bible Study

Our subject this morning is Importance and Value of Bible Study, You will find the text in Psalm l;l-3 — is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly y nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall he like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

There has, perhaps, never been an age that set such great store by study as that in which we now live. The unfortunate thing about it is that so much of the study in our day, both by children and adults, is devoted to books and subjects in which there is little or no profit.! A large portion of every year in our schools and colleges is practically wasted. Time is squandered upon the purely speculative, the uncertain, the unprofitable, the unessential, the unproductive, the irrelevant and the transitory. Many practical business men think that the sooner the boy or girl who is just out of school or college forgets half of what they imagine they have learned, the better. The most profitable of all study is wisely ordered Bible study. Its value is incalculable. It is beyond all comparison more profitable than any other study. It is the one superlatively profitable study.

Possibly some of you may be disposed to question that statement; so I will give you two reasons why Bible study is the one superlatively profitable study, why Bible study towers far above all other studies in importance and value.

7. Because of What the Bible Is

First of all, Bible study towers far above all other studies in importance and value because of what the Bible itself is,

1. In the first place, the Bible is the peerless masterpiece of clear, pure, chaste, forceful, beautiful, exalted English. Nothing can match it in purity, smoothness, clearness, force, and sublimity of expression. That admits of no question. AU intelligent, well-read and candid infidels acknowledge that. Prof. Phelps, at the head of the English Department at Yale, contended some years ago that candidates for admission to American Universities should have their qualification for admission, as far as their knowledge of English was concerned, tested by one book alone, the Bible. And Harvard University has announced in the past few weeks that hereafter every student before graduation must pass an examination in the English Bible. Because of Harvard’s well-known theological position and also from the fact that they seem to emphasize the Revised Version, it is evident that they have in view principally the fact that the Bible is the great English master-piece. Last Tuesday I received from G. P. Putnam’s Sons of New York and London, a book for examination — a dictionary of 6,000 choice and effective phrases. In this book (just published), time and again, page after page, every phrase was taken from the Bible, without variation or addition. Here and there were scattered phrases taken from Shakespeare, but on subject after subject whole pages of telling phrases were consecutively taken from the Bible. Why? Because this book of phrases was prepared by a master hand at English diction and he knew where to find the most illuminating and most telling phrases. Every man and woman should saturate themselves with the very words of the Bible if for no other reason than to clarify, tone up and invigorate their English diction. When Henry Stanley, the great newspaper writer, made his second tour of exploration into the heart of Africa, he took only one book with him, the Bible. In its study he beguiled and improved many lonely hours, and when he emerged, after having been shut up with one book for so many years, it was noticed that Henry Stanley had acquired by absorption an entirely new English style, a far more forceful style, Bible English. It is said that a newspaper report of a paragraph from one of Mr. Moody’s sermons was handed to Max Müller, the great philologist, and he was asked what he thought of it. He asked, “Who wrote thatT’ And the reply was made, “D. L. Moody.” “I do not wonder then at his power,’’ Max Müller exclaimed. “That is one of the finest pieces of clear, strong, pure Anglo-Saxon I have ever read.” But where had Mr. Moody learned this vigorous English! From the only book he thoroughly knew and daily devoured, the Bible.

2. In the second place, the Bible is the book that presents to us the most profound, the most coherent J the most consistent, the most comprehensive, the most complete, the most perfectly balanced, the most certain, the loftiest and the most enduring system of philosophy ever discovered, I say “discovered” instead of ^’devised” advisedly; for man could never have devised the philosophy found in this book; man simply discovered the philosophy which God had revealed in the Book. Time and again through the centuries men grown wise in their own conceit, and having only a ludicrously fragmentary knowledge of the Book upon which they ventured to sit in judgment, have assayed to ridicule the Bible’s philosophy regarding God and man and redemption and duty and eternity. But always in the ultimate outcome the philosophy of the would-be critics has dissolved and disappeared, but the philosophy of the Bible has withstood unscathed the storms of centuries. Philosophies, empires, schools of thought have passed away, but the words of this Book have not passed away. (Matt. 24;35.) The philosophy of this Book has proven imperishable, and as good for 1921 A. D. as for 95 A. D. In view of this undeniable fact is it not evident that this is the most important and invaluable of all books to study? Do not waste your time studying the soap bubbles of man’s iridescent speculation that may be beautiful but soon burst and leave nothing but a nasty, dank, greasy feeling behind, but study the Eternal Kock of this Book that is rich with real gold.

3. In the third place, the Bible is the book that offers to us the purest, loftiest, most complete and absolutely dependable syst&in of ethics ever known. Systems of moral philosophy have appeared throughout the centuries and chiliads, from Zeno to Herbert Spencer, only to disappear, but all really honest seekers after thorough-going and complete righteousness, bow to the imperishable durability of the ethics of the Bible. And even those who clamor hysterically for us to give up the Virgin Birth of our Lord, the resurrection of His very body from the dead and all the miracles, the Deity of our Lord, His atoning, substitutionary death, and others of the most distinctive of the doctrinal teachings of the Book, nevertheless themselves cry “Let us keep the ethics of the Bible. They are not only unsurpassed but absolutely unequaled.” The most important thing to know is, how to live; not how to live physically, but how to live morally. If that is so then the most important book for all of us to know is the book that tells us that as no other book tells us.

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