L I E) R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VERSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 THE DEVOUT STUDY 
 OF HOLY SCRIPTURE, 
 
 a paper 
 
 AD AT THE CHURCH CONGRESS, BRADFORD, 
 SEPTEMBER, 1898. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 VERY REV. THE DEAN OF SALISBURY. 
 
 PRINTED BY BEMROSE & SONS, LIMITED, DERBY; 
 AND 23, OLD BAILEY, LONDON.
 
 THE DEVOUT STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 When Lamennais was endeavouring to revive spiritual life in the 
 Gallican Church, after he had spoken of the blessing of elevation of 
 thought and distinction of character, one of his students asked, " How 
 can we gain this?" and he answered, "Only by the old way, of 
 constant prayer, and devout study of Scripture." Many years after 
 these words were spoken, tlie counsel to read the Bible humbly, with 
 prayer, was given in a thoughtful essay, contained in two volumes, on 
 some of the Pauline Epistles. In days when new methods of attaining 
 spiritual life are often recommended, and often tried, it is sometimes 
 well to revert to first principles and the plain duties of preserving the 
 purity and strength of one great source of spiritual life. It is f)ossible, 
 we know, for one who has a real and true knowledge of the Bible to 
 neglect the devotional reading, which alone can impart the sober 
 certainty of a true love of the higher life. To look upon the Bible as 
 the personal possession for which account must be given, the one 
 talent which must not be folded in a napkin or hidden in the earth, is 
 an actual part of the believer's duty. No attendance at services, how- 
 ever regular, no profitable experience from personal teaching, however 
 deep or eloquent, can compensate for the loss of the feeling which 
 masters all emotion and ecstasy that the Bible finds us, speaks to us, 
 and, like the eye of a portrait, seems never to lose sight of us, and 
 sustains with an awful and majestic force a hold which can only be 
 explained by the knowledge that the voice of God sp^ks inwardly to 
 the soul, assuming the reverent attitude of humble submission. In an 
 age of searchmg scrutiny into every characteristic of the collection of 
 sacred books, ranging over more than fifteen hundred years, it is surely 
 a duty to insist most strongly that no discovery, however startling, can 
 in any way invalidate the need for devout study, or assail successfully 
 the position of those who have felt, as a matter of personal experience, 
 the internal evidence of the truth of the faith. The remembrance that 
 there is a real unity pervadmg the records has only to be thoroughly 
 embedded in the mind, and many of the differences and difficulties so 
 often paraded to distract thought, vanish, and are as though they had 
 never been. 
 
 When a desire to ascertain what particular lesson for the deepening 
 of spiritual life within us a psalm or a prophecy may contain, is once 
 encouraged, the fruitfulness of Scripture to unfold the real life of man 
 is so felt as to extinguish all misgiving. What was called by the late 
 Dean Stanley, in a remarkable passage in his " Sermons on the Bible," 
 the modern element in Holy Scripture is a perpetual evidence of the 
 power by which a character, a pregnant text, a hitherto neglected saying 
 of our Blessed Lord's, will s^ipply the very medicine, the healing 
 balm, which some situation of difficulty, some wholly unexpected crisis, 
 may require, for the softening and healing grace demanded in moments
 
 of peril. It is only when tlie still hour of devout study has come that 
 what has been called the awfulness and divinity of words is fully appre- 
 hended. We know that they are insufficient, but we know also ihat 
 one work of the Comforting Spirit is to produce within us an inward 
 sense of the Divine relations of the ever-Iilessed Trinity. Tiiere is 
 a trembling adoration, altogether unspeakable, which is the real result 
 of devout study. There is something unspeakably awful in the recollec- 
 tion that in Divine communion every intellectual difference disappears ; 
 the deep thinker in his study, and the suffering sick woman who has 
 lain on a bed for twenty years, alike find a home and lest in the 
 approach of spirit aud personal union with Him who has eternal life to 
 grant to all who have kept His Word. When the soul turns in devout study 
 and confession to Him who is the image of God and the light of man, all 
 questions as to the reality of the narrative or the age of a Gospel cease 
 to perplex or disquiet. The wonder, the suddenness of revelation, the 
 knowledge that no reason can be given why Abraham and Moses 
 should have taught the unity of God and the need of true morality ; 
 why Ezekiel should have proclaimed the responsibility of every soul 
 that sinncih ; why Christ should have declared that His life was given 
 for the world, and that no man cometh unto the Father but by Him, 
 flash upon the soul with the intense conviction that the words of life 
 and truih are in the Bible as they are nowhere else ; and that as in the 
 life of Christ bright signs of the Godhead that dwelt within Him shone 
 on the path of the despised, rejected One, so do manifestations of the 
 real Prince of perfect manhood and perfect Godhead reward the strivings 
 after more light. 
 
 A simple plan and simple rules as to the use of Scripture are generally 
 found most enduring. 'Ihe rapid reading of one book of Scripture, 
 with a view to extract a personal lesson, has often been advocated by 
 masters in the spiritual life. Regularity in devout study implies self- 
 denial, and the combination of portions of the Old Testament with 
 passages in the New has constantly conveyed a truer intelligence of 
 inward meaning. 
 
 It may be well, too, to remember that the desire for the real intellec- 
 tual enjoyment of Scrijjture may sometimes intercept the vision that 
 comes from true submission and desire for progress. The analogy 
 between the written message and the personal Word of God, striking 
 as it is, has sometimes been pressed too far. There is no confusion in 
 the union of humanity and Divinity in the manifestation of the Ever- 
 lasting Son of God, but there may be sometimes a danger, lest in the 
 rememi.irance of the human element in Scripture we should forget the 
 intensity which makes the oracles of God reveal to the soul the inward 
 secret which produces the abiding personal loyalty, which Dr. Pusey, 
 in one of his latest sermons to young men, has well described as the 
 unfaiUng safeguard through temptation and misbelief. We have, thanks 
 be to God, a revelation penetrated by the peculiarities of individual 
 minds. As a noble building approached by avenues of trees discloses 
 its features gradually to persons advancing from different points of 
 view, so is the character of the faith unfolded in Pauline, Johannine, 
 and Petrine teachings shown to be one manifold, and jet absolutely 
 true. It is the privilege of those into whose lives the devout study
 
 of Holy Scripture has truly entered to realize the graces which come to 
 men as citizens of the kingdom of Christ, as well as emotional fervours 
 which express, like the breathings of Henry Marty n in the orchard 
 shortly before his death, the highest rapiure of tlie soul seeking union 
 with the Saviour. 
 
 The volume of Scripture begins with the revelation that the world 
 we know and see comes from the touch of a Creator, and in the last 
 book of the New Testaiuent, when the vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem 
 fills the soul, the devout student begins to apprehend that the march 
 of history and the volume of prophecy teach the lesson that we are to 
 judge the message by the end which it proposes, and to acknowledge 
 with the great Author of the Analogy that the gift of reason, like every 
 possession of man, must yield its tribute to the Lord of Life. 
 
 One word may well be added as to the gradual revelation made to 
 the soul, of the abiding nature of the words of Christ, the words of 
 spirit and life, which will endure when heaven and earth pass away. 
 There is a tendency in human nature to look upon the efforts of all 
 who devote themselves entirely to work for Christ, at home or abroad, 
 as a needless exaggeration of the rule prescribed in the Gospels. From 
 Si temptation to indulge in this the devout student of Holy Scripture 
 is entirely freed. He knows that there will be in every portion of 
 Christ's kingdom many who will feel continually that they hear a Voice 
 men cannot hear, and see a Lland which beckons them away from the 
 easy view of ordinary life. They know, too, that if they are not them- 
 selves called upon to sacrifice their own position and duties, deepest 
 and truest sympathy with all who do so, issuing in interest, practical 
 and real for all true effort, is demanded, especially in these days. The 
 study of other religions and other faiths than that of Christ receives an 
 Unwonted impulse from constant meditation and devout study. The 
 reproach that the Christian faith has made men sometimes too indif- 
 ferent to the real progress of humanity can never be raised against those 
 who feel that ihe study of Scripture has unfolded to their view the 
 grand nature of the compassion for suffering human beings which has 
 united men and women in generous schemes to rescue the fallen, to 
 help the friendless, and, in a word, to better the conditions of human 
 life. There are soine, doubtless, here who have known what it is to 
 witness the strivings and assist the doubts of some who have made 
 shipwreck of their faith. Is it too much to say that the continuance 
 of devout study might have saved many a noble soul from a vain regret, 
 that the vision of Divine life once enjoyed has gone for ever? Is it too 
 much to say that the path of safety at this time of strife might be 
 regained if souls in earnest read psalm, and gospel, and epistle solely to 
 discrimiriate between the dogma which may have something of earth 
 in its clothing, and the vision of a personal Saviour speaking to the 
 man within the man, and manifesting Himself as the King, the 
 Saviour, the home of the weary and heavy laden, where light comes 
 at eventide to all who feel that the goal of effort, the true rest for 
 man, is hidden with Christ in God? 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE OFFICIAL KEPORT OF THE CHURCH CONGRESS BY 
 BEMROSE AND SONS, LIMITED, DERBY ; AND 23, OLD BAILEV, LONDON.
 
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