II.
The Light Eevealed.
" The opening of thy words giveth light." When the book is opened, the light streams forth. The term translated "giveth light " is a transitive verb which means " to cause to shine." The direct object of the verb may be supplied by using any term which will indicate the lover of God's word. "The opening of God's Word maketh the attentive heart to shine." That is, the Word of God gives light by enkindling the light of truth within our souls. It is the same word that is used concerning God in the 135th verse — "Make thy face to shine upon thy servant." As His face shines upon us, He makes our hearts shine back upon ^ W. L. Watkinson, Life's Unexpected Issues, 27.
PSALM cxix. 130 25
Him and upon the world. He does not illuminate our path mechanically, but sets His light within us livingly. He uses us, not as passive reflectors of His brightness, but as burning and shining lights.
1. We must learn to open the book. If God has given us a heavenly Word, a Divinely communicated Word, the first thing we should do is to learn diligently to understand that Word. If God has spoken, then our greatest business is to try to understand what God has said. Suppose a great prince or a great sage spoke words of wisdom, and a thoughtless, foolish person rushed in and began to babble his inanities, instead of trying to understand the wisdam of the counsellor, what would you think ? You would probably think more than you would like to say. Are we any better, if, when God has spoken, and in the face of that utterance, instead of setting ourselves in lowliness to understand His great message, we go on babbling our own little passing speculations ? We are people of many books to-day, and we speak of our fathers sarcastically as " men of one book." There is no objection to many books, but we would do well to get back to the one, and to under- stand something more of the great mystery of Divine love which God has revealed to us.
^ Mr. Moody tells us in an amusing way of his own experi- ence : " I used at one time to read so many chapters a day, and if I did not I thought I was cold and backsliding, but, mind you, if a man had asked me an hour afterwards what I had read, I could not have told him — I had forgotten nearly it all. When I was a boy I used to hoe turnips on a farm, and I used to hoe them so badly to get over so much ground that at night I had to put a stick into the ground so as to know next morning where I had left off." That was somewhat in the same fashion as much Bible reading. A man will say : " Wife, did I read that chapter ? " " Well," she says, " I don't remember " ; and neither of them can recollect. Now, there is no sort of merit or profit in that sort of Bible reading; no blessing comes with it. It is of no more use than galloping through so many columns of advertisements or so many pages of the dictionary. If the Scriptures are to profit us, we must ask, as we read, " What does this mean ? What does it teach ? What lesson may I learn from it ? Does it suggest prayer ? Does it prompt praise ? Does it prescribe duty ? " It would be well if all of us might sometimes be pulled
26 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD
up in our reading by the question, " Understandest thou that which thou readest ? " ^
2. The more we study the Word, the more freely the light breaks upon us. " The opening of thy words giveth light " means not only that God's Word gives light, but that this light grows with the growing revelation or understanding of the Word. As the Word opens before the soul the Divine shines forth from it more clearly, and the glory of the God it exhibits becomes more wonderful. The more we understand the Word, the more we see of God. The deeper we go into the revelation, the nearer we get to the blaze of the eternal Light.
^ A friend of mine visited Mr. Prang's chromo establishment in Boston. Mr. Prang showed him a stone on which was laid the colour for making the first impression toward producing the portrait of a distinguished public man, but he could see only the faintest possible line of tinting. The next stone that the paper was submitted to deepened the colour a little, but still no trace of the man's face was visible. Again and again was the sheet passed over successive stones, until at last the outline of a man's face was dimly discerned. Finally, after some twenty impressions from as many different stones, the portrait of the distinguished man stood forth so perfectly that it seemed to lack only the power of speech to make it living. Thus it is with Christ in the Scriptures.^
^ A Hindoo gentleman, holding a high office in the Presidency of Bombay, told me a few years ago that during his vacation he was anxious to read with his son for an hour or two daily a book of high moral and spiritual influence. He thought of many, and at last decided to take the Book of Psalms. " We treat it," he said, " like any other book ; we investigate questions of author- ship, we try to discover the circumstances in which each psalm was written, we separate the purely Jewish elements from those of more general interest and importance, we try to discriminate between what is human and faulty, and what is lofty and spiritual. By doing this we seem often to hear the voice of God speaking in our hearts, showing us the way of truth and duty, and calling us to higher aspirations and efforts." The man who said this to me was not a Christian. It shows us what hope there is in present- ing our Scriptures to non-Christians in the right way, and how true it is that these Scriptures possess a universal adaptation to the human spirit.^