"God commanded the blessing, even Life for evermore" (Ps. cxxxiii, 3).
Now I hope the reader will take the trouble to look up the texts to which I have referred, and not be lazy. I am sure he would do so if he were promised a ten pound note or a fifty dollar bill for his pains, and if these promises are not all bosh, there is something worth a good deal more to be got by studying them. Just run through the list: health, wealth, peace of mind, safety, creative power, and eternal life. You would be willing to pay a good premium to an Insurance Office that could guarantee you all these. Well, there is a Company that does this without paying any premium, and its name is "God and Co., Unlimited"; the only condition, is that you yourself have to take the part of "Co." and it is not a sleeping partnership, but a wide-awake one!
So I hope you will take the trouble to look up the texts; but at the same time you must remember that the reading of single texts is not sufficient. If you take any isolated phrase you choose, without reference to the rest of the Book, there is no nonsense you cannot make out of the Bible. You would not be allowed to do that sort of thing in a Court of Law. When a document is produced in evidence, the meaning of the words used in it are very carefully construed, not only in reference to the particular clause in which they occur, but also with reference to the intention of the document as a whole, and to the circumstances under which they were written. The same word may mean very different things in different connections; for instance I remember two reported cases in one of which the word "Spanish" meant a certain sort of leather, and in the other a kind of material used in brewing; and in like manner particular texts are to be interpreted in accordance with the gist of the Bible as a whole.
This is just the mistake the Jews made, of building up theories on particular texts, and which Jesus corrected when he said: "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me" (John v, 39), or, as the Revised Version puts it: "Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me," which appears to be the better rendering. The words "ye think" is the key to the whole passage. He says in effect: "You fancy that eternal life is to be found in the book. It is not to be found in the book, but in what the book tells you about, and here I am as a living example of it." It is just the same with everything else. No book can do more than tell you about a thing; it cannot produce it. You may study the cookery book from morning till night, but that will not give you your dinner.