Not a charm or an ornament to keep on our shelves or to lock up in our closets, not a story-book to read for amusement, is the Bible, but, as the text tells us, the means of giving us eternal life in Christ Jesus; and so we ought to make use of it.
There, then, it is--Holy Bible, Book Divine, our chief treasure in this sin-darkened world, giving strength, comfort, and salvation. Ah! who should not prize it, read it, search it? God make us ministers and our members Bible students; how much better ministers, how much better members we would then be!
May God bless the words of our lips and the meditation of our hearts! Amen.
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.--_Rom. 3, 23._
A few days more, and we shall have entered upon Lent. What is Lent? Lent is a time of several weeks which for ages has been set apart among Christians for a period of more than usual seriousness. As observed in our Church, it is a time marked out from the rest of the year as more especially devoted to the contemplation of those vital truths on which our Christian religion is founded. To be brief, Lenten time with us is Passion time. Passion, in simple English, means suffering, more particularly, the suffering of Christ. Accordingly, Passion time, or Passion tide, is the season when we are more especially called upon to commemorate, and call to mind, and ponder, and think over the suffering of our Savior, Christ, those scenes announced in the Gospel when He was betrayed into the hands of wicked men, and by them was falsely accused, reviled, mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns, and at last crucified.
In order that we might do that in the proper manner, as we ought to do, the Church, from the earliest period, has appointed the forty days of Lent, just as it has appointed the four Sundays in Advent, to be a preparation for Christmas. For there are two great seasons in the year which it behooves every Christian to conscientiously observe, if he wishes to pay dutiful honor to his Savior.
The first season is Christmas, in memory of His loving kindness in coming down from heaven, putting on the nature of man. The other season is Lent, to commemorate His dying love. Both these seasons are so important, of such moment to the welfare of the soul, that the Church has set apart the four Sundays which come before Christmas and the forty days which come before Easter as a time of preparation. The wisdom of such an arrangement no one can doubt. Just like the early bell on Sunday is meant to call us to get ready for church, the service of God's house, so Advent and Lent call us to get ready for Christmas and Good Friday. When a musical instrument has been laid by for a while, it needs tuning, or it will make but sorry music. The minds and hearts of most Christians, too, require to be gotten into tune before they can bear their part fitly and harmoniously in the services by which the Church commemorates the death and resurrection of her Lord. And how? What is the best way to prepare for a profitable and advantageous Lent? That is conditioned by another question: What was it that delivered our blessed Lord into the hands of those wicked men, that caused Him that shameful treatment, mockery, and finally nailed Him to the cross? The malice of the chief priest, the treachery of Judas, the cowardice of Pontius Pilate? Deeper, my beloved, deeper; they were but the instrumental, not the procuring cause. The real cause, you know it, was something else,--sin. To do away with, to secure the pardon of that, Christ died. Then it is plain, that in order to understand the value of His suffering, to observe that season aright, we must begin with being convinced of the evil, of the exceeding hatefulness and danger of sin.