Chapter 16—Bible Biographies
“Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,...out
of weakness were made strong.”
As an educator no part of the Bible is of greater value than are its
biographies. These biographies differ from all others in that they are
absolutely true to life. It is impossible for any finite mind to interpret
rightly, in all things, the workings of another. None but He who reads
the heart, who discerns the secret springs of motive and action, can
with absolute truth delineate character, or give a faithful picture of a
human life. In God’s word alone is found such delineation.
No truth does the Bible more clearly teach than that what we do is
the result of what we are. To a great degree the experiences of life are
the fruition of our own thoughts and deeds.
“The curse causeless shall not come.”
Proverbs 26:2
.
“Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him.... Woe unto
the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall
be given him.”
Isaiah 3:10, 11
.
“Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the
fruit of their thoughts.”
Jeremiah 6:19
.
Terrible is this truth, and deeply should it be impressed. Every
deed reacts upon the doer. Never a human being but may recognize, in
the evils that curse his life, fruitage of his own sowing. Yet even thus
we are not without hope.
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To gain the birthright that was his already by God’s promise, Jacob
resorted to fraud, and he reaped the harvest in his brother’s hatred.
Through twenty years of exile he was himself wronged and defrauded,
and was at last forced to find safety in flight; and he reaped a second
harvest, as the evils of his own character were seen to crop out in his
sons—all but too true a picture of the retributions of human life.
But God says: “I will not contend forever, neither will I be always
wroth: for the spirit should fail before Me, and the souls which I have
made. For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote
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