“Search the Scriptures”
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The minds of all who make the Word of God their study will enlarge.
Far more than any other study, this is of a nature to increase the
powers of comprehension, and endow every faculty with new vigor. It
brings the mind in contact with broad, ennobling principles of truth.
It brings us into close connection with all heaven, imparting wisdom,
and knowledge, and understanding.
In dealing with commonplace productions, and feeding on the
writings of uninspired men, the mind becomes dwarfed and cheapened.
It is not brought into contact with deep, broad principles of eternal truth.
The understanding unconsciously adapts itself to the comprehension
of the things with which it is familiar; and in the consideration of these
things the understanding is weakened, its powers contracted.
God designs that the Scriptures, the source of science that is above
all human theory, shall be searched. He desires that man shall dig
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deep in the mines of truth, that he may gain the valuable treasure they
contain. But too often human theories and wisdom are put in the place
of the science of the Bible. Men engage in the work of remodeling
God’s purposes; they try to distinguish between the books of the Bible.
Through their inventions they make the Scriptures testify to a lie.
Just What Man Needs
God has not made the reception of the gospel to depend upon
human reasoning. The gospel is adapted for spiritual food, to satisfy
man’s spiritual appetite. In every case it is just what man needs. Those
who have felt it necessary to have the students in our schools study
many authors are themselves the most ignorant on the great themes
of the Bible. The teachers themselves need to take up the Book of
all books, and learn from the Scriptures that the gospel has power to
prove its own divinity to the humble, contrite mind.
The gospel is the power of God and the wisdom of God. The char-
acter of Christ on earth revealed divinity, and the gospel which He has
given is to be the study of His human heritage in all their educational
departments, until teachers, children, and youth shall discern in the
only true and living God the object of their faith and love and adoration.
The Word is to be respected and obeyed. That Book which contains
the record of Christ’s life, His work, His doctrines, His sufferings, and
final triumphs, is to be the source of our strength. We are granted the