Danger from Improper Reading
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serious thoughts. And you cannot dwell upon the self-denying, self-
sacrificing life of the world’s Redeemer and find pleasure in joking
and jesting and whiling away your time in foolishness. You are greatly
in need of a practical experience in the Christian life. You need to
train the mind for the work of God. The religious experience is to a
great degree determined by the character of the books you read in your
leisure moments.
If you love the Scriptures, and search them whenever there is
opportunity, that you may come into possession of their rich treasures,
then you may be assured that Jesus is drawing you to Himself.
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit,
after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not
after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
And ye are complete in Him.”
Colossians 2:8-10
.
We cannot be complete in Christ and yet be ready to grasp those
things that come from the so-called great men of the earth, and place
their wisdom before the wisdom of the greatest Teacher the world has
ever known. To seek knowledge from such sources is represented in
the word as seeking to drink from broken cisterns that can hold no
water.
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Let the truth of God be the subject for contemplation and med-
itation. Read the Bible, and regard it as the voice of God speaking
directly to you. Then will you find inspiration and that wisdom which
is divine.
* * * * *
The gathering together of many books for study too often inter-
poses between God and man a mass of knowledge that weakens the
mind and makes it incapable of assimilating that which it has already
received. The mind becomes dyspeptic. Wisdom is needed, that man
may choose aright between these many authors and the word of life,
that he may eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God.
My brethren, discard the streams of the lowlands and come to the
pure waters of Lebanon. Never can you walk in the light of God while
you crowd the mind with a mass of matter which it cannot digest. It
is time we resolved to have heaven’s help and allow the mind to be
impressed with the word of God. Let us close the door to so much