106
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene
salvation, and points out the way to heaven. He has inspired holy men
to record, for our benefit, instruction concerning the dangers that beset
our path, and how to escape them. Those who obey his injunction to
search the Scriptures will not be ignorant of these things. Amid the
perils of the last days, every member of the church should understand
the reasons of his hope and faith,—reasons which are not difficult of
comprehension. There is enough to occupy the mind, if we would
grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are finite, but we are to have a sense of the infinite. The mind
must be brought into exercise in contemplating God and his wonderful
plan for our salvation. The soul will thus be lifted above the mere
earthly and common-place, and fixed upon that which is ennobling
and eternal. The thought that we are in God’s world, in the presence
of the great Creator of the universe, who made man after his own
likeness, will lead the mind into broad, exalted fields for meditation.
The thought that God’s eye is watching over us, that he loves us, and
cared so much for us as to give his dearly beloved Son to redeem us,
that we might not miserably perish, is a great one; and he who opens
his heart to the acceptance and contemplation of themes like these,
[126]
will never be satisfied with trivial, sensational subjects.
If the Bible were studied as it should be, men would become strong
in intellect. The subjects treated upon in the word of God, the dignified
simplicity of its utterance, the noble themes which it presents to the
mind, develop faculties in man which cannot otherwise be developed.
In the Bible, a boundless field is opened for the imagination. The
student will come from a contemplation of its grand themes, from
association with its lofty imagery, more pure and elevated in thought
and feeling than if he had spent the time in reading any work of mere
human origin, to say nothing of those of a trifling character. Youthful
minds fail to reach their noblest development when they neglect the
highest source of wisdom,—the word of God. The reason why we
have so few men of good mind, of stability and solid worth, is, that
God is not feared, God is not loved, the principles of religion are not
carried out in the life as they should be.
God would have us avail ourselves of every means of cultivating
and strengthening our intellectual powers. We were created for a
higher, nobler existence than the life that now is. This time is one of
preparation for the future, immortal life. Where can be found grander