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Education
Such study has vivifying power. The mind and heart acquire new
strength, new life.
This experience is the highest evidence of the divine authorship
of the Bible. We receive God’s word as food for the soul, through the
same evidence by which we receive bread as food for the body. Bread
supplies the need of our nature; we know by experience that it produces
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blood and bone and brain. Apply the same test to the Bible; when its
principles have actually become the elements of character, what has
been the result? what changes have been made in the life? “Old things
are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
2 Corinthians
5:17
. In its power, men and women have broken the chains of sinful
habit. They have renounced selfishness. The profane have become
reverent, the drunken sober, the profligate pure. Souls that have borne
the likeness of Satan have been transformed into the image of God.
This change is itself the miracle of miracles. A change wrought by
the word, it is one of the deepest mysteries of the word. We cannot
understand it; we can only believe, as declared by the Scriptures, it is
“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Colossians 1:27
.
A knowledge of this mystery furnishes a key to every other. It
opens to the soul the treasures of the universe, the possibilities of
infinite development.
And this development is gained through the constant unfolding to
us of the character of God—the glory and the mystery of the written
word. If it were possible for us to attain to a full understanding of God
and His word, there would be for us no further discovery of truth, no
greater knowledge, no further development. God would cease to be
supreme, and man would cease to advance. Thank God, it is not so.
Since God is infinite, and in Him are all the treasures of wisdom, we
may to all eternity be ever searching, ever learning, yet never exhaust
the riches of His wisdom, His goodness, or His power.
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