FIRST PRINCIPLES by L. A. Reed

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Feb 19, 1901

FIRST PRINCIPLES

By L. A. Reed

There are advantages to be gained in studying the Bible as literature, which can not be well secured in any other way.

But what is real literary study, and to what does it lead? If we can ascertain some of the principles underlying general literature and its study, it may be that we shall be able to draw some helpful conclusions relative to Biblical literature and its study.

Let us seek for simple, self-evident truths, that need but to be stated in order to be seen; and from them and with them reach some measure of understanding in these things.

1. All literature is but the embodiment of thought to beings capable of thought; it is a bodying forth of mind to mind.

Biblical literature is the embodiment of God's thought; it is a bodying forth of God's mind to man's mind.

2. Literature, being then a transcript of mind, appealing to mind, and comprehensive to mind, must conform to the laws of mind, must contain the methods of thought.

And Biblical literature, being a transcript of the divine mind, conforms to the laws of the divine mind, contains the methods of God's thought.

3. He, then, who studies literature studies the thoughts, follows the laws, and learns the methods, of the mind of the author.

Accordingly, he who studies Biblical literature, studies the thought, follows the laws, learns the methods, of the divine mind.

In other words, restating this last: In the study of Biblical literature we are to learn what God thinks, how He thinks, and how He expresses His thought.

What more anybody could learn of God's mind I am at loss to know. Biblical literature bodies forth God's mind, and as that mind is infinite, there is infinite reason for studying Biblical literature. Such literature is of as much more value than the world's literature as God's mind is better, nobler, and greater than men's minds.

And if it is worth anything to me to study literature in order to know how weak fallible man thinks and expresses himself, of how much more value is it to me to know how God, the perfect, all-powerful, thinks and gives expression to His thought!

For His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts. Isa. 55:8, 9.

Let us believe this, and show it in our choice and study of literature.

L. A. REED.