Memorizing Scripture

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 8, 1883

Memorizing Scripture.

It has been noticed often in recent years at the examinations in our theological seminaries, that very few of our candidates for the ministry are able to quote Scripture with any great facility. A distinguished professor of systematic theology in one of our leading seminaries, no great while ago, was much mortified that his class, though able to answer the most difficult questions on all other points, could not give accurately the Scripture texts in proof of even the most important doctrines of the faith. It is to be apprehended that this is a growing defect among the young people in all our congregations and Sabbath-schools. They are taught everything about the word of God, without learning much of the word of God itself. The defect is a serious one, and is poorly compensated for by any amount of brilliant declamation or discussion on the part of the teacher, which leaves the pupil ignorant, after all, of the Bible’s own inspired words and doctrines.

What is most needed is that the young mind, while the memory is still quick, strong, retentive, and unoccupied as to other things, shall be filled with an accurate and extended knowledge of the very words of Scripture. To what better use can the mind of a child be put than to the task, which most children find easy and pleasant, of committing to memory selected portions of the New Testament? In all literature there are no words so beautiful and so precious as the words of Jesus and his divinely inspired apostles. In all history and philosophy there are no truths so important for a young mind to learn, and so salutary in training it, as these sublime and beautiful lessons of the word of God. No theory of Christian education can ever be complete without them, nor can any young mind be properly developed in the absence of these divine lessons of love, of truth, of moral virtue, contained in the word of God.

Now all experience proves that the only true and effectual process by which this indispensable part of education can be fully secured, is found in the old-time method of committing the words of Scripture to memory. With all our new devices and appliances, there is absolutely nothing, in our judgment, which can take the place of actually memorizing the book of God. No young person is likely to know much about the doctrines and precepts of the Bible who does not commit its words to memory. There may, indeed, be some desultory acquaintance with its facts, but as to anything more, the knowledge will be, at best, superficial, uncertain, and defective. David could say, "I have hidden thy word in my heart that I might not sin against thee." What all students of the Bible, whether old or young, need to do, is to store the mind, the memory, the heart, with the very words which the Holy Ghost did inspire, and which God has accordingly spoken in the Scriptures.

Admirable in spirit and perfect in all disciplinary methods as are many of our best conducted Sunday-schools, with their beautiful libraries and self-devoted bands of teachers, we never enter one of them without feeling that there is a sad defect in that practical ignoring of the word of God, which has resulted from setting aside the requirement to have the weekly lesson committed to memory. The loss to the child for life by reason of this omission is incalculable. Our deliberate opinion, confirmed by experience and long observation, is that no one thing could be learned in the Sabbath-school, so important in all its influences and results, as this one thing which is now universally omitted. That the Scripture lesson could be easily committed to memory if required, is demonstrated not only by the fact that it was once universally so done, but by the other fact that in many schools, even now, the Shorter Catechism is so memorized—a thing immensely harder to the child than the memorizing of any equal portion of the word of God, except, perhaps, its genealogical tables.—Interior.