A Fine Passage by H.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 16, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 23.

A Fine Passage

By H.

ONE incentive to Bible-reading is to look for beautiful passages. It is not the best incentive, but one which will develop and increase a love for the Bible. And it is not a search which is only occasionally rewarded with a gem of true beauty. The Old Testament records are dotted with bits of verse, oratory, description, and sentiment, worthy of place and rank with the so-called classics. Look for them, mark them, and dwell upon them. The Bible is the story of God’s dealings with His creatures, but those creatures were men, very human, and therefore just like the men of to-day. Jacob is an example. Follow his checkered life through. Tho it is filled with mistakes, he comes down to his death-bed loyal to his fathers and his God. His dying charge to his sons is touching:

“I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.” Gen. 49: 29-32.

Not in Egypt would the old patriarch sleep, but with his fathers in the land of promise, with Leah, the wife of his youth, the mother of his boys. O that every child of God to-day were so loyal to right! Then there would be fewer men and women asleep in a strange land, the land of sin, fewer following after the ways of the world, to the neglect of their own souls’ salvation and the salvation of their children. As did Jacob in the days of his strength would they wrestle and prevail. And as did Jacob would they come up to the hour of death loyal to God and right.