Our Reading by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 8, 1872

Our Reading.

By Jos. Clarke

It is surprising to witness the effect of a course of reading upon a cultivated mind. How it molds the character and shapes the destiny. How it ennobles and elevates, or sinks and degrades.

The young man who wishes to become acquainted with a profession, pursues a course of reading suited to his purpose, and soon becomes an adept in the art he has chosen, and forms a love for the same, often bordering upon enthusiasm. The man of the world reads the current news of the day. If he is a politician, he selects those periodicals most to his fancy, and soon he is posted upon his favorite topic. The merchant pores over the market reports; the farmer watches with interest the reports of the weather, and the prospects of the coming harvests, &c.; the mere lover of amusement reads with intense interest the last and latest romance. And so on, in endless variety, all classes are fed mentally, and character is formed.

The mind is turned in any direction you please, by a course of reading, conversation, and study. Why? Because it is thus furnished with material for thought and meditation, and thus thought is worked up into character.

You may talk of practicing medicine for your whole natural life-time, yet if you neglect reading upon that subject you will never become a physician in any sense worthy of the name. You may pursue the profession of law without the requisite reading, and all your talk will end in failure. So of all professions. To love and understand them, you must read and keep up with the times, or you will end in disgrace.

Applying this principle to those who are pursuing a Christian life, we may see why so few arrive at perfection; why we are so barren (some of us) in the work of the Lord. This is why the right word, in the right place, and in the right spirit, is so often wanting. We neglect our Bibles and other good books. The last newspaper must be looked over, at least; and we become greatly interested in the current news, and our time flies rapidly away, and business next calls, before the Bible is consulted.

Alas! the Bible, if not neglected wholly, is consigned to a secondary place, or placed after the late paper, and soon spiritual decay comes on, and perhaps we get far, far away from God before we are aware, and then God hides his countenance and his comforts from us, and we become stupid and dull in his service. Apathy and indifference follow; and unless our course is arrested, we should soon fall into hopeless apostasy.

But we feel our loss. A void, a painful sorrow, eats out our daily portion of comfort, and the world fails to satisfy the longings of the soul for that nourishment the word of God has afforded us in our past experience; and we turn away from the literature of the day, and again in earnest seek from the sacred page the happiness the world is powerless to give. A light springs up in the soul, and hope once more buoys up the sinking spirits; and we say in our hearts, There is no joy so satisfying as the joy of the Christian, no hope so full of confidence, no prospects so sure of realization, as those of the Bible reader who is wholly committed to the study of this precious volume.

It is probable that no one dares to hope in Christ for a moment, who wholly neglects the Bible; but there is such a thing as reading it daily, yet never reading it aright; and this is equivalent to neglect, just in that degree it is allowed to pass unheeded by. The Bible may be read so neglectfully, so carelessly, so indifferently, as to rather harden the heart against the important and purifying influences it suggests and enforces. How the Bible should be read, is alluded to in Ps. 119:18: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” This is the work of God’s Spirit, to so prepare the heart of man, that the sense of the Holy Scripture may be taken, and the character of the reader so enlightened as to be formed anew upon the principles thus inculcated. This divine illumination is what the apostle John calls the “anointing” (1 John 2:27) which “teacheth you of all things;” and it is spoken of in Luke 24:32, when the disciples spoke to each other of the conversation on the way to Emmaus. “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?” Again in verse 45: “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.”

The cold critic who only reads for information, or for means of caviling at the doctrines of the Bible, wholly fails to reap the harvest the word of God affords to him who reads aright. So of the reader who only for form reads the sacred volume, or he who for diversion reads God’s word. But let all continue to read; for many a caviler, many a cold critic, many a formalist, has been brought to the foot of the cross by reading the Bible. As he read, perhaps with careless or profane purpose, the light from Heaven, although unsought, came gently or suddenly down into the heart and took possession.

Ah! dear reader, that is the kind of possession we will seek; that as we read, God’s Spirit may fill us with light and understanding, and joy and peace. Then we can meditate joyfully and profitably; for we have sublime and noble subjects of thought.

Let us read the Bible as the devoted Ezra did, who was skilled in the law; as Daniel did, make it our business, our profession, our joy, to understand the times, and events, so as to make them practical, so as to daily, hourly, reap the rich fruit, the clusters of Engedi. Says Christ, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Delicious, sweet beyond expression, are the words of Holy Writ, when properly understood and appreciated as herein described. Jos. Clarke.