p. 18 | Language of the Bible

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 20, 1856

Language of the Bible

DR. GUTHRIE makes the following remarks on the strong language of the Bible, touching the condition of the ungodly:

"There are terrors enough in the Bible to make a man's hair stand on end. Surely, were God but for one moment to let this world hear the weeping and wailing of the lost, that sound more terrible than Egypt's midnight cry, would rouse the student at his books, arrest the foot of the dancer in the hall, stop armies in the very fury of the fight, and, calling a sleeping world from their beds, would bend the most stubborn knees, and extort from all the one loud cry, Lord, save me, or I perish! Still it is not terror which is the mighty power of God. The gospel, like most medicines for the body, is of a compound nature; but, whatever else enters into its composition, its curative element is love. No man yet was ever driven to heaven; he must be drawn to it; and I wish to draw you. The gospel has terror in it, no doubt. But it is like our atmosphere—occasionally riven by the thunder, and illuminated by the fatal flash—it is, at times the path of the stealthy pestilence—charged with the element of destruction, and impregnated with the seeds of disease; but how much more is it not a great magazine of health filled with the most harmonious sounds, fragrant with the sweetest odors, hung with golden drapery, the pathway of sunbeams, the womb of showers, the feeder of flowing streams, full of God's goodness, and the fountain of all earth's life! And, just as in that atmosphere which God has wrapped round this world, there is much more food than famine, much more life than death, so in the Bible there is much more love than terror.

"The terror is not only subordinate to love, but subservient to it. God, indeed, tells us of hell, but it is to persuade us to go to heaven; and as a skillful painter fills the background of his picture with his darker colors, God puts in the smoke of torment and the black clouds of Sinai, to give brighter prominence to Jesus, the cross of Calvary, and his love to the chief of sinners. His voice of terror is like the scream of the mother bird when the hawk is in the sky. She alarms her brood that they may run and hide beneath her feathers; and as I believe that God had left that mother dumb, unless he had given her wings to cover her little ones, so I am sure that He

who is very pitiful, and has no pleasure in any creature's pain, had never turned our eyes to the horrible gulf unless for the voice that cries, Deliver from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom. We had never heard of sin had there been no Saviour; nor of hell had there been no heaven. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof; and never had Bible light been flashed before the eyes of the sleeping felon to wake him from his happy dream, but that he might see the smiling form of Mercy, and hear her, as she says with pointing finger, Behold I have set before thee an open door."