We may if we please,
confine our study of Scripture to what is immediately edifying, skimming
lightly over all pages which do not serve a direct purpose of devotion, and
ignoring every difficulty which does not yield to the faculty of practical
insight, to the power of spiritual sympathy with the mind of the Spirit, which
the thoughtful Christian necessarily acquires in the habitual excessive of
bringing Scripture to bear on the daily needs of his own life. This use of Scripture is full of personal
profit, and raises no intellectual difficulties. But it does not do justice to the whole Word
of God. It cannot exhaust the whole mind
of the Spirit. It is limited for every
individual by the limitations of his own spiritual experience. Reading the Bible in this way, a man comes to
a very personal appreciation of so much of God's truth as is in immediate
contact with the range of his own life.
But he is sure to miss many truths which belong to another range of
experience, and to read into the inspired page things from his own experience
which involve human error. In this way
he becomes narrow, and full of prejudice, which prevent him from seeing that
the Bible is larger than his knowledge of it, and that other men whose needs
are different from his may be quite in the right in getting things out of the
Scripture which he does not know, does not need, and is inclined to call false
or dangerous.
William Robertson Smith
(Disclaimer: his stance in his writings on higher criticism is wrong)
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