 |
|
 |
||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||
|
|
||||
The Scripture Method
The Scripture method of imparting knowledge is not only the best, but unquestionably the most interesting. It doth not deliver its oracles after the cut and dried fashion of a creed, which states with abstract and chilling formality the opinions of those who publish it; but it reveals its ‘wonderful things’ in narratives of creation; of domestic troubles; of sin and murder; of violence; and apostasy; of physical convulsions; of loves (lawful and forbidden); of famines; pestilence and earthquakes; of invasions; massacres, sieges and sack of towns; religion, politics and superstition; of the foundation and overthrow of kingdoms, states and empires; of family histories in their minutest details; of personal adventure; of personalities, in accusations and vindication of character; etc, etc. Hence, while a creed is the driest and most repulsive elaboration of the ‘black art’; the Bible is the most interesting and readable book in the world. It is intelligible in all its doctrines; but it reveals them so as to make it incumbent on the reader to reason them out… the language of the Bible is, ‘Come, let us reason together,’ and ‘prove all things;’ hence ‘the deep things of God’ are addressed to faith, not implicit, but resulting from a devout examination of the wonderful details of this most extraordinary of all books.
J. Thomas, Herald of the Future Age, 1847, p. 122