Divine Inspiration.

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God". 2 Timothy 3:16.

 Inspiration means 'breathing into'. 

Thus on the Day of Pentecost the disciples were all filled with the Holy Ghost and be­ gan to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. They spoke by inspiration. Similarly the Spirit moved the holy writers to speak and write and gave them the thoughts, and with the thoughts the words they were to utter. God operated with and through their minds and hands, and thus what they wrote was wholly the infallible Word of God.

However, the holy men of God who wrote and spoke were per­ mitted to retain their own individuality with all its marks and touches. The Holy Ghost filled the sacred writers in such manner as to let every one of them follow out his own line of investigation and to allow him to keep his own characteristic style. But though the Bible was written by a number of men; though we find in it a great variety as to form and contents; though the holy writers were shepherds, fishermen, physicians, priests, prophets, artisans, statesmen, generals, kings; men with a great diversity of culture, some writing prose and others poetry, — yet we note a most won­ derful harmony of the entire Scriptures. This points to one Intel­ ligence. “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” “They spoke not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.” This alone accounts for the fact that the Bible, though written by many, is strictly a unity.

The real Author of the Bible is God. The words of Holy Scripture are God’s own words. All that the Bible says is true. We may fully trust in all its historical and astronomical data as well as in all its prophecies, in the account given of the creation of the world as well as in all its records of heavenly things. In short, the whole Bible, from cover to cover, is true. God cannot err.

Prayer.

O Lord Jesus Christ, reign in us and rule over us and bring into complete captivity every thought to the obedience of Thee and Thy Word that we may be ready to believe all that the holy men of God spoke by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and increase in the knowledge of Thee, and be strengthened with all might, according to Thy glorious power, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of Thee, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of Thy fulness. We thank Thee from our inmost hearts for the precious gift of Thy inspired Word. Amen.

 HONEST AS A HUEGENOT - Preachers Cabinet

 "For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Hebrews 11:10

—Huguenot ladies in times of persecution hid their small Bibles in their high dressed hair. When the sanctuary at New Rochelle was built they carried bricks in their hands and mortar in their aprons. They . were doers of the Word. "Honest as a Huguenot" was a proverb in those days. In their poverty they walked to church ten miles or more, barefooted; then, washing their feet at a spring in the lower part of New York, they would put on shoes as they drew near their humble sanctuary. Some slept in their wagons Saturday night, having come from remote districts to enjoy the privilege of Sabbath worship and hearing God's Word.

 DAILY READINGS IN THE LIFE OF. CHRIST - J.R. Miller (1890)

February 6. The Nazareth Home

"And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." Matthew 2:23

In that little village, until ready for His public ministry, Jesus made His home. It is a sweet thought that the Son of God dwelt for so many years in a home on earth. His pure and sinless life opened out there — as a bud opens into a lovely rose, pouring fragrance over all the lowly place.

The study of the childhood and the youth of Jesus, even from the few fragmentary glimpses of those years given us in the gospel, ought to prove an inspiration to every child and young person. No doubt, we wish that we could know more of that sweet and blessed home-life; but the little we are told about it is enough — or God's Spirit would have given us more of the story.

We know there was no sin in Jesus — and we can think of His gentleness, His obedience, His love, His unselfishness, and of all His other graces and beauties of character. He was a natural child, glad, joyous, interested in beautiful things, studious, earnest without being precocious or morbidly religious. He was such a boy as God loves, and as He would have every other boy strive to be.

We have one glimpse of Him at twelve, when He began to think of His relation to the heavenly Father; yet we must note the fact that He went back to Nazareth and resumed His place of filial duty, staying there for eighteen years longer. The Father's business on which He entered at twelve was not preaching and working miracles and going about doing good in a public manner — but for the time remaining at home, a dutiful child, a glad, helpful youth and an industrious, growing man.

Some young men chafe under the providence that keeps them so many years in a quiet, obscure home — where they can do only plain, common duty. But if Jesus found His Nazareth home a wide enough sphere for His blessed life, surely we should not think any home too narrow for our little lives to grow in.

 

 BLI NDNESS.

1 Timothy 6:20  "Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called."

—Godless science, says Coley, reads Nature only as Milton's daughters did Hebrew—rightly syllabling the sentences, but utterly ignprant of the meaning. Said Douglas Jerrold, "I knew a man who could speak five-and-twenty languages, and he never said anything worth hearing in any of them." So, until the moral nature is open to truth, a man is blind to the real beauty and significance of the facts acquired.