Never be afraid of your Bibles. BA175

Old-fashioned believers could give you chapter and verse for what they believed; but
how few of such remain! GF45

If you wish to know God you must know his word; if you wish to perceive his power
you must see how he worketh by his word; if you wish to know his purpose before it
is actually brought to pass you can only discover it by his word. 1607.377

Now, mark this: by this shall you know whether you are a child of God, or not; by the
respect that you have to your Father’s Word. If you have small respect for that Word,
the evidences of a bastard are upon you. 1880.40

To me the Bible is not God, but it is God’s voice, and I do not hear it without awe. 2010.114

It is not the book that is to be altered: our hearts want altering. 2055.655

These words come from him who can make no mistake, and who can have no wish to
deceive his creatures. If I did not believe in the infallibility of the Book, I would
rather be without it. If I am to judge the Book, it is no judge of me. 2084.257

The Bible never gives unrenewed human nature a good word, nor does it deserve it.
2129.88

I am perfectly satisfied myself to believe what he writes to me; and if it be so written
in his Book, it seems to me to be quite as true and sure as if he had actually come
from heaven, and had talked with me, or had appeared to me in the visions of the
night. 2183.15

Oh, to have “the word of Christ” always dwelling inside of us;—in the memory, never
forgotten; in the heart, always loved; in the understanding, really grasped; with all
the powers and passions of the mind fully submitted to its control! 2679.279

I have heard of two infidels, one of whom said to his fellow, “If you had to go to jail for
twelve months, and could only have one book, what book would you choose?” He was
very surprised when his companion said, “Oh, I should take the Bible!” The first one
said, “But you do not believe in it; I wonder that you should choose that.” “Oh! but,”
rejoined his friend, “it is no end of a book.” His record is true, it is “no end of a book.” 2916.6

Do you know what it is to have a text leap out of the Scriptures upon you, and carry
you away? This special energy and flash of truth is always memorable. How often
have the waves of this sea of truth been phosphorescent before my eyes—a sea of
glass mingled with fire, of which the spray has dashed over me and set my soul on
flame! 3184.27

The devil himself cannot invent a temptation which is not met in these pages; and all
the devils in hell together, if they were to hold parliament, and to call in the aid of all
bad men, could not invent a device which is not met by this matchless library of
truth. 2084.262

Always stand to it that your creed must bend to the Bible, and not the Bible to your
creed, and dare to be a little inconsistent with yourselves, if need be, sooner than be
inconsistent with God’s revealed truth. WCo36

I speak most plainly here, no additional revelation is to be expected, because the book
of God is ended, the revelation of God is finished, and he that adds to the sacred book
is cursed. 1428.450

I have little confidence in those persons who speak of having received direct revelations
from the Lord, as though he appeared otherwise than by and through the gospel. His word
is so full, so perfect, that for God to make any fresh revelation to you or me is quite
needless. To do so would be to put a dishonour upon the perfection of that word. 3336.21

There is a special curse pronounced upon any who shall add to this book; and you may
rest assured that the Holy Spirit will not so transgress in a matter which he has
peremptorily forbidden all his children to commit. 3353.224

I feel vexed with the fellow who chopped the Bible up into chapters; I forget his name
just now, and I am sure it is not worth recollecting. 1127.466

You are well aware, dear friends, that the division into chapters has only been made for
convenience’ sake, and is not a matter of inspired arrangement. I may add that it has been clumsily made, and not with careful thoughtfulness, but as roughly as if a woodman had taken an axe and chopped the book to pieces in a hurry. 1917.469

Did you ever notice how the Bible ends? It closes with that happiest of conclusions, marriage and happiness. 1883.65

You have lost a dear child. Was there not a word of the Lord to cheer you? You lost your property: was there not a passage in the Scriptures to meet the disaster? You have been slandered: was there not a word to console you? You were very sick, and withal depressed; had not the Lord provided a comfort for you in that case? I will not multiply questions: the fact is that you never were high, but the Word of the Lord was up with you; and you never were low, but what the Scripture was down with you. 2084.261

Have any of you known or heard of such a thing as conversion wrought by any other doctrine than that which is in the Word? I should like to have a catalogue of conversions wrought by modern theology. GF14

If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons; even if we paraphrase it into our own words, it must still be his Word upon which we place our reliance, for the only power which will bless men lies in that. It is God’s Word that saves souls not our comment upon it, however correct that comment may be. 2246.114

Do you think we all honestly want to know our errors? Are there not chapters of the Bible which we do not like to read? If there are—if any text has a quarrel with you, quarrel with yourself; but yield wholly to the word of God. 1274.44

If there is any verse that you would like left out of the Bible, that is the verse that ought to stick to you, like a blister, until you really attend to its teaching. 2337.585

This Bible is a wonderful talking-book; there is a great mass of blessed talk in this precious volume. It has told me a great many of my faults; it would tell you yours if you would let it.
2406.150

If you hear a man rail at the Bible, you can usually conclude that he never reads it. 197.258

It argues a high excess of impiety, when a man shall say that that which came from God is foolish. 407.477

Can you believe that your Maker sat down to write an unimportant book, or that the Holy Ghost inspired men of old to write that which, if not nonsense, is certainly of no importance whatever? Come, bow your head and repent of this your grave offence, for an offence it is, since it is not within the compass of any modest reason to imagine that any word which God has written can be foolish, or unimportant, or unworthy to be understood. 407.477

Reverence is gone, and self-sufficience reigns supreme. They criticize God’s word. Any fool can do that, but only a fool will do it. 1893.189

He that reads his Bible to find fault with it will soon discover that the Bible finds fault with him. 2129.88

One of these days you will want a microscope to find a grain of evangelical doctrine in a dozen sermons. 2089.323

An old man once said, “For a long period I puzzled myself about the difficulties of Scripture, until at last I came to the resolution that reading the Bible was like eating fish. When I find a difficulty I lay it aside, and call it a bone. Why should I choke on the bone when there is so much nutritious meat for me? Some day, perhaps, I may find that even the bone may afford me nourishment.” FA15

How dare you, because God reveals to you two things, which two things you cannot make square with one another—how dare you charge either the one or the other with being false? If I believe God, I am not only to believe what I can understand, but what I cannot understand; and if there were a revelation which I could comprehend and sum up as I may count five upon my fingers, I should be sure it did not come from God. But if it has some depths vastly too deep for me—some knots which I cannot untie—some mysteries which I cannot solve—I receive it with the greater confidence, because it now gives me swimming-room for my faith, and my soul bathes herself in the great sea of God’s wisdom, praying, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” 553.80

Rise above the babyhood which cannot believe two doctrines until it sees the connecting link. Have you not two eyes, man? Must you needs put one of them out in order to see clearly? 979.137

We are never prepared for the sake of one truth to deny another, and we do as heartily believe in free agency as we do in predestination. It has never been our custom to murder one truth in order to make room for another. There is room enough for two truths in the mind of the man who is willing to become as a little child. Yea, there is room in a teachable heart for fifty truths to live without contention. 1339.99

The right way to take medicine of such a kind is to swallow it at once. In the same way there are some things in the Word of God which are undoubtedly true which must be swallowed at once by an effort of faith, and must not be chewed by perpetual questioning. 1516.51

I have often told you, my dear friends, that I view the difficulties of Holy Scripture as so many prayer-stools upon which I kneel and worship the glorious Lord. What we cannot comprehend by our understandings we apprehend by our affections. 2004.40

Do we need to understand everything? Are we to be all brain, and no heart? What should we be the better if we did understand all mysteries? I believe God. I bow before his Word. Is not this better for us than the conceit of knowing and understanding? We are as yet mere children. We know in part. 2004.46

If my compass always points to the North, I know how to use it; but if it veers to other points of the compass, and I am to judge out of my own mind whether it is right or not, I am as well without the thing as with it. If my Bible is right always, it will lead me right; and as I believe it is so, I shall follow it. BA17

If your creed and Scripture do not agree, cut your creed to pieces, but make it agree with this book. If there be anything in the church to which you belong which is contrary to the inspired word, leave that church. To the law and to the testimony here is the infallible chart of faith, follow it closely, and if you do, you need have no fear of coming short, for this book cannot lead you astray. 1177.335

Personally, when I have been in trouble, I have read the Bible until a text has seemed to stand out of the Book, and salute me, saying, “I was written specially for you.” 2084.261

Rest assured that you never will be in a labyrinth so complicated that this book, blessed of the Spirit, will not help you through. 2084.262

Strange that there should be men so vile as to use the pen-knife of Jehoiakim, to cut passages of the Word, because they are unpalatable. Oh ye who dislike certain portions of the Holy Writ, rest assured that your taste is corrupt, and that God will not stay for your little opinion. Your dislike is the very reason God wrote it, because you ought not to be suited; you have no right to be pleased. God wrote what you do not like; he wrote the truth. 15.112

Use the hammer of diligence, and let the knee of prayer be exercised, and there is not a stony doctrine in revelation which is useful for you to understand, which will not fly into shivers under the exercise of prayer and faith. You may force your way through anything with the leverage of prayer. Thoughts and reasonings are like the steel wedges which give a hold upon truth; but prayer is the lever, the prise which forces open the iron chest of sacred mystery, that we may get the treasure hidden within. ME105

The best interpreter of a book is generally the man who wrote it. The Holy Ghost wrote the Scriptures. Go to him to get their meaning, and you will not be misled. 1079.616

We will not have it that God, in his Holy Book, makes mistakes about matters of history, or of science, any more than he does upon the great truths of salvation. If the Lord be God, he must be infallible; and if he can be described as in error in the little respects of human history and science, he cannot be trusted in the greater matters. 2195.159

I do not believe that, from one cover to the other, there is any mistake in it of any sort whatever, either upon natural or physical science, or upon history or anything whatever. I am prepared to believe whatever it says, and to take it believing it to be the Word of God; for if it is not all true, it is not worth one solitary penny to me. It may be to the man who is so wise that he can pick out the true from the false; but I am such a fool that I could not do that. If I do not have a guide there that is infallible, I would as soon guide myself, for I shall have to do so after all; I shall have to be correcting the blunders of my guide perpetually, but I am not qualified to do that, and so I am worse off than if I had not any guide at all. Sit thou down, Reason, and let Faith rise up. 2328.475

It is not possible for fallible men to write infallible books. Somehow or other, we either say more than is true or less than is true; the most skilful writer does not always keep along that hair line of truth, which is more difficult to tread than a razor’s edge. But Scripture never errs. Here is the bullion gold without a single particle of alloy. 3090.206

Inspiration and speculation cannot long abide in peace. Compromise there can be none. DG25

Our reverence for the great Author of Scripture should forbid all mauling of his words. No alteration of Scripture can by any possibility be an improvement. Believers in verbal inspiration should be studiously careful to be verbally correct. GF23

We care little for any theory of inspiration: in fact, we have none. To us the plenary verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture is a fact, and not hypothesis. It is a pity to theorize upon a subject which is deeply mysterious, and makes a demand upon faith rather than fancy. GF27

If you adopt theories which pare off a portion here, and deny authority to a passage there, you will at last have no inspiration left, worthy of the name. GF27

God forbid that we should be ensnared by those various interpretations of the modus of inspiration, which amount to little more than frittering it away. The book is a divine production; it is perfect, and is the last court of appeal—“the judge which ends the strife.” 2LS41

The coin of inspiration comes from the mint of infallibility. 1779.254

You must accept the revelation as infallible, or you cannot unquestioningly believe in the God therein revealed. If you once give up inspiration, the foundations are removed, and all building is laborious trifling. How are the promises the support of faith if they are themselves questionable? 1963.287

It is not the thoughts of the prophet which have been inspired of God so much as their words; for frequently they were moved to speak prophecies which were quite beyond their own understanding: in fact, my brethren, are not all the great mysteries of the faith above human thought? 2009.98

If we are left in doubt as to which part is inspired and which is not, we are as badly off as if we had no Bible at all. I hold no theory of inspiration; I accept the inspiration of the Scriptures as a fact. 2013.152

We believe in plenary verbal inspiration, with all its difficulties, for there are not half as many difficulties in that doctrine as there are in any other kind of inspiration that men may imagine. 2604.21

There are many nowadays who refuse to believe in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, but I fail to see how the sense of Scripture can be inspired if the words in which that sense is expressed are not also inspired. I believe that the very words, in the original Hebrew and Greek, were revealed from heaven; and notwithstanding every objection that can be brought from any quarter, I have never been able to get away from the firm belief that, if I give up my Master’s words, I give up his thoughts also. 3246.187

A divine originality runs through it all; marks of the divine mind abound in every portion, and the Holy Spirit still inspires it all, and breathes it into the hearts of believing readers. 3303.242

Sometimes it has been said that if anybody doubts the inspiration of the four gospels, it would be a very pretty puzzle for him to try to write a fifth gospel which should have in it some new details that would be congruous to the rest, and that would fit in with the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament. 3396.112

In the Old Testament we get the facts; in the New Testament we find the explanation of the facts. 1181.373

Dear friends, whenever you want to understand a text of Scripture, try to read the original. 2213.377

Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture. The locks of Scripture are only to be opened with the keys of Scripture; and there is no lock in the whole Bible, which God meant us to open, without a key to fit it somewhere in the Bible, and we are to search for it until we find it. 2633.363

Never make a figure run on four legs when it was only meant to go on two. Some people, when they get hold of a metaphor, want to make it have as many feet as a centipede, and they seek to draw all sorts of parallels which were never intended to be drawn. 2659.39

I have always found that the meaning of a text can be better learned by prayer than in any other way. Of course, we must consult lexicons and commentaries to see the literal meaning of the words, and their relation to one another; but when we have done all that, we shall still find that our greatest help will come from prayer. 3178.5

We never need enlarge a topic beyond what Scripture says. Indeed, there is often as much teaching in a type’s stopping short as there is in its going on. 3400.161

We should always read Scripture in this light; we should consider the word to be as a mirror into which Christ looks down from heaven; and then we, looking into it, see His face reflected as in a glass—darkly, it is true, but still in such a way as to be a blessed preparation for seeing Him as we shall see Him face to face. ME325

How much that can be said of the Lord Jesus may also be said of the inspired volume! How closely are these two allied! How certainly do those who despise the one reject the other! How intimately are the Word made flesh, and the Word uttered by inspired men, joined together! 2010.109

What God has joined together these modern thinkers wilfully put asunder, and separate the Revealer from his own revelation. 2010.110

Men talk about building upon Christ, and not upon the Scriptures; but they know not what they say; for our Lord continually established his own claims by appealing to Moses and the prophets. They would be Christo-centric, they say: I only wish they would. But if they take Christ for a centre, they will inevitably have the Scriptures for a centre too; and these men neither want the one nor the other. 2212.364

Now, sinner, if thou wouldst be obedient to Christ’s word, Christ’s word says, “He that believeth, and is immersed, shall be saved.” Mark, I have translated the word. King James would not have it translated. 140.267

The word of God to them might as well be the word of King James the First, whose name dishonours our authorised version, for they have never felt that its truths proceed immediately from the throne of God, and bear the sign-manual of the King of kings. 980.146

The Word of God is quite sufficient to interest and bless the souls of men throughout all time; but novelties soon fail. GF12

Large tomes we have in our library which it takes all our strength to lift, all upon Holy Scripture; myriads upon myriads of smaller volumes, tens of thousands of every shape and size, all written upon the Bible; and I have thought that the very suggestiveness of Scripture, the supernatural suggestiveness of Holy Writ, may be in itself a proof of its divine wisdom, since no man has ever been able to write a book which could have so many commentators and so many writers upon its text as the Bible has received, by so much as one millionth part. 132.205

I say again that our words come and go: as the trees of the forest multiply their leaves only to cast them off as withered things, so the thoughts and theories of men are but for the season, and then they fade and rot into nothingness. “The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever.” 2010.112

Some people like to read so many chapters every day. I would not dissuade them from the practice, but I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than I would, as it were, rinse my hand in several chapters. 1578.42

The Bible in the memory is better than the Bible in the book case. BA279

Be walking Bibles. 2540.507

There is dust enough on some of your Bibles to write “damnation” with your fingers. 15.112

Perhaps there is no book more neglected in these days than the Bible. I do verily believe there are more mouldy Bibles in this world than there are of any sort of neglected books. We have stillborn books in abundance; we have innumerable books which never see any circulation except the circulation of the butter shop, but we have no book that is so much bought, and then so speedily laid aside, and so little used, as the Bible. 88.273

But we must search the word, for unread Bibles are evidences against rebels, and are unbecoming in believers. 1118.355

I have many an old book in my library in which there have been book-worms, and I have sometimes amused myself with tracing a worm. I do not know how he gets to the volume originally, but being there he eats his way into it. He bores a hole in a direct line, and sometimes I find that he dies before he gets half-way through the tome. Now and then a worm has eaten his way right through from one wooden cover to another; yes, and through the cover also. This was a most successful bookworm. Few of us can eat our way quite so far. I am one of the book-worms that have not got half-way into my Bible yet; but I am eating my way as fast as I can. BA20

Scripture reading is our spiritual meal-time. WCo110

Dear friends, beware of reading the Bible for other people. Get your own text—your own morsel of marrow and fatness—out of Scripture; and do not be satisfied to be sermon-making or lesson-making for your class in the Sunday-school. Feed on the word yourselves, or else your own vineyards will not be kept. 990.273

The word that cometh out of Christ’s mouth is the daily manna of our heavenly life, and it behooves every Christian, however feeble or however strong, to keep the word of God with all his might against all comers, since it is his life. 1814.680

It was God’s word that made us; is it any wonder that his word should sustain us? 2340.613

How instructive to us is this great truth that the Incarnate Word lived on the Inspired Word! It was food to him, as it is to us; and, brothers and sisters, if Christ thus lived upon the Word of God, should not you and I do the same? He, in some respects, did not need this book as much as we do. The Spirit of God rested upon him without measure, yet he loved the Scripture, and he went to it, and studied it, and used its expressions continually. 2644.495

Precious Book! I would say of thee what David said of Goliath’s sword, “There is none like that; give it me.” Thou art marrow and fatness, honey, wines on the lees well refined; yea, manna of angels, and water from the Rock Christ Jesus. Of all soul-medicines thou art the most potent; of all mental dainties thou art the sweetest; and of all spiritual food thou art the most sustaining. 3303.242

It is better to preach five words of God’s Word than five million words of man’s wisdom. Men’s words may seem to be the wiser and the more attractive, but there is no heavenly life in them. TN235

I confess that the words of Scripture thrill my soul as nothing else ever can; they bear me aloft or dash me down, they tear me in pieces or they build me up after an unrivalled fashion. The words of God have more power over me than ever David’s fingers had over his harp strings. Is it not so with you? 1431.487

The Bible is a Book of precious promises; all the way we have to travel, they seem to be like a series of stepping-stones across the stream of time, and we may march from one promise to another, and never wet our feet all the way from earth to heaven, if we do but know how to keep our eyes open, and to find the right promise to step upon. 2657.17

If we doubt God’s Word about one thing, we shall have small confidence in it upon another thing. Sincere faith in God must treat all God’s Word alike; for the faith which accepts one word of God and rejects another is evidently not faith in God, but faith in our own judgment, faith in our own taste. 2147.303

When you shall come before him, he shall say, “Did you read my Bible?” “No.” “I wrote you a letter of mercy; did you read it?” “No.” “Rebel! I have sent thee a letter inviting thee to me: didst thou ever read it?” “Lord I never broke the seal; I kept it shut up.” “Wretch!” says God, “then thou deservest hell, if I sent thee a loving epistle and thou wouldst not even break the seal: what shall I do unto thee?” 15.112

The fact is, we sometimes read Scripture, thinking of what it ought to say, rather than what it does say. 391.346

Read the Bible in a common-sense way. Do not read it on your knees, as I have known some people do, it is an awkward posture: get into an easy chair: read it comfortably. Pray after you have read it as much as you like, but do not make a penance of what ought to be a pleasure. 609.33

True Bible-readers and Bible-searchers never find it wearisome. They like it least who know it least, and they love it most who read it most. They find it newest who have known it longest, and they find the pasture to be the richest whose souls have been the longest fed upon it. When one of our missionaries had to read a certain Book of the Old Testament through a hundred times while he was translating it, he said that he certainly enjoyed the hundredth time of reading it more than he did the first, for he understood it better, and it seemed to him to be fuller and fresher the more familiar he became with it. 3246.188

A certain sceptical writer, when in prison, was visited by a Christian man, who wished him well, but he refused to hear a word about religion. Seeing a Bible in the hand of his visitor, he made this remark, “You do not expect me to believe in that book, do you? Why, if that book is true, I am lost for ever.” Just so. Therein lies the reason for half the infidelity in the world, and all the infidelity in our congregations. 2013.155

Lord Bacon tells of a certain bishop who used to bathe regularly twice every day, and on being asked why he bathed thus often, replied, “Because I cannot conveniently do it three times.” If those who love the Scriptures were asked why they read the Bible so often, they might honestly reply, “because we cannot find time to read it oftener.” The appetite for the Word grows on that which it feeds on. We would say with Thomas à Kempis, “I would always be in a nook with a book.” FA211

I would quote John Bunyan as an instance of what I mean. Read everything of his, and you will see that it is almost like reading the Bible itself. He had studied our Authorized Version, which will never be bettered, as I judge, till Christ shall come; he had read it till his very soul was saturated with Scripture; and, though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress—that sweetest of all prose poems—without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man is a living Bible!” Prick him anywhere; his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. 2644.495

Holy Scripture requires searching—much of it can only be learned by careful study. ME323

Bible study is the metal that makes a Christian; this is the strong meat on which
holy men are nourished; this is that which makes the bone and sinew of men who
keep God’s way in defiance of every adversary. 1526.155

Let us quote the words as they stand in the best possible translation, and it will be
better still if we know the original, and can tell if our version fails to give the sense. GF23

We are fully assured that our own old English version of the Scriptures is sufficient
for plain men for all purposes of life, salvation, and godliness. GF29

There are some passages in the present translation that are so dark, that no man can
understand them without an explanation. 153.369

When our version is incorrect, then it is a duty to present the proper rendering, if one
be able to find it out; but to give translations out of our whimsied heads, without
having been taught in the original tongue, is impertinence indeed. 509.266

Not that I would readily find fault with our version at any time, for it is, as a rule,
marvellously correct and singularly forcible, and I am afraid when the new
translation of the Bible comes out it will be better to light our fires with it than to
give up the old version, which is so dear to us and so interwoven into all our religious
life. 1337.74

Beyond all other Christians we are concerned in this, seeing we have no other sacred
book; we have no prayer book or binding creed, or authoritative minutes of
conference; we have nothing but the Bible; and we would have that as pure as ever
we can get it. By the best and most honest scholarship that can be found we desire
that the common version may be purged of every blunder of transcribers, or addition
of human ignorance, or human knowledge, that so the word of God may come to us as
it came from his own hand. 1604.343

The men are not yet born who will give us a better rendering either of the Old or the
New Testament than is to be found in our old English Bibles, and it is my belief that
they never will be born. 1786.338

I would not even change the expression of our translation in many a place: not that I
am bound by a translation, for God’s original is that which we accept as infallible; but
yet there are translations which are evidently accurate, for the Lord’s own Spirit has
made them unutterably dear to his saints. 1813.668

You cannot change Holy Scripture. You may arrive more and more accurately at the
original text; but for all practical purposes the text we have is correct enough, and
our old Authorized Version is a sound one. 1890.155

I do not hesitate to say that I believe that there is no mistake whatever in the
original Holy Scriptures from beginning to end. There may be, and there are,
mistakes of translation; for translators are not inspired; but even the historical facts
are correct. 2084.257

Mistakes of translation there may be, for translators are men; but mistakes of the
original Word there never can be, for the God who spoke it is infallible, and so is
every word he speaks, and in that confidence we find delightful rest. 2305.195

I do not say that either of our English versions is inspired, for there are mistakes in
the translation; but if we could get at the original text, just as it was first written, I
am not afraid to say that every jot or tittle—every cross of a t or every dot of an
i—was infallibly inspired by God the Holy Ghost. 2577.318

The misreadings of the copies are really so inconsiderable, and are so happily
corrected by other manuscripts, that our Bible is a marvel in literature for the
comparative ease with which the correct text is discoverable. 3303.244

Go to Christ with prayer yourself, go to God with repentance yourself, and see
whether he does not pardon you, and bless you, and change you, and make a new
creature of you; and when he has done that, believe me, you will never again doubt
whether the Bible is true, for when it shall have saved you from your fears, rescued
you from your sins, and brought you into life, and light, and liberty, you will be
absolutely certain that it is true, because you have tried and tested it yourself. 2408.173

We must settle in our minds that there is a God, that the Word of God must certainly
be true, absolutely infallible, and beyond all question. 3145.242

It is an ill sign when a man dares not look a Scripture in the face, and an evidence of
brazen impudence when he tries to make it mean something less condemnatory of his
sins, and endeavours to prove it to be less sweeping in its demands. TD50:17

Some want to shape the Scriptures to their creed, and they get a very nice square
creed too, and trim the Bible most dexterously: it is wonderful how they do it, but I
would rather have a crooked creed and a straight Bible, than I would try to twist the
Bible round to suit what I believe. 1210.6

There can never be any justification for twisting Scripture, in order to wrench it out
of an enemy’s hand. 1436.542

There are some commentaries that seem to have been written on the principle of
twisting the text into the shape that the commentator approved, and I am afraid we
have all had a share in attempts to make the Word of God say what we think it ought
to have said according to our system of divinity. 3090.207

Do not throw away the best for the sake of getting something that may be newer, but
that must be far inferior. I hold one single sentence out of God’s word to be of more
certainty, and of more power, than all the discoveries of all the learned men of all the
ages. 1814.680

The words of this book are proved to be the words of God, because they have an
infinite adaptation to the varied minds which the Lord has made. 2084.261

I would rather speak five words out of this book than fifty thousand words of the
philosophers. 2246.114

And I say, and I am sure that many of you will say with me, these speeches of God,
these revealings of God which I find in these two books of the Old and New
Testaments, are my heritage. I rejoice to accept them as the estate of my mind, the
treasure of my thought, the mint of the heavenly realm, the mine from which I can
explore fresh veins of thought as long as I live, claiming all as my heritage for ever. 2415.254

This kind of experience should teach us the preciousness of the Word of God as a
whole so that we would not part with a single letter of it, and would not give up even
the dot of an i or the cross of a t. I always deprecate the spirit which tries to tamper
with the Word of God. I admire those who have sufficient knowledge of the ancient
manuscripts of the Scriptures to tell us, as nearly as they can ascertain them, what
were the original Hebrew and Greek words; but I deeply deplore that kind of spirit
which, after the style of a destructive parrot, seeks to tear the Scriptures to pieces,
and to rob the children of God of their priceless possession. Why, even a solitary
divine precept is so precious that, if all the saints in the world were burnt at one
stake for the defence of it, it would be well worth the holocaust. 3248.207

We can scarcely calculate how much we owe to those “holy men of God” who, under
the Spirit’s guidance, planted this vineyard from which we are continually gathering
such rich clusters. Think too how much we are indebted, under God, to those who
were the means of preserving this record, and handing it down to us, often at the cost
of their own lives. Every page of the Bible is, as it were, bespattered with the blood of
the martyrs, yet we have not had to pay that price for it; we draw the life-giving
water out of wells that we did not dig; and eat the fruit of the sacred trees that we did
not plant. 3248.210

Idle words are in the speech of man, not in the writings of Jehovah. BA143

A precept of Scripture is like a lighthouse upon a quicksand or a rock; it quietly bids
the wise helmsman steer his vessel another way. The whole coast of life is guarded by
these protecting lights, and he who will take note of them may make safe
navigation; but remember, it is one thing for the Scripture to give warning, and
another for us to take it; and if we do not take warning, we cannot say, “By them is
Thy servant warned.” BA230

The saddest story of Holy Scripture is a beacon, and never a lure. 2084.257