BIBLE TEACHING
‘Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.’
The value of Bible teaching depends upon the teacher. And, if this be so, there are two qualities we must expect and require of those who teach it.
I. The quality of reverence.—The teacher must impress the child with the conviction that when he comes to the Bible lesson he is entering holy ground. His words, his method, his very manner must suggest to the child the humility which is due to a sacred Presence. To teach, even to read, the Bible in a tone of flippancy, carelessness, or indifference, is not only to teach badly; it is to give the child from the very first an entirely wrong conception of the place which the Bible holds among the books of the world.
II. We must expect in the teacher the quality of faith.—The presence or absence of some faith in the message which the Bible brings is involved in every act of teaching. The way in which the teacher reads the Bible or allows it to be read, the very selections which he makes of the passages which are to be studied, the explanations which he gives, in themselves, and in the very tone in which they are given, reveal inevitably to the quick insight of the child whether or not the teacher speaks from a heart of faith or a heart of indifference or unbelief. Whatever faith a man has he must communicate it to his pupils through the teaching of the Bible. And we Christians cannot be content merely that a man should give the best faith that he has; we must ask for our children that the faith he gives is that faith which is the very essence of the meaning of the Holy Scriptures—faith in Christ Jesus, the Supreme Personality, God and Man. He is the Light which illuminates and gives value to every portion of the Bible. It is in Him that its history culminates; it is towards Him that its prophecies point; it is of Him that the Apostles speak and write; and therefore to teach the Bible from any other point of view than faith in the supremacy of the revelation given in Christ Jesus is to give a wrong conception of the whole meaning and character of the Bible itself. Nay, may we not go further and say that it is to give a wrong conception of the character of our Christian religion?
III. Our plea is for the honour of our Bible.—This nation is specially entrusted by the providence of God with the care of the Bible. At its very start, in the early days which seem so far remote, its typical King Alfred laid the foundations of its life by giving it, with the one hand, its body of laws, and with the other hand his translation of the Bible text; and still, at the beginning of the twentieth century, when at the Coronation our nation renewed its covenant with God through its representative the King, the Archbishop representing the Church, the guardian and keeper of Holy Writ, placed the Bible in the hands of the King with these words: ‘Our gracious King, we present you with this book, the most valuable thing that the world affords. Here is wisdom. Here is the Royal law. Here are the lively oracles of God.’ Let us be jealous with a great jealousy for this trust of the honour of the Bible which has been placed in our hands. We can only be faithful to the trust if we see to it that in the teaching of our schools the children learn to regard their Bibles as ‘sacred writings which are able to make them wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.’
—Archbishop Lang.
Illustration
‘If we are asked—What is, perhaps, the greatest factor that has kept the public and private life of our nation true to God and its best ideals? we should most of us, and with justice, reply, “The Bible.” The other day I saw the Bible—the volume which had been the chosen companion through all his life—of one who had done great service to his country and his Church. There in that volume, one felt as one looked upon it—marked, as it was, by the impress of every stage in the man’s history-there was the power, the friendship, which had sustained him in sorrow, uplifted him in joy, strengthened him in temptation, inspired him to labour. Similarly, all through the story of our English nation—since, at least, it first accepted its great destiny—the Bible has been the friend and companion of the people. It carries with it into the most distant parts of the globe the most sacred memories of home, so that in his Bible the traveller in the far seas feels that he is one with his parents in the cottage among the hills of the Highlands. The Bible by a thousand of the earliest and tenderest associations has woven a chain that binds every class in English life to the one Father.’