Some years ago a British editor wrote to the hundred reputedly greatest men in England, submitting this question: "If for any reason you were to spend a year absolutely alone, in a prison, for instance, and you could select from your library three volumes to be with you as your companion in your period of retirement, please inform us what those three books would be." In the answers that came from peers, jurists, statesmen, authors, manufacturers, men representing the successful life, ninety-eight of the hundred chose the Bible as one of these preferred volumes.
More recently the parallel question was asked throughout our country: "What ten books would you take with you if you were exiled on a desert island?" In a group of university professors, for example, some preferred Huckleberry Finn, The Psychology of Insanity, The White House Cook Book, and even The Arabian Nights to the Scriptures. On the other hand, when the readers of the Walther League Messenger, Lutheran young people's paper, were asked to designate the volumes they would include in this library for the marooned, although a total of 171 different books were suggested, every single list included the Bible.
These young people showed a superior thought. For there is within the covers of our Bible a divine uplifting force. When the psalmist (Ps. 119:9) proposes this age-old, yet ever-recurrent, question: "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" he answers by exalting the Bible. With one sweeping statement he sidetracks a long list of human remedies. He places no great store in scientific methods, he knows nothing of ethical self-culture. He estimates the full folly of directing us to fight the legions of lust with our own strength. We can find the path to clean living, he insists, by taking heed thereto according to the Word of God. The text-book on personal purity from which we are to learn the every-day lessons of chastity, the inspired writer reminds us, is the Bible.
It may appear as a flare-back to a discarded creed, this exaltation of the purifying power of the Bible in a day when much of modern thought regards the Scriptures with amused indifference. While the Bible is still the best seller, no book has ever been published against which the barbed spears of unbelief have been flung with greater vehemence.
Baldur von Shirach, youthful Nazi leader, who has been entrusted with the care of the 6,000,000 boys and girls in the Hitler Youth and the Federation of the German Girls, when interviewed in March, 1935, regarding his religious ideals and ambitions, first of all denied that he was interested in reintroducing the Wotan cult into Germany. He continued, however, by denouncing the Old Testament. "Let me say," he asserted, "that my attitude toward the Old Testament coincides with Goethe’s as laid down in his Dichtung und Wahrheit. I am frank to say that as leader of the youth I have some misgivings concerning certain portions of the Old Testament, portions in which unchaste and immoral things are told in a way that might prove dangerous to the youthful mind." Equally rabid are the pronouncements of the German Christian Party. This group attacks the Old Testament chiefly because of its Semitic background and seeks to substitute a "pure Aryan spirit" in the worship of the German people.
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that this hatred of the Old Testament is peculiarly German or specifically Nazi. It has long been championed in our own country. The Living Church, organ of the Episcopal High Church tendencies, refers to the song of Moses and Miriam as "a wild, barbaric folk-tale." A New York publishing house issues a volume entitled A Modern View of the Old Testament for high-school students in which Jacob is pictured as "a contemptible cheat," Samson as "a gigantic, sensual boor," David as "a daring bandit," and Amos as "a lumberjack from the country."
In 1934 a Lansdowne, Maryland, pastor of a Methodist Episcopal church desecrated an Easter service by hurling his gilt-edge Bible across the church auditorium with the challenge: "As I see it, then, the Bible is not the Word of God. The Bible is men's interpretation of the Word of God. Anything reduced to words is imperfect; for language itself is imperfect. ... As I look about me and see the institution we call the Church and the book we call the Bible used to restrict man's growth, mentally, morally, and spiritually, to create in him a prejudice against any new revelations of truth, or to enslave human beings in any manner, shape, or form, I feel like saying with all my heart, ... cursed be the Church and cursed be the Bible when used to enslave God's highest creation on earth, to enslave man created in the image of God!'" About the same time an Italian priest in Anticoli Corrado incited his parishioners to gather the Bibles which American missionaries had distributed and to burn them publicly in a flaming auto da fé.
Less brutal, but more insidious is the attack engineered by the high priests of our neo-paganism. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of a New York City Community Church, who baptized with rose petals, sneers: "Why should we be satisfied with the damaged goods of the New Testament? After you have rescued a few pages from it, the New Testament is useless. Its psychology is useless, its morals are outworn." The former president of William Jewell Baptist College at Liberty, Missouri, told a Kansas City audience: "The Bible is immoral and a pernicious guide to human behavior of the present day." When a Unitarian preacher agreed that the ethics of the Scriptures "are fortunately not the ethics of today" and that "we have no business dragging them into modern religious education," he simply repeated the threadbare argument raised in monotonous repetition by the princes of anti-Biblical prejudice.
With essentially the same objective, though with deceptive phraseology, modern pulpiteers continue to reject the Scriptures. They quote the Bible, it is true, but with crossed fingers, as they pull down the Savior's cross on Calvary to raise the double cross of deceit. This assault on Biblical morality is steadily becoming more outspoken. When the Free Thought Press Association belches forth "disclosures" that allegedly will unmask the Bible, we estimate this scurrility by remembering its source. But when the Tuft College Weekly endorses one of these atheistic publications and in its review exults: "The Bible and its teachings have not maintained their hold, ... the hoary book is found not only wanting, but pernicious in some of its teachings," we can understand why some young people are taught to smile at Bible morals.
Let any author so far outrage public judgment that attempts are made to bar his book from circulation, and immediately he will voice loud protests and claim that for the same reason the King James Version should be banned. Read the court record of any book dealer indicted for selling erotic, lust-laden novels of debauch and unnatural sin (if you can still find a court that labels filth by its right name), and you will not proceed far in the defense until you come across gloating references to Potiphar's wife. Lot's incest, or Solomon's multiple marriages.
Now, the Bible contains isolated records of seduction, adultery, and unnatural perversions, it is true; but so does the police blotter. Occasionally the Scriptures refer to intimate questions of life; but in fulsome detail professional medical books feature the same information. If issues of the Congressional Record and scientific reports cannot be accused of immorality when they present discussions of subjects never meant for popular audiences or immature minds, on what grounds can the Bible be indicted when at rare intervals it refuses to pass by scarlet, sordid sins without naming them?
It is also a fundamental fact that the Scriptures never glorify crime or delineate it with lines of seductive charm. Libertines keep their distance from the books of Holy Writ because they know that they can find no endorsement on its pages. The Bible not only refuses to place a halo on the sensualist or to laugh away the transgressions of the purity commandment, but it also insists upon condemning impurity without exception or reservation. In not one of the 31,173 verses of Scripture is there any semblance of compromise with lust, but almost one out of every ten of these verses deals with the temporal or future punishment of evil-doers. In not one of the 1,189 chapters does a single episode suggest or encourage immorality, or condone impurity. Even in the few passages which, in historical accuracy, picture moral lapses or ugly sin the constructive purpose is unmistakable. Hence the Bible's outspoken denunciation of impurity has often acted as a powerful restraint. A clergyman of long, intimate acquaintance with the frailties of his parishioners writes: "Beyond doubt many have been kept back from the practice of these sins by the plain things the Bible has said about them. Many others who had already fallen into these sins have been led by the Bible-stories to see their enormity and their frightful consequences and have thus been led to forsake them by what the Bible has said about them. I am not speculating about this, but I speak from a large experience with men and women." (Torry, Difficulties and Alleged Errors and Contradictions of the Bible, p. 60.)
It is no poetic exaggeration, then, when David exclaims: "The words of the Lord are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." The Bible must be pure because it is God’s Word; but besides, it is divinely powerful. The Bible not only teaches purity, it actually helps to create purity.
This is the plain assertion of Jesus. On the night of His betrayal, when, as humanity’s High Priest, He poured out His soul in prayer to His heavenly Father, He asked this blessing for His followers: “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth" (John 17:17). The Bible, this prayer of the Savior implies, is the means of sanctifying, purifying, cleansing. Before that night of all destiny, when speaking to His twice-born disciples, He declared: "Now ye are clean, through the Word which I have spoken unto you" (John 15:3). There are, then, according to the repeated emphasis of our Savior, divine impulses for purity mysteriously inherent in the Word of God.
Experience has shown the penetrating power of this Word, which is sharper than any two-edged sword. A dissolute, sin-bound young man of the fourth century comes under the conviction of sin after he has heard, by chance, a disquieting sermon from the lips of the great Ambrose. As he kneels in a garden, convulsed in the agony of despair, a child's voice calls to him, "Take, read! Take, read!" He rushes off to a friend, takes a manuscript of St. Paul’s epistles and reads: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof" (Rom. 13:13). He sees his Savior in a new, personal light. Faith is born. In an instant the sun of grace pierces the black clouds of anguish; the stranglehold of sin is broken. The Word has proved its sacred impulses to purity. A servant of sin has become a servant of God. A sensualist has died, but a saint has arisen, and Augustine strides forward in his career for Christ.
In the year 1789 mutineers from the English government ship Bounty, together with a group of Polynesian men and women, settled on lonely Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. A ten-year orgy of drunkenness and debauchery, supplemented by continued bloodshed, left only one white man with a group of natives. Isolated on that tiny speck in the vast Pacific, his thoughts turned to the Bible salvaged from the wreck of the Bounty. In the study of this Book both the sins of the past and the promise of the future were vividly impressed on his disquieted mind. That was the beginning of a remarkable transformation. Nineteen years later, when a whaling-ship accidentally reached Pitcairn Island, its astonished sailors found a community of thirty-five English-speaking people of high morality. Marriage vows had been introduced and faithfulness to these vows was rigidly observed. Where lust had reigned, virtue was now enthroned. The power of the Book had once more prevailed.
This divine endowment of the Bible is just as potent today in the battle which Christian young people wage in behalf of moral cleanness. Bible-reading exerts a purifying influence upon the soul. It has been shown that a dozen evil thoughts are capable of reappearing in 479,001,600 combinations and permutations. No human process of mental hygiene can successfully counteract this intricate persistency. There must be a source of superhuman energy — the purifying Word, which first cleanses and then proposes this ideal: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things" (Phil. 4:8).
The will to resist evil is likewise strengthened by this refining, energizing Word. When the shock troops of impurity assail the citadel of their high resolve, all normal young people know the treachery of their flesh and the attachments of a seductive environment. The repeated failure of their firmest resolution is summarized in St. Paul’s confession: "The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that. I do" (Rom. 7:19). Again it is the Word that reinforces Christian determination; and high-minded, strong-willed young people who have faced temptation and rejected the overtures to impurity will testify that this conquest came not by cool judgment but by some warning, pleading, strengthening passage of Scripture. The symbolism of Holy Writ does not play with meaningless pictures when it represents the Bible as a sword; for as no other weapon it can cut down the forces that would weaken the Christian warrior's will.
More: the Scriptures not only help to check evil impulses; their impressive building power also bestows a divine impetus for the purest attainments of life. Within the covers of our Bible we meet not only a select group of the cleanest minds of all ages, not only the noblest maxims of morality, not only the most consistent praise of chastity and the appeal for its preservation, but also the stimulating power of the Holy Spirit and His divine support for high-souled morality. Besides its warnings and its pleadings, its denunciation of vice and its exaltation of purity, "the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up" (Acts 20:32), offers itself to the youth of our country as the power of God unto their moral salvation.
Now, since these claims for the purifying energies of Scripture are valid, — and being the sacred pledges of God, they are always true, — this divine Book should be read with reverent appreciation. Let it not be said in this day, when changed conditions have reduced the number of working hours to an all-time low level, that the Church's youth has not been able to budget its leisure so that there is time for systematic study of God's Book. A Bible kept at the bedside will remind us of Scripture-reading at night and in the early morning. A Testament carried in the pocket will be a constant companion on journeys, vacations, and social visits. A chapter or two a day — and this usually means from five to ten minutes — will add resistance to our moral fiber. The reading of an entire book of Scripture — and many of its books can be read thoughtfully in a half hour or less — will often lift youthful morale to new heights. Regular attendance at Bible class — and Christian congregations should strive to make Scripture study attractive, congenial, and profitable — will strengthen stamina. The reading of the Word in the family circle, by which the home can receive daily guidance and instruction, will help to encircle our lives with courageous trust.
The Church's plain counsel in this search after purity is, then, first of all, the direction which the Scriptures themselves offer.
Read your Bible with a prayer for enlightenment, for the indwelling of God's Spirit in your heart and soul, so that you may understand the high mercies of your God.
Read it with reverence; for it offers you God's plan both for the redemption of your soul and the hallowing of your life. Approach this divine truth not in any faultfinding, condescending spirit, but with the acute consciousness that you are in communion with your God, translated into His holy presence.
Read it in solitude. The quiet, contemplative mood that is free from distraction is often required for the fullest blessings.
Read it attentively, remembering that with every word God speaks to you and that the common courtesies which we extend to those who address us must be deepened into alertness when God speaks to our souls. Many have found that by reading the Scriptures aloud they have been able to focus their thoughts more completely on the rich contents of every verse.
Read your Bible intelligently, with the aid of approved notes and commentary helps, so that you will miss none of its sacred treasures and spiritual riches. Acquaint yourself with a concordance, with Bible dictionaries, with standard helps. Far better than Marathon races through the Bible, which aim at speed, endurance, and quantity, is the absorbed, methodical searching of verse after verse.
Read the Bible daily and continually. The sin it helps overcome and the problems it solves are perpetual issues. If you finish a chapter a day, you will have completed the entire Bible in three years. If every day you read three columns of the Old Testament, two of the New Testament, and one of the Psalms, you can complete the entire Bible in a single year and annually find the whole counsel of God for your ransomed and consecrated life.
Read your Bible with personal application, believing that every syllable has been spoken out of the Father's heart of mercy and written in letters of everlasting love for your increase in the stature of purity and holiness. If any open or subtle force seeks to prevent you from applying God's counsel for your problems of purity, tear them out of your heart, no matter how attractive they may appear. Jenny Lind, whose voice enchanted millions, retired from public life at the very height of her concert career and lived almost secluded until the day of her death. When a friend, vacationing with her at the seashore, once put the pointed question, "O Madame, how is it that you abandoned the stage at the very height of your success?" the Swedish Nightingale thoughtfully spoke these words, “When every day made me think less of this," pointing to her Bible, “what else could I do?" If in your life persistent forces seek to entice you from the strength and help of God's Word, cut yourself loose from them, even though there be agony in the severance!