Before the war, it seemed almost unnecessary to find time for the Bible. Many of us were making money, others were busily earning it. Our children were getting on nicely at school. Certainly there were grave evils, like drink, and bitter social inequalities, and rancorous political quarrels, and reckless extravagances, which gave us uneasy twinges of conscience. But we drifted, in tens, hundreds of thousands, from public worship. We ceased to pray. We quietly laid aside the Bible.
Then--suddenly--we were brought face to face with facts which we had forgotten. One of those facts was Death--another was Pain--another was Hatred--another was National Duty--another was Suspense. We learnt that life is not a game, but a grim, heroic combat between good and evil.
For this crisis, we found that we were unprepared. Men and women fled for refuge, in some cases, to spiritualism, crystal-gazing, and fortune-telling. Pleasure and Romance played their part as comforters. Lives that had been frivolous were consecrated to war work. And there was the growing splendor of national unity and personal sacrifice. Hopes of a better dawn have encouraged us. We are sure that Faith will return.
Yes--but Faith in what? Faith in Whom? In our hearts, we know that we want something far deeper than Treaties and someone far stronger than Sovereigns and Statesmen. We need a revival--a new birth of life--a resurrection.
How is this to come about? Over and over again, nations have revived by reading the forgotten Bible. It was so even in the reign of old Josiah. And again it was so in Ezra's time. Our Blessed Saviour Himself, when He was on earth, read the Bible and based His teaching and His conduct upon it. So did His Apostles. So did the Reformers, the Puritans, and the Methodists, and so do missionaries the wide world over. Don't worry about clergy and churches. Let them go their own way--at any rate, for the moment. Read and know the Bible, and all else, including public worship, will fall into its place.
Read it with your own eyes. Why should you be enslaved any longer by destructive criticisms, usually made in Germany, where, as we now know, the simplest diplomatic document can be perverted and misrepresented by the very scholars who, for thirty years, have dictated unto us our theology? I don't believe, and I never did believe, one-hundredth part of the invertive hypotheses by which the Bible has been surrounded and obscured. By their fruits we know them. Read the Book for yourself, make it your own, set apart the time to do so, and you will find Someone who will be a very present help to you in trouble.
Unless I am mistaken, if you read with perseverance and resolution, you will discover things in the Bible about which you will want to talk to others. That was my own situation, and thus it is that you have these pages. Your difficulties, doubtless, are not mine. I dare say that you know more about the Bible than I do, and that your life has been far more consistent than mine with our Saviour's teaching. But you cannot owe Him a greater debt, for no debt could be greater, and you may see in these pages how many are the questions which He answers in the Gospels, how near He is to us all if only we will approach Him through the Scriptures, how ready He is to speak to us through His recorded words, how willing to uplift us as He uplifted those who came to Him. As you read these forty-two chapters--which are mere glimpses--you will probably say to yourself could put that much better--why, he has forgotten this and that and the other "--or even: " He is quite mistaken there." Well, be it so. Tell your own story in your own way; it will help you and it will help others. For it is clear that we want somebody to give us what has been called " the sense " of a Bible--that is, an invitation to the Book--in words that may spread from every Free Library--Sunday School--Brotherhood--Mission-Rectory-Manse--in the country--yes, and even throughout the world. We must all long for the time when, once more, this same Jesus who died shall be known again among men, not as a Crucifix merely, or as a Shadow, but in all His fullness of love, of power, of wisdom, of suffering, and of victory. Far, far happier would be both homes and hearts. There would be more laughter amongst us as of children; better pictures; a nobler literature; more wholesome pleasures; and a grand outburst of missionary enterprise.
Well--this book now belongs to you. Take what helps; pardon the rest; and may you find Him who is the Friend of friends.