ong thinking that we are
attaching a meaning to something which in fact, it turns out, has meant
almost nothing to us. Some day a phrase which we have often read or
repeated suddenly is lighted up with a significance we had never dreamed
of. We have long been looking some truth in the face, but in fact it has
never laid hold of us; we have made no inferences from it, deduced no
necessity of action, till on a day the significance of it emerges and
we are overwhelmed by the revelation of our blunder, of our stupidity.
The fact is that we assume that our conduct is quite right, and we
interpret truth in the light of our conduct rather than interpret
conduct in the light of truth. It is the explanation, I suppose, of the
fact that so many people read their Bible regularly without, so far as
one can see, the reading having any effect upon their conduct. The
conduct is a settled affair and they are finding it reflected in the
pages of the Gospel. Their minds are already definitely made up to the
effect that they know what the Gospel means, and that is the meaning
that they put into the Bible. One does not know otherwise how to account
for the fact that it is precisely those who think themselves "Bible
Christians" who are farthest from accepting the explicit teaching of the
Bible. If there is anything plain in the New Testament it is that the
whole teaching of our Lord is sacramental. If anything is taught there
one would think it was the nature and obligation of baptism, the
Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar, the gift of
Confirmation, the meaning of absolution. Yet it is to "Bible Christians"
that sacraments appear to have no value, are things which can be
dispensed with as mere ornaments of the Christian Religion.

I wonder if we have wholly got beyond that point of view? I wonder if we
have got a religious practice which is settled or one that is
continually expanding? I wonder if we force our meaning on the Bible or
if we are trying to find therein new stimulus to action? That in truth
is the reason for reading the Holy Scriptures at all--to find therein
stimulus, stimulus for life; that we may see how little or how much our
conduct conforms to the ideal set out there. We do not read to learn a
religion, but to learn to practice the religion that we already have.

Now to take just one point in illustration. The commission of our Lord
to His Church in the person of the Apostles was a commission to forgive