mes an
intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear
friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see
and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and All.

The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that
God is articulate in His universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal world
to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit that
they _should_ accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try to
think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the
words there on the page are actually for them. A man may _say_, "These
words are addressed to me," and yet in his heart not feel and know that
they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think of
God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book.

I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong
conception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silent
God suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finished
lapsed back into silence again forever. Now we read the book as the
record of what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood.
With notions like that in our heads how can we believe? The facts are
that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God
to speak. The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the _Word_.
The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is
the infallible declaration of His mind for us put into our familiar
human words.

I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when we
approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book which was
once spoken, but a book which is _now speaking_. The prophets habitually
said, "Thus _saith_ the Lord." They meant their hearers to understand
that God's speaking is in the continuous present. We may use the past
tense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of God
was spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken, as a
child once born continues to be alive, or a world once created continues
to exist. And those are but imperfect illustrations, for children die
and worlds burn out, but the Word of our God endureth forever.

If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible
expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a
_thing_ which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than