Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 07. Admission to the School
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 07. Admission to the School
Other Subjects in this Topic:
Admission to the School
The humblest, busiest Christian has the enormous help of possessing a book from God. It is not large; it is written for the most part in simple, direct language; it comes to us in our own mother-tongue. By agreement of all it contains the highest ideals. And, even more, it brings to us the Man who lived those ideals amid circumstances just like ours. And it does yet more, it gives the secret of power in living these ideals. And that is something no other book of West or East does, or can do.
This Book of God reveals what He wants us to know. It has been most strikingly preserved through centuries of neglect and of hatred. The best scholarship of the world has made it an open Book to the humblest, most unlettered person who can read. Our English translations are remarkable pieces of work. Here any one may come and learn just what God Himself would have us know on any matter of practical life.
The ticket of admission at the door of this schoolroom can be gotten and used by any one. It is not wisdom, nor scholarly knowledge, nor mental alertness, valuable as these are. If so, most of us would be staying outside the door. It is a ticket any one may bring. I will not say may easily bring, but may surely bring if he will.
That ticket has three coupons to it; namely, a humble spirit, willing to sit at a teacher's feet as a little child and be taught; an open mind, willing to let the lifelong, deeply rooted ideas go when the light coming in shows they should; and an obedient life, willing to change and shape the daily habit of life to whatever the Book may teach.
The best posture of body for the scholar in this school is down upon the knees. It is not always possible actually but can be in the spirit that controls the body. The joint of the knee has a most striking connection with will and eye and ear. The bending of the knee-joint helps to bend that stiffest of all human joints,—the will. And as the will bends the eye opens, and the ear opens, and the inner understanding finds the windows opening and new clear light softly flooding in. Prayer is the essential as one comes to this Book. With it will come and stay the willingness to be taught, to be shown where we are wrong, and to bring the life up to the teaching. That threefold willingness will be as a sure guide, leading you by the hand into the clear, sweet light of truth.
Now we want to come to this Book to find out just what it teaches. There is another way of coming to this Book. It is a common way, and a most difficult way to avoid taking. We are so constantly tempted to take it, and may be so accustomed to taking it, that I want to put up a good plain signpost of "Beware" over it here. It is the habit of going to the Book to find proofs for what we believe. And it is surprising how, if you are not particular about the connection of words in Scripture—and users of this way usually are not—how you can find something, a phrase, a verse, that seems the very thing you need to prove your point.
Our friends who, honestly enough, use this way should remember that it was the way used by the Tempter in the wilderness in trying to turn our Lord aside from the right. The evil one is a very skilful partial-quoter of Scripture, and has an astonishingly large following, doubtless an unconscious following, among earnest, godly people.