Chapter 8. The Teacher's Bible
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A man or a woman with a book is the picture of the Sunday school teacher. The Book is always essential. It is the emblem of the teacher's mission — to declare God's will, to tell of God's love. The message is in the book, and a teacher without his book would seem to be unattested.
Every teacher should have his own Bible. Of course Bibles are all alike, and one finds the same words, whatever the edition, small type or large, limp cover or stiff boards. Still every teacher should have a Bible of his own which he may use daily in his personal reading. It does not seem enough just to pick up any Bible that may be within reach, today one, tomorrow another.
A book is like a friend; we learn to love it, and it seems to get to know us better as we use it the longer, and opens its heart to us more and more freely as we commune with it more and more familiarly. It is easier to find what we want in a Bible we have used long — we know just where to look for it, on which page, and where on the page. It is strange, too, how it learns to open at our favorite chapters.
Then the teacher who uses his Bible much and to whom the book becomes a real friend, wishes to mark it, indicating the passages which have helped him, and noting on the margin memoranda and references which may be of value to him in his own spiritual life or in his work with others. Some old and well used Bibles tell the whole spiritual history of those who have read them, in the texts that are underscored. We cannot mark any Bible but our own. Besides, there is something sacred and confidential about the marks one makes in one's own Bible; they tell the story of spiritual experiences which only one's own eye should see. One does not care to put such records of heart life in any Bible but one's own. It would be making too free with sacred things.
The teacher's Bible should be a good one, one with marginal references, and if possible with its treasury of facts and helps at the end. Some one of the several editions of the Bible which are now so extensively used by teachers and other Christian workers will prove invaluable, having within its covers so much besides the text itself that throws light upon the teachings of the holy Book.
But far more important than the particular edition one uses is the study of the contents of the Bible. Every teacher should be a diligent Bible student. It is not enough to master week by week the passage assigned for the Sunday lesson — this is important, but the teacher should study the Bible in other ways.
How then should he study it? Not the way many people study it. They open it anywhere, and read a few verses, perhaps a chapter, in one place today, and then tomorrow open it, again at random, at another place, and read a few verses or a chapter. So they go on, year after year, perhaps never reading any one book through in order, if at all, often going over the same favorite chapter or some easy psalm again and again. Then they wonder why the Bible is not interesting to them, and why they appear to get so little help from it. How could it be either interesting or helpful, read in such an unscientific manners? No other book would stand the test of such a method of reading. No one could ever get interested in any other book, using it as most people read the Bible. There is a common sense way of reading it, however, and to those who adopt this it will yield its deepest revealings and its richest treasures.
The Bible is a collection of booklets bound together in one volume. There are sixty six of these booklets. They were written by different authors, in different countries, at different times, through some sixteen centuries. The scientific way of studying the Bible is to take it up book by book, mastering the contents of each one in turn. Each has its own history, its own meaning and belongs in its own place. We must know the general facts about the Book before we can properly understand it.
Perhaps we would better begin with the Gospels, since the story of Jesus Christ is the heart of the whole book and the key to it all. Take the Gospel according to Matthew. We may begin by getting all the facts we can find concerning the author. It seems remarkable that a publican should have been chosen to write the first Gospel. Yet no doubt Matthew was specially qualified for this task by his previous education and training. We may notice also that not a word is told about anything that Matthew did or said as an apostle — no act of his is described, no word of his recorded. His Gospel is his only memorial. It would seem that he was called and trained just to write a book. That was his mission.
We may then take up the Gospel itself. It was written for the Jews. Its object was to show them that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed their Messiah who was foretold. It is full of references to the prophecies. Here we have the key to this Gospel.
Having learned all such available facts, the next thing is to read the book — not a few words here and there today, and a few tomorrow, but to go through the whole of it, if possible at one reading. This should be done several times, until the student is familiar with every fact and incident recorded.
Let the same course be followed with the other books until each one has been mastered. This will require a considerable time, but it will be time well spent. The teacher who takes up the Bible in this systematic way will get an intelligent idea of it as a book. He will know where each booklet belongs in the history and will be able to fit it into its place. Nor is it so formidable a task as one might imagine — this reading of the several books of the Bible through at single sittings. No one who takes the Book up in this manner, with enthusiasm, earnestness and reverence, will ever regret it. The impression derived from reading, for example, one of the Gospels through at a single sitting, is wonderfully inspiring. It gives us in one picture a view of the whole of the life of Christ on the earth.
But there is another study of the Scriptures which is even more important for the teacher's spiritual benefit than by this method. Thousands who have never know anything of the Bible as literature; have yet found in it the treasures of life. They have never mastered it book by book; but they have had a key wherewith to open its storehouses when they will, finding therein divine revealings, heavenly comforts, promises for life's way, counsels for every duty and perplexity. However well we may lean to know the Bible as a book, we need most of all to know it as the Word of God, and to learn how to find in it bread for our souls' hunger.
One good way of studying the Bible for spiritual profit is by the topical method. We may take a particular subject and find from all parts of the Scriptures all that bears upon it, or will throw any light upon it. For example, take God's forgiveness. There are many superficial notions on this subject. Many make it altogether, too easy a matter, to be forgiven, having no thought of the divine holiness or of the real meaning of sin. Trace the subject of forgiveness through the Scriptures, getting the light of all the great passages on it. The result of such a study will be a deepened sense of the guilt of sin, new visions of the divine holiness, a fresh impression of the meaning of the cross, and then a wonderful view of the fullness and completeness of the forgiveness which God bestows upon all who confess their sins and accept Jesus Christ as their Redeemer.
Or take a series of studies on the character of God — his holiness, his love, his grace, his fatherly care. Or find out what the Bible has to say about the Christian life, what it is to be a Christian, the Christian's privileges, duties, and responsibilities, or the promises may be sought out and gathered into clusters. Special studies of much interest and profit will be found in looking up such words as peace, joy, hope, faith, love.
This topical method of Bible reading yields valuable results, if it is pursued reverently and thoroughly. It enables us to see the many sides of truth and thus to get a better conception of it, for as a rule no one text shows us the whole of any inspired teaching. Wrong views are often held by superficial Bible readers because they have taken their impressions from a single verse, instead of getting all the light upon the subject which they could find in the whole book, and then gathering from this the final teaching.
For this topical study, a concordance and a Bible textbook are the only helps required. The concordance shows all the passages in which the word itself occurs. Besides these, there usually are other passages which treat of the topic or bear upon it, and these a good textbook will indicate. It is profitable also to follow out in a reference Bible the various references for each verse turned to, as ofttimes these will throw additional light upon the subject.
All this requires much time and thought, but the results will richly repay the devout student. It is a search for gold and gems, in which one's quest is never in vain. The Bible is the World of God and no painstaking study should be thought too laborious, if it brings out in clearer light the truth about God and about duty.
Besides this serious and thorough study of the Bible, to learn the mind and will of God, every teacher needs to maintain the habit of daily Bible reading as a devotional exercise. Thus he hears God's voice in instruction, in correction, in warning, in guidance, in comfort, in inspiration — learning the lessons for his own life as he needs to know them. Thus only can the Word become a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. Every morning should have its verse, which may stay all day in the heart, like a grain of rich perfume to sweeten all the day's life.
The teacher's Bible is meant for use. It is not enough that he shall know its inspired words; they must be taken into his life, believed, trusted in as sure words, leaned on as one would lean on the bosom of Christ himself, and obeyed as the very will of God.
The Bible is a book which requires two kinds of interpretation to make its teachings clear. Commentaries are good in their way. They tell us what the words mean and explain all the allusions. But however perfectly one may understand the Bible passages, so far as language is concerned, it requires experience to reveal the full meaning that lies in the words. There are promises of comfort, but we do not know their preciousness until we are in sorrow. There are words for the widow, for the orphan, for the poor, for the sick, for the old, but we cannot find the real blessing in these words until we are in the experience for which the promise was given.
Hence the Bible opens its hidden meanings only as life goes on. We find what we need in some peculiar experience, in an old verse we had read a hundred times before without seeing the meaning which now flashes out so bright and clear.
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