Pleasure & Profit in Bible StudyMoody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Pleasure & Profit in Bible Study
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Bible -- Study and teaching
MERELY reading the Bible is not what God wants. Again and again I am
exhorted to "search."
"These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received
the word with all readiness of mind, and _searched_ the Scriptures
daily, whether those things were so."
"So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the
sense, and caused them to understand the reading."
We must study it thoroughly, and hunt it through, as it were, for some
great truth. If a friend were to see me searching about a building, and
were to come up and say, "Moody, what are you looking for? have you lost
something?" and I answered, "No, I haven't lost anything; I'm not
looking for anything particular," I fancy he would just let me go on by
myself, and think me very foolish. But if I were to say, "Yes, I have
lost a dollar," why, then, I might expect him to help me to find it.
Read the Bible, my friends, as if you were seeking for something of
value. It is a good deal better to take a single chapter, and spend a
month on it, than to read the Bible at random for a month.
I used at one time to read so many chapters a day, and if I did not get
through my usual quantity I thought I was getting cold and backsliding.
But, mind you, if a man had asked me two hours afterward what I had
read, I could not tell him; I had forgotten it nearly all. When I was a
boy I used, among other things, to hoe corn on a farm; and I used to hoe
it so badly, in order to get over so much ground, that at night I had to
put down a stick in the ground, so as to know next morning where I had
left off. That was somewhat in the same fashion as running through so
many chapters every day. A man will say, "Wife, did I read that
chapter?" "Well," says she, "I don't remember." And neither of them can
recollect. And perhaps he reads the same chapter over and over again;
and they call that "studying the Bible." I do not think there is a book
in the world we neglect so much as the Bible.
FAMILY WORSHIP.
Now, when you read the Bible at family worship or for private devotions,
look for suitable passages. What would you think of a minister who went
into the pulpit on Sunday and opened the Bible at hazard and commenced
to read? Yet this is what most men do at family prayers. They might as
well go into a drug store and swallow the first medicine their eye
happens to see. Children would take more interest in family prayers if
the father would take time to search for some passage to suit the
special need. For instance, if any member of the family is about to
travel, read Psalm 121. In time of trouble, read Psalm 91. When the
terrible accident happened to the "Spree" as we were crossing the
Atlantic in November, 1892, and when none on board ship expected to live
to see the light of another sun, we held a prayer-meeting, at which I
read a portion of Psalm 107:
"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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