Understanding the ScripturesMcConnell, Francis John
Religion
Understanding the Scriptures
McConnell, Francis John
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Bible -- Study and teaching
the path to sympathetic inner knowledge of the spirit of Christ. In our
second chapter we called attention to the truth that approach to
knowledge of God is through the doing of the will of God. Doing of the
will, according to Jesus, means much more than just a round of good
deeds. It means carrying the burdens which are inevitable in
cross-bearing. There is good reason for believing that the very highest
step in spiritual learning is taken only through the willingness to
bear the cross. In our modern educational systems we lay varying
degrees of stress upon the importance of different methods of acquiring
knowledge. There is at the bottom of the scale the method of mastering
the instruction of the teacher by attention and reflection. There is,
next, the method of learning through one's own experiment--through
using microscope or telescope or textbook for oneself. There are,
further, the social aids to the quickening of the mind as groups of
students study and discuss together. But the deepest knowledge comes as
the student feels his sympathy and feeling involved. If he must pay
himself out for the acquisition of the truth, or if he must defend his
conclusions at great cost to himself, this experience which involves
the feeling involves also the sharpening of the intellect. The eyes of
the soul are opened to the subtler intuitions. Thus it is in the
revelations of the divine purpose in the Scriptures. It is hard to make
out how anybody can hope to master a revelation of a cross-bearing God
without himself being a cross-bearer. In the New Testament narratives
of Passion Week the Master is reported as winning his surest
convictions of the presence of God and of the victory of his truth at
the very instant when he entered into the extreme depths of suffering.
In the after days it was when the saints faced stoning that they saw
the heavens opening; it was the apostle who had suffered hardships
almost too numerous to mention who got the most positive conviction of
the reward which awaited him. In the school of Christ the very heaviest
stress must fall upon the indispensability of cross-bearing as a means
to understanding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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