The Bible - Treasure of Life                                                 6/21/42

 

Scripture:  Psalm 119: 97-106

 

                        “Sing them over again to me,

                        Wonderful words of life;

                        Let me more of their beauty see,

                        Wonderful words of life.”

 

Many of us of a generation ago have sung those words lustily and joyously in Bible School on Sunday.  The song is a simple gospel tune, and it expresses a simple, heartfelt appreciation of the greatest literary treasure of mankind -- the Bible.  Some of us have also sung, in more thoughtful verse and stately music:

 

“Lamp of our feet whereby we trace our path, when wont to stray, Stream from the fount of heav’nly grace, Brook by the trav’lers’ way.”

 

Most of us have sung, perhaps at the time of the Communion:

 

            “Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord;

            My spirit pants for Thee, O Living Word.”

 

Thus do we repeat the words of writers of verse and song who have sought to say what the Bible means to all of us - light, truth, food for thought and inspiration, guidance, love, opening of the way to the living God!  What could be more precious than this?

 

A study of the long, evolving process by which the Bible came into being is thrilling.  A race of people who had an extraordinarily keen consciousness of their relationship to a Being far greater than themselves, gradually put into writing the records of what they felt to be inspired in that relationship - their appreciation of the Creator, the laws of conduct and fellowship by which they had found themselves best governed, the prophecies of those whose eyes were wide open to the signs of good and evil living, the poetry of their religious experience.

 

They wrote in their own tongues, known now only to those scholars who will study to understand and appreciate them.  They wrote laboriously and carefully, by hand, on scrolls of papyrus, on tablets of stone and various other materials of some permanence.  They treasured the writings, guarded them, studied, them, discussed them, read them in public, taught them to their children.

 

The time came when those qualified for so important a task collected all of the writings, which seemed to them clearly to have abiding and eternal value, into a single canon of sacred scripture.  At length these writings became, “the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings” of the Hebrews - our Old Testament.

(Canon of the Law about 400 B.C.; Canon of the whole Old Testament about 90 A.D.)

 

Meanwhile Jesus came.  With him a powerful new leaven was stirred into the religious life of all people, permeating the whole of civilized life like yeast in a loaf of bread.  Individual men and women were changed by Jesus.  Whole systems of thinking were altered.  His disciples and admirers wrote down what they could remember.  And they remembered a great deal!  For Jesus was such a vivid impression in their lives that they could no more have erased his spirit and teachings from their minds than they could have erased India ink or stone carving.  And so the recorded Gospels of the apostle writers came into being.  Meanwhile, letters were written by Christian leaders to other individuals and to new churches; letters which inspired them, rebuked their errors, kept them faithful to the ideals and the spirit of Christ.  These writings were set down in the languages of the people - their own tongue which they could read and understand.  (At any rate, the common written language.)

 

There came times of severe persecution when, as in some parts of our world today, one could not safely say what he truly thought about religion or government or anything else, unless it happened to be what the officials thought.  So, in guarded, symbolic and figurative language, they wrote their hope, their faith, the encouragement which they were inspired to record.  This is probably one of the keys to understanding the book of Revelation.

 

At length these writings that were treasured by the Christian people were gathered together.  Again those who were qualified selected the books which seemed authentically inspired, whose value had been proved by time, and included them in the canon which makes up our New Testament.  (397 A.D.; made binding, officially, in the 16th century.)

 

Of course there were other writings, with which many were familiar, which were not included in the Old or New Testament canons because they did not clearly have the same value.  Many of these other writings did contain enough instructive material to be preserved.  And so you will find between the Old Testament and the New Testament in some of your Bibles, especially older editions, a group of these books known as the Apocrypha.

 

In the days when the Roman Empire flourished and the Latin language was official over the civilized earth, when even the church had become considerably centralized in Rome, the Holy Scriptures were translated from their original tongues into the Latin Vulgate.  This translation is still official in one great branch of the Christian Church.

 

Slowly, over a period of centuries, often against tremendous opposition, the Bible has been translated into the tongues that people commonly use - German, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, the Indian, African, and Polynesian tongues - a thousand different languages and dialects.  Sometimes the translations were made from the Latin, as in the Douay version in English, authorized by the Roman Catholic church; sometimes from one commonly spoken language into another, as from the Chinese into the first Korean New Testament.  (1887 - see “Korea Mission Field” for May, 1938)  But usually the work has been done by those who were scholarly and thorough enough to translate out of the early Hebrew and Greek versions.  It has been a long labor of love and devotion by hundreds of Christian scholars.

 

And why is it done?  Why should people go to the trouble of translating a whole library into a thousand different languages and dialects?  Because of that library, the Bible, itself!

 

Countless human beings have found their chief guidance and inspiration in the study of its pages.  They have set the course of their lives by its truth, as a mariner sets the course of his ship by a trustworthy compass.  They have found the Word a lamp before their feet, on darkened and rough pathways.  They have been held steady by it in storm and have been sustained in calm.  They have been saved from perils of conceit and vainglory, from cowardice, from a multitude of open or secret sins by its guidance.  No wonder they have been eager to share it!

 

People have learned to use its words in their sense of security in God’s care.

 

            “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

              He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;

              He leadeth me beside the still waters.

              He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of

                        righteousness for his name’s sake.”  [Psalm 23: 1-3].

 

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

  My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”

            [Psalm 121: 1-2].

People have learned to express in the words of the Bible their own heartfelt praise for God’s mercies.

            “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me,

                        bless his holy name.

              Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

              Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy

                        diseases;

              Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth

                        thee with loving kindness and tender mercies;

              Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things;

                        so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” 

                        [Psalm 103: 1-5].

 

Tens of thousands have found in the Bible great ethical principles, and the reasons for those principles, by which they have learned to regulate their own living:

 

            Respect for experience in the lives of righteous older people - “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”  [Proverbs 16: 31].

 

            Parental responsibility - “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  [Proverbs 22: 6].

 

            Temperance (in all things) - “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”  [Proberbs 20: 1].  (There are warnings against gluttony and all sorts of license.)

 

            Self-control - “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.”  [Proberbs 16: 32].

 

            Trust in God, who is immeasurably greater than self - “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”  [Proberbs 3: 5-6].

 

Three years ago we had occasion in Hawaii to observe the one hundredth anniversary of a momentous time in the life of the Hawaiian people.  On May 10th, 1839, the first completed edition of the Bible in the Hawaiian language came off the mission press and bindery.  Portions of the scriptures had been in use earlier, but from that time on, the whole Bible was ready for the people of those islands.

 

The work of translation had been completed six weeks earlier.  More than fifteen years of faithful, painstaking work on the part of missionary scholars had gone into that volume.  The translation was made out of the original Hebrew and Greek languages by those, who not only knew their way about in the language of the Biblical originals, but were also having to master the Hawaiian language.  We are told that they did a masterly job.

 

The Hawaiian Bible followed closely on the heels of another task;

that of reducing the Hawaiian language to writing.  (Hitherto it had been only a spoken tongue.)  So the Bible became the first written classic of the newly emerging modern Hawaiian civilization.

 

The translators, in their work, had taken into account the feeling, as well as the literal meaning, of Hawaiian expressions.  Mary Kawena Pukui, writing in the anniversary edition of “The Friend” (May, 1939) writes of some interesting details.  She points out that, while our English translation of Matthew 5:13 reads: “Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”  The Hawaiian is, literally, “Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how shall it regain its saltiness?”  Isn’t that homely and vivid!

 

Again, in Matthew 6:14, one of the phrases of the Lord’s Prayer reads in English, “Lead us not into temptation.”  In Hawaiian it is, literally, “Do not release us to go into temptation.”  Perhaps we who use the English could deepen for ourselves the meaning of the Master’s prayer if we were to refer to the Hawaiian, or if we were to use the words, “Keep us from temptation.”  It is a loving thought!

 

And so, in due course, the Bible arrived on those shores.  Now it is read in many languages there, and treasure beyond price!  May it surely be sought as a lamp unto our feet, a light on our path, a rebuke to our waywardness, a comfort in our need, and a bulwark of our faith!

 

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dates and places delivered:

 

            Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, May 7, 1939  AM

            Wisconsin Rapids, June 21, 1942