Light On The Way                                                                 12/9/45

 

Scripture:  Psalm 119: 97-106

 

Text:  Psalm 119: 105;  “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

 

I have in my hand a copy of the New Testament.  On the fly leaf is this inscription: “June 11th, 1925.  My friend Robert:  May you ever use this as a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.  Sincerely, C. B. Harrold.”

 

Curtis Brookens Harrold was my pastor at that time.  It was the year of my graduation from college.  I had been a student preacher during the preceding summer under a license to preach granted by the proper church body at his recommendation.  I had not yet committed myself to the ministry.  He was not especially concerned over that.  But he did encourage me to read the Word, whatever else I might choose to do.  It is good advice.

 

A Gallup Poll showed, not long ago, that there is a distinct upward trend in Bible reading in our own land; that 57% of all civilians between 21 and 29 claimed to have read the Bible during the last 12 months, as compared to 48% the preceding year.

 

Possibly many have been reading the Bible because of their own great need of help in a time of great anxiety and unusual strain.  Men and women have been reading it under battle conditions.  Their families at home have been looking to the Bible for reassurance as, in spirit, they faced the dangers that confronted their loved ones.  People with taut nerves have been calmed again through regular acquaintance with the timeless word.

 

As some kinds of danger and demand have lessened with the ending of the war, wise people will continue the habit, more faithfully than ever, of reading the Bible regularly.  For the Bible has in it the timeless precepts by which people can build their lives in a new world.

 

Despite the end of wide-scale hostilities, the peoples of the world are anxious.  We now have our chance to build a peace which an axis victory would have denied.  And everyone is concerned that there be enough character to build it well.

 

We are profoundly influenced by numerous things, many of which are superficial - by the momentary announcements of the radio; the news of the day’s papers; the impressions at the movies.  Our news of important happenings all over the world, is more nearly up-to-the-minute than it has ever been before.  But there is a need for timeless knowledge as well, for the transforming wisdom of the Eternal.

 

The campaigns for literacy all over the world are proceeding rapidly - in the Philippines, in  China, in the countries to the south of us, people are being taught in a hurry to read enough of the common words and terms of their own language to make their way about over the printed page.  In Mexico, the government is spending millions in a campaign to wipe out illiteracy.  Everyone who can read is supposed to teach another to read.  After next year, it will be a punishable offense in Mexico to be unable to read or write.  And so it goes in many parts of the world.

 

There is a far more important consideration, however, than the ability of all mankind to read.  And this is it - what shall they read?  The propaganda of the Fascists?  The literature of the communists?  The silly unreality of some American comics?  Will they be persuaded to spend time with any portion of the world’s great literature?  Will they learn of the love of God and the principles of Christian living at first hand from the Bible?  How many literate Americans read, in the Bible, for themselves the timeless ways of life?  A great many do.  Too many do not, being satisfied to coast along on what they once knew, or perhaps absorbed from the lives of others.

 

A great many folk over our country have been astonished at reports of Christian natives on so many isles of the far Pacific where it had been supposed only savage life existed.  There has been an eye-opening among the armed forces who have been on the isles, and among their folks back home as well, on this score.  Those who have followed closely the missionary programs of their own churches were not surprised.  They knew of the savagery, cannibalism and primitive simplicity among many of the island peoples a century ago.  But they also know that the missionaries of their churches have been there, at great risk to their own safety, and in great hardship of living; that those missionaries learned the many languages and dialects of the native people, reduced them to writing, and then taught the people to read and write their own tongue; and, what is most important of all, gave them translations of the Bible to read.  Acquaintance with truly Christian people and familiarity with the Bible are the things that wrought the change in less than a century.

 

The Bible has proved its power on the opposite side of the globe as well in these latter  years.  A Dutch chaplain told the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, not long ago, that there is a great renewal of interest in reading the Bible in Holland, and in other countries of Europe as well.  In the last years of the war, Bible classes were being formed for Bible study all over the Netherlands.  So significant did this revival of interest in the Bible become that even the communists were impressed.  A communistic newspaper, issued illegally during German occupation, contained this remarkable statement:  “We note that the only effective weapon against the German tanks is the Bible.”

 

The late William Lyon Phelps of Yale used to say that the Bible .. “ought to have written on the cover, ‘Highly Explosive.  Handle with care.’  It is the book by which the dynamite of its message has lifted empires off their hinges and turned the course of human events.  It has put down the mighty from their seats and hath exalted them of low degree.”

 

Recently Dr. Visser t’Hooft, secretary of the World Council of churches, told an impressive audience that the peoples of Europe had re-discovered the Bible.  “It is ironic,” he said, “that the Nazi regime has, by its persecution, done the cause of religion a service.  ....  The people thought that since the Nazis attacked the Bible so vigorously, it must contain some dynamite, and they began again to open its pages to find that dynamite - and they found it!”

 

It is true that scientific knowledge and power is now reaching a stage which - in the hands of evil men - can destroy much (if not most or all) of the entire world.  It is equally true that the Book of Life still contains the knowledge and experience which, in the lives of consecrated people, can redeem and rebuild and restore the world.

 

We Christian people ought to be improving our reading of the Bible.  We may read it for the stately beauty of its diction.  We may read it for its clues to the understanding of history.  But most of all, we may read it for the very Word of God, which shines through it.

 

During the past year - the 129th in the history of the American Bible Society - more than 12 million volumes of the scriptures have been distributed, the largest number in any single year of the Society.  Of these volumes, over 800 thousand were whole Bibles - a larger volume by 60% than in any previous year.  Millions of Testaments and Gospel portions were supplied to the armed forces.  Over 20 thousand Testaments were carefully sealed in waterproof envelopes.  It was, strangely enough, the hope of everyone that these would not be read.  For they were prepared for life rafts of the Navy, the Merchant Marine, and the several air forces.

 

The Bible is now published in 1068 languages and dialects.  It still does not appear in every tongue, and it is still estimated that only one person in ten of the world’s population as a whole reads the Bible.  The field is open and ripe unto the harvest.  For there are hosts of people who have never seen the Bible.  And there are other hosts who have seen it anew in recent times.

 

It used to be  common saying that Protestant folk read their Bibles, but that the authorities of the Catholic churches did not encourage Bible reading among their parishioners.  That is no longer true.  In 1941 the Roman Catholic church brought out a new translation of the Bible, authorized for reading by Catholic people; and a Catholic agency, the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, launched a program of getting a copy of the new translation into every American Catholic home.

 

If we Protestants care about our Bible-based interpretation of Christian teaching and church fellowship, we had better be about the business of reading that Bible regularly, meditatively, and with understanding!

 

The largest population in the world is that of China.  There a most significant battle goes on between a determined Communistic development and the more deep-seated ancient Chinese culture which is now more-and-more influenced by Western Christian interpretations.  The Chinese have been seriously weighing the value of true social and political democracy.  In this they have found increasing comfort, guidance and inspiration in the teachings of the Bible.  An increasing number of thoughtful Chinese have been discovering in the Bible a philosophy which rings true to their own ideals.

 

An interesting incident is related of a Chinese army officer who asked a Mr. Moore in Hanchung for a Bible.  This was about 1941.  The latter replied that he had none to sell.  The officer, thinking that he wanted more money, began to offer increasing sums.  Mr. Moore explained that he had only one copy on his desk, that he was teaching in a Bible School, and that he simply could not carry on that teaching if he sold his only copy.

 

Then the officer said, “Tonight, when you’re through using it, I will send a man to borrow it, and I will sit up all night and read it and return it to you by eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”  And he did sit up all night with it.

 

In recent months and years, we have heard, and considered, various plans for a better world - a peaceful world - of tomorrow.  We have read and heard of Dumbarton Oaks, Bretton Woods, Yalta and San Francisco conferences upon such plans.  And they are all important in the desperately needed exchange of ideas and positions of the various countries.

 

It may seem naive for a minister on Long Island to have suggested to his congregation that we Christians ought to give serious consideration to the “Nazareth Plan.”  And yet I think he has an important point.  After all, our religion is to be taken seriously.  It is a moving faith in our breasts, or it is nothing.

 

In speaking of the “Nazareth Plan,” Mr. Parker referred to the time when Jesus stood in his home synagogue at Nazareth and read from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”  Then Jesus said simply, “This day has the Scripture been fulfilled in your ears.”  [Luke 4: 18-21].  The people present thought that it was some sort of presumption on his part.  And so, in anger, they threw him out.

 

But what I think Jesus meant was simply that he himself intended to do just that, to preach to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to advocate deliverance to captives, bring sight to the blinded, to give liberty to the bruised and beaten, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.  Anyone else can do it, after his example!

 

Perhaps I shall some time elaborate some on George C. Parker’s development of a good sermon from that context.  But what I want to point out here today is that the “Nazareth Plan” begins where the beginning must be made - with individual people.  The foundation of any peace plan can be laid only on the collective will of many individual people for righteous peace.

 

We can be solid individual stones in that foundation if we will go to our Bibles, as Jesus did there at home, read with understanding and faith and then go and put into practice the simple, effective truths we have learned.  For the Bible is a “lamp unto our feet,” a “light along the way.”

 

-------   Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 9, 1945.