" .... And Comfort Of The Scriptures ... " Romans 15:14
This is copied from the bulletin of Calvary Baptist Church on 472 Ocean Rd in Portsmouth NH 03801. (603) 436-7736. The bulletin date is 08/25/2024.
"... and comfort of the scriptures ..."
Sir Henry Morton Stanley was a Welsh journalist and explorer. He rededicated his life to his Lord and Master as a result of reading the Bible, alone, in the heart of Africa. His own testimony in his autobiography included the following remarkable paragraphs:
"My sickness were frequent, and during my first attack of African fever, I took up the Bible to while away the tedious, feverish hours in bed. Though incapacitated from the march, my temperature having been constantly at 105 degrees, it did not prevent me from reading, when not light headed. I read Job and the the Psalms.
The Bible, with its noble and simple language, I continued to read with a lighter and truer understanding than I had ever before conceived. In powerful verses had a different meaning, a more penetrative influence, in the silence of the wilds. I came to feel a strange glow while absorbed in its pages, and a charm peculiarly appropriate to the deep melancholy of African reserves.
"When I laid down the Book, my mind commenced to feed upon what memory suggested. Then rose the ghosts of bygone yearnings, hunting every cranny of the brain with numbers of baffled hopes and unfulfilled aspirations. Here was I, only a poor journalist, with no friends, and yet possessed by a feeling of power to achieve! How could it ever be! Then verses of scripture rang iteratively through my mind as applicable to my own being, sometimes full of glowing promise, often of solemn warning.
Alone in my tent, unseen of men, my mind labored and worked upon itself, and nothing was so soothing and sustaining as when I remembered the long - neglected comfort and support of lonely childhood. I flung myself on my knees and utterly poured out my soul in secret prayer to Him from whom I had been so long estranged; to Him who had mysteriously led me here into Africa, there to reveal Himself, and His will. I then became inspired with a fresh desire to serve Him to the utmost, that same desire which, in early days in New Orleans, filled me each morning and sent me joyfully skipping to my work.
As seen in my loneliness, there was the difference between the Bible and the newspaper. The one reminded me that, apart from God, my life was but a bubble of air, and it made me remember my Creator; the other fostered arrogance and worldliness. When that vast upheaved sky and might circumstance of tree clad earth, or sere downward, marked so emphatically my personal littleness, I felt often so subdued, that my black followers might have discerned, had they be capable of reflecting that Africa was changing me."
We can't imagine not having the Word of God in our hands to read and commit to memory. How often the spirit of God has brought precious verses of scripture to our minds just when we needed them most. But centuries ago, the Bible was not as easily available as it is today. How grateful we are for the godly men who were enabled with divine help to translate the Bible into the English language, print it, distribute it, preach it, and die for it. The Bible was brought to us at great cost,
2024 / 08 / 27
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