Understandest thou what thou here readest? it is asked of all ministers,
young and old, as they turn over John Bunyan's pungent pages. And every
new room, every new bird, and beast, and herb, and flower makes us blush
for shame as we contrast our own insignificant and ill-furnished house
with the noble house of the Interpreter. Let all our students who have
not yet fatally destroyed themselves and lost their opportunity lay the
Interpreter's House well to heart. Let them be students not in idle name
only, as so many are, but in intense reality, as so few are. Let them
read everything that bears upon the Bible, and let them read nothing that
does not. They have not the time nor the permission. Let them be
content to be men of one book. Let them give themselves wholly to the
interpretation of divine truth as its riddles are set in nature and in
man, in scripture, in providence, and in spiritual experience. Let them
store their memories at college with all sacred truth, and with all
secular truth that can be made sacred. And if their memories are weak
and treacherous, let them be quiet under God's will in that, and all the
more labour to make up in other ways for that defect, so that they may
have always something to say to the purpose when their future people come
up to church hungry for instruction and comfort and encouragement.
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