The world is “dark,” and the Holy Bible is the only “light” in it. “Speculation,” “imagination,” “reason,” and “philosophy” have no part nor lot here: they have no value whatever in answering the question, what is truth. There would be no difficulty in having a Bible exactly according to our own minds if each one might setup his own reason as the standard as to what is likely to be or what God is likely to do.

That is just how people are everywhere are acting. But that is not what settles questions revealed in this book. The Holy Bible claims to be from God. It claims to make known His “thoughts” and to reveal His “will” and “purposes.” The men who wrote it wrote down not what they imagined or presumed to reason out, not what they thought, would prove acceptable to others, not what they themselves might deem wise or think beneficent, but they wrote down what God thought, what God chose to say, what God commanded, yes and what God meant! Holy men spoke from God. What our attitude ought to be, therefore, is perfectly clear, and our duty is very simple! to accept what they revealed. We are merely like students who sit down to study the statutes of the Realm. The only question is, what do they say? No matter whether we can “understand” them, “explain” them, or “harmonize” them with our own views or with the views of others. Our duty as students is to know them, and as citizens to obey them.

So these Holy Scriptures reveal what God pleases to say. Our duty is to accept and believe them, because of that, and not because of our ability to understand them. The one great difficulty is that the authority of Scripture is not regarded as absolutely supreme. So long as people insist on squaring Scripture with reason, so long as there can be no certainty in the things of faith. There can be no unity of doctrine unless there be first a unity of authority. We have no more to do, and no less, than Israel had when Moses came forth from God, and down from Horeb, and made known what God had written and revealed.

We, therefore, have not to interpret revelation, because revelation is given to interpret to us what we otherwise could never have known. This must be our ground and this our spirit in approaching the word of prophecy. This must be our foundation. The deeper and firmer this is laid, the higher may the superstructure that we build upon it: whereas, a lofty structure on a feeble foundation must end in ruin and disaster. If God had not made know to us things to come, then we can never know them. But He if has, then we need not be ignorant.