How To Read The Bible.


To SOME, the Bible is uninteresting and 

unprofitable, because they read too fast. Among

the insects which subsist on the sweet sap of

flowers, there are two very different classes.

One is remarkable for its imposing plumage,

which shows in the sunbeams like the dust

of gems; and as you watch its jaunty gyrations

over the fields, and its minute dance

from flower to flower, you cannot help admiring

its graceful activity, for it is plainly getting

over a great deal of ground. But in the

same field there is another worker, whose

brown vest and business-like, straight-forward

flight may not have arrested your eye. His

fluttering neighbor darts down here and there,

and sips elegantly wherever he can find a

drop of ready nectar; but this dingy plodder

makes a point of alighting everywhere, and

wherever he alights, he either finds honey or

makes it. If the flower-cup be deep, he goes

down to the bottom; if its dragon-mouth

be shut, he thrusts its lips asunder; and if

the nectar be peculiar or recondite, he explores

all about till he discovers it, and then

having ascertained the knack of it, joyful as

one who has found great spoil, he sings his

way down into its luscious recesses. His

rival, of the painted velvet wing, has no patience

for such dull and long-winded details.

But what is the end? Why, the one died

in October along with the flowers; the other

is warm in his hive in winter, amid the fragrant

stores which he gathered beneath the

bright beams of "summer.”

Reader, to which class do yon belong, the

butterflies or bees? Do you search Scriptures,

or do you only skim them? Do you

dwell on a passage till you bring out some

meaning, or till you can carry away some

memorable truth or immediate lesson? Or do

you flit along on heedless wing, only on the

look-out for novelty, and too frivolous to explore

the Scriptures? Does the word of God

dwell in you so richly that in the vigils of a

restless night, or in the bookless solitude of a

sick-room, or in the winter of old age or 

exclusion from ordinances, its treasured truths,

would perpetuate summer round you, and

give you meat to eat which the world knows

not of?




 Golden Censer.