Personality of the Word of God
Illustration★★★★★Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. tu. 24:27 A modern novelist has described the presence of a Greek Testament in the room of a man tempted to his undoing. How often does the mere presence of the Divine Word make itself felt till the Book becomes no more a thing but a person!
A glance at it, and though time and custom and sin have checked the old feelings, they are at once unsealed. The volume is not dumb. It speaks, appeals, warms, solicits, in the voice that floated along our dreams in child- hood. It takes on an aspect sometimes terrible, as when it gleams like the flash- ing of a shield, sometimes tender as if it carried in it all the loving remonstrance of the past.
The tendency to pass into personality characterizes things that greatly command us. ... Most of us have pictures whose eyes follow us, rebuking and warning where we would err, smiling and restful as we strive up the heights. So it is with books, but especially with the Word of God.
We come upon it suddenly as it lies upon the table, and it meets us with almost the full shock and passion of flesh-and-blood reality.
The point
A novelist reflects on the personality of Scripture: the Bible is not merely an object but a living presence that speaks, appeals, warms, and transforms the soul with tenderness or conviction.