Bible-Reading
In the year 1914 F.W. Grant was deeply troubled about the
declining interest in and appreciation for the Bible Reading meeting. In July
of that year he wrote an article in "The Bible Treasury" entitled "The Neglect
of the Reading Meeting". I conclude with some extended excerpts from that
valuable article. "The Reading Meeting" is a great test of the state of an
assembly; for it is there, if things be right that the knowledge, gathered in
whatever way, is tested and made sure by that personal conference and
comparison which help so largely in making it the realised possession of the
soul. Here we may learn too, if there be the freedom and candour of brotherly
love, the needs to which the truth ministers and the ability to use it for real
edification. It is of immense value to test in this way how far we have got the
truth; while by this means what has been learned by each is thrown into the
common fund, to enrich the whole. Those who know least would be surprised to
realise how much the questions suggested by their own need may help in various
ways the very people who answer them. And this is only one of the many modes in
which the waterer is watered - the minister is ministered to. The reading
meeting is never, therefore, made needless or of little value by whatever
multiplicity there may be of more detailed and connected teaching. Nay, all
this creates a special need for the reading meeting, in order that the food
laid before the whole may be individually digested and assimilated. Here,
however, any lack of nearness to and confidence in one another will be surely
felt as a hindrance, and need of another sort, manifested to those who have
eyes to see......
When, over eighty years ago (now over one-hundred and
fifty years-ED) the Spirit of God began to move freshly in the hearts of His
people to recover them to one another, and to revive the almost lost idea of
the assembly of God, the reading meetings were a marked and prominent sign of
the awakened interest in His word, and that the people of God as such were
awaking to claim for themselves their portion in it. No class of men could be
allowed, however gifted, however educated and sanctioned by the mass, to stand
between their souls and the possession of what was needed alike by all and
designed by God for all. Now, alas, the decay of the reading meeting means
nothing else but the subsiding of that eager enthusiasm for the truth that then
was, and the lessened consciousness of the Spirit of God being in each and all
His own to give each for himself the power to acquire possession. The
flood-tide is gone, and the diminished stream begins to confine itself to the
old channels.
We need to proclaim again that God never designed 'theology'
to be for a class of theologians, but all the treasures of His word to be for
all His people, not a thing in it to be hidden, save from the eyes of the
careless and indifferent, those who are willing to exchange their heavenly
birthright for a mess of the world's pottage. We need once more to assert that
teachers are only a pledge on God's part of his eagerness to have all to know,
- not that He has restricted to these the possession of any kind of spiritual
knowledge. Teachers are only to show that there, in the living fount from which
they draw, is the living water for all, as free for others as for themselves.
They are only the truth of God's word made to stand out in blazon before the
eyes of those who have not yet found in there where He has put it for them, and
with this for a motto of encouragement to those who have faith in a God that
cannot lie, "Every one that seeketh, findeth". The success of teachers is shown
by their ability to make others independent of them when men say to them, as
the Samaritans to the woman of Sychar, 'Now we believe, not because of thy
saying'; and in proportion as the church of God by their means is made to
realise its ability for self-edification..... (Eph. iv. 11-13).......
How
intolerable is the thought of class restrictions to limit and hinder the grace
of God in His people, yet, alas, into which, sensibly, they so readily sink
down! The development of all gifts is necessarily hindered by it; and this is
largely the reason why so few among us are going forth to labour in the ample
fields on every side, and why the gatherings develop so little strength and
stability. We need not talk about a "laity" to have one. Let God's people sink
down into indolent acquiescence in their inability for their spiritual
privileges; and little gift of any kind is likely to develop among them. Those
that can be fed only with the spoon, are infants or invalids. On the other
hand, where spiritual life is strongest we shall be most fully conscious of our
need of one another...... Every one has a place to fill that no other can fill;
every one is necessary. Good it is to remember this, as to ourselves and as to
every other. If we forger it, we cannot by this escape from the consequences.
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