Passages, Preaching, Poems, Prayers:

Holy Scripture

Passages…

And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Matthew 4:3-4

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Matthew 5:17-18

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

John 5:39-40

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day. . .

Luke 24:44-46

Preaching…

From "A CLEANSED WAY"

‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way! By taking heed thereto
according to Thy word.’ — Psalm 119:9.

. . .It is not enough for a man to have a good watch in his pocket unless now
and then he can get Greenwich time by which he can set it, and unless that
has been secured by taking an observation of the sun. And so you cannot
trust to anything in yourselves for the guidance of your own way or for the
determination of your duty, but you must look to that higher Wisdom that
has condescended to speak to us, and give us in this Book the revelation of
its will. Men rebel against the moral law of the Bible, and speak of it as if it
were a restraint and a sharp taskmaster. Ah, no! It is one of the greatest
tokens of God’s infinite love to us that He has not left us to grope our way
amidst the illusions of our own judgments, and the questionable shapes of
human conceptions of right and wrong, but that He has declared to us His
own character for the standard of all perfection, and given us in the human
life of the Son of His love the all-sufficient pattern for every life.

So I need not dwell at any length upon the thought that in that word of
God, in its whole sweep, and eminently and especially in Christ, who is the
Incarnate Word, we have an all-sufficient Guide. A guide of conduct must
be plain — and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the
doctrines of Christianity there is none about its morality. A guide of
conduct must be decisive — and there is no faltering in the utterance of the
Book as to right and wrong. A guide of conduct must be capable of
application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstance and the
morality of the New Testament especially, and of the Old in a measure,
secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute details, but
deals with large principles. The morality of the Gospel, if I may so say, is a
morality of centres, not of circumferences; of germinal principles, not of
special prescriptions. A guide for morals must be far in advance of the
followers, and it has taken generations and centuries to work into men’s
consciences, and to work out in men’s practice, a portion of the morality
of that Book.

Alexander Maclaren

Poems...

                          H. Sriptures 

Welcome dear book, soul's joy, and food! The feast
        Of spirits, Heaven extracted lies in thee;
        Thou art life's charter, the dove's spotless nest
Where souls are hatched unto Eternity.

In thee the hidden stone, the manna lies,
         Thou art the great elixir, rare, and choice;
         The key that opens to all mysteries,
The Word in characters, God in the voice.

O that I had deep cut in my hard heart
          Each line in thee! Then would I plead in groans
          Of my Lord's penning, and by sweetest art
Return upon himself the Law, and stones.
          Read here, my faults are thine. This book, and I
          Will tell thee so; Sweet Savior thou didst die!

                                 Henry Vaughan, 1622-1695

                          The Bible 

We search the world for truth. We cull
The good, the true, the beautiful,
From graven stone and written scroll,
And all old flower-fields of the soul;
And, weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from our quest,
To find that all the sages said
 Is in the Book our mothers read.

                                 John Greenleaf Whitter, 1807-1892

A Prayer…

MY God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain sense of all that thou sayest? But thou art also (Lord, I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy diminution), thou art a figurative, a metaphorical God too; A God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such Curtains of Allegories, such third Heavens of Hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so retired and so reserved expressions, so commanding persuasions, so persuading commandments, such sinews even in thy milk, and such things in thy words, as all profane Authors seem of the seed of the Serpent, that creeps, thou art the Dove, that flies. O, what words but thine can express the inexpressible texture and composition of thy word, in which to one man that argument that binds his faith to believe that to be the Word of God, is the reverent simplicity of the Word, and to another the majesty of the Word; and in which two men equally pious may meet, and one wonder that all should not understand it, and the other as much that any man should.

                                                                        John Donne, 1573-1631
                                                                        From Exposulation 19