Knowing the Scriptures: Rules and Methods of Bible Study

The highest secret of Bible study, however, is that teachable spirit which is inseparable from obedience. Spiritual vision, like the physical, is binocular: it depends on both reason and conscience. If the intellectual faculties are beclouded, the moral sense is apt to err in its decisions; and, if the conscience be seared, the reason is blinded. Our Lord says, “If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine” (John 7:17); in other words obedience is the organ of spiritual revelation. Insight into the scriptures is never independent of the obedient frame, but is conditioned upon actual conformity to their precepts and sympathy with their spirit. True biblical learning is not so much mental as experimental. There are professed teachers and preachers who no more grasp the truth they nominally hold than does the sparrow grasp the message that passes through the telegraph wire on which it perches—as Norman McLeod quaintly put it.