There may be a promise in the Word which would exactly fit your case, but you may not know of it, and therefore miss its comfort. You are like prisoners in a dungeon, and there may be one key in the bunch which would unlock the door, and you might be free; but if you will not look for it you may remain a prisoner still, though liberty is near at hand. There may be a potent medicine in the great pharmacopoeia of Scripture, and you may still remain sick, though there is the precise remedy that would meet your disease, unless you will examine and search the Scriptures to discover what “He hath said.”
Should we not, beside reading Scripture, store our memories richly with the promises of God? We can recollect the sayings of great men; we treasure up the verses of renowned poets; ought we not to be profound in our knowledge of the words of God? The Scriptures should be the classics of a Christian, and as our orators quote Homer, or Virgil, or Horace, when they would clinch a point, so we should be able to quote the promises of God when we would solve a difficulty or overthrow a doubt. “He hath said,” is the foundation of all riches and the fountain of all comfort, let it dwell in you richly as “a well of water, springing up unto everlasting life.”
From a sermon entitled "Never! Never! Never! Never! Never!," delivered October 26, 1862. Flickr photo by Louise Docker; some rights reserved.
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