The Churchman's Ready Reference

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV THE THEOLOGY OF THE BIBLE THE Bible is not a treatise on systematic divinity. It does not classify, divide, and treat in detail onr knowledge of God. The botanist, studying plants, must arrange them in classes, and take each part of the plant, the petals, stamens, leaves and stems, to examine...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV THE THEOLOGY OF THE BIBLE THE Bible is not a treatise on systematic divinity. It does not classify, divide, and treat in detail onr knowledge of God. The botanist, studying plants, must arrange them in classes, and take each part of the plant, the petals, stamens, leaves and stems, to examine and compare. This is science. Yet many persons have a knowledge of the vegetable world, with but very little capacity to classify plants, or describe them. So it is with theology, the science which treats of God. It is the queen of sciences. Its subject is infinite. Few can acquire more than an outline of its immensity. He who knows nothing of the science, and does the will of God, Christ says, shall know the doctrine (St. John vii. 17), and is like a gardener cultivating plants for use and beauty. The Source of Theology The only possible source from which to study theology must be God, Himself. Without revelation from Him all must be conjectural. The greatest philosophers seemed to have come very near the truth, but they were still in doubt. As the Bible is the revealed word of God, it is the text-book from which we must gather our knowledge, arrange and classify its revelations. More books have been written to illustrate and explain this one, than on any other in the world. They consist of commentaries, histories, dictionaries, and translations. How this coincides with what St. John says (St. John xxi. 25.) The world itself cannot contain the books that might be written. Reason Man has been separated from the lower animals by calling him a reasonable being. The word man comes from a root which means to think. Reason is a divine gift, to be used in searching after the things which pertain to God. We are not asked by revelation to believe anything contrary to rea...