How Do You Read the Bible? by J C Ryle, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, paperback, 59 pages, £3.50, obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom. The material in this book is a chapter from the author’s Practical Religion; it has been “lightly edited with archaisms modernised and footnotes added”. Ryle heads what he writes with two quotations from the Bible: “Search the Scriptures”, and, “How readest thou?” Ryle’s writing is almost always practical, and that is certainly the case here.
He gives the reader eight main points, and his comments on each of them end with the same three practical questions: “What are you doing with the Bible? Do you read it? How do you read it?” Ryle’s points include: “There is no book in existence written in such a manner as the Bible” (it “was ‘given by inspiration of God’ (2 Tim 3:16)”; “There is no knowledge absolutely needful to a man’s salvation except a knowledge of the things which are to be found in the Bible”; and, “The Bible is the only book that can bring comfort in death”.
The author concludes by giving “points of application addressed to the conscience” of various groups of people. Among the advice he gives to those who are ready to begin reading the Bible is: “Begin reading your Bible this very day”, and, “Read the Bible with an earnest desire to understand it”. He also addresses the individual who “loves and believes the Bible, and yet reads
it but little”. He warns that such a person is “likely to get little comfort from the Bible in time of need”, and “likely never to be established in the truth” but “to be carried away by some specious false teacher for a season”. He ends by addressing those who “really love the Bible, live upon the Bible, and read it much”. He encourages them to “read the Bible more and more”, “meditate more on the Bible”, and “live by the Bible more and more”. When expanding a little on the point just quoted, Ryle counsels, “Let us measure all by the Bible, and resolve, by God’s help to conform to it. O that we may learn increasingly to cleanse our ways by the Word! (Ps 119:9).”
The final paragraph of the book begins thus: “I commend all these things to the serious and prayerful attention of everyone” who takes it up. May the book, with God’s blessing, send them to the Bible to give it serious and prayerful attention, and to give it such attention increasingly!
Protestant View
“Just Human Bones”
The mortal remains of the young woman who claimed to have seen visions of Mary at Lourdes, in France, in the 1850s are being taken to more than 50 locations throughout Britain during September and October. It is expected that the relics of Bernadette Soubirous will attract great public interest and will be the largest-ever exhibition of its kind in this country. A tour of the relics of another Romanist “saint” in 2009 attracted over 500 000 people.
Those who come to “venerate” the relics will observe “bone and tissue fragments . . . in a golden reliquary within a hermetically sealed glass case” and many of them will then “pray, light candles and leave petitions”. The remains will also be accompanied by 1000 litres of spring water from Lourdes for washing and drinking. The intention is that the alleged healing power that those who attend the shrine at Lourdes enjoy will be extended to the UK. A priest in London remarked that “the relics are just human bones, but they are bones that belonged to an individual touched by the power of God”.
What poor, deluded people they must be who think that “dead men’s bones” can have any influence on their physical health. Indeed, one of the greatest sources of superstition lies in attributing spiritual power to physical things. The whole delusion of Lourdes is a gross example of Romanist superstition and also of imposing on people when many of them are in a most vulnerable and needy condition. It is sad that such an exhibition is taking place in once-Protestant Britain and it merely emphasises the reigning spiritual darkness that envelops our land.
May the Lord send forth His light with His truth so that multitudes who today sit in darkness would come to know the true light of the gospel of Christ. When that will take place, it is not to human remains, nor to the mother of Christ’s human nature that people will look for spiritual and physical health, but to the Sun of righteousness who arises with healing in His wings (Mal 4:2).
AWM
Notes and Comments
Some Thoughts Following the Death of the Queen
On September 8, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed from time into eternity, after her exceptionally long reign of 70 years. Much has been said and done throughout the United Kingdom, by way of expressing sympathy to the Royal family. The message of sympathy sent by the Moderator and Clerk of Synod (see page 319) pays tribute to “the gracious manner in which Her Majesty the Queen conducted herself for the well-being of our nation” and of other parts of the world.
One would question the appropriateness of the abundance of funny anecdotes told by way of tribute to the late Queen in the House of Commons. Death is serious and, while the selection of comments by the media may have been biased in favour of what was humorous, it reflects the attitudes of a generation that ignores the solemn reality of sinners passing into eternity.
We may also note the new Prime Minister Liz Truss’s remarks that the Queen was the “rock on which modern Britain was built”. One does not want to be overly critical of this statement, but one would much prefer if she had pointed to the King of kings as the Rock on which modern Britain ought to have been built.
The Queen’s eldest son has now become King Charles III. Some will be more than disappointed that he did not choose another name as monarch, given especially the record of Charles I and Charles II as persecutors of those who strove to follow the Scriptures in every sphere of life, especially those who desired a fully reformed Church.
Yet it was good to hear the new King acknowledge God in these very early days of his reign. Much of what he said was no doubt conventional, according to the forms of previous generations. We should be thankful that he has moved away from wishing to be known as “Defender of Faith”, whatever that might mean in this multi-faith age. Instead he used the traditional expression, “Defender of the Faith”, which can be understood as being at least Protestant in its intention, although the title was originally awarded by
the Pope of the time to Henry VIII after the latter had written against Luther.
King Charles further stated, “I . . . do faithfully promise and swear that I shall inviolably maintain and preserve the Settlement of the true Protestant Religion as established by the Laws made in Scotland in prosecution of the Claim of Right and particularly by an Act intituled ‘An Act for securing the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Government’ and by the Acts passed in the Parliament of both Kingdoms for Union of the two Kingdoms, together with the Government, Worship, Discipline, Rights and Privileges of the Church of Scotland. So help me God.”
Again, he gave the undertaking, “In carrying out the heavy task that has been laid upon me, and to which I now dedicate what remains to me of my life, I pray for the guidance and help of almighty God”. And he acknowledged, as he pledged himself to “uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation” for the rest of his life, that such a period of time was what “God grants me”. We welcome such forms of words, but what we really long for is to see these sentiments put into practice in the whole life of the King and all his ministers, in all their activities in government, especially in the legislation that is passed.
Unusually the new reign coincided with a new government, under a new prime minister. Paul exhorted Timothy that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men”; in particular “for kings, and for all that are in authority”. It is altogether appropriate that we should pray for King Charles and for all members of government and members of the various UK parliaments, and others in positions of responsibility throughout the country. Paul mentions, in the same passage, one particular reason for interceding for those who are in authority: that “we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Timothy 2:1,2). We should ask that we might always be able to practice the true religion without interference and we should be very thankful for the degree to which we can live free from violence. We should pray that the Lord in His kindness would permit this to continue.
We should ask too that our rulers would come to realise that it is their duty to maintain the true religion. But we should also pray that God would grant spiritual blessings to people in various positions of authority, and indeed to desire spiritual blessings to be poured on people of every kind throughout the UK and beyond.
One final thought. It has been announced that the day of the Queen’s funeral is to be a bank holiday. Supermarkets and various other employers have decided to close on that day, although supermarkets in particular are almost universally open on the Lord’s day, on the day over which the King
of kings has sovereign authority. Supermarkets are to be shut out of respect for the late Queen, but they refuse to show respect for the Lord Jesus Christ in closing on His day. How incongruous!
Family Life in Britain
A review by Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, was commissioned by the UK Government and published on 1 September 2022. The review investigated all aspects of family life and included a survey of children in England (which received over half a million responses) and many interviews with married couples and single parents, to get an in-depth picture of family life today.
Shockingly, the review states that almost a quarter of families in the UK are headed by a lone parent (90% of whom are women) rather than in the traditional and scriptural two-parent family. Of children born after 2000, 44% spent some of their childhood up to the age of 17 outside of a two-parent family. This compares with 21% of children born in 1970.
Researchers used the Annual Population Survey of the Office of National Statistics to produce breakdowns of family composition by ethnicity, religion and socio-economic status:
- “Families of Asian descent, including those with Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi heritage, are far more likely to be headed by a married couple (approximately 85%, compared with 60% white British).
- “44% and 57% respectively of Black African and Caribbean families, and 22% of white British families, are headed by a lone parent.
- “49% of children in lone-parent families were in relative poverty compared with 25% living in married or cohabiting families.”
The Commissioner noted, “Family structure has gradually changed over the last 20 years. There are fewer married couples. There are more couples cohabiting. There are fewer traditional nuclear-family units. Family is always changing. It is dynamic and we need to find new ways to stay up to date with how it is changing so we can support it effectively. This review has shown for the first time ever that family has a protective effect. These core protective elements of family are love, strong and enduring relationships, the ability to depend on one another for emotional and practical support, and shared experiences.”
She called on the Government to put families at the heart of policy: “The research shows for the first time that family provides a shield from life’s challenges. . . . That is why the Government needs to prioritise how they can put families at the heart of all policy decisions.”
Mr Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, said, “It
shouldn’t come as a surprise that marriage rates have fallen. Hostile policy-makers have tried to pretend that marriage doesn’t matter, while current social policy massively penalises low-income couples who marry or even live together, through the couple penalty in the benefit system. Our research shows that most young adults still want to marry, and all the evidence supports this as a good choice, especially for raising children.”
Secular reasons can explain in part the breakdown of marriage, including the fact that women now have more freedom to escape abusive marriages. However, it is clear that this once-Christian nation which has turned its back on God and His laws has also departed from the creation ordinance of marriage and the God-given ordinance for the raising of children. The Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it and compares this to marriage. He goes on to say that “men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. . . . For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” One flesh is a loving life-long relationship, the casting aside of which results in the findings of the national survey outlined above. In its neglect of this ordinance, the UK has sown the wind and, we fear, is reaping the whirlwind in terms of moral degradation and the breakdown of society. FRD
Apoloising to Scottish Witches
In recent years, it has become popular for governments and other organisations to make apologies for the conduct of people connected with them in the past, and even to issue pardons to people convicted of crimes many decades and even centuries ago. Sometimes the apologies are accompanied by gifts of money to those claiming to represent the victims of historic “injustice”. One such group of “victims” is those who were executed, or even accused, under the Scottish law against witchcraft which was in force from 1563 until 1736. Edinburgh University has a database of such people, listing nearly 4000 (84% female) of whom perhaps two-thirds were put to death.
In March of this year, the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued an “apology” to these people, especially the women among them. The purpose of the apology was partly to send the message that there is nothing wrong with witchcraft (or no such thing as witchcraft, according to the atheists); and partly to show how much superior the present occupants of Scotland are to previous generations. In both respects, it was intended as a snub to Scotland’s former Christianity.
It cannot be denied that superstition was rife in Scotland before the
scientific era. Thomas M’Crie gives a rather extraordinary example from the articles of attainder for high treason brought against the Marquis of Argyll in the Scottish Parliament in 1661. One of these articles concerned a “miraculous” tree, on which some men had been hanged, which promptly died and issued a stream of blood from its roots. In such a superstitious atmosphere, it is little wonder that people engaged in witchcraft, and that they were severely punished for it. Doubtless some of the accusations of witchcraft had a malicious origin, while others were a response to eccentricity or madness, but some of the instances must have involved people who were deliberately using “black arts” to try to injure others. The penalty may have been excessively severe, but they knew what it was, and they chose to continue in their evil – witchcraft is an evil for which there is no possible justification (Ex 22:18) – and they suffered the consequences.
The work of our generation is not to sit in judgement on former generations but to prepare ourselves, and our fellow men, for the great Day of Judgement. Many presumptuous condemnations of people in the past will themselves be brought into judgement in that day.
DWBS