life whose exercise and outcome means our whole walk here as well as
hereafter. I would regard them, as it is apparent that He regarded them,
as being (in a sacred sense) self-sufficient; not, indeed, to the
self-sufficient reader, but to the reader who prays in reverent
simplicity that the Holy Spirit may dispel every moral mist, every
hindrance of heart and will, from between him and the meaning of the
written Word; and who intends in truthful sincerity to consent to, to
obey, the discovered meaning; and who is taking pains over the Book.

"It is a great joy to know how entirely this was the view of the matter
held, and loved, and taught in the ancient Church. Is there anything
about which there is a larger consent of the Fathers? St Athanasius
loves to dilate on the [Greek: autarkeia], the self-sufficingness, of
'the divine Scriptures.' St Cyril of Jerusalem entreats his hearers to
guide and fix their belief by the reading of the Canonical books. St
Chrysostom boldly accounts for all mischiefs by the lack of personal
acquaintance with the Scriptures.

"We are in the nineteenth century, almost in the twentieth, and perhaps
we therefore need, even more than our elder brethren of the fourth, to
renew our energies in Scripture-study by prayerful, painstaking
recollection of what the Book is. We need an ever fresh realization of
what it is immortally, unalterably; the divinely trustworthy, and
therefore authoritative, account of God's mind, and specially and above
all of God's mind concerning Jesus Christ and our relations to Him, our
life by Him, our peace, and power, and hope, in Him. And it is a few
words about this aspect of Scripture, and the search of Scripture, that
I now lay before you, with humility and simplicity of purpose, in the
way of a description and example of a sort of study that has been a
great blessing to myself.

"Take one of the holy Books, or a section of one of them; and for this
purpose shorter is better. By a certain exercise of imagination suppose
yourself to be reading a _newly-discovered_ fragment of the apostolic
age. Treat it somewhat as many of us have recently sought to treat
Bryennius' discovery, _The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_. What
microscopic attention has been brought to bear upon that little book,
just because good evidence gives it a place in the first century, and
because it speaks of Christ, and of Christians; of faith, worship,
ministry, and life, in a part of the prim