I am new to the writings of George Herbert Morrison, but was quickly taken with this quote about the Bible—about the way it meets our needs and the way it satisfies our spiritual hunger. I hope you’ll enjoy it too!
Whenever the Almighty satisfies his creatures, he gives them drink as abundant as the seas. Think of the Bible—an ancient book and yet intensely modern and practical. Think of the ages that have gone since it was written; think of the life we [now] live and of the stress and strain unknown in the quiet East; to me it is wonderful that the Bible should be of any use at all now and not have moved into the quiet of libraries to be the joy of the unworldly scholar.
But one thing is certain—the Bible meets the need of modern life. As a practical guide there is no book to touch it. There is not a problem you are called to face and not a duty you are called to do, there is not a cross you are compelled to carry and not a burden you are forced to bear but your strength for it all will be as the strength of ten—if you make a daily companion of your Bible.
The Bible never offers a drink from shallow waters. There, you do not find a set of petty maxims, but the everlasting love of God; you do not find any shallow views of sin, but a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And that is the secret of the Bible’s permanence—when our little systems have ceased to be, for sin and sorrow and life and death and duty, it gives us drink “as abundant as the seas.”
Think of Jesus in relation to his words. If ever words were as water to a thirsty world, surely it was the words that Jesus spoke. How simple they were and yet how deep! How tender and full of love and yet how searching! There are those whose lives so contradict their words that when you know the people you cannot listen to them. And there are those who are so much less than their own words that when you come to know them you are disappointed. But what people felt about Jesus Christ was this, that when all was uttered, the half was never told, for at the back of all his words there was himself, deeper unfathomably than his deepest speech. That is why the words of Christ will live even when heaven and earth have passed away. You can exhaust the cup or drain the goblet, but you cannot exhaust the spring fed from the deeps. And just because the words of Jesus Christ spring from the depths of that divine humanity, they will save and strengthen the obedient heart to the last recorded syllable of time.
