The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 115

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INSPIRATION

75

For this reason God gave our race the gift of writing. Whether on wax, on metal, on the face of the rock, on parchment, on papyrus, or on paper, is of no importance but that God enabled man to find the art of committing to posterity a thought, a promise, an event, independent from his person, attaching it to something material, ;

so that

it

could endure and be read by others even after his death

this is of greatest importance.

men, reading and writing are means of fellowship. It is essential to fellowship. But mere speaking confines it to narrow limits, while reading and writing give it wider scope, extending it to persons far away and to generaFor

us,

begins with speaking, which

Through writing past generations actually live Even now we can meet with Moses and David, Isaiah and John, Plato and Cicero we can hear them speak and receive tions yet unborn.

together.

;

their mental utterances.

Writing

is

therefore

no contemptible

who are overspiritual and sneer at the written Word, consider it. On the contrary, it is great and glorious — one of the mighty factors whereby God keeps men and generations in thing as some,

living

communication and exercise of

derful grace, God's gift to man,

love.

Its

discovery was a won-

more than doubling

his treasures.

The gift has often been abused yet even in its rightful use there is ascending glory. How much more glorious appears the art of writing when Dante, Shakespeare, and Schiller write their poetry, than when the pedagogue compiles his spelling-books or the notary ;

public scribbles the lease of a house

Since writing

may be used

purposes, the question arises:

without the least hesitation Scripture."

or abused,

"What

we answer

may

is its :

"

serve low or high

highest end.?"

The writing

As human speech and language

of the

And Holy

are of the Holy Spirit, Him. But while man uses the art to record human thoughts, the Holy Spirit employs it to give fixed and lasting form to the thoughts of .God. Hence there is a human employment of it and a divine. The highest and wholly unique is that in the Holy Scripture. Actually there is no other book which sustains communication among men and generations as does the Sacred Scripture. To honor His own work the Holy Spirit has caused the universal distribution of this book alone, thereby putting men of all stations and classes into communication with the oldest generations of the so is writing also taught us of

race.

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