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Show "THE PEOPLE OUGHT Tu READ THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD." The Bible has been preserved by the Catholic church in order that it might be read to the,pecple and by the people. Our Catholic forefathers knew the Bible better far then we do. In the days of St. Augustine and St. Chrysas-tom Chrysas-tom the people were known to cry out in protest in the church when by accident acci-dent the bishop quoted amiss a passage from the holy book. One of their objections ob-jections to accepting the new translation transla-tion of the Bible that St. Jerome made in that same age was that he had changed the lame by which they were used to call the vine that gave shade to Jonas at NIniveh. In times much nearer to our own the same familiar .acquaintance with the inspired page on the part of the people is proven by the large number of popular pop-ular proverbg that are constantly employed em-ployed in every land in Christendom, proverbs based upon some incident or Saying in the Bible. This is as as ' it should be. Of course, no man can lay claim to a liberal education who is not acquainted acquaint-ed with the .entire Bible. He may be successful in business, he may be widely wide-ly read in other literature, he mav even occupy a chair in some famous seat of learning, but if an allusion to a Bible personage or a Bible saying is lost upon him, he betrays a fatal defect in his education. Merely for the part it fills in all our modern literature, the Bible is the one book with which no well-read man can afford to be ill-acquainted. The Bible is the one book that all the peoples of Christendom have in common. com-mon. It leavens the literature of them all. And the Old Testament, by far the larger part of the Bible, is shared with them by the Jew as well. ' When reading the Bible, then, we are reading' the same book and thinking the same thought with the men of finest culture In every Christian land. In its pages we read the inspired word of God. That word reaches to the very throne of .conscience, stirs the heart to its . profoundest depths, preaches morality and order in parable, in apothegm and in living example, as none other can, and shows us the fatherly fath-erly hand of God leading humanity up-' wurds to, the full knowledge of his divine di-vine law. It constitutes "the consolation consola-tion of the scriptures" of which the Apostle St. Paul speaks, as in the days of the Maccabees it made the sacred books the chief comfort of the perse-' cuted people. . One of the mapy ills that the religious re-ligious rebellion of the sixteenth century cen-tury has bequeathed to us, is the popular popu-lar neglect of the reading of the Bible. At that time was broached the most far-reaching heresy of all the. ages. The church is the teacher whom Christ appointed to teach the world his doctrine. doc-trine. Men were told in the sixteenth century that they must not hearken . i to "the church, but must seek in the Bible alone for God's teaching in its entirety. Forthwith new doctrines, "as false as they were new, sprang up on all sides. Cardinal Hosius enumerates 227 sects at that day. To stem this torrent of error the church did the one thing that was right to do. She emphasized em-phasized anew the teaching of Our Divine Di-vine Lord in the church, as the rule of faith, and threw around the reading of the Bible such limitations as would guard the unwary from erring therein. The people of Europe w:ere a sick man. She withheld strong meat from him until un-til such time as it would do him good. That time has long since, arrived. The Catholic mind is duly submissive to the teachings of God's church. We are living liv-ing under the legislation passed on this point by Pope Benedict XIV, in the middle of the eighteenth century. All our Catholic Bibles have foot notes explanatory ex-planatory of difficult passages, as the law of the church requires. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, in Its pastoral letters to the Catholic people of this country, exhorts every family to have a Bible and urges the head of the household to read it every day to the family. The people cannot understand - all that they read in the Bible. True. No man can today. But they can understand under-stand the greater part of it. The examples ex-amples of the holy men and women of old will nerve them to do, and if need be, to bear great things for God. The dire vengeance visited upon the wicked, as tnlrl in tho Ptihlo will fill thorn with a saving dread of sin. The very words of Our Divine Lord himself which they will find written there will call them to holiness of life with a power and an unction that no other words possess. The people ought to read he written word of Qod. So long as they attach to it only that sense which holy mother church has held, it will do them good, great good and nothing but good. |
