“Life close to God’s Word is life close to God. When I urge you to make very much while you are in the seminary of this kind of devotional Bible study, running up into meditation, pure and simple, I am but repeating what the General Assembly specifically requires of you.
‘It is expected,’ says the Plan of the Seminary, framed by the Assembly as our organic law ‘that every student will spend a portion of time, every morning and evening, in devout meditation and self-recollection and examination; in reading the Holy Scriptures solely with a view to a personal and practical application of the passage read to his own heart, character, and circumstances; and in humble fervent prayer and praise to God in secret.’
And do we not find in the practice here recommended the remedy for that lamentable lack of familiarity with ‘the English Bible’—as it is fashionable now to speak of it—which is distressing us all in candidates for the ministry?
Brethren, you deceive yourselves if you fancy anyone can teach you “the English Bible” in the sense in which knowledge of it is desiderated. As well expect someone to digest your food for you. You must taste its preciousness for yourselves, before you can apply its preciousness to others’ needs.
You must assimilate the Bible and make it your own, in that intimate sense which will fix its words fast in your hearts, if you would have those words rise spontaneously to your lips in your times of need, or in the times of the need of others.
Read, study, meditate on your Bible: take time to it-much time; spend effort, strength, yourselves on it; until the Bible is in you. Then the Bible will well up in you and come out from you in every season of need.”
–Benjamin B. Warfield, “Spiritual Culture in the Theological Seminary,” in Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, ed. John E. Meeter (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1970), 2: 485.
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