January 7  A Man Of The Word

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Ps. 119:105.

Although well-read as a deist intellectual, upon his conversison to Christianity in 1816 Miller became a man of essentially one book-the Bible. Some years later he wrote to a young minister friend that "you must preach Bible, you must prove all things by Bible, you must talk Bible, you must exhort Bible, you must pray Bible, and love Bible, and do all in your power to make others love Bible too."

On another occasion he stated that the Bible is "a treasure which the world cannot purchase." It not only brings peace and "a firm hope in the future" but it "sustains the mind" and "gives us a powerful weapon to break down infidelity." Byeond that, "it tells us of future events, and shows the preparation necessary to meet them." He wanted young ministers to study the Bible intensively rather then having them indoctrinated in "some sectarian creed. . . .I would make them study the Bible for themselves. . .But if they had no mind, I would stamp them with another's mind, write bigot on their forehead, and send them out as slaves!"

Miller not only pointed others to the Bible, but he practiced what he preached. it was his own extensive Bible study that brought him to his rather startling conclusions. His approach was thorough and methodical. Regarding his early study of the Bible, he commented that he began with Genesis and read each verse, "proceeding no faster than the meaning of the several passages should be so unfolded, as to leave me free from embarrassment respecting any mysticism or contradictions." "Whenever I found any thing obscure," he explained, "my practice was to compare it with all collateral passages; and by the help of Cruden, I examined all the texts of Scriptures in which were found any of the prominent words contained in any obscure portion. Then by letting every word have its proper bearing on the subject of the text, if my view of it harmonized with every collateral passage in the Bible, it ceased to be a diffictulty."

Miller's study of the Bible was not only intensive but also extensive. His first time through it took about two years of what appears to have been full-time study. At that point he "was fully satisfied that [the Bible] is its own interpreter," that "the Bible is a system of revelaed truths, so clearly and simply given, that the 'wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein."

We can thank God that he still guides us through His word.

Every wayside blossom owes its being to the same power that set the starry worlds on high. Through all created things thrills one pulse of life from the great heart of God. The flowers of the field are clothed by His hand in richer robes than have ever graced the forms of earthly kings. And "if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?"(TFMB 96).