Judges 13:18

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?" Judges 13:18 .

Men are continually driven back from secret altars, and forbidden to indulge their curiosity in sacred places. We may receive anonymous blessings. It is difficult to distinguish sometimes between curiosity and reverent inquiry. Sometimes we are more interested in the secret things than in the things revealed. When we are conscious of such interest we may know that we are animated by curiosity, and not by the spirit of reverential inquiry. In coming to the Bible we must come for ripe fruit, for practical blessings ready to be handled, for the things which we can immediately understand and apply; and we must not be deterred from our use and enjoyment of these because a secret seems to be hidden within them all, and a ghostly presence seems to be moving in shadow across the pages as we peruse them. There is a point at which the knowable ends: at that point we may either become fools or wise men fools because we say there is nothing worth knowing, or wise men by saying the temporal must be conducted in the light of the eternal, the finite must be ennobled by a consciousness of the infinite, the human must be lifted up to its noblest significance by the assured presence and judgment of the divine.