Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
February 2008
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
Trekking for nine hours a day in the Himalayas leaves one with a bit of time to think, in between admiring the scenery, watching one’s step, and trying to breathe. On our recent expedition, I took with me a selection of the writings of William Wilberforce. A cheerful and joyful man, with a splendid singing voice, Wilberforce spent most of his working days as a politician. He sat in the British House of Commons from 1780 until he retired in 1825, and is best known for his role in the abolition of the slave trade.
What is less known and hardly appreciated today is the motivation behind his life in the world of politics. The received wisdom in many circles is that religious faith renders one biased and unscientific, and so disqualifies one from the public arena. To Wilberforce, however, ‘the best preparation for being a good politician … is to be a truly religious man.’ He sought, in his own words, ‘to act from a pure principle and leave the event to God.’ Such an approach to life does not come wrapped with the old school tie. Wilberforce would preserve the early morning for prayer and Bible study, and as result his writings are studded with references to biblical verses. He came to know all of Psalm 119 off by heart, as well as most of Paul’s epistles. Yet he also lamented: ‘I fear that I have not studied the Scriptures enough’!
Wilberforce’s example was a challenge to me to contemplate how much Scripture I had actually memorized. While watching out for loose rocks and deep ravines in Nepal, I tried to call to mind all of John’s Gospel. There were, I am pleased to say, whole sections which I could recite off by heart. There were other parts that descended into paraphrase, and yet other parts where I was stumped. I then tried the same exercise on the book of Galatians – a book which I had much studied in recent times. Alas, the result was better, but not dramatically so. Wilberforce could recite most of Paul’s letters; I struggled to get the gist of one.
This is supposed to be the information generation. It is certainly the generation that looks down on learning by rote. This often translates into generational differences – Grandma can recite poetry she learnt at school while the grandchildren can google-search any poem they like. But the Word of God is not dismissive of the use of memory. The Psalmist declares: ‘I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you’ (Psalm 119:11). There is nothing unthinking about this. In the fifth century B.C., Ezra and the Levites read the Law of God clearly to the people in the square before the Water Gate in Jerusalem, and gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading (Neh.8:8).
One of the best examples of the way God can use Scripture memorisation can
be seen in the life of John Newton. Newton’s mother died of tuberculosis in 1732, two weeks before John’s seventh birthday, but she had taught John from the Bible and from Isaac Watts’ songs. Sixteen years later, on 10 March 1748 (in the Julian calendar, which became 21 March when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1752) Newton was on board the Greyhound when it was caught in a storm that was so terrifying that he was lashed shirtless to the helm. For sixteen years he had lived a dissolute, rebellious and hardened lifestyle. He had composed bawdy ballads, made up blasphemous oaths, and had even taken to worshipping the moon. On one occasion he nearly lost his life while retrieving his hat while intoxicated after a drinking contest. Faced with death, however, he recalled the words of Scripture; the seeds sown by his godly mother bore fruit. The words of Proverbs 1:24-31 (‘Because I have called and you refused to listen … I also will laugh at your calamity’) flooded into Newton’s mind, and he was convicted that they applied to him.
This conviction of sin led finally to the assurance of amazing grace in Jesus Christ. Later Newton was to testify of his mother’s role in this work of God: ‘She stored my memory, which was then very retentive, with many valuable pieces, chapters, and portions of Scripture, catechism, hymns and poems.’ Humanly speaking, without Newton’s having the Scripture stored, albeit much neglected and almost forgotten, in his mind, the Holy Spirit would have had far less to work with when the day of grace came. When Jesus was tempted three times by the devil in the desert, He replied on each occasion with a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy (see Matt.4:1-11 and Deut. 8:3; 6:16; 6:13). I may have carried a book on Wilberforce through the mountains of Nepal but it is scarcely believable that our Lord carried a concordance with Him into a Middle Eastern desert. Jesus obviously knew the Scriptures off by heart, and used them to ward off Satan. This is rather easier to write about than it is to practise, but for the word of Christ to dwell within us richly (Col.3:16), there is clearly a need for it to dwell within us first. My project is to try to learn John’s Gospel off by heart. How about you?
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes