'Voices From The Past' Vol. 1 — December 1

Do not leave your Bible as some do, at church, and hear nothing of it all week long. Bring it home and let it dwell with you. Do not let the Word be as a wayfaring man that tarries with you for a night and is gone. Let it be an inhabitant, one that accompanies you to bed and board, and with whom you converse continually as your familiar and intimate friend. Have you not found the Bible to be so bountiful a guest, to pay you so liberally for its board, that you always give it a hearty welcome and would not part with it for the whole world? O consider what love the saints have had for God's law! Luther said that he hated the books he made if they hindered the reading of the Scripture. The godly have meditated in it day and night and have esteemed it above the sweetest honey and the finest gold. The martyrs in England have given much of their estates for a few leaves of it, and have laid down their lives before they would lose the precious fruit in it. O let this Book of books be often before you, and your meditation all the day! If you know and believe the contents of the Word, you would hardly ever let it out of your hand. You would lay it up as the tables in the ark, in your heart. God reveals his eternal good in it. It is the copy of his everlasting love, of which his eternal decree is the original. It contains his precious thoughts before the foundation of the world of redeeming miserable man with the blood of his Son, and making him an heir of the eternal weight of glory. These gracious and mysterious purposes of his, which were hidden in the night of many ages, have become visible to every eye in the Word of God. Here upon the stage of the Word, his grace and favour to mankind is fully displayed. Take heed how you hear. Like the noble Bereans, search the Scriptures daily.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Devotional Readings 'Voices From The Past Vol.1.'
George Swinnock, Works, I:143-145
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