How to read the Bible may be very effectively taught by showing the children how not to read it, and then emphasizing the contrary.
Bring before the children a pile of books. Here is one, you see, that has its leaves stuck together, here, and here, and here. Why was that done? Because between those leaves were things the owner did not like to read, and so she stuck the pages together. You may come across commandments in the Bible that are hard to keep, and the Bible may tell you to do things you do not want to do. Some people stick those pages together with a glue called “forgetfulness,” but you children will never do such a foolish thing. No; you will keep every leaf like this, so that you can open to all parts, and read everything that God tells you in it.
See this dirty book. Bah! how filthy. What did it? Dirty fingers. I hope you never helped to bring beautiful, white paper into such a plight as this. You see, you can scarcely read the print, the dirt is so thick. And so, before we start to read our Bibles, let us wash our hands and make them pure; and let us do more than that,—let us ask Jesus to wash from our hearts all the badness, all the anger and fretfulness and pride, because these things will spoil our Bible-reading as quickly as dirt on our hands.
Here is a book with the pages uncut. You can read here, and here, but who will ever know what is in here, where the leaves are uncut? That is a foolish way to keep a book, you say; but are you sure your Bible is not about as badly off? The pages are all cut, I suppose, but if there are parts of the Bible that you never look into, it’s about as bad as if the leaves were uncut, isn’t it? Let us read all parts of the Bible.
Here is a sheet of glass,—black glass. I am going to put it over this page, and ask some of you sharp-eyed boys and girls to read a few words. You cannot make out a letter? Well, I have done this to show you why some folks cannot read the Bible. They put in front of it their bad, black tempers, or their cloudy selfishness, and such things hide all the comforting words of the blessed book. Take away the black and gloomy glass, children, if you want to read the Bible.