Coleridge on Reading Your Flippin' Bible

The following is taken from a volume of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's works, specifically Volume 6 of his Collected Works, entitled "Lay Sermons." This work is addressed to the upper class of his time, the intellects, the elders, the statesmen, the so-called "smart people." The people who have the Bible, can read the Bible, and at the same time do not. Even though written in 1816, it is still remarkably applicable today. How many people do we know that have a Bible, call themselves Christians, and rarely touch the Word of God? That describes me all too often. Here we go... Hang onto your hats, kids.

"Alas!-the main hindrance to the use of the Scriptures... lies in the notion that you are already acquainted with its contents. Something new must be presented to you, wholly new and sholly out of yourselves; for whatever is within us must be as old as the first dawn of human reason. Truths of all others the most awful and mysterious and at the same time of universal interest, are considered as so true as to lose all the powers of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side, with the most despised and exploded errors. But it should not be so with you! The pride of education, the sense of consistency should preclude the objection: for would you not be ashamed to apply it to the works of Tacitus, or of Shakespear? Above all, the rank which you hold, the influence you possess, the powers you may be called to wield, give a special unfitness to the frivolous craving for novelty. To find to contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the ANCIENT OF DAYS, his words and his works, with a feeling as fresh as if they were now first springing forth at his fiat-this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the world and may help to unravel it! This, most of all things, will raise you above the mass of mankind, and therefore will best entitle and qualify you to guide and controul them! You say, you are already familiar with the Scriptures. With the words, perhaps, but in any other sense you might as wisely boast of your familiar acquaintance with the rays of the sun, and under that pretence turn away your eyes from the light of Heaven."

*coughs*

Um... I'm gonna go read my Bible.