Reading of the Bible

Reading OF The Bible The regular and constant perusal of the Holy Scriptures is so delightful a privilege of Christians that it is spontaneously adopted by the converted heart, and the book has such a charm both for the young and the old, the scholar and the unlearned, as to be a perpetual theme of study for every intelligent mind. It is also enjoined as a religious duty, as well in the volume itself (De 6:7; Joh 5:39), as in the prescriptive rules of most ecclesiastical bodies. The public use of the Bible was practiced by the Jews and by the early Christians, and has been continued among all Protestant bodies. SEE LESSONS. Especial officers were detailed in the early Church for the more general diffusion of this work. SEE READER. In the Roman Catholic Church, however, and to some extent in the Greek, the promiscuous perusal of the Scriptures, in the vernacular, has been prohibited. SEE BIBLE, USE OF BY THE LAITY. Much of the modern so- called "Bible-reading" is rather a mode of sermonizing, or a casual stringing together of disconnected texts on some fanciful principle.