by A. W. Tozer
Through the foresight and zeal of certain publishers within the last few years many of the great religious classics of the past have been revived and made available to the Christian public in attractive editions. These have been mostly of two kinds, viz., the works of the Puritan divines and those of the mystic theologians and devotional writers from St. Augustine to John Woolman.
The great Puritan writers and those closely related to them in doctrine and spirit were the spiritual forebears of our present day Fundamentalists, though candor requires that we note that, for reasons that need not be enumerated here, the noble fathers were not able to beget sons equal to themselves.
The devotional works that have appeared have been so varied as to make classification difficult. Some of the great names are Meister Eckhart, Bernard of Clairvaux, Jan van Ruysbroeck, Michael Molinos, John of the Cross, Thomas Traherne, Richard Rolle, William Law, Walter Hilton, Francis de Sales, Jakob Boehme and Gerhart Tersteegen. To those might be added the more familiar names of Fenelon, Guyon and Thomas á Kempis.
To a large extent these were universal Christians who experienced the grace of God so deeply and so broadly that they encompassed the spiritual possibilities of all men and were able to set forth their religious experiences in language acceptable to Christians of various ages and varying doctrinal viewpoints. Just as a sincere hymn may strike a worshipful chord common to all Christians, so these works of devotion instantly commend themselves to true seekers everywhere. There need only be genuine faith in Christ, complete separation from the world, an eager cleaving unto God and a willingness to die to self and carry the cross, and the Holy Spirit will introduce His people to each other across the centuries and teach them the meaning of spiritual unity and the communion of saints.
What disturbs me is the sharp disparity between theory and fact in the reception given these great spiritual classics by the rank and file of evangelicals. Theoretically the people of God should run to these books as a thirsting stag runs to bury his muzzle in the cooling stream; actually only a relatively few welcome them. Most Christians find them dull, and even though they may buy them, they seldom look into them, and wonder how they got their reputation as religious masterworks.
Why is this? Why do the majority of present day Christians prefer shallow religious fiction? Or uninspired Bible talks that never get beyond the "first principles"? Or one-page daily devotions? Or watered-down Christian biography? I think the reasons are two:
First, present day evangelical Christianity is not producing saints. The whole concept of religious experience has shifted from the transcendental to the utilitarian. God is valued as being useful and Christ appreciated because of the predicaments He gets us out of. He can deliver us from the consequences of our past, relax our nerves, give us peace of mind and make our business a success. The all-consuming love that burns in the writings of an Augustine, a Bernard or a Rolle is foreign to the modern religious spirit. Like understands like and fails to comprehend what is unlike itself. The tortoise finds the mockingbird dull. Esau has no fellowship with Jacob. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14).
To come to our devotions straight from carnal or worldly interests is to make it impossible to relish the deep, sweet thoughts found in the great books we are discussing here. We must know their heart-language, must vibrate in harmony with them, must share their inward experiences or they will mean nothing to us. Because we are too often strangers to their spiritual mood, we are unable to profit by them and are forced to turn to one or another form of religious entertainment to make our Christianity palatable enough to endure.
Secondly, people are unable to appreciate the great spiritual classics because they are trying to understand them while having no intention to obey them. The Greek Church father, St. Gregory, said it better than I could, so we'll let him tell us: "He who seeks to understand commandments without fulfilling commandments, and to acquire such understanding through learning and reading, is like a man who takes shadows for truth. For the understanding of truth is given to those who have become participants in truth (who have tasted it through living). Those who are not participants in truth and are not initiated therein, when they seek this understanding, draw from it a distorted wisdom. Of such the apostle says, `The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit,' even though they boast of their knowledge of truth."
In conclusion, we use books profitably when we see them as a means toward an end; we abase them when we think of them as ends in themselves. And for all books of every sort let us observe Bacon's famous rule: "Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
( The Size of the Soul, Chapter 10 )
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