Make Your Own Bible

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his Journal, “Make your own Bible.  Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.”  I followed his advice. I wrote those words down.  I have a collection of “Quotes of Note” and “Reading Notes” which have been for me “like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare…” and which now make up my own Bible of sorts.  What is the “blast of triumph?”  I think Emerson meant "the blast of triumph” to be those words and sentences that speak to you way down deep inside.

What a “blast of triumph” it was for me when I first read these words from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:  “I am a Jew.  Hath not a Jew eyes?  Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?  If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?”  I wrote the words down.  Now I read these words often in my Bible of sorts. I think of the words whenever human beings are denigrated or belittled.  The words of Shakespeare come to mind when I ponder the issue of immigrants at the southern border.  I think of these words when I remember the Holocaust.

It was a “blast of triumph” when I first read these words in the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament:  “I have called you by name and you are my own.  When you pass through deep waters, I am with you, when you pass through rivers, they will not sweep you away; walk through fir and you will not be scorched, through flames and they will not burn you.  For I am the Lord your God…your deliverer;…and I have loved you” (Isa. 43:2, NEB).  I wrote the passage down in my Bible of sorts.  I read the words often—they are a “blast of triumph” for me.

Elton Trueblood often quoted words attributed to Stephen Grellet:  “I expect to pass through this world but once.  Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now.  Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.”  I wrote the words down in my Bible of sorts, because they spoke to my soul.  I read them often.

I’m grateful for Edison’s advice, “Make your own Bible.  Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph…”  When you read words and sentences that speak to you—write them down.  When you feel words and sentences tugging at your very soul—write them down.  When you read words that make your whole being shake with truth and reality—write them down.  When you read words that bring you like Saul to the ground—write them down.  When you read words that lift you up to the  mountaintop—write them down.   Make your own Bible and read it often.