God-Consciousness Of The Bible

       The first thing which impresses the student of the Bible is what may be called the God-consciousness of its writers. As, on a beautiful day in spring, hills and valleys, fields and forests all lie bathed in the sunshine, so all parts of the Bible are bathed in this sense of the divine presence. On that beautiful spring day there may be a few places where shadows fall, so there may be places in the Bible where this divine presence may seem to be wanting. But this consciousness of the divine is certainly one of the dominant characteristics of the Bible. It opens with the significant words, ''In the beginning, God,'' and it closes with an eager, expectant, upward look, coupled with a gracious benediction. Its historical portions are the record, mainly, of a people who believed - that they were under the peculiar care of Jehovah and that He was working out His will through them. Its poetry breathes a lofty spirit of reverence and worship, and is charged with a powerful sense of the overshadowings of the Almighty. Its prophets came to the people burdened with the awful sense of a message from Jehovah, and their utterances abound with expressions showing their responsibility as bearers of such messages. The law, moral and ceremonial, rests upon a ''Thus saith the Lord,'' and every ministration of priest and Levite was calculated to direct the thought of the people to God.'' John Wesley Conley, D.D., in The Bible in Modern Light