The Word of God - Anthony Norris Groves

The writer once pressed a high church clergyman to justify the use of the pagan-derived practice of worshipping toward the east, seeing that the Word of God uniformly rejects and denounces it. The discussion raised the question of how we can ascertain the will of God. The churchman said it was by prayer. It was answered that both of us prayed, but each reached an opposite conclusion upon the point in hand and many others. It was urged that in prayer we speak to God, but that it is in His Word that He speaks to us, upon all matters with which that Word deals, and that therefore it is from that Word that the mind of God must be learned. It follows that obedience to it is a first duty, and an essential condition of communion with God and of co-operation with Him in His affairs. Failing such knowledge so gained, or such obedience, we can only follow human intelligence, or human folly, and our best intended labours may be rather working against God than with Him. 

A. N. Groves early saw this principle. One of the many to whom he was made a great blessing was the afterward celebrated Bible scholar Dr. Kitto, whom he greatly befriended in his youth, and who was a member of his household for a great while. Of Mr. Groves he wrote: 

You ask “is Mr. Groves an Arminian, a Calvinist, a Papist, a Lutheran?” He is one of those singular characters, a Bible Christian, and a disciple of the meek and lowly Jesus; not nominally, but practically and really such. A man so devotedly, so fervently, attached to the Scriptures, I never knew before. This is the best criterion I can furnish you of his character and disposition (5). 

And his biographer adds: 

Truly may it be said that this devoted love of God’s Word was that which distinguished him to the end of his course. 

To this his own statements bear abundant witness, and deserve the closest consideration, as revealing a chief secret of his saintliness and spiritual power. Writing to a friend preparing for the ministry of the Word he said: 

If I might be allowed to rejoice in one thing more than another, it is in the singleness of heart and eye which I trace growing within you… I am sure it is the way to find the largest measure of happiness even earthly things can yield; besides, and above all, being the key that unlocks those things in the Divine Word which are hard to understand, and for this reason, that we come to the consideration of them with hearts preoccupied by a ready-made decision, more in union with the worldly systems by which we are pressed on every side. And, against all this overwhelming influence, there is but one remedy, to read the word of God with a single view to know His will, by whom it was inspired; and then the baseless nature of all systems but the one that has a single and undivided reference to the glory of God, and the advancement of His kingdom appears as clearly as if it were the subject of material vision (10, 11). 

The penetrating insight into spiritual affairs here shown is unusual in one but thirty years of age and a believer of some ten years. The necessity for singleness of heart to please God as the secret of coming to understand the deeper truths in the Word; the blinding influence, the block upon progress in knowledge, of a heart preoccupied with a ready-made decision; the hindering power of harmony with worldly systems; the baseless nature of all that has not sole reference to the glory of God; that there is a spiritual vision that can make spiritual objects as clear as material vision makes material objects; that the one remedy against those spiritual dangers is to read the Word of God with the single view to know His will—these momentous matters are seen distinctly, and in their relations to one another, as by a divinely enlightened mind, and are set together in one short statement as by a master hand. 

But three years before he so wrote he had been made to see something which, seen and practised in theological halls, would revolutionize preparation for the ministry of the gospel, as it did in fact his own preparation. To feel the full significance of his words it must be remembered that he was possessed of an active and versatile mind; was well educated; had mastered not only his own profession of dentistry, so as in a very few years to have an income of £1,500 a year (worth then very much more than now), but had studied chemistry with a leading London firm, and had walked a hospital and acquired considerable skill in surgery. At Plymouth, when only twenty years of age, he devoted himself to scientific objects, and was a leading member of the Athenaeum Literary Society, in which his talents were much appreciated. It was such a one, gifted and brilliant, and no dullard, who says to us: 

About this time [his twenty-seventh year] I was led to see that the plan I had been pursuing of making myself acquainted with general literature, in order to gain influence over those I came in contact with, was founded in error, and I was led to believe, that if I laid aside these false grounds of Christian influence, and gave myself up to the study of His holy Word, the Lord would lead me to learn such principles from it, that I should see its sufficiency. From this moment the Lord began to bless me, and was about to commence that great work of stripping off from our united hearts the thick clog with which we [himself and his wife] had been cumbering ourselves so many years, and to show us that nothing is too hard for Him (27, 28). 

It appears that this adoption of a sound and reverent attitude to the Word of God as sufficient was the next great advance in his spiritual experience after his conversion about seven years earlier. How different is such a preparation for the ministry of the Word to that generally sought and given. Sitting with an aged Doctor of Divinity, the learned principal of a theological college, one found that his whole mind ran philosophically and not really theologically. He dilated fluently upon Kant, Hegel and Schleiermacher, but all my attempts, as much his junior, to draw upon him for instruction from Paul and John were fruitless. Yet we dare assert confidently that only by such a concentration upon the Holy Scriptures as sufficient can there be the slightest hope for a fulfilment of the wish expressed by Dr. Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures (114, 115): 

The hope of Christianity is that the class [of rhetorical sermonizers] which was artificially created may ultimately disappear; and that the sophistical element in Christian preaching will melt, as a transient mist, before the preaching of the prophets of the ages to come, who, like the prophets of the ages that are long gone by, will speak only “as the Spirit gives them utterance.” 

Ere long Groves writes: 

What little leisure I have for reading is confined to God’s Word, the book of our Father’s wisdom. I have very little confidence in man; my great desire has been to cast myself on the Word of God, that every judgment of my soul, concerning all things, may be right, by being, in all, the mind of God. For exactly in proportion as this is the case, shall we be a blessing to others (43). 

Let the reader test the state of his own mind against this self-revelation. Every judgment formed is to correspond with exactness to the mind of God, and no subject of thought whatever is to be an exception. Such phrases, therefore, are entirely ruled out as, “I think so and so,” “I have a right to my own opinion.” Human judgment distrusted; the mind of God sought from His Word, and the whole inward man subjected thereto: what a wholesome, correcting, illuminating principle. 

Yet it was not that he claimed to have reached perfection, though he longed after and aimed at it; for twenty years later, in 1847, he wrote: 

I sometimes for a moment feel as though I might one day experience the Spirit’s power in bringing every thought into obedience to Christ. I know now it is the only pathway of service (452). 

We are reminded of two contrasted statements of a true master mind, even judged naturally. The deep springs of action in Saul of Tarsus are given in this one sentence: “I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things” (Acts 26:9). The profound, all-pervading, inward revolution that changed Saul, the sincere but blinded bigot, into Paul, the receiver and revealer of the secrets of the Most High God, he himself states in this one sentence: “not that we are sufficient of ourselves to account [to reckon, to form a judgment about] anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5). 

Yea, we are reminded by Paul and by Groves of those words by which the Son of God drew back the veil that we might look within His perfect heart: “Meek am I, and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29); even as He had before said: “I can of myself do nothing: as I hear I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 5:30). Groves’ words are an echo of these; for Christ was being formed in him, by the Spirit, and that was becoming true with him, which had been seen perfectly in the Lord Jesus, that He knew and heeded all that was written in His Father’s Book. 

Thus we read again, words written in 1828, perhaps two years after the former:

My very constant prayer is that the Lord would lead my poor wandering heart into all truth, and make His holy Word my light and comfort. I feel how much I need very humble and patient waiting for the Lord’s manifestation of His will, that I may not fall into any error. I walk very fearfully, and the more I feel I differ from most about me, the more sensible I am of the very great need of the light of the Lord to guide me through the difficulties which surround me. My firm purpose is, by the grace of God, to follow simply the word of God, contending for what it plainly reveals with boldness, and with respect to those things not so plainly revealed, to remain in doubt; this must, doubtless, expose me to much from those I love, that I would not willingly incur, but I fear I cannot help it (45, 46). 

It was by maintaining this humble spirit that he, in due time, penetrated far into the present experience and enjoyments of things divine, and inherited the promise: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens” (Matthew 5:3). In 1847, his fifty-second year, he wrote: “What a hard lesson it is to learn to be ‘poor in spirit’ as well as ‘pure in heart’; yet these are lessons that must be learnt, if we would enjoy spiritual peace”(449). Is not John Newton’s verse an admirable description of this true poverty of spirit? 

As a little child relies
On a care beyond his own,
Knows he’s neither great nor wise,
Fears to stir a step alone,
Let me thus with Thee abide
As my Father, Guard and Guide. 

This attitude to the Word of God characterized Mr. Groves’ whole career. 

Of their life in Bagdad in 1832, four years later than the above lengthy extract, his eldest son wrote: 

In nothing was this period more marked than for the earnest study of the Word: it was regarded truly as “the light unto the feet and the lamp unto the path” of the child of God; obedience to it in everything being the one thing needful to those who would love the Lord (218). 

In the next year, 1833, he himself writes: 

Wherever I can literally follow Scripture, I feel easy as to the act; where I cannot, or fancy I cannot, I feel weak in proportion to my distance from it (229). 

And again: 

Remember our old rule, to judge according to God’s Word; let us be neither frightened nor allured from it: believe me, my dear brother, it will be the rock on which our battle with infidelity must be fought; therefore now learn to trust your sword, for it will cut deep if well wielded under the power of the Spirit (249). 

Such words have proved prophetic. When he wrote them infidelity was still outside of the churches; now it is very widely within them. As Begbie in his life of William Booth sarcastically but truly said of a great English Abbey: If the Bible is still in the lectern, the Origin of Species is in the pulpit! And no one can do anything to withstand this devastating tide except he be firmly set upon this rock, the Word of God as sufficient, authoritative, binding, permanent. To hear those Nonconformist orators, who have thrown away such faith in and submission to the Word of God as Groves had, declaim against the Roman Catholic Church, or any other spiritual foe, would be ludicrous were it not so solemn and dangerous. The trained battalions of evil smile at wooden swords, with whatever shouting they are flourished; but they still dread the sword of the Word “well wielded under the power of the Spirit.” It is idle to shout “The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon” if it be a paper sword. 

He spoke above of differing from most about him. Perhaps in nothing did he more radically differ from the majority of persons around him than in this fixed principle to follow the Word of God only. Certainly in this he was in his day very much of a pioneer. In 1834 he writes from India:

Sometimes my heart seems bewildered in the labyrinth of thoughts and difficulties that lie before me; it does seem so hard simply and fully to follow the word of the living God. Most persons you meet will hardly look at even the picture of it; and if we will not, how can God fully bless us? for it must be His own ways, His own plans, His own principles, that He will honour, and not ours (280). 

And in 1838 he adds: 

Dear Caldecott well says that the struggle now is between the Word and tradition. It ever has been, it ever was among the Jews, and is among the Gentiles. We take our stand on the Word; and in proportion to our practical inconsistency with it, will our testimony be weakened (385). 

In his quite unique and fascinating survey of church history, The Pilgrim Church, Mr. E. H. Broadbent has shown that, all through the Christian age, as spiritual life declined, God has again and again quickened the testimony to the truth by turning godly minds away from human tradition and opinion to His Word, strengthening them to search for His mind, to follow it as far as they perceived it, and to suffer for doing so. The Brethren movement was such a quickening, and in marked degree displayed this dominant feature. In his History (3) Neatby says justly: 

The Brethren sought to effect a fresh start without authority, precedent, or guidance beyond the letter of Holy Scripture. For them, essentially, the garnered experience of eighteen Christian centuries was as though it were not. Such an experiment in the hands of eminent men could scarcely fail to yield a considerable harvest of interest and instruction; and it has actually shed, if I mistake not, a flood of light on many of the obscurities and incredibilities of the history of the Church. 

The addition which needs to be made to this statement is that these men did not rely upon their eminence in natural talents or acquirements to explain the Scriptures. They believed in the Spirit of truth; and so Groves speaks of guidance “by the Word and Spirit of God, which is always promised to us for asking” (420). 

As a further example of how this attitude to the Word of God, and conjoint dependence upon the Spirit of God, was as a tap root that nourished the spiritual life of the mighty men of God of that period, we may again listen to George Müller. 

Speaking of his first intercourse in 1829 with that learned scholar and theologian, Henry Craik, with whom he was later associated closely for many years, and of the influence at once exerted upon him, Mr. Müller writes: 

I will mention some points which God then began to show me. 1. That the Word of God alone is our standard of judgment in spiritual things; that it can be explained only by the Holy Spirit; and that in our day, as well as in former times, he is the teacher of his people. The office of the Holy Spirit I had not experimentally understood before that time. . . the Holy Spirit alone can teach us. . . it was my beginning to understand this latter point in particular, which had a wonderful effect on me; for the Lord enabled me to put it to the test of experience, by laying aside commentaries, and almost every other book, and simply reading the word of God and studying it. The result of this was, that the first evening I shut myself into my room to give myself to prayer and meditation over the Scriptures, I learned more in a few hours than I had done during a period of several months previously. But the particular difference was, that I received real strength for my soul in doing so. I now began to try by the test of the Scriptures the things which I had learned and seen, and found that only those principles which stood the test were really of value (Narrative 46). 

Here, then, was a man of ability, who had taken a full theological course for the ministry, who knew Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and English, but did not know experimentally that the Holy Spirit alone can teach us the truth of God or that the Word of God is the only standard for things spiritual. And seeing how general this, alas, is, it is no wonder that the severe comparison of that mighty evangelist, C. G. Finney, remains true, when he said of the men sent out in his day from the colleges to the pulpits, that they were like men who should leave a naval college knowing everything except how to navigate a ship!

Similarly R. C. Chapman, speaking in 1854 to two lately converted children of another leading man in that circle, H. W. Soltau, said: 

Never forget how blessed it is to have the heart stored with the Word of God. Before I was brought to the Lord I slept with my copy of Homer under my pillow, but in the year 1823 the Lord brought me to Himself [it was his twentieth year] and gave me a vision, the only vision in my life. I distinctly saw an arm and a hand pointing with a finger to an open Bible and I believe the Bible was open at Psalm 119. Ever since, this has been my meat and drink (Cable, A Woman Who Laughed 40). 

And H. W. Soltau himself said of the first Brethren: 

They cast away all traditions, and read the Bible without note or comment. Many of them were men of understanding and learning, but they laid aside all traditions and commentaries, and resolved, by the help of God, to search for themselves (Who are the Brethren 7). 

It was not that men like Groves, Craik, Müller, or Darby underrated general or special learning. On the contrary, they used it to the full. As another scholar, G. H. Pember, said to me: “I took honours in classics at Cambridge, but I did it in my unconverted days for my own glory. Since I have known the Lord, however, I have tried to use it for the spread of the truth.” 

Nor should it be thought that Groves, Müller, or other such despised the writings of other godly men. That would have been to despise the use the Spirit had made of those men and their books. Groves’ Memoir contains reference to various books read and expresses a desire for the preparation of good writings for use in India (429), and George Müller, through his Scriptural Knowledge Institution, distributed vast quantities of spiritual literature. And Darby in the Introductory Notice to his New Translation of the Bible says: “all available helps have been used, different versions and commentaries having been laid under contribution.” Their statements that they read little but the Bible come from the opening period of spiritual life and when they had first come to see that they had been giving too large a place to the books of men and too little to the Book of God, and commenced to reverse this proportion. This being accomplished, and the Scriptures having gained their proper dominance, they could use safely and worthily what God had given other godly men to teach to His church, yet ever preserving to the divine oracles their pre-eminent place. Of a five months’ voyage from Calcutta to England in 1834 Groves wrote: 

I allow myself an hour or two of retirement every day, which tends to compose my spirits into a patient waiting on the mind and ordering of Christ. Just at the end of this time, before I leave my cabin, Arundoo, the Hindoo, comes in, and we have a little prayer together: besides this, I do little but write, and read God’s word: thus my days pass on (332). 

A very different, and far more profitable, sea voyage this, than what some of us know too well on a modern liner, with its quintessence of worldly, time-wasting folly, amidst which the spiritual man is in daily danger and conflict! Prayer, the Word, and writing filled the quiet days; the last showing that he did not discountenance others reading more than the Bible, or he would not have written anything for others to read. But what he wrote he sought to draw from the Word, so as to help others to understand it. And this is the true test of other books: do they illuminate the Holy Scriptures? If so, let us be thankful for them and use them, especially if we are of the majority who cannot ourselves study the Word in the original tongues. A thousand allusions to the then common life of men cannot be understood without some knowledge of that ancient and oriental life, and preachers and teachers especially do well to read works which explain that life. 

Yet it remains to emphasize that to these men the Bible was the only standard and test in things spiritual. Many children of God shrink from this. In present-day declarations of faith by evangelical bodies it is not seldom stated that the Word of God is the supreme standard of doctrine and practice. This is far below the position that Holy Scripture is the sole standard. The other allows to the Book of Common Prayer, or the Westminster Confession, or a denominational text-book, or a trust deed of a building, or to human reason, some right to be heard, some degree of authority, even if less than attaches to the Word of the living God. 

This simply falsifies the position and stultifies action. In practice men tend to follow the lower standard, because it is necessarily easier to nature to do so. Of the written Word and its requirements even good men, disciples, say what men said of the demands made upon them by the living Word: “This is a hard saying, who can hear it?” and still many of His disciples go back and walk no more with Him (John 6:60–66). But blessed, thrice blessed, are all the family of Caleb; they “follow the Lord fully and wholly,” they conquer the wilderness, they win their inheritance, they have repeated and honourable mention in the records of God, and when they are old they still have the vigour of their youth (Numbers 14:24; Deuteronomy 1:36; Joshua 14:6–15). 

God has said, “to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word” (Isaiah 66:2). Groves could write: “O for a meek, lowly, and contrite spirit, that trembles at God’s word, whilst fearless of all besides” (407), and God indeed “looked” upon him, that is, gave him His divine attention and favour. 

How very great is the loss of such as are of a class he describes: 

Christians here feel the truth of these and other principles that I hold, but they dread them and their consequences (311); 

and again : 

I spent last evening with some who desire the truth, yet dread the price. O! that they knew the preciousness of Him whose service, to those who love Him, is perfect freedom (323).

[Excerpted from the chapter "Dominant Qualities" in the book Anthony Norris Groves: Saint and Pioneer by G. H. Lang]