Benjamin Harris first printed The Primer in Boston in 1690. He had published a similar volume in London. It was so good he sold over five million copies because it was the intent of the colonists that all children should learn to read; in 1642, Massachusetts passed a law for that purpose because they rightly believed that an inability to read was Satan's attempt to keep people from the Scriptures.
The New England Primer combined the study of the alphabet with Bible reading. It introduced each alphabet letter in a biblical phrase and then illustrated it. The primer also contained a catechism of religious questions and answers. Emphasis was placed on fear of sin, God's punishment, and the fact that all people would have to face death.
Here are some examples of alphabet rhymes that teach moral values as well as reading.
A In Adam's Fall
We sinned all.
B Thy Life to Mend
This Book Attend.
BACK TO DICK, JANE, AND SPOT
After mastering "Dick and Jane," as the students became older, not one of us ever decided as a teenager or as an adult, "Tonight, I'll settle down with a good book; where's my "Dick and Jane?"
And why is that? "Dick and Jane" are for kindergartners, first graders; they offer no challenge for the now literate. There's nothing to ponder; there's no need to further study the boring antics of Dick and Jane; once you're done with those two and their dog, you're done with a vengeance because there's nothing to study or think about in them.
A DIFFERENT TOME
But how different is the Bible! We keep going back to the Bible, because, as Dr. John F. Walvoord said to his students, "The Bible takes all the intellect you've got, and more." Wise words from a very wise and respected theologian. The words and thoughts of the Bible keep drawing us back to its pages. Even those who reject it as the infallible Word of God respect it's ethics.
Thomas Jefferson, one of the few Deists among the Founding Fathers, and a mild and non-traditional one at that, couldn't put the Bible down. He compiled a book on its ethics with the title his granddaughter wrote, one that would choke an elocutionist: "The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth: extracted from the account of his life and doctrines as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John. Being an abridgement of the New Testament for the use of the Indians unembarrassed with matters of fact or faith beyond the level of their comprehensions.”[According to the Monticello Society, "Indians" wasn't a reference to the native American tribes; it was a code word for Jefferson's political enemies, the Federalists, especially.]
Later he revised the book and renamed it, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." According to the Monticello Society, "Jefferson used The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth as a chief source of moral instruction, very likely reading a passage every evening before retiring to bed. He wrote in 1819, 'I never go to bed without an hour, or half hour’s previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep.'"
Jefferson found the New Testament to be no "Dick and Jane" to employ and anachronism; he kept on returning to it, ad infinitum.
FRESH
What is this allure, this "enduring freshness" of the Bible, as Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer called it?
Part of its enduring freshness is not only that its concepts can be deep, they can also be, as Peter called some of what Paul wrote, "Hard to understand."
We'll get to one of those "hard to understands," but before we do that, let's take a look at a subject that has always fascinated me, one that I wanted to study in college, but I was way too ignorant in math and knew better than to attempt it: astronomy.
Our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, has an estimated 135 billion stars. Now, get this: the astronomers who are smart in math, believe there are at least 100 billion other galaxies. Wow! I was going to calculate all that, by my calculator just blew up.
According to these learned astronomers, as Walk Whitman called them, what we can see with our most powerful probe telescopes is only 6% of what's out there because of what they call "dark energy" and "dark matter" that we can't see. (This is getting deep, but we'll get deeper.) No wonder the psalmist wrote, "When I look t your heavens, your finger work, the moon and the stars, what are human beings, that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care care for them?"
The psalmist was saying, "This is no 'Dick and Jane." (Pardon the second anachronism.)
But it gets deeper: the question the learned astronomers ask is, "What's holding all this together? Why is there a coherence to this vast universe?" No one has really explained how all these particles that make up the universe hold together, they've tried, but the four basic theories explain THAT they hold it all together, but not HOW they hold it together.
But the Bible tells us: Christ is maintaining the universe, according to Colossians 1:17--"He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." The author of Hebrews 1:3 concurs, so the testimony of Scripture is consistent with itself: "And He {God the Son] is the radiance of His [God the Father's] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power."
With all this, we're a long, long way from Dick and Jane. What these texts are saying is that the power of Christ extends across the universe and beyond. And that just goes to show us that what Dr. Walvoord said was true: "The Bible takes all the intellect we've got and more." And once we've used up all our intellect, we have to say and live with a mystery. There was no mystery with Dick, Jane, and Spot. That's one reason we never returned to it. But the Bible contains mysteries and although we may not like it, we live with them. But part of the enduring freshness of the Bible are the mysteries therein. Besides that, even in eternity with God, we'll be ever-learning about Him because we'll never be infinite as He is.
There's only one other thing to say about the Colossian mystery: "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name!"
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