47.

 We learn, then, from St. Jerome's example and teaching the qualities required in one who would devote himself to Biblical study. But what, in his view, is the goal of such study? First, that from the Bible's pages we learn spiritual perfection. Meditating as he did day and night on the Law of the Lord and on His Scriptures, Jerome himself found there the "Bread that cometh down from heaven," the manna containing all delights.[⁸²] And we certainly cannot do without that bread. How can a cleric teach others the way of salvation if through neglect of meditation on God's word he fails to teach himself? What confidence can he have that, when ministering to others, he is really "a leader of the blind, a light to them that are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, having the form of knowledge and of truth in the law," if he is unwilling to study the said Law and thus shuts the door on any divine illumination on it?

Alas! many of God's ministers, through never looking at their Bible, perish themselves and allow many others to perish also. "The children have asked for bread, and there was none to break it unto them" (Lam. 4:4); and "With desolation is all the land made desolate, for there is none than meditateth in the heart" (Jer. 12:11).