Can the Bible Alone Guide You?

There are still many Christians who base their Christianisty on the Bible alone. This is evident from the fct that even outside the Catholic Church, no book sells more copies annually than the Bible. However, to try to mke the Bible the sole sourse of one's religious guidance is un reasonble and even impossible on the following considertions:

1. The Bible itself nowhere says that in it alone is to be found the whole secret of salvation. Christ said to His Apostles "He that hereth you, hereth Me" (Luke 10:16), He nowhere said "He that readeth the Scriptures shall be saved."

2. God inspired the Bible, but did not intendit as a full formulry of belief nd prctice, like Catechism or creed. This is evident becuse Christ Himself never wrote line surely a strange omission if He intended men to be saaved by the written word. None of the New Testment was written until some time after Christ's deth, some not till severl score of years-which leves rather strange gap in the continution of his work if He came to teach and save through the written word.

3.Men who have climed the Bible to be a sufficient source of all religious truth, have in history given the strongest refutation of their 'Religion,' they sid, 'pure, complete, simple, unchngeable, comes solely from the Bible,'-and within 100 years fter the proclmtion of this principle there were over 3,000 different nd inconsistent religions all climing to be the simple, cler, unchngeable religion of the Bible.

4. If it were not for the infallible Catholic Church, no one today would know what the Bible was, nor what books were inspired by God. Out of innumerable books pretending to be lives of Christ, nd histories of the Apostles, and their letters to the faithful, the Church used the authority given her by Christ to decide:"This is authentic and inspired and this is not!" Bible Christins are unwittingly accepting the authority of the Church when they ccept the Bible as universally constituted today, even through they deny this in words.

To Catholics, the Bible is a prize possession, inspired by Almighty God, written to confirm and testify to mny of the truth Christ taught His first disciples, nd to make unmistakable the authority and organization of His Church. Catholics are granted indulgences for reding the Bible, becuse, preserved from misinterpreting its difficult passages by an infallible Chrurch, they can gain from it light and inspiration for their lives.