These Words Upon Thy Heart: Scripture and the Christian Response

These Words Upon Thy Heart contains the James Sprunt lectures delivered by Howard Tillman Kuist at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia in 1946. Kuist adeptly discusses the essential nature, meaning, and purpose of Scripture and concomitantly how this impinges upon the life, calling, and character of believers in response to it. In addition, readers will happily find in the appendix “[John] Ruskin's Essay on Composition (abridged).”

“This is a truly great book.  It deserves to be in the study of every pastor, in the library of every biblical scholar, and in the collection of every Christian college, university, and seminary.”

—David R. Bauer, Foreword

“An exegete has to use his or her imagination to try to re-create what the readers might have been thinking. This is constantly emphasized by Howard T. Kuist, These Words upon Thy Heart, 1947, the professor at Princeton who taught me inductive Bible study….”

—Daniel P. Fuller, Walking in the Light: Step by Step Through 1 John

One reviewer, George W. Richards (Interpretation 1.2 [1947]: 254–56) aptly describes the significance of Kuist’s achievement:

“The[se] six chapters … contain the result of a lifetime of study and, as the 195 references in footnotes indicate, of reading and absorption of books by literary masters, philosophers, scientists, and theologians from Plato to Harry Lauder. The result is a book that stands out unique both for content and treatment among the scores of books on the Bible which have been published….

The author approaches the Bible as one would approach any masterpiece of literature…. Hence the author with fine literary art takes two words, heart and individual, upon which he bases his Introduction. He finds the answer to Adams', Toynbee's, and Ruskin's call for a solution of contemporary problems, individual, social, economic, and political, in the Old and New Testaments which are more than history, literature, and economics, in the self-revelation of God in the heart of man and the response of the individual to the divine purpose….[This book] is a profound and yet convincing study of the meaning and purpose of the Bible, its method of knowledge, and the Christian response to its call…. The theological student and the layman with a trained mind will discover nuggets of gold after he has analyzed the content. The Bible will appear the supreme book of the ages, because it bears witness to him who is in every age the Life and the Light of men and without whom we can do nothing that will last when time is no more. Heaven and earth may pass away, but he that doeth the will of God as revealed through Christ will abide forever.”