96. The Bible
The Bible is a book whose words live in the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be things rather than mere words. It is a part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it; the potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that has been around him of the highest and best speaks to him out of his Bible.
The Bible is the oldest surviving monument of the springtime of the human intellect. It reveals to us the character and intellect of our great Creator and Final Judge. It opens before us the way of salvation through a Redeemer, unveils to our view the invisible world, and shows us the final destiny of our race. God's Word is, in fact, much like God's world, varied, very rich, very beautiful. You never know when you have exhausted all its merits. The Bible, like nature, has something for every class of minds. Look at the Bible in a new light, and straightway you see some new charm. The Bible goes equally to the cottage of the poor man and the palace of the king. It is woven into literature, and it colors the talk of the street. The bark of the merchant can not sail to sea without it. No ship of war goes to the conflict but the Bible is there. It enters men's closets, mingling in all the grief and cheerfulness of life.
The Bible is adapted to every possible variety of taste, temperament, culture, and condition. It has strong reasoning for the intellectual. It takes the calm and contemplative to the well-balanced James, and the affectionate to the loving and beloved John. Not only is this book precious to the poor and unlearned, not only is it the consoler of the great middle class of society, both spiritually and mentally speaking, but the scholar and the sage, the intellectual monarch of the age, bow to its authority.
To multitudes of our race it is not only the foundation of their religious faith, but it is their daily practical guide as well. It has taken hold of the world as no other book ever did. Not only is it read in all Christian pulpits, but it enters every habitation, from the palace to the cottage. It is the golden chain which binds hearts together at the marriage altar; it contains the sacred formula for the baptismal rite. It blends itself with our daily conversation, and is the silver thread of all our best reading, giving its hue, more or less distinctly, to book, periodical, and daily paper. On the seas it goes with the mariner as his spiritual chart and compass, and on the land it is to untold millions their pillar cloud by day and their fire column by night.
In the closet and in the streets, amid temptation and trials, this is man's most faithful attendant and his strongest shield. It is our lamp through the dark valley, and the radiator of our best light from the solemn and unseen future. Stand before it as before a mirror, and you will see there not only your good traits, but your errors, follies, and sins, which you did not imagine were until you thus examined yourself. If you desire to make constant improvement, go to the Bible. It not only shows the way of all progress, but it incites you to go forward. It opens before you a path leading up and still onward, along which good angels will cheer you, and all that is good will lend you a helping hand.
There is no book so well adapted to improve both the head and the heart as the Bible. It is a tried book. Its utility is demonstrated by experience; its necessity is confessed by all who have studied the wants of human nature; it has wrung reluctant praise even from the lips of its foes. Other books bespeak their own age; the Bible was made for all ages. Uninspired authors speculate upon truths before made known, and often upon delusive imaginations; the Bible reveals truths before unknown, and otherwise unknowable. It is distinguished for its exact and universal truth. Time and criticism only illustrate and confirm its pages. Successive ages reveal nothing to change the Bible representations of God, nothing to correct the Bible representation of human nature. Passing events fulfill its prophecies, but fail to impeach its allegations.
The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying. A mind rightly disposed will easily discover the image of God's wisdom in the depths of its mysteries, the image of God's sovereignty in the commanding majesty of its style, the image of his unity in the wonderful harmony and symmetry of all its parts, the image of his holiness in the unspotted purity of its precepts, and the image of his goodness in the wonderful tendency of the whole to the welfare of mankind in both worlds. We should use the Scriptures not as an arsenal, to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as a matchless temple where we delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase our awe and excite our devotion to the Deity there proclaimed.
The cheerless gloom which broods over the understandings of men had never been chased away but for the beams of a supernatural revelation. Men may look with an unfriendly eye on that system of truth which reproves and condemns them; but they little know the loss the world would sustain by subverting its foundations. We have tried paganism, we have tried Mohammedanism, we have tried Deism and philosophy, and we can not look upon them even with respect. The Scriptures contain the only system of truth which is left us. If we give up these, we have no others to which we can repair.
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