MY dear old Bible is near me as I write, and the more I think of the story I have attempted to tell, the more wonderful it seems and the more I feel my need of being cast upon the Lord for the grace and wisdom He alone can give to enable me to tell the story of THE BOOK in such a way that the dear young people may be so interested that they may desire to know more about THE BOOK and its history.
We are all so used to think of the Bible as one book, that we forget that it is really made up of sixty-six parts, some longer and some shorter than others; and that between thirty and forty different men, all taught and inspired by the same mighty Spirit, were employed by God as its writers.
Think of it for a moment! If the sixty-six parts were printed separately in large, clear type, upon good paper, and bound in leather, they would fill a good-sized bookcase. A Bible in Braille-type for the blind requires about thirty-nine good-sized volumes; if placed side by side they would require a bookshelf seven feet in length, while the entire Bible in Dr. Moon's type, which though not so largely used as the Braille, is read by many blind who have lost their sight late in life, or after the tips of their fingers have been hardened, and so the sense of touch partly destroyed by hard work, requires more than sixty volumes.
The Bible was not all written at one time; for about one thousand five hundred years of the world's history there was, as far as we know, no written Bible. When the children of Israel went into the land of Canaan only the five first books of the Bible were written; when King David sat upon the throne, a few more parchments had been added, but about another fifteen hundred years were needed before even the Old Testament was complete. To-day we often see Bibles containing the whole sixty-six books so small in size that a little child can hold the entire Bible in its tiny hand.
A father went into the nursery one day; the nurse was reading aloud to his little girl.
“What are you reading?" he asked. "I am reading the story of Joseph out of the Bible," she replied.
And the child looked up and said eagerly, "Oh, papa, please don't stop her; it's so beautiful!”
The story the child was listening to with such interest was written three thousand years ago.
But perhaps the story of how the New Testament grew is more wonderful than that of the Old. The Jews were not a writing people. Though Matthew, Mark, Luke and John each wrote of Christ, they did so in different ways. While Matthew wrote of the Lord as the King of Israel, Mark wrote of Him as the Servant-Prophet; the Gospel by Luke brings the Lord before us as the Son of man, and John seems to crown all by writing of the same glorious Person as the SON OF GOD.
For nearly fifty years after the birth of Christ there was not, as far as we know, a single line of the New Testament written.
Another wonderful thing about the Bible is the way in which God has watched over and taken care of His book, though its enemies have done their utmost to destroy it. As long ago as the year 303 the Roman emperor Diocletian ordered a search for Bibles to be made through the whole of his vast empire. All the Bibles and Christian books that could be found were burnt, and hundreds of Christians rather than deny their Lord laid down their lives as martyrs.
We all know something of how the popes of Rome and their friends, knowing as they did full well that the teachings of God's word were opposed to their own, burnt not only THE BOOK, but those who loved and followed its teaching.
And even during the last fifty years attacks less open, but not less dangerous, have been made by those who wanted us to believe that the grand old book was not all it claimed to be, the word of God; that only some parts of it were inspired.
To-day the Bible is stronger than ever. Millions of Bibles are printed every year; and another of its wonders is that all those Bibles are wanted and circulated. A bookseller in a very large way of business was asked not long ago, "What book do you find has the largest sale?" His reply was, "The book that out-sells all others is the book called THE BIBLE.”
I hope these few facts about the Bible will lead us all to love and value the word of God more than we have ever done. Remember it is
“The voice that speaks a Savior's love,
And calls us home to God.”