It has been said that out of every thousand books written, six hundred do not pay the cost of printing and only live a year, while only fifty last seven years. However, the Bible, which is centuries old in its complete form, and probably over five thousand years old in its earliest portions, is still easily "the best seller."
It is printed in hundreds of languages and dialects, and millions of copies of the whole or part are circulated every year. Yet no book has ever been so persecuted.
Persecution has raged from the days of Jehoiakim, who "cut it with a penknife." Antiochus Epiphanes destroyed all the copies he could find; Diocletian did the same, and many made bonfires of the earliest printed New Testaments.
It has had to stand the attacks made upon it, first by Atheists and then by Modernists; but it is still what Mr. Gladstone called, "the impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture."
Man, like the grass of morning,
Droops ere the evening hour,
His goodliness and beauty
Fade as a fading flower;
But who may shake the pillars
Of God's unchanging Word?
Amen: Himself hath spoken;
Amen: thus saith the Lord.