A Marvelous History.
I ASK you to consider the wonderful history of the Book, taking that only since it appeared in its present completed form. For many centuries the world has been doing its utmost to get rid of it, but has utterly failed: kings, priests, and people have united in trying to banish it from the earth, but without avail: they have cursed it and burned it, they have caviled at it and maligned it: worse still, they have imprisoned and tortured and put to the most cruel deaths men, women, and little children for the sole crime of loving it and avowing their belief in its blessed truths, in their blind hatred of the Book and of the God Whom it reveals. But all to no purpose: God has sent the Book into the world, and it remains unto this day. He has planted it and no man can uproot it: it is charged with the message of His wonderful love and His glorious salvation: and men may hate it and scorn it and reject it, but He has said, My Word “shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”
Is there another Book on all the earth that would have withstood this terrible opposition? Nay, not the works of the world’s greatest thinkers would have stood it for a single decade, but in a few years of such persecution they would have passed into utter oblivion. What other book in the world is there for which men would willingly have suffered the loss of all things and counted their lives not dear unto them?
But the Bible has not only remained in the world, but it has prospered exceedingly, so that now it is spread over the greater part of the earth and is translated into more than three hundred languages. This, moreover, has not been done by the great man and rich men, or by powerful Governments, but chiefly by the poor and obscure ones, who were rich in faith and noble in purpose, of many of whom it may truly be said “this world was not worthy.”
A Marvelous Power.
If the history of the Book in the world has been wonderful, its power over men is more wonderful still. Of all the multitudes who have loved the Bible and have believed its truths there are very few who have not first had to be conquered by it: comparatively few have known and believed and loved the Scriptures from childhood: the natural heart has no desire for God or the things of God, and in all ages it has only been through reading or hearing the truths of God’s Word that men have “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God: and to wait for His Son from Heaven, Whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, Who delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:11Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 1:1)). This is what we call “conversion,” and is not a mere outward profession of Christianity when “religion walks in silver slippers,” as Bunyan puts it, and there has been no sifting process of persecution to test its reality. Many of the bitterest enemies of the Bible have become its devoted friends, not a few who have sat down to examine it and prove its falsity have seen their error, believed its truth, and become its firm adherents: many, after having persecuted those who believed in it, have themselves become believers and willingly laid down their lives in its cause.
This article about the Bible is taken from a book we have just published, by the author of “What Christ Taught,” entitled “GOD HATH SPOKEN.” It is a very opportune publication as to the Divine origin and character of the Word of God, and we are sure it will be vastly appreciated by our readers, and widely circulated. It is a book of sixty-four pages, and is published cheaply at rd., post free rid., or .r.s. 3d. for twelve copies.