until I found Christ as a Savior.  Read the Bible!  Bead the Bible!  Through all my perplexities and distresses I never read any other book, I never knew the want of any other.”  We are certainly not despising the science which is worthy of a name, nor are we forgetting any proposition which has found a place in the world’s thought, if we look into the face of Sir John Herschel, who tells us that “all human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths contained in the holy Scriptures.”  It is truly no part of wisdom for us to conclude that for scientific reasons we ought to forsake our Bible when Professor Dana avers:  “The grand old book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned and pondered, the more will it sustain and illustrate the sacred Word.”

Surely it is not the hour dogmatically to withdraw this book, which has proved the basis of civilization.  Professor Lyell, the great English geologist, tells us:  “In the year 1806 the French Institute enumerated no less than eighty geological theories which were hostile to the Scriptures, but not one of these theories is held today.”  Bacon’s remark is still true:  “There never was found in any age of the world either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible.”  And John Marshall and Prince Bismarck agree with Daniel Webster when he says:  “If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”  There is not an anarchist in America who does not clap his hands when he hears a Bible with the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount denounced.  Indeed, the civilization in which we stand, as compared with the barbarism out of which we have been led by the Bible, would make William Henry Seward’s assertion only a mild statement of the truth when he says:  “The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.”  I prefer lawyers like these to lead American public opinion.  Part of the service of these men has been that they have shown theology that the Bible is not a set of texts on a dead level of authority and equal value, but the revealing, slow and sure, of an inspiration obeyed by a certain people in the realm of morals like that inspiration obeyed by another people in the realm of art, and its test is:  Does the Bible’s ultimate message, its crowning commandment of Christ’s life and love, produce goodness in morals? just as the test of the long revelation of beauty in his ancestors and the Greek is, does its ultimate commandment produce goodness in art.

Christianity does not ask:  “What think ye of the Bible?” It asks:  “What think ye of Christ?” There the throne is set, and so majestic is His glory that the moment we come into His presence we are judged.  The Judge of the earth has taken His place in thought, history and hope.  He is not on trial, and He asks no question as to what man thinks of the book which has enthroned Him in literature.  The test is placed in my conduct and yours; each may say with Michael Bruce, who left these words on the fly-leaf of his Bible: