“This was vividly illustrated by the closing scene in the life of Sir Walter Scott.  The window of his chamber was open, through which entered the breeze, bearing upon its wings the music of the silvery Tweed, which had so often lulled his mighty spirit.  His son-in-law was present, to whom he said, ‘Lockhart, read to me.’  Lockhart replied, ’What shall I read?’ The dying bard turned to him his pale countenance and said, ‘Lockhart, there is but one book!’

“What a tribute from the world’s mightiest master of enchantment, who had himself penned so many works which were the admiration of his fellows, were those brief words uttered, when the spirit hung between two worlds, ‘There is but one book.’  Would you learn true sublimity?  Throw away Virgil, the Greek and Roman classics, and even Milton and Shakspeare, and go to the Bible.

“Amid all turbulence, agitation and danger, there is no other foundation upon which we can rest the welfare and peace of society.  This is the only resort of every scheme of human elevation.  This contains the primal lessons of all duty.  Let reformers recollect this, and let us all gather around and protect this pillar of truth.  Diffuse this ‘blessed book,’ as one of England’s poets, when pressing it to his lips in his dying hour, called it.  Wheel up this sun of light to the mid-heavens, and cause its rays to gleam in every land.”

Rev. Mr. Goodell, missionary to Constantinople, remarked, that during thirty years residence in Mahomedan countries, he had learned something of the importance of that book.  The nations of the East are all wrong in their conceptions of God.  He had often stood upon the goodly mountain, Lebanon, and upon the heights around Constantinople, and raised his thoughts to God, asking, How long shall this darkness prevail?  Without this book we could have effected little in our missionary work; but by it God hath done great things, whereof we are glad.  The Bible was once found only in dead languages; now it is translated into the language of almost every people with whom we come in contact.  Every friend of the Bible will rejoice to know that it is becoming the great book of the East.  Before its translation into the Greco-Armenian, it was a mere outside book, kept and admired for its handsome binding, and from a superstitious reverence.  Now it is an inside book; it has taken hold of the heart of the Armenian nation.  Once it was looked at; now it is read.  It has come to assume a great importance in the eyes of that people.  They have a great anxiety to read.  More than one hundred aged women are now engaged in learning to read, that they may read the New Testament for themselves.

* * * * *

Let religion create the atmosphere around a woman’s spirit and breathe its life into her heart; refine her affections, sanctify her intellect, elevate her aims and hallow her physical beauty, and she is, indeed, to our race, of all the gifts of time, the last and best, the crown of our glory, the perfection of our life.