He says, ‘My word is as the fire and the hammer.’  Is it tragedy that our souls delight in?  There is the divine tragedy:  ’But He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities....  He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth,’ and the closing scene:  ’And behold the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened.’”

“If we wish to strengthen and discipline our minds, and grow in knowledge, let us study the Bible by all means, for here we find difficulties enough to tax an angel’s powers, and at the same time find rest and consolation, means of growth, too, for we are assured that those who meditate on that Word ’shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.’  Oh, you do not know, if you never have tried it, how blessed it is to build up a pyramid of texts, for instance, all about God’s love to us, and the names he calls us by; it makes his love such a reality.  Theft there are the promises, soft pillows for weary heads, and there are directions for all perplexities.  I tell you there is nothing like the Bible.  I have tried all the rest.  Like Solomon I have found it all vanity.  ‘Oh, how I love thy law!’ ‘How sweet are thy words unto my taste!’ When this becomes our experience, life will be a different thing to us; it will not be dull and empty.  You know how we get absorbed in other reading, perhaps a novel, and it leaves a gloomy, unsatisfied feeling when it is done, but the Bible is never done, and the studying it grows and grows every day.  When the Lord comes, I’m afraid we shall not feel comfortable if he finds us studying hard on every other book and his laid by covered with dust.  If I were to ask you what book you would advise me to spend the most of my time on, the few years that I live, whether the Bible or the current literature of the day, you would probably say, ’The Bible by all means, because you have but a few years left to you at most,’ but the truth is, that many in this room may die before I do.  Not one of us knows what day the books will for us be for ever closed; and did it never cross your minds that the Bible is the only book we will want to take with us away down to the edge of the river?  When I lie down to die I feel sure that I shall not wish for a page of mental philosophy whispered in my ear, nor the finest passage of Shakespeare; but, ’Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; Thou art with me,’ and ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love.’  ’Thou art mine, I have called thee by my name.’  ’I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.’”

“Let us compromise this matter,” suggested Mrs. Parker.  “Let every other meeting be devoted to Bible study, and a committee be appointed to select something from the works mentioned here to-day as subjects for the intervening meetings.”