If you will take this book to your heart, you will find it bread such as kings' ovens never baked, water more crystal than that which bursts from mountain springs, wine the like of which was never pressed from purple grapes, meat which cattle on a thousand hills never furnished, and fruit no man ever gathered in royal gardens-- the fruit of the Spirit. You will find it a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path, a hammer for breaking the flinty rocks by the way, a fire that will burn out the stain of sin, and warm benumbed fingers for quickened service in His Name. Give it the first place in your life. You will want to hear from it as the last thing when you go hence. The words of loved ones will be sweet in your ear as you leave these mortal shores (if our Lord Jesus Christ should not hasten his coming, you must go), but you will want to hear its utterance above all the tones, even of those you love, speaking the final word of hope and cheer to you. Be very patient with it. It has great things to say to you--and you will not always be fit to hear them. You will not always--at the first--be able to understand them; but if you do not understand to -day, to-morrow, or other morrows after that, it will speak to you and you shall fully know. Perhaps it will wait till the unshed tears are in your heart, and the moan the common ear has never heard--then it will speak--and the words will fall into the sore place of the soul, as though angel lips had touched it; it will wait, perhaps, till the storm is high, and your frail craft (life's poor, frail craft) is tossed as though it would go down in the whelming waters (and the shore so far away), and then it will speak and say, "Peace --be still," and in that driven life of yours shall be a great and holy calm. Do not attempt to cross-question it as though you hesitated to believe all it said. To accept some parts and reject others will be fatal to you. God does not reveal himself to those who doubt him. He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of all them that diligently seek him. So must you approach this book--with reverence and submissive faith; for this book, O friend! is not the word of man, but in very truth--THE WORD OF GOD. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christ, Christianity and the Bible, by I. M. Haldeman