God’s book written in the rocks is old, exceedingly old, but God’s book
the Bible reaches back still farther. It goes back not only to the
“beginning” of this terrestrial world, but into eternity; for the
expression, “in the beginning,” used by John, reaches back long before
this world was. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.” From past eternity its majestic sweep covers the
whole range of being and reaches into the future eternity. It is, in fact,
the book of eternity, and within its folds lie the grandeur and sublimity
of the great unknown future. It never gets out-of-date. Other books have
their run of popularity and are forgotten, but the Bible never grows old;
no matter how familiar we become with it, it is ever new. To the Christian
it never grows stale, but is always fresh and always satisfying. It ever
reveals new depths that we fail to fathom, new heights that we can not
scale, and new beauties that enrapture our vision.
We read it over and over, and ever and anon we see new jewels sparkling
within its pages, jewels that delight the eye and reflect the light of
God. From it refreshing waters break out where we least expect them, and
our souls are refreshed like a thirsty man who suddenly finds water on the
desert. We may have read a text a thousand times, yet when we look at it
again it opens up and presents to us a vista of marvelous truth of which
we were before entirely unconscious. What other book can do these things?
When we read a book written by man, however interesting it may be, it soon
loses its interest and its charm; we do not find new beauties in it as we
do in the Bible. Its treasures are soon exhausted, but the Bible is ever
new, and so I do not believe that the Bible is man’s book nor that it
could be man’s book. Its depths are too deep to come from the heart or
mind of man; its heights are too great for him to reach; and its wisdom is
more than human. It can but be divine.
The Most Loved of All Books.
Wherever the Bible goes, people learn to love and to treasure it above all
other books combined. It is the one book that people love; it is the
treasure that people hold fast even at the risk of their lives. In past
ages when wicked rulers tried to keep it from the people, they could not.
At the peril of their lives people would have it. They underwent dangers
and tortures, and shrank not from anything, that they might possess this
wonderful book. It is not for what it claims to be—though it claims
much—nor for what men claim for it, but for what it is to the individual
himself that it is so dearly loved. There is that in the Bible which
endears itself to the human heart, and no other book has that quality.
Other books are enjoyed and admired and praised and valued; but the Bible,
in this respect, stands in a class by itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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