To what book do those in sorrow turn? To Voltaire? to Ingersoll? to
Haeckel? Do they turn to science or philosophy or poetry or fiction? There
is but one book that is the book of comfort. The sad and desolate heart
turns to its pages, and as it reads, the consolation of the Holy Spirit,
which fills the book, comes into that heart, and it is comforted. It is as
the balm of Gilead; it is as a letter from home to the wanderer; it is as
a mother’s voice to the child. Friends may speak words to comfort us, but
they can not comfort us as does the Book; its words seem to enter into our
innermost sorrows with a healing touch. God is the God of all comfort, and
it is the comforting God in this comforting book that comforts the soul.
It is also the book of hope. Sometimes man despairs, and he looks here and
there for hope, finding none; but there is one book in which hope may
always be found. It always has something to offer him to inspire hope with
new courage. Therefore it is the hope of the hopeless; since in the
troubled soul it brings a calm, brightening dull eyes and causing them to
look beyond. It lifts up the bowed head, strengthens the feeble knees,
renews the courage, and takes the sadness out of the voice; it is
therefore truly the book of hope.
The Book of the Dying.
A soldier, desperately wounded, lay in a trench. The shells were bursting
around him; the bullets and shrapnel were whistling through the air; the
roar of the guns shook the ground. He was going down into the valley of
the shadow of death. Knowing that he must pass over to the other side, he
reached into his pocket with his little remaining strength and pulled
therefrom a soldier’s Testament. Handing it to a comrade he said, “Read to
me.” His comrade opened the book and began to read—“In my Father’s house
are many mansions: if it were not so I would have told you. I go to
prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be
also.” A smile overspread the face of the dying soldier as he listened to
the words amid that solemn and terrible scene. He closed his eyes and lay
quite still smiling, then he murmured, “It is well.” And with a smile
still upon his face he passed across to the other side.
For what book do the dying call? For just any book? What words do they
wish to hear in the final hour? There is but one book for that hour; but
one that can throw light into that shadowy valley. That is the Bible. It
is the book of the living and of the dying, the book of the sorrowing and
of the hopeless. It is just such a book as the loving Father would give to
the children whom he loves, and it meets their need in all the details of
their lives as only God could meet it, and therefore I can but believe
that it is the book of God.
Only Answer to the Enigma of Life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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