For more than a thousand years God was calling the best and wisest men of the Jewish nation to write for His Book. Some of the authors were rich and learned; many were humble and poor. Kings wrote for it; a shepherd-boy; a captive lad who had been carried away as a slave into a strange land; a great leader; a humble fruit-gatherer; a hated tax-collector; a tent-maker; many poor fishermen. God found work for them all. There are sixty-six books in the Bible, written by at least forty different authors. Books on history; collections of sacred songs; lives of good men and women; stirring appeals to the sinful. God chose the men best fitted to write each part. He called them to His work; He spoke to their hearts; He put His Spirit into their minds. In these days those who read God's Word often forget what old, old writings the first books in the Bible are, and how everything has changed since they were written. Seeing the words so clearly printed on fine white paper, readers do not stop to think that they have come down to us from the days when the greatest nations in the world wrote their best books on lumps of clay, or on rough, brittle paper made from brown reeds. So these Bible readers grow impatient, and because they cannot understand everything all at once, some are even foolish enough to give up reading the Old Testament altogether. But the things that are hard to understand are only hard because we are still so ignorant. Whenever any new discovery about the ancient times has been made it has always shown us how exactly true the Bible is. Some years ago, just at the time when the doubts and carpings were at their worst, when those people who did not trust God even declared that many of the cities and kings mentioned in the Old Testament had never existed at all, a wonderful thing happened. God allowed the old cities themselves to be brought to light once more. Deep under the earth they were found, with their beautiful palaces, libraries full of books, and long picture-galleries, lined from end to end with stone and marble slabs, on which were cut portraits of the very kings whose existence the people were beginning to doubt! This is how it happened. 'The Bible does not describe things as they really were,' said some people. 'In Old Testament times, for instance, the nations were very rough and ignorant; as for Moses--who is supposed to have written the first books of the Bible--it is most doubtful whether he ever learned to read and write at all.' 'But Moses was brought up in Egypt, and the Egyptians were very learned; the Bible says so,' answered others. 'The man who wrote those words in the Bible may have made a mistake. It is true that the ruins of old Egyptian temples and palaces are covered with strange figures and signs; but who can say now whether they mean anything or not?'