Beloved reader, have we not much cause to bless the Lord for these words of His addressed to His poor perplexed ones on their way to Emmaus? They may seem severe; but it is the necessary severity of a pure, a perfect, and a divinely wise love. "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? And"--mark these words!--"beginning at _Moses and all the Prophets_, He expounded unto them _in all the Scriptures_ the things concerning Himself." He Himself--all homage to His glorious person!--is the divine centre of all the things contained in the Scriptures from cover to cover. He is the golden chain that binds into one marvelous and magnificent whole every part of the inspired volume, from Genesis to Revelation. Hence the man that touches a single section of the sacred canon is guilty of the heinous sin of seeking to overthrow the word of God; and of such a man even charity itself must say he knows neither the Christ of God nor God Himself. The man who dares to tamper in any way with the word of God has taken the first step on that inclined plane that leads inevitably down to eternal perdition. Let men beware, then, how they speak against the Scriptures; and if some _will_ speak, let others beware how they listen. If there were no infidel listeners, there would be few infidel lecturers. How awful to think that there should be either the one or the other in this our highly favored land! May God have mercy upon them, and open their eyes ere it be too late! Five minutes in hell will quash forever all the infidel theories that ever were propounded in this world. Oh, the egregious folly of infidelity! We return to our chapter, which furnishes one more proof of the place assigned by our risen Lord to the Holy Scriptures. After having manifested Himself in infinite grace and tranquilizing power to His troubled disciples, having shown them His hands and His feet, and assured them of His personal identity by eating in their presence, "He said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that _all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms_, concerning Me. Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus _it is written_."