She wraps man in darkness and makes him forever long for the light;" but for every such cry of despair the Book has its answer. No other volume so meets the demands of the soul, proving its truths concerning the future by the demonstration of its truths in time.

It is the Book for the dying as well as for the living. Its leaves are leaves from the Tree of Life; its visible fruits are the blessings of civilization; its best fruitage is eternal. It meets the degeneration of men by its principles of regeneration. What man has lost it helps him recover -to recover himself, to save himself. It is the regenerating Book for degenerated men and races; not that its mere statements can regenerate, yet to willing souls it becomes the power and wisdom of God. It is the instrument, but not the agent; the hammer by which the rock is riven under the blows of an almighty arm.

Two important thoughts may reveal the methods of the Bible in the accomplishment of its purpose. Its truths are no mere abstractions, but are fitted to become humanly vitalized. The object is to make of every man who accepts its truths, a living Bible.

Observe, first: The test of the Bible's power is

If there were a person in the whole world whose wants it could not reach it would be a failure among the races of men. If there were a degradation so deep in a single soul as to be beyond its power, that exception would prove its weakness. If there were a savage heart its truths could not help, that savage heart, powerless in accepting its truths, would be a decisive test against its assertions.

Such an exception, however, has never been found. We are not referring to an unwillingness to receive, but to an inability. The soul that can tread underfoot its own best interests, and despise all laws of morality, can reject this Book. To shade one's self against the sun does not stop the sun's shining. To reject a truth, or to oppose, does not weaken truth, but such a course does harm the one who assumes the risk.

It is no argument against the Bible that some will not accept it. While a demonstration was being made before a learned body, proving the impossibility of crossing the ocean by the power of steam, a steamship was actually ploughing the hitherto unbeaten path.

The lowest tribe yet found has not held a man too degraded to make the exception. Cannibals have become saints. The fruits of its faith have been alike among all races. Martyrs for the truth have been counted by hundreds among peoples

whose thirst was for blood.

No permanent good has ever been wrought among any people without this Book. Henry Martyn fainted in his journey of a thousand miles, undertaken to lay his translation at the feet of the Shah. If the statement of that eminent thinker, John Locke, is true, we cannot doubt the results: "the Scriptures have God for their author; eternity for their object; and truth without any mixture of error for their subject matter."

The conversion of the apostle Paul is a miracle of history; but repeated in countless instances since his day. The power that could transform a John Bunyan, or John Newton, is as mighty as that which swings the stars in their courses without jar or collision. Human nature says, "my will;" the Book teaches us to say "thy will, not mine." Human nature loves self; the Book has wrought a revolution when it has taught a love for our neighbor as strong as for self. The greatest reformation is of the individual; and on such

reforms society rests. Had the object of Napoleon's will been turned from himself to the good of others, we should have a different map of Europe. Men are not reformed in the mass, but one by one; and in the Great Day the account shall likewise be rendered, one by one. The moral law is a personal matter; the whole force of such a law is struck upon the one soul.

Placing side by side the Bible as the cause and righteousness as its effect, we shall hardly be accused of ill-judgment; if so, we are part of a numerous class. In reply to the question, Why the Bible should be studied more than other books, Matthew Arnold replies: "Because God is revealed in Israel and the Bible, and not in other teachers and books."

After a comparison of the Book with the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Herbert Spencer and the like, the same critical essayist adds: “The Bible has such power for teaching righteousness, that even to those who come to it with all sorts of false notions about the God of the Bible, it yet teaches righteousness, and fills them with the love of it; how much more those who come to it with a true notion about the God of the Bible!"

"To the Bible," he says in another place, "men

will return; and why? Because they cannot do without it. Because happiness is our being's end and aim, and happiness belongs to righteousness, and righteousness is revealed in the Bible. For this simple reason men will return to the Bible, just as a man who tried to give up food, thinking it was a vain thing and he could do without it, would return to food; or a man who tried to give up sleep, thinking it was a vain thing and he could do without it, would return to sleep."

We need make no apology in seeking from this same authority a knowledge of the spirit of Jesus in his meekness and moderation. "Even in these records, it is and can be presented but imperfectly; but only by reading and re-reading the Bible can we get at it at all."

In a communication to Thomas Paine, after the completion of his "Age of Reason," Benjamin Franklin-himself a disbeliever in revelation while believing in God-wrote: "If men are so bad with religion, what would they be without it? And may you not yourself be indebted originally to your religious education for the virtues upon which you so justly pride yourself? Therefore my advice to you is, to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person; for among us it is not