f Scripture have issued from the press, in five hundred and
forty-three languages. And I have read somewhere that the house in
which Voltaire lived is now one of the depots of the Bible Society.

II.--THE WITNESS IN OURSELVES.

1.--I have pointed out that the authority of the Scriptures has been
equivalent to the authority with which they themselves convinced men
that they came from God. Now let us try to bring this conviction home
to ourselves--_to test on ourselves_ the power of these Scripture
utterances which persuaded men of old that they came from above. For
it is as they compel in us the same convictions that we can readily
understand the making of the Bible.

Get outside all thoughts of an authoritative Bible. Forget the fuller
light of Christ in which you stand, which reveals comparative
imperfection in those ancient writers. Put yourself in their place.
Picture the nations of the earth in their ignorance and depravity, with
their blind gropings after God, reaching no higher than fetishes and
idols, and the tales of classical mythology. Then listen wonderingly
to those prophetic voices in Israel amid the surroundings of that dark
old world before Romulus and Remus were suckled by the wolf:

"Jehovah, Jehovah. A God full of compassion and gracious, slow to
anger and plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no
means clear the guilty.

"Rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your
God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great
kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil.

"Thus saith the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name
is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a
contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to
revive the heart of the contrite one.

"What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with thy God?"

And mingled with these noble thoughts, like a golden thread woven
through the web of prophecy, see that strangely persistent groping
after some great Being, some great purpose of God in the future--from
the Genesis prediction of "The Seed of the Woman" to the vision of the
Coming One by the great prophet of the exile "Surely He hath borne our
griefs and carried our sorrows ... the Lord hath laid on Him the
iniquity of us all."

Try to realise the impressivenes