of life
we receive His disciplinings. In the sins that cling so hard upon us we
feel the evils of our imperfection, from which He is seeking to deliver us
through His training of our spirits. In the shame of sin we are conscious
of the guilt that His free forgiveness wipes away, when we turn saying,
Father, I have sinned. In death we face the door-way to some other room of
the Father's house, where, it may be, just beyond the threshold our dear
ones wait for us! In Christ himself we own our heaven-sent Teacher,
Master, Saviour, Friend; our elder Brother, who in our sinful flesh lives
our holy aspirations, and, smiling, beckons us to follow Him, whispering
in our ears--To them that receive me I give "power to become the sons of
God."

The power of the Bible is--CHRIST.

II.

When Sir Walter Scott lay in his last illness, he asked Lockhart one day
to read to him. "From what book shall I read?" said Lockhart. "There is
but one book," was Scott's answer. Those who have sought the "power to
become the sons of God" will understand this hyperbole of the most healthy
human mind in modern English literature. Tested by experience there is
indeed, in the wide range of the literature of power, no book to be
mentioned with the Bible for feeding the life of God in man. Our fathers
found this true, and their children cannot correct their judgment. The
substitute for the Bible, as an ethical and spiritual instructor, is not
out.

I speak to those who are in earnest in the building of a man. You need
this book, my brothers. Luther's higher life dated from his discovery of
the Bible. Have you discovered the Bible? Within the body of human
"letters" have you found out the divine soul of the Bible? Through the
chorus of human voices have you heard the voice of the Eternal Power? If
not, life holds one more rich "find" for you--a treasure hidden in the
field over which you have so lightly strayed.

Buy a Bible, my brothers! The current coin of the land, in the shops of
our best booksellers, may have failed to buy for you a real Bible. No
noble book is ever to be made your own in this easy fashion. Ruskin tells
us that the great picture will not give itself to us unless we give
ourselves to it. The Bible must have its price. The best comes dearest. If
you will not pay you cannot buy. Pay for the real Bible your costliest
offering of mind and heart. Spend upon it, day by day, your careful,
reverent study, until beneath your lo