g it may be, it soon
loses its interest and its charm; we do not find new beauties in it as we
do in the Bible. Its treasures are soon exhausted, but the Bible is ever
new, and so I do not believe that the Bible is man's book nor that it
could be man's book. Its depths are too deep to come from the heart or
mind of man; its heights are too great for him to reach; and its wisdom is
more than human. It can but be divine.

The Most Loved of All Books.

Wherever the Bible goes, people learn to love and to treasure it above all
other books combined. It is the one book that people love; it is the
treasure that people hold fast even at the risk of their lives. In past
ages when wicked rulers tried to keep it from the people, they could not.
At the peril of their lives people would have it. They underwent dangers
and tortures, and shrank not from anything, that they might possess this
wonderful book. It is not for what it claims to be--though it claims
much--nor for what men claim for it, but for what it is to the individual
himself that it is so dearly loved. There is that in the Bible which
endears itself to the human heart, and no other book has that quality.
Other books are enjoyed and admired and praised and valued; but the Bible,
in this respect, stands in a class by itself.

The educated and the ignorant, the high and the low, all races in all
climes, when they learn to truly know the Bible, and when they submit
themselves to the God of the Bible, learn to love it and to delight in it
and are enriched and blessed by it; and because I too feel this deep love
in my heart for the old Book, I believe it. I believe that, in some way,
it was made for me by One who knew my needs, and that it corresponds to
the very essence of my inner self; and I believe that I could not love it
as I do if it were not God's book and if it were not true.

The Most Hated of All Books.

Not only is it the best-loved book, but it is also the most-hated book. No
other book has had so many nor such bitter enemies. I suppose more books
have been written against the Bible than against all other books combined.
Men do not hate Shakespeare nor Milton nor Longfellow; they do not hate
works on science nor philosophy; they do not hate books of travel or
adventure or fiction; they do not hate the other sacred books of the
world; they hate only the Bible. Why this hatred? It can be only because
they find in the Bible something that they find nowhere else.