What they
find there is a true picture of themselves, and the picture is not
pleasant to look upon, so they turn away their faces and will have nothing
to do with it except to vilify and condemn it. They deliberately
misrepresent it and write falsehoods about it; they satirize and ridicule
it, using all sorts of weapons and all sorts of methods to combat it, and
for only the one reason--that its truth pricks them in their consciences
and they can by no other means escape from it.

It is judged by a standard far more stringent than any other book, not
excepting the other sacred books. No critic would think of treating any
other book as he treats the Bible, nor of requiring of any other book what
he requires of the Bible. The more men hate God, the more they hate his
Word; and this has a deep, underlying reason, and that reason, I believe,
is that the Bible is God's book and that in it there is so much of God
himself.

It Has Withstood All Assaults.

But though so bitterly assailed through all the ages, the Bible has
withstood the assaults of all its enemies and stands victorious still. The
Greek philosophers, with all their skill, were vanquished. The greatest
intellects of modern times find themselves given pause before it. The
sharpest arrows that unbelief could forge have not pierced it; the
assaults made upon it have resulted only in the destruction of the weapons
used. All through the ages countless theories--religious, philosophic,
scientific, or other--have been used against the Bible, only to fall in
ruins at last before it and to be rejected even by those who once
advocated them. The Bible endures an amount of criticism that no other
book could endure, and instead of being destroyed, it is only brightened
and made better known. Could such a thing be truly said of error? Could
error endure what the Bible has endured, and live? It is the law of nature
that error is self-destructive, but that truth can not be destroyed; and
according to this law, the Bible must be true because of its
indestructibility.

It Tells Me of Myself.

My deepest emotions and longings, my highest thoughts and hopes, are
mirrored there, and the more settled inner workings of conscience are
there recorded. It speaks to me of my secret ambitions, of my dearest
hopes, of my fears, of the love that burns within me. My desires are
pictured in the Book just as I find them working in my heart. Whatever
picture it draws of the human soul I fi