cleaned men's lives and taught truth and salvation.
(234)
BIBLE OUTWEARS ASSAULT
Dr. John Clifford puts into the following verse the vanity and failure of all assaults on the Bible:
Last eve I paused beside a blacksmith's door,
And heard the anvil sing the vesper chime;
Then, looking in, I saw upon the floor
Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.
"How many anvils have you had," said I,
"To wear and batter all those hammers so?"
"Just one," he said; then, with a twinkling eye,
"The anvil wears the hammers out, you know."
And so, I thought, the anvil of God's word
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet, tho the noise of falling blows was heard,
The anvil is unharmed—the hammers gone.
(235)
BIBLE, POPULARITY OF
The Bible continues to be the most popular
of books, as shown by the report of the
American Bible Society for 1909. The total
number of issues amounted to 2,826,831, of
which 1,427,247 came from the Bible House
in New York, and 1,399,584 from the society's
agencies abroad, in Turkey, Syria,
Siam, China, Japan, etc. These issues consisted
of 327,636 Bibles, 545,743 New Testaments,
and 1,953,452 Scripture portions.
The number of volumes was 673,803 in excess
of the issues of a year ago, and 590,076
in excess of any year in its history.
(236)
BIBLE, REENFORCED
Recent dispatches from Denmark tell of
remarkable experiments, carried on in the
sound between Denmark and Sweden, for
the purpose of testing the seaworthiness of
a vessel built according to the dimensions
of Noah's Ark, as given in Gen. 6:15. According
to the Copenhagen Daily Dannebrog,
Naval Architect Vogt, who has experimented
for a long time with the dimensions of
Noah's Ark as given in the Bible, has recently
completed a model of that ancient craft.
It measures 30 feet in length by 5 feet in
width by 3 feet in height, the actual measurements
of the ark of Noah being 300×50×30.
The model is built in the shape of an old-fashioned
saddle-roof, so that a cross-section
represents an isosceles triangle. When this
queer craft was released from the tugboat
which had towed it outside the harbor and
left to face the weather on its own account,
it developed remarkable seagoing qualities.
It drifted sideways with the tide, creating
a belt of calm water to leeward, and the test
proved conclusively that a vessel of this
primitive make might be perfectly seaworthy
for a long voyage. It is well known that the
proportionate dimensions used by modern
ship-builders are identical with those of the
diluvian vessel. (Text.)
(237)
BIBLE, REGARD FOR
Rev. Egerton R. Young says of the Canadian Indians among whom he worked:
Often I have been made ashamed of the
littleness of my love by the devotion of these
Indians and their love for the Bible. One
of our Indians came with his son from the
distant hunting-grounds to fish on the shores
of our Great Lakes, gathering their supplies
for the winter. "My son," said the father,
"we leave for home to-morrow morning
early; put the Book of Heaven in your pack."
So the young man put it in, and after doing
so, an uncle came and said, "Nephew, lend
me the Book of Heaven that I may read a
little. I have loaned mine." So the pack was
opened and the Bible taken out, and the uncle
put it on the blankets after finishing with it,
instead of into the pack. The next morning
the father and son strapped on their snow-shoes
and walked thirty-five miles toward
home, dug a hole in the snow at night, cooked
some rabbits, had their prayers and lay down
and slept. The next morning after prayers
they pushed on thirty-five miles more, and
made their home. That night the father
said, "We are home now in our wigwam.
Son, give me the Book of Heaven, that the
mother and the rest may read the word and
have prayers." They searched for the book,
but it was not in the pack and the son told
of his uncle's request to borrow it. The
father was disappointed, but said little. The
next morning he arose early, put a few
cooked rabbits in his pack and started off.
That day he walked seventy-five miles, found
his precious book and returned the whole
distance the following day, having walked
in snow-shoes one hundred and fifty miles
through the wild forest of the northwest to
