Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/40

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32
BIBLE.

It is impossible to look into the Bible with the most ordinary attention without feeling that we have got into a moral atmosphere quite different from that which we breathe in the world, and in the world's literature.


This Bible, then, has a mission, grander than any mere creation of God; for in this volume are infinite wisdom, and infinite love. Between its covers are the mind and heart of God; and they are for man's good, for his salvation, his guidance, his spiritual nourishment. If now I neglect my Bible, I do my soul a wrong; for the fact of this Divine message is evidence that I need it.


The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other.


The Saviour who flitted before the patriarchs through the fog of the old dispensation, and who spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, articulate but unseen, is the same Saviour who, on the open heights of the gospel, and in the abundant daylight of this New Testament, speaks to us. Still all along it is the same Jesus, and that Bible is from beginning to end, all of it, the word of Christ.


Throw away the Old Testament! What part of it will you throw away? That which I do not understand? Take down then yonder blood-stained cross; for there is a love there "which passeth knowledge," and a Divine hatred of sin which shook the solid earth.