Bible Preservation

Islands were much rejoiced when copies of the Bible were first given to them. One old native preacher held up his Bible before the whole congregation and said.

“My brethren and sisters, this is my resolve: the dust shall never cover my Bible, the moth shall never eat it, the mildew shall never rot it. My light! My joy!” Brs.E, Follow the.

A boy in a printing office received from his master a list of Scripture questions and answers to be set up and printed. In the progress of the work, he asked the foreman if he should “follow copy”—that is, set up just as it is written. “Certainly,” said the foreman. “Why not?”

“Because this copy is not like the Bible.” “How do you know that?” “Why, I learned some of these proofs at Sunday-school, and I know that two of them are not like the Bible.” The boy took the Bible, and made it his guide, and pattern.

That is the true and only standard. Follow it. Briste, Harmony of the. As when you see wheels, shafts, pins, bands, lying apart, each finished in itself, yet each adapted to others, you know that some machine is contemplated by the founder, though you may not see how to put it together; but when you see the machine put together and in action, you perceive new fitness in every part, and the grand combination of all for one end; so in the several books of the Bible you discover an adaption to the same end, but in the completed volume you behold the grand harmony of all the books in one object—the restoration of a sinful race to its Paradise in God!

The mind that conceived such a plan, and slowly unfolding it, part by part, through the ages, brought it together finished in this book, must be divine. —Dr. J. P. Thompson.

Bratz, Practicing the. I have here a music-book, one used by singers. The object of this book is to teach and promote vocal music, and also instrumental music, to be employed in worship, commonly called sacred music. Now, how does this music-book teach music?

Simply by being studied, Not at all. Suppose a person previously unacquainted with the science and art of music, who has never sung a strain, and has no ear for melody, takes this book and commits it to memory, will that make him a musician? He might almost as well swallow the book, and would derive about as much benefit from it! He must reduce the book to practice.

He must make the sounds indicated, or the book is a dead letter to him. Precisely so is it with the Bible. —Dr. E. O.

Haven. Buioop, Accusing. Abel’s blood, and so Christ’s cry unto God, as the hire of the laborers unjustly detained, James 5:4; or as the whole creation, which is in bondage through our sins, is said to cry and groan in the ears of the Lord, Rom. 8:22, not vocally but efficaciously.

How sad is the case of those that have no interest in Christ’s blood; but instead of pleading for them, it cries to God against them, as its despisers and abusers! Every unbeliever despises it; the apostate treads it under foot. To be guilty of a man’s blood is sad: but to have the blood of Jesus accusing and crying to God against a soul, is unspeakably terrible. —John Flavel.

Buioop, Cleansing. A poor tempted Scotchman in great distress of mind proceeded to put himself in order for church, and while washing his hands, no one by, he heard a voice say, “Cannot I in my blood as easily wash your soul as that water does your hands,” “Now, Minister,” he said, in telling me this, “I do not say there was a real voice, yet I heard it distinctly, word for word, as you now hear me.

I felt a load taken off my mind, and went to the table and sat under Christ’s shadow with great delight.” —Dr. Guthrie. Bopy anp Sout. “Two things a master commits to his servants’ care,” saith one, “the child and the child’s clothes.”

It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master’s return, “Sir, here are all the child’s clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost!” Much so with the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. “Lord, here is my body; I was grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its content and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away for ever.

I took little care and thought about it!” —Flavel. Booxs, Advantages of. The writers who despise books may be original perhaps, but they may pass their lives without being original to any purpose of interest or utility.

Whereas, true talent will become original in the very act of engaging itself with the ideas of others; nay, will often convert the dross of previous authors into the golden ore that shines forth to the world as its own peculiar creation. From a series of extravagant and weak Italian romances, Shakespeare took the plots, the characters, and the major parts which have exalted his name, as an original writer, above that of every others in the annals of literature. —Dr. Cromwell. Booxs, Communion of.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable means of communication are in reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the so26 SERMON ILLUSTRATIONS ciety, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine away for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. —Channing.

Booxs, Destruction of Bad. A French lady who kept a book store in Paris heard Father Beauregard preach against the danger of immoral books, and was deeply convinced. She sent for the Father to come and examine her stock. He rejected books to the value of 6,000 livres, and she burned them in his presence, glad to make the sacrifice.

Broken Tu1ncs, The Value of. It is on crushed grain that man is fed; it is by bruised plants that he is restored to health. It was by broken pitchers that Gideon triumphed; it was from a wasted barrel and empty cruse that the prophet was sustained; it was on boards and broken pieces of the ship that Paul and his companions were saved. It was amid the fragments of broken humanity that the promise of the higher life was given; though not a bone of him was broken, yet it was by the broken life of Christ that his people shall live eternally; it was by the scattering of the Jews that the Gentiles were brought in; it was by the bruised and torn bodies of the saints that the truth was so made to triumph that it became a saying, that “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.”

It was by this broken box (Mark 14:3), that throughout the wide world it is proclaimed how blessed and glorious a thing it is to do a whole thing to Christ. When the true story of all things shall be known, then will it appear how precious in God’s sight, how powerful in his hands, were many broken things.

Broken earthly hopes will be found to have been necessary to the bringing of the better hope which endures forever. Broken bodily constitutions will be found to have been needful in some cases to the attainment of that land where the body shall be weary and sore no more; broken earthly fortunes, to the winning of the wealth beyond the reach of rust and moth and thief; broken earthly honor, to the being crowned with the diadem which fadeth not away. —P. B. Powers.

Catvary, Mount. Mount Calvary is lord of the Sacred Mountains, and by its baptism of blood and agony, its moral grandeur, and the intense glory that beams from its summit, is worthy to crown the immortal group. Its moral height no man can measure, for though its base is on the earth, its top is lost in the heaven of heavens. The angels hover around the dazzling summit, struggling in vain to scale the highest point, which has never yet been fanned by even an immortal wing.

The divine eye alone embraces its length and breadth, and depth and height. Oh, what associations cluster around it; what mysteries hover there! and what revelations it makes to the awe-struck beholder! Mount Calvary! at the mention of that name the universe thrills with a new emotion, and heaven trembles with a new anthem, in which pity and exultation mingle in strange yet sweet accord! —Headley. Catvary, Safety on.

Away on the frontier of our country, out on the prairies, where men sometimes go to hunt, or for other purposes, the grass in the dry season sometimes catches fire, and you will see the flames uprise twenty or thirty feet high, and roll over the Western desert faster than any fleet horse can run. Now, what do the men do? They know it is sure death unless they can make some escape. They would try to run away, perhaps, if they had fleet horses.

But they can’t; that fire goes faster than the fleetest horse can run. What do they do? Why, they just take a match, and they light the grass from it, and away it burns, and then they get into that burnt district.

The fire comes on, and there they stand perfectly secure. There they stand perfectly secure—nothing to fear. Why? Because the fire has burned all there is to burn.

Such a place is Mount Calvary.