06.01. The Grand Old Book

1. THE GRAND OLD BOOK

Whenever you see a crowd stopping at a given point, looking in some window, examining some object, interested in some article, whether their comment is favorable or unfavorable, you know they have found something out of the ordinary. In a city of the Northwest it was a beautiful wild lynx held captive in a show window, in Philadelphia it was the Liberty Bell, in Washington, D. C., it was the original copy of the Declaration of Independence, and having elbowed my way through so many crowds I have become convinced without doubt that it is the unusual, the something different that attracts the multitude.

There is one article on the streets of time which the world has never passed with indifference, that is the Bible. The high, the low, the rich and poor have stopped to look on this book, some for a moment, others for years, some to praise, others to criticize. Surely no ordinary book could attract such attention down through the years. What can be the attraction? Not the binding, for that is ordinary, medium paper and common print, it cannot be that, the attraction of this book is its message to man.