59 Sermon Illustrations on Authority of Scripture

How important is it to read the Bible? Here is the answer of some of America's historically prominent men: Andrew Jackson said, "That book, sir, [the Bible] is the rock on which our republic rests." George Washington put it this way: "It is impossible to righteously govern the world without God and the Bible...." Charles Dickens stated, "The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world." Horace Greeley asserted, "It is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people." Finally President Woodrow Wilson urged, "I ask every man and woman in this audience that from this day on we realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this Book [the Bible]." Reading the Bible and following its instructions will enable you to find Christ as your all-sufficient Savior. Further, regular reading will minimize your anxieties, decrease appetite for lying, cheating, stealing, immorality, and all manner of sin. You will realize real peace, joy, and love in your life.

A New York enthusiast had a good collection of paintings, one of them being the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which hung over his writing desk. For a long time he noticed that it persisted in hanging crooked despite the fact that he straightened it every morning. At last he asked the housekeeper if she was responsible for its lopsided position each morning that he came to his office. "Why, yes," she said, "I have to hang it crooked to make the tower hang straight." Does that sound strange? That is exactly how a lot of people read the Bible. Many people twist the Word of God in order to justify their own opinions or actions, or doctrine to make them all appear right. Let us not twist the Scriptures to suit our own fancy. Let us be sure to hang the picture right! The Wonder of the Bible The wonder of its formation-the way in which it grew-one of the mysteries of time. The wonder of its unification-a library of 66 books, yet one Book. The wonder of its age-the most ancient of all books. The wonder of its sales-the best-seller of all time, far ahead of any other book. The wonder of its interest-the only book in the world read by all classes of people. The wonder of its language-written largely by uneducated men, yet the best book from a literary standpoint. The wonder of its preservation-the most hated of all books, yet it continues to exist!

A young theological student came to Spurgeon to tell him that the Bible contained some verses which he could not understand and about which he was very much worried. To this the great English preacher replied, "Young man, allow me to give you a word of advice. You must expect God to know some things which you do not understand." Your Book Is Good A Brahmin said to a missionary: "We are finding you out. You are not as good as your Book. If you were as good as your Book, you could conquer India for Christ in five years." Scripture reveals the truth and sheds light on our shortcomings. The Converted Skeptic Two unbelievers once sat in a railroad train discussing Christ's wonderful life. Even non-Christians cannot escape thinking of Christ. One said, "I think an interesting romance could be written about Him." The other replied, "You are just the man to write it. Set forth the correct view of His life and character. Tear down the prevailing sentiment as to His divinity and paint Him as He was-a man among men." The suggestion was acted upon and the romance was written. The man who made the suggestion was Colonel Ingersoll; the author was General Lew Wallace, and the book was Ben Hur. In the process of constructing it, General Wallace found himself facing the unaccountable Man. The more he studied His life and character, the more profoundly he was convinced that He was more than a man among men; until at length, like the centurion under the cross, he was constrained to cry, "Verily, this was the Son of God." That's exactly the testimony of John the Baptist. He says, "The one coming after me, has been before me, because he was first compared with me." He was and is God. When that is accepted, then there is no difficulty in understanding either His character or His miraculous works.

Marshall Duroc, an avowed atheist, was once telling Napoleon a very improbable story, at the same time giving his opinion that it was true. The Emperor remarked, "There are some men who are capable of believing everything but the Bible." There are some people who say they cannot believe the Bible, yet their capacities for believing anything that opposes the Bible are enormous.

There is no place I have ever been in where people so thoroughly understand their Bibles as in Scotland. Why, little boys could quote Scripture and take me up on a text. They have the whole nation just educated, as it were, with the Word of God. Infidelity cannot come there. A man got up in Glasgow, at a corner, and began to preach universal salvation. "Oh, sir," said an old woman, "that will never save the like of me." She had heard enough preaching to know that it would never save her. If a man comes among them with any false doctrine, these Scotchmen instantly draw their Bibles on him. I had to keep my eyes open and be careful what I said there. They knew their Bibles a good deal better than I did. And so if the preachers could get the people to read the Word of God more carefully, and note what they heard, there would not be so much infidelity among us.

"We gaze more on a comet than on the sun." This is the reason why erratic teachers are for a while popular, and attract public attention. It is given out that they are "some great one," and all the town is staring with open mouth. The nine days' wonder is every day's talk. The new teaching is something marvellous, and the old creed is to be driven out of the land. New lights are to eclipse the old; at least, so we are told. Let us wait a while, however, and the comet will have vanished, and the half-forgotten fixed stars will be seen to be shining on with unfading splendour. May the Lord give us such fixed and established judgments that no novelties of doctrine may ever dazzle us. Children are fond of new toys; let us be men and keep to the tried word of the Lord.

The prescriptions of a physician must not be altered, either by the apothecary or the patient, so we, the preachers, must not alter God's prescriptions, neither must you, the hearers. We must not shun to declare, nor you to receive, "The whole counsel of God." It is as much as a man's soul is worth to alter a word of the Lord's own writing: to take away from the book, or to add to it, is forbidden; and threatened with the heaviest penalties. It is not ours to improve the gospel, but to repeat it when we preach, and obey it when we hear. The gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel, must be our religion, or we are lost men. Imagine a dispenser altering the ingredients of a medicine to suit his own notions! We should soon have him on trial for manslaughter; and surely he would deserve to be tried on a still higher charge should a patient die through his folly. The gospel prescription is such that an omission or an addition may soon make that which was ordained to life to be unto death. We may not attempt to be wiser than God, for the idea involves constructive blasphemy. No, it is ours to follow our copy to the letter, come what may of it. Lord, in my teaching I have ever kept to what thou hast said; and therefore men think me old-fashioned, and behind the age. Give me grace to continue so. Never may I aspire to practise a new pharmacy, but may I faithfully dispense thine own ancient and unvarying prescription of salvation by grace through faith.

Dr. Worcester once said, that he had been told by a returned missionary, that, after reading the first chapter of Romans to a heathen congregation, they came around him, and said, "You wrote that chapter for us." Rev. Dr. Dean of China relates a similar fact. He had been conversing with a very intelligent Chinese respecting our sacred books, assuring him that they were very old. He gave him a specimen. Soon after, the man came to Dr. Dean, and, with a look of triumph and accusation, exclaimed, "You told me your book was very ancient; but that chapter," pointing to the first of Romans, "you have written yourself since you came here and learned all about Chiaamen."

Destroy this volume, as the enemies of human happiness have vainly endeavored to do, and you render us profoundly ignorant of our Creator, of the formation of the world which we inhabit, of the origin and progenitors of our race, of our present day and future destination, and consign us through life to the dominion of fancy, doubt, and conjecture. Destroy this volume, and you deprive us of religion, with all the animating consolations, hopes, and prospects which it affords, and leave us nothing but the choosing (miserable alternative!) between the cheerless gloom of infidelity and the monstrous shadows of paganism. Destroy this volume, and you unpeople heaven, bar forever its doors against the wretched posterity of Adam, restore to the King of Terrors his fatal sting, bury hope in the same grave which receives our bodies, consign all who have died before us to eternal sleep or endless misery, and allow us to expect nothing at death but a similar fate. In a word, destroy this volume, and you take from us at once every thing which prevents existence becoming of all curses the greatest, you blot out the sun, dry up the ocean, and take away the atmosphere of the moral world, and degrade man to a situation from which he may look up with envy to that of the brutes that perish. Dr. Payson.

An honest peasant surprised an infidel the other day, who was jeering him for believing the Bible, by the reply, "We country people like to have two strings to our bow."—"What do you mean?" inquired the infidel. "Only this," rejoined the poor man, "that believing the Bible, and acting up to it, is like having two strings to one's bow: for, if it is not true, I shall be a better man for living according to it, and so it will be for my good in this life,—that is one string to my bow; and, if it should be true, it will be better for me in the next life,—that is another string, and a pretty strong one it is. But, sir, if you do not believe the Bible, and, on that account, do not live as it requires, you have not one string to your bow. And oh! sir, if its tremendous threatenings prove true, oh! think what then will become of you!" Caughey.

Paramount. Euripides hath in his well-composed tragedies more sentences than sayings; and Thucydides hath so stuffed every syllable of his history with substance, that the one runs parallel along with the other; the works of Lysias are so well couched, that you cannot take out the least word, but you take away the whole sense with it; and Pho-cion had a special faculty of speaking much in few words; the Cretians in Plato's time (however degenerated in St. Paul's) were more weighty than wordy; Timanthes was famous in this, that in his pictures more things were intended than deciphered; and of Homer it is said, that none could ever peer him for poetry. Then how much more apt and apposite are these high praises to the book of God, rightly called the Bible! It is the only book, to which (as Luther saith) all the books in the world are but waste paper. It is called the Word by way of eminency, because it must be the butt and boundary of all our words; and the Scripture, as the lord paramount above all other words, or writings of men, collected into volumes; there being (as the Rabbins say) a mountain of sense hanging upon every tittle of it, whence may be gathered flowers and phrases to polish our speeches with, even sound words, that have a healing property in them far above all the smooth phrases of human elocution. Spencer.

An infidel of acute mind sought an acquaintance with the truth of the Bible, and began to read at the Book of Genesis. When he had reached the ten commandments, he said to a friend, "I will tell you what I used to think. I supposed that Moses was the leader of a horde of banditti; that, having a strong mind, he acquired great influence over superstitious people; and that on Mount Sinai he played off some sort of fireworks to the amazement of his ignorant followers, who imagined, in their mingled fear and superstition, that the exhibition was supernatural. I have been looking into the nature of that law. I have been trying to see whether I can add any thing to it, or take any thing from it, so as to make it better. Sir, I cannot. It is perfect. The first commandment directs us to make the Creator the object of our supreme love and reverence. That is right. If he be our Creator, Preserver, and Supreme Benefactor, we ought to treat him, and none other, as such. The second forbids idolatry. That certainly is right. The third forbids profanity. The fourth fixes a time for religious worship. If there be a God, he ought surely to be worshipped. It is suitable that there should be an outward homage, significant of our inward regard. If God be worshipped, it is proper that some time should be set apart for that purpose, when all may worship him harmoniously, and without interruption. One day in seven is certainly not too much, and I do not know that it is too little. The fifth defines the peculiar duties arising from family relations. Injuries to our neighbor are then classified by the moral law. They are divided into offences against life, chastity, property, and character; and I notice that the greatest offence in each class is expressly forbidden. Thus the greatest injury to life is murder; to chastity, adultery; to property, theft; to character, perjury. Now, the greater offence must include the less of the same kind. Murder must include every injury to life; adultery, every injury to purity; and so of the rest. And the moral code is closed and perfected by a command forbidding every improper desire in regard to our neighbors. I have been thinking, Where did Moses get that law? I have read history. The Egyptians and the adjacent nations were idolaters: so were the Greeks and Romans; and the wisest or best Greeks or Romans never gave a code of morals like this. Where did Moses get that law which surpasses the wisdom and philosophy of the most enlightened ages? He lived at a period comparatively barbarous; but he has given a law in which the learning and sagacity of all subsequent time can detect no flaw. Where did he get it? He could not have soared so far above his age as to have devised it himself. I am satisfied where he obtained it. It came down from heaven. I am convinced of the truth of the religion of the Bible." The infidel (infidel no longer) remained to his death a firm believer in the truth of Christianity.

At one time, Dr. Wayland was lecturing on the weight of evidence furnished by human testimony. He was illustrating its authority and sufficiency even for the establishment of miracles. A member of the class, not entirely satisfied of the correctness of the teaching, suggested a practical application of the doctrine. "What would you say, Dr. Wayland, if I stated, that, as I was coming up College Street, I saw the lamp-post at the corner dance?"—"I should ask you where you had been, my son," was the quiet reply.

A couple of infidels were standing together on the deck of a vessel as she sailed past a desolate island of the sea. One said to the other, "Suppose you were condemned to live upon that island alone, and had the choice of but one book for your companion, what book of all books would you choose?" The other replied, "I would select Shakspeare, because of the variety of his themes."—"Well," rejoined the other, "although I do not believe the Bible, yet I would choose it for my companion; for the Bible is an endless book." Caughey.

A gentleman dining with a literary party, among whom were Lord Hales and Mr. Buchanan, put the question, "Supposing all the New Testaments in the world had been destroyed at the end of the third century, could their contents have been recovered from the writings of the first three centuries?" No one even hazarded a guess in answer to the inquiry. About two months after this meeting, Lord Hales told Mr. Buchanan, "That question quite accorded with the turn of my mind. On returning home, as I knew I had all the writers of those centuries, I began immediately to collect them, that I might set to work on the arduous task as soon as possible." Pointing to a table covered with papers, he said, "There have I been busy for these two months, searching for chapters, half-chapters, and sentences, of the New Testament, and have marked down what I have found, and where I have found it; so that any person may examine and see for themselves. I have actually discovered the whole New Testament from these writings, except seven or eleven verses (I forget which), which satisfies me that I could discover them also. Now, here was a way in which God concealed or hid the treasure of his word, that Julian the apostate emperor, and other enemies of Christ who wished to extirpate the gospel from the world, never would have thought of; and, though they had, they never could have effected their destruction."

A carpenter sees by his eye, when he applies the square, whether the wood be straight or not; but yet his eye (without which he could not see) is not the judge to try whether the wood be straight or not: of that, the square alone is the judge. So reason in man, without which, it is true, he could not judge, is not the square to try what is right or wrong in order to salvation. The word of God alone can determine that.

— Spencer

Fust (or Faustus) having printed off a considerable number of copies of the Bible, to imitate those which were commonly sold in manuscript, undertook the sale of them at Paris, where the art of printing was then unknown. As he sold his printed copies for sixty crowns, while the scribes demanded five hundred, this created universal astonishment; but when he produced copies as fast as they were wanted, and also lowered his price to thirty crowns, all Paris was agitated. The uniformity of the copies increased the wonder. Informations were given to the magistrates against him as a magician; his lodgings were searched; and a great number of copies being found, they were seized. The red ink, with which they were embellished, was said to be his blood. It was seriously adjudged, that he was in league with the devil; but, on discovering his art, the parliament of Paris passed an act to discharge him from all persecution, in consideration of his useful invention.

In the year 1507, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, Luther entered into orders, and celebrated his first mass. In the same year he found, in the library of his monastery, a Latin copy of the Bible, which he eagerly read, and soon became aware that many parts of it had been kept from the people. This was the commencement of his usefulness. What a contrast do those days present to ours! If any are now without a Bible, it must be their own fault; but then it was impossible to obtain one, or to ascertain the nature and tendency of its blessed truths.

Tindal, to whom we are indebted for the first translation of the New Testament into English, printed it abroad; and on its making its appearance in England, the Popish bishops and clergy obtained, in the year 1527, a royal proclamation, prohibiting the purchase or reading of it. This proclamation only excited the public curiosity, and led to an increased inquiry after the forbidden book. One step which was taken to prevent the circulation of this edition of the Scriptures, at once shows the hand of God in extending his truth, and furnishes an amusing proof of the folly of man in opposing the truth of God. The Bishop of London employed a person to purchase the whole impression of Tindal's version of the New Testament, that he might burn them at St. Paul's Cross. By this means the Reformer was enabled to publish a large and more correct edition, "so that they came over," says Fox, "thick and threefold into England, to the great mortification of the Bishop and his Popish friends."

Of this purchase the following fact is related:—Sir Thomas More, being lord chancellor, and having several persons accused of heresy and ready for execution, offered to compound with one of them, named George Constantine, for his life, upon the easy terms of discovering to him who they were in London that maintained Tindal beyond the sea. After the poor man had obtained as good a security for his life as the honor and truth of the chancellor could give, he told him it was the Bishop of London who maintained him by purchasing the first impressions of his Testaments. The chancellor smiled, and said he believed that he spoke the truth.

At the request of the Romish clergy, severe proclamations were issued by King Henry VIII. against all who read, or kept by them, Tindal's translation of the New Testament; so that a copy of this book found in the possession of any person was sufficient to convict him of heresy, and subject him to the flames. "But the fervent zeal of those Christian days," says the good old martyrologist, Fox, "seemed much superior to these our days and times, as manifestly may appear by their sitting up all night in reading or hearing; also by their expenses and charges in buying of books in English, of whom some gave a load of hay for a few chapters of St. James, or of St. Paul, in English.

In 1543, an act of parliament was obtained by the adversaries of translations, condemning Tindal's Bible, and the prefaces and notes of all other editions. It was therefore enacted, "That no woman, except noblewomen and gentlewomen, who might read to themselves alone, and not to others," (and for which indulgence they were indebted to Cranmer,) "nor artificers, 'prentices, journeymen, serving-men, husbandmen, nor laborers, were to read the Bible or New Testament in English, to themselves or to any others, privately or openly, upon pain of one month's imprisonment."

A similar act was also passed in 1546, prohibiting Coverdale's as well as Tindal's Bible.

In a city in one of the northern states lived a lawyer of eminence and talents. He was notoriously profane. He had a negro boy, at whom his neighbors used to hear him swear with awful violence. One day this gentleman met an elder of the Presbyterian church, who was also a lawyer, and said to him, "I wish, sir, to examine into the truth of the Christian religion. What books would you advise me to read on the evidences of Christianity?"

The elder, surprised at the inquiry, replied: "That is a question, sir, which you ought to have settled long ago. You ought not to have put off a subject so important to this late period of life."

"It is too late," said the inquirer. "I never knew much about it, but I always supposed that Christianity was rejected by the great majority of learned men. I intend, however, now to examine the subject thoroughly myself. I have upon me, as my physician says, a mortal disease, under which I may live a year and a half or two years, but not probably longer. What books, sir, would you advise me to read?"

"The Bible," said the elder.

"I believe you don't understand me," resumed the unbeliever, surprised in his turn: "I wish to investigate the truth of the Bible."

"I would advise you, sir," repeated the elder, "to read the Bible. And (be continued) I will give you my reasons. Most infidels are very ignorant of the Scriptures. Now to reason on any subject with correctness, we must understand what it is about which we reason. In the next place, I consider the internal evidence of the truth of the Scriptures stronger than the external."

"And where shall I begin?" inquired the unbeliever. "At the New Testament?"

"No," replied the elder; "at the beginning—at Genesis."

The infidel bought a commentary, went home, and sat down to the serious study of the Scriptures. He applied all his strong and well-disciplined powers of mind to the Bible, to try rigidly but impartially its truth.

As he went on in his perusal, he received occasional calls from the elder. The infidel freely remarked upon what he had read, and stated his objections. He liked this passage—he thought that touching and beautiful—but he could not credit a third.

One evening the elder called, and found the unbeliever at his house, or office, walking the room with a dejected look, his mind apparently absorbed in thought. He continued, not noticing that any one had come in, busily to trace and retrace his steps. The elder at length spoke:

"You seem, sir," said he, "to be in a brown study. Of what are you thinking?"

"I have been reading," replied the infidel, "the moral law."

"Well, what do you think of it?" asked the elder.

"I will tell you what I used to think," answered the infidel. "I supposed that Moses was the leader of a horde of banditti; that having a strong mind, he acquired great influence over a superstitious people: and that on Mount Sinai he played off some sort of fireworks, to the amazement of his ignorant followers, who imagined, in their mingled fear and superstition, that the exhibition was supernatural."

"But what do you think now?" interposed the elder.

"I have been looking," said the infidel, "into the nature of that law. I have been trying to see whether I can add any thing to it, or take any thing from it, so as to make it better. Sir, I cannot. It is perfect.

"The first commandment," continued he, "directs us to make the Creator the object of our supreme love and reverence. That is right. If he be our Creator, Preserver, and Supreme Benefactor, we ought to treat him, and none other, as such. The second forbids idolatry. That certainly is right. The third forbids profanity. The fourth fixes a time for religious worship, If there be a God, he ought surely to be worshipped. It is suitable that there should be an outward homage, significant of our inward regard. If God be worshipped, it is proper that some time should be set apart for that purpose, when all may worship him harmoniously and without interruption. One day in seven is certainly not too much, and I do not know that it is too little. The fifth defines the peculiar duties arising from family relations. Injuries to our neighbor are then classified by the moral law. They are divided into offences against life, chastity, property, and character. And," said he, applying a legal idea with legal acuteness, "I notice that the greatest offence in each class is expressly forbidden. Thus the greatest injury to life is murder; to chastity, adultery; to property, theft; to character, perjury. Now the greater offence must include the less of the same kind. Murder must include every injury to life; adultery, every injury to purity, and so of the rest. And the moral code is closed and perfected by a command forbidding every improper desire in regard to our neighbors.

"I have been thinking," he proceeded, "where did Moses get that law? I have read the history; the Egyptians and the adjacent nations were idolaters, so were the Greeks and Romans; and the wisest and best Greeks or Romans never gave a code of morals like this. Where did Moses get this law, which surpasses the wisdom and philosophy of the most enlightened ages? He lived at a period comparatively barbarous, but he has given a law in which the learning and sagacity of all subsequent time can detect no flaw. Where did he get it? He could not have soared so far above his age as to have devised it himself. I am satisfied where he obtained it. It came down from heaven. I am convinced of the truth of the religion of the Bible."

The infidel—infidel no longer— mained to his death a firm believer in the truth of Christianity.

A gentleman of New-York, who personally knew Thomas Paine, and was repeatedly in his company during the last years of his life, gave the following account of a conversation with him respecting the Bible:—

One evening I found Paine haranguing a company of his disciples, on the great mischief done to mankind by the introduction of the Bible and Christianity. When he paused, I said, "Mr. Paine, you have been in Scotland; you know there is not a more rigid set of people in the world than they are in their attachment to the Bible: it is their schoolbook; their churches are full of Bibles. When a young man leaves his father's house, his mother always, in packing his chest, puts a Bible on the top of his clothes." He said it was true. I continued, "You have been in Spain, where the people are destitute of the Bible, and there you can hire a man for a dollar to murder his neighbor, who never gave him any offence." He assented. "You have seen the manufacturing districts in England, where not one man in fifty can read, and you have been in Ireland, where the majority never saw a Bible. Now, you know it is an historical fact, that in one county in England or Ireland there are many more capital convictions in six months, than there are in the whole population of Scotland in twelve. Besides, this day there is not one Scotchman in the almshouse, state prison, bridewell, or penitentiary of New-York. Now then, if the Bible were so bad a book as you represent it to be, those who use it would be the worst members of society: but the contrary is the fact; for our prisons, almshouses, and penitentiaries are filled with men and women, whose ignorance or unbelief prevents them from reading the Bible." It was now near ten o'clock at night. Paine answered not a word, but, taking a candle from the table, walked up stairs, leaving his friends an myself staring at one another. (A) YOUNG BUCHANAN AND THE HIGHLANDER.—The late Rev. Claudius Buchanan, shortly after he had visited the principal parts of Europe, was met in the streets of London by an old Highlander, who was an intimate acquaintance of his father. In order to have a little conversation, they went into a public house, and took some refreshments.

Young Claudius gave his countryman a very animated description of his tour, and of the wonders he had seen upon the Continent. The old man listened with attention to his narrative, and then eagerly inquired whether his religious principles had not been materially injured by mixing among such a variety of characters and religions. "Do you know what an infidel is?" said Buchanan. "Yes," was the reply. "Then," said he, "I am an infidel; and have seen the absurdity of all those nostrums my good old father used to teach me in the North; and can you," added he, "seriously believe that the Bible is a revelation from the Supreme Being?—"I do."—"And pray tell me what may be your reasons?" "Claude," said the good old Highlander, "I know nothing about what learned men call the external evidences of revelation, but I will tell you why I believe it to be from God. I have a most depraved and sinful nature, and, do what I will, I find I cannot make myself holy. My friends cannot do it for me, nor do I think all the angels in heaven could. One thing alone does it,—the reading and believing what I read in that blessed book,—that does it. Now, as I know that God must be holy, and a lover of holiness, and as I believe that book is the only thing in creation that produces and promotes holiness, I conclude that it is from God, and that he is the Author of it."

Locke spent the last fourteen years of his life in the study of the Bible; and he wrote "The Common Place Book of the Scriptures," which is an invaluable fruit of his Scripture Studies. These facts of themselves give the strongest proof of the high estimation in which this profound thinker, and acute metaphysician, held the Christian Writings. He admired the wisdom and goodness of God in the method of salvation they reveal; and, it is said, that when he thought upon it, he could not forbear crying out, "O the depths of the riches of the goodness and the knowledge of God!"

He was persuaded, that men would be convinced of this by reading the Scriptures without prejudice; and he frequently exhorted those with whom he conversed, to a serious study of these sacred writings.

A relative inquired of him, what was the shortest and surest way for a young gentleman to attain a true knowledge of the Christian religion? "LET HIM STUDY," said the philosopher, "THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, ESPECIALLY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. THEREIN ARE CONTAINED THE WORDS OF ETERNAL LIFE. IT HAS GOD FOR ITS AUTHOR, SALVATION FOR ITS END, AND TRUTH WITHOUT ANY MIXTURE OF ERROR FOR ITS MATTER."

### 56. Testimony of Infidels.

When Valens, the emperor, sent messengers to seduce Eusebius to heresy by fair words and large promises, he answered: "Alas! sirs, these speeches are fit to catch little children; but we, who are taught and nourished by the Holy Scriptures, are ready to suffer a thousand deaths rather than permit one tittle of the Scriptures to be altered."

Rica, having been to visit the library of a French convent, writes thus to his friend in Persia, concerning what had passed: "Father," said I to the librarian, "what are these huge volumes which fill the whole side of the library?" "These," said he, "are the interpreters of the Scriptures." "There is a prodigious number of them," replied I; "the Scriptures must have been very dark formerly, and be very clear at present. Do there remain still any doubts? Are there now any points contested?" "Are there?"

# 86. COMMUNION OF