In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance and power of the Holy Scriptures. He compares trying to celebrate the Scriptures in a short amount of time to summarizing a tour of Europe or a visit to an art museum in just half an hour. The speaker highlights that God's voice is what created and sustains the world, and it is the speaking voice of God that keeps everything alive. He encourages listeners to rely on the Bible as the ultimate authority and not be swayed by charismatic personalities or beliefs that are not found in the Scriptures.

I hope that you will remember that I'm supposed to be a Bible teacher here, not an evangelist. Evangelists preaches at night. Some of you are disappointed because I don't dig more, but I am not supposed to be digging. I'm supposed to be teaching the scriptures, and there are two ways to teach the Bible, just as there are two ways to deal with a boy and some apple. One is to go to the orchard, get a few apples, and give them to the boy. The other way is to take the boy to the top of the hill and point down along the slope and say, there's the orchard, help yourself. Now, today I want to talk about the Word, not teach anything specifically, any doctrine specifically, but simply to point and say, there, there it is, go ahead, help yourself. The 119th Psalm is my text, Psalm 119. It has 176 verses in it. I'll just read a couple of opening verses. Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with a whole heart. I don't think we'll go any further than that. That's enough. The 176th Psalm. Now, I believe David wrote the 176th Psalm, though it doesn't say so at the head of it as it does at the head of Psalm 119. It doesn't say so at the head of it as it does at the head of some of the great psalms, but I think that I've been around David enough that I know the sound of each heart. I have a friend in my city by the name of Francis Chase, known to some of you, a great artist whose works appear everywhere, and you'll see them in Post and other magazines. When we're looking and flipping over the pages of the Post, that's Chase. Well, how do we know? He doesn't sign his name, or if he does, he disguises it so we can't find it. But I know it after 29 years. I know a man's style. Sometimes I hear a piece of music and I say to Becky, Who's that? Well, she'll smile and say, That's Mozart. Mozart's our boy. We like him. And you can tell Mozart, if you've ever listened to much of Mozart, because he has the style, and David has the style. And after you've read some verses in the 119th Psalm, you'll feel you're in the presence of David. So I'm going to be talking about David here, even though it doesn't say David wrote it. But in this Psalm, David celebrates the holy scriptures. But I'd like to know how anybody can begin to try to celebrate the holy scriptures, or at one hour, or less than an hour, or in 10 hours, to say anything worthy about the scriptures. It's like taking a tour of Europe and then coming home, and in a half an hour telling people what you saw. It's like going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and seeing the masterpieces of the centuries, and then giving a lecture a half hour long telling you about it. It's like taking a trip, a little journey through the October woods here in the state of Pennsylvania, and then coming back and writing a little piece about it. How can you do it? How can you condense immensity into half an hour? So I can't tell you everything that ought to be said about the word, but I can only tell you that David celebrated the word here, and I want to go along with him in it. We'll begin with that first word, blessed. Because, you see, only God can say blessed and make it stick. The priest can bless you, but you come unblessed before you get away from the church. But when God says blessed, it sticks, because God is the Blessed One. Jesus began his ministry by saying, blessed are, and blessed is, because he could say blessed, and he had authority to say it. A woman one time in an institution wanted me to bless her, and I wouldn't bless her, because I can't bless anybody. Only God the Blessed One, who comes from the regions of the blessed, can say blessed and make it last. So he says blessed here, and we'll begin there. Now he says, forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. We quote that a good deal, and why? Why should this be so priceless to us? It's because it tells us of that which we do not have and cannot find here on earth. Two things, permanence and perpetuity. Permanence means that it'll always be exactly like it is, and perpetuity means that it'll last on through the centuries. There's nothing like that around here. You never saw anything with your eyes nor felt anything with your hands that was permanent. You've built yourself a beautiful house, and I don't mind and I don't envy you and that if you can live in a nice house. But remember, there will be a day when the foxes will yelp over where that house now stands, and the moles will burrow, and you will long be forgotten. Permanence isn't of something belonging to the sons of men, neither of perpetuity. Nothing can last. There are some things you'd like to have last. My dear old mother, she was quite a philosopher, though she'd never read much philosophy. But she was quite a philosopher, and when some good man in the neighborhood would die, she'd say, why is it that such good men as that have to die? And there are people all around here that aren't much good, and they're living. I don't know, but I only know perpetuity isn't a word that can be applied. That is, anything perpetual, it doesn't last, brother. Nothing on earth is settled. Thy word, O Lord, is forever settled in heaven. I hold in my hand a beautiful leather-bound Bible here, an unusual Bible. My sons gave it to me. It cost $17.50. I bought it myself, and I had $2.50 left to buy a case for it. It was my father's day, or birthday present, or something. But you know the day will be when this thing will rot and turn brown, and it'll be gone, and somebody will kick it aside. Nothing on this earth lasts. Permanence and perpetuity don't belong down here. Chance and change are busy ever, and ages roll, and men decay. And there isn't a rose but has its thorn, and the thorn and the rose together shall be destroyed. Every apple has its worm, and the apple and the worm together shall decay. And all laughter has its rose-sad note, and the sadness and the laughter shall be silent at last. There is nothing down here that lasts, but thy word, O Lord, is forever settled in heaven. You know the word of God has power. Some people imagine God, as a colored song has it that I often quote, that God said, I'll make me a man. And so he sat him down by the riverside, and he scooped up the clay out of the riverbed, and he knelt down there by the riverside, and he made a man, and he blew into his nostrils a breath of life, and he became a living soul. And that's a great song written by one of the great colored poets, but it's materialistic to a degree that's dangerous. I quote it, and I like it. Clarence Darrow said it was the only fundamentalist output he cared anything for. But, brother, the simple fact is God didn't set him down and do anything. God spake, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood forth, and he said, Let there be, and there was, and he said, Let the light break, and it broke, and he said, Let the waters gather together, and they gathered, and he said, Let the grass grow, and it grew, and he said, and it was, and he spake, and it was done. And you will find that it is the power of the voice of God that keeps things together in the world. All over the world is held up by the words of his power. In him all things holds together, and he upholdeth all things by the words of his power. So, it is the speaking voice of God in the universe that keeps it alive. It isn't anything that man can discover, it is that voice. In the beginning was the word, and the word is with God, and the word was God, and the word was in the beginning, and all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And he upholdeth all things by that same word, so that it is that that holds the universe together. Studying science reminds me of the dear little old lady that went to an airfield, and a kind, young, friendly pilot in his uniform took her out and showed her around, explained all about airplanes to her, told her everything he knew about aerodynamics, and she, her face beamed and she oozed and awed while he was talking to her. So after about an hour of that, the young fellow led her back away off the field, and she said, Now, son, before you go, I'd like to ask you one thing. What makes the planes stay up? And that's what I'd like to know. Just what is it holds things together? After you've listened to Edison and Einstein and Henry Ford and Compton and all the rest, then you say, But wait a minute, what makes things hold together? And science has no answer, but God has the answer. In the beginning was the word, and the word is in all things, and he upholdeth all things by the word of his power. If God should withdraw his living, speaking word from the universe, it would fall into what the Greeks called chaos. It would fall back into vacuity and night. So the power of the word has never been overestimated. He sent his word and he healed them, and it's the only way he's ever healed anybody from the beginning. And when he lays his hand on anybody, it is still the spoken word that heals them. Well, by the word creation is held up, and it affords two things that you and I need so much, you see. It affords cleansing and quickening. Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word. You see, we need to be cleansed because we're so shamefully defiled. That's why we keep our hearts shut all the time. We keep our souls shut, even the people that talk all the time. I heard a fellow down in Atlanta, Mr. McAfee and I were together, and two fellows were kidding each other, yelling at each other across the street. One of them was a policeman, and one fellow was yelling. He had his big mouth open, and the cop yelled back. He said, shut up, shut your mouth, you look half naked. And there are people that are like that, you know. There's so much mouth that when it's open, they're half naked. And yet, they don't let you know what's inside their hearts. They just don't let you know because they're ashamed to. We go around all slicked up, and we learn from Emily Post how to hide what's in us and be unnatural and artificial because we're ashamed of what's inside. But by thy word are we cleansed, says the scriptures. The word I speak unto you cleanses. So we need this cleansing, and that's why we love the word so much. It stands up under the test of cleansing. Let any moral leper in the world, let any moral leper come and kneel and take the word and believe the word and meet its terms and see if he doesn't go away clean. There is cleansing in the word of the Lord, and there's quickening. And the reason we need quickening is we're so dead. We're desperately dead. We're dead with a deadness that you can't bury. We're dead with a deadness that nobody can diagnose. It's a moral deadness, a spiritual deadness, and we need quickening. And scripture says that he quickens us by his word, says in the Psalms and elsewhere. Now, I ask you to notice that in the Bible the word and the word blend into each other. We have a song that says, O word of God incarnate, O wisdom from on high, O light unchanged, unchanging, O light of our dark sky, we thank thee for the radiance that from the sacred page a lantern for our footstep shines on from age to age. Now, we sing that at home very often, but you notice how blessedly confused the writer was? He's confused with a happy, sweet confusion that a lover is confused with, somebody that's deeply in love. He's always in the state of a happy wooziness. And you take Bible writers. I'm afraid of a man who's too slick and too pat and who knows all the answers. I think that the happiest and most humble thing and honest thing we can do often is to say, ask me five minutes after the rapture. I'll tell you all about it, but I don't know now. There's a lot of confusion in the scriptures. It's not the kind that hurts you, it's the kind that hapifies you. It's like a meadow or a forest or the blue sky above or children at play. It's the confusion that blesses you. Now, here we have in the scriptures word and word, w-o-r-d without a capital letter and w-o-r-d with a capital letter. Now, which is which? Preach the word, said Paul, and he don't know whether he meant preach the Bible or preach Jesus, because the word's in the book and the word's in flesh. And yet this psalm, notice this song, O Word of God incarnate, he says, that could be nobody but Jesus. And then three lines later, we thank thee for the radiance which from the sacred page, and that can be nothing else with the Bible. So, you have the word made flesh to walk around among us, and you have the word made print to be carried under your arm, and loved, and wept over, and marked, and prayed over. So, we have the word and the word. Now, it's a blessed thing to know that, and you'll find that throughout the Bible, the word and the word, and you don't know for sure whether you mean Christ or whether it means the Bible or whether it means both. Now, I went to the trouble to count the times in this psalm, the 119th, that the word is referred to, which is called the commandments and various synonyms, and it's 174 times. And I went to the trouble to count the number of times the Lord's name is mentioned in the 119th psalm, and it's 287 times. And then I went to the trouble to find out how often the personal pronoun is found there. They tell me not to use the personal pronoun, but you'll have an awful time if you don't. Get the personal pronoun sanctified, and it's perfectly all right. It's the unsanctified personal pronoun that causes you the trouble. I, me, mine, and myself. Now, they're not there to be used all right, but they're to be sanctified first. You get them cleansed with the blood and filled with the Spirit, and you can use them, because the man of God who wrote the 119th psalm said, I, me, and mine, 283 times in the 119th psalm. The only body that got in the psalm more than he did was God, and God got in 287 against 283. So you see, David was walking around in that psalm, and it was God and David and the word walking around there together. And God had tied David up in a bundle of life with the word and and that's where you are, my brother. There's no separating the living word who speaks and the spoken word that is uttered. When he speaks the spoken word, he's speaking himself forth, and there's no separating the speaking word who speaks and the spoken word that is uttered from the worshiping listener who receives both. So don't you be afraid to say, the Lord is my shepherd, he's my shepherd. Get yourself into it. There's too much of this community religion, so too much too much of this social religion. They say people aren't converted one at a time, it's society that ought to be regenerated. How can you regenerate society without regenerating people? And how can you regenerate people without regenerating them one at a time? I want to talk this little word to some of you dear, humble people. It's this. Never get an inferiority complex over people that are supposed to be so very learned. Nobody's very learned, and some are dumber than others. And I wouldn't worry too much if I were you about these liberal preachers that say we're dumb and we have no education, that's why we talk about us. They say it's selfish to talk about I, the Lord's my shepherd, and I have been redeemed. They say that's selfishness. You ought to think about all mankind. Well, they're big windbags and they're hypocrites because they don't pray for mankind as much as you do, and you believe in individual salvation. And so do I, and so does David believe in individual salvation. So he said, I, me, mine, and my Lord, and the word, and he got them several hundred times into that book. Well, there's a golden treasure here, this book, this bible of ours, and that's one criticism I have. You people here at Mahaffey, you don't study enough. You want to be thrilled. I'd suggest you get a low-powered battery and get ahold of one side, and it'll give you the same kind of thrill out of your want. You want a little electric thrill, and you want to say, eee, and you feel if you get a little tickle it makes you squeal you've been blessed. Well, hell's full of people that had thrills, so to remember that. What you need to do, my brothers, to read the bible, and you can read a Schofield bible if you watch the notes. Somebody looked at me as if I didn't like the Schofield bible. I've worn four of them out, and I have number five now at home, so I'm not worried about it. I just don't believe it's notes. When they start telling me things are otherwise than they are, I just write that off. But he does divide up things nicely for you, so let's get that ready. Whatever bible you have, it's a good bible, and read it. But notice how David loved the scriptures. Now, you would like to be like David, and we sing, I want to be like David. Well, you know, David loved the word of God. He says, Thy word is better than thousands of gold and silver, above gold, yea, above fine gold. And I rejoice as one that finds great spoil. David knew what he's talking about, because he had been a soldier, and he'd gone out and captured a city, and looked around through the big houses to see how much spoil he could get, and he'd taken silver and gold and all in and dutiful things. He knew what it was to capture a city and take the spoil, but when he went to the book of God, he found more spoil than he found in all the cities of the world. I rejoice as one that finds great spoil, he said. Now, is this the extravagant outburst of a neurotic? Well, read the Psalms and see for yourself. No. David, in a more restrained mood, said, I love them exceedingly. I love the book exceedingly, and the poor boy, he didn't have anything much but the Pentateuch, and you and I have the Pentateuch, plus the prophets, plus the Psalms, plus the Proverbs, plus the Gospels, plus the Epistles and the Revelation. So we're better off than he was. I'd like to have David come back and see the whole Bible, and then write about it. Rather, he'd double it, wouldn't he? He'd write a bigger psalm than this one. Well, David loved it, and he said, I rejoice in it exceedingly. Now, some people have said, one man, I think with H.G. Wells, that the Bible was all right for its generation and its times, but that we ought to have another Bible now. Somebody ought to write a new Bible. They said, the old one's out of vogue. Well, all right, very well, and amen. Let somebody else write a Bible. I want to ask you where you can find the man that will kneel at the burning bush and cover his face and take off his shoes and say, holy, holy, holy, there in the backside of the desert at the cool of the day. I want you to know where is the man that will climb the mountain, and there amid the shaking and the thunder and the sound of the trumpet and the voice of words, look in awe some wonder upon the awful face of God. That was Moses. Find your man, locate him, hunt him out, send him to the bush, send him up the hill, and let him kneel there in terror and say, I exceedingly fear and quake, and we'll read his Bible. Or let him sit by the river Kebar like Ezekiel, despondent and gloomy and alone, dabbling his feet in the swift-flowing Kebar, a poor priest out of the land, far from home and completely discouraged. It was then that heaven was opened and he saw visions of God. Where is your writer today and your big brain that's willing to go through all this? Let him go into the den of lions and put his head on a lion's paw for a pillow and sleep through the night, and in the morning find that not a lion could get his mouth open. That's what Daniel did, and Daniel wrote the book of Daniel. Let him lie in a rat-infested prison as Paul did, and write his epistles out of his tears and fears and blood, and you'll know you'll be able to write an epistle. Let him go to the Isle of Patmos and get a job in a salt mine with chains on his legs, and there in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, let him look out over the vast landscape of the future. No, my friend, the trouble with these fellows that want to write Bibles, they want to go to school and get an education, get themselves a $235 electric typewriter and get some fine paper and chase everybody away, well-fed and well-rested and safe and sleek and happy, they want to sit down in an ivory tower and write a Bible. The Bible didn't come that way, brother. The men dipped their pen in sweat and blood, and they wrote with blood, and then they say, we want another Bible. I'd like to know who can write one. I'd like to know who can be humble enough to speak as he's moved by the Holy Ghost. We don't want another Bible. Only the one we've got has everything in it we need. Well, praise God for that. Now, we'll go on and ask, what is it that you want that the Bible hasn't got the answer to? The Bible has the answer to every question. I told a young man here, my friend Bailey, from the New England district, that a lot of this counseling is just wasted time. Young people get on panel discussions, and it's just ignorance trying to teach ignorance, that's all. A fellow that hasn't been anywhere trying to tell another fellow that hasn't been anywhere what it's like. You can't do that. It's like a priest delivering lectures on married life. What does he know about it, anyhow? These young people that want to have their conferences and counsel together, they don't know anything, and if there's anything worse than ignorance, it's ignorance talking to ignorance and trying to teach it. But, brother, the Bible can answer all your questions. You know what I think about pastoral psychiatry? Now, you can take this where you will, and I told them that at Wheaton College a couple or three weeks ago, so I'm not hiding this, nor am I afraid to tell other people. I tell it around, and I just think that pastoral psychiatry, all the books on pastoral psychiatry, if all of them were taken out somewhere, they should be sold for waste paper to the Salvation Army, or given to the Salvation Army for waste paper. They're simply wasted paper. Give me a dear old sanctified woman and a good Bible in five minutes, and she'll lead a young person further into God than all of your pastoral psychiatrists will. I don't believe in all that stuff. Well, I believe that the Bible has the answer, and if you'll go to your Bible, you'll find the answer. And the reason you have to hunt up a psychiatrist and lie on a cot is because you don't know your Bible. If you'd read your Bible, you wouldn't need old Dr. Slocum. You could go to the Bible. Ah, what a book we hold in our hands! What a book! What a book, brother! I have about 30 different translations of it, and I still love my old King James. I still love the old King James. Whisper, don't tell this in Gatner, mention it in Eschalon, but I even have the Revised Standard Version. Don't mind it at all, they can't fool me. If they try to fool me, they can't do it. All versions are pretty good, except one comes along occasionally that I'd be drummed out of the country, and I got in trouble for drumming one out. But for the most part, they're very, any translation is good. But if you love the old King James, there isn't any reason for your having any other, except of course for study. But oh, brother, what this book will do for you. Now, I want you to buy books, and I want you to take magazines, or at least one magazine. I want you to do that, but after you've read your books and your magazines, and they haven't done anything for you, I'll tell you where you can go to get help. Go to the book. You're lonely back home, you have no fellowship, some of you go to churches where you never hear the gospel, and if you said amen out loud, they'd carry you out. You're discouraged back home, the old man chews tobacco and spits on top of the stove, and they're on the rug, and there's no salvation, nothing around there. Oh, my friend, if you've got a bible and two eyes, you can walk with the mighty of the world. You don't have to think when you leave the saints at Mahathir, you're going to go back and never see a saint again. You can walk with the saints and fellowship with them. You can go with Abraham as he comes down out of Ur of the Chaldees, walking straight out ahead with his long snow-white beard pointing away, and behind him came his camels and all of his household goods. Abraham didn't know where he was going, but he was on his way. And some of you, dear people, don't know where you're going. Walk with Abraham, God's at him and he'll lead you. Or if you're discouraged, think about Jacob. Walk along with Jacob out there in the waste-howling wilderness, and you may see a vision of God above a ladder, and on the ladder angels ascending and descending. Or you may be with Jacob there on the bank of the river when God and Jacob were wrestling, and God played along with Jacob until he got his will broken, and then changed his name to Israel. And Jacob was all by himself. He wasn't in an alliance church with a good pastor who'd been to Niac, and a lot of helps. He was all by himself out there. Everybody had gone and left him. When I'm gloomy or discouraged, I go and listen to David's sweetheart. I like to hear this brother play the lute. He plays the lute beautifully, but I don't think he can play as well as David. And you know, David's lute wasn't like this. David made his lute out of bones and guts. He just took the bone of an ass and the gut of a cat and strung them up, and when you got the donkey and the cat together, they made sweet music, because David was full of the Holy Ghost, and David wrote the sweet music. Ah, my brother, I love the book of Psalms. I love the book of Psalms. Some Bible teachers are specialist on Romans. I can go to sleep any day of the year, any month of the year, having an uninspired teacher tell me all about the book of Romans. I've read the book of Romans. I know what it teaches, but there are specialists on Romans, and they're everlastingly taking you and putting you to bed in the book of Romans. Well, the book of Romans is probably the most important book in the scriptures, I will admit. But I like to march to music, you know, and there isn't too much music in Romans. It's just good, hard thinking. But in the Psalms, you can march to music, because David never went anywhere without his harp, so I love to hear David play his blessed harp. I worried about myself here some years back, because I loved the Psalms so. You'll find everything in the Psalms you'll find anywhere else, about redemption and incarnation and resurrection and glory and prophecy. You'll find it all in the Psalms, and I worried about it. I said, now wait a minute here. All these Bible teachers are teaching Romans and Colossians, and you're busy loving the Psalms. Something must be wrong with you. And then I read a sentence in a book by Horatio Bonar, and Horatio Bonar said, I love the Psalms because the Spirit of Christ is in the book of Psalms. Then I felt better, and I haven't apologized since. I know why I love the book of Psalms, because the Christ is in the book of Psalms, looking out between the lattice and sticking his hand through at the latch and saying, Come, my beloved, come away. So you'll find him there. And then, if you're really discouraged, go up there with Elijah and stand on that mountaintop when he challenged the 400 prophets of Baal. I often thought that after Elijah, no, they tell me that I'm sarcastic. They say that Mantozer's ironical, and that's the thing's wrong with him. He can't be sanctified because he's ironical. Well, I don't know. Sometimes a little irony won't hurt anybody. And this fellow Elijah, he was a satirist of the first nature. Here were all of these prophets around there with their robes on and all their paraphernalia, and they hadn't been able to get a bit of fire or anything else, not a thing. And he said, Maybe your God has gone on a journey, or maybe he's sleeping and needs to be waked up. And he needled them all day long and needled them until they were so mad that if God hadn't answered Elijah's prayer, they'd have torn him bone from bone and thrown him all over Mount Carmel. God had to answer. So when the set of the sun at the time of the evening sacrifice, he poured the water around, got on his knees, and said, In effect, O Lord, send a fire or I'm coming up quick because everybody here hates me. God sent the fire, all right, and Elijah slew the prophets of Baal. Things aren't so bad out your way, you know, not nearly so bad. They're not half as bad as you think they are. If they are, go and read about Elijah. Go and listen to Isaiah play the organ. Go with the three Hebrew children into the furnace and see how cool it is there with the Son of God with you. Go with Paul and Silas into prison and hear them sing. Paul and Silas in their prison sang of Christ the Lord arisen and the angel's arm of might smoked the prison gates at night. I'd like to have been there when the prison gates were opened and the walls were shaken and God let these men out. Go with John and see his vision of Christ. Go with Peter into his third epistle, his second epistle, into the third chapter and stand and watch a while and you'll see all the heavens and the earth and all the things that are therein catch fire and start to burn hotter than 10,000 hydrogen bombs. And then after the smoke is cleared away and the fallout is all gone, up out of it will come a glorious new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. That's the book, brother, that's the book. And if you can't love the book, there's something wrong with you. If you'd rather hear a preacher tell touching stories than preach the book, you need to go back for another dip, for you're an emotionalist, you're not a Christian at all. What have we here? What have we in this bible of ours? Well, I won't speak of its philosophy, I don't have time, but I can only tell you that I have Plato and Aristotle and Schopenhauer and Thomas Aquinas and almost all of the other recognized philosophers of the ages on the shelves of my library. But if I had to do it, I would part with them all and keep the 23rd Psalm alone. There is more for my soul in the 23rd Psalm than there is in Plato and Aristotle and Schopenhauer and Spinoza and all the rest of them. They said some pretty good things, but they didn't say, The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And of its poetry I shall not speak now. I only remember that when Walter Scott was dying, or at least was getting pretty old and ready to go, he said to his butler, he said, Bring me the book. Well, he had books piled to the ceiling all around, and the butler necessarily was puzzled, and he said, Well, Sir Walter, which book do you mean? You've got several thousand. Oh, he said, I said, Bring me the book. He said, What book would an old dying man want? He said, Bring me the book, and the butler grinned and went and came back with the Bible. He knew what was good for a man, and they tell me that Job is considered by scholars to be equal with Shakespeare and Deci and Aeschylus and Homer as one of the four or five great poets of all time. So, you don't have to be ashamed and apologize to some fellow of the big degree, because you've got a book here equal to Shakespeare and all the rest, and in addition to that it's inspired, and Shakespeare isn't. They say Luke is the most beautiful book ever written. If Luke is the most beautiful book ever written, you have no right to cause to be ashamed of the Bible. You've got the book of Luke here, and you're just so close to it you don't know how beautiful it is. One time, Benjamin Franklin, when the United States government sent him to France as ambassador, he was quite a writer and a scholar, and people knew it, and so he was invited to some kind of a gathering of learned men, you know, artists and poets and writers and so on, and each one of them would read something, and everybody else you know would tell about what was wrong with it or how good it was. So, one day it was Franklin's turn. He got up and read a short section. It took him about ten minutes to read it, and he sat down, and there was round after round of applause. They said, this is better than anything anybody has read in this club for years. Where did you get it? Did you write it? What is it? Franklin stood up and said, it's the Book of Ruth in the Bible. That's all. Book of Ruth. They hadn't heard it. Most wonderful thing they'd ever heard. So, we'll not talk about its philosophy, nor its poetry, nor its wise counsel, but David did say that he had more understanding than all his teacher because he understood the Bible. And all the ages have said, amen. What then is there in the Bible that specifically marks it out as the book you and I love, and the book you and I need? Two things, salvation and immortality. David said, I fought on my ways and turned my feet unto thy paths. I was gone astray like a lost sheep, but the Lord brought me again. Salvation is in the book, brother, and it's nowhere else. You'll find it nowhere else. Go to the book, and it'll speak to you, and it'll speak living words to you, and then immortality. Now, I don't know about you, but I kind of like to live, and my feet hurt. I don't know, I'm a crazy fellow. My feet hurt when I preach. Do you ever have anybody tell you that before? I suppose that is the craziest thing ever any man said that didn't have a straight jacket on. But it makes my feet hurt to preach. You know, there's some things that you don't like, but for the main, I like to live, and I like to worship, and I like to pray, and I like to think, and I like to meet my friends. And it would be a terrible shock to me if an angel were to come and tell me that I'd been mistaken about all this, and that when I died that'd be the end of me. I wouldn't believe the angel anyhow. I'd sniff him to see if he didn't have brimstone on him. I wouldn't believe him if he told me. No, my brother, not only salvation, but immortality. Think of that word, immortality. What a beautiful word it is. Mort, you know what mort means? Well, it's dead, and a mortuary is a place for the dead people, and mortal means you're subject to die, and immortal means you're not subject to die, and immortality means you're in a state, you will be in a state, where you won't die anymore, and can't die forever and ever. So, nothing can separate the speaking Lord from the everlasting spoken word, and the trusting man to whom it is spoken. I am, they were, and thou gavest them me, and I have given unto them eternal life. I believe that with all my heart, and I believe also the same Jesus who said, nothing shall pluck them out of my hand. I'm not going to argue about eternal security, or not eternal security, but for myself, when I pray, I believe in eternal security, but when I preach, I'm dubious about it for other people. So, brother, the word is here. The word is here, thank God. There was an old scientist, somewhat of a genius, and he called up his pastor, and he's about ready to go, forgotten his name now, but he's about ready to go, and he was so brilliant, and such a scholar, that his pastor was afraid of him. And he said, come down and read to me, pastor. He said, read to me out of the scriptures. Well, the young man went down, scared stiff, and he said, now let me see. He said, this man is a genius, he's a scholar, he's a scientist, he's a mathematician, he's a logician, he's got a mind that works like a fine watch, and what could I read that would fit into a mind like that? And on his way down, he thought about Romans, he thought about parts of Ezekiel, but what could I read about Isaiah? And he said, this brilliant mind, what could I read? Got down there, he said, brother, he said, I've been wondering what I ought to read to you. He said, what would you like to hear? Oh, he said, just read me that that says, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions, any that were not so I would have told you. He said, I'm forgetting all about my science and my philosophy. He said, I'm going to be with the Lord one of these days, and I'd like to hear about it. So the much-relieved pastor read him the 14th of John. Oh, you'll never get so many brains, and I'd like to tell you young fellows, you'll never get so much education that you outgrow the Bible. No, no, you might outgrow your head, you know, or your hat and all that, but you'll never outgrow the book. Now, I'll tell you this song, hymn, and then I'm through. Old William Cooper wrote, a glory gilds the sacred page, majestic like the sun. It gives a light to every age, it gives but borrows none. The hand that gave it still supplies the gracious light and heat. Its tools upon the nations rise, they rise but never set. Let everlasting thanks be thine for such a bright display as makes a world of darkness shine with beams of heavenly day. That's the Bible. My soul rejoices to pursue the steps of him I love, till glory breaks upon my view in brighter worlds above. If it isn't in the book, don't believe it. Believe all that's here, but don't believe anything else. Don't be carried away by personality and a slick voice and black hair and a handsome face. Make them check with the book, to the word and to the testimony, and if you can't find it in the book, turn your back on it, and when you do, you'll turn your face to the light. Amen? I hope that you will remember that I'm supposed to be a Bible teacher here, not an evangelist. The evangelist preaches at night. Some of you are disappointed because I don't dig more, but I am not supposed to be digging.