I heard a minister say the other day that a mother had not necessarily
done much for her boy because she had bought him a nice Bible and put it
in his trunk, when he was about to leave home to seek his fortune in the
world. I think it wrong for anybody--minister or what not--to indulge in
such loose and flippant talk. The effect is bad--always bad, and no
hair splitting, and no higher criticism, and no curiously ingenious
explanations can mend the matter. As for me, give me the old-fashioned
mother who sends her son out into the world with a Bible in his trunk,
and give me the old-fashioned boy who reads that Bible every night with
tears in his eyes, as he thinks of the old folks at home and of their
simple lives devoted to Jesus Christ. Give me the man, woman or child,
whose hands touch the Bible reverently, instead of slinging it about as
a dictionary or some common dime novel. Give me the plain old fellow who
quickly takes leave of that circle in which critics are proceeding to
ably explain away certain chapters of the Bible.
As for me, I want no new theories about the Bible--no new versions--no
new criticisms. No man has a right to weaken the faith of others. No man
has a right to knock away the staff that supports the crippled wayfarer.
And no man has a right to tell an aged mother that it does no good to
give her boy a Bible unless he can suggest a better substitute. Destroy
the old-fashioned idea concerning the Bible, and we shall have a nation
of infidels defying God, defying the law, and repeating the
licentiousness and horrors of the French Revolution. We should make the
Bible first in all things. Make the Bible first in the family, in the
Sunday-school and church, make it first in state and society, and we
shall have a Republic that will grow brighter and brighter as the years
come and go, and then we “shall go out with joy, and be lead forth with
peace: and the mountains and the hills shall break forth before us into
singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
[Illustration: CARNEGIE LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D. C.