CHARLES FOSTER KENT
JEREMIAH WHIPPLE JENKS
1912
The best of allies you can procure for us is the Bible. That will
bring us the reality--freedom.--_Garibaldi_.
If the common schools have found their way from the Atlantic to the
Pacific; if slavery has been abolished; if the whole land has been
changed from a wilderness into a garden of plenty, from ocean to
ocean; if education has been fostered according to the best lights
of each generation since then; if industry, frugality and sobriety
are the watchwords of the nation, as I believe them to be, I say it
is largely due to those first emigrants, who, landing with the
English Bible in their hands and in their hearts, established
themselves on the shores of America.--_Joseph H. Choate_.
And, as it is owned, the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet
understood, so, if it comes to be understood, it must be in the
same way as natural knowledge is come at; by the continuance and
progress of learning and liberty, and by particular persons
attending to, comparing and pursuing intimations scattered up and
down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of
the world. Nor is it at all incredible that a book which has been
so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as
yet undiscovered.--_Butler_.
Mr. Lincoln, as I saw him every morning, in the carpet slippers he
wore in the house and the black clothes no tailor could make really
fit his gaunt, bony frame, was a homely enough figure. The routine
of his life was simple, too; it would have seemed a treadmill to
most of us. He was an early riser, when I came on duty at eight in
the morning, he was often already dressed and reading in the
library. There was a big table near the centre of the room: there
I have seen him reading many times. And the book? It was the
Bible which I saw him reading while most of the household
slept.--_William H. Crook_, in _Harper's Magazine_.
The Bible has such power for teaching righteousness that even to
those who come to it with all sorts of false notions about the God
of the Bible, it yet teaches righteousness, and fills them with the
love of it; how much more those who come to it with a true notion
about the God of the Bible.--_Matthew Arnold_.