READING THE BIBLE.



HOW many of the readers are like the children whose faces we see in this pleasing picture? That is, earnest and interested readers of the Bible? We hope that the whole family are of this kind; for the Bible has claims upon us which no other book has. 

Do you want to know which is the best book in all the world? It is the Bible. Which is the most interesting book? The Bible. Which is the oldest book? The Bible. Which contains the most ancient history? The Bible. Which contains the prettiest and most charming stories for children? The Bible. Which contains the purest precepts, and the plainest rules how to be good and holy? 

The Bible. What book alone explains about sin, and life, and death, and Heaven, and hell? The Bible.  But it is not all this alone, which makes the Bible the most important of all books. 

It is because it is God's book, and tells us what God wants us to do. When we come to feel that this book contains the will of our Maker, then it has charms for us, which no other book possesses. It tells us how sin has come into the world, and how we have become defiled with it, and how we may get rid of it, and be saved and happy in his kingdom forever.

The Bible is, in many other respects, the most wonderful volume that was ever written. Many of the writers whose books compose the Bible never saw each other. They lived in different ages, separated by hundreds of years. They lived in different countries, separated by hundreds of miles. 

They wrote under all kinds of circumstances; in riches, in poverty; at home, in exile; in kings' palaces, and in dungeons; yet they all agree in what they write. It was more than fifteen hundred years after the first book of the Bible was written before the last was completed, the truth being brought out from age to age just as men needed it, and were prepared to receive it. 

But all this while its testimony is uniform, and one object is kept steadily in view; namely, to make men better, to lead them from sin to holiness, and show them how to gain Heaven at last.

All this could not have been the case if the Bible was the work of men. We can account for this harmony and uniform tendency only on the ground that it is the work of God, who saw the end from the beginning, and who is the same in all ages.

The world owes all its progress, refinement, and civilization, to the Bible. For in those countries where the Bible is not found, the people are low and degraded, half-civilized or savage; and wherever the Bible is introduced in these heathen lands, civilization and progress at once begin.

Then ought we not to love the Bible, and study it, till we know all about what it teaches? Yes, just as they are doing in the picture. Let our music stand one side, and let other books remain unopened, till we have first learned a good lesson from the precious Bible. Youth is just the time to acquire a love for this good book. Three chapters read on every week day, and five every Sabbath, will take you through the entire Bible in a year.





 U. S.