The Little Blind Girl


A little girl had been attacked with a sudden

and violent pain in her head, which ended in

blindness. She was taken to an eminent occulist

who pronounced her incurable. She wished to

know what the doctor said about her state, and

her mother told her.

"What, mother!" exclaimed the child, "am I

never to see the sun, nor the beautiful fields, nor

you, my dear mother, nor my father? Oh how

shall I bear it?" She wrung her hands and wept

bitterly. Nothing seemed to yield her the

 slightest comfort, till her mother, taking a 

pocket Bible from the table, placed it in her 

hands. "What is this, mother?" inquired the 

disconsolate little girl. "It is the Bible, my child."

 Immediately a score of its most consolatory 

passages presented themselves to her mind. She

 paused, turned her poor benighted eye-balls

 towards the ceiling, while an angelic smile

 played on her countenance, and then as if filled

 with the Holy Spirit, breathed forth in an 

impassioned but scarcely audible whisper,

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

THE time was when the Bible was one of the

most expensive books in the world. Madox, in

his history of the exchequer, says, that in 1230,

the building of the two arches of the London

bridge cost eight pounds less than the estimated

value of a single Bible which a certain abbot 

bequeathed to the abbey of Croxton. In 1272, it

is said that a laboring man was obliged to lay

aside the wages of fourteen years in order to 

procure a Bible. In 1299 the Bishop of 

Winchester borrowed a Bible from a convent of 

that city, and was obliged to give his bond drawn

 up in the most formal and solemn manner, for its

 return at a certain specified time. Since that 

time the art of printing has been discovered, and

 now an entire and beautifully executed copy can

 be had for the trifling sum of twenty five cents.

 As if to confer special distinction upon this 

blessed book, Providence has so ordered it, that

 this is not only the first, but the cheapest book

 ever printed by man.