hundreds of millions find their law of right and their rule for action
in the Bible. It is read in more than two hundred and fifty languages,
by four hundred millions of people living in every clime and zone of
the globe. It constitutes the only literature, the only code of law
and ethics, of many peoples and tribes. For thousands of years it has
gone hand in hand with civilization, has led the way towards the moral
and intellectual development of human kind, and despite the hatred of
its enemies and the still more dangerous misinterpretations of its
friends, its moral law still maintains its firm hold upon the hearts
and minds of the people, its power is still supreme for kindling a love
of right and duty, of justice and morality, within the hearts of the
overwhelming masses. Were it possible to annihilate the Bible, and
with it all the influence it has exercised, the pillars upon which
civilization rests would be knocked from under it, and, as if with one
thrust of the fatal knife, we would deal the death blow to our
morality, to our domestic happiness, to our commercial integrity, to
our peaceful relationships, to our educational and chart-table
institutions.

There are wives and mothers, who stand with lacerated hearts at the
open grave and see the light of their life extinguished beneath the
cruel clods, and yet, they bear up bravely, resting their bent forms
and supporting their tottering feet on the staff of hope and trust
which the Bible affords. Take that solace from them, and you may soon
have occasion to bury the wife next to her husband, and the mother next
to her child. There are husbands who, when sitting lonely, dependent,
in the circle of their motherless, weeping children, find the good old
Book the only comforter; take it from them and you drive them to the
madhouse or to suicide. There are maidens grieving, pining, their
hearts broken, their lives blighted, their career irretrievably