Christ, Christianity and the Bible

by Isaac Massey Haldeman

From the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, Tyre and Sidon; from the trenches of Tel el Armana; by the key words of the Rosetta stone and the black but speaking face of the Moabite stone; from newly discovered papyri and parchment, and the mystic page of cracked and crumpled palimpsest; from the rocks of earth, the depths of the sea and the heights of heaven—and from the latest discoveries of science, there arise amazing witnesses, which speak in tones that cannot be hushed, with facts that cannot be denied, and bear testimony beyond all possibility of dispute to the truth and accuracy of the book; so much so, indeed, that such an one as Sir John Herschell, the great astronomer, has said: “All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths contained in the Sacred Scriptures.”

Consider the vitality of the book.

In less than ten years a text-book is out of date, a cyclopedia worthless, and a library a cemetery of dead books and dead ideas; but this book keeps living right on—keeps abreast of the times, has a testimony for every day, and every day borrows its youth afresh as from the womb of the morning.

Science has laughed it out of court. Two hundred and fifty years ago Voltaire said: “Fifty years from now the world will hear no more of the Bible.” Self-elected scholarship has pronounced it out of date and dead. Again and again its funeral services are held. Kind and condescending eulogiums are uttered over its past history and its good intent. With considerate hands it is lowered into its grave. The resquiescat in pace is solemnly pronounced and lo! before the critical mourners have returned to their homes it has risen from the dead, passed with surprising speed the funeral coaches, and is found—as of yore—in the busy centres of life, thundering against evil, revealing the secrets of the heart, offering consolation to the sorrowing, hope to the dying, and flashing forth from its quivering, vital pages the wonders of coming glory.

While copies of the classics—Virgil, Zenophon, Cæsar, Sophocles, Pindar and Martial—are to be counted by a few thousands, and are cast aside by students as soon as they have graduated, and are forgotten in a twelvemonth, this Bible goes on printing every year millions of copies in all languages and dialects of earth; so far from casting it aside, when once read, men take it up and read it again and again, study it through life, dig into it as for hid treasure, and make it the pillow on which to lay their dying head.

With each succeeding year the demand for it increases and voices are continually crying—give us The Book.

It is the supreme book.

It is the book we need when the fire of sin gleams in our eye and its poison burns in our veins. It is the book we need when the heart is sore, when our soul is troubled, and when peace is no longer a guest in our home.

It is the book we need; for from its pages alone do we behold the light which shines from a Saviour’s empty grave; from its pages alone do we receive assurance of the resurrection of the dead, of immortality and the life to come; and from its pages alone do we hear the tender and welcoming words which seek to greet us and to comfort us while we struggle here ofttimes beneath the burden’s growing weight, those words of heavenly music: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

What author on earth would think his book dead and out of date if year after year the publication of it taxed the printing presses of the world? What author would deem his book out of date when the voices of everywhere proclaimed it the book of books, and multitudes unnumbered confessed that from its pages alone they found the way of life and peace?