THE CONQUERING BOOK

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 19, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 20.

THE CONQUERING BOOK.

The Bible is the conquering book. It has already dominated English literature, so that almost the whole of its text, from Genesis to Revelation, might, if all copies of the Bible were suddenly lost from the world, be restored in piecemeal fragments gathered out of the books in which the Book has been quoted. Then, besides, there are the Bible thoughts that have indirectly, we might almost say insidiously, permeated the literature of Europe and America. More than that, the Bible has been industriously for years securing its own translation into hundreds of tongues and dialects of the globe. The Koran does not take pains to translate itself, and, indeed, refuses to be translated; but in contradistinction with such apathy of false faiths the Bible courts transcription into foreign tongues, loses nothing in the process, but thereby gains for itself the homage of multitudes who, on reading it for the first time, cry: “This is the book we long have sought, that finds us out in the deepest recesses of our being and satisfies the profoundest cravings of our souls!” The Bible is the comforting book. There is no volume like it for consolation. It is the only sure and steady staff for pilgrim spirits to lean upon, and the only book that is quotable at the bedside of the sick. It is a book to wear next the heart in life, and upon which to pillow the head in death. No other so-called “scriptures” of the world say the things that the Bible says, or supply the hopes that its promises afford. The Bible is not simply a book, it is the Book. It is the best book of any kind that we have. We can not do without it, either here or hereafter.—N. Y. Observer.