How Much Is the Bible Worth?
By T. D. Talmage
The next bill I find on the table is a book bill. How much is your Bible worth? Scientific men are trying to show us, through the newspapers, and through philosophic papers, that our race is descended from the monkey. But we who believe in God’s word, read there that God made man in his own image, and not in the image of a monkey. Get out of my way with your miserable Darwinian theories! Scientific men cannot understand the origin of this world. We open our Bibles, and we feel like the Christian Arab, who said to the skeptic when asked by him, why he believed there was a God: “How do I know that it was a man instead of a camel that went past my tent last night? Why I know him by the tracks.” Then, looking over at the setting sun, the Arab said to the skeptic: “Look there! that is not the work of a man. That is the track of a God.” We have all these things revealed in God’s word. Dear old book! My father loved it. It trembled in my mother’s hand when she was nigh fourscore years old. It has been under the pillow of three of my brothers when they died. It is a very different book from what it once was to me. I used to take it as a splendid poem, and read it as I read John Milton. I took it up sometimes as a treatise on law, and read it as I did Blackstone. I took it as a fine history, and read it as I did Josephus. Ah! now it is not the poem; it is not the treatise of law; it is not the history. It is simply a family album that I open, and see right before me the face of God, my Father; of Christ, my Saviour; of Heaven, my eternal home. “How precious is the Book Divine,
By inspiration given!
Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine,
To guide our souls to Heaven. “This lamp throughout the tedious night
Of life shall guide our way,
Till we behold the clearer light
Of an eternal day.” As I take up your family Bible to-night, bright with promises and redolent with boyhood memories, and mighty with principles that are to regenerate the world, I ask you, ye men who are descended from those who fought until they died in their tracks, for the defense of this book; ye sons of the Covenanters, who were hounded among the Highlands of Scotland for this grand, glorious triumph, and God-given Book, “How much owest thou to my Lord?”—T. D. Talmage.