The Book That Could Not Sink.
ABOUT sixty years ago a party of missionaries set sail from America to carry the light of the Gospel to India, Burma, and other lands overshadowed by the false religions of Buddha and Mohamet. There were no steamboats in those days. An old yellow sheet lies before me now, written on one of those six months' voyages to India, telling quite simply and uncomplainingly of such terrible discomforts on the way as even our missionaries in the heart of Africa, to-day, are not called on to endure. For instance, the water supply ran so low, on this voyage of which my faded letter tells, that when a shower of rain came, the voyagers were thankful to catch and drink the water that ran off the deck; tho barefooted sailors had splashed about in it. But this missionary company, of which I set out to tell you, fared worse than having to drink dirty water, or having to thirst for more. For in a great storm their vessel was wrecked, and every one of them cast upon an uninhabited island. After days and days of suffering they were rescued; else this little true story would never have come to our ears. But it is not of their adventures that I wish to tell—it is the strange story of a Book that did not sink. It was black night when the ship containing the missionaries was wrecked; and when dawn rose over the island, and over the wet and weary castaways, nothing was in sight on the wide waters but spars, and beam ends, and bits of rigging, tossing, as if in a wild game with the rough waves. But as one of the missionaries walked along the sands in the early sunlight of the new day, he saw lying at his feet, soaked and discolored, but intact, his own Bible. The missionary pressed it to his bosom, and the whole company kneeled under the open sky while he read aloud psalm after psalm of praise and thanksgiving and trust in God. Perhaps you have heard this little story before; but I want it to suggest to you, to-day, the history of that great Book of books, in all ages. It has sometimes seemed to suffer shipwreck; it has been buffeted by waves of unbelief and scorn and denial. The church itself (of the Middle Ages), the calling itself Christian, sought to bury it fathoms deep, in an unknown tongue, and in edicts forbidding it to be read. But God's care was ever over it, and not a page was ever lost or defaced. Our Bible is threatened to-day—not by the boisterous clamor of the storms; but the more deadly work of enemies inside the ship, cutting holes here and holes there; denying this Gospel, and that epistle, and every supernatural record. Will the ship sink?—Never believe it! The missionary's Bible, lying unhurt on the sands, in the quiet sunlight that followed the storm, is a picture of the word of God for all the future. "Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven." "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever." "I have known of old that Thou hast founded them forever."