renchman, Italian, Russian, are all
akin. Of one blood all nations. That is a very beautiful inscription
that I saw a few days ago over the door in Edinburgh, the door of the
house where John Knox used to live. It is getting somewhat dim now,
but there is the inscription, fit for the door of any household--"Love
God above all, and your neighbor as yourself."

I was also impressed in journeying on the other side the sea with the
difference the Bible makes in countries. The two nations of Europe
that are the most moral to-day and that have the least crime are
Scotland and Wales. They have by statistics, as you might find, fewer
thefts, fewer arsons, fewer murders. What is the reason? A bad book
can hardly live in Wales. The Bible crowds it out. I was told by one
of the first literary men in Wales: "There is not a bad book in the
Welsh language." He said: "Bad books come down from London, but they
can not live here." It is the Bible that is dominant in Wales. And
then in Scotland just open your Bible to give out your text, and there
is a rustling all over the house almost startling to an American. What
is it? The people opening their Bibles to find the text, looking at
the context, picking out the referenced passages, seeing whether you
make right quotation. Scotland and Wales Bible-reading people. That
accounts for it. A man, a city, a nation that reads God's Word must be
virtuous. That Book is the foe of all wrong-doing. What makes
Edinburgh better than Constantinople? The Bible.

Oh, I am afraid in America we are allowing the good book to be covered
up with other good books! We have our ever-welcome morning and evening
newspapers, and we have our good books on all subjects--geological
subjects, botanical subjects, physiological subjects, theological
subjects--good books, beautiful books, and so many good books that we
have not time to read the Bible. Oh, my friends, it is not a matter of
very great importance that you have a family Bible on the center-table
in your parlor! Better have one pocket New Testament, the passages
marked, the leaves turned down, the binding worn smooth with much
usage, than fifty pictorial family Bibles too handsome to read! Oh,
let us take a whisk-broom and brush the dust off our Bibles! Do you
want poetry? Go and hear Job describe the war-horse, or David tell how
the mountains skipped like lambs. Do you want logic? Go and hear Paul
reason until your brain aches under the spell of his mighty