e way towards the moral
and intellectual development of human kind, and despite the hatred of
its enemies and the still more dangerous misinterpretations of its
friends, its moral law still maintains its firm hold upon the hearts
and minds of the people, its power is still supreme for kindling a love
of right and duty, of justice and morality, within the hearts of the
overwhelming masses. Were it possible to annihilate the Bible, and
with it all the influence it has exercised, the pillars upon which
civilization rests would be knocked from under it, and, as if with one
thrust of the fatal knife, we would deal the death blow to our
morality, to our domestic happiness, to our commercial integrity, to
our peaceful relationships, to our educational and chart-table
institutions.

There are wives and mothers, who stand with lacerated hearts at the
open grave and see the light of their life extinguished beneath the
cruel clods, and yet, they bear up bravely, resting their bent forms
and supporting their tottering feet on the staff of hope and trust
which the Bible affords. Take that solace from them, and you may soon
have occasion to bury the wife next to her husband, and the mother next
to her child. There are husbands who, when sitting lonely, dependent,
in the circle of their motherless, weeping children, find the good old
Book the only comforter; take it from them and you drive them to the
madhouse or to suicide. There are maidens grieving, pining, their
hearts broken, their lives blighted, their career irretrievably
blasted; take the solace from them which this book breathes into their
withered hearts, the solace that suffering innocence will be
recompensed, that a God of justice rules, take that solace from them
and you have taken all that makes life bearable. There are millions of
people pining in bondage, toiling in obscurity, suffering physically
and mentally for no crime of their own, sick and hungry, friendless and
hopeless; take the book from them that teaches them the lesson of
patient endurance, and you may write the word Finis, and close the
records of civilization forevermore. It is the one book that has a
balm for every wound, a comfort for every tear, a ray of light for
every darkness.

Its language all people can understand, its spirit all minds can grasp,
its moral laws all people can obey, its truths appeal not only to the
lowly and simple, but also to the highest intellect, they win the
spontaneo