tes that I shall stand
here, is just to give you my experience about the Bible.

"When I was professedly an unbeliever, I thought I knew a great deal
about the Bible, and I used to lay down the law, and talk very big about
this inconsistency and that inconsistency in the Scriptures, and I just
read those books which supplied me with weapons of attack. But I was in
utter ignorance of what the Bible really was; and had I read it from
beginning to end a thousand times over,--which I never did, nor even
once,--it would have been all the same, for I should not have read it in
a candid spirit--I should not have wanted to know what it had to tell
me.

"It's just perfectly natural. I remember that two of our men went up to
London some time ago, and they strolled together into the Kensington
Museum. When they came back, we asked them what they had seen there,
and what they liked best. One of them had seen a great number of rich
and curiously inlaid cabinets, but he could call to mind nothing else,
though he had spent hours in the place, and had been all over it
upstairs and downstairs. As for the other man, he couldn't for the life
of him remember anything, but he could tell you all about the dinner
they had together at a chop-house afterwards,--what meat, what
vegetables, what liquor they had, and how much it cost to a penny. You
see it was what their mind was set on that really engrossed their
attention.

"And so it is in going through the Bible: you'll not get a word of
instruction from it, if you go in at Genesis and come out at Revelation,
if you go in with an unteachable mind. God would have us ask him
humbly, but not dictate to him. Or you may notice in the Bible just
such things as you want to notice, and not see anything else, though
it's as plain as daylight. So it was with me, and so it has been and
will be with thousands of sceptics. I just looked into a Bible now and
then to find occasion for cavilling and scoffing, and I found what I
wanted. But I missed all the love, and the mercy, and the promises, and
the holy counsel, and never so much as knew they were there, though my
eyes passed over them continually.

"But now the Bible is a new book to me altogether. I can truly say, in
its own words, `The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me than thousands of
gold and silver.' The more I read, the more I wonder: often and often,
when I come to some marvellous passage, I am constrained to stop and bow
my he