Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1878-08-14
The Rich Variety Of Gods Word.

The Bible is like diamond, that hes not
one but fifty faces, from each of which the
radiance flashes. 1t is like great palace,
not like wall. Many books are like walls
thin, perpendicular, alike on both sides,
which are only attractive when thoroughly
masked under trellis and vine. Here is
palace, with many fronts, with hospitable
doorways, storied roofs, far-reaohing out
looks its whole exterior broken into differ
ent angles and gables, hanging balconies,
oriel windows its vast interior rich in sa-
looms, music halls, galleries. libraries, the thea
ter, the throne-room, all the apartments for
work and for rest, for study and for pleasure,
for public ceremonial, and for serene domes-
tic Joy. Such is the Bible. And from this
manifoldness of its structure we get final
impression of its truth, which is richer and
more powerful than could possibly have been
made, if in its constitution it had been mar
rover and more limited. One of our Amer
ican artists, wishing to perfect for himself
a portrait and bust of Shakespeare, took
the death mask from the face of the poet,
and had twenty or thirty photographs made,
from every possible angle of vision, that he
might get the fullest light on every point of
the face and head; then came the portrait
on the canvas, and then the stately head in
marble. So we look at the figure and face
of Christ, as these are given us in the Bible
from the earliest prophecy, from the law,
from the ritual, from the psalm and the song,
from the evangelical prophecies of Isaiah,
from the story of Matthew, and the other of
Mark, and the other of Luke, and the won
derful spiritual story of John, from the argu-
ment of Paul, the exhortation of Peter, and
the great vision at last of the King in the
heavens-when the garden, with which the
race began, has become the eternal city of
God, and when the babe prince is the Lord
of the saints--we take all these, and from
them all we get such a transcendent image
of the Son of God as no one writer could
have given. 1t takes forty writers, even un-
der the inspiration of God, to portray for us
that sympathzing Sovereign, that bleeding
Conqueror, that crucified King, whom we
are by-and-by to see, with the pierced hands
holding the scepter, with the many diadems
where was of old the crown of thorns IL
has vast, multiform oneness not like that
of Paradise Lost, or Plato's Republic, or
even of the Koran, which is one by limita-
ton, because the utterance of a single mind.
This is oneness compacted out of all the
varieties, power, spiritual culture, in many
separate and widely scattered writers. 1t is
unity built of variety, and it makes the
Bible the sunreme phenomenon of the liter
arv world r is ike the earth one planet.
bnt rivers meadows and mountain ranges
assembled in II: with seas and islands. the
narrow istbmus the outstretob of continents |:
with monitorv fires underneath. and the
great solemn Stars above With the moon
waIking tba skv aS to.niobt in nlacid bright
ness and the snn shedding the spIendor of
dav across the lands that are glad in his
coming, So is tbe Bible. II has parable
and nsalm brief story and vast LEGISLATION,
MIGHTY argument charming incident. curt
odmon;t;on If loo has its SIM of RIGHT.
eousness it's Old Testament and its New.
like answering hemispheres. what is latent
in tbe ono he;ng natant in The other. Re-