The Russellville Democrat., 1884-10-23
The Bible.

4nC 4SAOAOs 1 This volume is not only the re vealer of the great unknown to man, but his interpreter of the God of nature.
 In revealing God it gives us the key that unlocks the deepest and most profound mysteries of creation. When we stand and gaze upon the material world with an open Bible before us, and it's idea of an eternal and merciful father in our minds, all nature is capable of rising to her highest majesty and klndling within the soul the highest emotions of moral sublimity and grandeur. It ia then that the mind looks be- yond this present sphere of exist ence and contemplates the eternity and glory of tue invisible world. Without the Bible natures sweet est music would loose it's charm, man would sink in moral debase- ment: this universe with it's myriad worlds. planets, suns. consultations, and adamantine spheres, as they now move in silent and awful grand eur, would sink into insignificance. The Bible is adapted to every pos sible taste, temperament, class, cul- ture, and condition.
 The Bible has strong reasoning for the in:ellectual; it takes the calm, the contemplative, the affectionate and the loving.
 The pensive may read the funeral strains and the lamentations of Jer- emiah.
 And there are also the brilliant apothegms of the book of Proverbs. The lover ot pastoral and quiet delineatlons may dwell with the sweet singer of Israel, as he stands under the star spangled canopy of the night and beholds the range of planets wheeling unshaken through the immensity of space and takes up the mighty questionings of insrira- tion.
 If you would take the wings of imagination and be lifted from earth to heaven, just turn to revelation, pore over and fill your mind with the transcendant glory and beauty of the New Jerusalem with It's pearly gates and shining streets of gold; listen to the seven thunders and the voice of an hundred and forty and four thousand trained singers, with harps iu their bands, as they look over the battlements of heaven and sing praise to an everlasting God.
 The mind of Davld had just been contemplating the vastness, glory and grandeur of the celestial world, when he uttered these remarkable words: "What is man that thou wis ltest him? And the son of man that thou art mindful of him." He comprehended the omnipo- tence, and at the same time, saw the unbounded love and mercy of an all. wise being.
 Seeing these things clearly, by an eye of faith, man under his micro scopic view became a mere dust atom, the world sank into insignifi- canoe.
 Then this blessed volume has en countered the scorn of a Lucian and Parphyry, the vile skepticism of a Hume, the sneers of a Voltaire, a Paine and Gibbon. It has with stood all the thunders and sarcasm of infidelity and came off more than victorious.
 Not only is the Bible read in all christian pulpits, but it enters every habitation from the palace to the cottage, testifying to the world of mankind that it bears the stamp of a special revelation and the seal of an eternal God.
 The Bible is the word and the word is power, and both the power and the word are of God; and it is going to stand when all else has failed; when all other books shall have perished and vanished from the earth, this book is going to abide! When all nature is shaken, when the vivid lightnings flash Tn awful grandeur across the blackened sky, when thunder, in deepest tones rends the vaulted heavens; when the material world is in wild commotion, when mountains tremble and fall; when sea and earth have given up their dead; when all nations stand before the great Judge, it will abide; it is going to abide forever.
 Then if the Bible IS capable of such achievements; if it causes the soul of man so to rejoice; if it raises the mind to such sublime nights in anticipation of an eternity of bliss;
 fit opens to the mind such glori- ous prospects of immortality, teach ing how to llve and how to die, in- structing in the science of heaven; why, l ask the serious question, should it not be read and studied, and It's precepts practiced by alls
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