The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1902-06-03
Christian Life Column.
ROOSEVELT ON THE BIBLE.

HN.
emily sent a letter to the Strawbridge
Methodist Church, Baltimore, Ep-
,rorth League. His subject vas "The
Bible." and he said:
Every thinking man, when he
thinks. realizes what a very large
number of people tend to forget that
the teachings of the Bible are so in
+arwoven and entwined with our whole
civic and social life that it would be
IiteralIy-I do not mean fguratively,
mean Iiterally-impossible for us to
frure to ourselves what that life
would be if these teachings we're re-
moved. We would lose almost all the
standards by which we now Judge both
public and private morals; all the
standards towards which we, with
more or less resolution, strive to raise
ourselves. Almost every man who has,
nv his life work, added to the sum of
human achievement of which the race
Is proud, of which our people are
proud. almost every such man has
based his life work largely upon the
teachings of the Bible. Sometimes it
has been done unconsciously, more of
ten consciously, and among the very
greatest men a disporportionately
large number have been diligent and
close students of the Bible at first
hand.
Tincoln-sad, patient, kindly Lin
coin, who, after bearing upon his
weary shoulders for four years a
greater burden than that borne by any
other man of the ninteenth century,
laid down his life for the people whom,
living, he had served so well-built up
lis entire reading upon his early
ndy of the Bible. He had mastered
It absolutely; mastered it as, later, he
mastered only one or two other books,
notably Shakespeare; mastered it so,
that he became almost "a man of one
book who knew that book and who
instinctively put into practice what he
had been taught therein; and he left
his life as part of the browning work
of the century hat has just closed.
"You may look through the Bible,
from cover to cover, and nowhere will
you find a line that can be construed
into an apology for the man of brains
who sins against the light. On the
contrary, in the Bible, taking that as
a guide, you will find that because
much has been given to you much will
be expected of you, and a heavier con-
demnation is to be visited upon the
able man who goes wrong than upon
his weaker brother who cannot do the
harm that the other does, because it
is not in him to do it.
L plead, not merely for training of
the mind, but for the moral and spir-
ituaI training of the home and the
church; the moral and spiritual train
ing that have always been found in,
and that have ever accompanied the
study of, this book, which, in almost
every civilized tongue, can be describ-
ed as The Book with the certainty of
all understanding you when you so de-
scribe it.
The immense moral influence of
the Bible, though, of course, infinitely
the most important, is not the only
power it has for good. In addition
there is the u~nceasing influence it ex-
erts on the side of good taste, of good
literature, of proper n of proper
ton, of simple and straightforward
writing and thinking.
This is not a small matter in an
agc when there is a tendency to read
much that even, if not actually harm
full on moral grounds, is yet injurious,
because it represents slipshod, sloven-
" thought and work; not the kind of
serious thought, of serious expression,
which we like to see in anything that
goes into the fibre of our character.
The Bible does not teach us to
shIrk difficulties, but to overcome
them. That is a lesson that each one
Of Us who has children is bound to
teach these children, if he or she ex-
poets to see them become fitted to play
Tho part of men and in our
world.
If We read the Bible right we read
a book which teaches us to go forth
and do the work of the Lord; to do the
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