Mildred Duff

“ For thousands of years men have been writing books. Most books are forgotten soon after they are written; a few of the best and wisest are remembered for a time.
But all at last grow old; new discoveries are made; new ideas arise; the old books are out of date; their usefulness is at an end. Students are the only people who still care to read them.
The nations to which the authors of these first books belonged have passed away, the languages in which they were written are 'dead'—that is, they have ceased to be used in daily life in any part of the world. ”

“ They had been proud of their Bible, and had rightly felt it to be a great treasure; but now they saw that the words of the Bible must be shown forth in the lives of those who believe. To honour God's Book is not enough; we must obey it.
The Jewish people did not again learn to speak the old language of their nation. Yet all the copies of the Books of the Law, and the Books of the Prophets, the Psalms, and those writings which tell of the history of the Lord's people—that is, the whole of the Old Testament—were still written in the ancient tongue. ”

“ Never again would God's chosen people willingly worship false gods; their troubles had cured them once for all of that sin.
But although they knew the Greek religion to be untrue, they began greatly to admire the Greeks themselves, and to take their opinion about many things.
'Who can build like these Greeks?' they will have said. 'Who can carve such beautiful statues, or paint such beautiful pictures? Every one knows that their poetry is the finest in the world, and that their books are the wisest and pleasantest to read; and then, how well they train their young people! ”

“ Seeing the words so clearly printed on fine white paper, readers do not stop to think that they have come down to us from the days when the greatest nations in the world wrote their best books on lumps of clay, or on rough, brittle paper made from brown reeds.
So these Bible readers grow impatient, and because they cannot understand everything all at once, some are even foolish enough to give up reading the Old Testament altogether.
But the things that are hard to understand are only hard because we are still so ignorant. ”

“ Love, joy, peace; the love of Christ from which nothing can separate us; the joy which even the fires of martyrdom cannot quench; the peace which the world does not give, and cannot take away. This is the message which these first Bible pictures bring to us all. For to the early martyrs the Bible was what God intends it should be to us—a living power, a Divine Voice, a constant source of strength and inspiration on the heavenward journey. ”

“ About a hundred years before the days of Antiochus (of whom we read in our last chapter) a company of Jews were living in Alexandria, then a rich and beautiful city, with its stately palaces and temples of white marble, its beautiful gardens, and groves of graceful palm-trees.
After the death of Alexander, the Greek kings of Egypt delighted to live in the new city, and in the old Greek books we can yet read of the splendid processions and festivals held in its streets year by year. ”

“ But in Babylon, with its huge heathen temples blazing with jewels and gold, its scores of cunning idol-priests, who deceived the people by pretending to tell fortunes and make charms, and its countless images, here, at last, God's chosen people began to see the greatness of the gift with which the Lord had blessed them, when He gave them the words which have now become the first books of our Bible. ”

“ Though you know the whole Book of the Law by heart, you must not write a single word from memory, but raise your eyes to your copy, and pronounce the word aloud before trusting it to your pen. Before writing any of the names of God you must wash your pen: before writing His most sacred Name you must wash your whole body. ”

“ Broken bits and torn fragments of some of the early books may be seen in the glass cases of museums. Learned men pore over the fragments, and try to piece them together, to find out their meaning once again; but no one else cares much whether they mean anything or not. For the books are dead. They cannot touch the heart of any human being; they have nothing to do with the busy world of living men and women any more.
Now, our Bible was first written in these ancient languages: is it, therefore, to be classed among the 'dead' books of the world? ”

“ In the days when Paul preached at Athens, the old capital of Greece, much of the ancient splendour and power of the Greek people had passed away, for the Romans had conquered their country, and they were no longer a free nation.
Yet, although the Greeks had been forced to yield to Rome, their conquerors knew that the Grecian scholars and artists were far better educated and more highly gifted than themselves, and Greek statues and writings had therefore become the fashion throughout the Roman Empire. Indeed, many of the Greek sculptors and authors are remembered and admired to this day. ”

“ For the most selfish and cruel Pharaoh who ever reigned over Egypt had determined to treat the people who had come to live in Egypt, at the invitation of a former Pharaoh, just as though they were captives taken in battle.
Many of the old ruins in Egypt are covered with writings describing his cruelties. He killed all who rebelled against him, and condemned whole nations to wear out their lives by working for him in the gold mines, or granite quarries, or by making endless stores of bricks; he cared for no man's life if only he could be called the richest king in the world. ”

“ Nations may pass, languages die, the whole world may change, yet the Bible will live on. Why is this?
Because in the Bible alone, of all the books seen on this earth, there is found a message for every man, woman, or child who has ever lived or will live while the world lasts:
It is the Message of God's Salvation through His Son Jesus Christ.
The message is for all; for the cleverest white man, the most ignorant savage; for the black man of Africa, the yellow man of China, the tawny little man who lives among the icefields of the Arctic Circle. ”

“ He is the only safe Guide for our daily life. Through His death alone we have hope for the future. From the first page to the last the Bible speaks of Christ. This is the secret of its wondrous power.
'These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me.' (Luke xxiv. 44.)
Although we speak of the Bible as one Book, because it tells one world-wide story, yet this one Book is made up of many books—of a whole library of books in fact. ”

“ Alas for the Holy City, over which the Saviour of the world had stood and wept forty years before, knowing the suffering that lay before her!
'These Jews are dangerous. We must not allow them to rebuild their city, or to become a separate people again. As a nation they must cease to exist.'
So the Roman conquerors of Jerusalem agreed; and from that day onward the Jewish people have had no country of their own. They have, indeed, been 'led away captive into all nations' (Luke xxi. 24) exactly as the Lord foretold. ”

“ Whenever any new discovery about the ancient times has been made it has always shown us how exactly true the Bible is.
Some years ago, just at the time when the doubts and carpings were at their worst, when those people who did not trust God even declared that many of the cities and kings mentioned in the Old Testament had never existed at all, a wonderful thing happened. God allowed the old cities themselves to be brought to light once more. ”

“ These writers of the New Testament as they took their reed pens in their hands, and spread out their rolls of whitey-brown papyrus-paper, were not like Moses. True, they knew that the Holy Spirit was bidding them write, but that their written words should ever be used by God to form a part of the Bible would have seemed impossible to them all. ”

“ From one end to another the land was full of temples, many of them so huge in size, and so magnificent with carvings and paintings, that even their poor ruins—the great columns shattered or fallen, the enormous walls tottering and broken—are still the wonder of the world. ”

“ Only a few of the elder Jews could read Hebrew, and their children could not understand one word of the language. Must the little ones, therefore, grow up in ignorance of the Word of God?
This was impossible. Here in the heathen city of Alexandria the Scriptures would be the only safeguard of Jewish boys and girls. 'If the language of our children is Greek, then the Bible must be translated into Greek, so that they all can understand it.' So said these Jewish parents. ”

“ The great empires of Babylon and Assyria had passed away for ever, exactly as the prophets of Israel had foretold; but new powers had arisen in the world, and the great nations fought together so constantly that all the smaller countries, and with them the Kingdom of Judah, changed hands very often.
At last Alexander the Great managed to make himself master of all the countries of the then-known world. Alexander was an even greater conqueror than Nebuchadnezzar had been. He did not treat the Jews unkindly; he neither interfered with their religion nor took treasure from their temple. ”

“ A man might know by memory every letter of the Bible, but unless the Spirit of God were in his heart, helping him to act out in his life the words he repeats with his lips, all his knowledge of the Bible would only lie as a dead-weight upon his soul. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' (2 Corinthians iii. 6.) So wrote the Apostle Paul, who had, as we know, been educated by the Scribes and Pharisees, and when he wrote those words he was recalling his own experience.
Thus, as year by year the learned Jews thought more of the letters of their Bible, they saw less of its spirit ”

“ In addition to the story of our Saviour's life this Greek author, St. Luke, also wrote a book about a war—a war that was to become world-wide—the war against sin and the Devil, and the name of this second book is the 'Acts of the Apostles.'
In all this wonderful Bible of ours there is no Book more wonderful than the 'Book of the Acts.' Have you ever stopped to think what a terrible gap there would be in the history of God's dealings with the world had the 'Acts' never been written?
The Apostle Paul's life would be almost a blank. Stephen's victorious death would be all unknown to us. ”

“ The Bible tells of many of God's acts which seem very wonderful to us. We call these acts 'miracles,' because we cannot explain them, nor how they happened.
Now the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the rest of the prophets are also miracles, for although these men wrote at widely different times, and hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, yet their books all speak of Him. The light of God's Spirit shone into their hearts so that they foresaw and foretold the coming of the Saviour King. ”

“ Certain it is that Moses, with the help of the writings which we now know must have existed in his time, would have but little difficulty in writing those parts of Genesis which tell us the history of some of the most ancient nations of the world. For when God gives a man some work to do, He always helps him to do it. To those who really trust Him, and have patience to work on, the help they need always comes, the difficult path is made smooth. ”

“ Yet no single word of the Bible is copied from the heathen writings.
No; just as a man who decides to give his whole life to God to-day uses, in the Lord's service, the knowledge he gained before he was converted; so, after God called Moses to his great work, all the learning and wide knowledge he had gathered during his life were dedicated to the service of God, and used by His Holy Spirit.
We do not know—we are nowhere told—whether Moses wrote every word of the 'Books of the Law.' The Jews believed that every letter, every tiniest dot was his. ”

“ The fact alone that the Word of God can be read to-day in 412 living languages proves clearly that it is no dead book; and when we remember that last year 5,000,000 new copies of the Bible were sent into the busy working world for men and women by one Society alone, we see how truly 'alive' it must be. ”

“ There were no sham combats in a Roman circus; no mere pretence of being wounded. Men fought with men in stern reality; worse still, men were made to fight with wild beasts. Lions and tigers, and fierce bulls tore and gored men to death, while the audience leaned back in their comfortable seats, watching the horrible scenes intently.
Every rich man in Rome at the time of which we write owned hundreds of slaves, who were the absolute property of their owners. ”

“ Amongst the ancient manuscripts kept in the British Museum are old old copies of Homer's War poems, and here also are stored the precious fragments of the chronicles of that other great Greek writer—St. Luke.
Homer's book belongs to the forgotten past, for the heathen religion of Greece is to-day as though it had never been.
But the writings of St. Luke are as full of blessing and power as ever, and the war he wrote about grows more wonderful every day. ”

“ The Jews of Alexandria were not treated as foreigners, but as good subjects and citizens, by the Greek rulers of Egypt, and therefore as the years passed they grew rich and honoured in their beautiful home. Their children, however, seldom if ever heard Hebrew spoken; for all the Jews of Alexandria, for convenience' sake, spoke Greek like their neighbours.
But, although these Jews lived in a heathen city where they read nothing but Greek books, and heard Greek spoken all day long, they did not forget their God. ”

“ This old kind of Greek is not spoken in daily life by any people to-day, but many learned men can read and write it with ease; so that, you see, by the help of the Greek translation, the Rosetta Stone became a key for discovering the meaning of both kinds of ancient Egyptian letters. Thus, by the help of the Rosetta Stone, and after years of patient labour, the long-dead language could be read once more.
Egypt—the land into which Joseph was sold, where the Israelites became a nation, and Moses was born and educated! How great a joy to read the words carved on temple walls, or in palace halls ”