Young Folks' Bible in Words of Easy Reading. Josephine Pollard

which the gardeners have made with their plants and flowers, the stars and stripes, an elephant, the ball-player, a giraffe, a sun-dial, a calendar, an obelisk, sphinxes, and so forth. Now, this book is a great garden on which God has made figures that will last as long as the world lasts. There is Adam, with his face dark and sorrowful because he had sinned; there is Abel, looking up to that heaven which he, first of all men, entered; there is Noah, a preacher of righteousness, who preached many years without converting a soul, but kept on believing God; there is Abraham with a staff in his hand; there is Moses holding the wondrous rod and the book of the law; there is David with his harp; there is Paul, going forth to preach Christ; there is John, looking into heaven. The children who have the Bible taught them will find great interest in these figures. But the greatest interest in the Bible is this, that it is a sign-board pointing us to our Father's house in Heaven.

      Now, I come to the third letter. The B-I-B-L-E—is not only a Beautiful book, and an Interesting book, but it is a Blessed book. That is, it makes people happy and good, good and happy. A poor man comes from England to Chicago with his wife and three children, expecting to get work and to make him a lovely home. But he fails to get work and he has to sell many things to get bread for his family. At last he is in despair, but a good man comes to his house, learns of his need, gives him bread and gets him work; and that night the Englishman says to his wife, "Wasn't he a blessed man to help us at this time?" But in a few days the baby of the house is taken sick and soon dies, and the good man comes again and advances money to pay for the funeral of the dear little child; and they say, "Blessed man!" again. But that night, when all is over, and the baby is laid to sleep in the cemetery, the poor man takes down the Bible and reads to his wife of Christ's love to children, and of the beautiful world beyond, where there is no more crying and death, and the wife says, "Oh, isn't that a blessed Book!"

      Blessed Book. So the mother thinks whose boy has gone off to school or to sea. How careful she was to put a copy of the Bible in his hands and to get from him the promise to read it every day. She knows perfectly well that no great harm can come to him, if he reads and obeys what is written in the Word of God. I know a young lady who was very much distressed when in Paris several years ago because her hand-bag, a little portmanteau, had been lost. And when, after much hunting, it was found, she confessed that what distressed her most of all in the thought of losing her hand-bag was this, that it contained the little Bible which had been given to her when a child and which she had made her daily companion ever since. I hope that each of you owns a Bible which, the gift of a mother or of some dear friend, is growing more and more blessed to you as you go forward into your lives. There is much darkness in the future. You will have sorrows as well as joys. The clouds will gather. The shadows will sometimes descend and you will wonder where you are to walk, or what you are to do. But remember what David has said of this blessed Book: "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a guide to my path."

      Now, we come to the fourth letter, B-I-B-L-E. Beautiful, Interesting, Blessed, L, Life-giving. This is something better than anything we have yet said to you about the Bible. It gives life to those who are dead. You have seen a patch of ground early in the spring on which nothing was growing. But the rain falls, and the warm sunshine pours down, and the seeds in that soil burst into life and spring up and cover the earth with living plants and flowers. And so God's Word brings its dew and sunshine on our cold, dead hearts, and the flowers of love, hope, peace and joy spring up. The Bible is like bread, like the manna which came to the children of Israel in the desert. It feeds our souls. It gives us life. How does it give us life? It teaches us about God and his great love in Jesus, and when we come to get from Him the forgiveness of our sins, when we come to know God and love God and trust in God, we have life. "This is life eternal," said Jesus, "that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Some of you are giving money to send this Book to the heathen people. Where this Book goes it gives life like bread sent to people who are starving.

      But why do we need the Bible to know about God? Do not the stars and the sun and the earth tell us that there must be a God who made all these wonderful things and rules them? Yes, they tell us that God is powerful, that He is very great, but they do not tell us that he loves us poor sinners. The Egyptians believed in God; yes, in many gods. They were, as we know, a very wise and learned people. And yet this people Moses found bowing down and worshiping cats and crocodiles and beetles. They did not know the one God who led His people, and who said, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and who is not only holy, but merciful, forgiving our sins. Suppose that you were on an ocean steamer way out at sea, and she was sinking into the waves. To what or to whom would you pray? You wouldn't pray to the waves. They would not have mercy on you. You wouldn't pray to the stars. They wouldn't have mercy on you. You would pray to the God who is revealed in this Book, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has said that nothing can take us from His love, neither life nor death, land nor ocean, nothing can separate us from His love.

      Children, this Book tells us one thing which all need to learn, and that is, how we may gain life eternal, how we may escape from death. This Book is the story of God's love. It is the story of Jesus, our Savior. He that has Christ in his heart has life. "I am the resurrection and the life," said Jesus; "I am the way, the truth and the life." If this Book does not lead you to Christ, you have failed to get from it what God gave it for. David said of the Bible: "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul."

      We come now to the fifth letter, B-I-B-L-E—Everlasting. The Bible is Beautiful, Interesting, Blessed, Life-giving, and Everlasting. It is something that does not wear out. "The word of the Lord endureth forever." Children's clothes wear out, as you well know. Your play-things break; your shoes don't last; your books get torn; these bodies die; but the Bible lasts. It was good in David's time. It was good when Christ was a child, and He read it. It was good in Paul's time, and he added to it. It was good when Martin Luther translated it into the German language, and William Tyndale translated it into English. It lasts the way an oak tree lasts, that grows bigger and bigger and sends out little shoots that grow into other oaks and make a mighty forest. This Bible is now speaking to men in nearly three hundred different languages. It is going to be the one Book of the world. A hundred years ago a famous infidel in France, named Voltaire, foolishly published his opinion that the religion of the Bible would soon die out, but to-day men are using Voltaire's printing-press in Geneva to publish this grand old Book. Here is something, children, that is going to last. You can stand on it safely. God is in it. When the little girl whose father was an infidel and whose mother was a Christian was dying, and she said to her father, "Shall I hold to your principles, father, or shall I turn now to my mother's God?" the father said: "Believe in your mother's God."

      Just before beginning a great battle on the sea, you remember that Admiral Nelson hung out a flag with these words for all to see: "England expects every man to do his duty." And so our great General, the Captain of our salvation, expects that every boy trained up in a Christian church will do his duty. He expects that you will take this Beautiful, Interesting, Blessed, Life-giving and Eternal book and make it your guide, your compass, your rudder, your chart on the great ocean of life. He expects that you will be true men and women, honest, pure, obedient to God, loving your country and all the world. He expects that you will be faithful to duty, that you will be clean in body and in lips and mouth and eyes and heart. He expects to meet you and welcome you all in glory above.

      A passenger on one of our ocean steamers found an old friend in the captain. They talked about one of their old classmates in school. Said the passenger: "I could never understand why Will did not succeed. He left college well educated, full of life and health, well-to-do. He gave up the ministry which he had intended to enter, having fallen in with some free-thinking fellows. He studied law, but gave that up and went to farming. He became a skeptic. He left his wife and farming and became a gold-seeker in California. He left this and went to Idaho. He had lost everything, and supported himself by odd jobs. I knew him there. He was not a drunkard or a gambler, but he had never succeeded. He tried something new several times a year. He was now almost mad in his opposition to the religion of the Bible. Soon he died, bitterly rebelling against God. It is wonderful that such a man should ever have come to such an end."

      The captain was silent for a while, but at last said: "Old sailors have a superstition that there are phantom ships (that is, ghosts of ships) which cross the sea. I saw