Have A Bible You Can Mark
HAVE A BIBLE YOU CAN MARK
About bringing your Bibles with you - just have a Bible you can mark. If I should go and hear one of my friends preach, and he unfolded some grand and glorious truth, I would put a few words down upon the margin of the Bible that would just give me the key to the whole, and I would not forget it. By doing this, when you heard a good sermon you could go and preach it to other people. I hope the day will come when if a man hears a good sermon in the morning, he will be so full of it he will have to go and preach it over again in some locality where they have not heard it. If the lawyers and merchants would only do that they would make better missionaries than the hired ones. I think more of this Bible in my hand than of all the other Bibles in New York. If I had come without this Bible I would have been lonesome. I have carried it so long I have got used to it. Buy a good Bible, one that won't wear out, with a good flexible cover that will fold around you. Button up your coat over it and keep it close to your heart. You can mark your texts in it and know where to look for them at any time, and they will all be glad to see you in any prayermeeting. There will be something fresh about you that will make you always welcome.
An Englishman said to me, "Did you ever study the book of Job?" "No," I said,
"not particularly." "You ought to," said he; "it is a wonderful book; if you get the key to that, you get the key to the whole Bible." "That is singular," said I. "I thought Job was more of a poetical book; how do you make it out?" He said the first division represents Adam in Eden, .a perfect man untried; the second head represents his fall; the third says "The wisdom of the world came to restore Job." You cannot," he said, "find any wisdom in all the books equal to the wisdom of those three men, but they could not help poor Job out of his difficulty."
Just so is the world trying to put Adam back again; they try to amend him but they cannot do it. Your philosophers cannot restore Adam to his original perfection. What can the geologist tell you about the Rock of Ages? What can the astronomer tell you of the Bright and Morning Star? The fact is Job could not stand their treatment. He could stand his boils and his scolding wife, but he could not stand the way the wise men treated him. The fourth head is about Elihu; he came and. brought grace and that is what Job wanted. He did not want law; Job was a righteous man in his own conceit up to this time. He said, I have fed the hungry, I have clothed the naked, I did this and that - I! I! I!
- that was Job's cry then. He was a great man; if we had him now we would make him a leader in some Presbyterian Church and be glad to get him.