It is not hard for any man who hath a Bible in his hand to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance; but to make them his own is a work of grace only from above.
Protestant parents still keep a Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall. They study those passages more than they study any others, except those which incite to masturbation. Those they hunt out and study in private.
For more than a thousand years the Bible, collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with civilization science, law; in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always supporting and often leading he way.
I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism.
The Saviour who flitted before the patriarchs through the fog of the old dispensation, and who spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, articulate but unseen, is the same Saviour who, on the open heights of the Gospel, and in the abundant daylight of this New Testament, speaks to us. Still all along it is the same Jesus, and that Bible is from beginning to end all of it, the word of Christ.
Faith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention.