It is judged by a standard far more stringent than any other book, not excepting the other sacred books. No critic would think of treating any other book as he treats the Bible, nor of requiring of any other book what he requires of the Bible. The more men hate God, the more they hate his Word; and this has a deep, underlying reason, and that reason, I believe, is that the Bible is God’s book and that in it there is so much of God himself.
But though so bitterly assailed through all the ages, the Bible has withstood the assaults of all its enemies and stands victorious still. The Greek philosophers, with all their skill, were vanquished. The greatest intellects of modern times find themselves given pause before it. The sharpest arrows that unbelief could forge have not pierced it; the assaults made upon it have resulted only in the destruction of the weapons used. All through the ages countless theories—religious, philosophic, scientific, or other—have been used against the Bible, only to fall in ruins at last before it and to be rejected even by those who once advocated them. The Bible endures an amount of criticism that no other book could endure, and instead of being destroyed, it is only brightened and made better known. Could such a thing be truly said of error? Could error endure what the Bible has endured, and live? It is the law of nature that error is self-destructive, but that truth can not be destroyed; and according to this law, the Bible must be true because of its indestructibility.
My deepest emotions and longings, my highest thoughts and hopes, are mirrored there, and the more settled inner workings of conscience are there recorded. It speaks to me of my secret ambitions, of my dearest hopes, of my fears, of the love that burns within me. My desires are pictured in the Book just as I find them working in my heart. Whatever picture it draws of the human soul I find within myself, and whatever I find within myself I find within its pages, and thus I know that it is true. No man can know me as the Bible knows me nor picture out my inner self as the Bible pictures me; and since no work of man could correspond with my inner self as the Bible corresponds with me, I know that it did not come from man.