Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery,
the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet,
and enters land after land to find its own everywhere.
It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man.
It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is a servant of the Most High,
and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son of God.
Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight,
and wise men ponder them as parables of life.
It has a word of peace for the time of peril, a word of comfort for the time of calamity,
a word of light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people,
and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely.
The wicked and the proud tremble at its warnings,
but to the wounded and the penitent it has a mother's voice.
The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it,
and the fire on the hearth has lit the reading of its well-worn pages.
It has woven itself into our dearest dreams;
so that love, friendship, sympathy, devotion, memory and hope,
put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech.
No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own.
When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the Shadow, he is not afraid to enter;
he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand;
he says to friend and comrade, 'Good-by, we shall meet again,'
and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into light.