The Lost Book

THE LOST BOOK
by Clovis Chappell
II CHRONICLES, 34:14

 Housecleaning was going on in Jerusalem. The house
that was being cleaned was the Temple. Among the
multitudinous rubbish that was discovered was a book, a
book that had been lost for so long that its message
was in large measure forgotten. A book it was too whose
finding at once made a difference in the lives of those
who read it. Some sort of a reform was at once set in
motion by it.

 Now, of course, this book was not the only one that
has ever been lost. The truth of the matter is, that we
have been losing books ever since the birth of
literature. Sometimes we lose them through some great
disaster, like the burning of the Library of
Alexandria. Here hundreds of thousands of volumes were
lost in a very few hours. But books are not only lost
through some great catastrophe--the process of losing
them is one that goes on continuously. Books are in a
large measure like men--they are born, they speak their
message and have their day, and cease to be. Emerson
tells us that the life time of the average novel in his
day was only nine months. They often live a still
shorter time now. Books of science would last but
little longer; books of history and other kinds of
literature but little longer still. We outgrow our
books as individuals and as a race somewhat as a child
outgrows its toys.

We do not enjoy the games and the pastimes today that
we enjoyed as small children. We do not cherish the
same ambitions and ideals that we cherished then. We do
not read the same books. We have outgrown them. We do
not consult the same authorities when we want
information. For it comes to pass again and again that
in the ever enlarging horizon of man's knowledge the
wisdom of yesterday is the folly of today, and the
knowledge of yesterday is the ignorance of today.

But there is one book that the world has never
outgrown. It speaks to the needs of our day, and of all
days, as if written peculiarly for that time. And yet
it is one of the oldest of books. "It was born of
divine seed, planted in human soil," many centuries
ago. It waxed strong under the prophet's mantle and
grew to its maturity on missionary journeys and upon
the isle of apocalyptic vision.

 Yes, it is an old book, but though so old, it is the
newest and the freshest and most vigorous single piece
of literature in the world today. It has a message for
the individual and for the race that is both timely and
timeless. Men have never outgrown it. They never will.
It is a book that no nation has ever been able to keep
house adequately without.

 In the story before us the Jews lost their Bible. Of
course it was only a small fragment of the Bible we
know, but that loss was disastrous in its results.
During the days in which the Book was lost sin began to
weave the scourges that finally whipped them away into
exile. It was in these days of a forgotten and lost
Book that sin began the placing of those bombs which in
later years blasted the foundation from underneath the
nation.

 Mr. Moody calls attention to the fact that before the
outbreak of the French Revolution France spent millions
of money sowing down her people with atheistic
literature. They thought the Bible stood in the way of
their progress, and they threw it overboard. The Book
came in very large measure to be a lost book, but with
the loss of the Bible they lost much besides. They lost
that which made it possible for half the children of
Paris for a time to be born out of wedlock. They lost
that which made it possible for as high as ten thousand
new born babies to be fished out of the sewers in one
single year.

 What are the great progressive countries of our
present day? They are the countries where the Bible is
an open book. Why the great difference between the
United States and Mexico and our sister nations of
South America? The difference is in some measure
racial, I am ready to admit, but that does not fully
account for it. The big difference grows out of this
fact, that in the countries of Latin America the Bible
is almost wholly a lost book while we ourselves are, at
least to some extent, a Bible reading and a Bible
guided people. And I am confident that if the day ever
comes when America ceases to be so that the sun of her
national greatness will set forever.

 Now, while America is, as I said, to some extent a
Bible reading and a Bible guided country, there are
multitudes even in America to whom the Bible is in
large measure a lost book. The bene6ts they receive
from it are indirect benefits. They no longer read it.
They no longer make it the companion of their leisure
hours. They no longer renew their energies by feeding
upon its bracing truth. They no longer read it to their
children. They do not study it in the Sunday School.
Vast numbers do not attend, and multitudes of those who
do attend do not study the lesson.

 So it comes to pass that so far as many of us are
individually concerned the Bible is a lost book. We
have not read a chapter in it intelligently for the
past six months. The ignorance of the ordinary
individual about the Bible is one of the appalling
facts of today. This ignorance is not confined to those
who do not attend church and Sunday School. It is not
confined to the ignorant and uneducated. It spreads its
appalling darkness over all sorts and conditions of
people.

 In one of our state universities a freshman class of
one hundred and thirty-nine members was given an
examination on the Bible. The passing mark was 75. The
questions were of this nature:

 1. What is the Pentateuch?
 2. Name ten books of the Old Testament.
 3. "Parading for a mess of pottage," and what is the
    reference?
 4. Who was the Apostle to the Gentiles?
 5. What was Jonah's gourd?

 And other simple questions--and only twelve of the one
hundred and thirty-nine passed, and the average
for the class was only 40 per cent.

 I am told that a certain literary society in England
offered a prize some years ago for the best short
story. One member of the club copied the Book of Esther
word for word, changing only the names of the
characters and the historic setting. He won the prize,
and when the president conferred the medal he marveled
where the man developed such a wonderful literary
style.

 The average individual is ignorant of the Bible,
appallingly ignorant. It is said that a college
professor in the course of an English class came upon
the word "epistles." "By the way," said he, "what are
the epistles?" And for a moment all the air a solemn
stillness held. Then one man raised his hand. "Good,"
said the professor, "I am glad somebody knows. Will you
tell us, please?" Then came the answer: "I am not sure
that I know myself, but I think they were the apostles'
wives."

 Every man ought to be interested in the Bible for at
least three reasons. First, he ought to be interested
in the Bible from the standpoint of literature. It is
the greatest single piece of literature in existence.
If you love biography you ought to read the Bible.
There are no biographies that make us so intimately
acquainted with their heroes as do those of this Book.
Boswell does not acquaint us any more fully with his
great Dr. Johnson than does the Bible with Abraham, and
with Jacob and David, and in a few short pages. We know
these men better than we know our next door neighbors.
We know their virtues. All biographers will tell us
that about their heroes. We also know their weaknesses,
their vices, their failures, their sins. We know the
men as they were, what they thought, how they felt,
Slow they battled, how they sought God and found Him,
how they sinned against God and lost Him. If you love
biography read the Bible.

 If you love philosophy read the Bible. Jean Jacques
Rousseau says, "All other philosophy is contemptible in
comparison with it." And he was a man of no natural
partiality toward the Book.

 Do you love oratory? Then read the Bible. Webster
said, "If there is anything of eloquence in me, it is
because I learned the Bible at my mother's knee." Some
months ago I was called upon to speak before a school
of oratory on "The Oratory of the Bible," and I was
amazed at the wealth of material I had at my disposal.
Take the marvelous oration found in the twenty-sixth
chapter of Acts. You would have to go far before you
find one more gripping and more mighty.

 Do you love drama? Then read the Bible. The most
marvelous dramas ever written are to be found there.
Take the story of the Rich Fool or the story of Dives
and Lazarus, or above all else, the parable of the
Prodigal Son. Edwin Booth said that this parable was
the greatest drama ever written.

 Do you love poetry? Then I commend this Book to you.
The greatest epic ever written is in the Bible. That is
not my opinion simply, but that of the great master of
English, Thomas Carlyle. He said, "There is nothing in
the Bible or out of it to compare with it. Sublime
sorrow, sublime reconciliation, oldest choral melody as
of the heart, quiet as the summer midnight, as the
world with its seas and stars."

 Do you love songs, songs expressive of the highest
heights of human joy and of the deepest depths of woe?
Then read the marvelous songs of the Bible. They have
in them the sobbings of a desolate child that has lost
its way. They have in them also the rapturous music of
one who has found his way back into the light, and who
is being undergirded with the Everlasting Arms. Oh, if
you love great literature, and everybody should love
it--then read the Bible.

 Then you ought to be familiar with the Bible, in the
second place, because you can not understand the best
of modern literature without knowing it. The works of
the greatest modern masters are literally saturated
with the Bible. You could almost make a small Bible
with the gleanings from Tennyson and Browning and
Shakespeare and Ruskin and Carlyle. These men brought
their choicest water from this mountain spring. They
found their fairest flowers in this colorful garden.
They digged for their most resplendent jewels in this
inexhaustible mine. So much is this the case that to
read them intelligently you must know something of the
Bible.

 But the third and last big reason why everybody ought
to be familiar with the Bible is that it is a Book of
the heart. It is God's revelation of Himself to the
human soul. The Bible will make you wise about many
things if you will study it carefully, but its big
purpose is this, to make you wise unto salvation. It
shows you who God is, what He thinks, how He feels
about you and me, how He feels about sin and how He
feels about righteousness. No man can read the Bible
intelligently and candidly without turning away from it
with a new conception of God.

 This is the one great purpose of the Book. This is
what unifies it and combines its sixty-six volumes into
one book. On the surface it is not a unit. It was
written by some forty different men. These men belonged
to every station in society from ploughmen and
shepherds up to prime ministers and kings. These men
were not only separated from each other by every
possible social distinction, but they were separated by
fifteen centuries in time. And yet the different
volumes they give us combine into one great book.

 When you open its pages the fact of its unity does not
at first impress you. In truth it seems anything else
but a unit. "We are plunged," as Dr. Watson tells us,
"into an ocean of detail. The love affairs of a man and
a maid and contracts of marriage; the quarrels between
brothers with their treachery and their revenge; the
bargains in business, wherein land is bought and sold,
and covenants are made with witnesses; the feuds
between rival tribes, enlivened by raids and captures;
the choice of kings and their anointing amid the
rejoicing of the people; the evil doing of kings and
their assassination amid a people's hatred; the
orations of statesmen as they warn their nation against
offending God, or comfort them in days of tribulation;
adroit arrangements of ecclesiastics, and the inner
history of church councils; the collision of parties in
the Christian Church, and the bitter rivalries which
distract congregations; the radiant record of deeds of
chivalry, and the black story of acts of treachery--the
romance of unselfish friendship, and the blind enmity
of religious bigotry; the career of a successful man
and the unmerited suffering of a martyr; the devotion
of a mother to her child, and the jealousy of women
fighting for the same man's love; the idyll of
childhood; the strength of young manhood, the mellow
wisdom of old age--nomads of the desert, dwellers in
the city; prophets and sages, ploughmen and
vine-dressers, soldiers and traders, rich men and
beggars, holy matrons and women who are sinners;
patriarchs driving huge herds before them, and apostles
going forth with nothing in their hands; priests
offering sacrifice in the holy place, and publicans
collecting their gains in the receipt of custom;
scholars busy in their studies, and carpenters toiling
in their shop--all pass across this stage in unarranged
and natural procession. Nothing could be more artless,
nothing more fascinating."

 But as we read this many volumed story there comes to
us a growing vision of the face of God. We see Him ever
clearer till, we pass out of the Old Testament into
high uplands of the New, where He who in time past
spake to us through the prophets, at last speaks to us
through His Son. And as we see the face that looks out
upon us from the Gospels, we know what God is like.

 It is therefore a saving Book. It saves by showing us
God. And here, let me say, it stands alone. If God has
not made a revelation to us through His Book, we have
no revelation. This is a wonderful world in which we
live. Far be it from me to despise its multitudinous
beauties. But when I ask it for knowledge about a
loving and forgiving God, it gives me no answer.

 The depths saith, "It is not in me." And the stars
say, "It is not in me." And the flowers say, "It is not
in me."   Nature never forgives, and she has nothing to
say to me of a God who forgives. I know that one has
said,

       Earth's crammed with Heaven,
       And every common bush aflame with God.

I know there was one who could find in the "meanest
flower that blows thoughts that lie too deep for
tears." But these were people who carried minds
saturated with the truth of the Bible to their seeing.
Nature alone can not tell us of God, or else it would
not be true, as it is true, that "Where every prospect
pleases only 111811 is vile."

 Oh, if you are hungry to know God, read the Bible. It
is authority in that realm. That is the secret of its
marvelous power. That is the reason why it is such a
convicting power. If you want men to be convicted of
sin, give them the Bible. It is the hammer that breaks
the rock in pieces.

 That is the secret of its converting power. If you
want men reborn, give them the Bible--"Being born again
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the
Word of God which liveth and abideth forever."

 That is the secret of its sustaining and upbuilding
power--"I commend you to God and the word or His grace,
which is able to build you up." How weak and anaemic
many Christians are! How sickly and dyspeptic! They
have no appetite for the Word. Therefore they do not
feed on the Bible. But wherever you find a strong
Christian you are going to find a Bible reading
Christian. Jeremiah who had to stand alone for so many
years, said, "Thy words were found and I did eat them,
and they became the joy and rejoicing of my heart."
Most of us are weak because we are literally starving
for the Word.

 This ignorance too accounts for the readiness of many
of us to take up any new fad that comes parading by in
the stolen garb of religion. This is the reason so many
are ready to swallow any sort of nostrum that the
modern religious quack chooses to dose out. Who are the
church people, for instance, who go off after that
insidious piece of insanity known as Christian Science?
They are not Bible nourished people. Those who feed
daily and deeply on God's Word would never be taken in
by this pathetic imposture. I know many of them come to
read the Bible after they become Scientists with a
devotion that should shame many of ourselves. But they
bring to it a warped mind. Had they read it with equal
fidelity when they were members of a Christian Church,
they would never have been wooed from their Christian
faith. They would never have accepted as authority a
female fakir who brazenly contradicts over and over
again the fundamental truths
of the Bible.

 I beg you then to give this Book a large place in your
life. I beg you to appreciate it more, to love it
better, to read it with greater diligence, to teach it
to your children. You ought to appreciate it, in the
first place, because of the cost of the Book. It is
cheap now. You can buy a Bible for a dollar easy
enough, but it has come to you at a great price. God's
sons have suffered for this Book. They have suffered as
you and I will never know. For this Book has been hated
as well as loved. If you turn its pages intelligently
you will see them stained with the blood of those who
have died for the blessed volume. If you turn its pages
you will discover upon them the dank mold of dismal
dungeons where men have rotted in their effort to give
you this Book. If you shake it you will see fall from
its pages the gray ashes of those who have burned at
the stake that this unspeakable gift might gather dust
upon your center table. We ought to appreciate it more.
It has come to us at a great price.

 We ought to appreciate the Bible, in the second place,
because of the marvelous influence of the Book.
Wherever it has gone the night has begun to give place
to day. Wherever it has gone light has sprung up.
Wherever it has gone society has become more just, more
kind, more intelligent and more free. Through the years
it has been a message of glad tidings to the poor. It
has been a means by which God has opened the eyes of
the blind, and has set at liberty them that were bound.
John Richard Greene tells us that England was remade by
the King James' Version of the Bible. Under its
influence, he tells us, that the whole nation became a
church. The Bible, where it is read, has been, and is
still, the remaker of national life.

 I beseech you to appreciate this Book because of its
blessed influence on individual life. A monument stands
in New York today to a man who was once the meanest
river thief that ever vexed the police force of New
York. The name of that man was Jerry McAuley. One day
when Jerry McAuley was in jail somebody who believed in
the might of God's Word, slipped a New Testament
through the prison bars to him. He read it. He was born
again "not of corruptible seed, but by the Word of
God." He came out of prison to rescue thousands of men
and women from the slums of New York that today walk
Heaven's streets with him.

 And there is no book like this Book to take with you
if you are going where people are in distress. There is
no book like this Book to take to those who are lonely,
who are in need, who have burdens that they are not
able to carry, who have more heartache than they know
how to manage.

 I was visiting here in Washington the other day. I
went to see a sick woman. She was dying of
tuberculosis. When I had introduced myself she did not
seem at all glad to see me. In fact, she seemed just
the contrary.
 "Who sent you here?" she asked angrily. I did not tell
her. Then she said, "You can go right on back. I-can
get all the preachers to come to see me that I want to.
If I want you I'11 send for you."

 But I didn't leave. I talked right on as if she had
given me welcome. I saw that she was sick and fretful
as a little child. "Do you ever get lonesome," I asked.
"Yes," she said, and there was less of anger in her
voice. "Do you ever wake up in the night and cough and
wish that you had a friend that could watch with you
and comfort you?" "Yes," she said again, and there was
little trace of anger in her voice now. "I know a
friend like that," I said. "Let me read you about Him."

 And I then looked about for a Bible, but there was
none in sight. She did not know where hers was. She had
lost it. "That's all right," I said. "I know a passage.
I will, read it from memory. Are you from the country,"
I then asked. "Yes," she said, "I am from the mountains
of Virginia." "Oh," I replied, "this song was written
by a man from the hills. He was a man who never got his
heart out of the hills and never got the hills out of
his heart." And then I read to her the song of the
shepherd poet: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not
want."

 We had a short prayer. And when I left her, her face
was wet with tears. And I had reason to believe that
she was beginning to learn something of the comfort of
the Great Shepherd. And when she slipped out into the
Silence a few days later, she asked that I say the last
words over her remains. We had become friends. She, I
trust, had become a friend of Jesus. And the secret of
it all was a bit of song from God's blessed old Book.

 In the city of Fort Worth I went into another home.
The father and mother in the home were bitter against
the Church. I tried to talk to them, but found a
disposition to argue. Seeing that I was doing no good,
I told the mother if she would get me the Bible I would
have a word of prayer and then go. She went off and
stayed quite a bit and I knew she was having trouble
finding it. At last she came back with an old book. I
took it and glanced through it, saw the marks of much
reading in other days. There was a spot here and there
on the leaf as if a tear might have fallen upon it.

 I glanced up at the woman and said, "This was your
father's Bible, wasn't it?" "Yes." "He was a good man,
wasn't he?" "Yes," she said, and her face softened a
little--"he was one of the best I ever knew."

"He used to read the Book a great deal, didn't he?"
"Yes, a great deal." "Dead now, isn't he?" "Yes," she
answered," dead some years." "Do you think he was
saved," I asked. "Oh, of course," she said, and her
voice was soft now. "Then," I replied, "maybe you would
be interested to hear about the house that he is living
in now, and maybe you would be interested in going
there yourself sometime." And then I turned over and
read that marvelous spiritual poem: "Let not your heart
be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me."
And the tenderness of it crept over us, and our hearts
were very soft and tender as we bowed in the presence
of God.

 And, last of all, appreciate this Book because it is
true. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word
shall not pass away." We know and are sure that the
first part of this sentence is altogether true. The
world does pass away. Many of its greatest nations are
already dead. The gardens of yesterday are faded. The
laughter of yesterday is hushed. The world does not
last. If you build your faith and hope upon things you
are going to be disappointed, but the man who trusts
God's Word is not going to be disappointed. Get its
promises under your feet and you will stand unhurt and
unshaken "amidst the crash of elements and the wreck of
worlds."

 See to it then that you do not allow the Bible to
become for you a lost book. Whoever you are you need
it. It is everybody's book. You need it in life's green
spring that you may be kept from sin. For "wherewithal
shall a young man cleanse his way" except "by taking.
heed thereto according to thy Word."

You need the Bible in the stern stress of life's middle
passage. You need it that you may not lose your fine
idealism. You need it that through its inspiration God
may be able to revive His work in the midst of the
years. And you need this Book to be your staff when you
are doing the toilsome journey of the last mile. You
need it to whisper to you even down to old age. "And
even to your old age I am he; and even to hear hairs
will I carry you."

And last of all, you need to hear its triumphant voice
rising above the jarring discord of the falling clods
upon the coffin saying, 
"I am the resurrection and the life . . .
 "For this corruptible must put on incorruption and
this mortal must put on immortality. . .
 "Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy
victory?"

 Give the Bible first place among your books and your
heart will burn within you as He through its pages
talks with you by the way. It will become to you an
increasing power and joy, and you will find yourself
saying in genuine gladness,

	Holy Bible, book divine,          
	Precious treasure, thou art mine.