BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 25

It may be interesting to boys to know how widely the
Bible has been circulated during the later years of this century.
Up to the year 1800 only about five millions of copies of
the sacred Scriptures in about twenty-seven different lan-
guages had been produced since the world began. Since the
dawn of this wonderful century 165,000,000 Bibles, Testa-
ments and portions of Scripture have been distributed by
Bible societies alone, to say nothing of the vast numbers
that have been sold by booksellers in the regular way of
trade. And now, instead of thirty or forty different transla-
tions, there are more than three hundred. Wherever there
is a language that can be written or printed, there the
Bible is sure to be found. The word of God has gone forth
to the ends of the earth. There is no voice nor language
where the gospel of His love is not heard.

But why is this Bible the best of books for boys?
Because it is of all books the most helpful. There is no
other book in the world that has so delightful a way of
helping a boy to understand what true life is, and how to
live it.

A few years ago the editor of an American magazine,
called “The Forum,” invited a number of scholarly gentle- —
men—authors, preachers and others—to write a series of
papers that should tell what books these gentlemen had found
most helpful in the course of a busy, studious career. These
papers were exceedingly interesting, and sometimes not a
little surprising, for sometimes the most unusual books were
spoken of as proving helpful, while books you expected to
hear of seemed forgotten or overlooked. All these writers,
with.one accord, took it for granted that the Bible was the
most helpful of all books. They did not stop to discuss that
question, but wrote as though they supposed the supreme