BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 27

The boy who thinks the Bible is a solemn book of laws
and commandments, of restrictions and threats, with ‘‘ Thou
shalt not” standing at the head of every page, to make
life awful instead of happy, is wholly mistaken. He does
not know his Bible. He has perhaps been made to read it
for a punishment; perhaps he has been kept at home when
his heart was in the fields hunting squirrels, or by the river-
side fishing; and he may have been compelled to commit
passages of Scripture to memory that were least appropriate
to his years or to his state of mind. If this has been the
case, it is not to be wondered at that the Bible has come to
be regarded as a dreary book. It is a sad mistake to make
the Bible a mere task book; saddest of all to make it a
means of punishment to the young. It must be admitted,
we fear, that there are many thousands who never read the
Bible in their mature years, because they were turned
against it when they were young.

Such neglect is not blameless. The claims of the Bible
remain the same, notwithstanding the folly of those who made
it a rod of correction instead of a lamp of beauty. Those
who neglect the Bible do not know its worth. They pass by
the fountain, but if they knew how cool and sweet the waters
are they would stop and drink; they pass by the treasure-
house of the great King, but if they really knew what glories
fill every chamber of this great Palace of Truth, they would
enter in, only to be filled with admiring gratitude.

Martin Luther had almost reached the estate of manhood
before he ever saw a copy of the Word of God. One day,
while looking through the library of the great German Uni-
versity of Erfurt, he came quite accidentally across two huge
folio volumes, printed in the Latin language. This was the
Bible—one of the very few Bibles then in existence. Luther