C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Scripture
This book of stars lights to eternal bliss.
The history of every man should be a Bible.
The illumined record of celestial truth.
A Bible and a newspaper in every house.
Writ in the climate of heaven, and in the language spoken by angels.
Shallows where a lamb could wade and depths where an elephant would drown.
A stream where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb may wade.
We must not only read the Scriptures, but we must make their rules of life our own.
Revealed religion first, informed thy sight, and reason saw not till faith sprung to light.
The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.
The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek.
There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets.
The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.
Thus I clothe my naked villany with old odd ends, stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint when most I play the devil.
Whence but from heaven could men unskilled in arts, in several ages born, in several parts, weave such agreeing truths?
We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.
I have read it through many times; I now make a practice of going through it once a year. It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and rule for conduct.
A noble book! All men’s book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem,—man’s destiny, and God’s ways with him here on earth; and all in such free-flowing outlines,—grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity, in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement.
Cities fall, empires come to nothing, kingdoms fade away as smoke. Where is Numa, Minos, Lycurgus? Where are their books? and what has become of their laws? But that this book no tyrant should have been able to consume, no tradition to choke, no heretic maliciously to corrupt; that it should stand unto this day, amid the wreck of all that was human, without the alteration of one sentence so as to change the doctrine taught therein,—surely there is a very singular providence, claiming our attention in a most remarkable manner.