Twilight And Dawn | Page 4

to open their Bibles and find the first chapter of Genesis, when I said that I should like to ask them one question before a word was read.
I should like you, too, to think about it, and try to give an answer; for my question--
Why is the Bible different from any other book?
concerns you as well as the children of whom I asked it.
They all said at once that the Bible is different from every other book in the world because it is God's Book. Yes, that is the great difference; the Bible is God's own Book, in which He has spoken to us His own words, and it is the only Book in the world which tells us all the truth.
How wonderful it is to think of this, that every child who can read, and has a little Bible of his own, can learn what God has said!
Will you try to remember when you open that beautiful Bible, which was given you on your birthday, that there God is speaking--speaking to you just as much as if you were the only person in the world?
If you think of this it will make you very still and quiet, that you may hear what He says to you.
When we say that God has spoken to us, we mean that long ago He told those holy men whom He allowed to write His Book exactly how He would have them write. When you read in your Bible, you do not read what Moses and David wrote out of their own minds. God gave them His words to write for Him, so that we might know for certain, not what they thought God meant them to say, but what He really did say.
Do you understand this?
Perhaps not quite; so I will tell you a story to make it plainer.
I know a boy who is very fond of running errands, and a very useful boy he is. If I give him a message he is off like a shot, and back again with the answer almost before I know that he has gone. So willing and quick a messenger is Willie, that it is a pleasure to send him anywhere.
But there is just one thing that has sometimes hindered him from being a really good messenger. Can you guess what it is? You will soon find out if you remember that, besides being willing and quick, a messenger must deliver the exact message entrusted to him. He must give it just as it was given to him if he would deliver it faithfully.
Now Willie prefers to give his messages in his own way, and so, although he is willing and quick, he cannot always be relied on as a faithful messenger.
One day, when his mother said "Willie, run to the nursery and give Nurse a message for me," the little boy hardly waited to hear what the message was, but ran upstairs as fast as his feet could carry him. Very quickly back he came and went on with his play--I think he was just then building a fine house with wooden bricks. Now, as the message was an important one, his mother wished to be quite sure that it had been correctly delivered; so presently she said, "What did Willie say to Nurse?"
"The right thing," said he, going on with his building, quite unconscious that this was not enough for his mother, who must know exactly what Willie had told Nurse, or go upstairs to see whether she was doing what she had desired her to do.
You understand now, I am sure, that we could not be quite certain that we had God's message--and the Bible is a message or letter from God to us--we could not be sure that we had it right, if we did not know that He had given it to us in His own way and in His own words.
So, then, our question is answered. The Bible is different from any other book because it is God's Book, in which He speaks to us. Now I am going to ask you one more question.
If it is God who is speaking, and if He speaks to you, what must you do?
You must listen, not only with your eyes, when you read the words, or with your ears, when someone reads to you, but with your heart.
Do you remember what we are told in the Bible about a child to whom God once spoke? It was in the night that this boy heard God's voice calling him by his own name--the name which his mother had given him when he was a baby. Samuel had never heard the voice of God before, and he did not know who was speaking to him in the quiet night.
But he did what he