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cleaned men's lives and taught truth and salvation.

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BIBLE OUTWEARS ASSAULT

Dr. John Clifford puts into the following verse the vanity and failure of all assaults on the Bible:

Last eve I paused beside a blacksmith's door, And heard the anvil sing the vesper chime; Then, looking in, I saw upon the floor Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.

"How many anvils have you had," said I, "To wear and batter all those hammers so?" "Just one," he said; then, with a twinkling eye, "The anvil wears the hammers out, you know."

And so, I thought, the anvil of God's word For ages skeptic blows have beat upon; Yet, tho the noise of falling blows was heard, The anvil is unharmed—the hammers gone.

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BIBLE, POPULARITY OF

The Bible continues to be the most popular of books, as shown by the report of the American Bible Society for 1909. The total number of issues amounted to 2,826,831, of which 1,427,247 came from the Bible House in New York, and 1,399,584 from the society's agencies abroad, in Turkey, Syria, Siam, China, Japan, etc. These issues consisted of 327,636 Bibles, 545,743 New Testaments, and 1,953,452 Scripture portions. The number of volumes was 673,803 in excess of the issues of a year ago, and 590,076 in excess of any year in its history.

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BIBLE, REENFORCED

Recent dispatches from Denmark tell of remarkable experiments, carried on in the sound between Denmark and Sweden, for the purpose of testing the seaworthiness of a vessel built according to the dimensions of Noah's Ark, as given in Gen. 6:15. According to the Copenhagen Daily Dannebrog, Naval Architect Vogt, who has experimented for a long time with the dimensions of Noah's Ark as given in the Bible, has recently completed a model of that ancient craft. It measures 30 feet in length by 5 feet in width by 3 feet in height, the actual measurements of the ark of Noah being 300×50×30. The model is built in the shape of an old-fashioned saddle-roof, so that a cross-section represents an isosceles triangle. When this queer craft was released from the tugboat which had towed it outside the harbor and left to face the weather on its own account, it developed remarkable seagoing qualities. It drifted sideways with the tide, creating a belt of calm water to leeward, and the test proved conclusively that a vessel of this primitive make might be perfectly seaworthy for a long voyage. It is well known that the proportionate dimensions used by modern ship-builders are identical with those of the diluvian vessel. (Text.)

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BIBLE, REGARD FOR

Rev. Egerton R. Young says of the Canadian Indians among whom he worked:

Often I have been made ashamed of the littleness of my love by the devotion of these Indians and their love for the Bible. One of our Indians came with his son from the distant hunting-grounds to fish on the shores of our Great Lakes, gathering their supplies for the winter. "My son," said the father, "we leave for home to-morrow morning early; put the Book of Heaven in your pack." So the young man put it in, and after doing so, an uncle came and said, "Nephew, lend me the Book of Heaven that I may read a little. I have loaned mine." So the pack was opened and the Bible taken out, and the uncle put it on the blankets after finishing with it, instead of into the pack. The next morning the father and son strapped on their snow-shoes and walked thirty-five miles toward home, dug a hole in the snow at night, cooked some rabbits, had their prayers and lay down and slept. The next morning after prayers they pushed on thirty-five miles more, and made their home. That night the father said, "We are home now in our wigwam. Son, give me the Book of Heaven, that the mother and the rest may read the word and have prayers." They searched for the book, but it was not in the pack and the son told of his uncle's request to borrow it. The father was disappointed, but said little. The next morning he arose early, put a few cooked rabbits in his pack and started off. That day he walked seventy-five miles, found his precious book and returned the whole distance the following day, having walked in snow-shoes one hundred and fifty miles through the wild forest of the northwest to