Remarkable Testimonies to the Uniqueness of Scripture
John Milton (the famous Poet):
“There are no songs to be compared with the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the Prophets, and no politics equal to those the Scriptures can teach us.”
“I shall wish I may deserve to be reckoned among those who admire and dwell upon them.”
Sir William Herschel (Astronomer):
“All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths contained in the sacred Scriptures.”
Judge Blackstone (the great Jurist):
“The Bible has always been regarded as part of the Common law of England.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (Emperor of France):
“The Bible is no mere book, but a living Power that conquers all that oppose it.”
John Ruskin (Author):
“All that I have ever taught of art, everything that I have written, whatever greatness there has been in any thought of mine, whatever I have done in my life, has simply been due to the fact that, when I was a child, my mother daily read with me a part of the Bible, and daily made me learn a part of it by heart.”
Immanuel Kant (Philosopher):
“The existence of the Bible, as a Book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced.”
Sir Bernard L. Montgomery (British General):
“I read my Bible every day, and recommend you, gentlemen, to do the same.”
Sir William E. Gladstone (Prime Minister):
“I have known ninety-five great men of the world in my time, and of these, eighty-seven were followers of the Bible.”
Sir Isaac Newton (Scientist):
“We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authority in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.”
John Wesley (Minister of the Gospel):
“I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit, coming from God, and returning to God: just hovering over the great gulf; a few moments hence I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing—the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be a man of one book.”
Sir Walter Scott (Author and Poet):
“Within this awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries: Happiest he of human race To whom God has given grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch, and learn the way; And better had he ne’er been born Who reads to doubt, or reads to scorn.” “Bring me the book,” he said, when dying. “What book?” asked Lockhart, his son-in-law. “The Book”, said Sir Walter; “the Bible; there is but one.”
Thomas Carlyle (Historian):
“The one Book wherein, for thousands of years, the spirit of man has found light and nourishment, and a response to whatever was deepest in his heart.’
J. H. Green (Historian):
“England became the people of a Book, and that Book was the Bible. It was, as yet, the one English book which was familiar to every Englishman. It was read in churches, and it was read at home, and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which custom had not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a startling enthusiasm. . . . Elizabeth might silence or tune the pulpits, but it was impossible for her to silence or tune the great preachers of justice, and mercy, and truth, who spoke from the Book which the Lord again opened to the people. . . . The effect of the Bible in this way was simply amazing. The whole temper of the nation was changed. A new conception of life and of man superseded the old. A new moral and religious impulse spread through every class. . . . Theology rules there, said Grotius of England, only ten years after Elizabeth’s death. The whole .nation, in fact, becomes a Church.”
John Selden (Jurist and Orientalist):
“I have surveyed most of the learning found among the sons of men; but I can stay my soul on none of them but the Bible.”
Sir Matthew Hale (Lord Chief Justice):
“Every morning read seriously and reverently a portion of the Holy Scripture, and acquaint yourself with the doctrine thereof. It is a book full of light and wisdom, and will make you wise to eternal life.”
William Wilberforce (Slave-trade Abolitionist):
“Through all my perplexities and distresses, I seldom read any other book, and I as rarely have felt the want of any other. It has been my hourly study.”
John Quincy Adams (President of the United States):
“The first and almost the only book deserving of universal attention is the Bible. The Bible is the book of all others to be read at all ages and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice through and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermitted except by some overruling necessity. I speak as a man of the world to men of the world, and I say to you, “Search the Scriptures.”
“I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once a year. It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue."
Daniel Webster (American orator):
“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.”
Sir Winston Churchill (British Prime Minister):
"We reject with scorn all those learned and laboured myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral, and religious ordinances. We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rationalistic conception, will find its fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally, and in identifying one of the greatest human beings with the most decisive leap forward ever discernible in the human story. We remain unmoved by the tomes [scholarly writings] of Professor Gradgrind and Dr. Dryasdust. We may be sure that all these things happened just as they are set out according to Holy Writ. We may believe that they happened to people not so very different from ourselves, and that the impressions those people received were faithfully recorded and have been transmitted across the centuries with far more accuracy than many of the telegraphed accounts we read of goings on of today. In the words of a forgotten work of Mr. Gladstone, we rest with assurance upon ‘The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.’ Let the men of science and learning expand their knowledge and probe with their researches every detail of the records which have been preserved to us from these dim ages. All they will do is to fortify the grand simplicity and essential accuracy of the recorded truths which have lighted so far the pilgrimage of man"