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VOLUME SIX
NUMBER THIRTEEN
WOODROW WILSON ON THE BIBLE
The Great Scholar - Statesman Pays Powerful Tribute to the Book of Books Declares Men and Nations Are Safe When
They Remember God and Walk in the Light of the Bible—A Wonderful Speech Worth Preserving.
ECAUSE it is doubtless the most
notable utterance ever made by
one of the greatest men oi’ this
generation, we give to our read
readers in full the Denver speech
of Governor Woodrow Wilson, de
livered at the three hundredth
anniversary of the King James
translation of the Bible. It
B
thrills us to the finger tips to see and hear
this spotless scholar-statesman lay the lau-
rel of learning and the amaranth of
love on the altar of the Book of God
and the “God of books.” Preserve it,
and pass to every young man within
your reach.
“Mr. Chairman, Governor Shafroth,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
“The thought that entered my
mind first as I came into this great
room this evening framed itself in a
question—Why should this great
body of people have come together
upon this solemn night? There is
nothing here to be seen. There is
nothing delectable here to be heard.
Why should you run together in a
great host when all that is to be spok
en of is the history of a familiar
book?
“But as I have sat and looked upon
this great body of people I have
thought of the very suitable circum
stance that here upon the platform
sat a little group of ministers of the
gospel lost in this great throng.
“I say the ‘suitable circumstance,’
for I come here tonight to speak of
the Bible as the book of the people,
not the book of the minister of the
gospel, not the special book of the
priest from which to set forth some
occult, unknown doctrine withheld
from the common understanding of
men, but a great book of revelation—
the people’s book of revelation. For
it seems to me that the Bible has
revealed the people to themselves. I
wonder how many persons in this great audi
ence realize the significance for English
speaking peoples of the translation of the
Bible into the English tongue. Up to the
time of the translation of the Bible into Eng
lish, it was a book for long ages withheld
from the perusal of the peoples of other lan
guages and of other tongues, and not a little
of the history of liberty lies in the circum
stance that the moving sentences of this
ATLANTA, GA., MAY 18, 1911
book were made familiar to the ears and the
understanding of those peoples who have led
mankind in exhibiting the forms of govern
ment and the impulses of reform which
have made for freedom and for self-govern
ment among mankind.
Reveals Man Unto Himself.
“For this is a book which reveals men un
to themselves, not as creatures in bondage,
asnot as men under human authority, not
as those bidden to take counsel and com-
'7 ' . •
mand of any human source. It reveals every
man to himself as a distinct moral agent,
responsible not to men, not even to those
men whom he has put over him in author
ity, but responsible through his own con
science to his Lord and Maker. Whenever
a man sees this vision he stands up a free
man, whatever may be the government
under which he lives. (Applause.) If he
sees beyond the circumstances of his own
GOV. WOODROW WILSON.
life.
“I heard a very eloquent sermon today
from an honored gentleman who is with us
tonight. He was speaking upon the effect
of a knowledge of the future life upon our
conduct in this life. And it seemed to me
that as I listened to him I saw the flames of
those fires rekindled at which the martyrs
died—died forgetful of their pain, with
praise and thanksgiving upon their lips, that
they had the opportunity to render their tes-
timony that this was not the life for
which they had lived but that there
was a house builded in the heavens,
not built of men but built of God, to
the vision of which they had lifted
their eyes as they passed through the
world which gave them courage to
fear no man but to serve God. And I
thought that all the records of hero
ism of the great things that had illus
trated human life were summed up in
the power of men to see that vision.
“Our present life, ladies and gentle
men, is a very imperfect and disap
pointing thing. We do not judge our
own conduct in the privacy of our
own closets by the standard of ex
pediency by which we are daily and
hourly governed. We know that there
is a standard set for us in the heav
ens, a standard revealed to us in this
book which is the fixed and eternal
standard by which we judge our
selves, and as we read this book it
seems to us that the pages of our own
hearts are laid open before us for our
own perusal. This is the people’s
book of revelation, revelation of them
selves not alone but revelation of life
and of peace. You know that human
life is a constant struggle. For a
man who has lost the sense of strug
gle, life has ceased.
Men Who Struggle Know.
“I believe that my confidence in
the judgment of the people in mat
ters political is based upon my knowl-
edge that the men who are struggling are
the men who know. That the men who are
in the midst of the great effort to keep them
selves steady in the midst of pressure and
rush of life are the men who know the sig
nificance of the pressure and the rush of
life, and that they, the men on the make, are
the men to whom to go for your judgments
of what life is and what its problems are.
(Continued on Page 8.)
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