I met a young man some months ago in the inquiry-room in Hartford, and I said to him, as to others whom I met there nightly, “Well, my young friend, are you a Christian?” He replied, “I am not; but I am an inquirer after truth.” “What is your trouble?” I asked. “Why,” said he, “I do not know _which_ Bible to believe, or whether they are all alike to be believed, each one for what it is worth.” “What do you mean?” I replied. “I do not understand you; there is but _one_ Bible.” “Oh, yes, there are many Bibles. There are the Vedas and the Zend-Avesta and the Koran, but I do not count much upon the Koran; the others, however, are very ancient books, and contain the religion of the larger part of the inhabitants of the earth.” I found he had been reading Mr. Max Müller’s studies in comparative religions, and was much taken up with the idea that the Bible, especially the Old Testament scriptures, was only a Jewish version of the “more ancient” religions of Aryan races. I was at first disposed to ignore his difficulties and pass him by, but on second thought I felt it to be my duty to try and meet them. And since then I have found a great many persons who, while they are in no sense students or scholars, have read some book or magazine article by which they have been innoculated with the thought that the Bible is only one of many equally ancient and equally trustworthy religious books. And so it may be well just here to have our attention called to the difference between the Bible and these two of the more famous books. The Vedas are a very ancient collection of sacred hymns addressed to the fancied gods of nature, and make no pretension to be in any sense a revelation. They are the outpourings of the natural religious sentiment. The Zend-Avesta is an ancient _speculation_ into the origin of things. It does not pretend to be a _revelation_ of the truth, but only a human effort to account for and explain things that are seen. But the Bible differs from both in a most marked manner. The Bible is the _revelation of God and the history_ of creation, the origin of things and of man, showing God to be the creator and author of all, and our relation, not to nature, but to him. Now the difference between a speculation and a revelation is this: One is an effort of the human mind to account for things seen, and so make discovery of the things that are not seen; an effort to leap from the earth outward and upward into the presence and mystery of the unseen and eternal. The other is a positive _statement of the truth_ out and downward from God to man. We notice that the Bible, when speaking of God, never gives an _opinion_, never speculates. It always, in simple and majestic measure declares, as in the opening sentence of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That is so utterly different, both in matter and manner, from any sentence ever framed by philosopher or religious speculator, that it almost goes without saying that these could not have been the words of man, they are the words of God spoken by man as he was moved of God to speak, in order that man might have the _truth_, and have it _at once_ and simply, in a single breath.