THE BIBLE.
We search the world for truth; we cull
The good, the pure, the beautiful,
From graven stone and written scroll,
From old flower-fields of the soul;
And weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from the quest,
To find that all the sages said
Is in the book our mothers read;
And all our treasures of old thought
In his harmonious fullness wrought,
Who gathers in one sheaf complete
The scattered blades of God's sown wheat,
The common growth that maketh good
His all-embracing Fatherhood.
Whittier.