His name was Emile Cailliet. In later life he became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and then Princeton Theological Seminary. His story is so special, so well-loved, it has been told and retold over the years. If you question that, “google” his name. I googled “the book that understands me” and found versions of Cailliet’s story of all shapes and sizes, with one preacher even referring to him as “Emile Clay.”

Lately, I’ve been downsizing my library and tossing out superfluous, dated files. in running across this blessed story of Emile Cailliet, I knew it had to be retold here for the benefit of those encountering it for the first time.

Cailliet was born in a small French town, received an education that “was naturalistic to the core,” and grew up a pagan. He did not lay eyes on a Bible until he was 23 years old. As a lad of 20, he fought on the front lines of World War I and saw atrocities unspeakable. If he had been an atheist before the horrors of that war, his unbelief was now set in stone.

When a German bullet felled Cailliet, an American field ambulance crew saved his life. In time, his badly shattered arm was fully restored during a 9 month hospital stay. While recovering, he married a Scotch-Irish lass he had met in Germany just before the war. She was a deeply committed Christian. Cailliet later said, “I am ashamed to confess that she must have been hurt to the very core of her being as I made it clear that religion would be taboo in our home.”

Emile informed his wife that no Bible would ever be allowed in their home. And yet, he found himself longing for meaning in life. In his reading — and he was a voracious reader — he went through everything he could find to satisfy the yearnings of his heart and soul. He said, “I had been longing for a book that would understand me.”

A book that would understand me.

Unable to find such, Cailliet decided to prepare one of his own. Over the next few years, he filled a leatherbound pocket book with significant quotations he discovered in his reading. “The quotations, which I numbered in red ink for easier reference, would lead me as it were from fear and anguish, through a variety of intervening stages, to supreme utterances of release and jubilation.”

At least, that was the plan.

Finally, the day arrived when Emile Cailliet put the finishing touches on his book, the “book that would understand me.” He walked outside the house, sat down under a tree, looked around at the bright blue sky, and opened his precious anthology. This was going to be a great experience.

“As I went on reading, however, a growing disappointment came over me.” Far from speaking to his life and situation, the various quotations simply reminded Cailliet of their context, of where he had found them, and nothing more.

“I knew then that the whole undertaking would not work, simply because it was of my own making.” Dejected, he put the book back in his pocket.

He had no idea what to do then. But God did.

God was up to something at that exact moment.

Cailliet later said, “At that very moment, my wife, who incidentally knew nothing of the project on which I had been working, appeared at the gate of the garden, pushing the baby carriage.”

It had been warm that afternoon and as she and the baby made their way toward the market place, they found the boulevard crowded. Since they had only recently arrived, she did not know the name of the side street down which she now turned. Within moments the cobblestones were rattling the carriage so badly she knew she would have to turn aside. Just then, she spotted a patch of grass beyond a small arch and pulled onto it for a moment of rest.

The small grassy lot led to an outside stone staircase which she proceeded to climb without fully realizing what she was doing. At the top, she found a long room with the door wide open. She walked in.

At the far end sat a white-haired man working intently at a desk and not noticing her. Madame Cailliet looked around and saw a carved cross on the wall. That’s when she became aware that the office she had entered was part of a church, a French Huguenot church building hidden away (“as they all are,” Emile said in relating this story, “even long after the danger of persecution has passed”). The old gentleman was the pastor.

Emile’s wife now found herself doing something completely out of character. She walked up to the old man at the desk and said, “Have you a Bible in French?” Smiling, he handed her a copy. She took it and walked out without another word. Inside, her mind was flooded with blended joy and guilt.

At home, she began to apologize. She knew Emile had forbidden the Bible to be brought into their home and here she had gone out and asked for one. As she began her confession, Emile interrupted her.

“A Bible, you say? Where is it? Show me. I’ve never seen one before!”

Emile says, “I literally grabbed the book and rushed to my study with it.” He opened it at random and came upon the Beatitudes. “I read and read and read — now aloud with an indescribable warmth surging within… I could not find words to express my awe and wonder. And suddenly the realization dawned upon me: This was the Book that would understand me!”

He read deeply into the night, mostly the Gospels. And as he read, the One of whom they spoke, the One who spoke in them and was depicted in them came alive to Emile Cailliet.

“The providential circumstances amid which the Book had found me now made it clear that while it seemed absurd to speak of a book understanding a man, this could be said of the Bible because its pages were animated by the Presence of the Living God and the Power of His mighty acts. To this God I prayed that night, and the God who answered was the same God of whom it was spoken in the Book.”

(Cailliet’s story can be found in many places. The version I used for this is an excerpt from the July 1974 of Eternity Magazine.)

Before leaving the subject, may I share one more quote?

You know the name of Charles Colson. After serving in the Nixon White House, and while spending time in prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up, he came to faith in Christ and later formed Prison Fellowship. Speaking on the specialness of God’s Word, Colson admits that at first, the historical reliability of the Bible was of no concern to him. He changed his mind only when he began to see the power of Scripture to transform the lives of prisoners.

“My convictions have come, not from studies in Ivory Tower academia, but from life in what may be termed the front-line trenches, behind prison walls where Christians grapple in hand-to-hand combat with the prince of darkness. In our prison fellowships, where the Bible is proclaimed as God’s holy and inerrant revelation, believers grow and discipleship deepens. Christians live their faith with power. Where the Bible is not so proclaimed, faith withers and dies. Christianity without biblical fidelity is merely another passing fad in an age of passing fads.”

(Quoted in a sermon by Rod Benson on the www.forMinistry.com website of the American Bible Society. Their site says, “This article is reprinted with permission of John Mark Ministries.)