The Sword That Cuts Both Ways

From the pen of Louis Albert Banks (1855-1933):

There have been many sharp two-edged swords in the earth, subjected, like the far-famed Damascus blades, to the most ingenious temperings of the swordmaker’s art; but Paul declares that the Word of God is sharper than any of them. Shakespeare must have had this text in his mind where he speaks of “the mind’s eye” which flashes through all the sensations and actions of the soul like lightning, and lays bare to a man’s consciousness all that God has detected within him. There is life in the Word of God. It is living and active to awaken the slumberer, to cut deep beneath the surface and make man know himself.