Christianity claims a clear and open recognition by reason of the part it has played in the world's activity, its thought, its literature, its life. Whatever may be men's estimate of its value, the place it has gained and held is no matter of doubt or of question. No such vast and constant factor has appeared in the world's history, and, judged by whatever standard, no such personage as Jesus Christ has trod this earth's surface. The phenomenon is too stupendous, too ubiquitous, too perpetual, too irrepressible, to be dismissed. A silent force, destitute of all external helps and resisted by all human appetite and passion, yet making its way to the headship of the world, on its way baffling and capturing the world's great empire, conquering the northern hordes that conquered that empire, carrying literature and science to the tribes of the earth and the isles of the ocean, lifting low savages to dignity and purity, transforming wicked men and transfiguring moral men, deathless before the sword and cannon, thriving under the rack and fagot, handing down through dark ages, by its vital institutions, the perishable literature of the past, upheaving the nations with its crusades, its reformations, its missions, its stubborn stands for liberty and its seeds of revolution, dotting the earth with its ever-spreading churches, mastering a multitude of the master minds and leading now the leading nations, furnishing the grandest themes and inspirations for the painter, the musician, and the architect, as well as the leisure, the safety, and the resources for the labors of the scientist, forming the substratum of all modern

thought and the undercurrent of all modern history, compelling alike the gaze of friend and of foe, and calmly and resolutely bent on the subjugation of a resisting world such a force as this asks no man's pardon for a peremptory demand on the attention of the student. History presents no agency so vast, philosophy no study so profound, science no problem so remarkable. What sort of education is that which would deliberately exclude a survey of this broad area in the world's life, this most potent factor in its movements? What but the training of another Kaspar Hauser, shut away in his cellar from the great realities of the world in which he lives?

And the volume that contains and transmits this mighty agency, the volume that the world knows as the Book, the BIBLE - what good reason can be given why in a course of education it should be kept out of sight, thrust into a corner, or treated otherwise than with that conspicuous honor which its central position in the world's literature requires? In its contents, its circulation, its moral influence, and its intellectual stimulus, it is confessedly without a rival. No volume has so secured, or so endured, translation into the languages of the earth. No volume has ever so spoken to every age, class, and condition. No volume has been so centrally and vitally related to human thought and human achievement. No other volume so absolutely refuses to grow old. Intellectually its contents are of commanding excellence. It antedates, and by some thousand years anticipates, all other history.

One chapter in Genesis contains a record of the early nations which all the nations together could not supply

"the most learned among all ancient documents," says Bunsen, "and the most ancient among the learned." The famous Chaldean Chaldean account of the deluge, with its garrulousness, its seven days' duration, and its frightened gods crouching "like dogs" in the heavens, seems absurd beside our sober narrative. The migration of Abram from Ur of the Chaldees was a more momentous event than the fabled voyage of Eneas or the colonizing of Carthage. In comparison. with the exodus, the anabasis was a trivial incident. Joshua's subjugation of Canaan was a great military movement, fraught with more far-reaching consequences than the Norman conquest. Jerusalem, the city of twenty-seven sieges, has as weird a history as any other city on the globe, and the Jewish race a vitality unparalleled and unique. The Galilean Sea, but thirteen miles in length, has witnessed events more marvelous than the great and classic Mediterranean. What are the laws of Solon or Lycurgus beside that decalogue and the laws of Moses a lawgiver, says Milman, "who has exercised a more extensive and permanent influence over the destinies of mankind than any other individual in the history of the world." Where are there more true and touching narratives or more faithful and more thrilling biographies? Where in the world's literature do there stand out such majestic characters as Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Daniel, John, Paul? What collection of aphorisms

excels, in range, point, and truth, and application to every phase of human life, the Proverbs of Solomon? How low and shallow do the selected hymns of Egypt and Chaldea appear beside the Psalms of David ! lyrics that the Church still sings with delight and will always sing. The thunderstorms of Thomson, of Virgil, and of Homer are far inferior to that of David (Psalm xviii) both in graphic power and in sublimity of use. "Indeed," says Professor Francis Bowen, "I know not anything in all Greek, Latin, or English poetry that matches the sublimity and grandeur, the magnificent sweep of this description of the providence of God as manifested in the phenomena of nature." In like manner the passionless Alexander von Humboldt could speak of "the splendor of lyric poetry in the Psalms of David," and express his astonishment to find a single psalm (the 104th) representing "with a few bold touches the heavens and the earth-the whole image of the Cosmos." So fastidious a critic as Goethe could pronounce the book of Ruth "the loveliest specimen of epic and idyllic poetry we possess"; and Carlyle, the deist, could find in the book of Job "one of the grandest things ever written with pen," adding, "there is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit." It is but the literal truth to say that some single paragraphs and even sentences in that volume contain more breadth and depth of moral meaning than the whole Offices of Cicero. Viewed merely on its intellectual side, what ethical discourse in all classic literature can be named

in the presence of the Sermon on the Mount? What exhibitions of genius- to speak it reverentlypare with those parables of Christ, ready for every occasion and sometimes bursting forth in whole harvests at once? What rejoinders approach the consummate wisdom and skill with which he enlightened the inquirer, met the caviler, or silenced the foe? And, in their original form, how matchless often in their vividness, terseness, brilliancy, and grace! "Let me," wrote John Ruskin to The Pall Mall Gazette, "let me tell your readers who care to know, in the fewest possible words, what the Bible is. It is the grandest group of writings existent in the rational world," put into two of the grandest languages of the rational world,1 "translated with beauty and felicity into every language of the Christian world, and the guide, since so translated, of all the arts and acts of that world which have been noble, fortunate, and happy." And it was no less a man than the gallant patriot Garibaldi who wrote to the Earl of Shaftesbury, while struggling for the deliverance of Italy from the Austrian and papal power: "The best of allies you can procure for us is the Bible, which will bring us the reality of freedom."

Holding thus in our hands a volume of such transcendent merit and such potent influence, so centrally related to history and literature, morals and civilization, how can we hesitate for one moment to place it, in a course of education, on the throne which it has

1 This clause is slightly varied from the original, which refers only to its early Latin and Syriac versions.