E BIBLE AS 
 OD READING 
 
 ALBERT'

 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 
 
 United States Senator from Indiana 
 
 Author of 
 "WORK AND HABITS" 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
 
 Copyright 1907 
 
 BY 
 
 HOWARD . ALTBMU*
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 I. IN THE BIG WOODS. 
 
 "I wish I had something to read," said He. 
 
 "Well, what's the matter with the maga- 
 zines?" promptly replied the Other One. 
 
 "I have read them all," He immediately ob- 
 jected. 
 
 ."Why, I thought you didn't want to read 
 anything. I thought you said this was to be 
 a vacation in the woods, with no reading or 
 thought or anything else," said the Other One. 
 
 "Well, of course," said He; "but a fellow 
 has got to have something to read, after all." 
 
 "Well," said the Other One, "let me read 
 you something out of the Bible." 
 
 "The Bible!" said He. "Oh, no! I want 
 some good reading; that's what I want." 
 
 7
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 They were in camp in the deep woods, many 
 days' canoe trip from a human being. They 
 were two tired-out men wholly tired out when 
 they started, with non-productive brains, and 
 with sore, ragged nerves, from their year's 
 hard work. They were none the less worn 
 out that it had been a year of successful work 
 even of triumphant work. 
 
 So they said when they started: "Let's get 
 a rest. Let's not even take any reading ma- 
 terial. Let's obey Emerson. His advice to 
 the rest-seeker in his Wood Notes, where he 
 says to leave everything behind: 'Enough to 
 thee the primal mind.' ' 
 
 And so they did. They arranged for their 
 guides carefully (and you who go to the 
 woods look well to that). They were scrupu- 
 lous to the last degree about their cook (and 
 you who go to the woods be very sure about 
 that). They were particular about their tents, 
 almost technical about food and sleeping ac- 
 commodations and creature comforts. But 
 reading matter none of it for them. At the
 
 IN THE BIG WOODS 
 
 last minute, obeying the impulse of the civi- 
 lized, they brought all the magazines in sight; 
 and one of them, who always carried a Bible, 
 had it with him on this occasion. 
 
 So, up the streams and over the lakes they 
 went, and at last, far out from the path of 
 even canoe voyagers, on the shores of a lake 
 whose -name is Beauty, and in the depths of a 
 forest whose name is Noble, by a mossy spring 
 whose name is Delight, they swung their axes 
 and built their camp. Already Nature had be- 
 gun her work. They slept like pieces of iron, 
 with this difference there was the delicious 
 consciousness of going to sleep and ecstasy on 
 awakening. They ate with the appetite of the 
 primal man, but with the restraint of the civi- 
 lized one when out in the wilderness. They 
 were careful to get up from their meal always 
 a little hungry. They joyed in the woods. 
 The flight of birds was a thing to be looked 
 at and to get pleasure from. The forests had 
 strange, attractive sounds. The occasional sen- 
 tences of the guides were full of wisdom. 
 
 9
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Instantly Nature began her work on the 
 brain cells. These men had planned not to 
 think at all. They were astonished to find that 
 they thought more than ever and more sanely, 
 more calmly, and yet with a good deal more 
 vigor. Every suggestion of tree, and flower, 
 and cloud, and shadow and shine was fecund 
 with thought. The rain induced more than 
 sleep; it induced a curious yet a delightful 
 mental life. There was none of your neurotic 
 thoughts which come of overworked nerves 
 and all that sort of thing. 
 
 Of course, you can't keep that kind of men 
 down to not thinking at all. Their bodies, 
 which so long have been unused and mal- 
 treated, demand exercise long rambles among 
 the trees and over mountains; canoe trips 
 where every stroke generates more energy 
 than it expends; target practice with pistol 
 until the snuffing of a candle at night at 
 twenty yards, three times out of five, is no 
 extraordinary feat. Well, then, it was plain 
 to see how the minds of these men demanded 
 10
 
 IN THE BIG WOODS 
 
 r 
 
 exercise just as the body did; for the minds 
 had been more maltreated and neglected than 
 the body. 
 
 "So I want something to read," said He. 
 
 "Well, what's the matter with the Bible?" 
 said the Other One. 
 
 "Oh," said He, "I don't want anything dull. 
 I don't want to be preached to. I feel in a 
 religious mood, but not in the mood for a 
 sermon." 
 
 "Why, man," said the Other One, "the Bible 
 has more good reading in it than any book 
 I know of. What will you have poetry, 
 adventure, politics, maxims, oratory. For 
 they are all here." And he produced the 
 Bible. 
 
 Thus occurred the first Bible reading in the 
 woods. After it was over: "Why, I never 
 knew that was in the Bible," said He. "Let's 
 have some more of that to-morrow." 
 
 And on the morrow they did have more of 
 it. By chance, one of the guides was near and 
 he sat down and listened. The next day all 
 
 ii
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 the guides were there. The day after, the 
 reading was delayed and Indian Charley 
 modestly suggested: "Isn't it about time to 
 have some more of that there Bible?" And 
 more of it they had. 
 
 This continued day in and day out through 
 the long, but all too brief, vacation in the 
 woods the real woods, the deep woods, the 
 limitless woods none of your parks with trees 
 in them. 
 
 The comments of the guides were serious, 
 keen, full of human interest. It was no trouble 
 for them to understand Isaiah. They had the 
 same spirit that inspired David when he went 
 up against Goliath. They knew, with their 
 deep, elemental natures, the kind of woman 
 Ruth was and Rebekah was. Moses slaying 
 the Egyptian and leading the children of Israel 
 out of Egypt, laying down the law in good, 
 strict man-fashion, was entirely intelligible to 
 them. One wonders what the "higher critics" 
 and "scholarly interpreters" of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures would have thought had they seen these 
 
 12
 
 IN THE BIG WOODS 
 
 plain men, learned in the wisdom of the woods, 
 understanding quite clearly the twelfth chapter 
 of Romans, or the voluptuous Song of Sol- 
 omon, or the war song of Moses, or, most of 
 all, the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 "Why, I never knew those things were in 
 the Bible. How did you ever get on to them?" 
 said He one day, when a perfectly charming 
 story had been read. 
 
 "Why, this way," said the Other One. 
 "Many years ago in a logging camp, there hap- 
 pened to be nothing to read, and I just had to 
 read. I had read everything that is to say, 
 I had read everything but the Bible. And I 
 did not want to read that. I had read it over 
 and over again in the church and in my own 
 home, and always with that monotonous non- 
 intelligence, that utter lack of human under- 
 standing that makes all the men and women of 
 the Bible, as ordinarily interpreted to us, putty- 
 like characters without any human attributes. 
 But there was nothing else to read. So I was 
 forced to read the Bible, and I instantly be- 
 
 13
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 came fascinated with it. I discovered what 
 every year since that has confirmed that there 
 is more 'good reading' in the Bible than in all 
 the volumes of fiction, poetry and philosophy 
 put together. So when I get tired of every- 
 thing else, and want something really good to 
 read, something that is charged full of energy 
 and human emotions, of cunning thought and 
 everything that arrests the attention and thrills 
 or soothes or uplifts you, according to your 
 mood, I find it in the Bible." 
 
 It is natural enough, is it not? Surely this 
 book has not held its sway over the human 
 mind for two thousand years without having 
 engaging qualities something that appeals to 
 our "human interest." Surely the Old Testa- 
 ment, which is a story of the most masterful 
 and persistent people who ever lived, a peo- 
 ple who have seen nations rise and fall, dynas- 
 ties grow and perish like mushrooms I mean 
 the Jews surely such a history cannot help 
 being charged with thought, and emotion, and 
 love, and hate, and plot, and plan, with frailty 
 14
 
 IN THE BIG WOODS 
 
 and ideality, with Cowardice and courage, with 
 anarchy and law, with waywardness and obedi- 
 ence, with the flowing of milk and honey on 
 the one hand, and battle "till the sun stood 
 still" on the other hand. No, surely, such a 
 chronicle could not help overflowing with 
 everything human. 
 
 And surely, too, the New Testament, which 
 is the account of the Man who dominates all 
 Christendom to-day, the Man who is the most 
 powerful influence in civilization two thou- 
 sand years after He has passed from earth; 
 surely such an account could not be without a 
 fascination, compared with which our most 
 thrilling novels, and most passionate poems are 
 vapid and tame. And, of course, the New 
 Testament, with its vivid account of the life- 
 work and deeds, with the Crucifixion, Resurrec- 
 tion and Ascension of our Lord, is not with- 
 out these elements. And, when you add to 
 these merely human elements of the Old and 
 New Testaments the divine quality glori- 
 fying it all, you have by far the best litera- 
 
 15
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 ture in the world; and not the best litera- 
 ture only, but by far the most interesting 
 literature. 
 
 You have not only the development of the 
 only divine religion known to man, but you 
 have easily the best reading to be found in all 
 the libraries. It is of the Bible from this last 
 point of view that this little book is written. 
 I am talking now to those who are asking each 
 night about their firesides for "something good 
 to read"; and I am telling them to read the 
 standard novels, and more than the standard 
 novels the standard histories and biographies ; 
 and more than the standard histories and biog- 
 raphies the standard poets; and more than 
 both of these, the current magazines and all of 
 them, for they are the living expression of the 
 world's thought to-day; but I am telling that, 
 more than all of these put together, they will 
 find "good reading" considered from the view- 
 point of "good reading" and nothing else, be- 
 tween the covers of that volume which every 
 home would be ashamed to be without, but 
 16
 
 IN THE BIG WOODS 
 
 which, curiously enough, is the last one to be 
 read. 
 
 Or is it curiously enough? Is not the neg- 
 lect of the Bible as mere literature due to the 
 intellectual indigestion acquired early in youth 
 as to this particular book by the unintelligent 
 way in which it is read at the fireside and from 
 the pulpit? I say unintelligent, merely be- 
 cause, to our young men and young women, 
 when they are boys and girls, nothing but text 
 and precept and maxims are read, and these 
 are declaimed with an offensive solemnity that 
 defeats its very purpose. 
 
 But take the Bible up as an account of 
 mighty men and extraordinary women and 
 the most wonderful of people; take it up as 
 a purely "human document" (you will get 
 the religion in it as you go along), and know 
 how fascinating it is. I wish space permitted 
 a chapter upon the Bible as "good reading" 
 under each of the following titles: 
 
 The Bible and Adventure, The Bible and 
 Art, The Bible and Politics, The Bible and 
 
 -G. R. i
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Statesmanship, The Bible and Poetry, The 
 Bible and Oratory. 
 
 Having got all these you would not fail to 
 get what all of them combined tell : The Bible 
 and Religion. But let us take up some illus- 
 trations of each of these in another chapter.
 
 II. OLD TESTAMENT SHORT STORIES : DAVID. 
 
 First of all, the Bible is by far the most 
 admirable compendium of the best short stories 
 to be found in the literature of the world. For- 
 getting this, the consensus of modern literary 
 criticism is that the French are the best tellers 
 of short stories. And yet the French short 
 stories perfect as they are when compared 
 with other fiction are crude and prolix com- 
 pared with the short stories of the Bible, which, 
 after all, are not stories, but the plain telling 
 of actual human occurrences. They are of 
 every kind too. Suppose, for example, you 
 want to read a story of adventure one that 
 will make your blood jump and yet uplift 
 you. 
 
 Very well; turn to the seventeenth chapter 
 of First Samuel, and read how the golden- 
 haired, ruddy-cheeked, blue-eyed young 1 He- 
 
 19
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 brew called David came from the shepherding 
 of his father's flocks, bringing food for his 
 brothers, who were soldiers in the Israelitish 
 army encamped on the side of a mountain. 
 On the opposite side of the valley was the 
 army of the Philistines. 
 
 Those were tremendous days for fighting. 
 Men slew men with primitive ferocity. It 
 was the time of that rude chivalry where a 
 single combatant from one camp would chal- 
 lenge the other camp to produce an antagonist, 
 and settle the whole affray in a single-handed 
 fight. We read of the same custom in early 
 Roman history. It reappeared in the medieval 
 times. Indeed, in one form or another, it 
 has always been here and always will be 
 here. 
 
 The Philistines had a fighter who had never 
 found his match, and the terror of his fame 
 was upon the land. He was a tremendously 
 big man physically, and unlike most physical 
 giants his nerve was as fine and as tense as 
 his body was great (for, to digress, most phys- 
 20
 
 DAVID 
 
 ically big men are nervously inferior). And 
 this Philistine man of might was as brave 
 as he was tall. Also he was as hard as 
 nails. 
 
 There wasn't anybody in all Israel who dared 
 "go up against" him. 'And that was saying a 
 good deal; for the ancient Hebrews were per- 
 haps the best fighting men the world has yet 
 produced. They were as daring as courage 
 itself. They were schooled in combat. They 
 always believed that they were fighting under 
 the command of the Most High, and the strict 
 obedience required of them to the amazing 
 and minute laws of health laid down by Moses 
 made them altogether, in muscle, nerve and 
 brain, unsurpassed as warriors by any men of 
 any time, unless we may except the Japanese 
 Samurai. 
 
 And yet, when the Philistine champion came 
 out before the army of Israel and cried, "I 
 defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a 
 man, that we may fight together," Saul and 
 all Israel "were dismayed, and greatly afraid." 
 
 21
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 And day after day, while the opposing armies 
 rested, this defiance was renewed. 
 
 Pretty soon, of course, this had its effect. 
 The Hebrews began to lose heart. They be- 
 gan to "lose their nerve," as the saying is. 
 Worse than this, they were humiliated. They 
 began to be ashamed. And when you have at 
 once humiliated a man, and also scared him 
 to death, he is the most pitiable of spec- 
 tacles. Take it all together, it was a heart- 
 rending situation when the blond young musi- 
 cian (David had yellow hair and blue eyes 
 and a "peaches-and-cream" complexion, you 
 know) arrived in the camp with some bread 
 for his brothers. For you must remember 
 that David played on the harp and sang well; 
 so far as that is concerned, he did nearly every- 
 thing well. I have often thought that Emerson 
 must have had him in mind in his wonderful 
 lines on Character when he says : 
 
 His tongue was framed to music, 
 His hand was armed with skill, 
 
 His face was the mold of beauty 
 And his heart was the throne of will. 
 
 22
 
 DAVID 
 
 When David arrived he saw the fearful- 
 ness of Goliath; his blood turned to fire, and 
 he shouted out, "Who is this uncircumcised 
 Philistine that he should defy the armies of 
 the living God?" And the soldiers told him 
 all about it; and then the blue-eyed shepherd 
 boy went to Saul and told him that he would 
 be the Hebrew champion. 
 
 Of course, Saul said, "Thou art not able to 
 go against this Philistine to fight with him : 
 for thou art but a youth, and he a man of 
 war from his youth." 
 
 Then David made the argument that heroes 
 have made in different words from the foun- 
 dation of the world. There was a courage in 
 his heart all his own, and faith in his soul 
 from on high. He was another of the type 
 of Joan of Arc or of Nelson or of our own 
 Lawrence. 
 
 They put armor upon him, but he could not 
 move in it. He wasn't used to it, so he put it 
 off of him; he took instead his staff in his 
 hand and chose five smooth stones out of the 
 
 23
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 brook, and put them in his shepherd's bag, and 
 his sling was in his hand and he drew near to 
 the Philistine. When Goliath saw David, he 
 was furious with' insult, and roared out the 
 denunciation that you might expect, telling 
 David what he would do to him, and what, by 
 all the rules of the game, it was apparently 
 certain he would do to him. David's answer 
 was as noble as his courage: 
 
 Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest 
 to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a 
 shield : but I come to thee in the name of the Lord 
 of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou 
 hast defied. 
 
 This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; 
 and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; 
 and I will give the carcases of the host of the Phil- 
 istines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the 
 wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know 
 that there is a God in Israel. 
 
 And all this assembly shall know that the Lord 
 saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the 
 Lord's, and he will give you into our hands. 
 
 There spoke the voice of the soul oi the 
 Hebrew people. There was a defiance that 
 24
 
 DAVID 
 
 answered Goliath's own and overwhelmed it, 
 Also, it dazed the mighty Philistine warrior. 
 What! a mere boy say this to him! It was 
 astounding more, it was absurd! And still 
 more, it was insulting! And then the fight 
 took place. The world has not yet forgot- 
 ten this immortal combat. And for "good 
 reading" in the realm of adventure noth- 
 ing has been produced that comes anywhere 
 near it. 
 
 I have not been long in telling this. And 
 yet, condensing it all I can, I have been a good 
 deal longer than the Bible is in relating this 
 story. And I have left out a good deal, at 
 that. That is one characteristic of everything 
 that is written in the Bible. It is condensed. 
 It fairly snaps and sizzles with condensation. 
 It is full of action, and although it reports con- 
 versations, gives the arguments that are used 
 pro and con, describes incidents, it is all done so 
 quickly and naturally and to the point that 
 you can read it in five minutes. 
 
 To the stories of David alone I might de- 
 
 25
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 vote as much space as this volume contains; 
 for of him the Scriptures tell us more "good 
 stories" than of any other man (with the pos- 
 sible exception of Joseph), mentioned in the 
 whole Bible. No hero of any age was more 
 versatile; the great Leonardo himself was not 
 so many-sided. 
 
 Already we have seen this golden-haired lad 
 a "mere boy" minding or tending his father's 
 flocks, wrestling with lion, bear, finally killing 
 the veteran and giant champion, in single com- 
 bat. Later we shall find him at the court of 
 King Saul, harp before him, charming away 
 his master's blues and making friends right and 
 left. To know David was to love him; and 
 it was this very popularity that was so nearly 
 his undoing. You remember how Saul, over 
 come by jealousy, time, time and again, by fair 
 means or foul, sought to slay his young lieu- 
 tenant; and how David, each time he had 
 Saul in his power, stayed his hand and spared 
 the life of his most treacherous and relentless 
 enemy. 
 26
 
 DAVID 
 
 Loyalty and generosity were dominant traits 
 of David's character. Rea'd the First Book of 
 Samuel and you will find them illustrated an 
 hundred times. You will find, too, that this 
 is a story of such absorbing, rugged interest as 
 to make the adventure novel of the year seem 
 but the tawdriest of pinchbeck. David, you 
 must remember, was one of your restless fel- 
 lows, one of those human dynamos all a-crackle 
 with energy ; a reformer, fighting man, righter 
 of wrongs, poet and politician in a word, a 
 born leader of men. He was, to be sure, the 
 Lord's Anointed, and had a divine destiny 
 before him; but leaving that out of the ques- 
 tion, we know that he was one of the best all- 
 round men of his day and generation and the 
 Lord as well as the world is always looking for 
 just that kind of men. His training, tempera- 
 ment and abilities irresistibly drew him into the 
 military or public life of camp and court which 
 gave him that stern schooling that was to make 
 him the master of the Chosen People. Like 
 all great men, he had his ups and downs. In 
 
 27
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 his youth, at his monarch's royal board, with a 
 score of valiant deeds to his credit, we find 
 him feted and courted on every hand. Only a 
 few years later we see him in the Cave of Adul- 
 lam, leader of a ragged band of poor debtors 
 and malcontents. A sorry crew those four 
 hundred bankrupts and ne'er-do-wells; but 
 David, mind you, was their leader! And so 
 we follow him step by step until he comes into 
 his own and reigns in Jerusalem and some 
 mighty "good reading" we have had by the 
 way! 
 
 Big men make big mistakes. If they are 
 good men they survive them. Peter thrice 
 denied his Lord and lived his cowardice down ; 
 another once betrayed Him and made the name 
 of Judas a hissing for the ages. Even David's 
 life had its blacker pages; and yet he was "a 
 man after God's own heart." If you would 
 see him at his best and at his worst (and give 
 yourself up to the charm of one of the most 
 moving tales in all literature), read the story 
 of Uriah the Hittite and his Little Ewe Lamb. 
 28
 
 DAVID 
 
 Turn to the Second Book of Samuel and read 
 in the eleventh and twelfth chapters that won- 
 derful recital of unlawful love, black treach- 
 ery, swift punishment and bitter remorse. 
 What could be more exquisite than Nathan's 
 simple and moving parable in which the young 
 wife the king has stolen becomes the poor 
 man's Little Ewe Lamb snatched away and 
 butchered by his wealthy neighbor? How can 
 one better employ a quarter of an hour than 
 in reading this little masterpiece? 
 
 Is it surprising that David's vast and varied 
 knowledge of men should come to full flower 
 in the wisdom of his son Solomon? A thou- 
 sand years hence, our descendants will still be 
 marveling over the dozen verses (I Kings 
 3: 16-28) that chronicle Solomon's judgment 
 between the two mothers. Cite, if you can, 
 a single instance in modern literature that 
 shows keener or wiser perception of the funda- 
 mentals of human nature!
 
 III. OLD TESTAMENT SHORT STORIES : LOVE, 
 COURTSHIP AND INTRIGUE. 
 
 The earlier books of the Bible afford as 
 many entertaining stories as the ones we have 
 just been discussing. And they are not only 
 entertaining, but they are crammed full of real 
 life, of knowledge of men, of old world 
 shrewdness. Of late years there has been a 
 furor for nature books; but which of them 
 displays closer observation than Jacob showed 
 when he tended Laban's flocks and by an 
 absurdly simple device trebled his wage of 
 ring-straked cattle? A dozen or fifteen verses 
 in the thirtieth chapter of Genesis tell the 
 whole story. Turn back a few pages and you 
 find the tale of Jacob and Esau and the story 
 of Abraham and Isaac a story of pathos 
 (albeit with a "pleasant ending") that rouses 
 the dullest man's sympathies. If you would 
 
 31
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 still have more short stories, read of Elijah and 
 Elisha; of young Samson, his riddle and his 
 Delilah. If you would know the horrors of 
 a beleaguered city, turn to the last ten verses 
 of the sixth chapter of the Second Book of 
 Kings. Daniel furnishes an almost unbroken 
 series of readable adventures; and Jonah (in 
 the fourth chapter) an extraordinary insight 
 into human nature and a lesson of sublime 
 beauty. 
 
 Let me impress upon you that in every 
 Bible story there is always "something 
 doing." Let us take, for example, two flash- 
 lights that illustrate this, and from a beau- 
 tiful point of view. I have often thought 
 that were I a painter I would paint at 
 least two pictures, if I never painted any 
 others. 
 
 The first of these is the picture of the first 
 gentleman described in all the literature of the 
 world. Abraham, growing old, considered 
 that the time had come when his son Isaac 
 should have a wife. There were many beauti- 
 32
 
 ful young women in the land, any one of 
 whom would have made an excellent wife for 
 Abraham's son. But with that deep wisdom 
 which never fails to bear the fruit of happi- 
 ness and well-being, he said that Isaac must 
 have a wife from among his own people. So 
 he sent his most trusted servant with camels 
 and presents to go into the land where peo- 
 ple of his own race dwelt and there search 
 out a wife, Abraham giving to this trusted 
 servant definite instructions. 
 
 After a time the servant and his train of 
 camels came to the city of Nahor, and the 
 servant made up his mind that the way he 
 would decide among the damsels that came 
 down to- the well for water (for it was the 
 custom of all the young women to come down 
 to the well of the community and take water 
 in a pitcher for the family) would be thus : 
 the one, who, when he asked of her a drink 
 of water should not only give him a drink, but 
 also say, "I will give thy camels drink also," 
 was the fit mate for his master's son. 
 a G. K. 33
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 So, among others, down came Rebekah to 
 the well; and he asked her for a drink of 
 water from her pitcher. Whereupon she 
 said, "Drink." . . . And the Bible proceeds to 
 say that, when she had done giving him 
 drink, she said, "I will draw water for thy 
 camels also." She was the real woman, you 
 see; one who thought it a fine thing to be 
 gracious. 
 
 Then follows the story of the strange court- 
 ship by proxy, after the Oriental custom. 
 Rebekah is described as very beautiful. The 
 end of this part of the story is that, consent- 
 ing herself and with the consent of all her 
 family, she went with Abraham's servant to 
 meet her future husband. 
 
 About the time when they might be expected 
 to return, Isaac went out into the field to 
 meditate at eventide. We can see him can 
 we not? as the purple evening fell and night 
 come on, tall and slender and full of that 
 vigor which was to father a race, walking 
 in the field thinking, and thinking think- 
 34
 
 LOVE, COURTSHIP AND INTRIGUE 
 
 ing of his future and of his destiny, and 
 most of all of her who was coming and 
 who would make all worth while and glorify 
 his life. 
 
 And then, goes on the story in the words 
 of the Bible, "he lifted up his eyes, and saw, 
 and, behold, the camels were coming." And 
 when the camels bearing his bride had ar- 
 rived, Rebekah lighted down from the camel, 
 and then occurs this exquisite picture the pic- 
 ture of the first gentleman in literature. He 
 "brought her into his mother Sarah's tent." 
 And so ends this tender and beautiful tale of 
 delicacy and refinement, of chivalry and man- 
 ner, which made up the character of this first 
 of that race of men whom the world has al- 
 ways loved and will always love the race of 
 gentlemen. 
 
 Beautiful manners, courtly behavior and the 
 unselfishness that underlies all true nobility, are 
 constantly found in the characters of the Bible. 
 If you would like to rest yourself with a tender 
 story of fidelity, read the Book of Ruth. Con- 
 
 35
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 sidered merely as "good reading," it is easily 
 the best short story ever written. But it is 
 better than that it tells the tale of the most 
 loyal unselfishness of which there is any rec- 
 ord. It is proverbial that no man nor woman 
 can get along with his or her mother-in- 
 law; but it is a modern proverb. The men 
 and women of the Bible found no difficulty of 
 that kind, and of this, Ruth is the best illus- 
 tration. 
 
 When Ruth's husband died, his mother, 
 Naomi, who was a very poor woman, told her 
 daughter-in-law that it would not be fair to 
 waste her beauty and youth remaining with a 
 poverty-stricken old woman and that it would 
 be best for her to go back to her own people 
 where she could take up the broken thread of 
 her life. Ruth would not do it. Orpah, an- 
 other widowed daughter-in-law of Naomi, 
 took the old lady's advice, but Ruth was stead- 
 fast, and uttered these words words so ex- 
 quisite, pure and exalted, that to this day they 
 uplift us. Said Ruth :
 
 LOVE, COURTSHIP AND INTRIGUE 
 
 Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from fol- 
 lowing after thee : for whither thou goest, I will go ; 
 and where thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall 
 be my people, and thy God my God : 
 
 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be 
 buried. 
 
 These words were to an aged and poverty- 
 stricken mother-in-law, mind you, and were 
 uttered by the loveliest of red-lipped maidens 
 with all her life before her. 
 
 It is hard to imagine what would have hap- 
 pened to the forlorn old woman if her daughter- 
 in-law had not been so "stedfastly minded," 
 as the Bible puts it, for it was Ruth who pro- 
 vided her with the necessaries of life by glean- 
 ing in the fields of Boaz. This Boaz was a 
 fine man. I wish every rich man might study 
 his character. He followed the ancient law of 
 Moses which commanded the owners of fields 
 and vineyards to leave something on their 
 vines, trees, and grain fields for the poor to 
 gather up. 
 
 So when Ruth went into his fields to glean 
 with the other maidens, Boaz observed that she 
 
 37
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 was a stranger, modest, industrious and at- 
 tractive; and he commanded the young men 
 who were harvesting not to molest her and 
 ordered his overseer to take care that not only 
 the gleanings but an occasional sheaf was left 
 for her to gather up. It was by gathering up 
 this grain left for her, that Ruth was able to 
 provide her aged mother-in-law with food and 
 keep her alive. 
 
 Strenuous or gentle, the women of the Bible 
 are always "doing things." There is not a lazy 
 woman in all the Scriptures no dolce far 
 niente creatures, no relaxed and languorous 
 idlers. If they were kindly and comforting at 
 heart they showed it by doing kindly and com- 
 forting things all the time, as was the case with 
 Ruth, or Hannah, or Rebekah. If they were 
 of strong spirit they were always counseling, 
 leading and inspiring. Deborah and Esther 
 were types of the patriotic woman. If you 
 would like some good reading where hatred, 
 vanity, revenge and judgment are written with 
 the pen of power, read about this Esther. 
 38
 
 LOVE, COURTSHIP AND INTRIGUE 
 
 When by her remarkable charm and beauty 
 and "drawing" personality, Esther had become 
 queen, she appears to have had the one pur- 
 pose in life of pleasing and caring for her 
 lord, the king a very trivial purpose, no doubt, 
 but still the purpose for which God made man 
 man and woman woman ; the one to protect and 
 provide the other to comfort and soothe. 
 
 Everything would probably have gone along 
 well if Haman, the king's right-hand man, 
 had not plotted against Mordecai, Esther's 
 uncle. The reason why Haman was so "down 
 on" Mordecai was because the proud old man, 
 Jew though he was, would never bow or un- 
 cover to him. In revenge, Haman conspired 
 to have Mordecai hanged ; and hatched an anti- 
 Semitic plot for the total extermination of the 
 Jews. Just at that point Esther appeared as 
 the figure of destiny, and at the risk of her 
 own life saved her people, turned the tables on 
 Haman and won promotion and honor for her 
 kinsman. 
 
 A good way to test the tremendous pith and 
 
 39
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 point of the Bible narrative is to read over a 
 portion of it, get it thoroughly in mind; then 
 close the Bible and try to write out yourself 
 the very things you have just read. You will 
 find that you will use two or three times as 
 many words as the Bible does, do the best 
 you can. 
 
 Of course, stories of adventure are very 
 numerous in the Bible the volume is packed 
 full of them. 
 
 But suppose you want some other kind of 
 story intrigue, let us say, or diplomacy. You 
 will find it all in the history of David. His 
 craft in statesmanship equaled his courage in 
 war. It is fascinating to see how he laid the 
 foundation of that dynasty from which sprang 
 our Saviour. 
 
 If you want "human-interest" stories that 
 yet involve statesmanship, diplomacy and war 
 you will find them all crowded into the life of 
 David. And through them all you will find 
 fundamental, almost primal, human passions 
 running at high tide. 
 40
 
 LOVE, COURTSHIP AND INTRIGUE 
 
 For example, David loved women man- 
 fashion and violently he loved them and 
 that led him, man of God though he was, into 
 wrongdoing. And the hatred of the people 
 of that time was equal to their love, and their 
 grief was something terrible. When the men 
 of that time and race hated, that meant a kill- 
 ing. We see it in the same race as late as 
 the time of the play of the Merchant of Venice, 
 where that wonderful old character, Shylock, 
 exclaims, "Hates any man the thing he would 
 not kill?" 
 
 While David is the master character through- 
 out all his period, and, indeed, one of the 
 master characters of all time and of all peo- 
 ples, that period was full of characters. The 
 fact is that the Bible is made up of big char- 
 acters, men and women and children, loving, 
 plotting, warring, hating, intriguing, philoso- 
 phizing, praying, forgiving, doing justice and 
 working righteousness, yet falling to the low- 
 est depths. 
 
 Stories of adventure never lose their fascina- 
 
 41
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 tion. Indeed, Mr. Rider Haggard, in a 
 thoughtful essay says that there is an increas- 
 ing love for tales of this kind, and explains it 
 upon the ground that it is a reaction against 
 our neurotically complex civilization. The 
 Bible is full of these narratives. As I have 
 pointed out, there is not a Hebrew to-day who 
 does not glory in the craft, courage and in- 
 spiration of Gideon. Who can forget the ex- 
 altation of Disraeli, that greatest of English 
 statesmen, who, when speaking of the princes 
 of Israel, always named Gideon ? The famous 
 night attack of this Hebrew captain has al- 
 ways reminded me of Washington's night pas- 
 sage of the Delaware and his thunderbolt as- 
 sault on the Hessians at Trenton. The Israel- 
 ites had fallen into bad straits. "And the 
 children of Israel did evil in the sight of the 
 Lord: and the Lord delivered them into the 
 hand of Midian seven years." 
 
 And the Midianites "didn't do a thing" to 
 the Jews. They "destroyed the increase of the 
 earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no 
 42
 
 LOVE, COURTSHIP AND INTRIGUE 
 
 sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, 
 nor ass." 
 
 In that black hour a leader arose for the 
 oppressed people, just as leaders for the masses 
 always rise when their situation becomes des- 
 perate. It is true that the Bible says that God 
 sent His angel to Gideon; but for myself I 
 believe that all great leaders of the people al- 
 ways have been and always will be directly in- 
 spired from on high. I find no difference be- 
 tween the divine guidance of Moses and a like 
 direction of Washington and Lincoln. 
 
 It is picturesquely characteristic that the 
 angel found Gideon threshing his wheat by 
 the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 
 Nearly all the great leaders of the people are 
 found thus in the common occupations when 
 they are called to lead the people. So with 
 Jackson and with Cromwell and with Joan of 
 Arc; and the mighty Peter threw aside the 
 barbaric pomp and luxury of a Czar to work 
 as a humble laborer in a common shipyard of 
 Holland. Gideon himself says: "My family 
 
 43
 
 THE BIBLE -AS GOOD READING 
 
 is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my 
 father's house." 
 
 Nevertheless, the angel hailed him, "Thou 
 mighty man of valor!" for he saw quite 
 through the externals into the soul of the man. 
 It is a curious thing how the mysterious quality 
 of daring is almost impossible of discovery 
 until occasion develops it. The quiet man may 
 have it and, on the contrary, the most ostenta- 
 tious and vainglorious man may have it ; as 
 witness Major Burnham, the famous Ameri- 
 can scout, who, so far as deeds prove anything, 
 is the most daring man alive to-day. On the 
 other hand, consider Murat, Napoleon's famous 
 marshal, who was vainglorious to a ludicrous 
 point, but who was as brave as he was vain- 
 glorious. 
 
 Gideon was a good deal of a doubter. He 
 could not make out how he, with the poor ma- 
 terial he had among the deteriorated Hebrews, 
 could prevail over the well-equipped Midian- 
 ites. And he asks miracles to prove it ; and so 
 you will remember that the dew fell only on 
 
 44
 
 LOVE, COURTSHIP AND INTRIGUE 
 
 the fleece and none on the floor around it which 
 was dry. Even that did not satisfy him, and 
 he reversed the process, . and the dew fell on 
 the floor and none on the fleece. He was con- 
 vinced at last, and gathered the Israelites about 
 him. But they were too< many, and everybody 
 that was afraid was sent back. That test lost 
 Gideon twenty-two thousand soldiers and rid 
 him of twenty-two thousand cowards. Ten 
 thousand remained. But Gideon needed tem- 
 pered steel for this enterprise ; he couldn't take 
 anybody with him who was too nice, on the 
 one hand, or too slovenly, on the other hand. 
 So he took them down to the water to drink. 
 Those that bent down on their hands and knees 
 he excused, and those that lapped water with 
 their tongues like a dog he took. That gave 
 him three hundred men. "The Midianites and 
 the Amalekites and all the children of the east 
 lay along in the valley . . . ; and their camels 
 were without number, as the sand by the sea 
 side for multitude." 
 
 But they were picked men that Gideon had. 
 
 45
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 All the chaff was winnowed out from among 
 them. It was the same situation when a hand- 
 ful of high-grade Greeks utterly overthrew 
 the enormous hosts of the Persians. It was 
 the same situation that all men find every- 
 where. Do we not see it in politics, where a 
 small band of pure, true, brave men can put 
 to utter rout an immense number of baser 
 quality ? 
 
 Then came the strategy of the blowing of 
 the trumpets and the breaking pitchers and the 
 lights suddenly revealed, with the result of 
 confusion, dismay, flight in the hostile camp 
 and the resistless onslaught of the Jewish war- 
 riors.
 
 IV. NEW TESTAMENT SHORT STORIES. 
 
 Between the time of Gideon and the age of 
 the Apostles there was an interval of more than 
 twelve hundred years. Before the begin- 
 ning of the Christian Era, the semi-barbarous 
 tribes on which the early kings of Israel waged 
 incessant warfare had been subdued or exter- 
 minated; and Judea herself had become a 
 Roman province. Under the conciliatory rule 
 of Tiberius she enjoyed comparative peace and 
 prosperity. You must not, then, expect to find 
 in the New Testament tales of striplings slay- 
 ing giants, or of Jewish generals leading for- 
 lorn hopes on to victory. Quite different is 
 the type of hero in this later age. As David is 
 the dominant man in the Old Testament, so 
 St. Paul overtops his fellows in the New. In 
 this Roman citizen (as he was proud to call 
 himself) you have a hero for all time. Let 
 us consider his case. 
 
 47
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Here we have a young Pharisee, a gentle- 
 man, a man of good family and of some posi- 
 tion in the world, with the straitest of Jewish 
 traditions behind him. He has a sound educa- 
 tion; he is well grounded in Greek philosophy 
 and Roman law. His abilities are those of a 
 man in a million; a brilliant future is before 
 him. With the fury of a zealot we find him 
 upholding the old church by persecuting the 
 new. In those days religion was no mere fad. 
 It was a matter of freedom or imprisonment; 
 often, one of life or death. And yet, at the 
 bidding of the heavenly voice this young man 
 of Tarsus deliberately turns his back on his 
 rosy future and casts in his lot with a despised 
 and feeble sect whose leaders are peasants and 
 illiterate fishermen. Evidently, the man is a 
 fool or a hero; and you shall see that he is 
 no fool. Glance at the catalogue of St. Paul's 
 hardships (II Cor. 11:22-28) and you will 
 put him in the same class with old Ulysses. 
 
 Read of his arrest; of the attempt of the 
 mob on his life; of his trials; of his appeal 
 48
 
 NEW TESTAMENT SHORT STORIES 
 
 to Caesar. Then begin at the twenty-seventh 
 chapter of Acts and follow his fortunes as he 
 makes the long and perilous journey from 
 Jerusalem to Rome. In every verse there is 
 action, adventure or hairbreadth escape, until 
 at length the weary captive settles down in 
 Rome in his own hired house. 
 
 Does the story of adventure pall? Then 
 turn to the eighth chapter of St. John and 
 you will find (in less than a dozen verses) the 
 portrayal of a scene so dramatic that, even if 
 it held no lofty lesson, it would take high rank 
 as literature. Do you ask for pathos? Read 
 the hundred words beginning at the eleventh 
 verse of the seventh chapter of St. Luke won- 
 derful, is it not, how a single phrase may color 
 a whole scene? The young man of whom the 
 Evangelist writes, was, you remember, "the 
 only son of his mother, and she was a widow." 
 
 -G. K. 49
 
 V. THE BIBLE AND COMMON SENSE. 
 
 In the bookstores there are many volumes 
 of "Maxims" and "Thoughts," and they seem 
 to be increasing in number. We have Marcus 
 Aurelius, whose meditations are admirable I 
 advise every young man to get a copy of the 
 great Roman; Epictetus, whose observations 
 are the keenest to be found in literature any- 
 where outside of the Bible ; La Rochefoucauld, 
 whose cynical wisdom is very bright but 
 poisonous and untrue ; and the immortal Tent- 
 maker's Rubaiyat, which, correctly understood, 
 are the best commentary on the perspective of 
 life that I know of. We are having even the 
 sayings of Confucius rendered anew, and a 
 good many modern philosophers of epigram 
 are developing, too. 
 
 And they are all worth while. The truth 
 is that almost any man can write good advice 
 
 si
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 if he is in dead earnest. Think, for example, 
 what you who read this would say if you were 
 asked to put in ten pages a series of rules for 
 the guidance of a son, brother, or friend. Try 
 it you will be astonished at the sound, prac- 
 tical advice you will prescribe. But in this, as 
 in every other form of literature, the Bible is 
 so far superior to all the rest put together that 
 the others seem to be loose and wordy after 
 you have steeped yourself in the Proverbs of 
 the Book of Books. 
 
 As a matter of intellectual refreshment as 
 a mere matter of "good reading" after you 
 have thrown down your magazines, take up the 
 Bible and read idly and casually from Proverbs 
 or Ecclesiastes. You won't be able to read 
 very rapidly. You will find yourself so ab- 
 sorbed in every sentence that, in wonder, you 
 will exclaim, "Why did I never read this be- 
 fore?" It will be as if, in curiosity, you opened 
 an old trunk in the attic just to see what was 
 in it and not because you expected to find any- 
 thing; and then, having opened it, found the 
 52
 
 trunk full of diamonds, making you enor- 
 mously rich. 
 
 Let us try two or three of these proverbs, 
 not selected but taken absolutely at random as 
 the eye happens to fall on a page : 
 
 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it arc 
 
 the issues of life. 
 
 or this: 
 Let thine eyes look right on. 
 
 or this: 
 
 A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a 
 just weight is his delight. 
 
 When pride cometh, then cometh shame; but with 
 the lowly is wisdom. 
 
 or this: 
 
 Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou 
 perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge. 
 
 or this glorious sentence: 
 
 Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a re- 
 proach to any people. 
 
 53
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 or this, which I think the dearest, sweetest and 
 noblest in the whole Bible : 
 
 A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born 
 for adversity. 
 
 Solomon is ever sending his shafts straight 
 at the heart of slovenliness, hypocrisy and 
 drunkenness. No wonder that our Lord, who 
 descended from Solomon, was always lashing 
 the hypocrites ! It was congenital. His ances- 
 tor, Solomon, was always doing the like. But 
 here are two or three things that Solomon says 
 about drinking: 
 
 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and who- 
 soever is deceived thereby is not wise. 
 
 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath con- 
 tentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds with- 
 out cause? who hath redness of eyes? 
 
 Evidently Solomon would have agreed with 
 our Irish philosopher, "Dooley," about the 
 modern "club" where men die of what 
 "Dooley" calls "wet rot." For Solomon goes 
 on: 
 
 54
 
 They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to 
 seek mixed wine. 
 
 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red 
 
 No ! nor any other color. 
 
 At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like 
 an adder. 
 
 And does not the following sound more 
 than good? 
 
 Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest 
 not what a day may bring forth. 
 
 Undoubtedly Solomon wrote the following 
 after his wife had scolded him for talking 
 about himself: 
 
 Let another man praise thee, and not thine own 
 mouth ; a stranger, and not thine own lips. 
 
 And how absolutely true and wise is this : 
 
 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses 
 of an enemy are deceitful. 
 
 Next to the Lord's Prayer this petition is 
 the summit of wise asking for God's favor: 
 
 Remove far from me vanity and lies : give me neither 
 poverty nor riches. . . . 
 
 55
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the 
 Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name 
 of my God in vain. 
 
 Solomon understood the hollowness of 
 riches. He is always saying things like this 
 and he knew: 
 
 Labor not to be rich : cease from thine own wisdom 
 . . . for riches certainly make themselves wings. 
 
 A good name is rather to be chosen than great 
 riches; and loving favour rather than silver or gold. 
 
 He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and con- 
 sidereth not that poverty shall come upon him. 
 
 It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, 
 than with a brawling woman in a wide house. 
 
 Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his 
 soul from troubles. 
 
 Don't think, though, that this wise man, 
 Solomon, was always dealing out a lot of 
 maxims. He was, of all rulers, the most just; 
 of all men the most wise, of all administrators 
 the most able, unless we except Moses. But 
 56
 
 THE BIBLE AND COMMON SENSE 
 
 he was also a poet and a poet of the moods 
 of hot blood and desire. Of all the poets of 
 passion the man who wrote the Proverbs was 
 the most burning. He sings love's very de- 
 lirium. 
 
 Job is the great dramatic poem of the Bible 
 and abounds in noble passages, lofty concep- 
 tions and overwhelming presentations of the 
 majesty of the Creator. It is classed among 
 the "Wisdom Books" on account of its lesson : 
 that man is a creature too fleeting and too 
 finite to question the justice of a God of in- 
 finite wisdom and limitless power. 
 
 There is an old story of a man who having 
 read Hamlet for the first time exclaimed, 
 "Why ! It's made up almost entirely of quota- 
 tions!" His cry would have been the same 
 had he read Isaiah; for of all the prophets he 
 is the most quotable. The twenty-eighth and 
 fifty-third chapters will give you at least a 
 partial idea of the power and beauty and 
 solemnity of the whole majestic book. Jere- 
 miah and some of the minor prophets, too, 
 
 57
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 will repay you an hundredfold for every min- 
 ute you devote to them. 
 
 These prophets were a mighty race, and to 
 this day our civilization bears their stamp' 
 clean cut as the proof impression from a newly- 
 cut seal. Let us consider the mightiest of this 
 mighty race.
 
 VI. THE STORY OF MOSES. 
 
 The story of Moses illustrates how Fate 
 plans great men's entrances into the world as 
 carefully as she arranges the whole pattern 
 of their lives. And yet it is not Fate at all. 
 The great are made so hy the vigor of parents, 
 prenatal influences, early environment. Who 
 doubts that Bonaparte would not have de- 
 veloped into Napoleon, the world-conqueror, 
 had not his mother been a woman of immense 
 abilities and extraordinary energies? And 
 also before he was born had she not ridden, 
 by day and by night, with her husband in the 
 Corsican campaigns, studying, witnessing, 
 practicing strategy with the ablest soldiers on 
 the field, enduring privations of march and 
 camp and experiencing the determined courage 
 which the battlefield inspires? 
 
 Was not Alexander the son of Philip ? Was 
 he not born in the very whirlwind of warfare ? 
 
 59
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Did he not spring from the loins of an unex- 
 hausted statesman and warrior; and are we 
 not told that the queen dreamed that she was 
 to be the mother of a lion? It was not for 
 nothing that Abraham Lincoln's parents were 
 the poorest of the poor and the commonest of 
 the common people. It was this which gave 
 him his "blood-understanding" so much 
 deeper and truer than the brain-understanding 
 of the masses, of their wants, needs, destiny. 
 It was this which gave him the breadth of wis- 
 dom to know the common mind the breadth 
 of wisdom so much wider and deeper than 
 that of the ablest statesman who does not have 
 this kinship with the millions. 
 
 If you look narrowly you will see how For- 
 tune marks those whom she means to make the 
 officers of her large designs by peculiarities of 
 their birth and parenthood. It is all quite 
 natural and entirely scientific; but it is so 
 striking and apparently exceptional that we 
 cannot wonder that ruder people were super- 
 stitious about such things. 
 60
 
 THE STORY OF MOSES 
 
 This same thing was markedly true of the 
 man who is one of the greatest of all merely 
 human personages the Jewish law-giver, 
 statesman, leader Moses. In the first place, 
 the Egyptians in their fear of the multiplying 
 power of the children of Israel, as a means of 
 retarding it used the very methods to advance 
 it. They put the Hebrews at hard work in the 
 open air. Still they waxed stronger! Of 
 course, they waxed stronger! But this aston- 
 ished the Egyptians, so they set taskmasters 
 over them, and regulated the work of the Israel- 
 ites with rigid severity. 
 
 And they [the Egyptians] made their lives bitter with 
 hard bondage, ... all their service, wherein they made 
 them serve, was with rigour. 
 
 And, of course, they grew harder-muscled, 
 steadier-nerved, and, because of the watchful- 
 ness constantly maintained over them, quicker- 
 minded. Every year they learned discipline 
 and acquired an instinct for solidarity. It was 
 the very training necessary to produce a people 
 from whom should spring a fearless, method- 
 
 61
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 ical, inventive statesman, full of initiative. 
 And it was from parents of the more intel- 
 lectual type among such a people, whose very 
 intellectuality had been vitalized and made 
 orderly by disciplined work, that Moses came. 
 He appeared, too, at a time when all of the 
 male children of the Hebrews were to be killed 
 under the orders of Pharaoh. That her son 
 should escape this fate was undoubtedly the 
 consuming care of Moses' mother. She 
 kept Moses to herself until she could conceal 
 him no longer. Then she made her little ark 
 of bulrushes, put Moses in it and set him afloat 
 in the water where the weeds were thick enough 
 to keep him from being drawn away by the 
 current. Then comes the incident of Pharaoh's 
 daughter finding him; unwittingly giving 
 Moses' own mother to him as a nurse; bring- 
 ing up the future deliverer of Israel in her own 
 house; thus bestowing upon him all the in- 
 struction and training of a prince. An ideal 
 birth and an ideal training for a great work, 
 was it not? 
 62
 
 THE STORY OF MOSES 
 
 Then comes the incident of Moses killing the 
 Egyptian, which proves his volcano-like pas- 
 sion ; the discovery of his crime and his flight, 
 which proves his prudence ; his courtesy to the 
 daughters of the priest of Midian, which demon- 
 strates the human touch in him ; his service as 
 a shepherd of this Midianite, whose daughter 
 he had married (for Moses was a marrying 
 man from the first). 
 
 I am not going to tell you all of this fas- 
 cinating history of this mighty man, so full 
 of human incident read it for yourself in the 
 words of the best of story-tellers and biog- 
 raphers. Find out how he got back to Egypt; 
 the boldness and craft of his leadership of his 
 oppressed people and all of the circumstances 
 of his development as statesman and law-giver. 
 There is not a dull line among them except the 
 occasional genealogies which are always dull, 
 in the Bible and every place else. 
 
 I do not recall a more tremendous picture 
 in any literature I ever heard of than that of 
 the passage of the children of Israel through 
 
 63
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 the Red Sea, and the catastrophe that over- 
 threw the Egyptians following them. This 
 whole chapter might be devoted to the four- 
 teenth chapter of Exodus. 
 
 How like the fear of masses of people was 
 the terror of the Israelites when they saw the 
 Egyptians coming after them! And how like 
 real greatness in all times is the splendid spirit 
 of Moses when he told them: "Fear ye not; 
 stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord !" 
 
 Moses was always thus inspiring the people 
 when they needed it and rebuking them with 
 equal vigor when they needed rebuke. 
 
 But I will pass all this and come to the laws 
 of Moses his real work and his immortal 
 monument
 
 VII. MOSES THE LAW-GIVER. 
 
 From the very day of Moses' return to 
 Egypt we find him giving orders of one kind 
 or another to all the children of Israel; anc}, 
 significantly enough, they are nearly all of 
 them about eating and drinking evidently the 
 prime importance of the laws of hygiene im- 
 pressed itself upon this practical statesman. 
 Moses had great difficulty with the children of 
 Israel in the wilderness. It is interesting to 
 see him enforcing one simple commandment 
 after another, such as the keeping of the Sab- 
 bath Moses, I believe, was the first of the 
 Hebrews to put that custom into actual prac- 
 tice. As fast as he could get them used to it 
 he assumed a judgeship over them. The Bible 
 says: 
 
 Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood 
 by Moses from the morning unto the evening. 
 
 e G. R. 65
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Moses' father-in-law objected to this; and 
 they had an argument about it. Here is the 
 way the Bible puts it : 
 
 The thing that thou doest is not good. 
 
 Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this peo- 
 ple that is with thee : for this thing is too heavy for 
 thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. 
 
 Decidedly the old man was, in this instance, 
 wiser than Moses, as witness his following 
 remarks to Moses : 
 
 Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, 
 and God shall be with thee: Be thou for the people 
 to Godward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto 
 God: 
 
 And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and 
 shalt shew them . . . the work that they must do. 
 
 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able 
 men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetous- 
 ness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thou- 
 sands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and 
 rulers of tens: 
 
 And let them judge the people at all seasons: and 
 it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring 
 unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: 
 so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear 
 the burden with thee. 
 66
 
 MOSES THE LAW-GIVER 
 
 Moses saw the good sense of that, and in- 
 stantly adopted the idea. There again was 
 greatness. A great man is not he who thinks 
 up everything for himself. The great man is 
 he who is hospitable to ideas, no matter from 
 what source they come. 
 
 So this was the origin of the judicial system 
 of tire Jewish people. 
 
 Very soon Moses saw that practical judg- 
 ments were not enough. The people must have 
 moral laws and observe them from generation 
 to generation until they were transformed into 
 human character. So God delivered to him 
 the Ten Commandments, which he delivered to 
 the Jewish people; and these commandments, 
 handed down from Sinai, are, with the modifi- 
 cations which the Saviour made, the founda- 
 tion of the morality of all the civilized world 
 in the twentieth century. 
 
 That is a vast thing, when you think about 
 it. All the righteousness of the world is con- 
 densed into a few sentences given to a semi- 
 barbarous people thousands and thousands of 
 
 67
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 years ago, and perfected by our Lord two thou- 
 sand years ago. I defy any man to read the 
 Bible without being immensely interested, and 
 also without acquiring a respect amounting al- 
 most to awe for the mind and conscience that 
 could have devised it this at least, if indeed, 
 like myself, you do not come to see that it was 
 more than a human wisdom; it was entirely a 
 Divine Wisdom. 
 
 Now we get to the laws of Moses. I do not 
 think that the lawyers that are being developed 
 now are so good as our earlier lawyers; be- 
 cause not many of them read the Bible, and 
 very few, indeed, are well grounded in it. In 
 a former time, boys who afterward became 
 lawyers were really deeply read in the ordi- 
 nances of the first and greatest law-givers of 
 the world the ancient Hebrews. You will be 
 astonished to find how the roots of our law run 
 back to the Hebrew encampments in the wilder- 
 ness. But there is not time to trace out that 
 most engaging connection. 
 
 Let us take a few of these statutes as ex- 
 68
 
 MOSES THE LAW-GIVER 
 
 atnples of wonderful and exceedingly practical 
 human wisdom. The very first thing we notice 
 is a tendency toward liberty even toward 
 democracy; for you must know that the 
 Jewish people were the first champions of 
 liberty the world ever saw. Don't forget that 
 it was a time when slavery was universal. Yet, 
 here is this law : 
 
 If them buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall 
 serve : and in the seventh he shall go out free for 
 nothing. 
 
 There are many and rigid laws against 
 murder, wounding and fighting of all kinds 
 evidently Moses' people were very hot-blooded. 
 Here again the tendency toward freedom oc- 
 curs Moses never lost an opportunity to make 
 an excuse to set servants free. For example: 
 
 And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the 
 eye of his maid, that it perish ; he shall let him go 
 free for his eye's sake. 
 
 And the same of a tooth. 
 The law of damages is minute; and up to 
 an hundred years ago the preceding thou- 
 
 69
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 sands of years had wrought very little improve- 
 ment in it. In some respects the laws of Moses 
 were better than ours. 
 
 For all manner of trespass . . . the cause of both 
 parties shall come before the judges; and whom the 
 judges shall condemn, he shall pay double unto his 
 neighbor. 
 
 In the more delicate affairs of life the laws 
 of Moses were most humane, considerate and 
 just in some respects much more so than our 
 own to-day. And occasionally he rises to the 
 heights of Him of the Mount of Olives, as, 
 for example, in his famous ordinance: 
 
 Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. 
 
 And this was not only moral law, but a prac- 
 tical rule of action and punishment rigidly en- 
 forced. And his laws against usury are equally 
 effective. 
 
 The foregoing laws are pretty good, are they 
 not? But, mind you, they are only the begin- 
 nings the first attempts of Moses. Here are 
 some examples after he got thoroughly trained 
 70
 
 MOSES THE LAW-GIVER 
 
 to his work. We must note that the very first 
 and most numerous of these concern the health 
 of the people. From the time of Moses until 
 this day, the most perfect laws of hygiene ever 
 developed were the health ordinances of the 
 great Hebrew law-giver: 
 
 Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and 
 cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat. 
 
 But they were forbidden to eat anything else, 
 and, as we know to-day, for most excellent 
 scientific reasons. And as to water-animal life : 
 
 Whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the 
 seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. 
 
 But everything else in the waters were "an 
 abomination." Then he enumerates all the 
 kinds of birds they may not eat. Every kind 
 of scavenger on water, on land or in the air 
 was condemned. Moses was so particular 
 about it that he commanded that 
 
 Whosoever toucheth the carcase of them shall be 
 unclean until the even.
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Even to the varieties of fowl, fish and beast 
 to which Moses confined the Israelites he ap- 
 plied the most searching methods to determine 
 whether even these were in good health. I 
 know nothing more impressive than this fact, 
 that down to twenty-fi>e years ago the most 
 perfect method to determine whether any bird, 
 fish or animal was healthful was the Jewish 
 method of Moses. In America, up to the time 
 of our Meat Inspection Law, the Kosher 
 slaughter-houses were the most scientifically 
 hygienic in all the thousands of years from the 
 time of Moses. 
 
 Take, for example, the precautions in de- 
 termining the wholesomeness of beef. In the 
 Kosher slaughter-house the animal is elevated 
 by the hind quarters, so that all the blood runs 
 toward the head. Then the throat is cut by a 
 single stroke of a long knife, designed for this 
 purpose; and every drop of the blood is 
 drained away. The animal is then cut open 
 and the hand inserted and the sides within 
 carefully felt to see whether there are any ad- 
 J*
 
 MOSES THE LAW-GIVER 
 
 hesions. If a single one is felt the animal is 
 condemned. The lungs are blown into, and if 
 the least air escapes the animal is condemned. 
 And so on with other like precautions, every 
 one of which, as we now know, is entirely 
 scientific. And yet this practice is not one whit 
 different to-day than it was in the days of 
 Moses. 
 
 The truth is that the Jews are the only peo- 
 ple who as a people, and speaking by and large, 
 have been eating wholesome meat for several 
 thousand years. Sometimes this entails sac- 
 rifice among the poor. For example, I know 
 of one instance where a Jewish family in Ger- 
 many had fattened a fowl for one of their holi- 
 days. As they were required to do, they took 
 it to the priest, who, upon examination accord- 
 ing to the Mosaic rules, found it unwhole- 
 some. This family immediately sold it to 
 Christians in open market, as they had a per- 
 fect right to do, because the Christians were 
 then eating, and have always been eating, a 
 good, fat fowl without ever thinking whether 
 
 73
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 there was anything the matter with it or not 
 We sometimes wonder at the amazing 
 vitality of the Jews their physical persistence 
 as a people but if you read the laws of Moses 
 and reflect that they have been observed rigidly 
 even to this day, wonder begins to dissolve. 
 
 Of course, I cannot devote too much space 
 to the laws of Moses; but suffer one or two 
 further examples. Nothing shows the deep 
 statesmanship of this wonderful man and his 
 craft in the service of liberty so much as his 
 institution of the year of the Jubilee, which 
 came every fifty years. In that year every 
 bondsman went free and every man returned to 
 his own possessions. 
 
 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim 
 liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants 
 thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall 
 return every man unto his possession, and ye shall re- 
 turn every man unto his family. 
 
 Everybody set free; all debts discharged; 
 all mortgages lifted. It was something for the 
 people to look forward to. They were not to 
 
 74
 
 MOSES THE LAW-GIVER 
 
 be eternally chained to existing conditions. 
 There was to be a new deal all around. What 
 a large wisdom what a far-seeing justice! 
 It is far beyond anything of which we are 
 capable to-day. Any person preaching that 
 doctrine to-day would surely be called an 
 anarchist. 
 
 The large tolerance and nobility of mercy 
 in the laws of Moses, even with all of their 
 rigor, are inspiring. For example, if a man 
 got to be so poor that he had to sell his posses- 
 sions, any of his kin could come around to the 
 buyer and redeem them. With us in this 
 twentieth century when a man sells anything it 
 is gone for good and all, no matter why he had 
 to sell it. The Mosaic law of redemption ap- 
 plies now only to tax sales. 
 
 The Mosaic laws on divorce contain the 
 highest justice toward woman the world ever 
 saw down to the time of Christ. Before Moses 
 (and, excepting only among the Jewish peo- 
 ple after him, for that matter), a man put 
 away his wife at will, and she was more or 
 
 75
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 less an outcast. But with Moses there was 
 a regular bill of divorcement. Everything is 
 so full of common-sense. For example, take 
 these statutes concerning the honeymoon: 
 
 When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not 
 go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any 
 business : but he shall be free at home one year, and 
 shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken. 
 
 This was not only kindness and an under- 
 standing of the situation; but it was great 
 shrewdness, also. The man would probably be 
 worth very little that year, anyhow. I must 
 again repeat the element of mercy running 
 through the laws of Moses, and in an age, re- 
 member, when mercy was very little heard of 
 or understood. For example : 
 
 Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother: 
 or, 
 
 No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone 
 to pledge: for he.taketh a man's life to pledge: 
 
 or, 
 
 76
 
 MOSES THE LAW-GIVER 
 
 If a man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge : 
 In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again 
 
 when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his 
 
 own raiment, and bless thee: 
 
 or, 
 
 Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor 
 and needy. ... At his day thou shalt give him his 
 hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is 
 poor and setteth his heart upon it: 
 
 or, 
 
 When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, 
 and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go 
 again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the 
 fatherless, and for the widow: 
 
 or, 
 
 When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go 
 over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, 
 for the fatherless, and for the widow. 
 
 When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, 
 thou shalt not glean it afterward : it shall be for the 
 stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. 
 
 This mercy extended even to the animals, 
 as, for example: 
 
 77
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out 
 the corn. 
 
 Or take this, at a time, remember, when 
 everybody thought it perfectly right to cheat 
 even the ancestors of Moses himself, as wit- 
 ness the deceit of Esau and the trick of Jacob 
 played upon Laban. Moses would have none 
 of that, and said : 
 
 Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a 
 great and a small. 
 
 But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight. 
 
 In short, go over the laws of Moses. They 
 will surprise you much more than any flimsy 
 sensation that you see in the newspapers, and 
 they will instruct you mightily. They are 
 golden hours indeed one spends with this 
 master wise man of the ancient time, states- 
 man and law-giver, dreamer and man of affairs, 
 physician and poet. 
 
 Finally, Moses came to his end. How 
 grandly tragic was his final day! He never 
 set foot in the promised land toward which he 
 had led his people. But he was permitted to 
 78
 
 MOSES THE LAW-GIVER 
 
 look upon it. Indeed, that is the most, it 
 seems, that is permitted to the vastly great. 
 They see the vision ; they plan the march ; they 
 captain the advance but they enter not into 
 the fulfillment. And so Moses, the greatest of 
 the great, went up into Mount Nebo, and the 
 promised land unrolled before him. And then 
 the great one fell. His work was finished, and 
 he fell. And, a hundred and twenty years 
 though he was, "his eye was not dim, nor his 
 natural force abated." 
 
 79
 
 VIII. JOSEPH THE DREAMER. 
 
 In writing of the courtship of Rebekah, I 
 said that there were two pictures that I should 
 like to paint. The other picture is that of "The 
 Dreamer" the dreamer, Joseph. For Joseph, 
 like all men who achieve great things, was a 
 dreamer in his youth, and a dreamer for all his 
 life; but he was a doer and an achiever as 
 well as a dreamer. In these dreams, too, there 
 was a vast egotism another common trait of 
 all mountainous characters. For example, 
 there was Caesar, with his "/ came, / saw, / 
 conquered" ; there was Caesar telling every- 
 body in the apparently sinking ship to fear not, 
 "you carry Caesar and his fortunes." So I 
 could go on with almost numberless illustra- 
 tions: Gibbon, in literature, Bismarck, Ito, 
 Frederick, Alexander, Cromwell, Rhodes, 
 Gladstone, Napoleon, Disraeli indeed, every- 
 
 6 G. R. 8l
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 body big enough to be remembered Wesley, 
 Loyola, Mohammed, Carlyle or Ben Jonson 
 every mountainous character, I tell you. 
 
 I have heard "two by four" persons com- 
 plain daintily, and fiercely jealous ones de- 
 nounce violently, Roosevelt for "his egotism." 
 It's no whit different from Joseph's or David's, 
 or any of the really great of human history. 
 Emerson explains it all as he explains nearly 
 everything. (Read Emerson, a little, at least, 
 every day, as well as the Bible. ) Who but one 
 with an immortal confidence in himself, his 
 own rectitude and the actual and potential 
 greatness of the American nation, could rightly 
 represent this tremendous, incalculably vast 
 and effective aye, and most confident force 
 in the world, called the American people? It 
 is this same kind of peculiar egotism that 
 characterizes the dreams of Joseph. But 
 you will remember, of course, his two principal 
 dreams. 
 
 The first was about himself and his brethren, 
 and the Bible ^uts it thus in the words of 
 82
 
 JOSEPH THE DREAMER 
 
 Joseph : "Hear, I pray you, this dream which 
 I have dreamed : 
 
 "For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, 
 and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright ; and, 
 behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made 
 obeisance to my sheaf." 
 
 And the other dream is described with equal 
 brevity and vividness: 
 
 "And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his 
 brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream 
 more: and, behold, the sun and the moon and the 
 eleven stars made obeisance to me." 
 
 That meant, of course, as the story explains, 
 that not only did his brothers bow down to him 
 but his father and mother also. It was quite 
 natural that a man of this peculiar imaginative 
 temperament should be called "The Dreamer," 
 as indeed he was, and also that he should have 
 been as unpopular with his brethren as he was 
 popular with his infatuated father. 
 
 One day, his brethren went to shear and feed 
 their father's sheep in Shechem. His father, 
 Israel, sent Joseph out to find his brethren. He 
 
 83
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 had a little difficulty in finding them, for they 
 had moved on to another place called Dothan. 
 There Joseph proceeded. When he was quite 
 afar off one of his brothers saw him coming, 
 but Joseph did not see them. Oh, no ! he was 
 "dreaming." You can see him now if you will 
 close your eyes lithe and strong and fine, 
 wandering slowly, and his great dark eyes filled 
 with visions of another time and of another 
 land, of great enterprises and splendid duties 
 and mighty deeds dreaming, always dream- 
 ing, and with the dreamer's halo about him. 
 
 Again it was drawing toward evening, we 
 may well believe. The sun was sinking behind 
 the western hills; the trees were silhouetted 
 against the sky; and down in the valley the 
 brethren attending the sheep, and toward them 
 with unseeing and yet all-seeing eyes came 
 Joseph, the dreamer; and when his brothers 
 saw him coming, they said one to another : 
 "Behold, this dreamer cometh." Why has not 
 some great artist painted that marvelous pic- 
 ture? 
 84
 
 IX. ST. PAUL: ORATOR AND MISSIONARY. 
 
 Now for another turn of the Scriptural cine- 
 matograph; for the Great Volume is just that, 
 revealing successive pictures, startling changes, 
 no two alike and all interesting; that's the 
 point I'm making now the Bible is "interest- 
 ing." Well then, some oratory. 
 
 Everybody is interested in oratory. Some 
 of us may think we are not. But let such a 
 scoffer at the power of speech fall under the 
 spell of a master of the art and he changes his 
 mind. So, let us take the master effort of 
 the most finished orator of ancient times, and 
 possibly of all time of course, you know that 
 I am referring to Paul's oration on Mars' Hill. 
 We hear this perfect example of the art of 
 oratory read to us and get very little of its 
 meaning, none of its beauty, and absolutely no 
 idea whatever of the power with which it was 
 
 85
 
 spoken and of its almost hypnotic effect over 
 Paul's difficult audience. It is hard, of course, 
 to get it to you in cold type. But, perhaps, 
 we can get some notion of it. 
 
 In the first place, then, remember that Paul 
 was a man of finished education. He had been 
 very decidedly a mart of the world. There was 
 little that anybody could teach him. It is easy 
 to see how, after his conversion, he became 
 by common consent the leading advocate of 
 Christianity. He went about preaching 
 the gospel with inspired eloquence and with 
 a logic that no man before or since has 
 equaled. 
 
 This was the state of affairs when he came 
 to Athens. The Athens of that time was in her 
 decadence. She had reached the height of her 
 achievements in the time of Pericles heights 
 so lofty and made by her genius so brilliant that 
 they yet flame before our eyes across the cen- 
 turies. In Paul's time Athens was the center 
 of a super-civilized, overeducated, decadent 
 people. The Athenians believed in nothing, 
 86
 
 ST. PAUL : ORATOR AND MISSIONARY 
 
 and, like all agnostics, were really superstitious 
 about everything. The Bible says that 
 
 All the Athenians and strangers which were there 
 spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or 
 to hear some new thing. 
 
 So when Paul came among them they were 
 interested, curious, amused. Here was "some- 
 thing new" at last. So they asked Paul to ex- 
 ploit his doctrines, and, of course, he consented. 
 That's what he was there for. They took him 
 to the Areopagus, saying: 
 
 May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou 
 speakest, is? 
 
 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: 
 we would know therefore what these things mean. 
 
 Paul understood his audience. He waited 
 till there was absolute silence until you could 
 "hear a pin drop," as our saying has it. And 
 then quite naturally, as though he were utter- 
 ing the most commonplace truism imaginable, 
 he began his immortal address, as follows : 
 
 Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you 
 are too superstitious. 
 
 87
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Then he paused. That sentence fixed them 
 absolutely chained their attention. He 
 struck them at their weakest point; for, al- 
 though they were the most superstitious of 
 creatures, they prided themselves that they 
 were not superstitious at all. After a moment, 
 when he had let this thunderbolt of a sentence 
 penetrate into their very souls, he went on prov- 
 ing the statement by example (and here the 
 rules of the art are perfectly observed; you 
 must support each statement by an illustration). 
 So he continued : 
 
 For, as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I 
 found an altar with this inscription, To THE UNKNOWN 
 GOD. 
 
 Undoubtedly this sentence was delivered 
 with a little more earnestness, but still not 
 much. It was a mere matter of fact. But he 
 delivered it with a little more earnestness; so 
 that the following sentence, which was to be 
 spoken with fervor, might not be too abrupt. 
 For the next sentence captured that audience.
 
 ST. PAUL : ORATOR AND MISSIONARY 
 
 Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare 
 I unto you. 
 
 This was not shouted, we know very well; 
 but we also know that it was uttered with an 
 earnestness and a physical and nervous power 
 which was all the more overwhelming because 
 not violent. In three sentences he had caught 
 their attention, challenged their pride, illus- 
 trated it, and reached the climax of his exor- 
 dium. 
 
 To describe the remainder of this oration 
 would be merely to repeat it. It is the shortest 
 important speech ever made, excepting only 
 Lincoln's undying Gettysburg address. In less 
 than one hundred and fifty words he put the 
 argument for and assertion of the living God, 
 of salvation and of the resurrection of the dead. 
 And in doing this he even included a quotation 
 from the Greek poets. It is all very simple, 
 powerful, convincing. 
 
 When he had closed, some mocked. But 
 others said, "We will hear thee again on this 
 matter." So Paul accomplished what he came 
 
 89
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 to Athens to do. He had planted the seed. He 
 had aroused interest. He had spoken words 
 that his hearers could never forget words that 
 would be in their minds when they went to 
 rest, and in their hearts when, awakening, they 
 arose from their couches. 
 
 I recommend you to read, just as a matter 
 of entertainment, the whole story of Saul's con- 
 version and, as the renamed Paul, of his travels, 
 adventures and final end. And if in the search 
 for "good reading" you want a little very solid, 
 very sensible and very beautiful ethics phil- 
 osophy that passes that of Emerson, both in 
 its charm and in its truthfulness (and that is 
 saying a good deal) then read the twelfth of 
 Romans.
 
 X. CONCLUSION. 
 
 This little book draws rapidly to a close and 
 yet I have said almost nothing about the 
 Saviour. Somehow or other I couldn't bring 
 myself to it. The story of our Lord, as a 
 mere matter of fascinating reading is above the 
 charm of any narrative you will find. His 
 divinity aside, the practical wisdom of his say- 
 ings exceeds those of Solomon. But what he 
 did, what he lived and what he said cannot be 
 retold with an infinitesimal part of the enter- 
 tainment which the gospels themselves give. 
 That is true, of course, of the whole Bible 
 true of Moses, of Joshua and David and the 
 rest but with the Master, somehow, "it's dif- 
 ferent." 
 
 I never read any essay upon our Lord but 
 with a certain kind of repulsion. He needs no 
 interpreter; comment and commentary on
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 Him seem sacrilege of course, such a view is 
 undoubtedly unreasonable and unintelligent, 
 but I just feel that way about it. The only 
 worth-while study of our Redeemer is that of 
 Renan, and he, as everybody knows, was an in- 
 fidel and tries to prove the Saviour no Re- 
 deemer at all. But you, reader, you read the 
 life and words of Jesus of Nazareth as given in 
 the gospels just as you read them for your- 
 self. That's all I suggest. And, take my word 
 for it, you'll not find them dull. 
 
 I think that we Americans are falling into 
 the same trouble that the men of Athens had 
 fallen into at the time of Paul's immortal ora- 
 tion on Mars' Hill. The men of Athens were 
 continually looking for "something new" as 
 we are told, the Athenians and the strangers 
 there spent their time in nothing but telling 
 or hearing some new thing. 
 
 But the Bible is full of the most extraor- 
 dinary experiences that few people know any- 
 thing about. They are tucked away here and 
 there throughout this astonishing volume. As 
 9*
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 I have said before, they are of every kind, too. 
 Incidents of love of the most passionate and 
 yet the tenderest and the most self-sacrificing 
 kind ; incidents of anger that set our blood on 
 fire even in the reading of them; incidents 
 of the blacker passions rioting unrestrained, 
 wanton and desperate; incidents of craft and 
 cunning more subtle than those told by Conan 
 Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes, or by that mas- 
 ter of all modern writers of plot and intrigue, 
 Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 Perhaps the most engaging as well as most 
 surprising of all achievements of Bible char- 
 acters is the work of the world's greatest law- 
 giver, Moses. You shall find that it is almost 
 inconceivable that any man should rise among 
 a people so oppressed as the Hebrews had been 
 in Egypt and so savage as they became after 
 the Exodus who could write statutes of such 
 practical wisdom, such depth and forethought 
 as are the laws of Moses. 
 
 I have advised every law student who has 
 ever consulted me to study the laws of Moses 
 
 93
 
 THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING 
 
 before he begins his Blackstone, and keep on 
 studying the laws of Moses after he has com- 
 pleted his law course. And then keep on study- 
 ing the laws of Moses all during his practice. 
 And, best of all, these ordinances of the ancient 
 Hebrews are not a bit heavy and musty as are 
 most law books. They are bright, keen, con- 
 densed and to the point. In short, they are 
 "good reading." 
 
 The Bible is the most quotable book in all 
 literature. You may take Shakespeare and 
 Dante together, take Milton and Horace, put 
 in the Koran and Confucius, and then boil 
 them all down, and the quotable things in all 
 of them put together are but a fraction of the 
 sayings in the Bible that fasten themselves in 
 your mind. 
 
 [THE END] 
 
 94
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 995 236 7