friends who are friends by tradition and hearsay, not from close acquaintance.

The Bible suffers in the hands of its friends, suffers from being neglected. The rank and file of the membership of the churches are letting the Bible alone, believing it and respecting it, but leaving it untouched. The statement has been ventured that two-thirds or three-fourths of the membership of the average Christian Church do not open the Book oftener than once a month. Whatever the statistical truth may be, it is not to be doubted that the churches are filled with members who are little more than casual readers of the Scripture. The percentage that is doing real Bible study is no doubt alarmingly small. If any minister, teacher, or leader is prepared to question these statements, it must be that he has had the "Isles of the Blessed" or the "Delectable Mountains" as the field of observation and labor.

The church as a whole cannot be said to be alive to the Word of God. It fears the drudgery of searching the Scripture, and knows far too little of the joy and plenitude of it. No problem of church life equals this one; yet it has scarcely received adequate attention in modern study of church questions. Questions of organization, of theology, of extension, have received large attention. Meantime the greatest of all questions-how to reach the people efficiently with the Word-has been too lightly considered.

Neither is there as much encouragement in the work of young people's organizations as could be desired.

It is true that the Bible has been more in

the hands of the young people of this generation than any other. It is also true that the methods of using the Bible in vogue in these organizations has not been as a rule promotive of real interest in the Scripture. The expression of the Christian life. through testimony and organization has been until now the dominant issue. The need of the solidification of study is only beginning to appear. As these organizations enter, as they are bound to do soon, if indeed the transition is not already well under way, upon the second stage of their history, it is devoutly to be wished that they might be wisely led into a more careful and more educative use of the Scripture. There is even now a great task awaiting the appointed leaders in the Church of Christ. It is the task of conserving the energies of the young forces of the church, of giving full scope to their fresh enthusiasm, and at the same time securing their hearty response to the worth and attractiveness of the Word of God, thus opening the way to a new education. Such a second stage in the development of young people's work might be characterized by a higher quality of work, by methods of genuine productiveness. If the first stage has been marked by aggression, the second should be marked by aggression based upon concentration. One of the great needs of the church to-day is for some institute work for young people, with the Scripture as its basis and material.*

It is no longer regarded as a sign of hostility to speak of the imperfections of Sabbath School work. No one thinks of denying the tremendous effective

* See Chapter XIII, "The Scripture and Childhood."

ness of the Sabbath School in the last hundred years. From the beginning it has been a powerful and constantly growing arm of the church, enlisting many of the most gifted sons and daughters of the church in its work. Yet in one respect the Sabbath School has been a stupendous failure. Notwithstanding it is organized to do the work of a school, it has produced no intensive education in the Bible, neither has it created by its methods of study a widespread feeling of interest and enthusiasm. Whilst secular education has constantly advanced both in ideal and method, religious education in the Sabbath School has witnessed a very slow development. Many of the most ardent friends of the Sabbath School are now thoroughly awake to this situation, and the signs of progress are multiplying. The fact that many of the children of the church spend ten years or more in the church school, and come out with a very limited store of scriptural knowledge, and with little interest in the Book itself, ought to be a fact of great significance for students of Sabbath School work.*

The work of the home in fostering the influence of the Bible, and creating a real love for it, has been greatly weakened. No other source of anxiety is so great as this. The Bible is pre-eminently the Book of the home. In the soil of the home the roots of its influence are calculated to sink the deepest. If we could find ways of reinstating the Bible in the home, all are agreed that the problem of religious education would obtain speedy relief.

The pulpit cannot be omitted in a survey of the

*See Chapter XIII, "The Scripture and Childhood."

facts bearing upon popular interest in the Bible. Whatever new elements of strength the pulpit may have discovered, it is very evident that its strength is not so manifestly the strength of the Word of God as it once was. It is a real source of dismay that in the time when many things have called the minds of the people away from the fascination of the Book, the pulpit should have swerved at all from its call to "preach the Word." The studies of this volume are intended to lay emphasis upon the responsibility of the pulpit as one of the chief educational forces of the church, and to urge the use of such methods of public instruction as are calculated to intensify the biblical atmosphere of the pulpit and at the same time make for popular interest in the Word of God.*

The fact plainly stated is that the church is not interesting the people enough in the chief instrument of its life. There is little popular ardor for the Scripture. Original interest is not being awakened; the people are not being impelled in large numbers to first-hand contact with the Scripture; the church's teachers are not producing popular relish for the Bible. Candor compels the admission that while the church is doing many things well, the methods of its work are not, except in limited areas, making for interest in the Book. The phenomenon to which our attention is addressed is this, that in the increase of human interests, the multiplication of knowledge, the growth of literature, science, taste, education, refinement, the Bible has partly fallen out. Why has not the Bible profited by the growth of reading

* See Chapter XII, "The Strength of the Pulpit."

habits among the people? Why has not interest in the Bible kept pace with interest in other literature? Some would find a theological or a moral cause for the difference, but we are led to suspect that there is another cause-we have not taken sufficient pains to invest the Bible with interest. Hence we have a more or less educated public that is assiduous in its devotion to the attractive forms of literature, following eagerly the ancient and modern works of the imagination in prose and poetry, giving no little attention to history, to philosophy, to science, to government, to many questions of human welfare and conduct that have passed into some form of literary expression. But the same educated public furnishes for the most part only casual readers of the Bible.

There are general tokens of the popular lapse of the Bible that cannot be passed by. One is the growing lack of familiarity with the Scripture. There is, in fact, difference of opinion at this point, some holding that the Bible is even more in the hearts of the people than before. The general impression, however, is that the Scripture is constantly falling behind in the educational progress of the people. Very high authorities have spoken upon this subject. The forty-first annual convention of the National Education Association, deploring the exclusion of the Bible from the schools in many of the states, said, "It is apparent that familiarity with the English Bible as a masterpiece of literature is rapidly decreasing among the pupils in our schools." A professor of literature in one of the largest of the state universities stated in public that the greatest hin