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lar knowledge and appreciation of the Bible certainly warrants the conclusion, that the greatest of all problems for the church's teachers and leaders is the problem of bringing the people under the fas cination of the Book.

III

THE SURPRISE OF SCRIPTURE

No

CHARLES READE, the novelist, somewhere states that at the suggestion of Sir Edwin Arnold he took up the Old Testament and read it as if it were a new book to him. It is interesting to contemplate this gifted writer, with his imaginative temperament, coming to the Bible in such a frame of mind. doubt he would meet with many genuine surprises. He would come upon many unexpected discoveries. He would open for himself many new sources of delight. He would find material for imagination and stimulus for thought before undreamed of. In short, he would undergo the very pleasant experience of having an inviting picture of his mind turn into a reality-the Bible would become a new Book to him.

The advice upon which Mr. Reade acted is sufficient to put any thoughtful teacher or preacher of the Word in a "brown study." Two things are immediately suggested. First. That this method of approach to the Bible must be the secret of every wise method. Second. That there exists a widespread mental condition in respect to the Bible which demands a cure.

The method suggested is in reality not a method at all. It is rather an attitude, a mental state. We have often observed how a child will return again

and again to the reading of the same book, each time with some new element of interest. It remains a new book to him. Even the adult mind knows something of this experience. There are certain books that have travelled with us through all the “tract of years." An active man of business related to the author how from boyhood he had periodically reread a certain book that he loved, and had never failed to enjoy it.*

Another thing to be noted in this connection is the keen regret which the mind often feels in the reading of a book a second or third time, that it is not now the first reading, in order that the relish and novelty of first contact might be a present experience. This regret, however, is overcome in part in the case of a really valuable book, for the mind will continue from time to time to break into new meanings of the book, and make ever new discoveries of strength or beauty. The expectation that good books will be read and re-read is a part of the commercial estimate. When an author dies, for instance, the publishers proceed at once to new editions, knowing that many will read the old books again with new

* Lord Macaulay, who was an omnivorous reader, was accustomed to re-read his books many times. I have no pleasure in books," he wrote, "which equals that of reading over for the hundredth time great productions which I almost know by heart." A record in his journal says, "Home, and I have read Gil Blas.' Charming! I am never tired of it." Addressing an assembly of business and working men in England, Mr. John Morley, the biographer of Gladstone, said, "It is a great mistake to think that, because you have read a masterpiece once, twice, or ten times, therefore you have done with it. Because it is a masterpiece, you ought to live with it, and make it part of your daily life."

zest. This question of keeping interest awake and alert is really at the bottom of successful teaching. All methods are inadequate that do not in some way promote and appeal to that lively state of the mind called interest. To bring a scholar back to an old book and make it seem new to him, to invest familiar realms of thought with fascination, to prevent old things from gathering rust, and becoming inert and dull to the mind-in short, to keep the mind alive with the novelty of truth, is the secret of all education, whether secular or religious. It was a profound insight into this truth of education that led our Lord to speak of the scribe instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven as "like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”

It is a strange conceit, but not unwarranted, that it would be a happy experience if we could for the time being forget all that we have learned of the Bible, and suddenly on a given day, like the finding of Paley's watch, discover the Book, as it would appear for the first time. The reason for this halfformed wish lies in the fact that the mind likes to indulge itself in surprises. Real lovers of literature understand this perfectly. Imagine, for instance, the charm of the patriarchal stories read for the first time in our present state of knowledge. Or imagine the thrill with which a sensitive person would uncover for the first time the stories of Moses and wandering Israel, of David and his struggles and victories, of the scores of scenes and incidents that make the pages of the Old Testament alive with interest. Or think how memorable the day would

be on which with trembling fingers one would turn for the first time the pages of the fourfold story of Jesus and his Cross-the story that has made the world a new world. Missionaries tell us that just such experiences frequently occur in their work. To the heathen the surprise of Scripture is a literal fact. In a famous passage in his Short History of the English People Green recites the story of how an entire people was brought into first contact with the Scripture. It was towards the close of Elizabeth's reign when the Scripture was set up to be read in the hearing of the people, and great crowds came to listen, as its words "fell on ears which custom had not deadened to their force and beauty."*

The historian's words just quoted very aptly suggest a widespread feeling about the Bible. The ears of many have been deadened to its "force and beauty." Humdrum is the word which expresses, for a great many, the mind's attitude towards the Scripture. Familiarity has hardly bred contempt; but custom has at least dulled the edge of novelty. The Bible is an old Book to a multitude, whereas it is calculated, like the books of our childhood, to be ever new and engaging, ever worthy of repeated readings. The natural result has come that very many members of the church have closed the Book, and ceased to search its pages. It does not occur to them that they might go back to the Bible, as Charles Reade went to the Old Testament, to read it as if it were new to them. They do not suspect that coming to the Scripture thus would bring out surprises on

* Chapter VIII, "On the English Puritans."

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