of the effects wrought in human history by this simple narrative of the Old Testament.

6. Dare one speak of imagination in relation to Jesus Christ and Salvation? There is abundant warrant for doing so. "Is Jesus a real person to you? Is the Cross a realizable fact to you?" It is admitted that such questions as these have the highest pertinence. They suggest again the function of imagination. That the New Testament begins with a fourfold story of the life of Christ is a fact of the greatest significance. It is clearly intended that the picture of Christ should be an active factor in our faith. The request with which the Greeks came to the disciples, "Sir, we would see Jesus," is the perpetual need of faith, for Christianity inheres in his Person. The Gospels furnish the greatest of all fields for the imagination, because one cannot take a single step in them without meeting the Person whose story they unfold. As we read the four biographies, does Jesus emerge from history and stand out before the mind? Does he become to us sweetly companionable as the Friend of sinners? Do the scenes of his life seem actual and near, as if they were recounted of one whom we know? Do we seem to take our places among his disciples and follow the Master from Judea to Galilee, and into Samaria, by the lake, and to the mountain-top? These questions show us how necessary it is that one should read the story of Christ's life with such sympathy and insight as imagination can furnish. Yes, it is true, we are to imagine Christ. And the Cross also, as the tragic climax of his life. Imagination, as faith's assistant, takes the divine act of self-sacri

fice on the Cross and brings it into contact with Sin. Bunyan's imagination sees the effect of the Cross so clearly that he draws a picture in his great Allegory of the pilgrim travelling with a burden on his back, only to have the burden slip away from him at sight of the Cross and go rolling into a near-by cavity like a tomb. To the natural heart the Cross is a stumbling-block, but imagination clothes it with divine reality and potency. Yes, we are to imagine the Cross, to gain insight into its meaning, and to reconstruct the fact into the spiritual reality of personal salvation.

7. Abundant suggestion to the teacher and the preacher is contained in the foregoing considerations. The point to be insisted upon is that the function of one who teaches the Bible is, not merely to communicate its contents to other minds, but to make its contents live, to give to them for others the savor of interest, of feeling, of life. The great preachers are always men of imagination. They see truth en large, they discern its pictorial values, they are able to rehabilitate it for every-day use. They see Jesus walking, not only in Judea and Galilee, but also on the streets of our towns, up and down the church aisles, and the corridors of hospitals and prisons. All who teach the Scripture need most of all to cultivate the sense of reality. There is one very simple rule for all who communicate the Word. Give the lesson a body, which is the form of teaching. But do not fail to breathe into the body the breath of life, by which are meant interest, feeling, power, inspiration-most of all, reality. Imagination lies very close to the heart.

V

THE ZEST OF HISTORY

It is our special task to point out the qualities of the Scripture that make for interest, and to indicate some methods by which the teacher and preacher may avail themselves of these qualities. Fundamental to all of these is the value of history.

"To understand anything we must know its history. Yet the writer of this terse sentence is careful to recognize that understanding is not the chief benefit of history. "The study of history," he adds, "is chiefly valuable for its moral significance and influence." Its greater and more potent work lies in "helping to excite the emotions and move the will," in stirring to activity "the forces and agencies that build up character, that indicate duty and that prompt action." No study of the interest of the Bible for mankind and of the methods for fixing that interest more strongly upon the mind, is complete without the recognition of two facts: the place which history holds in the natural education of mind and heart, and the place which history holds in the Bible.

As a matter of fact the "historical spirit” is a constant factor in popular education. The feeling, if not the love, for history, is almost universal. The rise of the historical school so-called is the belated

* History, Prophecy and the Monuments, by J. F. McCurdy, vol. i, p. 8.

recognition upon the part of scholars of a tendency of the mind. This general appreciation of the historical form is not of course technical or scientific. It is more properly described as "a feeling." It is almost to be classed among the instincts of the mind. Historians are few, indeed real students of history are also few; yet the thought of the people in general easily falls into historical moulds. The strength of this feeling is in reality a measure of enlightenment. Unenlightened peoples are content with unrecorded traditions, loosely connecting the Present with the Past; enlightened nations observe that the Present is under the dominion of the Past, and for them History is an effort to measure and interpret the influence of yesterday upon to-day. Historical study is basal and constructive; the mind is bound to ask, What is the testimony of experience?

The reasons for the popular appreciation of history are found in such motives as these; the mind's joy in the contact with facts, the satisfaction of continuity, the impression of purpose, the force of example, the strength of action. There are three things that the mind loves; narration, picture, and motion. History obtains value from each of these. It is in form a narrative, presenting facts, incidents, and persons in the interesting sequence of a story; it is pictorial to the extent of depicting scenes and persons for the mind's eye to see; and it represents motion in that unlike the Ancient Mariner's "painted ship upon a painted ocean," it represents real persons engaged in real action. The heart craves reality. The modern historical novel is spoken of as a new product. In truth it is a revival, a reversion to

type. Fiction always confesses its dependence upon fact; the dramas and tragedies of Shakespeare are historical. The whole background of thought, indeed, as expressed in the literature of enlightened peoples, is historical. We are always carrying the facts of life back into the light of the Past; and just as constantly widening the light of the Past by the light of the Present. The element of solidity is lost out of the people's thought, when they are not trained in history.

The simplest forms of historical study are geog raphy and chronology. These have been called "the two eyes of history." It amounts to saying that no one can see the Past without the aid of these eyes. Geography is the solid ground of history; chronology is the chain of history. There is nothing more awakening than intelligent map study, and there is no more valuable contribution to rudimentary historical knowledge than skilful map-making. A wellmade map of modern Africa, for instance, tells the story to the eye of how a continent has been cut into slices in a generation.* It is conceivable that the study of geography might be made a far more efficient means of promoting general historical knowledge than is usually the case.† Dr. Edward Everett

* The author found it easy on one occasion to interest a large audience in a rudely drawn map showing "The Partition of Africa." It was a lesson in current history, with plentiful opportunities to illustrate Providence; besides it was an unconscious lesson in modern missions.

Mr. John R. Mott, in his recently printed plea for leadership in world evangelization entitled, The Pastor and Modern Missions, finds the first element of mission strategy at the opening of the twentieth century in the great developments of geography. He