to a large conference of college men meeting in North America: "Japan leading Orient, but whither?"

Bible study corrects our individual standards and measurements. It spreads out before us God's plan for human existence. It helps men to put first things first; to see big things big, and small things small. A habit of Bible study is a daily hint that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." To the Bible men have come in all times to find those life visions, where, in Matthew Arnold's words:

The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we say we mean, and what we would, we know.

A man becomes aware of his life's flow,

And hears its winding murmur; and he sees

The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze

And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.

IV-The Church and the Bible

To be sure, the Bible is no longer chained to the altar as in the medieval days, but it has not really come to its own among the thinking men of the church. As yet a beginning only has been made. In certain sections of our country we find a lack of Bible study among men in the church which is fairly pitiable. In short, it would be almost a misnomer to speak of it as Bible study. In many churches one is imprest not so much with a wrong method of Bible study as the entire neglect of the whole question. In the minds of many men the Bible is still a recondite granary of mystifying and otherworldly facts. By many the Book has never really been discovered as a modern guide to personal living, or as a practical motive to service. But the results of modern Biblical thought and research are pressing rapidly into common and universal knowledge. The Christian ignores them at the peril of being both benighted and ridiculous. A missionary told me in India last year, that one of

the first needs with which he was confronted as he arrived in the Orient was the insistent necessity of a thorough mastery and interpretation of the Bible. He found that the heathen world knew the Book of his religion more perfectly than he knew it. In fact, many of these people had studied it, he said, more carefully than they had studied their own sacred vedas.

In some way the church must get its men interested in the Bible. This task, like other important tasks, is not easy. As we visit churches in various parts of the world, the question arises: How many pastors and leaders have really tried to enlist men in the study of this Book? The interesting of men in the Bible involves able and courageous leadership, the study of methods, Bible courses and literature, business ability, money, sacrifice, patience, and, beneath all, an unquenchable conviction that God's revelation in His Word is eternally worth while.

The church needs able, broad-minded, godly men to teach the Bible in men's Bible

classes, in the Bible school, and in connection with discussional groups outside the churches. Who will be responsible for the bringing of the Bible to thoughtful young men? This is a question which must be answered by representative laymen of the church, by students in our colleges, by college graduates, and by the modern ministry. Here is a calling of great importance-a teaching ministry. To popularize and dignify the Bible in the hearts of young men is one of the church's opportunities in this generation. Without real Bible study the church loses objective and spiritual dynamic. To the church, primarily, the Bible is the Book of Life.

V-Modern Call for Character

Above all the voices of our times one discerns the call for character. Politics, business, commerce, and religion are under the search-light of moral reform. A new and wide-spread reassessment of men's characters and motives is now proceeding.

There never was a greater demand than at present for men whose honesty and devotion are not measurable in dollars and cents. Among men who really shape the creeds and the progress of nations, there is decreasing faith in that mammon gospel which Carlyle said was "driven by galvanism and possest by the devil."

The Bible is the first book upon ethics. The moral codes of the Christian Scriptures have worn well and are still operative. Righteousness, which continues to be the eternal foundation of nations, is the groundwork of the Bible. The Bible strikes down injustice and wrong wherever these are found. It is the book of right, of integrity, of sincerity, and reality. Its words are "true, and righteous altogether.”

The Bible assists in character-forming because it reveals us to ourselves as we really are. It is peculiarly personal. The response of the soul to the Bible message is "search me, O God, and know my heart." Herein lie the riches of a personal, daily