few sentences more and then the letter closes. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, Amen."

Just the story of how a runaway slave in the first century was led to Christ and restored to his master-and this a book of the New Testament! How otherwise could the power of the gospel to overcome sin, and meet at the same time the social conditions of the day, have been so beautifully and impressively told as in this charming little letter of Paul to Philemon? Infinitely more precious to us is the New Testament because it contains such letters of life.*

* Somewhat in this form the author has told the story of the Epistle to Philemon to many audiences, and invariably with this expression resulting, "I never knew that the New Testament was so interesting."

IX

PURPLE AND FINE LINEN

"BLUE and Purple and Scarlet and fine Linen." From the twenty-fifth chapter of Exodus to the end of the book this descriptive phrase occurs more than a score of times. It is the passage in which the heavenly pattern of the Tabernacle is let down to earth; and it is doubtful if the place of Beauty in Life has ever elsewhere received so strong an emphasis. When John Ruskin came to write of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture”—the building of life as well as the building of houses-he could not omit Beauty from the shining seven.

Canon Farrar states that he once heard the poet Tennyson dwell on the tremendous impression derived from the words "And again they said Hallelujah and her smoke riseth up forever and ever." He himself adds that it may be doubted whether any passage in our greatest writers can equal the magic and haunting charm of the last chapter of Revelation, with its lovely opening words:

"And he showed me a pure river of Water of Life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the Tree of Life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the Tree were for the healing of the Nations."

The characteristic thing, however, about the beauty of the Scripture is that it is not alone the

possession of poets and writers: it is a natural, a world possession, like the beauty of a landscape. Among all the properties of the world, both visible and invisible, there is nothing that men so surely possess as the gracious, pervasive qualities of the Book, which more than any other is the book of the people. Father Faber's words about the attractiveness of the Protestant Bible as one reason for the strength of Protestantism will illustrate our thought. "Who will say," he asks, "that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strong. holds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like a music which can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind and the anchor of national seriousness. The power of all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant, with one spark of seriousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."

It is true that the literary study of the Scripture may be pursued in such a manner as to yield very little spiritual result, much as one might admire the rich arabesque of a Damascus blade, and miss its marvellous flexibility and the keenness of its edge. Nevertheless it is an important method of enamouring the heart that should not be neglected. Doubtless the Old Testament worshipper had his own sense of pride in the beauty of the Tabernacle. Worship must have seemed to him none the less worthy and

all the more fascinating because it was centred in a Sanctuary which did not lack the touch of Beauty, which was not careless of the form in the wealth of spirit. Exactly this combination-an inexhaustible wealth of meaning within, clothed in multiplied forms of beauty without-is found in the Bible. Now the literary study of the Bible consists not alone in the dissection of these outward forms; rather in the study of these forms as the appropriate vehicles of expression. The noblest forms of architecture, as Mr. Ruskin teaches, are those which, besides being attractive in form, have an inward story to tell, a truth to set forth. The baroque and rococo forms of architecture could only maintain themselves in an age that was more concerned with form than with meaning. The ornament of the Bible is not ornament tacked on. It is organic beauty, the kind of beauty that is rooted in substance, that grows out of character, that interprets an inner meaning. This definition of the literary study of the Bible at once furnishes both the teacher and the preacher with a strong instrument of appeal. It is the same appeal that is furnished by the careful study of Nature--the impression of infinite care and pains, the evidence of appreciation in the Author of those instincts of the human mind that love the best. Even as God has made it easy to yield to the fascination of Nature, so he has made it easy to love his Book. Nor is it the least of the duties of the religious teacher to reveal the sources of interest for the mind to be found in the form of the Scripture.

The appreciation of the Bible as Literature is a distinctive part in the process of religious education.

As such it is not by any means confined to persons of literary taste. The educational qualities of the Book are quite within the reach of the average mind. Proof of this is found in the fact that every community has its uneducated persons who are unconscious students of the literary values of the Bible. They could write no dissertations upon the subject; they would indeed find it difficult to explain their own feelings; it is nevertheless plain that they cherish the same feelings for the finer things in the Scripture that become with the literary student a matter of technique. The popular response to the simple beauties of the Word is very much the same as the popular feeling for music. A popular strain in music, a simple ditty, a phrase in the language of life, these find ever an open heart. Let Jenny Lind or Madame Patti sing "Home, Sweet Home," and every heart is responsive. Such popular interest depends not upon technical knowledge; yet it is, since every fine art is reducible in the last analysis to great simplicities, the same in essence as the more technical appreciation of the artist. We insist, therefore, that there is a great unused power for instruction in the ability of the people to appreciate what we call, for lack of a better name, the literary qualities of the Scripture. These are indeed the simplicities of form and expression which lie very near to Nature's heart. Whatever is musical, for example, in the language; whatever is touched alike with high simplicity and grandeur; whatever strikes in upon the solitude of the heart and creates a sense of companionship; whatever refines, sharpens, dignifies, and elevates life; whatever contributes new