have a place. What is true in this land obtains on the Continent. The Old World in its one hundred universities offers no solitary exception to the same law. Unchristian scholars may seek these advantages of learning, yet they owe their thanks to Godfearing men for what they enjoy. In varying shades of thought, these venerable as well as newer seats of learning all rest upon the one only chief Book that invites the keenest criticism in reverence of spirit. Every great institution of learning on the globe is a monument of the power of human faith as revealed in the teachings of the Book of books.

Be it observed further, sound learning is essential to religion and demanded by it. The Bible incites to the reading of all other books. It welcomes every new advance in scientific research, philosophical inquiry and history as a part of its own mission. It is for just this purpose it has founded colleges and universities in addition to schools of lower grades. Puritanism, clinging to the Book, saw to it that learning was not buried in the graves of the forefathers, by establishing at the very outset grammar schools; "the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university."

Infidelity goes to Christian schools for an education, and then attacks the faith that has founded and endowed such privileges as they have so freely used. Burke, with his keen insight, thus wrote: "The scheme of Christianity is such that it almost necessitates an attention to many kinds of learning. For the Scripture is by no means an irrelative system of moral and divine truths; but it stands connected with so many histories, and with the laws, opinions and manners of so many various sorts of people, and in such different times, that it is altogether impossible to arrive to any tolerable knowledge of it without having recourse to much exterior inquiry. For which reason the progress of this religion has always been marked by that of letters."

Contrast with this elevation of the race the experience and confession of those who have sneered at these great truths. Their writings are comparatively unread. Learning is not all. Hobbes who prided himself upon the name Philosopher of Malmesbury, after all his life of ninety years could say no more than this: "I am about to take a leap in the dark." It was the favorite expression of Voltaire, the great encyclopædist, whenever the name of the Redeemer was mentioned, "Crush the wretch!" He spent his life.

trying to make his malediction true, but all in vain. Infidel flatterers he cursed to their faces. At one moment raving against God and man, this great skeptic would in another moment turn away in piteousness of accents and plead, "O Christ! O, Lord Jesus!" The agony of his mental torture made even his physician shrink from his visits, while his nurse declared that "for all the wealth of Europe, she would never see another infidel die.” Hume made no secret of his infidelity, by tongue or pen. He too had finished his work, and sat at the card-table when death was approaching. Manliness itself seemed gone as the dying philosopher jested over the great change that was coming, as if eternity was but a fable ; and yet at other times his frame, trembling with fear, would shake the very bed beneath him in his awful despair.

All are aware of the attempts made to blot out the remorse that blackened the death chamber of Thomas Paine. A mournful travesty on intellectual power without a moral support, lingers in such experiences. A sound learning demands for its stability a harmony with the Book of books.

Apart from and beyond these considerations, history has a voice in this question. Professor

Ladd in his Doctrine of Sacred Scripture divides the history of the Bible into three great periods: The first period covers the era of its construction - from Moses to the latest writings of the New Testament; the second naturally reaches from the completion of the Book until the Reformation ; the third begins with the time of Luther and the rapid dissemination of the volume by the agency of the printing press, and continues until the present time. This is at once a natural and clear division in its history.

We have previously referred to the influence of the earlier books upon the race, but a new force was given in the addition of the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. The Book as a whole cannot therefore be judged until its full completion and acceptance by the Christian church. The legitimate question therefore seeks an answer as to the influence of the Book upon learning during all these eighteen Christian centuries, Why should there have been any "dark ages" if such a power lies in the Book?

Notwithstanding all the errors of the Church, it must be confessed that it always made some use of the Book. But, in what respect? The period extending from the early Fathers until the

Reformation is rightly called the "ecclesiastical." The Church was aiming for supremacy and power. It claimed the right even of crowning and dethroning kings. The kingdom of Christ was gradually becoming a great material, rather than spiritual,

power.

To accomplish its end, the Church made use of the Inquisition to terrify and destroy all who opposed its rule, and for a while it succeeded. The most saintly often fell under its ban. Corrupt men seized its offices, and the streets sometimes were crimsoned with the best blood of the earth. Nothing was allowed to pen that wrote a word

stand in its path. The

against its tyranny was

broken; the writer was excommunicated or put to death, and the book prohibited and destroyed; a method of procedure calling forth the indignation of Milton against the presumption that "St. Peter had bequeathed to them the keys of the press as well as of Paradise." And yet this was not all; the Church still professing to be guided by the Book burned every copy it could find in the hands of the people. Houses were searched by officers, lest even a page of its contents should be concealed. More than from infidelity, has the Book suffered in the hands of those who have