body is involved in the reformation. It is by this law that the religious standard of nations marks what shall be their relative place in the social life. No idolatrous nation is in a civilized state; they that make idols are like unto them-degraded. In a certain respect every man is like his conception of God. Paganism is a unit in its theories and in its fruits. Mohammedanism casts its blight upon all who receive it. Belief in a cruel God produces a cruel people.

The races of men are divided into barbarous, enlightened, half-civilized, and civilized; and each of these states is paralleled by its so-called religion. We shall assume the undisputed acceptance of the statement, that in some way civilization and the Bible recognize each other. The manner of that relation remains to be considered. "In nothing, indeed, is the course of European history so remarkable," says Mr. White in his "Eighteen Christian Centuries," "as in the immense differences which intervals of a few years introduce. In the old monarchies of Asia, time and the world seem almost to stand still. The Indian, the Arab, the Chinese of a thousand years ago, wore the same clothes, thought the same thoughts, and led the same life as his successor of to-day.

It is within the memory of living men when an African embassy, bearing costly presents to Britain's queen, was welcomed with royal honors. In response to the question they brought from their prince as to the secret of England's greatness, Victoria procured a richly-bound copy of the Bible and sent it back with this message: "Tell the prince that this Book is the secret of England's greatness."

Men and nations need what such a book gives. We are not demanding even an assent to the volume as from God, in recognizing what Pascal so long ago discovered: "the vast difference between a book which one makes and throws among a people, and a book which of itself makes a people.” The great English literary critic, Matthew Arnold, will surely not be accused of a too favorable bias in his unsought testimony: "Yet assuredly of conduct, which is more than three fourths of human life, the Bible, whatever people may thus think and say, is the great inspirer."

M. Taine, the world-renowed French essayist, could not see England without its Book. In all the literary wealth of the empire "upon which the sun never sets," he caught sight of an old folio, the translation of Tyndale with all its venerable precepts, and thus wrote: "Hence have sprung

much of the English language, and half of the English manners; to this day the country is biblical; it was these big books which had transformed Shakespeare's England."

We are surely appealing to no extravagant admirer of the book in repeating the statement of Professor Huxley: "for three centuries, this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to noble and simple, from John O'Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians." Beyond all cavil or doubt, this Deathless Book is the book of the truest civilization.

We are

We leave for other occasions a consideration of its marvelous influence upon the chief factors of society-laws, customs and motives-in order to learn the secret of such a power. not to be understood as limiting all truth to the Bible. The two books, nature and revelation, are from the same mind, and will not conflict. Socra tes was firmly of the conviction that God was his teacher; a conviction the world still cherishes as undisputed. The devout and scholarly editors of Plutarch deny any knowledge, on his part, of Christianity or the doctrines of the Jewish Script

ures; while his "Delay of the Deity in Punishing the Wicked" is a profound classic in natural theology. We are not compelled to accept or deny the possibility of other books containing truths that will stand the test of time; and yet the best that can be said of all so-called "sacred books is that their religions are ethnic, while that of the Bible is catholic.

Prophets and apostles doubtless uttered some truths that had been partially apprehended before, yet this is no reason for any dispute as to the question of inspiration. It is the direct teaching of Christianity that all men may know somewhat of God and truth even without the "Law." No divine right of appealing to human consciousness was surrendered when "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Luthardt, in his "Saving Truths of Christianity," quotes Irenæus as to whole Christian congregations in the second century without the Bible, but who bore its truths in their hearts.

Men may appeal to the Zend Avesta, yet its pages hold no grip upon the living. We may appeal to Buddhism, but there is in its highest doctrines a weary void; there is no life in it. It has been the fashion to quote Confucius; but there is

no glow of piety in his sententious sayings. His writings deal only with the seen and temporal; and with all their power they cannot elevate the great dormant people. "Each of these great ethnic religions is full on one side, but empty on the other." The Koran can be judged by its fruits; enough of borrowed Scripture to keep alive, while its humanness debases every soul that falls under its sweep.

In his "Ten Great Religions" Dr. Clarke has thus tersely expressed these facts: "The religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, have come to an end, having shared the fate of the national civilization of which each was a part. The religions of China, Islam, Buddha, and Judea have all been arrested and remain unchanged and seemingly unchangeable. Like great vessels anchored in a stream, the current of time flows past them, and each year they are further behind the spirit of the age, and less in harmony with its demands. Christianity alone of all religions, seems to possess the power of keeping abreast with the advancing civilization of the world. The Gospel of Jesus

continues the soul of all human culture."

If it is possible to epitomize the fundamental doctrines of the Book upon which the civilized