ed, but in a prayer--"Our Father." The
earliest, simplest, deepest cry of the human after God, now by Him who
lived its spirit perfectly, the trusting, loving, holy Child of the
Father, made no longer a sigh, a dream, a vision, but a life. "The life
was the light of men."

That light is the sufficient clue to the dark labyrinth in which we wander
wearily.

I cannot always make out the face of a Father on the stern, harsh Power
in whom we live and move and have our being. Then I turn to my Divine
Brother, who, of all the children of men, saw deepest into the mystery,
and in his far-mirroring eyes I read the vision which satisfies me.

With poor dying Joe, I whisper to myself:

"'Our Father:' yes, that's werry good."

V.

The Right Critical Use of the Bible.

"I am convinced that the Bible becomes even more beautiful the more one
understands it; that is, the more one gets insight to see that every
word, which we take generally and make special application of to our
own wants, has had, in connection with certain circumstances, with
certain relations of time and place, a particular, directly individual
reference of its own."

Goethe: quoted by M. Arnold in "The Great Prophecy of Israel's
Restoration."

V.

The Right Critical Use of the Bible.

"God, who at many times and in many manners spake in time past to the
fathers, by the prophets."--Hebrews, i. 1.

The right use of the Bible grows out of the true view of the Bible.

The Old Testament is the literature of the people of religion, in whom
ethical and spiritual religion grew, through all moods and tenses, toward
perfection. The New Testament is the literature of the movement which grew
out of Israel, the literature of the Universal Church bodying around the
Son of Man, in whom religion came to perfect flower and fruit. The real
Bible is the record of this real revelation coming through real ethical
and spiritual inspirations; a revelation advancing with men's deepening
inspirations toward the Light which rose in the Life of Jesus Christ our
Lord.

God, who at many times and in many manners spake in time past to the
fathers by the prophets, hath at the last of these days spoken unto us
by a Son.

These speakings of the Divine Spirit in the souls of men, at many times
and in many manners, were articulated, as best was possible, in the
writings of many ages and of many forms. The Bible