art itself may be lost. Some great figure-painters have been
unwilling that their pupils should study anatomy; fearing that the bones
would stick through the flesh in their paintings.

This danger shows itself plainly in all critical and historical uses of
the Bible, in the old-fashioned as in the new-fashioned study of the
Bible.

The international series of Sunday-school lessons burden the brief hours
of the Lord's Day with a mass of matter, which may or may not be true
knowledge about the Bible, but which certainly is not the true religion of
the Bible. A child may learn the tables of the Israelitish Kings, the
geography of the Holy Land, and the architect's plans of the temple of
Jerusalem, and may be learning nothing whatever of the real religion which
is shrined within the Bible. That is very simple:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
mind, and with all thy strength: And thy neighbor as thyself.

The time spent on these more or less interesting matters may rob the child
of his one weekly opportunity of learning to use the Holy Scriptures so as
to become wise unto salvation. To use their words of wise men, and their
tales of holy men, to inspire the love of goodness as the love of God,
this and this alone is to teach religion from the Bible. Bread that
consists of two-thirds bran and one-third white flour is eminently
laxative; but it is generally supposed that this age is lax enough in its
hold of truth. A little more wheat and a little less bran, ye good
doctors, might strengthen the constitutions of our children.

The new study of the Bible is perhaps even more in danger of missing its
real secret. An interest in the literature and history of Israel may
divert the mind from that which is, after all, the heart of these
"letters," and the core of this history.

Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.

Of this danger I think that I see signs, in some of the great masters to
whom we owe our new criticism, in some of the manuals which are
popularizing it, and in some of the gifted preachers who are
reconstructing theology around it. The science of religion is absorbing
too much of the life that should go into the art of religion; and we have
fine forms of thought, mantled with flabby flesh of feeling, in which no
red blood of holy passion pulses.

To read Homer with a view of understanding the fables of superstition, and
of interpreti