.

I.

The Unreal Bible.

"The Bible, and the reading of the Bible as an instrument of
instruction, may be said to have been begun on the sunrise of that day
when Ezra unrolled the parchment scroll of the Law. It was a new
thought that the Divine Will could be communicated by a dead literature
as well as by a living voice. In the impassioned welcome with which
this thought was received lay the germs of all the good and evil which
were afterwards to be developed out of it: on the one side, the
possibility of appeal in each successive age to the primitive, undying
document that should rectify the fluctuations of false tradition and
fleeting opinion; on the other hand, the temptation to pay to the
letter of the sacred book a worship as idolatrous and as profoundly
opposed to its spirit as once had been the veneration paid to the
sacred trees or the sacred stones of the consecrated groves or hills."

Dean Stanley: "History of the Jewish Church," iii. 158.

I.

The Unreal Bible

"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning
those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they
delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and
ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having traced the
course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in
order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
concerning the things which thou wast taught by word of mouth."--Luke
i. 1-4.

This day, in our Church year, calls us to think upon the influence of the
Bible on the advance of man into the Kingdom of God.[1]

Since the growth of written language great books have been the
well-springs of thought and feeling for mankind, from which successive
generations have drawn the water of life. Since the introduction of the
printing-press books have been, beyond all other agencies, the educators
of men. And of all books of which we have any knowledge, those together
constituting the Bible form incomparably the most potent factors in the
moral and religious progress of the western world; and as all other
progress is fed from moral and religious forces, I may add, in the
general advance of Christian civilization.

From these books the lisping lips of children have learned the tales of
beautiful goodness which have nourished all noble aspirations. Over these