the rest. The measure of a man's being
seems to be the swiftness with which his nature runs from the bottom of
this scale to the top, the swiftness with which he identifies himself,
says "I" in all of it. The measure of his ability to read on any
particular subject is the swiftness with which he runs the scale from
the bottom to the top on that subject, makes the trip with his soul from
his own little I to God. When he has mastered the subject, he makes the
run almost without knowing it, sees it as it is, _i. e._, identifies
himself with God on it. The principle is one which reaches under all
mastery in the world, from the art of prophecy even to the art of
politeness. Tho man who makes the trip on any subject from the first
person out through the second person to the farthest bounds of the third
person,--that is, who identifies himself with all men's lives, is called
the poet or seer, the master-lover of persons. The man who makes the
trip most swiftly from his own things to other men's things and to God's
things--the Universe--is called the scientist, the master-lover of
things. The God is he who identifies his own personal life, with all
lives and his own things with all men's things--who says "I" forever
everywhere.

The reason that the Hebrew Bible has had more influence in history than
all other literatures combined, is that there are fewer emasculated men
in it. The one really fundamental and astonishing thing about the Bible
is the way that people have of talking about themselves in it. No other
nation that has ever existed on the earth would ever have thought of
daring to publish a book like the Bible. So far as the plot is
concerned, the fundamental literary conception, it is all the Bible
comes to practically--two or three thousand years of it--a long row of
people talking about themselves. The Hebrew nation has been the leading
power in history because the Hebrew man, in spite of all his faults has
always had the feeling that God sympathised with him, in being
interested in himself. He has dared to feel identified with God. It is
the same in all ages--not an age but one sees a Hebrew in it, out under
his lonely heaven standing and crying "God and I." It is the one great
spectacle of the Soul this little world has seen. Are not the mightiest
faces that come to us flickering out of the dark, their faces? Who can
look at the past who does not see--who does not always see--some mighty
Hebrew in it singing and st