have almost ceased to be a necessary part of a
gentleman's education, there is no class of allusions from which we can
draw to lighten or strengthen ordinary speech unless we turn to the
Bible. This deprives conversation of much of its colour and renders it
rather commonplace and meagre. Unfortunately, among many of our young
people, the Bible seems to be a book to be avoided or to be treated in a
rather "jocose" manner. To raise a laugh on the vaudeville stage, a
Biblical quotation has only to be produced, and the weary comedian, when
he is at a loss to get a witty speech across the footlights, is almost
sure to speak of Jonah and the whale!

It is disappointing to notice this gradual change that has taken place
in the attitude of the younger generation toward the Sacred Book. The
Sunday Schools, in their attempt to make the genealogies of importance
and to overload the memories of their little disciples with a multitude
of texts, or to over-explain every allusion in the terms of physical
geography, etc., may in a measure be responsible for this, but they
cannot be entirely responsible. One must admit that diversities of
interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures from a religious point of view
will always be an obstacle to their use in schools where the children of
Jews, of Mohammedans, and of the various Christian denominations
assemble. But there is always the home, where the first impetus to a
satisfactory knowledge of the Sacred Book ought to be given. The decay
of the practice of reading aloud in our homes is very evident in the
lack of real culture--or, rather, rudiments of real culture--in our
children. But there is no use in declaiming against this. Other times,
other manners; accusatory declamation is simply a luxury of Old Age!

Personally, my desultory reading of the Old and the New Testaments gave
me a background against which I could see the trend of the books I
devoured more clearly; it added immensely to my enjoyment of them;
besides, it was a moral and ethical safeguard. It was easy even for a
boy to discover that the morality of the New Testament was the standard
by which not only life, but literature, which is the finest expression
of life, should be judged. If there are great declamations, declamations
full of dramatic fire, which nearly every boy at school learns to love,
in the Old Testament, there are the most moving, tender, and simple
stories in the New. To the uncorrupted mind, to the unjaded min