t exegesis began to play about it.
He pointed out that Cardinal Newman interpreted the words, _I will lay
thy stones with fair colours and thy foundations with sapphires_, as
authorizing "the sumptuosities of the Church of Rome"; and to
Protestants who said that this was a wrong use of the passage he pointed
out that their similar use of the Beast and the Scarlet Woman and
Antichrist would seem equally wrong to Cardinal Newman; "and in these
cases of application who shall decide"? What he insisted on was the
value of the Bible as a beautiful and ennobling literature, easily
accessible to all. He would have it taught with intelligence, sympathy,
reverence, and, above all, "as a Literature,"--for biblical teaching
ought to show the widely varying elements of which the Bible is
composed: the profound differences, not merely of authorship and style,
but of tone and temper, between one book and another; the historical
circumstances under which each came into being; the section of humanity
and the period of time to which each made its appeal.

In 1869 he wrote in his Annual Report--

"Let the school managers make the main outlines of Bible history, and
the getting by heart a selection of the finest Psalms, the most
interesting passages from the historical and prophetical books of the
Old Testament, and the chief parables, discourses, and exhortations, of
the New, a part of the regular school work, to be submitted to
inspection and to be seen in its strength or weakness like any other.
This could raise no jealousies; or, if it still raises some, let a
sacrifice be made of them for the sake of the end in view. Some will say
that what we propose is but a small use to put the Bible to; yet it is
that on which all higher use of the Bible is to be built, and its
adoption is the only chance for saving the one elevating and inspiring
element in the scanty instruction of our primary schools from being
sacrificed to a politico-religious difficulty. There was no Greek school
in which Homer was not read; cannot our popular schools, with their
narrow range and their jejune alimentation in secular literature, do as
much for the Bible as the Greek schools did for Homer?"

In 1870 he wrote about a book[20] by two young Jewish ladies: "I am sure
it will be found, as I told them, that their book meets a real want;
there were good books about the Bible for the learned, and there were
bad books about it--that is to say, bad _resumes_ of its hi