ecause of the ideal of character it sets before us. "It
presents to our souls characters that are supremely worthy of our
reverence because consciously centered in God and full of his power.
It permits us to share the enthusiasm of the men who discovered the
fundamentals of our religion and the character of our God. It is
indispensable to complete the {259} discipleship of Christ, because it
is the creator of the mold which his soul expanded."[24] Its types of
character may lack the finer graces, yet they are types we may do well
to imitate. Will the lives of Abraham, Joseph, Samuel, Elijah, David,
and many others ever lose their lessons? What sublime ideals even the
Christian minister may find in the lives of the prophets!

Will we ever get beyond the moral duties which are, according to the
Old Testament, obligatory upon man? Purity of thought, sincerity of
motive, singleness of purpose, truthfulness, honesty, justice,
generosity, love--these are some of the virtues which again and again
are in the strongest language insisted upon in the pages of the Old
Book. Indeed, the Old Testament emphasizes the loftiest ideals of
human life and society, anticipating the time when in all the world the
universal Fatherhood of God and the common brotherhood of man would be
realized. In an editorial in the Expository Times, commenting upon a
paper read before the First International Moral Education Congress, are
found these suggestive words: "It is when the teaching of the Old
Testament is simple, frank, and historical that it becomes the best
text-book of ethics in the world, for it possesses these two
incomparable advantages--it is full of humanity, and it is full of
variety. The epics of Joseph and David, the {260} tragedies of Elijah
and Isaiah have an undying charm. And the examples are varied as they
are interesting. It offers examples of almost every stage of moral
development. Whatever the pupil's moral attitude, there is some Jewish
hero that appeals to him. That hero's actions can be traced to their
motives and followed to their consequences. He can be treated with
sympathy in so far as he attains the standard of his times, and yet
criticized in so far as his motives are not those which we recognize as
absolute. So the pupil may learn at once to appropriate those _media
axiamata_ which fit him, and yet realize that there is something beyond
and above them."[25]

The Old Testament is of permanent significanc