RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (Camb.), PH.D. (PENNA.)
Professor of Literature (in English) in the University of Chicago; Late
Lecturer in Literature to Cambridge University (Extension),
and to the London and the American Societies for the
Extension of University Teaching

Author of "The Literary Study of the Bible," etc.; Editor of
"The Modern Reader's Bible"

BOSTON, U.S.A.

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
1903

PREFACE

I WISH to explain that this volume is not an abridgement of my other work on The Literary Study of the Bible. There is necessarily much in common between two treatments of the same topic: but the purposes of the two are distinct. The larger work is intended for formal students; it is an illustration of literary morphology in the field of sacred Scripture. The present book is addressed to the general reader, whether more or less cultured; it avoids technicalities, and treats the matter of the Bible, approaching this from the literary side. In what sense I understand the word 'literary' as distinguished from theological and critical- I have sufficiently explained in the opening section.

Many things have convinced me that we are entering upon a new era of popular interest in the sacred Scriptures. My duties as a lecturer have brought me in contact with many different types of audiences in different parts of England and America. No single thing has impressed me more than the commonness of the remark - coming usually from persons who were neither uneducated nor irreligious that the Bible (except for a few passages) had long been a sealed book to them, but that they were taking to it again. We have done almost everything that is possible with these Hebrew and Greek writings. We have overlaid them, clause by clause, with exhaustive commentaries; we have translated them, revised the translations, and quarrelled over the revisions;