able" taboo such a choice for a steady program? What passing folly is there in wasting golden hours by cramming the mind full of the endless supply of novels that will not of themselves have a natural life of more than a few months.

So the wise one tries to choose a few from among the confusing multitude. President Eliot has made his selection. Like the wise man he is, he has made it embrace a large range, but you will notice that most of his choice are biographical or poetic. We do not know what basis he used for selection. But a book that is interesting, human, true to life, of moral worth, that is educative, that is an authority in its line and charming in style surely commends itself.

Many books possess one or the other of these qualities, but few indeed, combine them all. So few are these comprehensive books that where one is discovered, like an unexpected treasure, it should command our immediate interest and attention. For such a book is a masterful book, and can be made to master your life. Such a mastery must have been inherent in that long-lost book at whose public reading it was recorded, "And the ears of all the people were attentive unto the words of the book."

A courageous leader in the fourth century before Christ was triumphantly aiding a handful of returned Jewish exiles in the rebuilding of their sacred ancestral city and its temple. They find a copy of the law, the old book of the Covenant.

Just a portion of what we call the Pentateuch was it, just a portion of the first five books of our Old Testament. So strange was the power and fascination of that book that all the people listened with attentive ears. If even a portion of the book (and that not its most compelling part) could so move men, how great must be its power in all its comprehensive completeness, as we possess it, today?

It is worth while to study the mastery of this book and feel the Bible's imperial sway over conscience, mind, and heart.

No stronger testimony to the mastery of the book could be borne than that which the great English historian, Green, gives in his fascinating history in the eighth chapter, the chapter on Puritan England. Says he, "No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years which parted the middle of the reign of Elizabeth from the meeting of the long Parliament.

"England became the people of a book and that book was the Bible. It was as yet the one English book that was familiar to every Englishman; it was read at church and read at home, and everywhere. Its words as they fell on ears which custom had deadened, kindled startling enthusiasm. When Bishop Bonner set up the first six Bibles in St. Paul's many well-disposed people used much to resort to the hearing thereof; especially when they could get any audible voice to read them; while the

small Geneva Bibles carried the scripture into every home.

"So far as the nation at large was concerned, no history, no romance, hardly any poetry save the little-known verse of Chaucer existed in the English tongue, when the Bible was ordered set up in the churches. Now from the Bible legend and annal, war-song and psalm, state-roll and biography, the mighty voices of prophets, the parables of evangelists, stories of mission journeys, of perils by land and sea; all were flung broadcast by minds unoccupied for the most part with any rival learning.

"The fall of Constantinople a century earlier had given the start to Greek literature which wrought the revolution of the Renaissance. Now the disclosure of the older mass of Hebrew literature wrought the revolution of the Reformation. The power of the English Bible became the mightiest force in the literature and social life of the people. The Bible formed practically the whole accessible literature. A strange mosaic of Biblical work and phrase coloured English talk two hundred years ago, just as we use bits of Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, and Thackeray. The mass of picturesque allusion which we borrow from a thousand books, our fathers were forced to borrow from one; and the borrowing was the easier and the more natural because the range of Hebrew fitted it for the expression of every feeling. When Spencer poured his warmest love notes in the 'Epithalamium' he adapted the very words of the psalmist, as he bade

the gates open for the reception of his bride. When Cromwell saw the mists break over the hills of Dunbar, he hailed the sunburst with the cry of David, 'Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered. Like as the smoke vanished so shalt thou drive them away.' Far greater," continues Green, "was the effect of the Bible on the people at large. The whole moral effect produced nowadays by the religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the lecture, the missionary report, the sermon was then produced by the Bible alone. The effect was amazing -the whole temper of the nation felt the change. A new moral and religious impulse spread through every class."

Could more telling testimony be borne to the masterful power of any book? If you would further grasp the masterful power of this book:

I. Note its Moral Grandeur.

We need no stronger evidence of the book's moral power than is already given in that statement of Green's, "No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than during those years of Elizabeth's reign . . . then England became the people of a book and that book was the Bible." The same story comes from every land and every clime where the contents of the book have been loyally listened to. The story of the carving of our own nation out of the wilderness of forest and prairie and mountain testifies the same great truth. The taking of the book in prairie schooners on the far frontier and rough backwoods cabin and the living of its pre

cepts made our fathers a God-fearing, righteousliving, liberty-loving people. "By their fruits ye shall know them." We know that Thomas Jefferson was speaking what our national history has proven true when he said, "I commend the study of the sacred page to all my countrymen. Its perusal can but make of them better husbands, better men, better citizens." The book itself shows where such moral power lies. The grandeur of its moral ideal speaks to the human conscience from every page. If human frailty and human nature sometimes blot its ideal characters, if Abraham lies and David grievously sins, and the truthful record tells us so, it is a cause to commend the trustworthiness of the narrative and its true human portrayal, rather than to decry. Nowhere is sin pandered to, always is it held up for human ignominy and divine displeasure.

If social customs and barbaric cruelty find a higher recognition on some of its Old Testament pages than approve themselves to our Christian consciences, whence came the light of our Christian consciences? We should but be thankful again to the God of righteousness, who could reveal Himself step by step in the onward march of human development, until at last the full revelation of God's Fatherhood and man's brotherhood could be appreciated. We would not decry the England of today, because under Elizabeth, sheep-stealing and a hundred other crimes of like nature were punishable by death. Rather would we look to the end of