was not pledged to continue. And He has kept His pledge to men and the church. The Spirit is God exerting power in human life. "Where the Spirit dwells and works, God dwells and works." Thus He is immanent in men. Our tendency is rather to exaggerate the achievements of the disciples during Jesus's earthly life. Manifestly he expected us to do better than they. It is of the essence of infidelity to deny His words. We may speak modestly and still believe that under the Spirit we have done quite as well in comprehending truth, in the conduct of life, and in Christian activity as they did. God has been not less immediate, but more. He has been, not a guest of human life, but a resident in human life. All those things that we would like to have God do for us, in us, and with us, the Spirit God exerting power-does. It is one of the misfortunes of modern Christianity that it imagines itself to be deprived of some advantages in these days of the Spirit that it would have had in the days of the incarnation. The cry "back to Christ " was not a sign of unmixed wisdom or of the most rational and luminous faith.

The fanatic has sometimes misused the doctrine of the Spirit, and driven men away from reality. The remedy for a fanatical use of truth is a sane and rational use of truth. And if our generation shall recover for men's lives the truth of the Spirit, as the truth of the divine Fatherhood and the truth of Christ have largely been recovered, then we shall deserve well of those who come after us.

Finally, how shall the sense of God's direct influence be begotten in men? How can we make universal what is certainly frequent ? How can we make constant what is surely occasional? We easily believe in the direct influence of God at life's best moments and in the presence of the best men. Here is the test of faith; that it shall believe in the possibility of His influence everywhere and always. No other unbelief is more subtle and deadly than this which doubts His direct and immediate touch upon the life of man.

How does one man influence another? By living with him, by teaching him his truth, by revealing his character, by setting before him his plans and purposes, by giving him help and asking help of him in return, by giving him love and asking his love in return, by being strength and comfort to him in life's daily struggle - by all that one life can be to another. No man can tell the story or put it down in words. We cannot say it, try as we may. Even the Bible itself does not fully say it. By every figure of speech and by every kind of utterance, it tries, but at last the secret of the Lord is only with them that fear Him.

How can God's direct influence be increased and maintained? By the practice of His presence, by fellowship with Him in prayer, by companionship with Him in labor, by the study of His word and His works, by the doing of His work; by dwelling in the secret of His presence and being His servants in the world.

Once it was said of a group that others took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus and learned of Him. Do you see? Need I go on?

Forty-four years ago, almost on this very date, Abraham Lincoln's neighbors in Illinois gathered about him to say good by as he started to take up his life's heroic task. Among other things, he said: "Trusting in Him who can go with me and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well." May the Lord of hosts be with us as He was with our fathers!

THE BIBLE AS AN AID TO SELF-DISCOVERY

PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING, D. D.

OBERLIN COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO

Has the Bible any pre-eminent place in bringing the man of the twentieth century to self-discovery? Especially, can it help him to that highest self-knowledge that implies conscious relation with God? If so, it must be because in pre-eminent degree it makes available a wealth of complex experience, puts us in direct contact with the most significant personal life, and challenges our every power even more by the depth than by the breadth of its appeal.

It is worth noting, that the question has been already tested for us in history. It was the Christianity of the Bible that awakened men to real self-consciousness, made forever impossible the simple, satisfied attitude of antiquity toward life and the world, and compelled the bringing in of the modern romantic spirit. In the words of a great philosopher, "Christianity had demolished this calm self-sufficingness of the secular world" in which the ancient rested. There began then to be developed, for the first time, that personal consciousness which thenceforward, with all its problems,― freedom of the will and predestination, guilt and responsibility, resurrection and immortality,has given a totally different coloring to the whole background of man's mental life." Paulsen makes "the longing for the transcendent one of the truths which " Christianity has engraven upon the hearts of men." "Antiquity," he adds, "was satisfied with the earth; the modern era has never been wholly free from the feeling that the given reality is inadequate." Now, the Book whose influence has been thus sufficiently powerful to draw the decisive line of demarkation between the ancient and the modern worlds, and to awaken the modern man to that which is most characteristic in his consciousness, can hardly fail of pre-eminent power in bringing the individual to the discovery of himself.

No man, certainly, is likely to come to full self-knowledge independently of those influences which have streamed forth from the Bible. It suggests the laws of our life and it tests our powers in too concrete and telling a fashion to be wisely ignored.

The Bible is a most deeply and broadly human book; and so furnishes that appeal of complex experience so necessary to full selfconsciousness. It touches unerringly the whole gamut of the deeper human emotions and aspirations, and embodies them in figures that

mankind will not willingly let die. The expereince of the race increasingly confirms the testimony of Lotze, who says even of the Old Testament, that "for the most faithful delineation of the ever-recurring fundamental characteristics of human life, the Hebrew histories and hymns are imperishable models." And he adds, concerning this universal human appeal of the Scripture: "The treasures of classic culture are open to but few, but from that Eastern fountain countless multitudes of men have for centuries gone on drawing ennobling consolation in misery, judicious doctrines of practical wisdom, and warm enthusiasm for all that is exalted." A book with such breadth of appeal cannot fail to stir to larger self-consciousness any man who will face its phenomena with attention.

Moreover, it is of critical importance as an aid to self-discovery, that the Bible should be in such rare degree a personal book; for persons are chiefly stirred by persons. And the Bible is so instinct with life, that it is hardly possible to put the point of a needle into it anywhere without drawing blood. It brings us face to face with what must be counted the most significant line of personalities which history anywhere presents. And it is the great glory of the historical study of these later years that it enables us to see these prophetic men as living personalities, facing precise problems. Nothing so stirs and fructifies our own life, nothing so brings us to glad sense of our own higher possibilities, as this appreciative and responsive sharing of the visions of the higher man. Like children, we grow best by trying to measure up to things beyond our present capacity. And thus splendid vision haunts us perpetually, until we have tried to make it our own in deed as well as in thought. We come to a new self-consciousness.

For it is only true to say, on the one hand, even of the Old Testament; that it is the one great moral book of antiquity. It is not a mere collection of moral aphorisms, but shows the developing moral sense everywhere, in everything. Character is really the supreme interest in this bock. Among all the ancient peoples in truth, only the Jews have the modern scnse of sin, and the Bible is, in this particular, the only ancient book with a really modern tone. Compared with these sober Jews, even the gifted Greeks are but playing children in their sense of sin and character. This clear and constantly developing ethical tone marks out the Bible distinctly from all other ancient books.

And when one passes to the New Testament, this powerful ethical impression is only increased. One may well say with Sabatier: "What other book like this can awaken dumb er sleeping consciences, reveal the secret needs of the soul, sharpen the thorn of sin and press its cruci

point upon us, tear away our delusions, humiliate our pride, and disturb our false serenity? What sudden lightnings it shoots in to the abysses of our hearts! What searchings of conscience are like those which we make by this light?" And all this means that in sober fact we must concede to the Bible unrivaled power in bringing a man to moral self-consciousness.

Even the Old Testament is the one great religious book of antiquity. For the actual life of the civilization of this twentieth century, amongst all the ancient world's religious books, only the Bible is of prime significance. These Old Testament writers have been, as a matter of fact, among all the ancient writers, the world's great spiritual and religious

seers.

And if this can be said even of the Old Testament, how much more is it true of the New, with its vision of the supreme personality of Christ. For self-discovery, this is most significant. Just so surely as religious interest is deeply laid in the very foundations of man's nature, just so surely as religion is the supreme factor" in the organizing and regulating of our personal and collective life," just so surely as it brings us into the highest personal relation of which we are capable, just so surely as religion is thus the deepest experience into which a man may enter,- even so surely must that Book, which is the transcendent religious Book of the world, stir our whole natures as nothing else can stir them. For the unity of our natures makes it impossible that this highest appeal should be responded to without profound influence upon all the rest of our life. As does no other book, therefore, the Bible brings to consciousness the whole man.

As the record of the progressive seeking of men after God, and of the progressive revelation of God to men, moreover, the Bible offers peculiar help in the development of our own highest consciousness; for it enables us to relive, as it were, in our own personal experience this whole religious life of the world, to apply thus to our own deepest life-problems a real historical method. And hardly any procedure could be more helpful in bringing us to intelligent consciousness of ourselves than this retracing of the most important steps in the working out of character and faith in the world.

But the Bible is all this, finally, because it is, above all else, a book of honest testimony to experience. Its supreme value lies just here. For the testimony of another is our chief road to enlargement of life. Most of all, it is through such simple, honest witness that the New Testament puts us face to face with the redeeming personality of Jesus Christ. Whatever our theories about the Bible, it is not as compelling