the Bible speaks of things which are common to all, and speaks of them in a grand, simple, aud truthful way, which has appealed to men of all races and times. In danger and difficulty, in trouble and sorrow, there is no book which has been a greater comfort and strength than the Bible.

Now I have spoken of the Bible as a book. But though it is a book in one sense it is not a book in another. It is not one book, but many books collected together and bound up in a single volume. But as they have been collected together just as they now are for about 2,000 years, we speak of them not improperly as one book. Just as the Bible contains, and is made up of, many books, so these books are not all of one kind. We have history, poetry, proverbs, stories, hymns, and speeches in that wonderful and many-sided whole we call the Bible. All these books were

not written at one and the same time. Indeed sometimes the parts of a single book were written at different times, independently of each other, and then pieced together by somebody else later on. People's idea of a book then was something very different from people's idea of a book now. There was no printing then a book was written on scrolls, which were not cheap to buy like paper to-day. One man wrote something and somebody else added to it, and so a book grew up gradually, like some old castle in England of which part belongs to one period, and part to another, and a third to another still.

The Bible has been what it is now for about 2,000 years. Eight hundred years before that there was probably no part of it in existence. That is to say, it took about 800 years for the Bible to grow up. Some (but not much) was written about 2,800 years ago, some (but not much) was written not more than 2,000 years ago, so that between its oldest and newest parts there is a difference of 800 years. Think what a long time this is! In 1066 the Battle of Hastings was fought, and William the Conqueror became King of England. In 1866 Victoria was England's Queen. Imagine a book begun while William the Conqueror was King of England and finished while Victoria was Queen, and you have an idea how long it took before the Bible was finished. We must expect to find, and we do find, great differences of style and opinion in a book of which the oldest bits were written 800 years before the latest bits, and parts of which were written in each set of hundred years between the beginning and the end. How differently people think and feel now from what they thought and felt in the reign of William the Conqueror! But we shall find that on some very important things the oldest and newest and in-between parts of the Bible think the same.

In

THE FORMATION OF THE BIBLE

3

William the Conqueror's time people thought courage a virtue and falsehood a vice, and people think the same under Victoria.

Did you notice the words 'between the beginning and the end' with which a sentence a few lines above finished up? This did not mean that if you were to open a Bible now, the oldest bit is on the first page, and the latest bit is on the last. By no means. The ages are jumbled together, and most of the many books which make up the one book, the Bible, are themselves growths, with old bits in them and new bits and in-between bits as well.

The Bible is almost all written in Hebrew. Of course the Hebrew of the oldest pieces is not quite the same as the Hebrew of the latest pieces, but the language changed more slowly than English. Even Chaucer, who is only 500 years old, is more different from the English of Queen Victoria than the Hebrew of the oldest part of the Bible differs from the Hebrew of the latest part. The Hebrew Bible has been translated into dozens and dozens of different languages, but it is much the best thing to read it in the language in which it was written. Our English translation is a very noble one, but the original Hebrew is nobler still. The Germans have a very fine translation of the great English poet Shakespeare, but most Germans who are very fond of poetry and like Shakespeare learn to read him in English. And I hope that you, in the same way, will learn to read the Bible in Hebrew.

§ 2. Now though the Bible is made up of many books, there are several other reasons why we may nevertheless speak of it as one book, besides the reason that these many books have been collected and bound up together for some 2,000 years. Let us now see what these reasons are.

The

First of all, the Bible was all written by men of the same nation and people. Secondly, a great portion of it has to do with the history of that one nation, and it does not deal, except quite incidentally, with the history of any other. Thirdly, in spite of much variety, there is in the Bible a certain unity too. poetry, for instance, is mainly of one kind; it is religious poetry. The proverbs are mainly of one sort too. The history is not told for history's sake, but for a particular object. It is not so much told to tell people certain facts as to teach them the moral which to the writers seemed to underlie those facts. The Bible has to do with two great subjects, which, taken together, and in connexion with each other, make up what we call Religion. (Hence the poetry of the Bible is, as I said just now, religious poetry.) These two great subjects are Goodness and God.

The Bible tells us about God and Goodness; this is what gives

to it its unity. This is what gives to it its unique value. No other book has told men so well and so truly of goodness and God as the Bible. All that it says about God and all that it says about goodness is not indeed of equal value and of equal truth: there are degrees of excellence and of worth. But, taken as a whole, no other book has spoken and still speaks of God and goodness as this book, the Bible. And this is what has made the Bible precious and beloved through so many ages and to so many very different peoples. For God and Goodness can never grow old. Men and women always want to know about them, and in this respect one age is the same as another. The poetry of the Bible is often very beautiful, but men have not loved it for its beauty. Its stories are often very interesting, but men have not read them again and again for their interestingness. Its proverbs are often very wise, but men have not learnt them for their wisdom. Its history records many facts, but men have not greatly cared for the facts. Just as the writers cared for the 'moral' more than for the facts (and the later the historians the less they cared for the facts and the more for the moral), so its readers have always cared for the history of the Bible because they found in it something which told them about God and goodness, about virtue and vice, holiness and sin, about God's rule in the world and how he governs it for the best.

§3. The subject of the Bible, then, is Goodness and God. It was written in Hebrew by Hebrews and primarily for Hebrews. Hebrew was the name of a people (as English is the name of a people), who were afterwards called Jews.

Perhaps

I who write this book and you who read it are Jews. some of our great great great (and so on) fathers wrote a bit of the Bible itself. But we do not now speak Hebrew. We talk and speak English, and we are English people. Later on you will come to understand better how we are both Englishmen and Jews. There are people who are both Italians and Jews, others who are both Germans and Jews, and so on. At present, then, I will merely say this: that you and I are Jews, and that the Bible was written by Jews and for Jews, and tells us about Jews. Therefore the Bible specially appeals, and is most specially interesting, to Jews. Shakespeare is a world-poet (all who care for poetry love Shakespeare), but he is perhaps quite especially adored by English people. The Bible is a world-book (all who care for goodness and God love the Bible), but it is perhaps quite especially adored by Jews. You now see why. It tells about their early history and doings. It was written by them, and, in the first place, for them.

THE BIBLE AND THE JEWS

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But as we Englishmen are rightly proud of Shakespeare, whom lovers of poetry in all countries think to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest poet who ever lived, so Jews are rightly proud of the Bible, which lovers of goodness and God think to be the greatest religion-book in all the world.

The Bible, I say, tells us something of the early history of the Jews, or Hebrews as they were then called. It was written long ago and it tells of long ago, for the very latest words of the Bible were written some one hundred years before Julius Caesar landed in Britain, and he landed, as you know, about eleven hundred years before the battle of Hastings.

Now let me bring together two main things which I have said. (1) The Bible tells us of God and Goodness.

(2) The Bible was written by Jews, about Jews, and for Jews.

Hence you see that, as the Bible has told the men of Europe and America and Australia the most of what they believe about God, and much which they believe about goodness, it is the Jews who have been the great world-teachers about goodness and God. And this is really so. Most, and the very best, of what men believe about God, and a very great deal of the very best of what they know and believe about goodness, was written by Jews and is found in the Bible. It is the Bible, and through the Bible it is the Jews, who have taught men not only to love God and to love goodness, but to see that the love of goodness is part and parcel of the love of God.

§ 4. You may perhaps ask: How did the Hebrews-the men who wrote the Bible-get to know so much and so well about God and goodness?

That sounds an easy question, but it is really a difficult one. I cannot answer it fully because I do not fully know. The best answer I can give is this, that it was God who told them what they have told us. It was by God's help and will that they wrote about him and about goodness the noble words which we read in the Bible.

Let me explain what I mean a little more clearly.

If there were no God, we should not know anything about him. If there were no God there would be no goodness. I believe that this is perhaps the most important sentence, telling the most important truth, in all the world.

But when I say 'it was God who told them,' I do not mean that he told them in the same way that I might tell you about a strange fish on the south coast of Africa which you had never seen or heard or thought of. God did not tell them, and does not tell us, things

in that way. He does not pour knowledge into us as we pour water into an empty bottle. He has given us the power and the desire to know him and to be good, and if we use our power, he helps us to become good and to love him (for to know God and to love God are very near relations to each other). But over and above the help which he gives to every man, he gave a special help to the Jews, or perhaps I should say to the best men among the Jews, and to the men who wrote the Bible. He needed the Jews for his own good purpose to be the interpreters of his will to other nations and peoples. Through the Bible the Jews have taught the world about goodness and God, and so God told them more and let them know more about himself and how to serve him than he told to any other people. How exactly he told them I cannot tell you. That he told them, that he let them know a special and peculiar amount about himself and his service, that is a fact of history which everybody must accept. We shall soon hear various stories from the Bible itself how God told the Jews about himself and of his service and of righteousness and mercy; but the important thing is not exactly how the Jews were told, for their greatest men could hardly have explained it to you quite clearly themselves, but that they were told, that they somehow received this higher and better knowledge of goodness and God, and that through them Europe and America and Australia have received it too.

There was one particular way by which God led them and helped them to think and know gradually more and more of God and goodness. It was by their own lives and by their history. The past seemed to them full of religious lessons. And that was one reason why they wrote down the story of their past, and why one writer took up the work of another and added to it his reflections, and the moral which, as he thought, shone out from the whole.

Have you and I not often learnt a little from our own past? We think to ourselves: If I had not done this, or if I had done that, how much better it would have been, and so we learn from our mistakes and perhaps do better in the future. That is one way in which we learn from the past, and perhaps if you think of it you will find out other ways as well. Sometimes it may be our faults, sometimes it may be some good little act of another or of our own, sometimes it may be a joyful, and sometimes it may be a sad event which has befallen us-1 -but in all these different ways we may learn a little more about goodness, and perchance too about God.

So too the Jews learnt about goodness and God and the service of God by their history and their own lives. Actual life and practice, doing and being, these are often the best teachers. Not that the Jews were by any means perfect; they made many and