the thought of God, is so suffused with the consciousness of him, so soars into the heights of his presence and brings back such glorious results to the mind and spirit of man, as this book?

Just so long as it is true that "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee," just so long as we human satellites revolve around, and reach out to realize what binds us to, our central Sun, just so long the book of God will be the new book, the unending book, the timeless book.

The Bible's perennial interest comes also from the fact that it deals with the lesser, but always important and poignant, themes and questions which cluster around its one great ever-contemporaneous theme, those of man's relations to eternity, and to God, the God of might and right, of law and love. "If a man die, shall he live again?" "How shall man that is born of a woman be just with his Maker?" "How shall I come and appear before God?" "What shall I do to be saved?" "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?" Other books may attract our attention for a time, with their passing questions, and then be blown away like the innumerable leaves that strew the autumnal brooks in Vallombrosa, but this book will come to generation after generation with unwaning power and hold, because it deals with no light and passing themes; it grapples with the very things which men in their deepest moments most desire to know.

Solves Man's Problems

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And it not only grapples with these questions, it gives confident and satisfying answer, from a thorough and

accurate knowledge of God and man. It is timeless because the truths it utters are timeless, always true, always verifying themselves to the minds which fairly grasp them. It did not answer every detail of his inquiry, but it brought peace to the mind and heart of that Arabian Emir as he struggled with the problems of human virtue and suffering, and to the Preacher, as he sought some satisfying clue amid the distracting questions of life and death and human society. It filled with its peace the great questioning soul of Habakkuk, "the prophet of reasoned faith," in the midst of teasing doubt. It came to Saul of Tarsus, either in the written letter of the Old Testament, or the germinal truth of the New, which he felt to be one, and solved every problem of reason and conscience and spirit for him. And so with Augustine and Luther and Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and Gladstone and Romanes and Balfour, and souls like theirs, in all time and everywhere. It did this yesterday. It does today. To grapple with the deep, absorbing, lifeand-death-involving problems is a great thing; to solve them is a greater; the Bible does both; and lives forever.

But it does not solve them intellectually alone; it solves them morally, spiritually, vitally, and it solves them with power. The Bible is timeless, because there timelessly works in it and through it the timeless power of Him with whom all things are "one eternal now." One prophet saw a vision of an almond tree, and the message of the tree was, "I watch over my word to perform it." Another perceived the eternal promise of God in the unending circulation of snow and rain, and understood that " my word shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and shall prosper in the

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thing whereto I sent it." But a greater Prophet than them all declared, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." In every age, every land, every century, from the beginning until now, God is using this book as the medium through which to send the life-giving pulses of his spiritual might. Given our faith, our application of it, our obedience, he never lets it fail. He honored it in the first century, incomplete, not yet fully formed. He honored it when flaming apostles of foreign missions carried it among the heathen in medieval time and down to our own day. He honored it in the seventies and eighties upon the Congo; he honors it in India, Korea, Egypt, now. He honored it last year, last week, last night, as through its means he brought souls to salvation, healing, life. It knows no statute of limitations"; its potency never evaporates. Our faith may. Our zeal may. We may fail to apply it. But the God of eternity stands by it to send his power through it. The "two anointed ones" continually pour into it the exhaustless oil of light and life. It is as timeless as God.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

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1. How, and why, is the Bible a book of a "particular clime and time "?

2. How can it be said to be "contemporaneous"? 3. How does it compare in this with all other books? 4. Do its wonderful circumstances and wonderful people account for this? Why?

5. What are the four great respects in which it is "timeless"? (Answer this in four sentences.)

6. Why will it never be out-of-date?

CHAPTER II

THE TIMELY BOOK

The Bible is timeless, dealing with a timeless theme, grappling timeless problems, uttering truths eternally valid and powerful, used to bring salvation in every age by a God who is "The Eternal Now."

Being timeless, it should be timely. It was timely when it came, fitting its period, its people, its circumstances, as the glove the hand, or, better, as the key the lock. But times change. What precisely fits one man or age cannot fit another, precisely, at least. Though the Bible's formative principles and constructive substance are unchangingly right and potent, "enduring forever," do not its outer form and expression need to undergo some process to be adapted to any particular time, especially one so different from Bible times as ours? Is not some adaptation of form necessary?

Obviously.

Left in the original Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, what message would the Bible convey, upon this world or any world, to an American "Twentieth Century" ear and mind? It must be translated. And then? It must undergo a certain process of "transposition," like a piece of music, all whose essentials are left unchanged, but which is put into a certain key to be played upon a certain instrument, into another to be played on another, but with no conflict, schism, or discord between the different scores," each necessary to the full rondure" of

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the whole. Translated into English; transposed into "Twentieth Century."

Can the Old be Timely?

This will call, first, for our discovery, under the Oriental and ancient drapery, of the outlines of the timeless truth. Difficult and dangerous? True. But much more dangerous, and leading into infinitely more difficulties, would be not to discover under the drapery the truth. And the discovery is not so hard as it may look. Some knowledge of the laws of language, some acquaintance with the circumstances and the history, the ability and industry to compare Scripture with Scripture, especially to read the Old Testament in the light of the New, some testing and verifying religious experience of one's own, the promised enlightenment and guidance of the Holy Spirit, and a due proportion of mental independence and mental modesty, will enable anybody to see with reasonable clearness the main outlines of truth's real body under its foreign and changing garb.

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Then these eternal truths must be expressed in the present-day language, and, what in another phase is the same thing, must be applied to present-day facts and forces. At first sight this, too, would seem a very difficult, even if an absolutely necessary, undertaking. They didn't know everything down in Judee." And surely not only the wording, but the shape of thought, needs much alteration to fit our time! What light on modern problems from a man who never saw a railroad, heard a telephone or phonograph (happy man!), never caught a wireless or beheld a modern factory? Someone has proposed a new name for the phenomena of metals