quarter hours has been thinking of the world, the flesh, if not the devil, be prepared to switch for the other quarter into the channel of the things of the Spirit?

Too often our spiritual interest, zeal, appetite, are insufficient, not only to get us at the hard work required, but also to furnish the spiritual masticating action, and digestive juices, that "reading with the tongue," which makes the Bible's hardest places finally easy. The flintiest wheat yields its substance to vigorous teeth, sturdy saliva, and potent gastric-juice. But real food is dry to the tongue which brings no moisture of its own. True in various degrees of the Christian, how triply true of the unconverted souls! One wonders that any such was ever found with the open Bible before him.

Our low stage of spiritual advancement, our narrow spiritual experience, the small degree to which we are letting the Spirit illumine us, wall away the Bible treasures. When all these conditions are favorable, their long ray cuts the darkness of the passage into the Bible mine, brings us into the inner chambers, lights up the walls with gleaming glories almost dazzling. Without them, how dark!

Methods are at fault. We approach the Bible too infrequently. The incalculable advantage of momentum, cumulation, "making the iron hot by striking," we forfeit. We need them all.

We approach it too lightly, taking too little time for the right mind-impact, for getting large enough sections, for mature thought, for incubation. One might learn Esperanto by fifteen-minute daily stretches, but you cannot learn the language of Canaan or map out Zion's walls so.

We approach it too languidly; formally, or in the tired fifteen minutes just before we sleep, or the hasty fresher fifteen in the morning. Seldom the fresh, vigorous, tense, nervous, vital grapple.

We approach it unintelligently. We could use the Standard Revision, which allows us to follow unhindered the mind of the Spirit, but we take the King James, which chops it up unnaturally, misleading, interrupting. We fail to follow the law of "known to unknown," "easy to hard," and attack the difficult first, or take it "hit-ormiss." We treat alike precept, law, poetry, prophecy, history, making the Bible mean a thousand things it does not, and missing a thousand things it does. We fail to use the abundant literature of comment and explanation which light up its obscure allusions. We would not expect to get at Virgil or Browning without that.

Greatest defect of all, we approach it too often, prayerlessly. Prayerlessly means without expectation, without preparation, without illumination, without appropriation, without assimilation. If the undevout astronomer is mad, who is imbecile, deaf, blind, senseless, like "my servant " who approaches his Bible without prayer?

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. Is the Bible "hard"?

2. Name four reasons in the Bible itself (five sentences).

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3. Name five reasons in ourselves (five sentences). 4. Name five reasons in our methods (five sentences). 5. What things, human and divine, will make it easy"?

CHAPTER XIII

SATURATED SOLUTIONS

The

When any substance, solid, liquid, or gaseous, takes up into itself all it possibly can of a certain other substance around it or in it, we say that it is saturated." water will hold no more salt or sugar, the air will hold no more moisture. Then, at a touch, the saturated fabric drops water, the overladen air deposits dew, forms cloud, or sends down rain, the crystal-saturated liquid exudes crystal, drops crystal, covers with crystal whatever it touches, and if the process is long enough and intimate enough converts it into crystal. If evaporation reduces the proportion of water so that it cannot carry so much of the other substance, the surplus is deposited, "precipitated"; and if you put a stick, string, any solid, into the liquid it will begin at once to lay down the excess chemical upon that surface. In this way is made the familiar "rock candy" of our childhood. A saturated solution of sugar crystallizes around the string. Innumerable natural crystals of every sort came into existence thus, by evaporation, cooling, or some other shock. The wonderful stalagmites and stalactites of our limestone caves thus originated, and deposits not so beautiful.

Soul Saturation Incomplete

No one can be literally "saturated" with the Bible. Our natures will always have deeper and finer fibers

which its blessed truths and influences will be progressively reaching; always more of it to take in, and more of us to take it in. No one can rightfully sing: "Bread of heaven! Feed me till I want no more!" We will want more, and get more, all the time.

But it certainly is possible to be so full of Scripture facts, truths, words, spirit, that our lives present all the phenomena of saturation. We can readily think of many such minds, in and out of the Bible. How full Matthew is of Old Testament prophecies about Christ! Every salient incident or fact of Christ's life precipitates a Scripture reference: "That it might be fulfilled." Paul was like that with the Old Testament too; and John's Apocalypse, with few formal Scripture quotations, fairly drips Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, and the rest. No mind was ever more original and self-initiating than our Lord's; but see how touch or event or friend or enemy precipitates the Bible allusions, from start to finish, from the temptation's "It is written" to the anguished cry upon the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Modern instances are the Puritan writers and preachers, poets like Milton, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Whittier, Browning. What Bible-saturated men were Spurgeon and Moody and A. J. Gordon-to name no others!

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A Bible-saturated mind precipitates Scripture at a touch. And who can overestimate the value of that? We need the Bible truths, words, principles, at our tongues' ends, at our hearts' depths. We need them for warning, as one needs a monitory beacon on some to us uncharted, dangerous coast; we need them for direction, as one needs a road map in new country where he can so easily

go astray; we need them for defense, like Christ's "it is written" thrust between him and Satan's allurements; we need them for offense, as when, pleading with some soul for his salvation, we must have a sharp-tipped, feathered arrow from God's word to pierce to his heart; we need them about our work, for soothing, for instruction, for spiritual construction. Who has not wondered at the old Christian worker or minister who always had an appropriate Scripture text or passage for every occasion, every need? It seemed to us like genius sometimes, and sometimes like inspiration. It may have been the latter, somewhat; but it was so because it was first saturation: He shall bring to your remembrance all I said unto you," entangled in the meshes of your mind.

Precipitating Scripture at a Touch

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A Bible-saturated mind, in thus precipitating Scripture at a touch, surrounds with Scripture brightness, beauty, jeweled value, holy sacredness, things that would otherwise be trivial, passing, fleeting. Whittier's miracle of the winter storm which turns every common weed into a filagree of silver is repeated a thousand times in such a mind. The Chinese thrust a little idol-shaped bit of metal inside the oyster's shell, and the mollusk's life-forces, roused by the irritation, begin to cover the intruder with a layer of pearl. In Spurgeon's "Dropping Well of Knaresborough," sticks and twigs become rods and fronds of Jasper. Alas, that there are minds so otherthan-Bible-saturated that good things, great things, true things, at once are crusted with gall, venom, verdigris, or pinchbeck! But if a man's appreciation of familiar Bible beauties has been delicate and keen and joyous, how his