be found in this conception of love as a child,—a conception never wholly lost, even when the child was robbed of the purity which we recognize as its ideal property. It should be noted, also, that the Romans laid hold of this idea more eagerly than did the Greeks; for the child itself, though more artistically set forth in Greek literature, appears as a more vital force in Roman literature.[19] III IN HEBREW LIFE AND LITERATURE The literature of Greece and Rome is a possession of the modern world. For the most part it has been taken as an independent creation, studied indeed with reference to language as the vehicle of thought, but after all chiefly as an art. It is within a comparatively recent time that the conception of an historical study of literature has been prominent, and that men have gone to Greek and Roman poetry with an eager passion for the discovery of ancient life. The result of these new methods has been to humanize our conception of the literature under examination. Singularly enough, while the modern world has been influenced by the classic world chiefly through its language, literature, and institutions, the third great stream of influence which has issued from ancient sources has been one in which literature as such has been almost subordinated to the religious and ethical ideas of which it was the vehicle; even the strong institutional forces inherent in it have had only exceptional attention. There was a time, indeed, when the history of the Jews, as contained in the books of the Old Testament, was isolated from the history of mankind and treated in an artificial manner, at its best made to illustrate conduct, somewhat as Latin literature was made to exemplify syntax. The old distinction of sacred and profane history did much to obscure the human element in what was called sacred history, and to blot out the divine element in what was called profane history. There are many who can remember the impression made upon their minds when they learned for the first time of the contemporaneousness of events in Jewish and Grecian history; and it is not impossible that some can even recall a period in their lives when Bible people and the Bible lands were almost as distinct and separate in their conception as if they belonged to another planet.